Last Movie You Watched

[listener]

THE WICKED PRIEST  Japan 1968
starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as a 1-man army battling yakuza and evil priests
very commercial Japanese film, good mix of violence, humour and tears.  Banzai Media edition, with English subtitles

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge, I'll take your top 5 under advisement

Choices based on very personal reasons, not reflecting necessarily what I think are Woody's greatest films, just the ones that touched me most. So, of course, ymmv.

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Choices based on very personal reasons, not reflecting necessarily what I think are Woody's greatest films, just the ones that touched me most. So, of course, ymmv.

Sarge

Naturalmente.

Love and Death is one you would certainly appreciate, given the subject matter.  You need to watch it at least once.

I have let a lot of Woody slip me by:  if I want to know how neurotic Jews might act, I need only ask myself, with no need of anyone's advice.  But of the ones I have,  Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets over Broadway stand out for me, even over Annie Hall and Manhattan..  . My intro to Woody was Take the Money and Run.  It was the first half of a double bill, the second part being a definite contrast:  Mary Queen of Scots, with Glenda Jackson.

And thank you, sieur.  Viz. "if I want to know how neurotic Jews might act" . . . I used to like Allen much better than I do now; whether or not this was strictly fair, I reached a point where I thought, "This isn't cute anymore."

I'm not sure I've even seen Hannah and Her Sisters, a state of affairs which clearly I ought to remedy.

[James]

Devastated by the loss of their unborn baby, Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt a child. At the orphanage, both feel drawn to a little girl (Isabelle Fuhrman) named Esther, and soon the couple take their new daughter home. But when a dangerous series of events unfolds, Kate begins to suspect that there is something evil lurking behind the child's angelic exterior.

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[bhodges]

One of my favourite De Sica movies. Totally different from his neo-realist films, and quite surprising coming from this director. Splendid creation of atmosphere, superb characterizations from the young actors (Sanda, Berger, Testi).

Based on a novel chronicling the friendships of young jewish italian bourgois in Mussolini's Italy. A movie that gently makes its way and stays in the memory.

Mine as well. This is, I think, third time I've seen it. That elegiac atmosphere is what keeps me coming back to it, he captures it magnificently; soft lenses, autumnal colors, melancholy of Dominique Sanda. It always felt more like a Visconti film to me.

And a favorite here, too. I haven't seen it in awhile, but saw it 3-4 times years ago. Beautifully filmed, excellent cast, very sad story.

Frenzy, for the very first time. A classic, of course.

Another one I enjoyed a number of times, back in the day. More humor than usual for Hitchcock, e.g., the dinner scenes.

--Bruce

[Karl Henning]

Another one I enjoyed a number of times, back in the day. More humor than usual for Hitchcock, e.g., the dinner scenes.

Funny (erm) you should say that, Bruce, because in recent weeks I watched both The Trouble With Harry and Family Plot for the first time, and they really are flat-out comedies!  And the thought which struck me once Frenzy stopped rolling was . . . Some weeks ago on Facebook I shared the link to an article which compiled as statistics how little dialogue female actors have, even when they are the principal characters (one of the sound-byte takeaways was, Mulan has half the lines spoken by her pet dragon—a talking imaginary animal fergoshsakes).  Well, at the end of Frenzy I could not help thinking that all the women in the script were (a) victims, or (b) something of a scold (the wife who refuses, not without reason, but neither without rancor, to harbor Blaney), or (c) the comic-relief ditsy wife who half-starved her husband with absurd dainties.

Mind you, the film is "of its era" (and, great though the series is, The Twilight Zone scripts were almost without exception a man's world, so the era was what it was).

Edit :: minor but weird typo / I blame autocorrect

[Karl Henning]

Oh! There was also Blaney's ex's secretary, also playing rather a negative type. So all the female actors who have actual dialogue, are either unflattering stereotypes, or the victims of violence.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[SimonNZ]

[listener]

THE RESCUE  HK 1971    Mandarin
dir. Shen Chiang        Cast: Lo Lieh, Shih Szu, Ling Ling, Chin Chi-chu, Bolo Yeung
Body count pretty high, hatchets to multiple  foreheads, fast cutting decreases the impact of the gore.  Lots of flying (wirework)
79 minutes doesn't give any time for anything but getting from one crisis (one fighting against many usually) as quickly as possible but it's not as confusing as usual.   

[Rinaldo]

First off, I liked the story & how it was told, its themes, and how it flipped through time as it did to unravel things. The length and pacing were pitch perfect, never dull or lagging. I NEVER cared for Cate Blanchett at all, didn't get her, but her performance here won me over, it was great - it changed my view of her, I like how she portrayed this deeply damaged character. Additionally, I liked the entire cast, perfect choices .. I'm a huge fan of comedy and stand-up comics, so seeing Andrew Dice Clay & Louis C.K. outside of what they normally do was icing on the cake - it worked, I dug it. I can honestly say that this film/story is pretty much tied with Crimes and Misdemeanors as my favorite Woody Allen picture(s).

Agreed, Blanchett was excellent and the movie a pleasant surprise. One of Allen's best.

[mc ukrneal]

Finally saw the last Hunger Games movie. I'm not sure I would have liked the book either, but it just seemed ponderous. The acting seemed totally wasted. And an irony of ironies, I think Donald Sutherland was the only one who smiled in the whole movie. I think it took itself too seriously...

[listener]

MARGUERITE  France 2015
A French impression of FLorence Foster Jenkins, set in 1920's Paris.   Michel Fau as her vocal coach looks a lot like James Coco.  Good, but not great is my first impression, might change. I've not seen the American treatment of the story with Meryl Streep.  I've lived with the Jenkins LP on RCA for many years so I was prepared.
Some nice scenes in a dadaist cabaret. (also in DVD extras)

[Bogey]

An all time favorite:



A hidden gem:



And a series that I now want to see the complete run of nine based on this one:

[James]

Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a lawyer, is recently widowed and grieving the loss of his wife when he is sent to a remote village to put a deceased eccentric's affairs in order. Soon after his arrival, it becomes clear that the villagers are hiding a terrible secret. Kipps discovers that his late client's house is haunted by the spirit of a woman who is trying to find someone and something she lost, and that no one -- not even the children -- is safe from her terrible wrath.

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[André]

Each "character" is a giant and Mowgli is a midget. This makes for a rather, errrr, unbalanced view of the book. Belief is of course suspended, and all told I enjoyed the film. So did my 8 year old grand daughter, who is probably more the 'target audience'. 

[listener]

HAPPY TOGETHER   1997  Cantonese   dir. Wong Kar-Wai 
photographed by Christopher Doyle  in high contrast colour with some monochrome sequences
with overprinted subtitles rendering subtitles unreadable.
Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung, Chang Chen
Gay angst in Buenos Aires among Hong Kong ex-pats losing and looking for partners

[Karl Henning]

Over the weekend, and for the first time each:  Topaz & Torn Curtain.

Topaz I found something of a chore at first, between improbabilities such as Moscow allowing a family of three all to travel to the west together, as if they could not possibly be thinking of defection, and some staggeringly wooden dialogue ("We were so close, the three of us, they didn't know if Nicole would marry André or me.  She married André." = my vote for most superfluous line in any Hitchcock movie I've seen).  And was that lady really just going to bleed all over the curb, without using any cloth to staunch the wound?  It got better, though I am not convinced that the last 40 minutes of the movie can redeem what went before.  (Will come back at the end of this post.)

Torn Curtain I enjoyed perfectly well, with perhaps the proviso that (as I have been working my way backwards ― Family Plot, Frenzy, Topaz, Torn Curtain) I am already accustomed to watching a Hitchcock film with "a 70's/pop soundtrack."  The Blu-ray disc has as an extra, at least one scene with Herrmann's cue synched in, but I've not watched it yet.  I did watch the featurette extra;  I had not got the impression from just watching the film, how Julie Andrews had had a narrow shooting window for Hitchcock (and she had been to some degree 'imposed upon' the director) . . . anyway, viewing that featurette prompted me to slide the Topaz disc back in the tray ―

― so then, I watched an extra on the Topaz disc, Leonard Maltin basically offering an apologia for the film.  (And probably we all already allow that a "grade-B Hitchcock" effort is still dashed good.)  I think he's made an argument for me to give it a fresh try.

One point which Maltin gives more color on (and which I've been gradually absorbing in my Journey Through Late Hitchcock) is, how the movie studio environment, and movie-going public, were changing, and the seasoned director made concessions (and possibly not all the motivation was external).  The preview cards for Topaz are staggeringly negative.  One of the lightning rods for the negative comments was the original duel ending (which I think I might have found preferable to the "solution").

The interesting common element between these two, is that both were inspired by actual events.  The Uris novel is a fictionalization of actual Communist infiltration of French intelligence (don't say it, just don't).  And Torn Curtain came from Hitchcock considering two British diplomats who defected to the East, one of whose wives followed a year later with their three children, as the director pondered the question, "How did Mrs. Maclean feel about that upheaval of the family?"

[James]

Former cinema superhero Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is mounting an ambitious Broadway production that he hopes will breathe new life into his stagnant career. It's risky, but he hopes that his creative gamble will prove that he's a real artist and not just a washed-up movie star. As opening night approaches, a castmate is injured, forcing Riggan to hire an actor (Edward Norton) who is guaranteed to shake things up. Meanwhile, Riggan must deal with his girlfriend, daughter and ex-wife.

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[SonicMan46]

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2015) - National Lampoon documentary - really enjoyed and great to see all of those characters again in their youth (and older being interviewed and making comments, if still alive!); ratings: 7.1/10, IMDB; 87%, Rotten Tomatoes; 4.3/5*, Amazon - agree w/ those numbers and would do 4* on Amazon, if reviewing - both films streamed.

Purple Rain (1984) w/ Prince et al; ratings: 6.4/10, IMDB; 67%, Rotten Tomatoes; 4.5/5*, Amazon - saw this film on release and remember enjoying - own none of his music; Susan wanted to see what was 'up' w/ all of the news coverage he received on his recent death - she left the room about half way through, and I soon turned the film off - guess I've been listening to TOO MUCH classical music, old jazz, and pop singers from the last century - HA!    Dave

[SimonNZ]

^Purple Rain is a fairly bad film with good music moments. The Sign O The Times concert film was, for my money, by quite a wide margin, the best Prince film released in theaters. Watched some of it again a few days ago, and it holds up really well.