Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

Paths of Glory

[LKB]

Paths of Glory

Must be Kubrick in the air, a good thing. 

[milk]

A masterpiece. There is no one like Altman today. His movies are like finely painted wooden boxes with handmade hinges. I just marvel at the touch. Movies don't have touch anymore. Everyone wants slickness or the studios do. Or maybe things are just made for too big of an audience. Maybe the independent cinema is long gone. But Altman was a singular voice and this film is great and very satisfying. Gould is the 70s noire detective; there are also no stars quite like Gould anymore either.
This movie is so funny and entertaining and interesting as well. It has great character actors too. It's a treat.

[Karl Henning]

Must be Kubrick in the air, a good thing. 

Indeed. First I watched this one, too!

[Karl Henning]

A masterpiece. There is no one like Altman today. His movies are like finely painted wooden boxes with handmade hinges. I just marvel at the touch. Movies don't have touch anymore. Everyone wants slickness or the studios do. Or maybe things are just made for too big of an audience. Maybe the independent cinema is long gone. But Altman was a singular voice and this film is great and very satisfying. Gould is the 70s noire detective; there are also no stars quite like Gould anymore either.
This movie is so funny and entertaining and interesting as well. It has great character actors too. It's a treat.

Interesting. As I was watching just the other day Gould and Altman worked together on M*A*S*H, as well.

[Brahmsian]

Paths of Glory

My favourite of Kubrick's earlier period.

[SonicMan46]

Paths of Glory

One of my favorite Kirk Douglas movies (and I believe in his top 3, too) - the Criterion version shown below is superb for those thinking of a purchase and/or upgrade - more HERE.  Dave

[Karl Henning]

One of my favorite Kirk Douglas movies (and I believe in his top 3, too) - the Criterion version shown below is superb for those thinking of a purchase and/or upgrade - more HERE.  Dave

That is indeed how I viewed it. Wonderful!

[milk]

Interesting. As I was watching just the other day Gould and Altman worked together on M*A*S*H, as well.

I don't know whether to watch that again. Many people say it's kind of cruel and dated and weird. Did you enjoy it? I love California Split too. That's a brutal Altman film but a real masterpiece. What Altman does with sound design is mind-blowing - how he layers his mise en scene and sound world to give you a sense of disorientation and reality.

[SonicMan46]

Lonely Are the Brave (1962) with Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Water Matthau, George Kennedy, and Carroll O'Connor.  Short synopsis below - this was Kirk's favorite film - discussion HERE.  Yet another DVD replacement for me - the Amazon HD streamer was well done; seems like my main HD purchases with some defects/artifacts are the 1940s and before - hopefully Amazon will add some better restorations?  Dave

Lonely Are the Brave is a 1962 American Western film adaptation of the Edward Abbey novel The Brave Cowboy. The film was directed by David Miller from a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. It stars Kirk Douglas as cowboy Jack Burns, Gena Rowlands as his best friend's wife and Walter Matthau as a sheriff who sympathizes with Burns but must do his job and chase him down. It also featured an early score by composer Jerry Goldsmith. Douglas felt that this was his favorite film. (Source)

 

[milk]

Lonely Are the Brave (1962) with Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Water Matthau, George Kennedy, and Carroll O'Connor.  Short synopsis below - this was Kirk's favorite film - discussion HERE.  Yet another DVD replacement for me - the Amazon HD streamer was well done; seems like my main HD purchases with some defects/artifacts are the 1940s and before - hopefully Amazon will add some better restorations?  Dave

 

What a cast!

[VonStupp]

The Santa Clause 1, 2, & 3 (1994, 2002, 2006)
Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold
Martin Short, Alan Arkin, Ann-Margret

Never saw these originally, but found them for the girls to watch this week. Lots of smiles and giggles, so it was worth it. These are free of cynicism which is so hard to find in family films anymore.

Tim Allen may not be great for the big screen, but he is sincere as Santa, and I enjoyed Galaxy Quest!

[milk]

This movie is a masterpiece. This was my second time around and I loved it even more. It was like reading a great Russian novel or Dickens. I'm not sure this film has a peer. It's just marvelous.

[SonicMan46]

Quest for Fire (1981) w/ the actors in the quote - another DVD replacement w/ a HD Amazon streamer - cannot believe this film is 40 years old, i.e. MUCH has happened in the understanding of human evolution and pre-history genetics, plus the book was written in 1911 although the screenplay likely used modern science information of the times.  The main implication is that two different human species in this case Neanderthals and now modern Homo sapiens did interacted and could interbred (we have 3% Neanderthal DNA in our genomes), but probably around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.  STILL a fun movie.      Dave

P.S. The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) novel of prehistoric fiction by Jean M. Auel is a more modern 'take' on the same subject, also made into a film w/ a gorgeous Daryl Hannah as a Cro-Magnon girl who grows up in a Neanderthal clan and gives birth to a son.

Quest for Fire is a prehistoric fantasy adventure film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, written by Gérard Brach and starring Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi and Rae Dawn Chong. The film is an adaptation of the 1911 Belgian novel The Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny. The story is set in Paleolithic Europe (80,000 years ago), with its plot surrounding the struggle for control of fire by early humans.

The film was not intended to be a scientifically accurate documentary of a specific point in pre-history. This is reinforced in the scientific community. In an essay for the journal American Anthropologist, professor Philip Lieberman described as "absurd" the mixture of different levels of advancement among different tribes living in close proximity. Lieberman pointed out that it "would be most unlikely 80,000 years ago" for humans to still be exhibiting apelike characteristics, at the same time noting that the Ivaka tribe was depicted as having "a village culture that would have been likely 10,000 years ago." (Source)

 

[SimonNZ]

Over the last few days



Second time watching Jeremiah Johnson and Waltz With Bashir, third (or maybe fourth) of Lone Star (or Forget The Alamo as director John Sayles originally intended to call it and I like to think of it).

All three brilliant in their own ways.

[TheGSMoeller]

Passing... a fascinating film, shot in stunning black & white cinematography. Available on Netflix.

[VonStupp]

Death Hunt (1981)
Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Carl Weathers
Ed Lauter, Angie Dickinson

I saw this when it came out, but haven't since. I think my memories mixed Death Hunt with another Bronson movie, which is odd since I haven't seen many, but I was expecting an ending that didn't happen.

Bronson plays a low word-count good guy, entrapped by backwoods ruffians, and dutifully pursued by grizzled, hard-drinking Lee Marvin, a 1930's Yukon mountie. Like Jeremiah Johnson, I love these snow-filled survival movies.

Apparently based on a real pursuit of the main character, but far from reality.

[Iota]

Apocalypse Now Final Cut

I saw the original film so long ago and it's not much more than a few select memories now, so alongside that and personal changes since then, this was more or less like seeing it for the first time.

It's a leviathan at three hours long, but without a longueur in sight, and with every moment feeling an integral brick in its construction, it's a breathtaking achievement. The many iconic moments I did remember are still as fresh/haunting as ever, Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando exuding all sorts of inexpressible horrors of the human mind, Coppola's visionary courage, but just about everything in this updated version, including the music, held me spellbound. A powerful, marvellous thing.

[LKB]

I love the smell of remastered classics in the morning...

[Iota]

I love the smell of remastered classics in the morning...

Haha.

Another line which I'd forgotten was Sheen's 'Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500', one of the few laugh out loud moments for me