What's the last movie you've seen?

[Beet]

Halloween 2007: The Rob Zombie version

Liked: Doesn't try to replicate every line or the exact structure of the original.
Disliked: Another remake.
Thought was interesting: This movie focuses a lot more on Michael Myers, who in the original was really just a dark, shadowy instrument of terror. In this one he is actually the subject itself.
Kicker: This movie destroys the myth of the original.

[Beet]

Just finished watching Amazing Grace.

I liked it very much. 

I thought it was interesting that the U.S. and Britain abolished the slave trade at about the same time, and the distinction between the slave trade and slavery itself. It also thought it was interesting that the British Isles are probably the area of Europe in which slavery had the least ability to take root. As early as the late 18th century separate rulings in England and Scotland declared slavery invalid on the Isles themselves, even before the trade was abolished in the Empire.

[Beet]

Not a movie, but the AFI recently released its latest top 100 movies. The huge number of changes just hurts its credibility, IMO. I guess there's never much consensus on what's considered the best movie, but when you have a well-known film like Vertigo (1958) jumping 50 places into the top ten, it kind of emphasizes how much the list is the product of a particular set of industry insiders at a particular moment in time. On the other hand, there's honesty to admitting that the critical community can change its mind profoundly, and I admire and respect that.

Raging Bull jumped 20 places to #4, which is absurd.
The Searchers (1956) jumped 84 places into the top 10, with growing recognition of its influence; but that's more of an artifact of 2007, IMO, than the film itself.
Birth of a Nation was removed from the list and replaced with Intolerance. Give me a f-cking break. Does the Godfather being at #2 mean an endorsement of the mafia? Then why would Birth of Nation be removed from the list? David Wark Griffith may or may not have been a racist, (see Intolerance and Broken Blossoms) but the industry should acknowledge the truth about its formative milestones- as Susan Faludi points out in The Terror Dream, Birth may have been simply tapping into the western/John-Wayne narrative on grand scale.

Edit:
I do like how they acknowledge that LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring was the most significant of the LOTR movies. It established the basic premises not only for the plot and themes of the next two films but the very notion of such an open-ended trilogy (the Star Wars trilogy, for example, ended with the blowing up of the Death Star, not the heroes journeying off into uncertainty) after a three-hour feature. It took a big risk and basically established the success of the entire trilogy.

[Beet]

No Country doesn't quite glorify violence in the traditional sense. Pain and suffering are not glossed over. Deaths are portrayed individually (for the most part) and happen to characters you care about. There is no larger purpose that the audience can rally around to justify the violence. So in that sense its a very realistic portrayal of violence.

On the other hand I can see where BRTD is coming from. The coolest thing about this movie is watching Chigurgh kill people and waiting to see if he does or does not. The coolest character in this movie is Chigurgh as well. He gets the best lines. Watching violence or anticipation of violence is just about the only reason someone would go to see this, and it is billed after all as entertainment. In some sense the realism only makes it more direct, to throw it even more in your face the following: We made this movie so you could watch this violence and enjoy it as an artistic masterpiece. So yes, in a way it is a very profound glorification of violence, more than perhaps any other film.

[Beet]

I've watched a few classics from my VHS movie collection, and I highly recommend all of these:

What I watched Saturday:

Escape from New York (1981)
In the future of 1997, a condemned criminal and former war hero (KURT RUSSELL) is offered his freedom if he can rescue the President of the United States (DONALD PLEASENCE) from the walled prison island of Manhattan after a terrorist brings down the President's plane in this futuristic adventure.

The beginning of this thing with the airplane flying into a skyscraper in lower manhattan was pretty creepy.

[Beet]

Recently began to watch Ken Burns's The War. I like Ken Burns, and in this series he focuses on how things changed for four families from different parts of the country. It kind of reminded me of Flags of Our Fathers

[Beet]

The Searchers  by John Ford (R-CA). I can see how it was an inspiration for a lot of movies like Taxi Driver, The Hills Have Eyes, and parts of Star Wars. John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards is a very fascinating hero/anti-hero. I like how they set up the ambiguity of the central character and then his more humanistic sidekick, almost like his conscience, following him.

[Beet]

I just got back from No Country for Old Men.

My god.  That was the tensest movie I've ever seen.  I'm still not sure what even happened at the end.  I'm going to have to think about it for a few days.

Carla Jean got killed.

Well I know that.  I mean just in terms of the the killer walking away and the sheriff having that dream.  It was a very abrupt ending.

SPOILER ALERT: DON'T READ THE ONE POINT FONT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END

In the book, the Mexican guy gets arrested and the cop goes to the jail cell and kills him... Lame..

[Beet]

The Last King of Scotland

Pretty good movie, Whittaker was great.

Whittaker was scary... so yeah. It's strange how optimistic economics combined with Stalinist terror. For much of the time since, Africa has seen weak or absent governments combined with economic stagnation or retreat.

[Beet]

I watched The Godfather again and the first time I've watched the entire thing and understood it all. The strongest parts there are probably the memorable scenes and one-liners, of course. The Moe Greene character was hilarious! Just like the kind of guy opebo would like to be in real life.

[Beet]

All About Eve. Wonderful performances by George Sanders and Bette Davis.
"I can see your career rising like the sun in the East," Sanders at one point says to the character played by Marilyn Monroe.
"Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a rough night!"
"Wonderful story. Everything but the bloodhounds nipping at 'er rear end."
And so many other quotables.
Both this and Stanley Kubrick's later Paths of Glory are stunning studies in the complexities of power, which are rarely seen any more. Old Hollywood still had its stuff at mid-century, even in the midst of its precipitious decline.

[Beet]

The Godfather (1974)

The first time I had ever seen this film. And it was brilliant . It was worth staying up until 2 am

You mean part II?

[Beet]

Birth of a Nation. I don't believe this was actually the first feature-length film; that title will go to The Story of the Kelly Gang, and pioneering in grand film scale must also be credited to the Italian industry before the start of World War I. The Italians had very cheap labor, good landscapes and some excellent architecture to create classical epics. However, this film apparently made quite an impact on the U.S. market. Intercutting scenes; the death-in-the-arms; the close-up; the battle scene and the pan. The first half was not nearly so racist and was almost a straightforward account of the Civil war.

[Beet]

Easy Virtue (1928), Blackmail (1929) and Rich and Strange (1932) all early Hitchcock works.

Easy Virtue, starring Isabel Jeans and Franklin Dyall. Opens with head-shot of the top of a magistrate's head. As he looks up, we get a front view of his face. And so begins a court scene embellished with flashbacks. The end of the film mirrors the beginning, and an object (a camera) is used to symbolize psychological state. This will be repeated with a knife in Blackmail.

Blackmail, was Britain's first talkie. It's a teaser at first because there are eight minutes with no talking at all,  including some scenes where you might expect it, but Hitchcock had this re-shot after hearing of the release of Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer in America. If you listen carefully in the first eight minute, you can hear at least one 'sound' that gives away that there will be talking dialogue. Just before the first word is spoken, there is the sound of something closing... perhaps this was not to give the audience too much shock. Leading lady Anny Ondra was Czech and her voice was entirely dubbed through the film.

You can see Hitchcock beginning to experiment with dynamic opening sequences, and this theme is continued in Rich and Strange.

Rich and Strange- only thing I can say is see this. The opening sequence is fantastic. A perfect fit for Depression-era audiences. The letter close-ups are a direct inheritance from the silent era, particularly Birth of Nation. Interesting that panel shots were still included here even though it's a talkie.

[Beet]

Ever seen The 39 Steps?

Yes, have you? I thought it was good, but perhaps a little hyped. Though it definitely had the 'innocent man caught up in criminal conspiracy' and the macguffin plot formula fully developed.

[Beet]

Ever seen The 39 Steps?

Yes, have you? I thought it was good, but perhaps a little hyped. Though it definitely had the 'innocent man caught up in criminal conspiracy' and the macguffin plot formula fully developed.

I really enjoyed it but I thought it lacked dénouement; the climax is hit and then suddenly the film ends which jarred a bit for me. I think he got it right with North by Northwest.

I haven't seen the three you mentioned, if I were to get hold of one which would you recommend? My personal favourite Hitchcock is Rear Window though I must admit to not having actually seen Psycho yet (it's on the 'to watch' list).

If you like Hitchcock I would say Blackmail. This is the most standard Hitchcock of the three. The finale chase sequence is at the British Museum and you can really see some of the themes that he repeats over and over later, used here, such as police going after the wrong person, chase sequences, voyeurism, and moral ambiguity. Rich and Strange has some good sequences showing London, Paris and Alexandria, Egypt circa 1930, and you can tell he's having fun with it, but it's basically a comedy/drama.

My favorite Hitchcock is Vertigo, though Rear Window is excellent as well. As some critics have noted, Vertigo the most personal and explanatory of his films w.r.t his issues with women. Rear Window probably does the same for his obsession with voyeurism.

Psycho is pretty much all shower scene + psychological profile of Norman Bates, which is easy to become familiar with without actually seeing the film. Once you've seen those parts you've pretty much seen it all.

[Beet]

The Marriage Circle (1923), with Adolphe Menjou, who plays an old man (Kirk Douglas with whom he co-stars in Paths of Glory, was only seven years old when this movie was made!), Marie Prevost and Monte Blue. It was Ernst Lubitsch's second American film after Rosita. Lubitsch supplied the young major studio Warner Brothers with some needed elegance and "class". Compared to sound film, the actors and actresses had to exaggerate their movements and expressions, and the use of close-up visuals of letters and telegrams, often shown twice, was quite extensive to move the plot.

[Beet]

Robert Rossen's All the King's Men (1949), starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, and Mercedes McCambridge.

"Willie's Law is Our Law!"
"Man was born in sin and conceived in corruption."
"Every man has a price. The louder he yells, the higher his price."
"We need to find a dummy. A dummy? Ha. That's what we've got."

[Beet]

The History Boys

Lovely and Depressing. I will watch it again, i'm sure; I just don't feel like doing it to myself yet

The next movies on the list are: Dig, Partition, White Chicks, The Phantom Tollbooth, Idiocracy, Saturday Night Fever, The Benchwarmers, Candy, The Band's Visit, The Prestige, Kokoda, Blades of Glory, Shrek 3, The Illustionist and The Producers.  Any ideas about which order?

Just...don't...watch...any...of...them...

Those magician movies (The Illusionist and The Prestige) aren't bad.

[Beet]

A Trip to the Moon (1902), a breakthrough 14-minute George Melies film for its use of tricks and special effects such as superimposition and disappearance/reappearance, anticipating mankind's actual trip to the moon 67 years later, and often considered the "first" science fiction movie. Melies himself starred as the lead astronomer/journeyman, and the film benefitted from Melies' background as a magician, as opposed to photographer as the Lumiere brothers were.

The Great Train Robbery (1903), Edwin S. Porter's movie is often called the first Western with a fully defined narrative structure. It features things such as chase scenes, cross-cutting, and a man firing a pistol straight at the screen! Though with the amount of smoke that goes up and without sound or suspense, it's not scary to the modern viewer.

Nerone (1909), or "Nero. Or the Fall of Rome." A pretty crappy movie, but one gets to see what it's like to have a big costume drama with a lot of actors many years before Birth of a Nation.

[Beet]

Night of the Hunter (1955), not your typical slasher as the title and synopsis would suggest, this is mostly about the struggle of two kids, brother and sister, to hide some money from an escaped convict who is out to get it. The best parts are the eerie landscape scenery when the kids are rowing down the river, and the part played by Lillian Gish when she is guarding the kids. And of course the "LOVE/HATE" tattooed on the fingers, famously parodied in The Simpsons. Apparently it's good because it's "lyric and expressionistic" and therefore influenced Scorcese, Lynch, the Coen brothers, and the like, even though the plotline is pretty straightforward.

[Beet]

The Great Train Robbery (1903), Edwin S. Porter's movie is often called the first Western with a fully defined narrative structure. It features things such as chase scenes, cross-cutting, and a man firing a pistol straight at the screen! Though with the amount of smoke that goes up and without sound or suspense, it's not scary to the modern viewer.

Only pre-30s movie I have ever thoroughly enjoyed.

Really?  I think some of the Charlie Chaplin silents are entertaining.

Quite true there aren't many genuinely entertaining silents by todays standards. Most silents were meant to be viewed in theater, with orchestral or narrative accompaniment, and sometimes they had color tinting which has since been lost. Therefore, no modern experience is going to be the same as its silver screen equivalent, especially since most of the time you can only view them on the Internet or on DVD. However, I have some hope for the following which I've not seen:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Vampires
The Battleship Potemkin
Metropolis
The General

[Beet]

Beet,

Have you been getting these silent films (the Melies particularly) off the internet or do you just have them on dvds? I've been looking for a copy of Voyage dans la lune for a while now.

Also, a silent film I enjoyed - mainly for the interesting hand-tinting - is Re Lear, an Italian version of King Lear from 1910. It's only 16 minutes long so doesn't take up much time at all!

I have them on DVD (which has the "original" narration script) but here you go-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbGd_240ynk

Part 2 should be on the list off to the right.

[Beet]

Anatomy of a Murder (1959), James Stewart, George C. Scott, D: Otto Preminger. Based off the novel by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker. Also in this as judge is Joseph Welch, of "have you no shame?" fame in the Army-McCarthy trials. I liked this more than 12 Angry Men (1957) or any other trial movie I have ever seen (although a 1989 ABA ranking disagrees), because almost every courtroom scene is filled with not only witty and entertaining dialogue but legalistic insight.

The French Connection (1971), Gene Hackman, D: William Friedkin. An early seventies crime thriller like many others at the time and many other crime thrillers to follow, but done much better than most. Many excellent, neo-realist scenes of suspense and unforgettable performance by Hackman. "Ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?"

[Beet]

Rope (1948), James Stewart, D: Alfred Hitchcock and An Affair to Remember (1957), Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr D: Leo McCarey. Both a little crappy/disappointing. However, it is interesting that

(1) Stewart looks the same age to me no matter what movie he's in.

(2) Meeting at the top of the Empire State Building is apparently game-theoretically rational!:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.progressiveu.org/210408-abc-tests-game-theory-a-must-read-facinating