Night Games. Mai Zetterling. 1966. ⚃

I don’t think the plot recap at imdb can be improved upon :

Jan (Keve Hjelm) grooved up in an over class environment and with a strong attachment to his egocentric and cold-hearted mother Irene (Ingrid Thulin).

I mean, that’s just perfection.

[twenty minutes pass]

Wow, this is something else. I had expected more Bergmanesque stuff after Zetterling’s first movie, but this is definitely not that.

The first wild scenes made me think of Pasolini, and not the fun Pasolini, but this movie is made almost a decade before Pasolini’s stuff? So it’s… Fellini, but as nightmare. Kinda.

So I had to pause the movie just to Google “well what did people at the time think”:

The film premiered at the 27th Venice International Film Festival where it was considered so controversial that it was shown to the jury in private. The film was also the cause of former child-star Shirley Temple’s resignation from the San Francisco International Film Festival. Temple denounced the film as “pornography for profit” and was against it being shown at the festival.

The cinematography is very striking, and the way it glides between the present and the past is masterful.

*unpause*

[forty minutes pass]

Well! This must have been challenging for the actors… I don’t think anybody would have shot anything like this today. I almost understand Shirley Temple.

[the end]

Well!

It’s so ahead of its time. But it’s hard to really like: It’s set in such a creepy milieu… It’s like “yes, being super-duper incredibly rich sure is hard”…

I don’t know. I’m also super drunk.

Anyway, the performances are incredible. Lena Brundin in particular, but just about everybody… except the lead, who’s a bit of a non-entity (Keve Hjelm). And… Oh! Yeah! Naima Wifstrand as the batty aunt! Fantastic!

And the cinematography! Amazeballs!

It’s a unique movie, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d recommend watching.

The Beaches of Agnès. Agnès Varda. 2008. ⚅

[the end]

Hey! I forgot to write anything!

I was just too engrossed by the movie. It’s totes brilliant. Love the way she’s extremely personal but still grounds everything in the movies, so it doesn’t become private.

Terminator: Salvation. McG. 2009. ⚂

[three minutes pass]

Oh, this is the 2009 movie? In 4K? I think I thought that I was buying the new movie… and I’m also surprised that I haven’t seen this one before.

And it’s directed by the Supernatural showrunner? Hm. We’ll, let’s see.

[forty minutes pass]

Oh, those are different people? I thought they were the same person, only travelling back in time… It’s a common phenomenon in movies: A director will often just cast a bunch of people that just look like prettier versions of themselves in the lead roles.

Here’s the director…

And here’s the two leads; kinda similar types. They both have McG’s haircut in this movie, so they look identical to me. If you have to cast this way, couldn’t one of them have had an eye patch or a wooden leg or something?

The terminators sure are easier to kill in this movie than in the second movie! It’s like going from Alien to Aliens…

[several hours pass]

It’s a pretty good action movie. The plot is very straightforward for one of these things — I thought they were skipping around in time, but they aren’t. There’s a bunch of fun action scenes in here… but… It’s just… it’s just a bit boring, isn’t it? Like, having the big reveal be a huge infodump is just so… dull?

But I’ve seen worse Terminator movies. I think.