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Author Topic: Write about the last movie you watched (2006-2010)  (Read 5996447 times)

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12710 on: March 22, 2009, 10:14:17 PM »
Brute Force  (Jules Dassin, 1947)
Some nice photography and some good starkness to some of the drama, but a bit of a disappointment overall (relative to expectations).  Hume Cronyn as the heavy is genius casting.
Grade: B

The Big Clock  (John Farrow, 1948)
The setup is really awkward, but after that the film gets surprisingly entertaining.  It helps that I'm a sucker for Charles Laughton.  Harry Morgan as the heavy is genius casting.
Grade: B

Three Strangers  (Jean Negulesco, 1946)
The setup is really great — Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Geraldine Fitzgerald in a room together, feeling each other out — but it's all kind of downhill from there.  Some good moments, but way more overblown than it should have been, with the separate fates of the three characters rarely being as interesting as the frame that unites them.  Liked Peter Whitney here, though.
Grade: C+

Garden  (Ruthie Shatz & Adi Barash, 2003)
Really strong documentary about a pair of semi-homeless, teenage male hustlers working the Garden area of Tel Aviv.  Some familiar elements from films like Streetwise and Children Underground, but the portrait of the friendship between the two guys (Nino and Dudu) is pretty unique and very special.  The film is airing again on the Sundance Channel on March 27.  You should check it out, probably.
Grade: B+

pixote
« Last Edit: March 22, 2009, 10:16:50 PM by pixote »
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Junior

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12711 on: March 22, 2009, 10:18:23 PM »
The Big Clock  (John Farrow, 1948)
Not enough penis.
Grade: B -

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pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12712 on: March 22, 2009, 10:48:27 PM »
Story of Women  (Claude Chabrol, 1988)
I've mostly repressed my experience of this one.  A chore to get through, that much I remember.  Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Grade: C

Little Odessa  (James Gray, 1994)
Mostly just alight, though the ending is awful.  Oh, and please tell me the film wasn't referencing concentration camp ovens like it seemed it might be.  Thanks.
Grade: C+

The Devil and Daniel Webster  (William Dieterle, 1941)
This film is too insane not to earn a positive grade.  There are some brilliant moments and some wonderfully campy moments and some totally bizarre moments and some really nice photography and effects.  Walter Huston has a lot of fun as the devil, but James Craig is generally bland and even annoying as the farmer who strikes a Faustian bargain with him.
Grade: B-

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie  (John Cassavetes, 1976)
I watched this on the Sundance Channel, and they showed the original, 135-minute cut of the film.  I'm anxious now to rent the Criterion disc and check out the 108-minute version Cassavetes edited together for the 1978 rerelease — because the version I saw had so much potential.  It's very good, and some many individual scenes fantastic, but it just didn't all come together really.  The milieu of the film is absolutely perfect.  And I'm smiling now just thinking about Mr. Sophistication.
Grade: B

pixote
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ˇKeith!

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12713 on: March 22, 2009, 10:58:34 PM »
My Name Is Bruce

With JCVD, a great double feature.

Just don't add Pauly Shore is Dead and make it a triple.

duder

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12714 on: March 22, 2009, 11:18:55 PM »
Little Odessa  (James Gray, 1994)
Rewatched a few scenes. This is still great



and so is this



and so is this



and so is this



Stop underrating movies, pixote :(

...

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12715 on: March 22, 2009, 11:22:24 PM »
Camille  (George Cukor, 1936)
Hmm, I should probably review movies sooner after seeing them so I have something to say.  Let's see.  Cukor had a reputation for getting good performance from his leading ladies but ignoring his actors (that's what Clark Gable maybe told me anyway), and this film fuels that idea.  Garbo is good, but Robert Taylor is horrible.  Partly that's just casting, but he could maybe have at least made an effort to be vaguely European or something.  Opposite Garbo, his aw shucks Nerbaskaness just seemed silly and better suited for a supporting role behind Jimmy Stewart.  I could never get past that and buy into the romance at the heart of the story.  Henry Daniell, on the other hand, was sort of a revelation.  Contemptuous sneering is rarely so delightful.
Grade: C+

Milk  (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
A second viewing made it clear how much better the first half is than the second — maybe because once James Franco moves out, the movie enters territory that The Times of Harvey Milk covers better.
Grade: B+

Bring It On  (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
Fun.  Have all you Dollhouse watchers been lying to me about Eliza Dushku?  I liked her here.  Jesse Bradford had his moments, too.  Is he still around?
Grade: C+

A Thousand Clowns  (Fred Coe, 1965)
Probably at its best early on when it's just Jason Robards and Barry Gordon.  Robards is just so much fun to watch (I really want to rewatch Long Day's Journey Into Night now).  Things gets progressively clunkier once William Daniels and Barbara Harris show up, and the way Harris ends up sticking around felt kind of forced to me.  It's still good throughout, but early on it seemed on pace to be great.  Martin Balsam is strong and appealing — though I'm maybe a little surprised he won the Oscar — and Gene Saks gets the energy level back up with all that Chuckles the Chipmunk stuff.  Fred Coe was mostly a tv director, and it really shows here, generally in a bad way.  The editing is particularly awful.  It's a shame 12 Angry Men didn't convince filmmakers that "opening up" a play is not esssential in adapting it to film.
Grade: B

pixote
« Last Edit: March 22, 2009, 11:24:29 PM by pixote »
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pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12716 on: March 22, 2009, 11:25:24 PM »
This is still great

and so is this

and so is this

and so is this

Yes (though the setup to that scene should have been better), yes (Redgrave really enlivens things), no, and definitely not.

pixote
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skjerva

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12717 on: March 22, 2009, 11:31:00 PM »
finally made time for a flick - The Last House on the Left (2009) - quite good, and much better than the original.
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

ˇKeith!

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12718 on: March 22, 2009, 11:36:54 PM »
Bring It On  (Gus Van Sant, 2008)

WHERE CAN I SEE THIS!!!!!!

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #12719 on: March 22, 2009, 11:53:27 PM »
The Mask of Dimitrios  (Jean Negulesco, 1944)
Lorre and Greenstreet in another Negulesco film, but this one's not even as good as Three Strangers.  The plotting is really dumb, and moments where Lorre says things aloud for our benefit ("How did he know my name? I never told him my name.") were typical of the overall cartoonishness and had me wishing I was watching the Warner Bros. cartoon version of Lorre instead.
Grade: C-

Fallen Angel  (Otto Preminger, 1945)
This ruins my theory about how every movie with Dana Andrews in it is fantastic.  The cinematography is great — Preminger and Joseph LaShelle choreograph some glorious moving camera shots — but the story is pretty weak.  So weird film for this to be Alice Faye's final film (for years and years).  She didn't fit here at all.  Andrews and Linda Darnell are better, but I sort of wish this had been Charles Bickford's film from the start.  The ending's not bad on its own, but it feels like something out of a totally different film (which is the same thing I said about Michael Clayton's, actually).
Grade: C+

Downstairs  (Monta Bell, 1932)
Damn these pre-Code films, taunting me with what could have been.  This is a fun little comedy.  Saucy, too!  Feels more like something out of 1932 France than 1932 Hollywood, with a strong Lubitsch feel as well.  John Gilbert has a really good time as the unrepentant scoundrel of a protagonist, and Paul Lukas' performance — as the butler trying to keep the house in order hold onto his new wife (Virginia Bruce) — has me convinced to stop putting off seeing Watch on the Rhine.
Grade: B

The Tall T  (Budd Boetticher, 1957)
So simple yet so good.  I was expecting more action, but the film is mostly buildup — and really good buildup at that.  I've been iffy on Randolph Scott, but he's fantastic here.  Richard Boone is strong, too (is Have Gun - Will Travel on DVD?), but Henry Silva nearly steals the show as the gayest draw in the west.  John Hubbard's character is annoying, moreso that the story requires, I think, but otherwise everything is pretty good here.  I just wanted more is all.
Grade: B+

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