Last Movie You Watched

[mc ukrneal]

Tender Mercies (1983) w/ Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Allan Hubbard, Betty Buckley, and Wilford Brimley - short summary below (a 4* Roger Ebert review HERE) - a favorite movie and just replaced my old DVD w/ a newly released BD. Duvall does his own singing wonderfully w/ a mix of Meryl Haggard and Lefty Frizzell IMO (an example HERE) - nominated for 5 Oscars, winner of 2, including 'Best Actor' for Duvall - highly recommended.  Dave

   

What a great movie! And what a great actor! He is in SO many good movies with so many good performances. And he's played so many different types of roles. I really admire his acting and he sure was busy too!

[SimonNZ]

The film generated a lot of good discission with the friend I watched it with, as well as more interesting than usual reviews online including this Atlantic piece about the economic/class aspects of the film:

How Burning Captures the Toll of Extreme Inequality in South Korea
Lee Chang-dong's new film paints a deft and intimate portrait of a young generation beset by economic desperation.

Went and read the Murakami story it takes as its loosely based on (Barn Burning from The Elephant Vanishes) partly to add to my suspicion that one strand of the story does not come from that but probably from Murakami's novel Dance Dance Dance (though I've yet to see that confirmed. )

[André]

An excellent film, one of the best I've seen in recent years.

[aligreto]

Wrecked





A man wakes up trapped in a car crash at the bottom of a ravine with dead men around him. He cannot remember anything and, through flashbacks, his memory gradually returns regarding the unfolding events that led him to where he is. I cannot spoil the film but it has an interesting conclusion. It is worth a watch.

[aligreto]

We once had a team building exercise at work about surviving after a plane crash in the arctic. Most of us thought it would go very smoothly seeing as we had a member of the Royal Marine Reserve who regularly went on military exercises in Norway. But no, there had to be someone who objected on the basis of his experience in taking Boy Scouts camping, so as with all team building exercises there it turned very nasty .

I would always bow to greater experience 

[Papy Oli]

For the second time only in 20 years maybe, The Shining. 2 hours completely gripped by the screen. You just can't look away...

[aligreto]

For the second time only in 20 years maybe, The Shining. 2 hours completely gripped by the screen. You just can't look away...

Yes, I also find that it still holds up very well.

[Madiel]

The film generated a lot of good discission with the friend I watched it with, as well as more interesting than usual reviews online including this Atlantic piece about the economic/class aspects of the film:

How Burning Captures the Toll of Extreme Inequality in South Korea
Lee Chang-dong's new film paints a deft and intimate portrait of a young generation beset by economic desperation.

Went and read the Murakami story it takes as its loosely based on (Barn Burning from The Elephant Vanishes) partly to add to my suspicion that one strand of the story does not come from that but probably from Murakami's novel Dance Dance Dance (though I've yet to see that confirmed. )

An excellent film, one of the best I've seen in recent years.

Well this is interesting to know, because one of the Australian networks (the one that actually does things like pick up interesting foreign language films) has been advertising this as one of the films added to their streaming roster this month.

Better add it to the queue.

[TheGSMoeller]

The film generated a lot of good discission with the friend I watched it with, as well as more interesting than usual reviews online including this Atlantic piece about the economic/class aspects of the film:

How Burning Captures the Toll of Extreme Inequality in South Korea
Lee Chang-dong's new film paints a deft and intimate portrait of a young generation beset by economic desperation.

Went and read the Murakami story it takes as its loosely based on (Barn Burning from The Elephant Vanishes) partly to add to my suspicion that one strand of the story does not come from that but probably from Murakami's novel Dance Dance Dance (though I've yet to see that confirmed. )

I will also recommend this excellent film.

[André]

I watched the Criterion restoration L'Atalante, who has had a very chequered history of cutting, rearranging of scenes, soundtrack changes etc. Vigo's last film (1934) has long been viewed as one of the best films ever made and has influenced moviemakers as diverse as Truffaut, Godard, Kusturica, Bertolucci. The wiki article mentions that:

L'Atalante was chosen as the 10th-greatest film of all time in the British journal Sight & Sound's 1962 poll, and as the sixth-best in its 1992 poll. In the 2002 poll, it ranked 17th, with 15 critics and directors (including Jim Jarmusch) naming it as one of their 10 favorite films.[1] In 2012 it was ranked 12th on the critics poll with 58 votes, including David Thomson, Geoff Andrew and Craig Keller

The cinematography, by Boris Kaufman (brother of Dziga Vertov, of Man With a Movie Camera fame) is superb. Each shot is conceived as a painting, with exquisite detail, often shot from unusual angles. Many scenes are conceived as the characters would have been living them, instead of being from the spectator's viewpoint. The many excentricities (absurdities) of Zéro de conduite - filmed the previous year - give way to a surreal visual poetry. Whereas the earlier film was provocative, over the top and, in the end an artistic dead end, L'Atalante shows how imagination and fantasy can elevate the prosaic to the transcendent.

[André]

Kore-Eda has been hailed as the artistic heir to Ozu. I can't vouch for that as a blanket statement, but there are certainly meeting points, both philosophically and artistically between this film and many of Ozu's. The subtle, complex tangle of relationships between children and parents, the clash of values that generational changes bring are acutely observed. Visually, transitional shots are a clear echo of a favourite Ozu method - ellipses that suggest a change of time and place, both actual and psychological. This is a film of great delicacy, poignancy but that does not shirk the devastating psychological disturbances the characters - especially the two young children - must face in this story of babies mixed at the hospital (it starts when they are 6 and are preparing to enter school).

Warmly recommended.

[aligreto]

The Lake House





This is a modern fantasy and it is the story of how a couple who have both lived separately in the same house carry on a distance relationship by letter. The issue here is that the time scale is a problem since they live in separate time points two years apart [no spoiler as this is established early on in the film]. The story is how the relationship develops and is ultimately resolved. I liked it.

[steve ridgway]

The Last Witch Hunter. The film stars Vin Diesel as an immortal witch hunter who must stop a plague from ravaging the entire world. It's in the job description .

[aligreto]

The Gift





A study in how a lie can infiltrate people's consciousness and have devastating consequences. It was quite watchable.

[Todd]

Journey's End.  A centenary production commemorating the Great War, this latest adaptation of the 1928 play of the same name offers some good acting (from Paul Bettany, particularly) and a nice, mostly physical production to look at.  The combat portions are not emphasized, with the dialogue taking center stage.  Quite play-like, it does not sound natural in its cadence or delivery, but it works well enough. 

[greg]

Awesome! 10/10.

I had been watching many horror movies over the last year, mostly either trying to find a pleasant surprise, or to find a good one under what I had imagined what I would like for the genre, and this fits exactly with what I was wanting.

I had played the first two Silent Hill games years ago, and it does fit the mood quite a bit.

[71 dB]

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray collection.

[asin]B0058N2T3K[/asin]
I watched all 7 movies of this boxset in 3 days. 

The first one is a classic in my opinion, essential horror from the 80's. The second one is a misstep. The third one is good again. The fourth one is directed by Finnish director Renny Harlin (Renny Lauri Mauritz Harjola) who went the same school I did, but before my time as he is much older than me. I think this movie is one of his best directing efforts as I find his style generally "overblown" (e.g. Cliffhanger). Unfortunately the fourth movie in this series has imho weak script. The fifth and sixth movies are even weaker, lacklustre even, but Wes Craven's 7th movie is good and fresh! Movies 1, 3 and 7 form a nice trilogy while movies 2, 5 and 6 are pretty pointless.

[mc ukrneal]

I saw:
[asin]B0001GOH6Q[/asin]
I had high expectations of this based on the reviews and the actors. While the actors were good, the movie was just awful. The characters don't actually develop, and at times they dig their heals on to insist on carrying on the behavior that hasn't worked for many years. Albert Finney tells a good story, but the plot's insistence that he never divert from that is wearing as the movie moves on. It's beautifully shot, and it's one of those movies that just meanders forward (something I generally like). It's one of those movies that tries to show you how meaningful it is by hitting you over the head with it (over and over). Overall, despite some really good acting, it's a wet fish.

[aligreto]

The Square





This is a Swedish film that is a parody on Modern Art. The plot is somewhat disjointed and untenuous and my attention wandered even if it has sections of interest.

[aligreto]

Damascus Cover





An interesting enough and entertaining espionage thriller set mainly in the middle east.