What is the last movie you saw? and rate it.

Still in the Dark Ages here. I saw a number of old movies lately. Last night I watched the:

1932 version of "Midsummer Night's Dream" ~ Max Reinhardt's lavish production.

I really like this version a lot. It's b/w and truly the film shimmers with brilliance. The fairies are beautiful to watch. The early effects are pretty amazing. I especially loved the scene with Oberon leading and a billowing black fabric (his cloak), representing night clouds follows behind him encompassing all....that scene is truly awesome. The acting is quite good and very funny at times. The one main fairy is a famous figure who danced at the Ballet Russe. She is mesmerizing to watch; especially when she is conveyed to the heavens by a dark presence...her arms dance and as she goes further away the white hands blend into the stars....truly brilliant film-making. I think the sets were beautiful/elegant as well...the twisted columns in the Duke's palace are very beautiful and etheral...reminiscent of Maxfield Parish's work. Sure, the film is 'Hollywood', but somehow it's pulled off very well and it's a fun film to watch - very magical. Mickey Rooney as Puck is irritating at times; either you hate him or like him. I guess by now, I have just gotten used to his performance; I admit at first I was not sure if he was cast well for the part. I think since he was a hit on the stage with the role he overplayed it a bit for the screen...that is just my opinion. The comedy bits are pretty funny. James Cagney (who would think it?) plays Bottom and he is quite good at the role; I think more convincing than Kevin Kline. He was quite thin and rather handsome. Joe E. Brown is very funny...especially when he comes on stage dressed as Thisbie. The score is stunning, featuring Mendelssoh's Midsummer Night's Dream.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable movie if you just go with it and know it's from a different era of film-making. I can see where many directors have gotten ideas from this early film of 'trick photography as it was once known. If Reinhardt was alive today, I wonder what use he would have made of CGI. Now that would be interesting.

Definitely a classic for alltimes. 10/10

4 1/2 hr. "Che" as a revolutionary angel. Interesting character study of a team effort at overthrowing governments.

"Amreeka" a sweet lady and when she slips in the White Castle, it takes your heart away. Wait for that plot event; great film moment.

The last movie I watched was District 9 and I absolutely loved it. I think it was a better overall movie than Avatar, because I really cared for the characters; brilliant and unique sci-fi, what could be better? 9/10

Death Proof
7/10

The story is about a psycho stuntman Mike who stalks beautiful women then staging car-chases that leads to murder. The film was off to a weak start but got a lot more interesting as it progressed. It is definitely not one of Tarantino's finest, some scenes (girlie chats) could use some editing and the script wasn't very well-crafted. The climax of had to be the car-chase in the end; it had me at the edge of my seat.
Not my favorite of Tarantino but it was an enjoyable ride.
:)

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Originally Posted by skib

What makes me chuckle is when Richis is monologuing Grenouille when they're dunking him. The delivery was fine, but the speech itself is a bit cheesy in my opinion.

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Oh yeah, I suddenly remembered that bit and think likewise. Alan Rickman and those corny lines were quite painful to watch. :shocked:

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Originally Posted by toni

Death Proof
7/10

The story is about a psycho stuntman Mike who stalks beautiful women then staging car-chases that leads to murder. The film was off to a weak start but got a lot more interesting as it progressed. It is definitely not one of Tarantino's finest, some scenes (girlie chats) could use some editing and the script wasn't very well-crafted. The climax of had to be the car-chase in the end; it had me at the edge of my seat.
Not my favorite of Tarantino but it was an enjoyable ride.
:)

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Hopefully my opinion of the film didn't bias you :p

Pulp Fiction! Pulp Fiction mademmoiselle!

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Hopefully my opinion of the film didn't bias you :p! Pulp Fiction! Pulp Fiction mademmoiselle!

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Well, just a little biased. :p I was skeptical while watching it. I know, can't wait for Pulp Fiction!

Sleepy Hollow
3/10

There was nothing new about it but was good for killing time.:)

I saw Zombieland - it was much better than I thought it was going to be.

I also watched Sex Drive and Ms. March...these were my husband's choices. They were both pretty stupid.

"Dressed to kill" by B. de Palma.... not his best but there are some nice moments. :smile5:

The Birth of a Nation - Well, after a few weeks of being away from the silver screen, I decided to return for a brief period of time yesterday to re-watch D.W. Griffith's controversial and influencial epic masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation. It's somewhat funny what a great contradiction this movie is, for right up to the hour and thirty minute mark, the film is a masterpiece of its time and a powerful work of art, making the famous James Agee quote not too far-fethced: "[D.W. Griffith] achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." Oh how these words ring true in the esquisitley epic first half of this film, even with its racial undertones (which become extreme overtones in the second half). The first half of the film, taking place in the south before and during the Civil War in which two families from opposite sides befriend and fight each other in war. As almost any cinemaphile knows, this film was revolutionary in its filming techniques and along with Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, virtually defined film grammer. There are some moments of such mastery and such historicity, such as the infamous battlefield charge sequence, which, despite being filmed almost a century ago, is unlike anything I've ever seen. There is also a particular shot on the eve of the war in which many of the characters are in a dance hall, and the camera looms out from the middle of the floor into a great long dancing crane shot. To the average viewer this shot is nothing very special, but to one who knows the near-impossibility of a shot with that movement and held that long with those heavy primitive cameras, one cannot help but be left in awe.

Not only is the technique masterful, but one actually cares for the characters, and there is a sense of total epiphany when a wounded confederate soldier coincidentially meets the girl whom he's been in love with for so many years, and yet has only seen her picture.

All of this, all of this supreme work is thrown away exactly at the hour and a half mark in which the narrative turns to the Reconstruction era in which Griffith makes one of the most extreme perversions of history and paints the south as a landscape terrorized by newly freed slaves. At this point the tone of the film changes completely. From great and sophisticated historical epic, to close-to-unbearable racial slur in the style of a vile minstrel show. We go from supreme epic and historical events, such as the masterfully directed and edited re-visioning of the night Lincoln was killed, to a disguising anti-abolitionist vaudeville. The characters which I so cared for in the first part, I hate in the second for there racial intolerance, portrayed heroically by Griffith. More sickening than anything else, is that African Americans are portrayed as friendly helpless teddy bears when slaves, and yet turn into savage sexually-charged animals when free. The portrayals are almost sickening. I find it funny how Griffith didn't use a single black actor in the film, instead putting white actors in blackface, for what self-respecting African American would reduce himself to such a sick film?

The first time I saw this film, I was able to watch it all the way through. That may be because I was a little indifferent towards the first half, and then paradoxically was able to tolerate the second half. But on this viewing, after being so awed by the supreme art of the first half, it felt like a spit in the face to watch the sickeningly amateurish and dull second half, which admittingly did have some of the technical mastery the first half did, but whose content was so immature, so disguising, that it just seeped into the art of the film and lowered it down into a sick piece of white supremacy. Eventually, the sickening racism became so unbearable and made me feel so unclean, that I just had to turn it off for the sake of my stomach. This is the most racist film I have ever seen.

But what is The Birth of a Nation today? Was Griffith's choice in cutting the vile latter half of the film in its re-release a good idea? Well no, because the film is what it is, and to hide what is already in it is just an act of dishonesty. But what are we to make of a film like this today? Yes the first half alone ranks it among one of the greatest films ever made, but the second half tugs it down to a work of out-dated silent cinema. If the second half was the film on its own, I would gladly call it one of the worst films I had ever seen. But what of it? Battleship Potemkin and October are far more than bearable and are masterpieces I enjoy watching again and again, despite the fact that they are works of Soviet propiganda. Why are these films tolerable? Because of the way they are directed. Because of the fact that if we treat them as "movies" they become supreme and powerful works of art. But Griffith's film, for my tastes that is, is far too explicit in its bigotry to be bearable, it openly embraces racism and portrays the Klu-Klux-Klan as cinematic heros. The thing that divides the mastery of Griffith's film and Eisenstein's propaganda pieces is that the immorality of the work is so explicitly there, that it destroys any merits the films may have. Whilst watching Battleship Potemkin one isn't all that much aware that one is watching a film displaying the heroism of Leninism in so much as we are thinking "what a great and powerful film this is!" The Birth of a Nation brings itself down to the level of the ideas it expresses, and thus does not hide its sins. 5/10

Also, here's one of Godard's best films, a cinematic poem of post-WWII.

Short Film

Ultraviolet: 8/10.

Milla Jovovich is superb, both as kick-*** assassin babe and as caring mother.

I watched "Shutter island" yesterday at the theater. Didn't like it much. I have seen this plot so many times. I also think it lacked atmosphere.
However there was some good acting.

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Originally Posted by manolia

I watched "Shutter island" yesterday at the theater. Didn't like it much. I have seen this plot so many times. I also think it lacked atmosphere.
However there was some good acting.

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I disagree. Thought it was a very fine noir horror/thriller. 8/10.