What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[LordBest]

Sherlock Holmes. A less cerebral Holmes for a less cerebral audience, perhaps, but a decent film.

 

[Edward]

The Red Baron (2008), a biopic of the WW1 flying ace. Well worth picking up - I'm now planning to pick up a decent biog of the man, as much as anything to see how close to history they played it. The aerial scenes are especially impressive - I had to watch the 'making of' featurette to be sure they were green screened.

 

[Falconetti]

Demons of the Mind

Demons of the Mind. Pretty awful Hammer horror.

 

[Celia Crowson]

"The anniversary" (1968) - I so wanted to slap the mother right across the face - Bette Davis was brilliant! :eusa_clap

 

[ratpack66]

Alias Nick Beal with Ray Milland and Thomas Mitchell

 

[Smithy]

Just finished watching "Star of Midnight" (1935) with William Powell and Ginger Rogers which was thoroughly enjoyable. The chemistry between the leading pair is great and the dialogue witty and amusing. Also of note was the amount of booze that Powell's character got through during the film!

 

[Spitfire]

Went to the movies yesterday to see "Max Manus" - a Norwegian film about the resistance and WWII in Norway. A truely great - and very moving movie.
Can only be recommended.

See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbK4WTQFf9U

 

[Falconetti]

I'd love to see The Annivarsary again. Great movie... I think half the cast wanted to give Ms Davis a slap also..

 

[Lady Day]

Paperheart
It was one of those odd faux documentary things, but the characters were cute. I liked the puppet sequences.

LD

 

[Wally_Hood]

Just finished watching "Star of Midnight" (1935) with William Powell and Ginger Rogers which was thoroughly enjoyable. The chemistry between the leading pair is great and the dialogue witty and amusing. Also of note was the amount of booze that Powell's character got through during the film!

This is a very fun movie. Indeed, the golden era has wittiest dialogue and best characters!

 

[Chas]

"Deliverance" is playing right now on Encore Ave. We are watching....

"C'mon....squeal! squeal!....EEEEEE!......EEEEEE!"

 

[Antje]

Where the wild things are.

 

[CherryBubbles]

Just watched Delicatessen and How to Marry a Millionaire a couple nights ago - both enjoyable, but for completely different reasons

 

[Dr Doran]

Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Hated it.

 

[Brian R.]

The Red Baron (2008), a biopic of the WW1 flying ace. Well worth picking up - I'm now planning to pick up a decent biog of the man, as much as anything to see how close to history they played it. The aerial scenes are especially impressive - I had to watch the 'making of' featurette to be sure they were green screened.

As a history nut, I have been wanting to see this film. I really enjoy studying WW1.

 

[John in Covina]

The Book of Eli!

The Book of Eli. A pretty intense film with an interesting ending. Denzel plays Eli who was entrusted to bring the last remaining Bible to a safe place some 30 years after a nuclear war devastates the US and the world.

I found it exciting and rather thoughtful. :eusa_clap

It made me think of this passage from the King James Bible - Isaiah 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

 

[Wally_Hood]

The new Star Trek movie. Lotsa fun. They played the time travel card early on, like in the first movie. Normally time travel gimmicks pop up when ideas are scarce, along with the amnesia thing.

Ben Cross from Chariots of Fire was Sarek...

 

[Edward]

The new Star Trek movie. Lotsa fun. They played the time travel card early on, like in the first movie. Normally time travel gimmicks pop up when ideas are scarce, along with the amnesia thing.

In this case, I actually thought it was a very clever use of the device, allowing them the scope to 'reimagine' the franchise without jettisoning or devaluing existing cannon by creating a parallel version of the Trek universe.

Last night, I watched a couple of good films on the UK Film Four channel. Firstly, the penultimate screening in their Danny Boyle season, Millions. A really nice, whimsical little low-budget British film. The basic plot runs thus: Two young boys have recently moved house following the death of their mother. The younger brother (both are primary school age, I would estimate about eight and ten) regularly sees visions of Saints (much humour to be had throughout here, both from the child's encyclopaedic knowledge of Catholic Saints and the actual, very human, portrayal of the Saints themselves by a whole range of wonderful English character actors. If you're not too much a Biblical literalist or too easily offended by it, St Peter's take on the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is hysterical, not last for its laconic delivery. The film takes place during the last few days before Britain adopts the Euro currency. Due to a robbery, a large quantity of old sterling banknotes, which had been on their way to be destroyed, fall into the hands of the boys (discovered by the younger, who initially believes it a gift from God), and they have four days to spend it before the notes become worthless... Fine performances by both the kids. Notable also for a strong turn by James Nesbitt as their father, even it took me a minute or two to get used to his (reasonable) Manchester accent (Jimmy Nesbitt is famously Norn Irn through and through, and I've never seen anything else in which he has used anytihg other than his own accent). Daisy Donovan, better known as a satirical comedian (UK Loungers may remember her from The eleven O'Clock Show, circa 1999, which launched the careers of both Sacha Baren Cohen and Ricky Gervais), puts in a convincing performance as Dorothy, a charity worker who becomes a new love interest for Nesbitt's character. This is a film that in any other hands (say, for instance, those responsible for such horrors as Love, Actually) could have been a vile, schmaltzy, sickening mess. however, Boyle's subtle treatment keeps it down to earth, and very 'real'. Very funny, occasionally laugh-out-loud so, and well worth catching.

The second film I watchec last night was Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which focusses on the trials and tribulations of two brothers and their friends caught up in the Tan War and then the Civil War in Ireland. The film picks up during the Tan War, in 1920, when the younger brother (an excellent performance by Cillian Murphy), a newly qualified doctor, gives up his teaching place at a London hospital to instead remain in Ireland and fight for the IRA against the British. The British forces are all somewhat lumped together... the portrayal of the Black and Tans is pretty much how they were (to be fair, those boys had been turned into animals by a military machine that made them killers, put them out into the Somme, and then - as was common across the world at the time - didn't appear able to settle them back into civilian society. Most of them would probably have been considered to be suffering from some sort of PTSD by today's standards.... but then this is not their film...). Otherwise, some brutal acts by British troops are fairly balanced, I think (a short, emotional speech by an officer, who rants about the experience of his men, sent to the filth and the horror of the trenches, then dispatched to Ireland to fae a guerilla war, something with which the British army in 1919-21 were wholly unprepared for, this still being the age of pass pitched battles). But this is not a story about British Imperialism, rather one of how the men involved in the Irish struggle related to each other, their emotional nationalism, and so on. Particularly well represented are the complexities of the mindsets that led to the Civil War on either side, and the tragedy thereof, where all too often brothers fought (and occasionally killed) each other. The film certainly doesn't shy away from depicting the brutality of the Irish either, whether in the execution of a seventeen year old informant within their ranks in 1920, or the Civil War attacks and killing of their own. I would say that to get the full benefit of this, it helps to have some prior knowledge of the period 1919 to 1923 - much as it helps to have some idea of WW2 in fully getting Casablanca. Worth seeing, if bleak.

 

[Quigley Brown]

'Sunset Blvd.' last night! My favorite quote is the men's clothing store scene when the employee whispers in Joe's ear: ' “As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?”

 

[Dr Doran]

'Sunset Blvd.' last night! My favorite quote is the men's clothing store scene when the employee whispers in Joe's ear: ' “As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?”

One of my all-time favorite films. I love how the woman descends the steps, holding her hands above her head in gestures that betoken both silent acting ... and insanity.