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Author Topic: Write about the last movie you watched (2006-2010)  (Read 5997984 times)

roujin

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32420 on: June 13, 2010, 01:14:26 PM »
Owen Wilson is an auteur.

 :D

There is zero energy there. Just nothing.

mañana

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32421 on: June 13, 2010, 01:17:13 PM »
pix should random death match it against the Bill Murray Garfield.   :)
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32422 on: June 13, 2010, 02:31:30 PM »
Days of Heaven

Paris, Texas

Awesome! I'm glad you said you'll watch both again because I had the same issues you had with both these films initially, but revising them, I find more and more I love about them and find them more and more emotional and effective.

tinyholidays

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32423 on: June 13, 2010, 02:35:54 PM »


2006. Written and directed by Paul Greengrass.

After watching the excellent Bloody Sunday on Friday, I continued my Greengrass Education weekend yesterday with United 93, a film I had rather avoided when it was newly released. At that time, no one had preached me a Gospel of Greengrass, and I already felt plenty inundated with post-9/11 trauma bonding events. In fact, I was so angered by the way politicians kept manipulating people's unstoppably visceral reactions to their memories of 9/11 that I could not imagine wanting to see a movie in the same vein.

When I saw Bloody Sunday, though, I think I knew and made peace with the type of film that Greengrass would direct with United 93. It is in the moment, in the room. It doesn't tell the audience who these characters are by stuntcasting Nic Cage and swelling the music when something heroic or terrifying is going to happen. Rather, United 93 persists in the ordinary, the mundane, the office bureaucracy of that morning.

There's something genius in the structure of this film, much of which focuses on what's happening with air traffic controllers, the FAA, and the military. Like us, the audience, those people knew something bad was happening but were helpless to act against it. They could track the horror, as we did when we watched the planes crash that morning on tv, but they had no real access to stop the situation. In contrast, when we are aboard United 93, we are with people who can act in that moment, and who do. And, through Greengrass's handheld camera technique, we don't feel as if we are watching these events play out, tracking it across the screen of the movie. Rather, we are on board. This film allows the audience to be the observer, the acted upon, and the actor, but never the sap.

I'm sure that almost every person who has seen this film already knew the story of United 93, had already imagined what they would say if they had to call their own family from the flight and tell them goodbye, had already cried plenty that week in September. But even though I knew and had already thought through these events, I still sobbed for the last half hour of the film. I mean, like, heaving sobs, not gentle tears. It's strange to know that that emotional reaction still exists inside of me, inside of many (if not most) of us, over eight years later. To push these ideas further, I had a similar reaction last week to an episode of Mad Men (an episode I had already seen, at that). Spoilers for the 1960s, everyone: President Kennedy is assassinated. Now, I was born in 1983. My parents were only three years old when Kennedy was killed. However, I still cried for, like, five minutes during this episode, and they weren't really tears for the characters that I know and care about. It's weird, but I think I felt some echo of the national pain over the Kennedy assassination. Me, whose #3 life goal is to emigrate to Canada. So, I'm intrigued by the collective wound that United 93 unveils. I think it would probably not take much to get someone crying over September 11th, but Greengrass does so in a respectful, respectable, responsible way.

Overall ranking: #99, between Bonnie and Clyde and Children of Men

FroHam X

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32424 on: June 13, 2010, 02:41:31 PM »
Awesome review, and we Canadians welcome
you with open arms.
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Clovis8

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32425 on: June 13, 2010, 02:45:43 PM »
Really great review Tiny. I knew you would love it. I agree it deals with the subject matter in a perfect manner. I too took a long time to see it and avoided all 9/11 films because I worked at ground zero right after the attack. I didnt want to see a moralizing or hyper-patriotic film. But of course Greengrass is far too good to give us that.

P.S. As for your #3 life goal. We would love to have you!

P.P.S. Mad Men just went to the top of my queue!


oldkid

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32426 on: June 13, 2010, 04:05:21 PM »
You know, tinyholidays, this is exactly why I love the FS forum-- because of people like you who love the movies I love and for much the same reasons. 

United 93 is an amazing movie, and there is no way I can tell someone who hasn't seen it just how great it is.  Greengrass shows that we don't need a single, fully realized individual for us to understand emotionally what is happening, that we don't need simplified exposition, and we don't need a narrator to tell us what's happening.  We just need to be in the experience, and our own backgrounds and understanding will fill in the rest.  I am sure it was not easy to film this experience in this way-- I understand that the events were just filmed straight through in order 14 times-- from takes that lasted from 20 to 55 minutes long-- to give the experience life. 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181589,00.html

Thus, as difficult and dark this movie is, it is the closest thing to experiencing a real life tragedy.  And I weep openly every time I watch it and do so gladly.  If only to honor the dead, but also to openly recognize the many terrible tragedies that happen on the planet every day. 
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

edgar00

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32427 on: June 13, 2010, 05:40:52 PM »
Floating Weeds (1959, Yasujiro Ozu)

F

What dreck. A shameful, pitiful movie. A steaming pile of dung.
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tinyholidays

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32428 on: June 13, 2010, 05:52:49 PM »
Awesome review, and we Canadians welcome
you with open arms.

Really great review Tiny. I knew you would love it. I agree it deals with the subject matter in a perfect manner. I too took a long time to see it and avoided all 9/11 films because I worked at ground zero right after the attack. I didnt want to see a moralizing or hyper-patriotic film. But of course Greengrass is far too good to give us that.

P.S. As for your #3 life goal. We would love to have you!

P.P.S. Mad Men just went to the top of my queue!

You know, tinyholidays, this is exactly why I love the FS forum-- because of people like you who love the movies I love and for much the same reasons. 

United 93 is an amazing movie, and there is no way I can tell someone who hasn't seen it just how great it is.  Greengrass shows that we don't need a single, fully realized individual for us to understand emotionally what is happening, that we don't need simplified exposition, and we don't need a narrator to tell us what's happening.  We just need to be in the experience, and our own backgrounds and understanding will fill in the rest.  I am sure it was not easy to film this experience in this way-- I understand that the events were just filmed straight through in order 14 times-- from takes that lasted from 20 to 55 minutes long-- to give the experience life. 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181589,00.html

Thus, as difficult and dark this movie is, it is the closest thing to experiencing a real life tragedy.  And I weep openly every time I watch it and do so gladly.  If only to honor the dead, but also to openly recognize the many terrible tragedies that happen on the planet every day. 

Thanks, guys. Thanks especially to the welcoming Canadians. One day, I hope that we will all share the collective burden of one another's health care together.

Clovis, I'm so excited for you to watch Mad Men! Will you give us updates? When the third season ended, I watched the series again from the beginning, and I was shocked by how much it has improved since the pilot. And I thought it was brilliant from the first episode. So, I want to simultaneous heighten and lower your expectations?

Thanks for the link, stevekimes. Greengrass is such an interesting filmmaker. I'm kind of tempted to watch his Bourne movies now, even.

GothamCity151

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #32429 on: June 13, 2010, 06:11:32 PM »
Just got back from El Secreto De Sus Ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes). All I can say is "Wow". I understand now why the Academy awarded this film the Best Foreign Language Oscar. This film is astounding. Every performance is fantastic, the cinematography is beautiful, and it features some of the most suspenseful scenes in recent memory, particularly one involving an elevator. The writing in the film is spectacular. It is dark, witty, and gets your heart racing, the way a thriller should. You are able to make an emotional connection to each of the characters nearly immediately. I can not recommend this movie enough. As of now, it is my 2nd favorite film of the year.

 

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