Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

Pride and Prejudice. The cast includes Donald Sutherland Judi Dench.

[JBS]

Pride and Prejudice. The cast includes Donald Sutherland Judi Dench.

Shame on me for never seeing that one. The Ehle/Firth casts all the other versions into the shade for me.

[Karl Henning]

Shame on me for never seeing that one. The Ehle/Firth casts all the other versions into the shade for me.

Thanks for the tip! I chanced on this one, browsing at the Library. 

[JBS]

Thanks for the tip! I chanced on this one, browsing at the Library.

What? You've never seen the Darcy in the pond scene?
(Although that's not why it's so good.)

[Karl Henning]

Pride and Prejudice. The cast includes Donald Sutherland Judi Dench.

No good reason why I've neglected this. "Perhaps Mr Collins has a cousin" near made me spit out my tea.

[relm1]

Yesterday, I watched "Donnie Brasco" (1997), a really good movie with excellent directing, acting, and story.



The film is a true story about an FBI informant who spent years infiltrating the mob.  He slowly forms a very close bond with Lefty (Al Pacino) who takes him under his wing, sort of raising him in the mob.  Pacino is excellent here but quite subdued.  He is not the mob boss but a low ranking "spoke".  All the acting is subtle, and characters build a strong, believable bond as tensions and conflicts rises around them.  If they find out that Donnie is a rat, Lefty would be snuffed (killed) because he vouched for him.  The relationships and motivations are all understandable, realistic, and relatable.  Very good film.

After the film, I was curious to read more about the story.  Joseph (who went by Donnie Brasco while undercover) is still alive and Lefty and the mob were convicted but always disbelieved Donnie was the informant who ratted them out since he was so loyal to them.  They felt it was someone else.

[Mister Sharpe]

Much as I loved this animated film - and its anti-war theme - the original novel by Diana Wynne Jones was even more impressive, richer, more complex and mysterious. I've read it twice and may be gearing-up for another stint with it, so indelible are its curious - many of them enigmatic - characters.

[AnotherSpin]

La course à l'échalote (1975)

This is the kind of comedy that charms without trying too hard - no noise, no forced laughs, just a quiet stream of wit and warmth. The humor comes from character and timing, not punchlines, and there's a rare elegance in how naturally it unfolds.

Pierre Richard is magnificent. His blend of fragility, mischief, and physical grace turns every scene into a small delight. He doesn't chase the joke; he is the joke, in the best sense.

Jane Birkin, luminous as ever, brings a light, ironic presence that never feels staged. She and Richard play off each other with effortless charm, their chemistry is alive with subtlety.

It's a film that smiles rather than shouts. And if you value humor that feels human, intelligent, and beautifully unhurried, this is a quiet treasure. European in the best way.

[Karl Henning]

I forgot (if ever I had marked) that Dick Cavett and Robt Goulet appear in Beetlejuice.

I posted earlier that Beetlejuice was not necessarily a favorite movie. I am in the midst of the peculiar experience of finding that the sequel has sharpened my appreciation of the original. And not in a "gawd the sequel is a dog, and isn't the original better?" way. Rather, I find the sequel so good, I feel that the original is better than I was giving it credit for. Even so small a thing as Willem Dafoe's character addressing Keaton as "Mr Juice." (I mean, he has to, right, so as to avoid the charm of three times." During the first 20 minutes-ish of my first viewing, I began mentally deriding the sequel as "The Dark Bio-Exorcist Rises," but it all winds up working. I love, too, that Jimmy Webb's "Macarthur Park" is used for the grand set piece near the end. The tag scene probably defies any rational narrative explanation, but let it flow.

[Karl Henning]

For only the second time, a movie I upbraid myself for having so long neglected: Being There.

[relm1]

Not exactly a movie so this might be the wrong thread, but I finished Andor Season 2 and it was excellent!  It actually made Rogue One and Star Wars better films.  Complex characters, very good acting and writing, excellent pacing (though the first few episodes take patience, the patience is rewarded by the depth of the characters and interweaving plots).  Very, very good show.

Very much Star Wars for adults.

[DavidW]

Not exactly a movie so this might be the wrong thread, but I finished Andor Season 2 and it was excellent!  It actually made Rogue One and Star Wars better films.  Complex characters, very good acting and writing, excellent pacing (though the first few episodes take patience, the patience is rewarded by the depth of the characters and interweaving plots).  Very, very good show.

Very much Star Wars for adults.

There is a TV thread. You might want to cross-post there.

[krummholz]

For only the second time, a movie I upbraid myself for having so long neglected: Being There.

My very favorite Peter Sellers vehicle... and the image of a simple gardener who rises, improbably, into the highest echelons of government because people interpret his simple gardening analogies as full of profound insight and wisdom reminded both myself and a friend, independently, of a certain major US political figure (who shall not be named!)...

[DavidW]

Woman of the Hour: A serial killer stalks a woman by appearing on a dating show.

Murder on the Orient Express: Albert Finney's version has an all-star cast and is the best adaptation of this classic, even eclipsing the David Suchet version.

[pjme]

[AnotherSpin]

What do you think about?

[Florestan]

Typically crazy 1970s French comedy --- and a nice pretext for Catherine Deneuve to show off her legs. 

[pjme]

What do you think about?

Die-hard Wes Anderson fans will probably cherish The Phoenician Scheme. His films have become a brand, beloved precisely because they are so very similar: the same symmetrical design, hyper-structured scripts, bone-dry performances, tiny guest roles and lots of "strange" humor.
The film got mostly bad (to very bad) reviews in the(Belgo-Dutch) press: Anderson needs a fresh start, this is a boring film...
Yet I do like his extremes, the visual abundance, the fantasy, the meticulous (often nostalgia inspired)  design.
Plenty of good music too- even Stravinskys Apollon musagète turns up.

I suppose that I was hoping for some sort of goofy criticism of Trump/Musk/Vance-like figures or -eventually- pumping some real life in his characters....but no, The Phoenician scheme remains too distant...lifeless. 

[AnotherSpin]

Die-hard Wes Anderson fans will probably cherish The Phoenician Scheme. His films have become a brand, beloved precisely because they are so very similar: the same symmetrical design, hyper-structured scripts, bone-dry performances, tiny guest roles and lots of "strange" humor.
The film got mostly bad (to very bad) reviews in the(Belgo-Dutch) press: Anderson needs a fresh start, this is a boring film...
Yet I do like his extremes, the visual abundance, the fantasy, the meticulous (often nostalgia inspired)  design.
Plenty of good music too- even Stravinskys Apollon musagète turns up.

I suppose that I was hoping for some sort of goofy criticism of Trump/Musk/Vance-like figures or -eventually- pumping some real life in his characters....but no, The Phoenician scheme remains too distant...lifeless.

Thank you, that's close to how I saw the film myself. Visually, it's quite fascinating; some of the shots you could easily look at for ages, like images with a life of their own. As a child, I rather enjoyed something similar, poring over intricate, incomprehensible diagrams or maps of faraway lands in heavy old atlases.

As for what was actually going on... well, I can't say I entirely made sense of it, to be honest.

[Karl Henning]

The Devil and Daniel Webster, an early (I think) scoring assignment for Bennie Herrmann. A classic!