Last Movie You Watched? Mark 9

Vesper wrote:

ALL THAT JAZZ (1979) - dir. Bob Fosse.

This was the first movie starting with A on my hard drive that I was yet to watch. I literally could not be bothered cycling further down with my remote. Didn't know I was sitting down to watch a Palme d'Or winner.  

I had my laptop open intending to multi-task. Instead I was transfixed. A great film, but I'm still trying to process it in order to articulate how I feel about it. I was actually really tempted to watch it again right away. I'm honestly surprised I hadn't heard of it more, as I thought it'd be a film discussed a lot more than it is.

I definitely thought it jumped up a couple of notches in the second half, as Gideon inches towards death and Fosse eases you into full blown surrealism. The preservation of typical musical storytelling until this point in the story is great as it makes the strangeness of the medium make sense. The sequence below is just fantastic, awesomely shot, conceived, choreographed....



And that ending is such a punch to the gut. Ann Reinking was a quality piece as well, Fosse was a lucky bastard.

Between this and CABARET, how is the rest of Fosse's work?

For years, ALL THAT JAZZ, along with APOCALYPSE NOW and 2001, were my favorite films (and I hated KRAMER VS KRAMER for decades because JAZZ and APOC were overlooked in favor of that glorified movie-of-the-week.) But I have to admit, I've never gotten through any of Fosse's other pictures (though I bet I'll like LENNY when I finally see it.)

Saw RED 2 last night and could not stop laughing, except when they show Catherine Zeta-Jones' legs, which looked like itty-bitty pipecleaners now. Barely remember the first one, but I wish I'd seen this one in the cinema (well, maybe not, the digital look of the thing was pretty harsh most of the time.)

It was, once again, World War Z. Yep, I gave it another try. This time, I actually managed to get to the credits, but my attention span fell asleep at pretty much the exact same mark that I stopped it last time. It kicked up again when Brad Pitt got to that W.H.O. outpost in Wales, when the movie, I felt, turned into a zombie movie. If the eventual sequel sticks by that atmosphere, I probably won't mind it. Maybe there's hope after all.

The Third Man

What an awesome experience this still manages to be, every scene drips with character and brooding mystery. The cast is great, the dialogue rich but its the environment that is the real star of the show, a real tour de force of light and shadow in every sense of those words.

9/10

Harmsway wrote:

What I mean is that while FIGHT CLUB justly seethes with outrage at a corrosive culture, it does a poor job of identifying the diseased heart of the contemporary Western world. It's impossible to build an effective cultural critique when you start with such a puerile understanding of masculinity.

I haven't read the novel, but in the case of the film, isn't that lack of depth just a matter of trying to gauge what will pass muster for a theater-going audience and generate adequate box office returns?

A lot of the ideas in the film are like Durden's single-serving notions ... just a sound-byte of interest, without real context.

The Hobbit : The Desolation Of Smaug - thrilling, spectacular and amusing fantasy adventure. Something about these makes them much more fun to watch than the plodding likes of The Wolverine or Man Of Steel (maybe it's having Tolkien to work from, I dunno).

Tora Tora Tora

made the mistake of watching the Michael Bay nonsense this past week. Historically, dramatically and musically this is of course superior. No mishmash of 1970s ships, slow mo, melodramatic snuff. The main theme to the film fantastic, hinting at the tragedy, the drama to come.
Acting wise James Whitmore sort of bubbles to the top, making Admiral Halsey the General Patton of this particular piece. The attack sequence is one of the greatest set-pieces you're likely to see.
Pearl Harbour, the film, was just a mess. Here Dorie Miller is seen doing what he got the Navy Cross for without all the fictionalising of his captain dying in his arms.
Just...maddening.

The Hobbit : The Desolation Of Smaug

Enjoyed the 3D special version in the cinema accompanied by my daughters, whom I have managed to turn into fans, and had a great time. This movie was faster paced than the previous installment and the actionscenes with the barrels in the river is the best I have seen in many years, suberbly edited by a Jackson who was clearly enjoying himself a lot. Evangeline Lilly is always a sight for sore eyes, daddy candy, and my girls loved her instantly.
While the movie is not faithfull to the book as some hardcore fans would like it is faithfull nonetheless to Tolkiens tales only made more exiting.
the Bilbo & Smaug scenes are brilliant and the ending makes me pray that december 2014 may come quickly.

Scanners (1981)

First time seeing this. I enjoyed it a lot for the early 80s vibe, and of course Ironside is so fun to watch as a villain as always.

Excellent score from Howard Shore.



If you're on an early Cronenberg fix, I suggest THE BROOD next (Oliver Reed is terrific here, playing a similar role to the one Pat McGoohan plays in SCANNERS) followed by VIDEODROME. Skip RABID. The girl is hot, but one scene aside the film is painfully dull.

I have VIDEODROME next, then Netflix should send me THE BROOD later this week.

Die Another Day.  

Have I ever mentioned Jinx is a douchebag?

Zatoichi's Vengeance (1966)



Zatoichi's Vengeance is the 13th installment of the Zatoichi franchise and by the far the strongest film of the series (so far). The thing that makes this film so great is that it includes elements from the all the past Zatoichi films and pretty much rolls them up into one storyline.

Each film up until this point typically only had one or two small subplots. Vengeance has several major threads running throughout the entire film, complimented by several minor plot points. While this might sound messy, it is not. The script is brilliantly written by Hajime Takaiwa. I was disappointed to find this is his only outing with the franchise. The story has everything.

The thing that truly elevates this film is the character of the blind biwa priest who serves to bring a "soul searching" aspect to the series. He is wise and seems to know Zatoichi too well. He is blind, so he does not fit in with the common folk, but the blind do not accept him because of his extraordinary skills. He is a loner. The priest begs for him to stop fighting. At one point Zatoichi considers this. Both men share a meal where they are watched by the mysterious samurai who plans to kill him. He leaves without incident. But both blind men knew he was there. Zatoichi confesses he was afraid. This confession comes as a surprise for a man with so much skill, in any of the previous films you would not have expect such a comment or emotion to make it into the script.

The film is by the numbers in a sense, but this addition brings much more introspection into the series and a level of emotion not seen in the prior films.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The Hobbit : The Desolation Of Smaug - thrilling, spectacular and amusing fantasy adventure. Something about these makes them much more fun to watch than the plodding likes of The Wolverine or Man Of Steel (maybe it's having Tolkien to work from, I dunno).

I was very non-plussed by the first Hobbit movie....is this noticeably better or different?

DR. NO (1962, directed by Terence Young). Judi who? The first Bond film remains one of the very best, having stood the test of time astoundingly well (it seems a lot less dated, and far more exciting, than many 007 outings that followed much, much later).

BETTY BLUE (1986, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix). Absorbing, funny, poignant and supremely stylish.

Loomis wrote:

BETTY BLUE (1986, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix). Absorbing, funny, poignant and supremely stylish.  

After seeing this movie with the decline of Betty's character I am always in need of a comedy, I agree it is one of those movies I kept returning too year after year.

Videodrome (1983)

 

lachesis wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The Hobbit : The Desolation Of Smaug - thrilling, spectacular and amusing fantasy adventure. Something about these makes them much more fun to watch than the plodding likes of The Wolverine or Man Of Steel (maybe it's having Tolkien to work from, I dunno).

I was very non-plussed by the first Hobbit movie....is this noticeably better or different?

Well, I quite enjoyed An Unexpected Journey (although that's not to say that weren't some scenes that could have done with some judicious cutting ... the elves in Bilbo's home, for example). But yes, I'd say Smaug was better.

Die Hard - a Christmas tradition in my house, as is the first sequel (which will follow later in the week). Still probably my favourite action-thriller outside of the Bond series, and still yippee-ki-ay motherfuckin' great.

The Shining (1980)

First time I watched it in awhile, so I felt in the mood for it. I just love it for its atmosphere and Nicholson eating up everything. Now I'm gonna resume my Cronenberg run with THE BROOD and DEAD RINGERS. I especially look forward to the latter.

I decided to revisit The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and the result was mostly positive if still tinged by a feeling the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Ironically whereas the hobbit moments of LOTR were my least favourite, here the situation is reversed, the Dwarves in particular never engage. Equally odd is the CGI work, which is excellent when generating a full blown character but dreadful when tinkering with real life such as the aforementioned dwarves or New Zealand itself.

Die Hard 2 - 'How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?', indeed ... it's amazing Willis manages to resist the temptation to wink at the camera at that point. Not on a par with the first film, but still streets ahead of where the franchise is at now after A Good Day To Die Hard.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Videodrome (1983)

 

Long live the new flesh!

I saw VIDEODROME opening day and was just WTF? afterward. I even bought the novelization, which at least hadn't eliminated some signficant plot points, but it still was WTF?

I really ilked the idea of the new flesh, which I remember telling people (a la TMP) the next step in our evolution will be homo video if we take Cronenberg seriously.

I finally rewatched it again several years back and liked it, even though I think it is seriously flawed and wonder if a new cut of the film that put stuff back in would work better. Does the Criterion have cut scenes?

Not according to DVDBeaver, and Netflix only sent me the old 1998 Universal DVD release, which doesn't have all the extras. Criterion actually has the full footage of those transmissions from what I read, with commentary. I copied the old DVD so to revisit and see how it grows on me, because I am at least intrigued enough to want the criterion blu release, but I don't love the film enough to purchase it.

Dante's Peak. First non-Bond film I saw Pierce Brosnan in, and the first movie in general I saw Linda Hamilton in (I saw Terminator later). I've always enjoyed this movie, to the point where I just always watch it whenever it's on one of the Encore or Starz networks. Good special effects, good acting, maybe a little too fast paced (the movie clocks in at just under 2 hours, but feels even shorter), but utterly enjoyable. Personally, I feel that this and The Thomas Crown Affair are Brosnan's best films, period.

Anchorman 2 - at 2 hours, this is funny but overstretched .. edited down to a tighter 90 or 100 minutes, it would be hilarious. For the most part though, it stays classy :) .