Last Movie You Watched

[TheGSMoeller]

... and Die Hard.

Often imitated, never duplicated.

[Karl Henning]

It holds up very well.  There is the occasional potential for Naked Gun-like parody (imagining Hans dropping, "I read it in Better Homes & Gardens") but never a genuine quibble.

[George]

[Octave]

IIRC, David Foster Wallace said it (DIE HARD) was the first movie that made him root for the bad guys.
We are overdue for a Reginald Veljohnson renaissance.  We need him as a fusty college dean or exasperated prison warden.

[Karl Henning]

IIRC, David Foster Wallace said it (DIE HARD) was the first movie that made him root for the bad guys.

One rather stagey bit which I noticed on this last viewing was Hans telling Karl "[something] die Fenster";  Karl doesn't respond (apart from turning his head back in puzzlement). And then Hans clarifies in English, Shoot the glass! -- as if Karl wouldn't have understood the German.

[lisa needs braces]

Their earlier film Bound is also excellent. Supposedly Warner Bros let them make that one as a test of their film making abilities since Warner were hesistant about handing the big budget The Matrix would require to these new directors.  I don't remember Bound's plot details, but I do remember being engrossed and Joe Pantoliano being in it. 

Invariably The Matrix is compared to Dark City. The plots echo each other, and The Matrix was filmed using some of the same sets that Dark City used.

I even find it striking that both films gave distinctive color palettes to the "real" world and the constructed ones. 

This video (accompanied by obnoxious music) has side by side comparisons of stills from each film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcBUelP1bI

[lisa needs braces]

I'll look into Bound & Dark City and see if they interest me. I remember seeing the Matrix when it came out but it never really stuck to memory much (like my very favorite films often do), I bought the blu ray on a whim (it was only $7.00) .. and it is visually impressive in the format on the home system, the film is fun entertainment.

Roger Ebert was a huge fan of Dark City and even does the DVD commentary. He added it to his "Great Movies" list:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-dark-city-2005

And the trailer for the film is just great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSpowoKqSzc

 

[lisa needs braces]

An exchange from Dark City:

John Murdoch: When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?

Inspector Frank Bumstead: What do you mean?

John Murdoch: I just mean during the day. Daylight. When was the last time you remember seeing it? And I'm not talking about some distant, half-forgotten childhood memory, I mean like yesterday. Last week. Can you come up with a single memory? You can't, can you? You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

[lisa needs braces]

Charming and sweet indie film with a (possible) sci-fi twist.

Plot: A few Seattle small-newspaper reporters (two of them interns) take a trip to do a story on an eccentric man who claims he can time-travel.

[Octave]

Over the past month, several films by Robert Altman, six of them for the first time:
1. COUNTDOWN (1968)
2. McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971)   highly recommended
3. BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS (1976)
4. A WEDDING (1978)
5. SECRET HONOR (1984)
6. SHORT CUTS (1993)
7. KANSAS CITY (1995)
8. GOSFORD PARK (2001)
9. A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006)

and a year or so ago: M.A.S.H. (1970), BREWSTER MCCLOUD (1970), NASHVILLE (1975), THIEVES LIKE US (1974), CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974), THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), STREAMERS (1983), THE GINGERBREAD MAN (1998), and DR. T AND THE WOMEN (2000).

I think I've mostly avoided seeing any Altman for over a decade mainly because of the tone of his films and the apparent uncut cynicism that pulses through them, which sometimes seems like barely-contained biliousness, unmoored even from a political program/pretensions or an apocalyptic/'principled' nihilism....unmoored even from those.  I might be unduly leaning auteurist whatever-whatever, but the clutch of films I'd seen when I was quite young just struck me as temperamentally misanthropic.  Now, having seen more of his pictures, listened in on his copious DVD commentaries (which can be useless and frustrating, so I haven't been careful about it), and read a bit more about him, I'm 1.) even more certain that this early intuition is true, and 2.) its truth is truistic and that there might be a lot more to the misanthropy than just a bunch of grouchy surrender. 

The only absolute essential of all these [the first nine listed above] still seems to be MCCABE.  (I'm already reconsidering this judgment; but the greatness of MCCABE seems to me like a sure shot.)  It had improved greatly since I first saw it many years ago, and the closing shots of Julie Christie almost seem in retrospect like a self-lacerating shrug at Altman's own substance use, and/or a counterculture in/of retreat.  The movie is just a desperate, crumbling sepia-print piece of revisionism; and the use of Warren Beatty just could not be better.  (Likewise the Leonard Cohen songs, which are haunting.)  I wonder if it would be an ideal double-feature with, say, P.T. Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD.  The parallels even just in the sculpted central performances....they are fascinating, not just a matter of resemblance.  (Anderson was apparently on set as a back-up director for A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, in order to guarantee completion for insurance purposes, this due to Altman's age and health.  I see that Anderson also contributed a forward to the interview volume ALTMAN ON ALTMAN.) 

I was also really impressed by BUFFALO BILL (unfortunately it was a non-anamorphic DVD, so the image was not optimal), which seemed like a remarkably adept piece of 'postmodern revisionism'.  (Not a phrase I would normally employ as a compliment, but if you see it, I think you'll find the expression apt, and that the film is rather ahead of the curve....also stranger and more nuanced than DJANGO UNCHAINED, which has improved a little in my memory, but remains a disappointment for me.)  The cynicism is incredibly thick and bitter, even when it's being funny (often), and I found it mildly off-putting that its real concerns were with criticizing American show business via its origins (which it does fantastically, almost to the point of being a possibly superior warm-up for THE PLAYER[1992]) rather than thinking through real historical relations with real Natives....except that the two are so inter-related, which is the whole point of the film.  Paul Newman (just excellent here) offers an increasingly crazed performance with King Lear overtones, a feature repeated by Philip Baker Hall in the bravura monologue SECRET HONOR (not written by Altman, but adapted from a stage production).  I disliked HONOR initially because no corpse should be kicked the way it kicks Nixon; even largely despising the Nixon I've encountered through my reading, I was nauseated by the series of low blows that comprised this monologue.  (Maybe I'm irritated that the film manages to crucify a straw man and make me feel sorry for Nixon?)  But never mind all this....what a performance!  Have I ever been treated to this much Philip Baker Hall at once, or in any three of his films put together?  Another P.T. Anderson connection, as Hall's character in MAGNOLIA [1999] seems to be an almost direct reference to the SECRET performance, complete with a psyche crumbling while being recorded, along with the striking features of this decline, aphasia [??] and bizarre self-interruption.  It's totally fascinating and P.B. Hall is incredible....just grand guignol all the way.  The thing I valued the most about SECRET HONOR was the sustained image of memories and their emotions---largely, here, bitterness, regret, and vengefulness---surging to the surface and breaking into the stream of thought; that might happen in lots of acting, but Hall turns this into action painting.  If you just go into the film bracketing its relation to Nixon, the performance itself is incredible and nerve-wracking, a real horror show.  I'm surprised that I ended up feeling so galvanized by it; but its strengths certainly are not its theater as a (re)writing of history [the sheer wildness of the mid-80s speculation is part of the atmosphere of the piece, and I have no idea if the writers expected the original audiences to take it seriously....it plays as mania, which comes across as entirely appropriate, and I don't mean "appropriate to Nixon-the-man"], or as a reliable portrait of an actually-existing human being....the point of interest actually seems a lot more universal and alarming than that. 

Of this batch, COUNTDOWN (from which Altman was apparently fired or quit after the film was almost completely shot...his fingerprints and name are still on it) is probably by far the least interesting, even with an exquisitely lonely and desolate "happy" thriller ending.  (Also in spite of Robert Duvall, whose acting I almost always love.  It is heartbreaker that we probably won't get to see him be Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote.  My fingers are still crossed.) 
Also very unsatisfactory to me was A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION; which is too bad, since it had a melancholy sweetness of tone that somehow didn't seem to be all the doing of Garrison Keillor.  (Though at a glance, a lot of cinephiliac critics seemed to like it a lot; I still have no idea what film they saw.  Maybe it was a bad year for new movies?  I don't think I saw any movies at all that year; I was wading through books.)

For what it's worth, I think GOSFORD PARK might be the most impressive and accessible of all these; I still didn't care for it much this time, for reasons obscure to me.  But its structure and pacing and musical development of character and plot were admirable.  It is certainly more palatable and intricate than, say, SECRET HONOR; and more visually sumptuous and less full of bile and grime than MCCABE....I'm actually surprised that GOSFORD wasn't naturally my favorite among all these, but that's the way my impressions played out.


P.T. Anderson w/Altman on the set of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

[DavidRoss]

Their earlier film Bound is also excellent.

Bound was very good, much better than what followed.

Charming and sweet indie film with a (possible) sci-fi twist.

Yes.

I've noticed for some time now that we have similar taste in movies.

Thread duty:

Yesterday saw the new Star Trek flick with our younger boy and his girlfriend in IMAX 3D. Don't know which was worse: the movie or the nauseating 3D. It was a nearly excruciating experience for me, loud, stupid, clichéd. There was about a one-second shot of an English beauty in her underwear that raised my heartbeat, but otherwise an immediately forgettable snoozer.


The kids and my wife liked it.

[George]

In looking up Bound .. I realized that I have in fact sat through this movie, but yet, do not recall much at all.

I remember about a minute of it vividly. 

[drogulus]

Over the past month, several films by Robert Altman

     You have complicated reactions to films generally, which isn't unusual, I'm sure I do too. What strikes me is that I wonder how much of my own complicated reactions are anyone's business, even mine. There must be some happy medium between just liking or disliking a film and analyzing it into various components of reaction which upon further review get tossed out in favor of a different set. Some films really do support a continued revision of factors influencing a final judgment, and others it appears just move you around among various levels of indifference. The films of Altman and Peckinpah and P.T. Anderson have enough in them to chew on, so you can say "I didn't like it but there was plenty there not to like". Later you can come back and like or dislike them more, or more deeply, or more fully. Anyway, I get the idea that you enjoy the way you dislike some films, like maybe you appreciate what a negative business artistic vision often is.

     Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup runneth over. Someone said Brad Marchand is a "little ball of hate". Hmm, maybe like Kubrick, or Altman?

[TheGSMoeller]

I remember about a minute of it vividly. 

Ha! I know that minute quite well myself. 

[Octave]

You have complicated reactions to films generally, which isn't unusual, I'm sure I do too. What strikes me is that I wonder how much of my own complicated reactions are anyone's business, even mine. There must be some happy medium between just liking or disliking a film and analyzing it into various components of reaction which upon further review get tossed out in favor of a different set. Some films really do support a continued revision of factors influencing a final judgment, and others it appears just move you around among various levels of indifference. The films of Altman and Peckinpah and P.T. Anderson have enough in them to chew on, so you can say "I didn't like it but there was plenty there not to like". Later you can come back and like or dislike them more, or more deeply, or more fully. Anyway, I get the idea that you enjoy the way you dislike some films, like maybe you appreciate what a negative business artistic vision often is.

This statement seem to take an approach similar to your comment on Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED, to the effect that a certain set of reactions are superfluous because "that's the the point", because that's the effect of the film, what it was designed to do, i.e. the reactions are just the machinery of the work of art at work: the reactions have been already-accounted-for and don't constitute something external to the action of the film.  If this is even remotely your point---and I realize it's a stretch---it's interesting to me but risks legitimating laziness and consumption as the basis of encounters with film.  The aforementioned is a "theological" understanding of art that makes even (so-called) auteurism (in film criticism) seem atheistic. 

One reason is that there would be no discussion of anything at all---art, politics, sports, whatever---if reactions weren't discussed.  We'd all be locked in our atomized little private home-entertainment-system consumerist worlds.  What do you mean by "business"?  It's perfectly acceptable to do things this way, but I'm just inclined to follow a different route, especially because movies and related image-making are such potent forces in culture, not only in USA culture.  Classical music can be discussed in terms of "historical" or "structural" "facts" that would seem to be immune to "reaction" or even especially to "reflection", but that's not how things are; there, too, there are a constant stream of revisions, alterations, "discoveries", reassessments, etc.

Not wanting to miss your point, I still feel compelled to say that using "business" as a metaphor/model/term for what's pertinent or not----that's probably something I'd like to avoid.   Movies have not always been very important to me, but even just in this past several years that has changed.  Also, I think "reaction" is insufficient....it's a "response" I'm after: nothing so formal as a critique, obviously, but a handful of little notes that come to mind after I've reflected on a film experience.  The fact that it's "analysis" doesn't mean it will get to or anywhere near the bottom of anything, even of my own temperament and taste; but it does mean that there is something other than "reaction" being proferred. 

Since most judgments of any kind seem to be subject to revision, alteration, recontextualization etc, the provisional nature of judgment seems to be part of the game.  It's the qualifications, shifts, revisions that interest me most; most obviously those that seem to happen to me from one viewing/reading to the next, or even within the span of a single viewing.  I'm making these shifts everybody's business!  Naturally, though, it's fine to just register an impression or two about the "fact" of one's liking a movie; it's also fine to look down on movies as a form inferior to classical music or painting or literature, that's also a position not without merit.  I'm saying that there's often more to talk about in a work of art than just a matter or more or less liking/disliking it, even if all one says could theoretically be summarized by those ~2 options.  Being forced to submit to the sound-byte culture and offer one line about "thumbs up/down and why" would seem to be problematic, and not the equivalent of a longer discussion of an experience.  I am happy with others' employment of this model, because it's perfect acceptable and it's enough to lead me to new experiences; but privatizing a critical response by classifying it as a "reaction"----no, it's more than that. 

As to the level of "interest" (another unduly universalized term of commerce) of my or anyone's comments about this or that thing/subject/movie....that's another story.  It's none of my business how interested someone else is in my responses, but it's of interest to me, of course; lots of things that are none of my business are of interest to me!

Anyway, I get the idea that you enjoy the way you dislike some films, like maybe you appreciate what a negative business artistic vision often is.

No, disliking things can be savored; but it's me seeing things in films that probably should be disliked but are instead enjoyed, widely.  I see this as symptomatic of something and I say so.  Or often enough, it's even just me making some observations about films that mostly amount to appreciation but have to do with the film, not just me-enjoying-my-reactions-to-the-film.  When it's negative, it's a dissenting opinion and sometimes it involves gauging my own personal history of reception, diet, thinking, temperament; but it isn't about me, it's about the artifact and its standing as a social event, as something, etymologically, "interesting" to large numbers of people.  It doesn't amount to just a variety of unthinking consumption and "enjoyment".  There are things and ways other than consumption and enjoyment, and not all criticism is just about the critic.  Critical (not necessarily negative) comments about a work of art have a social function; it's not just a private pursuit that lives and dies inside one person's skull.  It's language, it's social.  A film as a meeting place, and talking about a film as a way of socially dealing with a social event.

[Wakefield]

BTW, I really miss slightly more pulpy girls, with natural boobies and less depilatory wax. In short, I was a kid in the 70s, but I'm a spiritual son of that age. 

[North Star]

Yesterday:

Smoke (1995)
Director: Wayne Wang
Writer: Paul Auster
Stars: William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Harold Perrineau

Strongly recommended.

They're all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You've got your bright mornings and your dark mornings. You've got your summer light and your autumn light. You've got your weekdays and your weekends. You've got your people in overcoats and galoshes, and you've got your people in shorts and T-shirts. Sometimes the same people, sometimes different ones. And sometimes the different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light from the sun hits the earth at a different angle.

     
 

[drogulus]

This statement seem to take an approach similar to your comment on Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED, to the effect that reactions are superfluous because "that's the the point", because that's the effect of the film, what it was designed to do, i.e. the reactions are just the machinery of the work of art at work: the reactions have been already-accounted-for and don't constitute something external to the action of the film.  If this is even remotely your point---and I realize it's a stretch---it's interesting to me but risks legitimating laziness and consumption as the basis of encounters with film.  The aforementioned is a "theological" understanding of art that makes even (so-called) auteurism (in film criticism) seem atheistic. 

One reason is that there would be no discussion of anything at all---art, politics, sports, whatever---if reactions weren't discussed.  We'd all be locked in our atomized little private home-entertainment-system consumerist worlds.  What do you mean by "business"?  It's perfectly acceptable to do things this way, but I'm just inclined to follow a different route, especially because movies and related image-making are such potent forces in culture, not only in USA culture.  Classical music can be discussed in terms of "historical" or "structural" "facts" that would seem to be immune to "reaction" or even especially to "reflection", but that's not how things are; there, too, there are a constant stream of revisions, alterations, "discoveries", reassessments, etc.

Not wanting to miss your point, I still feel compelled to say that using "business" as a metaphor/model/term for what's pertinent or not----that's probably something I'd like to avoid.   Movies have not always been very important to me, but even just in this past several years that has changed.  Also, I think "reaction" is insufficient....it's a "response" I'm after: nothing so formal as a critique, obviously, but a handful of little notes that come to mind after I've reflected on a film experience.  The fact that it's "analysis" doesn't mean it will get to or anywhere near the bottom of anything, even of my own temperament and taste; but it does mean that there is something other than "reaction" being proferred. 

Since most judgments of any kind seem to be subject to revision, alteration, recontextualization etc, the provisional nature of judgment seems to be part of the game.  It's the qualifications, shifts, revisions that interest me most; most obviously those that seem to happen to me from one viewing/reading to the next, or even within the span of a single viewing.  I'm making these shifts everybody's business!  Naturally, though, it's fine to just register an impression or two about the "fact" of one's liking a movie; it's also fine to look down on movies as a form inferior to classical music or painting or literature, that's also a position not without merit.  I'm saying that there's often more to talk about in a work of art than just a matter or more or less liking/disliking it, even if all one says could theoretically be summarized by those ~2 options.  Being forced to submit to the sound-byte culture and offer one line about "thumbs up/down and why" would seem to be problematic, and not the equivalent of a longer discussion of an experience.  I am happy with others' employment of this model, because it's perfect acceptable and it's enough to lead me to new experiences; but privatizing a critical response by classifying it as a "reaction"----no, it's more than that. 

As to the level of "interest" (another unduly universalized term of commerce) of my or anyone's comments about this or that thing/subject/movie....that's another story.  It's none of my business how interested someone else is in my responses, but it's of interest to me, of course; lots of things that are none of my business are of interest to me!

No, disliking things can be savored; but it's me seeing things in films that probably should be disliked but are instead enjoyed, widely.  I see this is symptomatic of something and I say so.  It doesn't amount to just a variety of unthinking consumption and "enjoyment".  There are things and ways other than consumption and enjoyment.

     I have to think about my reactions to films, too. I too see symptoms. You're certainly right that many people appear to consume and enjoy, even when they are invited to do more.  Some of this is a reluctance to introspect, some may even be a lack of response. People don't often tell you they don't feel what you feel, especially if you don't ask. 
     
     Unthinking consumption may actually be harder than it looks. People don't tell you everything that goes on. Only some people do that.

[drogulus]

      I try not to be too much of a "concern troll" about films, like for example Contact, the sci-fi film from the Carl Sagan novel. I wouldn't want anyone to think it's not worth seeing. It's a pretty good film of its kind. It even raises issues! Anyway my displeasure at its inadequacies is never far from my mind when I happen to see it late at night. It's still worth consuming and enjoying, if that's what inarticulate people are doing.

[DavidRoss]

Smoke (1995) Wayne Wang

Strongly recommended.

Yep. Ditto for the rest of his films.