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

[byquist]

Phoenix, German film. Praised by critics. A little slow in the beginning. Some say it's like Hitch's Vertigo, well, not exactly. Must see again to fully appreciate. Excellent acting. Don't think there is a moment of humor. Sad about her woman friend, seemed unbelievable a little -- why did she do what she did? No reason. Film for Film Studies class, that good.

[Helga]

Watched Wit a tv movie based on a play with the same name. Emma Thompson stars and is brilliant as usual. It's a very gripping movie about cancer and the treatment for it. My professor in my literature and medicine class told me that it is shown to any students studying to be a doctor to show them the importance of empathy and bedside manners.

[YesNo]

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_...berty_valance/

This was number 45 on the BBC list of the 100 best American films. It was directed by John Ford. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201...american-films

There are at least two other John Ford movies on the list ("The Searchers" and "Stagecoach") which makes me suspect the list as much as seeing Citizen Kane being number one. Suspect it of what? Of being artsy-fartsy? Pseudo-cultural? Well, the library display is hard to miss and I figured I could use some culture. I suspect it of generating enough desire in me to watch something I probably would not waste my time on were it made more recently.

The movie is a rom-com situated in the wild, wild west where ranchers want an open range and immigrant settlers want their fences.

The main theme is who will Hallie, a young, illiterate, but cute woman pick for her husband? She could pick Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer who comes to town to bring law and order but who can't shoot a gun, or she could pick Tom Doniphon, a rude, but decent guy who can shoot a gun and more importantly can shoot better than Liberty Valance. For some reason Doniphon has not shot Liberty Valance yet although Valance has done enough to have justified a shooting. I suppose Hallie could consider Valance as a possible beau, but Valance is more useful as the bad guy who makes the differences between Doniphon and Stoddard stand out. Eventually Valance goes over the top one too many times and Stoddard challenges him to a duel and, just as the title promises, someone shoots Liberty Valance out of love for Hallie.

I admit I enjoyed the movie although it would not make my top 100 list. One hundred is a very small number. I think it was more interesting than Citizen Kane.

Score: 8/10

Edit: The movie was based on a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson which I just finished. The story was more realistic than the movie which exaggerated the characters making Stoddard too genteel and Doniphon stand out too much in the town. There was no political theme in the story between ranchers and settlers. The marshal was competent and generally ignored. He was not the buffoon the movie turned him into. But the movie got the romance underlying the story correct.

Score for the story: 10/10

[kev67]

The last movie I saw at the cinema was Inside Out. Some of the small children were a bit upset, which did not surprise me. It was very good, but my favourite Pixar film of those I have seen is Wall-E.

[Ecurb]

Phoenix, German film. Praised by critics. A little slow in the beginning. Some say it's like Hitch's Vertigo, well, not exactly. Must see again to fully appreciate. Excellent acting. Don't think there is a moment of humor. Sad about her woman friend, seemed unbelievable a little -- why did she do what she did? No reason. Film for Film Studies class, that good.

I saw "Phoenix", too. It was overrated, in accordance with the principle that all holocaust films must be given 4 stars by critics, lest the critics be drummed out of the club.

[byquist]

Would have to put "Liberty Valance" in top 100 -- super-evil vs. innocence and courage, courage to the point of foolhardiness. But, he risked his life. Plus the Duke controlling events so smoothly. Great story. Stewart showing his specialness.

[YesNo]

John Ford's "Liberty Valance" movie was good enough to lead me to reading Dorothy Johnson's short story. There was also a hit song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David that Gene Pitney sang based on the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDN4L7cAQf0

My problem with the movie is that after reading the story, the movie seemed shallow and sentimental. I remember having a similar experience watching "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" after reading the novel by Anita Loos: The novel was great; The movie was mediocre in comparison.

What made the movie disappointing was precisely the super-evil vs innocence theme. John Wayne was a poor choice for Bert Barricune (Tom Doniphon in the movie). Bert was a drunkard and a cattle thief, not the John Wayne anti-bully who could stand up to Liberty Valance when no one else could. Bert could shoot, but so could others in the town including the marshal. Valance had a reward on his head and did not come into town lightly. Ranse Foster (Ransom Stoddard in the movie) was not a nice James Stewart sort of guy who came to the wild west with a law book in his hands. He was educated enough to be able to read Plato in Greek. However, he was also a lazy drifter who scorned those who tried to help him. He spent his time wasting his life preparing to kill Valance because Valance humiliated him earlier.

What made the story memorable was Bert's love for Hallie to the point that he risked a murder sentence by killing Valance so that his rival could marry her and then pushed Ranse to get some basic ambition so Hallie would be happy. Johnson pulled this story off with surprising economy. It was a perfect example of "show, don't tell" writing.

[Emil Miller]

Behind boisterous student high-jinks in an English university town lies a world of existential angst with a dramatis personae of fairly stock characters.
There is the frigid professor whose frustrated wife seeks solace with the working-class student with a chip on his shoulder.The token black African student overplaying his hand as he tries to be more like the English than they actually are. The shy student whose diffidence makes it hard for him to fit in and is killed in an attempt to do so.
Despite the paucity of plot, the acting is good: especially Paul Rogers as the professor who discovers the truth about his wife which leads to her student lover being sent down.

7/10

[YesNo]

"Bridge of Spies": http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bridge_of_spies/

There's nothing wrong with the movie. My wife thought this would be a better bet than my choice of "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse": http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/scou...?search=zombie She was probably right.

The movie is about heroism which is an ambiguous state since just about everyone who did something in the movie could be viewed as heroic from some perspective, even the ones shooting into Donovan's home. They all acted selflessly and for some higher end and took risks although some of that selflessness is now viewed as self-righteousness.

There was one scene where Power's insisted that he told his captors nothing and Donovan replied that Powers knew what he did and didn't do and it didn't matter what anyone else thought. That seems to me to be the key challenge that any hero has to face: rejection by the community he is serving.

Score: 9/10

[kev67]

Just watched the Coen Brothers' adaption of True Grit. There is an odd mid film sag in it, yet it is still a masterpiece imo. I loved the intelligence of Reuben Cogburn, Mattie Ross, La Boeuf, and in particular Ned Pepper. What I loved above all, was the way the vengeful nature of Mattie Ross became apparent. She was at least as intelligent as the others, much more so probably, but the others had a wisdom she lacked. She paid a heavy price.

Also, Domhnall Gleeson: small part but one of the best actors of the world. Jeff Bridges is still one of the best.

[YesNo]

Spectre: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spectre_2015/

There are bad guys who have infiltrated the government and are controlling all the data in the world. They are going to do something bad with it. The main bad guy is the son of the man who raised Bond. My wife wanted me to explain the movie to her after it was over. I couldn't, but things blow up and the good guys win and the bad guys lose and Bond gets the girl. And the car.

Score: 8/10

[Helga]

I know it's not a movie but I went to a movie theatre here on the ice yesterday and saw live stream from London, Hamlet to be accurate and enjoyed it a lot. The stage looked great, Claudius was great, Ophelia was kinda crazy and Hamlet was great too. Clearly a lot more money in the theatre in London then here on the ice, not saying it isn't great here, it's just, everything is bigger. Filming a play is very tricky business and I think we could learn a lot from whoever it was that managed the filming.

[Emil Miller]

Set in docklands, this British film has a hard row to hoe in that it's audience needs to believe in the central character being a part-time hangman who marries a much younger woman without apprising her of the fact: he is able to do this because he has another name and a job as a hairdresser that protects him from vengeful relatives of those he has hanged.
When he inherits a number of barges from a river transport company that his father owned,he gives up the barber's business and takes up semi-retirement whilst carrying on as a hangman.
His wife agrees to live on one of the barges but a young longshoreman her husband employs begins forcing himself on her which eventually leads to both men fighting. The husband falls into the river and is believed drowned; at which point the woman commits suicide.
Now it gets really weird because the hangman secretly survives and turns up at the prison to execute his employee who has been found guilty of his murder.

5/10

[Emil Miller]

Back in the 1950s you got a better dressed class of criminal in British adventure films, albeit that they were usually swarthy individuals of foreign extraction and whose nefarious schemes were upset by clean-cut Englishmen.
In the above example, a group of Spanish and French smugglers are being sought by an English chap whose brother has been murdered by the gang.
Set in Barcelona, the plot involves jewel thefts and the export of stolen gold items painted too look like cheap metal copies which are then transported to England for resale as gold.
With the help of a Spanish nightclub singer and a British customs officer, the hero eventually tracks down the gang leader and marries the singer.

Tiresome nonsense typical of the period and instantly forgettable.

4/10

[YesNo]

Atlas Shrugged (Part 1): http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atlas_shrugged_part_i/
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2): http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atlas_shrugged_part_ii/
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3): http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atla..._is_john_galt/

Although I heard of Ayn Rand's book, I have never read it. I was kind of hoping to watch these movies as a form of speed reading. Of the three movies the first was the best. The actors changed in the second and in the third. This was disorienting since I watched them one after the other.

It is the near future, 2016 and following, and there is a depression caused by inflation. The Taggert family owns a railroad which is now the chief surviving means of transportation. There are two heirs to the Taggert family, an incompetent male and his sister Dagny who keeps things running in spite of her brother. There is also a sequence of prominent people who voluntarily disappear and the mysterious phrase "Who is John Galt?" keeps coming up.

Dagny and a steel producer lay a new line of tracks and they have an affair. Although these two enjoy some successes the politicians gain too much power and eventually civil liberties collapse as well as their efforts to keep society running.

Dagny finds John Galt who lives in what looks like a high-tech, survivalist Shangri-La using gold coins as money hidden behind a technological illusion of mountains that Galt probably designed. Galt is on a sort of strike against society. In addition to striking he and some of the others have also vowed to bring society down. They sabotage efforts to get the country out of the depression and they ultimately succeed in shutting down the US with its incompetent government. Dagny and Galt have an affair.

Those in the commune have to swear the following oath:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor use another to live for mine.

There is a final scene where the government captures Galt and straps him against a wall with his arms stretched out as if he is being crucified. Then they give him electric shocks. He seems to temporarily die but Dagny and others save him at the last minute. He resurrects and he lays in her arms in the helicopter like Jesus in Mary's arms in the Pieta statue except Galt is not dead and they are going back to the commune where they will live happily ever after.

As I see it, especially considering the sabotage incidents, Osama bin Ladin would have been proud of them.

Score: 2/10