Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

Last night: "Christmas with the Addams Family" and A Christmas Carol (a/k/a Scrooge) with Alastair Sim (1951).

[The new erato]

LOOPER was outstanding: time travel, crime thriller, drama, telekinesis, good stuff. A new favorite here.

Fine movie. But then there's little by Bruce Willis I don't like and often love.

[George]

I actually said "Wow!" at that ending.

I saw it coming but loved the movie anyway.

[CaughtintheGaze]

If you've not see this, you should. Obscurus Lupa is a good introduction to this series.

[asin]B000F6ZIJM[/asin]

[Octave]

OSLO, AUGUST 31 (Joachim Trier, 2011)

Highly recommended.  The following is extremely optional reading.

An instance---unlike my loathsome halfwitted failure of a horror-binge, aforementioned [tidy mediocrity, no abjection in sight]---of not knowing a thing about a movie working to great advantage.  Interesting that one of the most striking brief passages of the movie wouldn't sound all that interesting on paper, nor come across like a virtuoso piece of dreamfactory swoon; the image above, in fact.  Yet: it felt like life.  In fact, I now realize that, 1.) it's the image used on the poster for the film, and 2.) it features a young woman who is almost nonexistent in the film and, as far as I can tell, mostly unimportant to its story, and it vaguely suggests a relationship between the male and female that is both not the case and somehow essential to this moment as an organic little part to the film as a whole.  It was also useful not to know the relation of this film to cinema/literary history, a connection made plain almost at the beginning of the end credits; the connection in question was news to me, and immediately started reshaping the previous 1.5 hours in my mind.  Also useful not to read much at all about this film before seeing it, because I would have suffered the impression that it is an overrated film (at least in the USA art circuit), which might very well be true without blunting the gleaming, spacious, unpretentious almost-perfection of it.  It might be worth mentioning that generically the story would seem to be about addiction recovery, then about early-midlife crisis, then about responsibility, then (related) about 'Oedipal' (strictly speaking, without reference to Freud etc) reckoning with actions that can't be taken back. 

The film improved immeasurably on reflection.  Even some dead spaces, casual conversations, quiet emoting, digressions apparently without consequence---one scene in a club with pounding electro, one long penultimate tracking shot catching the protagonist fumbling his way through a page of Händel, both puzzling and a little annoying to me---seemed to draw together into something tighter and harder and more pointedly suggestive after I'd just sat with my memories of the film.  I'm thus far under the vague impression that this movie has excited a lot of people---it certainly made a bunch of best-of-year lists---but I'm going to resist reading about it for a while; even really great things can be overrated even just by receiving the attention they deserve.  I don't want to noise up the quiet throb that the film left in me.

[snyprrr]

Loretta Young... very very cute, and aged the best I've seen.

[Wakefield]

Considered just for the pleasure of watching the adorable Mrs. Sarah-Jane Potts, it was finally an interesting movie.

BTW, my love for Mrs. Potts arose several years ago, when I saw a quite stupid comedy (After School Special, AKA National Lampoon's Barely Legal), where she plays the role of an "adult film star".

[North Star]

Saw Vertigo for the first time on Tuesday. Very enjoyable, will definitely need to revisit it at some point.

[Karl Henning]

Possibly my very favorite Hitchcock film.

[North Star]

Possibly my very favorite Hitchcock film.

I still haven't seen these three, for example: Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window 

Other films of Hitchcock I've seen: Notorious, The Birds, and The Man Who Knew Too Much - liked all of them very well, but it's been a while since I saw them.

[Karl Henning]

I still haven't seen these three, for example: Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window 

I own Vertigo, Psycho & North by Northwest on DVD, so you know I like revisiting them periodically. Rear Window is good, of course, but it's not one I find myself in need of owning.

Other films of Hitchcock I've seen: Notorious, The Birds, and The Man Who Knew Too Much - liked all of them very well, but it's been a while since I saw them.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a rare instance of Hitchcock remaking one of his own films, 1934 VS. 1956; both of them worth watching, and interesting differences between them.

[Karl Henning]

Apart from any already mentioned, two Hitchcock films which I consider obligatory viewing ; ) are:  Suspicion (with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine & Nigel Bruce) & Strangers on a Train.

[North Star]

I own Vertigo, Psycho & North by Northwest on DVD, so you know I like revisiting them periodically. Rear Window is good, of course, but it's not one I find myself in need of owning.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a rare instance of Hitchcock remaking one of his own films, 1934 VS. 1956; both of them worth watching, and interesting differences between them.

I've seen the remake.

Apart from any already mentioned, two Hitchcock films which I consider obligatory viewing ; ) are:  Suspicion (with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine & Nigel Bruce) & Strangers on a Train.

Cheers, I'll add those to the list.

[bhodges]

Saw Vertigo for the first time on Tuesday. Very enjoyable, will definitely need to revisit it at some point.

Possibly my very favorite Hitchcock film.

Pretty sure it's my favorite Hitchcock, too - though I love Psycho and The Birds (among others).

Over the holidays, saw everyone's Christmas favorite:

[asin]B004RPQSVE[/asin]

--Bruce

[Bogey]

Apart from any already mentioned, two Hitchcock films which I consider obligatory viewing ; ) are:  Suspicion (with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine & Nigel Bruce) & Strangers on a Train.

Rear Window for me....then Rope, but only a "neck" behind.  Quite a few I am yet to see though.  We did take in "Hitchcock".  Enjoyed it more than I thought I would. 

[drogulus]

     My favorite Hitchcock is Vertigo, and after that Shadow of a Doubt.

     https://www.youtube.com/v/LEoTXa_52A0

     Some reviewers have pointed out that these films are wildly implausible. It's a measure of the psychological mastery of Hitchcock that they seem very real at a primordial level while the plots are pretty rickety by the cold light of tired metaphors.

[Octave]

Some reviewers have pointed out that these films are wildly implausible. It's a measure of the psychological mastery of Hitchcock that they seem very real at a primordial level while the plots are pretty rickety by the cold light of tired metaphors.

I saw Hitchcock speaking in an interview recently, ~late 50s I think, though I'm irritated that I cannot remember where I saw it.  He referred to audience/critical expectations for a "moronic logic" (his words!) in which cause-effect and motivation were fairly clear and all actions in balanced accord.  I agree with you about the "primordial" reality of his images, though.  The kind of overdetermined, engineered mise en scene and set pieces sometimes touch some kind of strange, compressed fever-dream stasis that I cannot nail down; it's what I identify with much of what is described as "suspense" in his movies, but happens for me often at points where that suspense doesn't seem to be aimed for by the plot, like the hand reaching into the drain in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, or some of the shots with bottles in the cellar in NOTORIOUS, or (maybe more typically climactic) that scene descending the stairs at the end of NOTORIOUS.

VERTIGO has grown and grown for me over the years.  I guess I have seen it maybe five times now and it's become almost unbearably intense for me, while the first couple times I found it first dumb and boring, then cheap-ironic funny.  I shouldn't even admit to those first reactions, but there you are.

[Octave]

The late filmmaker/film-essayist Chris Marker was a VERTIGO obsessive.  He deals with this (works through it?) in his CD-ROM project IMMEMORY.  Here is an essay of sorts by him, on VERTIGO.   Be warned that you might need to enjoy this style of spiral communication to enjoy this essay.  Among his faults is that Marker could be a condescending shit.  After all, he essay ends:
"Obviously, this text is addressed to those who know Vertigo by heart. But do those who don't deserve anything at all?"
http://www.chrismarker.org/a-free-replay-notes-on-vertigo/

[Octave]

I don't care for the novelist Bret Easton Ellis much at all, least of all as, apparently, a person; but I do remember understanding his Twitter reaction to VERTIGO getting the top spot in SIGHT AND SOUND's 2012 greatest-films poll:

Vertigo: bored at 17, mildly interested at 28, beyond devastated at 37. From then on I've considered it the most beautiful film ever made...

[Karl Henning]

Over the holidays, saw everyone's Christmas favorite:

Just wanted to note that this was appreciated, Bruce.