Last Movie You Watched? the 8th

The White Tuxedo wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960, dir. Terence Fisher)

On the big screen at an old-school, slightly run-down movie theater, which was the perfect venue for a film like this. They showed all the Hammer Dracula trailers just before the film started (the trailers for DRACULA A.D. 1972 and THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES got lots of laughs).

For my money, BRIDES OF DRACULA is the best entry in Hammer's Dracula series.

I may go along with you on that. I actually enjoy Cushing more than Lee. I just wish they'd been teamed up again sooner.

It is my favourite of the Hammer Dracula's too (although the 1957 film is very very close) and about to be released on Blu Ray in the UK.

Amazon Link

Il giorno della civetta (1968, dir. Damiano Damiani)

Pretty good political mystery thriller about the Mafia web on Sicily. Cobb, la Cardinale, and a very finely performing Nero are in it. Pretty cool direction as well (note camera and use of music, particularly their interplay, most notably in the final part). Italian (and French, if the TV mag is correct) filmmaking for a fine TV evening once again.

North by Northwest (1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Needed something lightweight, so I watched this. Hadn't viewed it in a couple of years, first time on HDTV flatty - and it did the film a really good service.
I'd rank at least six or seven Hitches ahead of it, it is too light in tone for my tastes - hardly ever feel real danger or espionage thrill - , the love story does not do much for me - never really enjoyed the scenes on the train and later in the hotel room -, was never really swayed by the cut from Rushmore to Thornhill in the bed on the train in the end (and noticed Mason's line about using live bullets, didn't click with me much like some other stuff in the film) - BUT, it is still a very cleverly scripted and directed entertainment thriller with lots of great dialogue (at least in the first third, the quality does not seem to hold up), and a lot of terrific cinematography. Bernard has done better, but there is also some quality stuff from him (the main theme works well, for instance).
All in all, enjoyable fair (and I will watch most of Hitch's films in English this year, hopefully (this was the dubbed version)).

AMOUR (2012, directed by Michael Haneke). Mindblowingly well-acted by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant (that Riva lost out on this year's Best Actress Oscar to Jennifer Lawrence's performance in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is something that will always leave me flabbergasted), and deeply moving, indeed sometimes almost unwatchably heartwrenching. A remarkable film.

I thought it was a hateful, misanthropic film.

How so?

The only flaw I find - and I see it as a minor one, especially as the film's good points are so, erm, good - is overlength. Not sure we need the dream sequence, for instance. Also, certain scenes are extended and certain shots held for far longer than is necessary (the shot of the concertgoers at the beginning, for instance), or perhaps I should say far longer than is conventional. Obviously, this is a deliberate stylistic choice on Haneke's part and one supposes one must defer to his way of telling the story. Sometimes this technique works brilliantly (the scene with the pigeon and the blanket at the end), but on other occasions seems to verge on a prescription for tedium. Small quibbles, though, for otherwise AMOUR is an excellent film, if you ask me.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I thought it was a hateful, misanthropic film.

Scrolling down too fast I thought you were referring to NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

Loomis wrote:

How so?

This year’s award for cruelest movie title has to go to Michael Haneke’s Amour. One of Europe’s most hateful filmmakers (yet beloved by the festival circuit) has titled his latest offense to resemble a love story. Ha!

It’s actually another grisly death story from Haneke (The White Ribbon, Funny Games) that follows the slow disintegration of the husband-wife union between classical-music professionals Georges and Anne (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva). This isn’t a broken-marriage epic like Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage but a procedural on mortality. Anne suffers a debilitating stroke, and Georges cares for her in their bourgeois Paris co-op until he realizes the inevitable and contemplates death for the two of them.

Cheerless as ever, Haneke plays his joke hand early. The film opens with a shock: the image of a corpse followed by the ironic title “Amour.” It’s such a mean, sour gesture that only loony film critics can miss its hateful point. It’s sub-Buñuelian, but I’ll bet Neil LaBute is trying to figure out how to repeat it in his next opus.

After the title joke, Haneke opens on a flashback by cutting to a shot of a concert audience—that is, us. The image is weighted with the dismal inevitability of everyone’s death. Haneke’s mordant sense of humor scores a funeral to The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” His artistic snobbery shows in a classical performance where a jolting piano chord offers bombast, then an unnerving quiet note like the two opening images.

Haneke uses illness as a metaphor for the decline of cinema (an idea that connects him to fellow nihilist prankster Lars von Trier). Amour teases the impermanence of art as well as humanity. A scene of Anne perusing a photo album and mournfully saying “long life beautiful” confronts us with the futility of transitory happiness, even of photographic reproduction. Perversely, Haneke wants to deprive viewers of cinematic pleasure yet allows Trintignant, Riva and even Isabelle Huppert, as their resentful, suffering daughter Eva, to give vividly detailed, convincing performances—each pro, an axiom of modern European cinema, is as good as they’ve ever been. Riva’s stroke-impaired speech isn’t given Streep-like close-ups but seen from an effective distance, and Trintignant’s decrepit gait is like a reverse-vitality dance. His voice quavers awesomely. Too bad so much of the dialogue is repetition of the words “sick” and “hurt.” But then, that’s Haneke.

This seems like Haneke’s most compassionate film, though that’s not saying much. Haneke avoids art critic Robert Hughes’ realization “Life goes irrepressibly on.” Amour is no more life-affirming (or cinema-affirming) than The Dark Knight Rises. It’s serious, yet it’s meant to be glum, and that snarky opening embrace of double suicide does not equal the serious contemplation of existence in Leo McCarey’s 1939 Make Way for Tomorrow (a mortality comedy) or a truly great artist like Antonioni, who gave audiences something worthwhile by asking “How do we live?” A nihilistic misanthrope like Haneke doesn’t change his sadistic, whip-hand stripes.

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That's how.

Well, I disagree with that review. And who says AMOUR is supposed to be "life-affirming"? Or that Haneke was obliged to deal in "cinematic pleasure"? This isn't meant to be a work of entertainment or a feelgood story (indeed, it's sometimes almost unwatchably harrowing). There isn't a Hollywood ending here - and rightly so.

I do, however, find AMOUR to be "cinema-affirming", in that it demonstrates the power of the medium to communicate an emotionally involving story about three-dimensional human beings. Indeed, for a film set almost entirely within a single apartment it's a surprisingly cinematic (as opposed to theatrical or televisual) and visual affair.

THE COMEDY (2012)

Pretty slow for a 90 minute film. It had a few uncomfortable and awkward parts through out, which made for good humor.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944, dir. Howard Hawks)

Better than CASABLANCA.

Stalag17

mighty fine film. I don't think until now I've ever seen a Billy Wilder film, yet another wrong fixed or what have you. Despite Holden I seemed to be drawn most to the partnership of Harvey Lembeck (so good to see him in action outside of Bilko) and Robert Strauss. Easy to forget it's a PoW film as it goes on, so wrapped in the characters and the traitor in their midst.
The presence of a Russian women camp next door is odd somewhat but a small note of discord.

Olympus Has Fallen - it's 'Die Hard In The White House' as disgraced former Presidential chief of security Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is the only man who can take on the North Korean terrorists (how coincidentally timely) who have taken over the aforementioned building. Preposterous-but-passably-fun action-thriller nonsense :) .

Might see it at some point but I'm much more interested in WHITE HOUSE DOWN.

Loomis wrote:

Might see it at some point but I'm much more interested in WHITE HOUSE DOWN.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN isn't worth your time (or anyone's time, really).

The Last of the Mohicans (1992, dir. Michael Mann)

Minor quibbles (music, slightly melodramatic in places, two important characters a bit short-changed), but all in all, it's an excellently crafted, entertaining and engaging modern adventure film (playing during the French and Indian War, saying which may prevent misunderstandings of my usage of the word "modern").
Mann and Spinotti deliver top-notch stuff, DDL at the height of his prowess, delivering a truly naturalistic and compelling performance; I was also surprised by Stowe's acting, it must have been that I saw the English version, the first time I realized how good she is. Studi as Magwa is one hell of a downplayed, but at the same time terrifying, believable, and memorable "villain". The historical background and details and politics are very well researched and woven into the film. It looks pretty impressive, cinematography is first class. The score works very well in the last, well made and moving sequence.
I very much approve.

Screenshots perhaps some time later (not necessarily in this thread; I also was too lazy to post some pics of Hanussen which may follow.)

The Majestic, Moon & White Mischief

A long, pointless afternoon for many reasons. Quite liked the first (seeing James Whitmore and Martin Landau in action in their respective roles), the second was what it was and the third utterly dry and dull apart from dear Greta Scechi.

Manhunter wrote:

The Last of the Mohicans (1992, dir. Michael Mann)

Minor quibbles (music, slightly melodramatic in places, two important characters a bit short-changed), but all in all, it's an excellently crafted, entertaining and engaging modern adventure film (playing during the French and Indian War, saying which may prevent misunderstandings of my usage of the word "modern").
Mann and Spinotti deliver top-notch stuff, DDL at the height of his prowess, delivering a truly naturalistic and compelling performance; I was also surprised by Stowe's acting, it must have been that I saw the English version, the first time I realized how good she is. Studi as Magwa is one hell of a downplayed, but at the same time terrifying, believable, and memorable "villain". The historical background and details and politics are very well researched and woven into the film. It looks pretty impressive, cinematography is first class. The score works very well in the last, well made and moving sequence.
I very much approve.

Screenshots perhaps some time later (not necessarily in this thread; I also was too lazy to post some pics of Hanussen which may follow.)

One of my favourite films of the 1990s. Just overall well-acted, well-directed, well-shot. Fairly loyal to Fenimore Cooper too.

Harmsway wrote:

Loomis wrote:

Might see it at some point but I'm much more interested in WHITE HOUSE DOWN.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN isn't worth your time (or anyone's time, really).

Fair enough. I'll skip it.

Looking forward to WHITE HOUSE DOWN, though. I enjoy my Roland Emmerich rollercoasters of dumb fun (INDEPENDENCE DAY, GODZILLA and, especially, 2012) and was fairly impressed by the trailer.

THREE TIMES (2005)

I think this ran too long, given the three story lines. I did like the use of titles for the 1911 segment, the changes in film stock and lighting, and the performances.

OBLIVION

Not bad. I liked the soundtrack. A little predictable, perhaps, but that's not a bad thing. Of course, it's always ironic to see Tom Cruise killing aliens. :D

Ravenstone wrote:

OBLIVION

Not bad. I liked the soundtrack. A little predictable, perhaps, but that's not a bad thing. Of course, it's always ironic to see Tom Cruise killing aliens. :D

Agreed. The story isn't exactly the most original thing out there (think PLANTET OF THE APES meets MOON meets INDEPENDENCE DAY), but I thought the soundtrack by M83 was rather excellent, as was the cinematography. For only being his second film, Kosinski seems to have a great eye for visuals.

THE ROYAL TENEBAUMS (2001, dir. Wes Anderson)

Delightful. My third favourite Anderson.

Largo's Shark wrote:

THE ROYAL TENEBAUMS (2001, dir. Wes Anderson)

Delightful. My third favourite Anderson.

from the start, from the Baldwin narration I'm hooked. Powerful film.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969, directed by John Schlesinger). Somewhat dated, occasionally confusing and sometimes less than credible, this is mostly an exercise in directorial virtuosity (coupled with an excellent soundtrack) - but boy what virtuosity! Schlesinger's remarkable stylishness makes this absorbing and often quite dazzling fare, even though the relentless grimness of the subject matter is hard to take after a while and one does wonder about the whole point of the film. Jon Voight is terrific, although Dustin Hoffman is a bit too hammy for my taste.