Last Movie You Watched

[listener]

Early (1974) Peter Weir Australian film THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS
not surprising that we have seen more from him, unlike the ex-pat director seen yesterday.

[Drasko]

Kind of rehash of first trilogy on speed. Far too much is condensed into one movie. Too many events make every one of them fail to properly resonate, and all the characters are severely underwritten. With some serious script pruning coulda' been a contender.

[Karl Henning]

"If it didn't need re-writing, it wouldn't be a Star Wars script!"

[NikF]

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_on_the_Wild_Side_(film)

I'd read the book but never got around to watching the film. So we had a look. Sadly, I found the title sequence was the highlight. Apart from that we agreed the whole thing felt underwhelming.

[SimonNZ]

Knight Of Cups (Terrence Malick, dir. 2015)

Before this I would have said that I would be happy to watch whatever assorted poetic imagery Terrence Malick put before me.

But no more. Sadly I have to report that this was unexpectedly bad, and the gap between the beauty of the photography and the banality of what little script there was only emphasised criticisms of style over substance. I don't mind the near total abscence of narrative, but mind very much Christian Bale's lead character having such a lack of character (his one mopey expression throughout supposedly conveying existential despair). I also mind the various women presented rather cynically as interchangeable entertainments or distractions for the lead. And that the unceasing vulgarity of the moneyed-rich lifstyle is fetishised and glamourised and the non-rich are utterly absent non-people. And it might have been better if the film were silent than have the few moments of scattered dialogue and interior monologue and lit-crib voiceover be so embarassing.

Malick's fils can also often seem cut down from much larger films, like theres a five hour directors cut of New World or Tree Of Life out there waiting to be seen. This feels like its cut down from two years worth of constant filming, and might require a week-long final cut to do the material and overreaching jumble of ideas and preocupations coherent and meaningful.

[André]

The Depth of simplicity

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2G7oeyOsfSg

A fascinating short film about the cinema technique of japanese giant Yasujiro Ozu. Available on Youtube. Ozu's framing and camera technique (the 'tatasmi shot') are unraveled and explained. Possibly the best short film ever about a cinema author.

[Karl Henning]

Family Plot, for (somewhat inexplicably) the first time. Great fun.

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[Bogey]

Over the years I must have started this one six or seven times and never made it through.  Went to the well again the other night and still had to push the ejector seat button.  I may never realize its touted genius.

[Bogey]

This makes my latest viewing 0-2.  How can you make a boring spy film?  Well, start with the template that this crew put together.

[James]

Over the years I must have started this one six or seven times and never made it through.  Went to the well again the other night and still had to push the ejector seat button.  I may never realize its touted genius.

I bought this one too .. I agree, I managed to sit through it once, but it's a total bore-fest and dated. Ideal length for a movie is under 2 hours, 90 minutes is perfect.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Kind of rehash of first trilogy on speed. Far too much is condensed into one movie. Too many events make every one of them fail to properly resonate, and all the characters are severely underwritten. With some serious script pruning coulda' been a contender.

I just finished watching this a few minutes ago. I can see where you are coming from, definitely....I do think that the film needs two other movies afterwards to elaborate on things further. I liked this movie, more than I liked A New Hope anyway!

[Cato]

Over the years I must have started this one six or seven times and never made it through.  Went to the well again the other night and still had to push the ejector seat button.  I may never realize its touted genius.

I bought this one too .. I agree, I managed to sit through it once, but it's a total bore-fest and dated. Ideal length for a movie is under 2 hours, 90 minutes is perfect.

Wow!  This has been an all-around fave of mine for years!  Even the scenes with the politicians (Claude Rains at his puckish best!) I found interesting and well done.

As far as length, the length should depend on the story, and some stories might need 3 hours or more.  I think of Sergei Bondarchuk's film of War and Peace and its c. 8-hour length.

However...

De gustibus non est disputandum!

[North Star]

Wow!  This has been an all-around fave of mine for years!  Even the scenes with the politicians (Claude Rains at his puckish best!) I found interesting and well done.

As far as length, the length should depend on the story, and some stories might need 3 hours or more.  I think of Sergei Bondarchuk's film of War and Peace and its c. 8-hour length.

However...

De gustibus non est disputandum!

Have you seen Sátántangó? 

(I haven't seen LOA in years but I recall quite enjoying it, and not finding it overly long.)

[Cato]

Have you seen Sátántangó? 

No:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111341/

[Karl Henning]

Over the years I must have started this one six or seven times and never made it through.  Went to the well again the other night and still had to push the ejector seat button.  I may never realize its touted genius.

Interesting, Bill!  And you are certainly giving it a fighting chance 

Thread Duty:

Finished two last night:  on my own, Family Plot, and with the girls, Mr. Turner.


With the landing of the 15-Blu-ray Hitchcock box, more than half of the movies in which I have never yet watched (!!) I thought I'd make it easy for myself by working my way backwards chronologically.  I like all the tried-&-true elements of the Hitchcock oeuvre probably as much as anybody, but I also found the novelties (keeping in mind that this is the first time I have watched anything that Hitchcock filmed later than Marnie) fresh and engaging.  I love the cast, and the fact that they are (were) all "non stars";  and as I remarked last night, I got a charge of entertainment out of a movie combining Hitchcock's direction with a Columbo score.  I later learnt who it was scored the film, and maybe it is my favorite John Williams score (and I may not be kidding).  Still very tame compared to our day, but it was amusing to note how much less oblique than in the earlier movies, was the odd bit of sexually charged dialogue.  Just as I had discovered in The Trouble With Harry, a great little movie.


Mr. Turner, however, was 87% bitter disappointment.  It runs two and a half hours, and if they had cut an hour's worth of the pointless, ahistorical (by the writer/director's own admission), tawdry cupboard sex, it would at least have made 90 minutes of worthwhile viewing.  Practically the first thing we see the titular artist do, is brusquely grope his housekeeper, before quite settling to work on a canvas. Faugh, doubl-faugh.  After two hours and a half, the viewer has not learnt anything of reliable interest about the artist's life or character: Timothy Spall pinches his face up into a parakeet scowl which may owe much to John Cleese's Twit of the Year contestant (no really, probably 85% of his facial closeups make you wonder if he found a hamster turd in his steak-&-kidney pie);  and almost all his lines in the last 60 minutes of the movie are indistinct grunts.  Nor have you learnt much of anything (and after two and half hours!) about his work.


I watched perhaps half of the "making of" featurette, and they had an artist on the production team, to create the "unfinished canvas' props.  But they didn't consult the artist on any number of elements in the script, such as where Turner supposedly spits on a canvas in order to make an adjustment.  That drew an audible snort from the artists in my life;  because unless Turner had some as-yet-unknown medical condition which made his saliva an oil solvent, that bit of bogus stagecraft doesn't help the artist half a damn.


Very pleased that we did not go see this in the cinema, where it would have been an insufferable letdown.  The beautifully photographed landscapes were too few, and too little, to come anywhere redeeming the enterprise.

[Karl Henning]

Ideal length for a movie is under 2 hours, 90 minutes is perfect.

What an extraordinarily artistic remark.

Wow!  This has been an all-around fave of mine for years!  Even the scenes with the politicians (Claude Rains at his puckish best!) I found interesting and well done.

Ditto.

[drogulus]

Mr. Turner, however, was 87% bitter disappointment.

     I liked the film a little more than that. Spall is a favorite of mine, if I don't like a film I'll find someone else to blame.

     

     Never before in film history has a pineapple been so well deployed.

[Todd]

Bridge of Spies.  Extremely well crafted, as one would expect from Spielberg and crew.  The use of barrel distortion heavy wide angle lenses becomes a bit tiresome, and the bridge of the title is one nice looking set - I guess no one wanted to risk braving the elements.  The tiny homage to Kubrick is a nice touch.  (Spartacus is on the marquee of a German movie theater.)  Tom Hanks is good.  Mark Rylance is very good.  The best of the three Oscar nominees for best picture from last year that I've seen, but hardly a movie for the ages. 

[Brian]

the bridge of the title is one nice looking set - I guess no one wanted to risk braving the elements.

I, for one, thought the bridge set looked kind of bogus and soundstage-bound.

But we were both wrong.

They filmed that on the real bridge.

(See German-language source citations 41-45.)

[drogulus]

     I don't know what it's like to be unable to finish a film because it bores me. It happens sometimes with really bad films, but even then not often. People must be very different about boredom in some way. I'm not easily bored by a film even when I'm not liking it.

     The traditional "problem" with LOA is that, like the Ottoman Empire and the Arab revolt, it disintegrates into chaos. The film is truer to history than drama.