What's the last movie you've seen?

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Paper Moon (1973), Ryan O'Neal, Tatum O'Neal, Madeleine Kahn, D: Peter Bogdanovich

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Broken Blossoms (1919), Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, D: D.W. Griffith

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1919), Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, D: Robert Wiene. Ravishingly haunting.

It's humorous to see the exaggerated, theatrical movements that actors made those days as a substitute for the realism that has dominated most of the time since.

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Steamboat Willie (1928), Direction, Production, Story, Voices, and Animation: Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks
Nosferatu (crappy YouTube version) (1922), Max Schreck, D: F.W. Murnau

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Stagecoach (1939), John Wayne, Claire Trevor, D: John Ford
Point Blank (1967), Lee Marvin, D: John Boorman. I must see Bonnie and Clyde again, for I'm not sure what made Pauline Kael disparage this one while heavily promoting B&C.

Five films over the weekend:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975): Finally got around to seeing this, though it kept occuring me throughout the film that I had seen it many times before, in pastiche. The best scenes in the film, are by far, the ending and the scenes where all the inmates talk in their circle, the scenes when they leave the institute jar a bit. However it is very funny. Great as it is, it is not the 11th best film of all time (According to IMDB, might be old).

I have high expectations from this film for it took Best Picture from Barry Lyndon. Watched small portions of it in high school English as we were reading the book.

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I've heard of this one, but Annie Hall didn't really click for me, probably because I'm too young.

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Blue Velvet (1986), Kyle MacLaughlan, Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rosselini, D: David Lynch. Lynch has certainly established his particular variation of neo-noir, but on other levels the plot falls within formulaic prescriptions; and his stylistic imprint can be found on his other works as well. Certainly not deserving of a remake.

Adam's Rib (1949), Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, D: George Cukor. Cukor, who was gay, had a reputation of a "woman's director", and this early feminist film is congruent with that, but he resented this, point out that no director has directed more performances that won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

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Wow. A movie that suggests a family has starved to death in contemporary America, shows a police officer firing recklessly into a crowd, general lawlessness in the California agriculture industry, children who are unfamiliar with toiletry. A Spike Lee film? It also provides a vaguely positive impression of "Reds" and government-run camps. A Soviet propaganda film? No, it's Grapes of Wrath (1940), Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, D: John Ford, a toned-down version of Steinbeck's extensively researched novel released just the previous year, produced with the knowledge of studio executives and endorsed by Whittaker Chambers. It won John Ford the second of his eventual five academy awards for Best Director. The cinematography by Gregg Toland stands out as one of the best examples of B&W for doing justice to Depression-era images.

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It Happened One Night (1934) with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, D: Frank Capra. Supposedly the original "screwball comedy", this story of a mismatched couple's adventures through the medley of depression-era America, keeping secrets from one another, each trying to one-up the other, and generally finding themselves in tough situations, is praised by Leonard Maltin as "still as enchanting as ever." The script can be read as a sort of allegory of the Great Depression (Colbert's money is stolen in an early scene; then Gable's final dollar is given away to a hungry boy and his mother) and the proletarian man who teaches the spoiled rich girl a lesson or two about life, but Gable and Colbert's interpretation on-screen dampens any ideological thrust in the script. The final marriage scene is a more subtle version of the walk down the aisle in The Graduate (1967), minus the generational wars.

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THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

A great, epic film with a fantastic score and great battle scenes. It's always been one of my favorites.

Agreed.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, D: Robert Aldrich

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Did anyone get the feeling that 6 mo. after the end of Wall-E, the landing site would look like a concentration camp with emaciated people eating each other?

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Blue Velvet.

Booooooooooring.

Surprised you felt the same way.

There Will be Blood.

I did not like the songs. The melody, singing and lyrics were all very bad. Otherwise it was okay.

The Man with the Golden Gun.

Bond films are horrible.

Once Upon a Time in the West.

Good, but overshadowed by the Dollars trilogy.

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There Will be Blood.

I did not like the songs. The melody, singing and lyrics were all very bad. Otherwise it was okay.

WTF? Are you thinking of another movie that's actually a musical?

Oops, I was thinking of Sweeney Todd, good catch. There Will Be Blood would make a good title for Sweeney Todd as well.

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Eraserhead.

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Eraserhead.

Any thoughts?

I kind of had high expectations due to some reviews mentioning that it had been influenced by early 20th century film expresionism (such as the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Un Chien Andalou, which I guess is a way of saying it had dark, urban, and supernatural mis-en-scene), that it's a David Lynch film, plus the fact that it's your screen name.

I liked it, but I would not want to see it again. It centers around a kind of child/infant - centered horror that is rare in film. Unusually it is a type of horror that works better with a male, since males are not usually placed in nurturing/caretaking roles. The horror is that you at once fear the infant in your care but the fear arises primarily from inadvertently hurting him/her, and thus doing something wrong. Thus there is an interplay of sympathy and dread. Physical deformity only dramatises the underlying tension of unintended pregnancy. All that is the genius of the cutting scene- the imagery of which certainly will not be forgotten. But this interpretation is coming from someone who has never been entirely comfortable babysitting young children, let alone infants.

There is also a very constricted feel to the entire film, arising from the fact that you never really know where he is, he is supposed to be in this industrial city yet there are other a few other real characters and you never see crowds. You can definitely see some of Lynch's signature here with his later films (dystopian themes, the stage performance as a dream, stepping back and forth across the line of cohesive plot/no cohesive plot and sudden violence).

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Quentin Tarantino fest:

Hell Ride
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kill Bill Vol. 2

The Maltese Falcon
The Postman Always Rings Twice (mentioned in Kill Bill 2)
Dial M for Murder

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Death Proof

Gentleman's Agreement

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Strangers on a Train (1951)

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Die Legende von Paul und Paula

A movie made in East Germany in 1973. Not bad, really. Me is who is often fed up with the classicism of movies today, with that, I had something to deal with.

Can you clarify?

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The Last Picture Show (1971). Peter Bogdanovich. Timothy Bottoms. Jeff Bridges. Cybill Shepard.

This is the story of a dying small town in west Texas in 1951-1952, and the human difficulties in coping with that change. A low key, melancholy realism. If made today it probably would not gross much, but in its time was nominated for eight academy awards including Best Picture.

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The Last Picture Show (1971). Peter Bogdanovich. Timothy Bottoms. Jeff Bridges. Cybill Shepard.

This is the story of a dying small town in west Texas in 1951-1952, and the human difficulties in coping with that change. A low key, melancholy realism. If made today it probably would not gross much, but in its time was nominated for eight academy awards including Best Picture.

I've read the book, never seen the movie. 

The author of the book, Larry McMutry, grew up in Texas and his novel is semi-autobiographical. He also shares screenwriting credits for the movie with Bogdanovich. The winner of Best Picture 1983, Terms of Endearment, was based on another novel by him; he also shares Best Adapted Screenplay 2005 with Diana Ossana for Brokeback Mountain.

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Couples' Retreat - was not as bad as I thought based on the reviews and based on the way it was made. This is the perfect movie for watching in a large theater. The jokes are funny enough that people around you laughing will tickle your funny bone, but not funny enough that you'd laugh by yourself if you were watching it with a few friends at home. Where I do agree with the critics is the unrealistic (and probably unhealthy) ending. C.

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Where the Wild Things Are. My, my. Spike Jonze has turned a classic picture book of less than 10 pages into a generation X psychological thriller. This is not a children's movie. It is about the dark recesses of the mind. It is unique and very powerful, if only occasionally fun. B+.

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Birthday Girl

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American Madness (1932). Directed by Frank Capra. Written by Robert Riskin. Walter Huston, Pat O'Brien, Kay Johnson (75 min.)

http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDAmericanMadness.htm

A populist bank President is saved from a run by his own depositors. The film directly confronts the bleak reality of depression America. It is interesting to see the contrasts between the attitudes then and the attitudes now. The attitudes now are all about taxpayer costs of bailouts. But in this film, the satisfying ending occurs when the bank is bailed out, thus saving the depositors. There is a detailed explication of how a bank run builds up and plays out, which, although we all know what it is intellectually, it is still fascinating to see it come alive. There is probably no better depiction of a depression era bank run even now on screen. For that reason alone you should see this movie.

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The Black Dahlia

Well, rather boring. Which is what happens most of the time some American directors try to make a movie on 30s/40s. They make everything perfect, the decorum, the costumes, the style, everything, but it seems just empty, you don't feel the actors are evolving in a special ambiance of an other epoch, you just have the feeling they are in a decorum. At least that's the impress i had about this one several other movies.

Plus here, the plot isn't that great, i mean there is not much stakes going on about what's happening in the story.

Well, the only stuffs to be noticed here are the presences of Hillary Swank and especially Scarlett Johanson in 40s looking...

In short a film in costumes in which you mainly notice that this is a film in costumes...

I saw it too-- it was pretty boring. Scarlett Johanson was hot of course.

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An Education - Too predictable. It reminds me of that book which claims (I think?) that there are only seven common story-lines out there that get told over and over again.