Last Movie You Watched

[aligreto]

Volcano....





I have always liked Tommy Lee Jones.

[Draško]

Finally got around to watching this - As is usual with sequels of this sort I was'nt expecting much.
Personally I thought the movie was wonderful and it managed to keep my interest despite the slow pace and long running time.

I saw this recently too. And I too was expecting little, but I agree with your assessment. I found the time flew by.

+1



Sunstroke, Nikita Mikhalkov's latest.

[Ken B]

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

This holds up pretty well. It has the same sort of headshake errors most courtroom movies do, and more than just a few Stanley Kramer moments, but it's interesting and well acted throughout. Widmark is the standout, playing against type.

[Karl Henning]

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

This holds up pretty well. It has the same sort of headshake errors most courtroom movies do, and more than just a few Stanley Kramer moments, but it's interesting and well acted throughout. Widmark is the standout, playing against type.

I do need to watch that one at last.

[milk]

Agnès Varda is a rare phenomenon in the world of cinema. She directed her first feature film La Pointe courte in 1955 and immediately drew the attention of critics. 63 years later she is still going strong, her latest film Visage, villages is nominated for an oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards (best documentary) as well as at the french César awards (the french oscars). A living legend,  she will be 90 in a few months. Fiercely independent, most of her (all too rare) films are documentaries. Cléo is probably her lasting contribution to the Nouvelle vague, a film in which the city (Paris) is a character, a foil for Cléo's moods and thoughts.

I saw Vagabond in a class when I was a student. It made a lasting impression on me. I remember it as powerful and masterful.

[aligreto]

The Gunman....





I an not a big fan of Sean Penn.

[aleazk]

I saw Call me by your name.

There's not a single thing in this movie that I found less than beautiful. Quite moving. Also, excellent soundtrack, with pieces by Ravel and John Adams.

[milk]

L'Argent de poche by François Truffaut. A small masterpiece. I didn't connect with much of his work after 400 blows. But this is back to Bazinian realism. I think it must be difficult to work with kids. I knew my wife would enjoy this one! 

[George]

Three Billboards Outside....... (2017) w/ Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, & Peter Dinklage - short synopsis below (2nd quote); ratings, 8.5/10, IMDB; 93% (8.6/10), Rotten Tomatoes critics (4.3/5 from audience) - just an excellent film and highly recommended - I'd agree w/ the ratings - already stacking up nominations - 6 Golden Globe, 4 Screen Actor's Guild, and likely foretells a number of Oscar nominations to follow - McDormand in both lists for 'Best Actress.'  Dave

Saw this one today and found it funny, moving and unpredictable. Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson are two of my favorite actors, so it was a treat to see both of them here.

[Undersea]

I saw this recently too. And I too was expecting little, but I agree with your assessment. I found the time flew by. Anyone expecting an action movie might be disappointed. There is action, but that is not really the main part of the film.

Good stuff glad you enjoyed the movie too.
The Blade Runner movies are sort of Art flicks rather than Action movies I think - I thought the visuals in this one were particularly beautiful.

[aligreto]

Hyena....





A dark, gritty film about drugs and police corruption.

[Todd]

Get Out.  Entertaining. 

[drogulus]

 
     I saw I, Tonya and Lady Bird yesterday. Though I liked Lady Bird I have to go with I, Tonya as the more Oscar worthy, both of them ahead of Darkest Hour and well behind the criminally overlooked The Florida Project.

[Karl Henning]

So, at last (as we might say) I have seen Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

Roger Ebert's review of the latter is dated 15 May 1967:

Here is a gloriously greasy, sweaty, hairy, bloody and violent Western. It is delicious.

"For a Few Dollars More," like all of the grand and corny Westerns Hollywood used to make, is composed of situations and not plots. Plots were dangerous because if a kid went out to get some popcorn he might miss something.

So Westerns had situations, instantly recognizable. The man in the black hat strikes a match on the suspenders of a tough guy at the bar. Two gunmen face each other at each end of a long alley.

"For a Few Dollars More" has lots of stuff like that, but it's on a larger, more melodramatic scale, if that's possible. Shoot-outs aren't over in a few minutes like they were in "High Noon." They last forever.

This is a sequel to "A Fistful of Dollars," which I didn't see but wish I had. Both films were shot in Italy, with English-speaking actors in the leads and Italians in the bit parts with dubbed dialog.

Clint Eastwood, as The Man With No Name, is formidable: He chews and spits out dozens of cigars.

Lee Van Cleef, as Col. Mortimer, looks like an infinitely weary Clark Gable. He carries an arsenal with him. After a memorable duel in which they shoot each other's hats to pieces, Eastwood and Van Cleef join up to collect the reward for the desperado Indio (Gian Maria Volonte).

The rest of the film is one great old Western cliché after another. They aren't done well, but they're over-done well, and every situation is drawn out so that you can savor it.

For my part, as I had seen Last Man Standing and Yojimbo (which it is about time I revisited—Watch This Space) I felt I was long overdue to watch "the in-between version."

Here is this morning's ramble:  Last Man Standing I loved from the get-go;  I enjoyed the "familiar actors in the ritual roles" aspect (so that was no mark against the 're-make' angle, so far as I was concerned);  and my established contrarian love for Hudson Hawk predisposed me to enjoy a 'less-than-blockbuster' flick starring Bruce Willis.

Back when the samurai armor was on exhibit at the MFA, we sold Yojimbo in the Gift Shop.  I know that I watched the film then, and loved it unreservedly.  It feels like it ought to be a piece in this present puzzle, but it is a jewel which I do not necessarily know how to fit in, and maybe it just resides imperiously apart.

Personally, I failed to 'connect' with Westerns as a genre while I was growing up.  Maybe this was as simple a thing as, it failed to make any impression on me, on the b-&-w small screen.

There have been one-offs in the past – Dances With Wolves (arguably an "anti-Western"), the Coen Bros.' True Grit (an atypically 'straight' endeavor for them) and Django Unchained (as much your typical Tarantino revenge fantasy, as a Western per se).

Well, then . . . this year I dipped my toe in the [John Wayne] Westerns pool with (hat tip to Cato) The Searchers, the original True Grit, and (hat tip to Jeffrey) The Shootist.  Whether or not I would yet make a fan of the traditional genre, I like all of these very much.

Given all this background, I came to Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More pretty much prepared to appreciate both the subversion of the genre stereotypes (the Eastwood character is not exactly a straightforwardly admirable type) and the, erm, operatic exaggerations in presentation (the lively and sustained eruptions of violence).

[pjme]

Excellent, moving, gripping film.  It starts slowly in idyllic, beautiful surroundings : summer, Northern Italy, lazy, slightly boring vacation days, history, well educated people... and the aids-crisis is, apparently, still far away.
Then Elio and Oliver fall in love....
Excellent choice of music (Bach, Ravel, Satie, Sufjan Stevens, some Italian disco & rock for the "couleur locale") :http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/soundtrack. Great!

SPENCER KORNHABER writes eloquently - better than my limited English anyway.

"The masterful shot that closes Call Me by Your Name asks the viewer to do the same thing the character on screen is doing: think. Over seven minutes, Elio Perlman, the 17-year-old played by Timothée Chalamet, simply stares into a crackling fireplace as tears well in his eyes. He presumably is reflecting on his tryst with Oliver, Armie Hammer's 24-year-old grad student who visited Elio's Italian home for the summer. And on Elio's own father's life in the closet, revealed to him toward the end of the film. And maybe on his future, perched as he is on the cusp of adulthood, and having just had an affair that felt life-changing.

The audience should be reflecting on those things, too. It's possible, though, they'd be considering something surely not on Elio's mind: AIDS. At least, that was the case for me—a fact that has gotten me into arguments with friends who are, understandably, wary of over-reading a film devoted to young love's bittersweetness and the glory of short shorts."

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-shadow-over-call-me-by-your-name/549269/

From The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2018/feb/20/call-me-by-your-name-2018-best-picture-oscar-should-win-luca-guadagnino-timothee-chalamet

[Todd]

Brimstone.  Writer-director Martin Koolhoven channels Lars von Trier, Quentin Tarantino, and John Carpenter in this tale of a Dutch preacher transplanted to the Old West and set on administering some Old Testament style justice.  The film may be set in the Old West, but it's not really a western, nor is it a meaningful morality play, nor is it much of anything more than not so well done shock schlock.  Dakota Fanning, by way of a plot twist, mostly says nothing, while Guy Pearce chews the scenery in an over the top fashion that nonetheless cannot match the over the top story.  Kit Harington is on hand to be handsome and use an inconsistent American accent, and fellow GoT star Carice van Houten is on hand to get naked.  The mostly reverse chronology four act structure would work to generate tension were the story better written.  The final act is so over the top and burdened with outlandishly grotesque outrageousness as to elicit laughs of disbelief rather than suspension of it.  My wife thought whoever made the film needed mental health treatment, of the inpatient variety.  I just thought Koolhoven was trying way too hard. 

[Karl Henning]

So, at last (as we might say) I have seen Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

Although Clint Eastwood's poncho was never washed during the production of the "Dollar" trilogy, it was mended.

[Karl Henning]

[Fistful of Dollars was a] remake of Yojimbo (1961), which itself was based on the as yet unadapted 1929 novel "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett. In fact, the film's US release was delayed when Yojimbo screenwriters Akira Kurosawa and Ryûzô Kikushima sued the filmmakers for breach of copyright. Kurosawa and Kikushima won, and as a result received 15% of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Kurosawa said later he made more money off of this project than he did on Yojimbo (1961).

[NikF]

Brimstone.  Writer-director Martin Koolhoven channels Lars von Trier, Quentin Tarantino, and John Carpenter in this tale of a Dutch preacher transplanted to the Old West and set on administering some Old Testament style justice.  The film may be set in the Old West, but it's not really a western, nor is it a meaningful morality play, nor is it much of anything more than not so well done shock schlock.  Dakota Fanning, by way of a plot twist, mostly says nothing, while Guy Pearce chews the scenery in an over the top fashion that nonetheless cannot match the over the top story.  Kit Harington is on hand to be handsome and use an inconsistent American accent, and fellow GoT star Carice van Houten is on hand to get naked.  The mostly reverse chronology four act structure would work to generate tension were the story better written.  The final act is so over the top and burdened with outlandishly grotesque outrageousness as to elicit laughs of disbelief rather than suspension of it.  My wife thought whoever made the film needed mental health treatment, of the inpatient variety.  I just thought Koolhoven was trying way too hard.

Nice review as usual, Todd.

[aligreto]

Killing Ground....





Missable.