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

[Janine]

I've been watching plays on DVD this week, since I bought a boxes set of Chekhov by the BBC....well worth the money and contains a lot of plays and some radio plays and narrated short stories, as well. I was lucky to spot it onsale on Amazon.

So far I have watched two productions of "The Cherry Orchard" - both with Judi Dench...early one is b/w TV production and Judi (much younger) plays the daughter; second side is the older production, where she plays the mother. Both were very good; but I particularly liked the second. I might add, the first one, the mother is played by Peggy Ashcroft, a fine actress. Many noted stars appear in this production such as John Gielgud, Ian Holm (very young), Anton Lesser, Timothy Spall (also young), etc.

Two night ago I watched "The Seagull" and found that to be very good and quite complex; the characters are quirpy and interesting; story relies more on character development and relationships than on any set plot. It starred Anthony Gates, Michael Gambon, Stephen Rea, to name a few.

The flip side of the DVD was the production of "An Artist's Story" taken and adapted by Chekhov from one of his short stories. I find now I have the desire to read that story. It starred a much younger Patrick Stewart as the brooding artist.

[NickAdams]

Gummo - Some may say that director Harmony Korine is unfair and condecending towards his characters, presenting them as dumb, racist white trash, and while the extremity of this film may create a convincing argument for that (for its content is not gracious or subtle) it is too shallow an interpretation in this otherwise haunting and hypnotically strange and disturbing film.

Way too shallow. It assumes that all filmmakers approach a project the same, but the fact is that the film is the thing and production information is outside of it. People may look at the chair wrestler and the racist teens and think that this is what Korine thinks of the Midwest, but that was real. It's in the film, because it exist and not because Korine wrote it. I love this film.

[The Comedian]

Saw the newest Harry Potter -- pretty dumb and hard to follow, like most movies. 4/10

[NickAdams]

500 Days of Summer
This movie is hard to rate, because I liked and disliked things that ran throughout it.
I enjoyed it overall. There is a mixture of honest moments and characters and movieness and genre stock. I liked the soundtrack, but was unenthusiastic about the score. The narrative and it's mosaic style is refreshing for a Hollywood picture (it's nothing new if you a familiar with French cinema), but the glossiness of the picture always distracted me; one could argue that it reflects Tom's job, but ... eh. lol

[Taliesin]

Avatar.
The visuals were pretty nice. Too bad you can't say the same for the plot.
4/10

[Mathor]

Last night saw Up In the Air with George Clooney. I enjoyed it alot, plus the soundtrack was good too. I wouldn't go to see it if you've recently been laid off...too close for comfort. Some of the opening scenes were of people that had been laid off and you can understand all the emotions that are involved.
George Clooney was as good as ever. His performance was a little more controlled, not as much banter as usual, but still he had some good moments.
Very well written. My husband and I also saw recently, A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Both of course were animated. We enjoyed them as well, but it was nice to see real people in a low key movie for a change.

All of those movies are pretty fantastic. And Up In The Air was my number 1 favorite movie of 2009.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I had been meaning to order and Gandhi for nearly a year previously to last week. I must say that I was pretty much impressed throughout the entire film, what a marvellous epic work! The DVD had lots of interesting extras on too (5 hours) which is always a bonus. I'd certainly recommend the film to anyone like me who hadn't seen this film before.

I think I am going to watch Kundun tonight, which is a story of the Dalai Lama's life by Martin Scorsese, it looks like it might be OK.

[Janine]

I had been meaning to order and Gandhi for nearly a year previously to last week. I must say that I was pretty much impressed throughout the entire film, what a marvellous epic work! The DVD had lots of interesting extras on too (5 hours) which is always a bonus. I'd certainly recommend the film to anyone like me who hadn't seen this film before.

I think I am going to watch Kundun tonight, which is a story of the Dalai Lama's life by Martin Scorsese, it looks like it might be OK.

Neely, I loved that movie when it was first released. I actually believe I saw that one in the theater. It was wonderful. The acting superb. Do you recall who directed it? I can't myself...failing old age memory.

I like Martin Scorsese. I was just going to list two films I saw recently; he commentated on the DVD for both of them. He's a big fan of The Archers.

Here's what I watched, these two Michael Powell movies:

A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven; US original release)

I can't say enough for this wonderful old film. It's quite different than anything I have seen before; very clever cutting and innovative technigues for the time. I saw some clips on Youtube and it made me want to see the film in it's entirity. It has this surreal scene of a stairway (escalator) leading slowly up to heaven. The DVD was marvelous, in that it was fully retored and the print vibrant and beautiful. The reality scenes are shot in vivid technicolor and the ocean scenes are stunning. The dream sequence or heaven sequence is shot in lighter tons of gray, b/w, which creates a luminous quality. One other cool scene stands out to me, of a ceiling of circles, which from the angle shot, looks like ovals and are very surrealistic. These parts reminded me of the Dali sequence in "Spellbound'...some parts actually remind me of "The Wizzard of Oz". The acting is a little melodramatic at times; but within standards of the day. I liked all the acting and thought the casting excellent and the actors top-notch. It stars David Niven, Kim Hunter. The script is witty and more meaningful than one first perceives. There is more here than meets the eye on first viewing. The more I thought about the film and the concept, the more possibilities I came up with. The film is actually based on a true story, in which an airman abandons his burning plane with no parachute, falls into the sea; and survives the fall; which is truly amazing. I won't give away anymore. That part is the beginning and there a lot more to come. I would rate this film highly and applaud the film-makers for coming up, at the time, with something entirely original; or so I believe it to be.

The Age of Constent

This is a later Powell film and I thought I might not like it as much but I was pleasantly surprised. I loved it! It stars Helen Mirren in her very first film role...she was wonderful. It also stars James Mason, who I have always thought a very fine actor. I don't have time to write fully write up the storyline; but it's shot in Queensland, Australia and it's stunningly beautiful. I think part is shot on an island of the coastline...very secluded and natural. Cora (Mirren) is a young girl who lives with an achohlic and abusive grandmother; James Mason comes there to the area thinking it's totally unihabited; he's an artist and looking to renew his inspiration in painting. Cora is saving as much money as she can to get away from the island and Mason (Brad) is happy finally to find a deserted place away from civilization and the critical art community. Of course, quicky he discovers to his grief that he is far from alone in this remote area of the world. Of course you can guess the read; their paths keep crossing and Cora eventually models for him; he is very kind and sweet and truly wants to pay her and help her to he goal. Of course, Cora is quite beautiful in a natural way. She is not the picture-perfect beauty one sees in magazines of today. She's actually a little overweight in the hip, bottom, upper leg area of her body.

There is a lot of comedy in this film, which I didn't expect. Brad's little dog is adorable and so funny; one scene has him slipping back into his collar when Brad returns to his ramshackle shack on the beach...that dog deserved an Academy Award! Another scene that really cracked me up was when they arrived on the island in a small outboard motor boat and the dog looked completely thrilled on the journey; but once there, when the transporter pulls away from the dock, he is whimmering on the edge, like he's begging the guy not to leave him in this God-forsaken wilderness.

I would definitely see this film many times over. It was a lot of fun and very touching as well. Being an artist myself, I think I very much appreciated how Brad felt. I would say it's a rare old gem and worth watching many times over. The supporting cast are really zany and funny. Seems this remote location has a few too many residents for Brad's comfort zone.

I got this entire set on Amazon for a very reasonable price. It was released and offered recently; I treated myself to some movie sets for Christmas.

I love the films of Powell and Pressburger! "The Red Shoes" is one of my alltime favorite films. A side note: Scorcess has a collection of memorabilia from the production. I saw it on my DVD features and it is very impressive; he adores the film! Hey, he has good taste in films!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Neely, I loved that movie when it was first released. I actually believe I saw that one in the theater. It was wonderful. The acting superb. Do you recall who directed it? I can't myself...failing old age memory.

I like Martin Scorsese. I was just going to list two films I saw recently; he commentated on the DVD for both of them. He's a big fan of The Archers.

Yes Richard Attenborough. It was his obsession taking him 20 odd years to make. It almost took him to breaking point and bankruptcy, and although he won eight Oscars for it and gained worldwide recognition, he never made a penny out of the film himself.

Kundun was poor.

[Janine]

[QUOTE]

Yes Richard Attenborough. It was his obsession taking him 20 odd years to make. It almost took him to breaking point and bankruptcy, and although he won eight Oscars for it and gained worldwide recognition, he never made a penny out of the film himself.

That's interesting. I like background stories - 20 odd years is a long time to remain dedicated to one project - he had to be obsessed!

Kundun

was poor.

Was just reading about this film on Wikipedia. You might like to check out what they said. Oddly enough, it was nominated for four Academy Awards: for Art Direction (Dante Ferretti, art direction and Francesca Lo Schiavo, set decoration), Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Costume Design, and Original Score (Philip Glass). I think I would still be interested to see it considering that..they said the cinematography was beautiful and the score great. I don't know if it won any. The plot sounds a bit familiar but I might be thinking of another film similar to this one.

[Janine]

Moving right along....

Tonight I watched:

Bringing Up Baby ~ Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant

It's a screwball comedy, a little slapstick at times; but very witty and funny, too. The script and key lines were great. I laughed out loud quite a bit. I really, really enjoyed this old film. I can't get over that I have never seen this one before. Grant and Hepburn had perfect chemistry. I was surprised how well Cary Grant pulled off the comedy; but then again, he really just played his role 'straight' and it was wonderful. I found him very attractive in this film. He played a absent-minded professor and his geeky glasses almost made him seem more appealing. I don't know how he prevented himself from not cracking up, in many of the scenes; he really make one laugh and never he cracked a smile. Katherine Hepburn was adorable in this film; with much more girlish charm in her zany character of the scatter-brained Susan, than she usually exhibits. The dog and the leopard were really entertaining, too, as were the crazy cast of character actors. If you haven't seen this film, it's a 'must-see'. It's a good time and I am sure I will watch it many times over and still enjoy it emensely. The new release of the DVD was beautifully restored - now I know why they called it the silver screen. You can't beat the luminisence of the b/w film during this period. Definitely a 10/10 in the comedy genre. Loved it!!!

[DanielBenoit]

Avatar - We walked out of the theater. Me, Emily and Zach. Ten degrees below zero. We got into the car. Five minutes later Zach and I discovered that we really had to pee, really bad. I had drank two large sodas in the theater, and so did Zach. Soon enough we were bouncing up and down like little kids. Zachs house was only a couple of minutes away, but it seemed like forever. We even considered pulling over and peeing on the side of the road. Yes, we had to go that bad. But then a car drove past and we got back in, afraid of a police car driving by.

Soon enough after enough unbearable anticipation and suffering we got to his house and we ran out.

This pretty much parralells my experience at Avatar. All of a sudden shocking, tedious and you can't wait to get out.

Let me tell you my anticipation. This seems pretty much to be one of the best reviewed film out now. Ebert put it on his best of the year list. Many people on here loved it. People were comparing it to Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. One detractor on this website, NickAdams, who had not seen the movie, but stated that he didn't care about the innovations in special effects, he cared more about innovations in narrative and character. I knew how he felt, being more thrilled by films like Werckmeister Harmonies than say 2012. But after all I heard, I thought of him being a bit close-minded, for if one treats Star Wars as a profound art film, then it will come out as a superficial mess with a fortune-cookie philosohy. But if you treat it for what it is, and that is a purely entertaining Saturday night-matinee, then you get one of the greatest films of all time.

Avatar is not one of them. It is no Star Wars nor is it no Lord of the Rings. People seem to have a habit of overreating to James Cameron's films, and whilst watching it I thought what a mediocre director Cameron was in comparison to Peter Jackson. Neither really make profound films nor a either anywhere close to the likes of Stanley Kubrick, but Jackson applies special effects in such a masterful way, that I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings the whole time I was watching this movie.

Take a simple example. In The Lord of the Rings Jackson uses the beating of the Ring-Wraiths wings as a hallucinatory and atmospheric dread. The theater becomes silent as the stereo blurts out the minimalistic pounding draining out eveything. When you think about it it's quite poetic. Now despite my youthful passion for the films when they first came out over seven years ago, I now consider The Lord of the Rings to be despite its landmark influence on special effects, I no longer see it as a great film. But Avatar is not even a good film and is infinitley more tedious than even a second of the nine hours of the three LOTR films.

What's even more insulting is that the special effects at times, or rather most of the time, are so obviously. .. . .special effects. CGI today is used so indulgently that it all seems all too cartoonish. LOTR, before the CGI explosion, used it to an extent in which is was supposed to convince you that it was reality. For every second I saw Gollum, I was utterly convinced that he was real and that Mordor was a real place. The texture of monsters like Shelob seemed so realistic that I was truly freaked out. Here, there are some rather beautiful images, but everything looks like a special effect and are utterly unconvincing. The whole time I was thinking "oh look how well done these special effects are" and not "wow I hope the blue aliens survive". See. I cared so little about this films world and characters that I even forgot what those creatures are called. This has got to be one of the most passive movie going experiences I have ever had. So much was happening on-screen, but I was completely shut-off, it was as if a great distance existed between me and the screen.

That said, somewhere under here lies the film so many critics were talking about. The avatar thing is fascinating and the way it is gone about is enthralling. The romance between one of the creatures and the main character is charming and rather beautiful, and Zoe Salanda's performance as the films herorine (all animated mind you) is quite convincing and rather good. But all of this, all of the wonders done with the special effects and story (despite the weak dialouge and screenplay) are put to no good use with James Cameron's arrogant, indulgent and awful direction which has no skill or respect for aesthetic effect or even special effects themselves. He just throws this well-done CGI at you and puts no life or feeling into it. There was not one second of the film in which I felt like I had entered the films world. Not one. My mind was in the theater the whole time.

Now of course James Cameron's going to get nominated for Best Director and his film may even get a Best Picture nomination, as well as nine others, just like with Titanic, because Hollywood is always immedietly impressed with a special effects film that is halfway better than something like Transformers. Sitting through Avatar is nowhere near the pain and torture of sitting through Transformers, but at least everyone else in the theater thinks so. Avatar is bound to be named by the general public as one of the greatest films of all time just as much as they did with Titanic and LOTR. Though that may be, fifty years from now, Citizen Kane will still stand tall. 4/10

[wessexgirl]

Gummo - Some may say that director Harmony Korine is unfair and condecending towards his characters, presenting them as dumb, racist white trash, and while the extremity of this film may create a convincing argument for that (for its content is not gracious or subtle) it is too shallow an interpretation in this otherwise haunting and hypnotically strange and disturbing film.

Yes before viewing this I had heard all about the films contnet; the cat-drowning scene, the depictions of racism, the extremely odd logic of the film, which consists of a series of surreal vignettes concerning a small Ohio town which had been hit by a tornado.

At the begining we are presented with many explicitly disturbing things, not least one of them being the drowning of a cat by two teenagers, then them going to the grocery store to sell it. One of the teens narrates and talks about his friend "some say he's evil". At this point we certainly agree, knowing very well that most serial killers began with killing cats. But they don't kill for enjoyment, or at least partly. Their hunt is in a sense a strange and offbeat means of survival, it's Korine's modern twist on the hunter-gatherer culture. What the grocery store does with the cats I don't know and probably don't want to know, but that doesn't matter. The point is that they are killing cats, but why is it so much more disturbing than if they were killing bears or wolves.

There are many deep and simple snapshots just like this throughout this exploration through this hic town in mid-western America. Take one in which a girl figures out she has AIDS. She goes to a doctor and learns that she's going to have to have her breasts surgically removed. She despairs over the fact that she won't be able to get a boyfriend after that because "boys are like that". Which raises an uncomfortable and yet deeply troubling question: Do we as a society place all the value of a women in her breasts? If so, what is she to men when she no longer has them? The answer is deeply troubling.

This film is a masterpiece of poetic and despairing moments concerning suicide, murder, Satanism, sexuality, death, old age, racism and blue-collar culture. Korine makes a masterful use of different film mediums to convey his visual poetry, which is effective at all times with haunting voice-over narration by the two teenagers. Just take the opening sequence in which one of them describes the tornado that hit. To hear his voice and the things he says so simply is chilling.

This is a troubled and deeply disturbing film whose style and subject matter will immedietly turn off many people. Those who cherish experimental art cinema know who they are and will seek out this film, if you are still watching Twilight, you may not be ready for this film just yet. It has a beautiful pace and is masterfully directed by the young Korine and hardly ever fails at what it does (except at the more light-hearted comedic parts). And despite its disturbing images, it does have heart and moments of tenderness you are shocked to find. There is a beautiful scene in which one of the teenagers pays to have sex with a prostitute. She turns out to be a weirdly motherly and innocent girl who looks like she walked out of a cartoon from the 50's. Instead of having sex the two talk and she mothers him in an odd and tender way. When I say this film has heart, I mean it is embedded under all of the despair and suffering of this horror, just like at the heart of every human being. 9/10

I'd never heard of this film Daniel until this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibs1akHKzU0

Harry Hill is hilarious .

[LitNetIsGreat]

That's interesting. I like background stories - 20 odd years is a long time to remain dedicated to one project - he had to be obsessed!

Well it was an on and off project, largely dictated by funding issues. In his own words he did make a lot of "crap" in order that he could help fund his one real project - though he was certainly obsessed.

[DanielBenoit]

Avatar - 10/10 - I wasn't looking forward to this movie. I mainly saw this to prove how good it WASNT. No amount of bias can bring this visual triumph down. And no, it's not because the visual triumph is such a spectacle, it's because it is paired with a story that is surprisingly amazing.

This movie does everything you would dislike in a movie. It's filled to the brim with special effects, it's about 75 percent animation, the last 1/3 of the movie is one long action sequence. These are things which one could normally safely say ruin just about any movie. James Cameron proves that he is the exception to the rule. So much intricacy is put on developing the story, that by the time the action rolls around, you're praising god that it's there. This movie is the 'Ben-Hur' or 'Jaws' of our era. This film does things with motion that I did not know were possible. Okay, James Cameron, after months of thinking this was a TERRIBLE concept for a film (with a story that from the trailer seems pretty wishy-washy) you've proven me wrong. I should have expected this.


EDIT: One other point. This is the only movie I've ever seen in 3d where the 3d enriched the experienced. I have been adamant that 3D ruins the viewing experience, that it is distracting, that it really has no place in cinema (and 99.999999 of the time I'm right). To this and all points, Cameron, Touche.

I am just so confused. I seriously feel like I've seen a differrent movie from everybody else. Everybody's saying how absorbed they were and how it didn't seem all that long, for me, my God was I passive throughout the whole thing, and man did it seem like five hours. Another problem was that I was almost entirely indifferent to the entire film. It was certainly a million times better than pieces of crap like Transformers, but I was just utterly indifferent the whole time.

Believe me, I wasn't expecting an art film. I came into the theater in the Saturday night-matinee mindset. I was ready for some kick-*** action and special effects, and was ready to forgive all of the expect cliches one is bound to find in a action movie. But James Cameron to me just used all of his effects to no good use by just putting them up there on screen. As I've mentioned before in my review, maybe it's best to parallell the scenes with the flying Ring-Wraiths or when those big elephants come in LOTR with any of the battle seqeunces and you'll see that Peter Jackson is the superior director. Also, take another example from Star Wars; there was an utter excitment in hearing and seeing those lightsabers come out before a dual. It was perfect and enthralling. Avatar had no effects that enthralled me in any way as those other two films.

Sorry if I keep on writing about Avatar, but I am very troubled by this film.