What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[imoldfashioned]

The Sweet Hereafter. Much to think about in that one.

[SamMarlowPI]

Tyler Perry's: Why Did I Get Married?...a really good film...lots of good messages...and of course he always makes me laugh...

[AmateisGal]

Just finished The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep is brilliant.

[GeniusInTheLamp]

How To Steal a Million - Just one word to describe the movie: Charm.

[Zemke Fan]

Helen gave me the three Kelly/Hitchcock films for Valentine's Day. I love, love, love her! (And it's not just because she lets me keep my crush on the Princess!)

[Zemke Fan]

The Sweet Hereafter. Much to think about in that one.

A very powerful and often overlooked film.

[Patrick Murtha]

I watched Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas last night, and had an ambivalent reaction to it. It is cinematically exciting, without any question, and very well performed. But a question that arises for me is, why should I care about these people or what happens to them? They're just vile. Although I rather like the fact that Ray Liotta's Henry Hill turns informer because he's afraid for his hide, not because he has any "moral awakening," still, I'm left with an emptiness that I don't feel when I'm watching The Sopranos (obviously influenced by Goodfellas) or, to pick other gangster films starring Robert DeNiro, The Godfather Part II or Once Upon a Time iin America. No one's death or danger in Goodfellas moved me. And one of the most celebrated elements of the film, Joe Pesci's Oscar-winning performance as the nut gangster Tommy, I felt functioned in a dramatically inert way. The character has no shadings and no interiority, and once you've established (as Scorsese does early) that he'll do anything, where do you go with that?* I did like his send-off stylistically, but then I liked the whole film stylistically. It was the emotional connection that wasn't there for me.

*Here's how another film goes about it: In the classic Kiss of Death, Richard Widmark's Tommy Udo, a character closely related to Pesci's Tommy, commits one utterly memorable barbarity and that's it. We spend the rest of the film being apprehensive whenever he's in the scene, but director Henry Hathaway doesn't push it. He just wants us on edge. Scorsese keeps upping the ante with his Tommy, scene by scene. It's operatic, but there's a sense of diminishing returns because the same fact ("He's nuts!") keeps getting demonstrated.

[Jovan]

Interesting take, Mr. Murtha. I tend to agree with you, despite that I haven't seen the movie yet.

[imoldfashioned]

A very powerful and often overlooked film.

Very true--I'm a huge Atom Egoyan fan. I really want to listen to his commentary for the film. I like the Pied Piper theme in that very much--you could apply it to several of the story threads.

The acting is very strong too; I'd watch Ian Holm read the phone book and Sarah Polley is wonderful--one of her first films I think.

[Spiffy]

Pleasantville on tv. And it made me cry, again. My roomate took pity on me and took me out for coffee afterwards.