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

[Emil Miller]

Jean Gabin stars as Georges Simenon's iconic Inspector Maigret whose avuncular exterior conceals a steely resolve to bring criminals to justice in the French courts. In this case, the villains are a trio of American gangsters who arrive in Paris to kill a man who is a potential witness for the prosecution of a gangland boss in the USA. They manage to gun the man down in the street but the shooting is witnessed by a police officer who is amazed to see another car pick up the wounded man, leaving both the villains and the police stymied as to who has taken him or where he could have gone. Maigret's team at the Sûreté have the task of painstakingly tracking down the wounded man before the killers are able to find him.
Above average policier with Gabin giving a characteristically laid back performance. 8/10

[YesNo]

The Wolf of Wall Street: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wol...et_(2013_film)

One take away from this movie is how to sell something: Make the buyer aware of a need and then have an inventory that supplies that created need. Don't describe what you have prior to identifying the need in the buyer.

The movie is long with wild parties and inane behavior to get you caught up in the plot and make the time pass quickly.

I can't see anything wrong with it, although I wouldn't want to see it again, but then there is no need to see it again.

Score: 10/10

[Helga]

Ha ha ha! That about sums it up. We watched Jack Reacher last week. It was long, tedious, implausible with rubbishy characterisation. A typical Tom Cruise film. Then this week we watched Oblivion which is basically Jack Reacher but with a futuristic setting and flying machines. Yawn.

Ah yes but notice the grey and black dog that growled at Tom Cruise for 5 seconds, I know that dog and it took over a month of training to teach him how to act like that. If the dog understood Scientology it probably would only have taken a day.

[qimissung]

August: Osage County 9/10 I grew up in a town just a few miles from this setting, so this whole movie was like coming home for me. Even some of the family dynamic s. I thought everyone gave a good performance.

All is Lost 9/10 a tour de force by Robert Redford.

[YesNo]

Best Man Down: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1885300/

The library labels this a comedy, but it's more of a drama. Although the best man got drunk during the wedding reception, this is nothing like the Hangover series which were definitely comedies. He not only acts ridiculously at the reception, he also dies afterwards.

The plot pulls all the pieces together nicely. The best man's death disrupts the plans made by the survivors, but the resolutions seem to me better than they could have anticipated.

Score: 8/10

[YesNo]

August: Osage County 9/10 I grew up in a town just a few miles from this setting, so this whole movie was like coming home for me. Even some of the family dynamic s. I thought everyone gave a good performance.

We saw this last night. My wife told me she read a review of the movie that said something like, "If you think your family's bad, wait till you watch this movie."

I would have expected that Barbara (played by Julia Roberts) would have weighed 100 pounds more than she did. Also, from my limited experienced, the problem of abusive people like Violet (played by Meryl Streep) is that they don't take their medication not that they deliberately drug themselves more than is necessary. Barbara's 14 year old daughter (played by Abigail Breslin) seemed in character when she wanted to watch some TV show rather than go to the funeral, but other than that she seemed too quiet. Her mouth should have been running more helping to wind up the anger her mother and grandmother were projecting on those unfortunate enough to be around them. Also the TV show would have been something like Spongebob not some old movie classic. I can't think of any teenager that would have wanted to watch that movie.

So, some of the plot didn't ring true to me, but my experience and imagination are limited. I can't deny that such abusiveness is real, but that doesn't mean I trust Tracy Lett's description of reality.

Score: 8/10

[Emil Miller]

Updated from the 1930s to the 50s, this is loosely based on Scott Fitzgerald's short story Babylon Revisited and has a stunningly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor as the daughter of Walter Pidgeon who plays an impoverished American living in Paris but refusing to give up living in the style to which he'd once been accustomed. Van Johnson is the American writer revisiting the city after some years when he was stationed there with the US army at the end of WWII and where he meets Taylor on the day that Paris is liberated. The story is told in flashback and recounts their marriage and Johnson's lapse into alcoholism when his novels are rejected. Both Taylor and Pidgeon give good performances and there are some amusing one-liners for the roguish father but Johnson's all at sea in his part and unconvincing as the writer. Eva Gabor plays herself as a much married gold digger and Donna Reed is good as Taylor's embittered sister who wanted Johnson for herself in this glossy romantic family saga typical of the 1950s. 7/10

[Emil Miller]

In seven episodes this takes some viewing but holds interest by virtue of its convoluted plot.
The problem is that spy stories had been done to death by 1979 and, to my mind, the film no longer carried conviction despite some excellent supporting roles to Alec Guinness's rather bland performance.
Having the head of British intelligence as an aged and rather prissy academic who collects old books while performing mental gymnastics with his Russian counterpart mirrors the eccentric Sherlock Holmes's struggle against the evil Moriarty, so the scenario is somewhat motheaten. 6/10

[papayahed]

Lone Ranger - It was entertaining, but I'm torn. I like the quirkiness of the movie Tonto but at the same time it bums me out that it isn't true to the TV series.

[Paulclem]

I watched a documentary film called Restrepo about US Marines and their battles in a remote valley in Afghanistan. It had the usual chaotic combat footage and scenes of marines relaxing in a sressful position.

What was really striking ws the understandable grief they felt when one of their comrades was killed in a Taliban attack, which contrasted with their significantly blaze attitude to female civilian deaths and children casualties, which they witnessed.

Another thing that really struck me was how a young Captain - 30 maybe - was expected to negotiate with Afghan elders when he clearly had no idea about the culture, and admitted at the beginning of the film that he had not read up on it in order to keep an open mind. You couldn't blame this chap, but the really shortsighted political policies that whoever was runing the campaign were using.

Very illuminating.

[qimissung]

I'd like to see that one sometime, Paul. It looks really interesting. It's just that things with a lot of death in them are hard to watch. For me anyway.

The Spectacular Now. A relatively realistic coming of age story, by which I mean it is not in the vein of John Hughes, as celebrated as they are.

Also Ran, the brilliant, stately, despairing, tragic tale of a Japanese warlord who is betrayed by his sons. Based on Japanese legends and King Lear.

[Emil Miller]

This has Kirk Douglas as a master criminal planning to rob an giant insurance company in Hamburg.
Apart from some ludicrous fight scenes and a silly car chase involving maximum destruction, there is the nail
biting robbery involving high tech gadgetry which Douglas and his accomplice pull off until the inevitable double cross blows the whole thing out of the water.
It's alway a shame to see class actors like Douglas reduced to the rubbish of the seventies and beyond, even though they still manage to give of their best. 6/10

[Snowqueen]

I watched Prisoners last week, it was quite violent at times but overall it was a good film. I really liked Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance. 7/10

[Emil Miller]

Being a great cat person, I watched this enjoyable documentary about felines. They really are the most enigmatic
creatures and also the most beautiful. 9/10

http://youtu.be/izqCgnEEKwc

[qimissung]

The Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. 9/10 This was a truly excellent documentary. In the end it was somewhat disturbing, but rarely have I seen a movie or read a book that shows the layers of good and evil in human beings like this one did.