This starts off pretty oddly… I mean, abruptly. But then it ambles along kinda nicely…

Pretty odd.

But fun.

Did I miss something? Has this movie been mis-ripped? I feel like I’m watching the third episode of something instead of the first.

Rio Bravo. Howard Hawks. 1959. ⚃

Oh, yeah. Wim Wenders. He was hot shit in the 80s. Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, and then… did we forget about him or did he make some bad movies or something?

He’s made a buttload of movies! I think I lost track of him after Until the End of the World, which felt like a… whatchamacall them… EU mish-mash. That is, it had huge financing from all over Europe, so there was one French actor, one German, etc.

And this movie starts with a paean to open borders, so…

But I’m really enjoying it so far. It feels like a nice, small, quirky movie.

This is most amiable, but it’s only subtitled in English when they’re talking a different language… and their English is kinda… er… not super clear?

I wonder what the story behind this is. It looks like it has a kinda small budget? Was it made for a TV channel? Until the End of etc had a pretty huge budget and… wasn’t that successful (but it didn’t bomb or anything)…

Lisboa is very pretty. Haven’t been there since I was like 19, though.

… yeah! It was the summer of Pump of the Volume. 19.

I like these long stretches of music.

This movie has some scenes that are absolutely fantastic, and I love the mood Wenders creates here. But it has some pacing issues.

Lisbon Story. Wim Wenders. 1994. ⚃

Hm… this seems quite familiar. Have I seen this recently?

I chose this movie because it’s the oldest movie in my /dvd/ directory that’s not marked as being seen…

Oh well. It’s super stylish so far, so I guess I’ll just watch it (again).

The mid-60s was a strange time for Hollywood — this is basically a 50s heist movie farce, but with some nods towards more modern sensibilities. It’s so awkward!

Should they go all meta, or play it straight? Instead it’s in a kind of in-between state where you kind of imagine the audience in the cinema is going “eh? eh?”

I mean, it’s funny and stylish, but it’s awkward.

I mean, Peter O’Toole in a screwball comedy?

Everything here basically works… Hepburn is great and Hugh Griffith is perfect as her father and the scenes are fun. But as a 50s movie this would have been 40 minutes shorter. This movie feels like it’s stalling every other scene; kinda sputtering all the time when it should be zipping along.

How To Steal a Million. William Wyler. 1966. ⚃