Last Movie You Watched.

Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

Dr. No. What else on the 60th anniversary day, eh?

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Dr. No. What else on the 60th anniversary day, eh?

I've heard good things about it. I'm trying to hold off the years Bondathon a little bit longer to make it all the better. I usually start every spring.

I assumed you'd seen it (something your current pic choice would back up), but your first sentence there indicates the opposite.

Pure coincidence. Sarai just plucked a photo she liked from Tits n' Shells Weekly.

CJB wrote:

Pure coincidence. Sarai just plucked a photo she liked from Tits n' Shells Weekly.

Showgirls

I actually rewatched this to prepare for Blonde, because I noticed some critics liken Ana de Armas' performance in the Marilyn Monroe biopic (intense and deeply lived in) with Elizabeth Berkley's very committed performance in Verhoeven's over the top camp-fest.
This film has seen a critical re-appreciation over the last decade and a half, mostly the last decade.
On which I can't really get on board with. Whereas Starship Troopers was always a brilliant satire that too many critics misinterpreted at the time of its release, Showgirls was and is a mess of a film, Verhoeven-ian self-indulgence that never manages to be half as interesting as it has pretensions of being. What does stand out as a curiosity is Berkley's performance. It's rare to see any actor throw themselves into a role to this extent, the fact that it happens in a film that isn't up to that level of commitment (something that her co-stars were very aware of) giving the performance a strange aura and Berkley's efforts themselves something almost endearing.
It's a tiny bit sad for her that she never was allowed to recover from the debacle of this film's box office failure (and critical reception). I think there was an interesting performer hiding in there somewhere, if she had been given the opportunity to grow. Arguably the best thing she was cast in after Showgirls was a tiny role in Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Which is meager for someone who was kind of cast aside as a joke at the age of just 23.

I am all in on Showgirls. But I only saw it for the first time after the reappraisal began, so I came to it already predisposed to the contrarian take.

Berkley undoubtedly should've had a better career.

I don't like it as much as Basic Instinct or Invisible Hollow Man. I would have to rewatch Robocop and Starship Troopers to be sure, but I might put it ahead of those. I think the Hollywood film of his I am most lukewarm to is Total Recall, even more so than Flesh and Blood.

Your post sent me searching after an article I remembered reading years ago, which I found:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2001/jacques-rivette/rivette-2/

Rivette on Showgirls:

It’s Verhoeven’s best American film and his most personal. In Starship Troopers, he uses various effects to help everything go down smoothly, but he’s totally exposed in Showgirls. It’s the American film that’s closest to his Dutch work. It has great sincerity, and the script is very honest, guileless. It’s so obvious that it was written by Verhoeven himself rather than Mr. Eszterhas, who is nothing. And that actress is amazing! Like every Verhoeven film, it’s very unpleasant: it’s about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that’s his philosophy. Of all the recent American films that were set in Las Vegas, Showgirls was the only one that was real – take my word for it. I who have never set foot in the place!

That whole article is a fun read. I don't even particularly regard Rivette. It's just nice to hear someone who makes movies talk about movies with a degree of passion that supersedes polite business talk, giving opinions such that you feel you are finally listening a human being.

This is interesting about what the "auteur" idea really started as:

I’m going to make more enemies…actually the same enemies, since the people who like Minnelli usually like Mankiewicz, too. Minnelli is regarded as a great director thanks to the slackening of the “politique des auteurs.” For François, Jean-Luc and me, the politique consisted of saying that there were only a few filmmakers who merited consideration as auteurs, in the same sense as Balzac or Molière. One play by Molière might be less good than another, but it is vital and exciting in relation to the entire oeuvre. This is true of Renoir, Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Dreyer, Mizoguchi, Sirk, Ozu… But it’s not true of all filmmakers. Is it true of Minnelli, Walsh or Cukor? I don’t think so. They shot the scripts that the studio assigned them to, with varying levels of interest.

On Fire Walk With Me: "And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground."

On French cops: "I’m incapable of filming French cops, since I find them 100% un-photogenic."

On Titanic: "Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag. On top of which the actress is awful, unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time."

Woody Allen: "He’s not always as ambitious as he could be, and he’s better on dishonesty than he is with feelings of warmth. But Deconstructing Harry is a breath of fresh air, a politically incorrect American film at long last. Whereas the last one was incredibly bad. He’s a good guy, and he’s definitely an auteur. Which is not to say that every film is an artistic success."

Alien Resurrection: "I didn’t expect it as I was walking into the theater, but I was enraptured throughout the whole thing. Sigourney Weaver is wonderful, and what she does here really places her in the great tradition of expressionist cinema."

Some good words on Hitchcock, too. His favorite is Notorious.

I think Showgirls most reminds me of Spetters, among Verhoeven's Dutch work.
Famously, Spielberg was a fan of Soldaat van Oranje and was trying to convince George Lucas to let Verhoeven direct Return of the Jedi. Then he watched Spetters and quickly dropped that idea.

Salomé wrote:

I think Showgirls most reminds me of Spetters, among Verhoeven's Dutch work.
Famously, Spielberg was a fan of Soldaat van Oranje and was trying to convince George Lucas to let Verhoeven direct Return of the Jedi. Then he watched Spetters and quickly dropped that idea.

Picturing the two of them meeting is a chuckle. I really like Spielberg but his films are sincere and relatively sexless, total opposite from Verhoeven.

The Banshees Of Inisherin - it's 1923 and while civil war rages on the mainland of Ireland, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) falls out with best buddy Padraig (Colin Farrell) on the titular island off its coast for reasons at first unexplained. From this low-key beginning Martin McDonagh weaves a funny, moving and metaphorical tale ... both leads are great, Farrell in particular.

Winter Light, Through a Glass Darkly and Silence

I'm still trying to take in the first one.

VIDEODROME. Absolutely hated it first-run in cinema, but then read the novelization when I was stuck for something to do during lunch six months later and realized there was a really good story in there. Every subsequent viewing has been enjoyable, though I still think Cronenberg was evolving in terms of how to tell a story properly. The idea we are evolving toward what basically is Homo Video was ahead of its time -- I kind of think if you blend this story with THE FINAL PROGRAMME (LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH), you'd have a transformation into Homo Couch Potato, or Homo Mushmind.

Nuns On The Run - reasonably amusing early 90s comedy in which on-the-run crooks Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle hide out in a convent school as 'women of the cloth'.

Blade - saw my local arthouse cinema was showing this as part of their 'In Dreams Be Monsters' season, so I thought 'That'll do me for a Saturday night' (their bar was doing a themed drink ... 'Bloody Spritz', consisting of vodka grenadine and lemonade. Had a couple during the film, very nice).

Somewhat of a novelty as it's a movie featuring a Marvel character from a time when there wasn't about 10 of those released every year (and 18/R-rated, to boot). Some of the late 90s CGI didn't hold up too well, but overall the action was still pretty damn good with Wesley Snipes clearly enjoying himself as the titular vampire hunter and Kris Kristoffersen perfect as his grizzled compadre.

I had no idea Blade was a Marvel thing.

Glass Onion : A Knives Out Mystery - Daniel Craig returns as 'Southern gentleman' private eye Benoit Blanc, this time pitching up on the private island of Musk-esque tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) along with his closest friends for a proposed murder-mystery weekend. Naturally, things turn out to be far from that straightforward.

Rian Johnson has plenty of fun at the expense of social media influencers/'disruptors' (this is often a very funny film) whilst also delivering a properly knotty, twisty murder mystery. At the head of an excellent ensemble cast (including Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn and Leslie Odom Jr) Craig is (again) clearly having way more fun as Blanc than he was allowed to have as Bond.

I enjoyed this a lot.

Violent Night - if you're looking for something to cut through the seasonal schmaltz a bit, this sweary and bloodily violent festive action-comedy might be right up your chimney. David Harbour stars as Santa, who (when he arrives at a fancy family home as a robbery is taking place) steps up, action-hero stylee. Also starring John Leguizamo and Beverly D'Angelo.

Die Hard and Die Hard 2 - annual festive rewatch. Not much else to say that hasn't been before.

Taxi Driver. A film that could not be made today.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Taxi Driver. A film that could not be made today.

In what way? Are you talking about the infantilisation of the movie going audience? Or something else?
The themes of the movie itself could not be more poignant today.

Black Rain - late-80s Ridley Scott number in which NYPD cops Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia escort a Yakuza member back to Japan, only for him to give them the slip. Douglas and Garcia must then collaborate with the Japanese police in order to track him down. Decent enough thriller.

Salomé wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Taxi Driver. A film that could not be made today.

In what way? Are you talking about the infantilisation of the movie going audience? Or something else?
The themes of the movie itself could not be more poignant today.

According to the regnant ideology in AINO (America in Name Only), Travis Bickle is a straight-up villain and the nightcrawlers of New York he condemns are heroes to be worshiped. Yet the film's judgment of Bickle is ambivalent. Yes, he's portrayed as a borderline lunatic, but he also behaves heroically, and effectively saves a young girl's life while removing three slimeballs from the planet. That will never do in the age of DIE (diversity, inclusion, equity). Bickle would have to be portrayed as an unreconstructed monster.