Last Movie You Watched

[SonicMan46]

Wife's BD yesterday, short overnight trip to Greensboro (O.Henry Hotel & Green Vly Grill dinner) - in the hotel room on a HDTV:

Marshall (2017) w/ Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, & Kate Hudson - short synopsis below - early 'less important' case in the life of Thurgood Marshall (1940 - 'true story' HERE) - ratings: 7.2/10, IMDB; 83% (6.8/10), Rotten Tomatoes - a good courtroom drama that does not enlighten one about the early career of Marshall regarding his many NAACP cases and appearances before the Supreme Court; but we enjoyed - I would leave a 4*/5* review on Amazon and a recommendation to those liking courtroom films, especially about true stories.  Dave

Starring Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, Sterling K. Brown, and James Cromwell. Director Reginald Hudlin's Marshall, is based on an early trial in the career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. It follows the young lawyer (Chadwick Boseman) to conservative Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) charged with sexual assault and attempted murder of his white socialite employer (Kate Hudson). Muzzled by a segregationist court, Marshall partners with a courageous young Jewish lawyer, Samuel Friedman (Josh Gad). Together they mount the defense in an environment of racism and Anti-Semitism. The high profile case and the partnership with Friedman served as a template for Marshall's creation of the NAACP legal defense fund.

 

[Todd]

There's no thread for upcoming flicks, but I just learned about this summer flick today.  Dundee.  Danny McBride plays Crocodile Dundee's son and Chris Hemsworth plays Wally's son.  I didn't know I wanted another flick in the series, but it turns out that I kinda do.  I do hope it's R rated; Danny McBride's artistry deserves nothing less.  (As it happens, I'm working my way through Eastbound & Down again.)

[Brian]

A film that tries hard not to be a cheap horror movie  - and it isn't one. But rarely have I left a cinema with such an unpleasant feeling. It is a painfull & trying experience, mixes dry, ice cold humor with an increasingly shocking awareness of doom.

That's Yorgos Lanthimos' style for you! The Lobster is a similar feeling when you leave the cinema - like watching a disaster and knowing it could have been prevented.

[George]

There's no thread for upcoming flicks, but I just learned about this summer flick today.  Dundee.  Danny McBride plays Crocodile Dundee's son and Chris Hemsworth plays Wally's son.  I didn't know I wanted another flick in the series, but it turns out that I kinda do.  I do hope it's R rated; Danny McBride's artistry deserves nothing less.  (As it happens, I'm working my way through Eastbound & Down again.)

So that IS a real movie. Very cool.

And great idea about rewatching Eastbound and Down. 

[Todd]

So that IS a real movie. Very cool.

I sure hope so.  I have to think getting Hemsworth to do a fake teaser trailer would be kind of spendy.  Maybe I'll be disappointed.  At least Deadpool 2 is definitely a real thing.

[LKB]

Next up, The Ghost and Mr Chicken

I could write several paragraphs concerning TGAMC, but I'll limit this post to one observation:

If your happen to see this in the theatre when you're a young, hyper-imaginative boy, the organ music will stay in your head for decades.

Regards,

LKB

[Karl Henning]

Over two evenings, I rewatched Enemy of the State.

I'm waving to a couple of you who already knew that.

[vandermolen]

I saw 'Darkest Hour' at the cinema on Saturday and enjoyed it very much. I liked the fact that the opening scene shows Churchill looking for his marmalade cat under the bed. Gary Oldman is very good but my favourite 'Churchill' remains Albert Finney in 'Gathering Storm' and, unlike most critics, I thought highly of Brian Cox's recent performance in 'Churchill'. Of course there are historical accuracies but I thought that 'George VI' in 'Darkest Hour' was the best I have seen on screen.

The soundtrack is, unusually, on DGG.

[Karl Henning]

Jeffrey, only a trivial slip, so believe that I am not chiding you.  I am enjoying the contextual substitution where (I am guessing) you meant inaccuracies.

[...] Of course there are historical accuracies but I thought that 'George VI' in 'Darkest Hour' was the best I have seen on screen.

[André]

Its' entirely probable that a 'historic' film contains at least some accuracies.

[vandermolen]

Jeffrey, only a trivial slip, so believe that I am not chiding you.  I am enjoying the contextual substitution where (I am guessing) you meant inaccuracies.

Quite right Karl. I like to throw in a few deliberate mistakes just to check that the other members are on the ball.

[vandermolen]

Its' entirely probable that a 'historic' film contains at least some accuracies.

Ha! Yes a very good point. The fractionalisation of History is worrying.

[Karl Henning]

Quite right Karl. I like to throw in a few deliberate mistakes just to check that the other members are on the ball.

Very glad not to appoint you, old bean.

[Karl Henning]

Really, a movie I am soon to watch again . . .

Annie Hall contains more intellectual wit and cultural references than any other movie ever to win the Oscar for best picture, and in winning the award in 1977 it edged out Star Wars, an outcome unthinkable today. The victory marked the beginning of Woody Allen's career as an important filmmaker (his earlier work was funny but slight) and it signaled the end of the 1970s golden age of American movies. With Star Wars, the age of the blockbuster was upon us, and movies this quirky and idiosyncratic would find themselves shouldered aside by Hollywood's greed for mega-hits. Annie Hall grossed about $40 million--less than any other modern best picture winner, and less than the budgets of many of them.

[snip]

Alvy is smarter than the ground rules of Hollywood currently allow. Watching even the more creative recent movies, one becomes aware of a subtle censorship being imposed, in which the characters cannot talk about anything the audience might not be familiar with. This generates characters driven by plot and emotion rather than by ideas; they use catch-phrases rather than witticisms. Consider the famous sequence where Annie and Alvy are standing in line for the movies and the blowhard behind them pontificates loudly about Fellini. When the pest switches over to McLuhan, Alvy loses patience, confronts him, and then triumphantly produces Marshall McLuhan himself from behind a movie poster to inform him, "You know nothing of my work!" This scene would be penciled out today on the presumption that no one in the audience would have heard of Fellini or McLuhan.

[Baron Scarpia]

Alvy is smarter than the ground rules of Hollywood currently allow. Watching even the more creative recent movies, one becomes aware of a subtle censorship being imposed, in which the characters cannot talk about anything the audience might not be familiar with. This generates characters driven by plot and emotion rather than by ideas; they use catch-phrases rather than witticisms. Consider the famous sequence where Annie and Alvy are standing in line for the movies and the blowhard behind them pontificates loudly about Fellini. When the pest switches over to McLuhan, Alvy loses patience, confronts him, and then triumphantly produces Marshall McLuhan himself from behind a movie poster to inform him, "You know nothing of my work!" This scene would be penciled out today on the presumption that no one in the audience would have heard of Fellini or McLuhan.

Nonsense! I've never seen a Fellini film, I have never heard of McLuhan and to this day I have no idea who he is. The gag was funny anyway. And I think the gag would have been improved if he had used someone with some name recognition, like Margaret Atwood or Philip Roth, etc, rather than McLuhan, whoever he is.

And, didn't Rodney Dangerfield use a similar gag in "Back to School" when he hired Kurt Vonnegut (?) to write a term paper about his own work, which got a C (if I remember right).

[Karl Henning]

Nonsense! I've never seen a Fellini film, I have never heard of McLuhan and to this day I have no idea who he is. The gag was funny anyway. And I think the gag would have been improved if he had used someone with some name recognition, like Margaret Atwood or Philip Roth, etc, rather than McLuhan, whoever he is.

Aye, you are underscoring the point.

[Baron Scarpia]

Aye, you are underscoring the point.

Underscoring what point? Would have been penciled out by whom?

[Karl Henning]

"This scene would be penciled out today on the presumption that no one in the audience would have heard of Fellini or McLuhan."  One possible presumption is, that the viewer would need to have done that homework to find the buts funny, therefore the scene should be struck.  But as you demonstrate, the scene is funny, regardless.

(Penciled out by . . . the producer?  A firm answer is not needed, any more than you need to know McLuhan's work.  One of the takeaways from the documentary about Casino Royale is that Allen called one of the suits a "murderer," because he wanted to pencil out his funny scenes. But one of the directors reassured him that the scenes would stay in.  And thank heaven, because his scenes go a great ways to redeeming the endeavor  )

[Ken B]

Nonsense! I've never seen a Fellini film, I have never heard of McLuhan and to this day I have no idea who he is. The gag was funny anyway. And I think the gag would have been improved if he had used someone with some name recognition, like Margaret Atwood or Philip Roth, etc, rather than McLuhan, whoever he is.

And, didn't Rodney Dangerfield use a similar gag in "Back to School" when he hired Kurt Vonnegut (?) to write a term paper about his own work, which got a C (if I remember right).

McLuhan HAD name recognition. He had something more important: puffed up intellectual credentials. The best remaining example of those is Ulysses by Joyce. 

[Baron Scarpia]

"This scene would be penciled out today on the presumption that no one in the audience would have heard of Fellini or McLuhan."  One possible presumption is, that the viewer would need to have done that homework to find the buts funny, therefore the scene should be struck.  But as you demonstrate, the scene is funny, regardless.

(Penciled out by . . . the producer?  A firm answer is not needed, any more than you need to know McLuhan's work.  One of the takeaways from the documentary about Casino Royale is that Allen called one of the suits a "murderer," because he wanted to pencil out his funny scenes. But one of the directors reassured him that the scenes would stay in.  And thank heaven, because his scenes go a great ways to redeeming the endeavor  )

I'd try to provide a counter example, if I could think of a film I've seen recently. In this age of proliferating programming sources and internet streaming sophisticated visual storytelling is done in television series. The only thing that's left behind in cinema is comic book movies. I think the humor I see in 'literary' television series is at least as sophisticated as anything Woody Allen did.