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

I reviewed this film some time ago and watched it again yesterday. It's among my top ten films on account of its stupendous acting and characterization.
Arthur Kennedy gives the performance of a lifetime and Kirk Douglas is also at his best. Much criticism has been levied at Gertrude Lawrence's performance but, as the anguished single mother of crippled Jane Wyman and her brother Arthur Kennedy, trapped in a run-down St Louis apartment, she is both irritating (as the script requires) and at the same time pitiful. Wyman is superb as the crippled Laura Wingfield and heartbreakingly shy and withdrawn on account of her disability. When her brother invites a workmate home, it seems as though all the longed for hopes of the mother for a 'gentleman caller' who might take up with Laura, have been realised. The workmate ( Kirk Douglas), who believes in self-improvement, takes pity on the girl and teaches her to be more self-confident and in that one evening changes her perception of herself so that she becomes less reclusive and more outward looking. Then he reveals that he is engaged to be married to someone called Betty but Laura, although disappointed, knows that he has changed her forever.
If I had been Kirk Douglas, I would have dropped Betty and married Laura like a shot.

It Happened One Night (1934; Frank Capra) - 9.5/10

What can be said about this masterpiece except that it's perhaps the paradigmatic, archetypal romantic comedy, and certainly one of the best films to come out of Classic Hollywood? Claudette Colbert was reportedly paid double her salary ($50,000 out of the film's $325,000 budget) and remarked after filming that it was the worst film she's ever made... this was before the film swept the Oscars, with her winning best actress, Gable winning best actor, Capra winning best director, and the film winning best film. It's just one of those films where everything works: the comedy, the characters, the writing, the acting, the motivic gags. It's essentially perfect.

The Southerner (1946; Jean Renoir) - 8.5/10

Renoir considered this his best American film, and it's not difficult to understand why. It features his typically understated visual poetry that he reserved for the hardworking lower classes. While it lacks the satire of his masterpieces like The Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, it makes up for it in its warm, meditative, elegiac tonality and delicate, almost ethereal camera. Perhaps the only negative are the unknown actors, that can't quite summon up the poignancy that Renoir tries to generate. Besides that, it's a fine film, and one of the best films made on its subject matter outside The Grapes of Wrath.

A Dry White Season (1989; Euzhan Palcy) – 4/10

A film whose heart is in the right place in its depiction of the horrors of apartheid in Africa and the ignorance of the privileged, bourgeoisie white classes, but whose execution boils down to amateurish propaganda.

Europa (1991; Lars Von Trier) – 9/10

Before Trier’s Dogme days, he was an unabashed stylist, almost to the point of baroque mannerism. Europa is his masterpiece of that style, which features more archaic classic film techniques—including the superb usage of back and front projection—than you can shake a stick at. This is one of those films whose cinematic, visual, aesthetic atmosphere trumps all other considerations. It’s a beautiful, haunting film, and really shows off Trier’s diversity given that he would make Breaking The Waves—a masterpiece in a completely different vein—just a few years later.

Cowards Bend the Knee (2003; Guy Maddin) – 7/10

Not Maddin’s best film, though it’s a fascinating exercise in silent film archaisms like his others, but earlier efforts like Arkangel and Careful are much better, not to mention the mini-masterpiece, The Heart of the World.

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Originally Posted by Snowqueen

I watched Winter’s Bone last night; it’s a great film. Jenifer Lawrence’s performance was brilliant throughout the movie. 8/10

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It is an amazing movie and the novel is also great

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

On a small side note has anyone seen Django? I saw it and loved it, but I would like to hear diverse opinions on it.

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Sorry, I can´t give you a diverse opinion. Christoph Waltz at its best! So funny and clever, that movie. I so loved the opening scene with Dr. Schultz. "Guten Morgen, ihr armen Teufel!"
The bag scene has Monty Python niveau!

Nobody walks: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1907731/

Score 1/10

Many of the scenes didn't make sense. The portrayal of sound effects didn't make sense. The scenes with the son didn't make sense. The "angry poem" the daughter wrote about the Italian tutor didn't make sense nor did his anger in response. She was basically a wretched student. I can see how the visitor's affairs with the husband and assistant might have the potential to make sense, but they ultimately didn't.

All About My Mother (1999; Pedro Almodovar) - 8/10

As with all Almodovar, the film has visual flair to spare, but here it's set in a slightly more subdued and somber mood, and is all the more stronger for it. The characters are less caricatured than in his earlier work; they have a real humanity to them, which makes the films more melodramatic moments (and they are still rather too frequent) work better than in the past. I like how Almodovar acknowledges his influences, mainly A Streetcar Named Desire and All About Eve, which gives the films several more layers to work with. About the only negative is that the pacing is awkward in parts, especially the abruptness of many of the tragic moments, and the humor occasionally comes off as a bit forced. Ultimately, it's still a very moving film with some of the best characters conceived in cinema in the last 10+ years.

Weird casting of top Hollywood actress Gene Tierney with Shakespearean actor Leo Genn in
this B/W British film with one of the worst scripts imaginable for a screenplay that is meant
to taken seriously. The story concerns a young girl student (Glynnis Johns) who has a crush on her
classics master and who disappears after a row with the teacher's wife, leading to small town
gossip that she may have committed suicide or that he might have murdered her.
All too obviously adapted from a play, there are a series of fraught scenes between the girl's parents
and the hapless teacher and similar scenes with the police and the school head before the girl
turns up, having run away to stay with a friend in London; thereby resuscitating the failed marriage
of the tutor and his American wife.

My film guide sums it up nicely: 'Preposterous domestic drama making much ado about nothing.'

Keane (2004; Lodge Kerrigan) - 8.5/10

An utterly fascinating character study of a man suffering from mental illness (perhaps schizophrenia), drug addiction, and who may or may not have lost his daughter. With its constant, claustrophobic close-ups, Keane reminds me of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. Much like that film, the close-ups disorient us spatially from everything around Keane, so we're totally focused on his subjective experiences. However, Keane also has his moments of sanity where he meets a down-on-her-luck neighbor and that neighbor's young daughter. Much of the film concerns Keane's growing relationship with the daughter, and one of the superb features of the film is that we, as an audience, are completely unaware of how that relationship will unfold. This is because Kerrigan has written the character with such a complex volatility that we're never sure if and when we're going to encounter the mentally unstable Keane versus the loving, caring, kind Keane. Obviously, none of this would've been possible without the riveting, Oscar-worthy performance of Damian Lewis, who was unjustly snubbed by The Academy. Altogether an extraordinary effort, and one of the most unique, rewarding films to come out of the last 10 years of independent cinema.

L' Enfant Sauvage (1970; Francois Truffaut) - 7/10

A bit of a departure for Truffaut, this film has an austerity to its granitic cinematography that reminds one of the films of Bresson, or even Straub, while still retaining Truffaut's warmth, humor, and humanity. The film is based on the true story of a feral child found in the forests of late 18th century France, and the teacher--played by Truffaut himself--who attempts to civilize and educate him. Most of the film deals with that education, its successes and failures. Perhaps the film's strongest trait is Truffaut's progressive humanizing of the child they come to call Victor. However, there is a strange lack of resolution at the film's end, which could perhaps be called a trademark of Truffaut's cinema, but which doesn't work as well here as opposed to in, say, The 400 Blows.

Pauline at the Beach (1983; Eric Rohmer) - 9/10

This was my 9th Rohmer film, yet every time I watch him I'm surprised by how utterly strange and unique his rhythms are, and how he can make substantial visual cinema while drowning his films in overtly expositional dialogue. Yet I'm equally struck by how quickly I sink into those rhythms, and how quickly I'm aware of the counterpoint between the (often luscious) visuals and the complex, contradictory, even hypocritical lives of his characters. This film concerns a young girl of 15, Pauline, who is being watched by her older cousin, Marion (a stunningly gorgeous Arielle Dombasl) on vacation where they meet two men vying for Marion's affections, the younger Pierre whom loves Marion, and the older playboy Henri. The film begins as if the vacation will be about Pauline learning about love from Marion, yet all she learns is how stupid and hypocritical adults can be when it comes to love. In typical Rohmer fashion, plot is nearly non-existent, as he's not concerned about what people do but why they do it. This film is one of his best reflections on the irrationality of human behavior with its extremely well-written, subtle, very-human characters and gorgeous cinematography courtesy of the great Nestor Almendros (who also shot L'Enfant Savauge, funnily enough).

Netflix's new "House of Cards" with Kevin Spacey. Sorry, the old British H of C with Ian Richardson is way superior -- far more whit which only the Brits can do so well.

Killer Joe (2011; William Friedkin) - 8/10

Basically, neo-noir done as a Southern Gothic dark comedy; the plot, like the best noirs, is familiar and archetypal, yet with enough original twists to make it feel fresh and new. A young drug dealer (Emil Hirsch) who's in debt to the mob convinces his father (Thomas Hayden Church) and step-mother (Gina Gershon) to hire a professional killer (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his mother (Church's ex-wife) for the life insurance that's in his sister's name. Lacking the up-front money needed, "killer Joe" agrees to take the virginal sister as a "retainer fee." The film, like many neo-noirs, takes advantage modern film's freedom to show sex and violence, which always had to be suggested in their 40s/50s predecessors.

What's original here is just how far director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) is willing to go with it, and how originally it's introduced. The opening, eg, has Gershon answering the door of her trailer without any pants on in one of the film's many laugh-out-loud scenes. Elsewhere the film mixes eroticism and awkwardness, as in the lengthy sex scene between Joe and the sister, or the soon-to-be cult classic "drumstick" scene. The ending, however, is damn-near Shakespearean, with its eruption of revelations and violence. The performances are uniformly great, and every character feels wonderfully realistic in their respectively sleazy roles, though I have to give a special nod to Church for delivering some of the funniest lines in any film of the last 10 years with aplomb. Friedkin's direction is typically in-your-face, with editing and angles getting the most visceral punch out of every scene and shot. The irresolute ending will leave many in fits, but it's quite a trip getting there.

The Impossible. 9/10 This was good. A trifle sentimental at the end, but the scenes of the tsunami were very well executed. It was hard to see how anyone managed to survive.

The Shipping New 9/10 I read the book a few years ago. I thought the movie adaptation was very well done.

Skyfall. 7/10

Tonight I'll be watching Megamind with my nieces.

Key Largo (1948; John Huston) 9/10

Bogey and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor--do casts get any better than this? To top off the uber-star power you have the great John Huston directing. Key Largo is awash (no pun intended) in Huston's trademarks, including psychologically fragile masculine characters, and the vulnerable women that suffer them. The great Karl Freund lenses the film, bringing his unmatched control of noir chiaroscuro, though the film is atypical for a noir in several ways, including the single, claustrophobic setting that finds its characters taking shelter from a hurricane. Each of its characters get a multi-faceted arc. Bogart is more understated here than in, say, Sierra Madre, displaying another facet of his art. It's a good thing Bogart has that capacity for subtlety as he leaves it to Robinson to chew the scenery, and chew he does, as his Rocco is even more blustery than the storm, though infinitely less effectual. The ending on the boat is a masterpiece of pychologically piercing cinema, with Robinson's Rocco going through an array of emotions upon realizing he's suddenly become the trapped prey. The women get less to do in the film, but Bacall is even more subtly poignant than Bogart. Trevor gets to play it up a bit more as the lush, though her song number is one of the most emotionally affecting in the film. The film is nearly perfect, though some occasionally awkward pacing problems plague it at times, most won't even notice.

I enjoyed watching Megamind and so did my nieces. 7/10

Oscar Homolka gives a bravura performance as Descius Heiss, an escapee from Devil's Island, living in London as a successful antiques dealer who also happens to deal in stolen goods. When his shop assistant discovers his secret and begins to blackmail him, the dealer kills him and disposes of the body, but a wily police chief who is a friend of the dealer uncovers his friend's complicity. The film is spoiled by the overacting of Kenneth Griffiths as the creepy blackmailer and the usual plot loopholes that tend to undermine most crime stories, but it's entertaining viewing nevertheless and if it's somewhat dated, that's not surprising after 66 years.