Author Topic: Write about the last movie you watched (2006-2010)  (Read 5996912 times)

michael x

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29790 on: April 07, 2010, 06:27:50 PM »
Brothers  (Jim Sheridan, 2009)
Grade: C+

Does C+ mean it's worth watching in your grading system? I am curious about seeing this film.

Love Happens  (Brandon Camp, 2009)
I watched this on a plane.  That was the right place to watch it.
Grade: C-

 :D :D

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29791 on: April 07, 2010, 06:35:37 PM »
A Christmas Tale
So, yeah, it's not as good a film as Amélie is all I'm saying.
Grade: B

What a strange, strange pair of films to compare. What, because they are both French?

Heh, yeah, pretty much.  :)

(Actually, I thought the opening of A Christmas Tale recalled the opening of Amélie, formally speaking.)

Does C+ mean it's worth watching in your grading system? I am curious about seeing this film.

C+, for me, is just short of a recommendation — i.e., the film has its moments, but I didn't quite like it overall.

pixote
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29792 on: April 07, 2010, 06:41:03 PM »
Love Happens  (Brandon Camp, 2009)
I watched this on a plane.  That was the right place to watch it.
Are movie selections on planes really this bad?

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29793 on: April 07, 2010, 07:22:55 PM »

Police, Adjective  (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009)
The surveillance scenes were mostly fantastic — both when the cop was watching the kid and when we were watching the cop (at his various meals, for example).  Some of the latter scenes were held a bit too long, I thought, but I liked the idea all the same.  Where the film faltered, I thought, was in the dialogue-driven passages.  The writing there just wasn't as evocative as the purely visual moments, and I didn't like the shift from such understated storytelling to the opposite.
Grade: B


La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet  (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)
The best documentary of last year (and again this year, Filmspot-wise) is probably a better celebration of the human body in motion than Riefenstahl's Olympia.  Totally unexpected from Wiseman, too, who I think has more a reputation for a critical eye for a look of wonder.  The long takes are wonderfully immersive, but also very conducive to getting lost in thought about various unspoken and undirected themes.  Standout scenes include one particular rehearsal of a pas de deux and the exqusitely filmed performance of Medea and her children.  Art from art.
Grade: A-


The White Ribbon  (Michael Haneke, 2009)
I don't remember many specific criticisms about this one except that when it was over, I just kind of shrugged.  It's a very nice production, with strong performances and excellent black-and-white cinematography, but thematically it was just kind of meh for me.  Narratively, too, in the latter stages.
Grade: B


Antichrist  (Lars von Trier, 2009)
This film contains some of the best shots of last year (e.g., the walk in front of the mountain), but also some of the worst shots (specifically, the handheld stuff in the apartment early on).  There's a metaphor in that.  And while Gainsborough's performance is pretty good, it's mostly for naught, as this film is just boring.  Too boring for me to care about its themes.  And provoking an audience reaction isn't that hard, ya know?
Grade: C


Fantastic Mr. Fox  (Wes Anderson, 2009)
Delightful from start to finish.  There was one line, maybe two, that felt forced (and way forced, at that), but most everything else was charming and amusing and funny and I already said delightful, right?  And the animation was totally cool and smile-inducing in its own right.  The best ficton film since Children of Men.
Grade: A

pixote
« Last Edit: April 07, 2010, 07:35:13 PM by pixote »
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roujin

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29794 on: April 07, 2010, 07:29:11 PM »
REVIEWS!

pixote

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29795 on: April 07, 2010, 07:30:45 PM »
REVIEWS!

Thirty more to go ... but I have other places to be. :'(

pixote
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flieger

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29796 on: April 07, 2010, 07:31:15 PM »
REVIEWS!

Just beat me to say: Hooray, some pixote reviews!  :)

1SO

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29797 on: April 07, 2010, 07:39:01 PM »
I feel like I'm missing something.  Why does the screenshot from La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet look like it was produced by Eli Roth?

I assume it's from Medea, but is the film that liberal with the red in general?

Clovis8

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29798 on: April 07, 2010, 07:40:52 PM »
Ratcatcher (1999, Lynne Ramsay)



Between this film and Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay has shot to the top of my favorite working directors list. It is hard to describe, but she has a perfect "eye" for film. Every single frame in her films is a work of art. The only other working director that compares in this sense is Wong Kar-wai. They both infuse the most mundane things with deep beauty. I could watch their films with the sound turned off, they are that gorgeous.





Ramsay sets her film in the middle of a garbage strike and chooses a crushingly poor family as her subject, yet somehow she is able to punctuate this dark world with moments of pure joy.

A young boys first attempts to understand his sexuality.


The power of imagination to free you from sorrow.


This film illustrates the point I was trying to make about "kids films". While the main character in this film is a kid this is in no way a kid's film. It has no easy morality or golden rules. It contains only the harsh realities of life. Lynne Ramsay is not one for fairy tales.

I know it sounds a little like I am crying wolf comparing my second film in as many days to Where the Wild Things Are but this film is so close in tone, visuals and theme that Spike Jonze had to have seen it before making his film. My favorite scene in WTWTA seems to be taken right out of Ratcatcher. When Max is sitting at his mothers feet playing with her stockings has to be an homage to the same scene in this film.


Given my love for this film, my indifference towards WTWTA, and their similarities, I think I need to rewatch the latter.

Ratcatcher is a near masterpiece. I cannot wait for Ramsay's next film which is apparently set in the aftermath of a school shooting.

Grade: A+


Holly Harry

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #29799 on: April 07, 2010, 07:41:51 PM »
A+ is near masterpiece?
"Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again."-Woody Allen.