Last Movie You Watched

[Draško]

I quite enjoyed this, even though I'm not die hard fan of either Paul Thomas Anderson or Daniel Day-Lewis. Firstly it's immaculately crafted film, cinematography, sound, art direction, costumes, all really exquisite. It begins quite conventionally, with an old fashioned vibe, but as the film progresses psychological portraits of the main characters and their relations become more and more complex and by the end film becomes rather open to interpretation. Which I liked. Worth seeing.

[Karl Henning]

http://www.youtube.com/v/wuoWUMmLocs

[Karl Henning]

Curiously, Roger Ebert sounded all for Escape From L.A. (I mean, not "Great Movie," but there is real admiration in there.)

[Karl Henning]

http://www.youtube.com/v/wuoWUMmLocs

Goldarnit, this has me curious to check out Bananas.

[James]

The Silence of the Lambs
1991 ‧ Drama/Crime film ‧ 2h 18m

Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.

[asin]B077HP1DSS[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

I watched Escape From L.A. again last night.  Probably the first time I watched it, I was looking for low expectations to be underscored.  I remember it seeming long, but let us say instead that I was predisposed to be impatient with it.  (I also remember having no patience with the several illogicalities, but just where do we leave John Carpenter, if we demand that everything on the screen be rational?)  Between the ice having been broken earlier, and the superior look and sound of the Blu ray, I find myself siding with Ebert here.

Also, I needed to watch an insufferably Evangelical President-for-life of the United States on the day of the news that Bill Graham snuffed it.

[Omicron9]

So, at last (as we might say) I have seen Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

Roger Ebert's review of the latter is dated 15 May 1967:

For my part, as I had seen Last Man Standing and Yojimbo (which it is about time I revisited—Watch This Space) I felt I was long overdue to watch "the in-between version."

Here is this morning's ramble:  Last Man Standing I loved from the get-go;  I enjoyed the "familiar actors in the ritual roles" aspect (so that was no mark against the 're-make' angle, so far as I was concerned);  and my established contrarian love for Hudson Hawk predisposed me to enjoy a 'less-than-blockbuster' flick starring Bruce Willis.

Back when the samurai armor was on exhibit at the MFA, we sold Yojimbo in the Gift Shop.  I know that I watched the film then, and loved it unreservedly.  It feels like it ought to be a piece in this present puzzle, but it is a jewel which I do not necessarily know how to fit in, and maybe it just resides imperiously apart.

Personally, I failed to 'connect' with Westerns as a genre while I was growing up.  Maybe this was as simple a thing as, it failed to make any impression on me, on the b-&-w small screen.

There have been one-offs in the past – Dances With Wolves (arguably an "anti-Western"), the Coen Bros.' True Grit (an atypically 'straight' endeavor for them) and Django Unchained (as much your typical Tarantino revenge fantasy, as a Western per se).

Well, then . . . this year I dipped my toe in the [John Wayne] Westerns pool with (hat tip to Cato) The Searchers, the original True Grit, and (hat tip to Jeffrey) The Shootist.  Whether or not I would yet make a fan of the traditional genre, I like all of these very much.

Given all this background, I came to Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More pretty much prepared to appreciate both the subversion of the genre stereotypes (the Eastwood character is not exactly a straightforwardly admirable type) and the, erm, operatic exaggerations in presentation (the lively and sustained eruptions of violence).

Might I also recommend "High Plains Drifter?"  On the surface, it certainly appears to be a Western.  But when it's over it is arguably a fit for an entirely other, seemingly unrelated, genre.  Very well done.

-09

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, will gladly take under advisement.

[Karl Henning]

Not the strict topic . . . indeed, while I am planning to watch Predator (at last), I have no plans to view this . . . sequel.  But I am enjoying a review which offers such insights as "... because you don't go to these 'VS.' movies, like Freddy VS. Jason, and expect Schindler's List";  and, "Surprisingly, this movie is not complete [merde]."

http://www.youtube.com/v/eKViXqTcDaM

[North Star]

I'm still waiting for Schindler's List vs. The Pianist to be released.

[Karl Henning]

Not the strict topic . . . indeed, while I am planning to watch Predator (at last), I have no plans to view this . . . sequel.  But I am enjoying a review which offers such insights as "... because you don't go to these 'VS.' movies, like Freddy VS. Jason, and expect Schindler's List";  and, "Surprisingly, this movie is not complete [merde]."

http://www.youtube.com/v/eKViXqTcDaM

Earlier, I enjoyed his thoroughly disparaging review of Alien Resurrection . . . so I enjoyed his working in another dig at that movie's expense at the end of this one.

Overall, the fact that he rates Alien VS. Predator higher than Alien Resurrection does not, ultimately, inspire me to try it out.

YMMV 

[Karl Henning]

I'm still waiting for Schindler's List vs. The Pianist to be released.

Well played, dear fellow!

[LKB]

The last film l watched was, unsurprisingly, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

For the fiftieth anniversary, around six weeks from now, Warner is re-releasing the film in the 4K UHD format.

I'm hoping for a theatrical re-release as well, a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind; seeing Kubrick's masterpiece on the big screen is like nothing else in cinema, and there are bound to be many young cinephiles who would benefit.

C G C,

LKB

[Karl Henning]

The last film l watched was, unsurprisingly, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

For the fiftieth anniversary, around six weeks from now, Warner is re-releasing the film in the 4K UHD format.

I'm hoping for a theatrical re-release as well, a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind; seeing Kubrick's masterpiece on the big screen is like nothing else in cinema, and there are bound to be many young cinephiles who would benefit.

C G C,

LKB

You know, I would go see that on the big screen, myself.

[LKB]

You know, I would go see that on the big screen, myself.

Bravo, sir. 

It's worth paying a little money, just for the opening credits...

https://youtu.be/e-QFj59PON4

Looking up,

LKB

[Baron Scarpia]

I'm still waiting for Schindler's List vs. The Pianist to be released.

I'm not sure how that would work, Holmes vs Poirot seems more feasible.

"Ah, mon ami, I've had my tisane and I will sleep and let the little grey cells do their work."

"Now, old chap, you've never heard of cocaine?"

[SimonNZ]

Heh. I've seen AvP three or four times and consider it a good guilty pleasure. AvP:Requiem is the one you can definitely avoid.

[aligreto]

Bound....

[Karl Henning]

Last night:  Yojimbo (1961) and Play It Again, Sam (1972)

The latter was based on Woody Allen's 1969 play, in which he also starred (demonstrating that he has acting chops beyond 'mere stand-up') together with Diane Keaton and Jerry Lacy.  Curiously, the film was directed not by Allen himself, but by Herbert Ross.  Ebert remarks that the film has a predictability which is to be expected from its B'way play origins (it opened at the Broadhurst Theatre), but which (I paraphrase, perhaps) hardly matters in a movie this funny.

SPOILER ALERT (for any to whom the movie is, erm, not yet known) The ending of the film rhymes the iconic film which is famously misquoted in the title;  my question, I guess, is how that worked on stage.  At first, I consider that it 'might not work';  but being in the theatre has its own sense of suspension of disbelief, and it may work just fine.

END SPOILER ALERT

It was in auditioning for the role of Linda that Keaton first met Allen.

Near the end of the first run of the play, Allen left the show and was replaced by (wait for it) Bob Denver.

Tony Roberts, so far as I can tell, plays essentially the same character all the time to a much more thorough degree than might be suggested for Allen himself;  and here he plays an utterly realistic New York business type who (in that era) went nowhere without telling his office what phone number he might be reached at.  Which (for me) makes it all the more interesting that the movie elected to relocate the action to San Francisco (the play is, of course, set in NY).  This makes climatological sense, so that there is romantic fog for the closing scene at the airport.

I see I have not said anything about Yojimbo, but I hardly need to.

Why should that stop me?

I don't think it is merely nostalgist of me that I love the look of b-&-w film.  (Tangentially, I also watched a Twilight Zone episode last night, "And When the Sky Was Opened.")  Curiously, and even though one could not really say that the musical materials are 'owned' by this or that genre . . . while listening to the lovely score (the sound a little dated, though not distractingly so, the Blu ray reproduction is sweetly sonorous) I found myself wondering if the minimalist melodic minor third (sometimes in this or that wind instrument, sometimes in . . . harpsichord!) suggested to the Wild West.  Of course, there is something of a barbaric rawness to the spare material, not specific to New Mexico Texas Almeria.

In just the same way, I expect, as I can just about equally love three perfectly different productions of Hamlet, my enjoyment of Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars, and Last Man Standing.  Probably you expect this of a composer, but I thoroughly admire how Masaru Sato, Ennio Morricone (the pseudonym Dan Savio in the credits threw me, I admit) and Ry Cooder each created a musical environment which helped define the film.  Of Mifune, Eastwood and Willis, there is no arguing that Mifune is the strongest actor (and not merely a matter of the nature of the weapon requiring more elegant physicality);  but that does not diminish either American actor.  Again, the role in each film is an enjoyably distinct character.  Eastwood's legendarily laconic character (which he scrabbled down through initial struggles with Leone, whose original script had much more dialogue for the part) contrasts very agreeably with Willis's, who in the noir manner communicates mostly via voice-overs.


And here I am still not saying much about Yojimbo.  It's great!

[Cato]

The last film l watched was, unsurprisingly, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

For the fiftieth anniversary, around six weeks from now, Warner is re-releasing the film in the 4K UHD format.

I'm hoping for a theatrical re-release as well, a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind; seeing Kubrick's masterpiece on the big screen is like nothing else in cinema, and there are bound to be many young cinephiles who would benefit.

C G C,

LKB

You know, I would go see that on the big screen, myself.

Bravo, sir. 

It's worth paying a little money, just for the opening credits...

https://youtu.be/e-QFj59PON4

Looking up,

LKB

Dudes!  I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey several times on the huge semi-wrap-around Cinerama screen: my friends and I sat toward the front (being in Row 1 was not the best: too overwhelming and slightly distorted at the edges) and received that "you-are-in-the-picture" feeling which only Cinerama could deliver.

If there are any Cinerama screens left which might show it, rush there at once: THAT is the way to see 2001 !