Last Movie You Watched

[DavidW]

I watched a cheesy 80s rom-com



Gilda Radner had a small role but still managed to steal every scene she was in.

[Florestan]

Coffee did originate in an area--Ethiopia, Somalia, or Yemen--that was within the ambit of Mediterranean commerce, so one could rationally imagine individuals using it as a beverage but not enough to catch history's attention before its "official" discovery c 1500 CE.

Syphilis and newspapers however can't be reconciled like that.

And Gladiator 1: a Roman Emperor fighting gladiators in the arena, really???

My favorite common mistake with respect to Roman history, though, is that the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD and the events took place in Rome. Actually, Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer in Ravenna (Rome had long before lost its status), and the Roman Empire fell in 1453 (Byzantine is an ideologically motivated, pseudo-scientific misnomer for Eastern Roman. The Emperors in Constantinople never called their state anything other than Imperium Romanorum/Bassileia ton Romaion, ie Empire of the Romans, and themselves anything other than Imperator Romanorum/Bassileus ton Romaion, ie Emperor of the Romans. The inhabitants were called, and called themselves, Romaioi, ie Romans, not Byzantines, let alone Greeks or Hellenes.)

[pjme]

'Flow' telles the tribulations of a cat that tries to survive a catastrophic flood. The cat meets other animals including a capybara, a secretarybird, a dog and a lemur.

There is no dialogue and the music is deeply intuitively ground in. It feels recognizable but also strange and sometimes aliena ating. A lot happens but there is also something unfinished about 'Flow'. it just could be a dream, a soft "video game"....The animals are quite roughly designed ( sketched..) the woods, seascapes and overgrown hills are impressive.
Not bad at all, maybe not deeply gripping as I was hoping for.

[SonicMan46]

Last few nights, a couple of Clint Eastwood films - Dave

 

[Cato]

And Gladiator 1: a Roman Emperor fighting gladiators in the arena, really???

My favorite common mistake with respect to Roman history, though, is that the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD and the events took place in Rome. Actually, Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer in Ravenna (Rome had long before lost its status), and the Roman Empire fell in 1453 (Byzantine is an ideologically motivated, pseudo-scientific misnomer for Eastern Roman. The Emperors in Constantinople never called their state anything other than Imperium Romanorum/Bassileia ton Romaion, ie Empire of the Romans, and themselves anything other than Imperator Romanorum/Bassileus ton Romaion, ie Emperor of the Romans. The inhabitants were called, and called themselves, Romaioi, ie Romans, not Byzantines, let alone Greeks or Hellenes.)

The lunatic Emperor Commodus did indeed "fight" in gladiatorial games: they were of course rigged.  One source (Cassius Dio, an eyewitness to the reign of Commodus) wrote that the lunatic also slaughtered animals by the dozens by shooting them with arrows from his seat in the stands.

Plots to hire a gladiator to kill him - rather than take a dive - may have happened, but sources say he was strangled in his bathtub by his wrestling coach, whom the mistress of Commodus and other officials had hired to perform the assassination.

Yes: "Byzantine" is a modern term, as any professor of Byzantine History will tell you.  All the way to 1453, the "Byzantines" called themselves "Romans."

Last night, we revisited the odd, occasionally darkly comic, mystery movie Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.

Missouri is not a "Southern state" per se, but the southern part of the state is perhaps closer to an old "Southern" mentality, which is the viewpoint of the movie.

Sam Rockwell, as always, is outstanding!

There used to be a maxim in the 1970's: "Give me $100,000 and Warren Oates and I will make a terrific movie!  Wait!  Make it half a million: why should Warren Oates always be in cheap movies?" 

Sam Rockwell is a 21st century Warren Oates!

And concerning stories about the South: the great writer Flannery O'Connor (a Catholic who hailed from a small town in Georgia) once commented:

"If you write a grotesque story about the South, the critics will call it realistic.  But if you write a realistic story about the South, the critics will call it 'grotesque.' " 

[Florestan]

The lunatic Emperor Commodus did indeed "fight" in gladiatorial games: they were of course rigged.  One source (Cassius Dio, an eyewitness to the reign of Commodus) wrote that the lunatic also slaughtered animals by the dozens by shooting them with arrows from his seat in the stands.

Plots to hire a gladiator to kill him - rather than take a dive - may have happened, but sources say he was strangled in his bathtub by his wrestling coach, whom the mistress of Commodus and other officials had hired to perform the assassination.

I believe the study of the rise of the Roman Empire and the fall of its Western branch is quite helpful and orientating in the current international context. Nihil novum sub sole. 

[Madiel]

Re the Roman Empire: people adopt names of power even if the geography doesn't hold up. This is how Russia started somewhere other than where Rus was.

[Cato]

There used to be a maxim in the 1970's: "Give me $100,000 and Warren Oates and I will make a terrific movie!  Wait!  Make it half a million: why should Warren Oates always be in cheap movies?" 

Sam Rockwell is a 21st century Warren Oates!

And concerning stories about the South: the great writer Flannery O'Connor (a Catholic who hailed from a small town in Georgia) once commented:

"If you write a grotesque story about the South, the critics will call it realistic.  But if you write a realistic story about the South, the critics will call it 'grotesque.' " 

Concerning Warren Oates: he had top billing in a few movies, but usually was a supporting character actor.

Let me recommend The Wild Bunch, where he is part of a large ensemble with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine.

Two movies - if you can find them - had him as the star: The White Dawn concerns three sailors from a whaling ship, who become trapped in the Arctic and depend on Eskimos to survive. 

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is another Sam Peckinpah movie (The Wild Bunch was also his): a wild and at times bizarre ride through the 1970's in Mexico and the underworld.

e.g.

[relm1]

'Flow' telles the tribulations of a cat that tries to survive a catastrophic flood. The cat meets other animals including a capybara, a secretarybird, a dog and a lemur.

There is no dialogue and the music is deeply intuitively ground in. It feels recognizable but also strange and sometimes aliena ating. A lot happens but there is also something unfinished about 'Flow'. it just could be a dream, a soft "video game"....The animals are quite roughly designed ( sketched..) the woods, seascapes and overgrown hills are impressive.
Not bad at all, maybe not deeply gripping as I was hoping for.

You might like The Wild Robot.  It was very good, heartfelt, has a wonderful score too!

[hopefullytrusting]

You might like The Wild Robot.  It was very good, heartfelt, has a wonderful score too!

High recommend for The Wild Robot. I needed a box of tissues, but I'm also quite weepy, like Jeremiah.

[Kalevala]

You might like The Wild Robot.  It was very good, heartfelt, has a wonderful score too!

High recommend for The Wild Robot. I needed a box of tissues, but I'm also quite weepy, like Jeremiah.

I enjoyed TWR too.  I believe that I watched it on Peacock Plus.

Would love to see Flow.

K

[T. D.]

Youtube documentary about 5 famous Soviet hockey players. Can only post a URL here:

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

[hopefullytrusting]

This movie did not age well, and I suspect none of them will, which is kind of sad given the overall investment in the project: Avengers: Infinity War



The only part I appreciated more was Brolin as Thanos; he did an excellent job, and I think that kind of stoicism in a "villain" is an excellent choice to make.

My favorite part of Black Panther was Killmonger, and I don't find any of the superheroes, at least in Avengers, interesting. The Hulk is probably my favorite, but Bana and Norton were both way better (Norton being the best - Keaton would also be a good Hulk). I like Mackie, but not in these films, but I'm glad he did them because now he is a big enough draw to show his talent (same with Chris Evans, but I already loved him from the Fantastic Four). I think I can pretty much do without the rest, lol.

[Irons]

May I ask if that's some sort of senior discount or does everyone pay 4 pounds?  When I was growing up, there used to be a theatre that would only charge 1 dollar for movies--trying to remember, but I think that it was either for just certain times/days or maybe for certain movies.  Certainly helpful when you were a teenager!

K

I only paid a pound more, as did my son, for a pre-booked seat (although the cinema was less then half full) on a Saturday evening for "A Complete Unknown". I was expecting to pay more as a first cinema visit for over five years, but surmised low prices due to alternatives such as streaming etc.

[Kalevala]

I only paid a pound more, as did my son, for a pre-booked seat (although the cinema was less then half full) on a Saturday evening for "A Complete Unknown". I was expecting to pay more as a first cinema visit for over five years, but surmised low prices due to alternatives such as streaming etc.

Interesting!  From what I've seen, the prices just keep going up around here.    They do give you a price break on early showings though (last that I recall.  Like you, it's been a while since I've actually gone to a theatre to watch a movie.).

K

[Cato]

Ryan George has a "Pitch Meeting" for the new and (apparently fraught with problems) Captain America movie.

(Spoilers, but if this is the last movie you watched...Okay then!  )

 

Caution!  This Pitch Meeting contains Violent Rhetoric e.g. :"Oh, beating up Senior Citizens is tight!"   


Recently, Mrs. Cato, who had forgotten most of the movie, and I watched a controversial Western from 1960: The Unforgiven, directed by John Huston, with Burt Lancaster and silent-screen legend Lilian Gish, the latter absolutely hair-raising in several scenes!


One of the main themes is a deep racism against American Indians, which theme caused the controversy back then.

Great score from Dmitri Tiomkin!

[Kalevala]

Ryan George has a "Pitch Meeting" for the new and (apparently fraught with problems) Captain America movie.

(Spoilers, but if this is the last movie you watched...Okay then!  )

The other day, when I was checking out ticket prices (after reading Iron's posting), I was surprised to see that there were two options for watching Captain America; one was in a type of iMAX setting (with, obviously, higher ticket prices).  Boy, am I ever behind the times! 

K

[DavidW]

This movie did not age well,

It really doesn't have to, half the experience was being in the theater on opening weekend. It was one of those proverbial water cooler moments. It was before everyone collectively became exhausted from Marvel content. It was a culmination of plot and character arcs from an entire legendarium of movies. That kind of extended storytelling at the box office had never been seen before. And that counts for something. And the hype and buzz around it when it first came out was unbelievable.

It doesn't stand on its own, and it is not a good film by itself. But I disagree with you, it still has legs. The cynical post-Marvel burnout hand-wringing is what won't age well. With time when people can put distance from the constant stream of mediocre vomit that is the bulk of TV shows and recent movies, I think more people will see that the first eras were something special. The combination of all the poor films and general superhero malaise colors the perspective of many, and I think that includes yourself.

It is just that I've seen in so many things these days people shitting on works that were not made for them. For example, I don't know how many middle-aged white dudes have posted scathing reviews for romance novels that have that Book Tok buzz when they don't even like the genre. Or conservatives on YT yelling about LGBTQ representation in a video game they would never play themselves.

[Cato]

The other day, when I was checking out ticket prices (after reading Iron's posting), I was surprised to see that there were two options for watching Captain America; one was in a type of iMAX setting (with, obviously, higher ticket prices).  Boy, am I ever behind the times! 

K

A bomb in IMAX would be an even bigger bomb!

Recently we saw A Real Pain.



I found it mediocre, an imitation of a Woody Allen movie, with almost relentless coprolalia, which severely detracts from the religious atmosphere surrounding a pilgrimage to the sites of massacres.

It seemed I was watching two clueless idiots with little real sense about the seriousness of what they were undertaking.  In very few scenes were their ridiculously obscene tongues under control, so that a reflection on their ancestors' ordeal could take place.

[Papy Oli]

Tár.


Dear god, what a bore...