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

Irrational Man by Woody Allen: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/irrational_man/

This is the story of a famous, but burnt-out philosophy professor (the irrational man) who goes to a new school where one of the married female faculty members and one of his attached female students (the irrational women) try to get this dark, plump, life-defying, mystery man in bed with them in spite of their current relationships. He is able to avoid their attempts until he finds a reason for living.

If you like the Woody Allen style of trashing deep existential intellectuals, as I do, you should like this movie. It also should appeal to the crowd who are a little too mature for a rom-com, but like to watch men and women make life entertaining for their neighbors.

Those at Rotten Tomatoes didn't think much of the movie and admittedly the general anti-intellectualist plot did seem to have been done many times before. But I'm not as picky as most and I had a good time.

Score: 10/10

A rare excursion into post-studio system films for me, this didn't particularly impress and was more or less what I expected.
The body count was reminiscent of a minor war and much of the the dialogue was mumbled and almost required sub-titles.
The format was similar to that of 'The Terminator' with a practically indestructible villain who kills about 15-20 people while on the trail of a man who has stolen $2 million dollars of drug money.
Eventually he is involved in a car crash which apparently kills the other driver and leaves the villain badly damaged but, as with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he still continues staggering on in pursuit of the money: I actually laughed when he climbed out of the wrecked car and walked around like Frankenstein's monster.

Definitely a movie for (very) young men but no film for an older generation.

6/10

The Martian. Fun movie. 8/10

Anomalisa. Brilliant movie. 9/10

Directed by Robert Aldrich this is a remake of No Orchids for Miss Blandish that I reviewed recently.
Unlike the British version, Aldrich sets the action in the 1920s rather than the 1940s, so the film has a very different ambiance even though it adheres broadly to the original story.
Whereas the British film was a pastiche of the American gangster films of the period, the US version is a satire on the gangster films of the twenties with everyone killing everyone else and a Keystone cops motorcycle chase at the end.

Searching through some correspondence yesterday I came upon this missive that has some bearing on the British film:

Dear Emil,

The other day, as is my wont, I was sitting in the bath contemplating one of life's little absurdities ( No
not that one! ) concerning the unlikely prospect of seeing certain films again: one of which was that
outstanding example of cinematic crumminess 'No Orchids for Miss Blandish.'
You can imagine my surprise when, a few days later, I received the NFT programme for April which
showed that it will be screened on Friday, April 2nd at 8.30 pm.
As an aficionado of the genre, you might care to see it. If not, a glance at the following critique from
Halliwell's Film Guide may change your mind.

An heiress is kidnapped by gangsters and falls for their psychopathic leader.
Hilariously awful gangster movie from a bestselling shocker.
Everyone concerned is all at sea, and the result is one of the worst films ever made.

There, you can't say fairer than that!

Of course, it's not quite the same as seeing it in 1948, because one misses the effect of leaving the
cinema with popcorn and choc-ice all down the front of one's suit, but for £2.00 it's still a
bargain for all practising sado-masochists.
Should you be interested, please call me on 703 0911 ext.211, 9 am-6 pm and I will try to get a
couple of tickets with a gangway seat.

à bientôt

Willi

I saw "The Revenant" yesterday. This film has been nominated for a dozen Academy Awards, and Leo DiCaprio is the favorite to win "best actor", presumably due to his ability to groan as if in pain. He performs this feat for perhaps an hour of the 2 hour + movie, and, although he does it well, it began to bore this member of the audience.

The movie is based on a novel which is based on a legend which is based on (perhaps) a true story. It involves Hugh Glass, a mountain man in the 1820s. He gets attacked by Indians, mauled by a grizzly, and abandoned by his compatriots. I read an earlier version of the story, maybe 30 years ago, and the movie appears to spruce up the tale in predictable ways: the Indians are more noble (they are searching for one of their stolen women, even though she was stolen by a different group of white men than those that they massacre.). Glass is given a half-breed son whom the villain of the piece murders (in the book Glass is motivated by revenge for being abandoned, but it's unclear whether the abandonment was a reasonable triage, so his desire for revenge is not completely justified).

"Revenant is directed by Alejandro Inarratu, who took home some Oscars for "Birdman" last year. It is spectacularly pretty (Emmanuel Lubezki is the cinematographer). But Glass's test of endurance in crawling back to civilization while badly injured becomes a test of endurance for the audience. It reminded me of "Gravity", another movie about a solo survival. Gravity was also pretty -- but movies are essentially "dramatic" -- that is, as in dramas, characters are best elucidated through dialog. DiCaprio relies on grunting and moaning in pain instead of talking to further his (apparently considerable) Oscar hopes.

In addition, Inarratu seems to enjoy shock for shock's sake. The grizzly mauling continues endlessly; at one point, Glass eviscerates a dead horse and crawls inside it (eeewww, gross!) for no better reason than to keep warm (whats wrong with his buffalo pelt?). When Glass catches a fish, he stands in the icy water eating it raw (shouldn't the master survivalist, however hungry, worry about freezing his feet off?).

Inarratu employs some magical realism (as he did in Birdman), but it seems a mere flourish, and is not essential to the movie. I skipped "The Martian" earlier this year, because I though that, like Gravity or Castaway, movies about people surviving on their own tend to be dull. They lack interpersonal drama. I'm not sorry I saw "The Revenant" -- but it's not a great candidate for the Best Picture Oscar.

I agree with you about Gravity. I'll postpone seeing The Martian as well.

I was thinking a bit more about my preference for dialog in delineating character. I'm not a big Cormac McCarthy fan (for example) possibly because he prefers description and action to dialog. IN the last five years we've seen critically acclaimed, award winning movies like "Silent Movie", "Gravity". "The Martian (which I haven't seen) and now "The Revenant". Are modern "auteur" directors trying to eliminate "competition" from screen writers and playwrights for the "auteur" title? Thinking further, I'm a big Terrence Malick fan -- so I like SOME visually exciting movies lacking good dialog. I don't get Leonardo DiCaprio as a favorite for "best actor", though.

I saw "Creed" the other night. It's the seventh (I think) Rocky film -- I didn't see 5 or 6, but enjoyed the others, especially the original. In addition, "Creed" has been mentioned as one reason to boycott the Oscars for racism, because Michael Jordan (no, not the shoe salesman) wasn't nominated for best actor (despite, supposedly, being deserving). Sly Stallone gave a decent performance as Rocky, redolent of nostalgia, but the movie didn't quite cut it. Why root for a millionaire who takes up boxing? It lacks the "underdog" panache of the original "Rocky". There was no reason to nominate Jordan for best actor -- the role is slight. Save your money.

Whatever Works: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/whatever_works/

This is a delightful Woody Allen movie. The main character is an anti-social, depressed, negatively spun quantum physicist and the three women in his life. Although he is supposedly brilliant, an almost Nobel Prize winner, the easiest way he can think of to leave a woman is by jumping out the window. That would work, but his suicide attempts are never successful. He always falls onto something that breaks his fall right at the bottom sort of like the universe sparing him for his next ordeal or wife. Of course he doesn't believe the universe cares enough about him to waste its time plotting against him, or that it could care at all, but for someone who doesn't believe in the significance of coincidences, his life is full of them pairing him with women whose views of reality oppose his own.

Score: 10/10

Went to see Deadpool, pandering to my love of all things spandex-clad.

I felt rather let down by it actually, having expected to enjoy it. Though stylish, it was nowhere near as clever as it thought it was, the plot was non-existent, and it rapidly fell into the tired narrative tropes that it had initially set out to mock. For all its big Holywood budget, it somehow felt cheap and nasty.

"Mustang"
A film about 5 girls (sisters)that live in Turkey and what they do to escape repression.
Lovely, sad and revolting. Rate:8,5

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lokasenna

...pandering to my love of all things spandex-clad....

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lokasenna, have you seen kick-***?

its overly vulgar, ridiculously violent, and tremendously absurd, but I found in spite of that, I still liked it...

that's funny---the forum software's editing out "mass" minus the "m."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bounty

lokasenna, have you seen kick-***?

its overly vulgar, ridiculously violent, and tremendously absurd, but I found in spite of that, I still liked it...

that's funny---the forum software's editing out "mass" minus the "m."

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Yes, I've seen Kick-(m)*** - I really enjoyed it, thinking it a clever riff on superhero films. The second film, though, was utterly awful.

i agree, and given how much i liked the original, i soooo wanted it to be good. i enjoyed snippets, but on the whole boy it was a movie that probably shouldn't have been made.

We were planning to see Deadpool, but when we had the opportunity the weather kept us home.

I've seen a couple of the Marvel movies: Ant-Man and The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Ant-Man was the best of the two, because the underlying conflict in the human relationships seemed better done. They both deserved an 8 out of 10.