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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched (2013-2016)  (Read 973670 times)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1950 on: May 27, 2014, 07:45:16 PM »
What led you to Soldier of Orange? Seems like a treat anytime somebody watches a Verhoeven around here, unless it's Robocop - Starship Troopers period, and even that is a rare sight. Verhoeven is one of those filmmakers who has fallen through the cracks of cinema. Even deeper down than Walter Hill.

verbALs

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1951 on: May 28, 2014, 03:06:29 AM »
I think I read about it in one of those "1000 films to see before you die" type books a while back. I was expecting a scratchy "early" film but this has great production values; including some impressive beach scenes protected against sea invasion. You expect grand set pieces from Verhoeven and these are really well done.

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;D I like them so much because they are terrifically commercially minded people, real natural traders. A small country stuck between large nations; playing the middle man. If you have locals to show you round a city like Amsterdam, it's a much better experience isn't it? Their english is better than mine as well.
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1952 on: May 28, 2014, 12:23:02 PM »
Brighton Rock

The performances of Richard Attenborough and Hermione Baddeley in this movie are outstanding in the entire history of British cinema. Baddeley plays the most unlikely detective as she tracks the murder of Kolley Kibber (yes that's right, I spelt it wrong) and tries to save the naif Rose from herself and the dread Pinkie Brown. Baddeley's Ida Arnold, a pier end clown by day, the very definition of the old phrase "brass", is the natural mother hen. She also plays the human analogue of the town of Brighton, tough, seedy; grinning on the outside but hard as a stick of rock through the middle. Brighton appears to be an amoral hell on earth, where the law is sneered at. The seaside town always appeared like an annexed extension of London proper, where the vices of the city run rampant; where all the worst ways to have fun are practised every weekend during the summer. Like Kolley Kibber, it might be better not to visit because you might never be able to leave again.

Terence Rattigan seems to have a levening effect on the heavy Catholic themes of Graham Greene's original. Pinkie Brown's fatalistic guilt trip on poor Rose is lightened on film into a fast moving talk-fest. Attenborough manages to be the underage man patronised by his older colleagues but he also convinces as a dangerous animal. His vicious reactions to being cornered are more beast than human being.

Quite independently from the traditional noir of post-war America; "Brighton Rock" distills the same tone of a morbid, moral vacuum. It seems to exist in its own world, separated from the quirky humour of the Ealing strain and the usual period drama. Greene may have been inspired by hard-boiled writing in the States, but it isn't a copy. Just like the name of the town written through the confectionary, this film is 100% pure post war British city life writ large and nasty.
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy

mañana

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1953 on: May 28, 2014, 04:23:51 PM »


Fort Apache – John Ford, 1948

The film meanders in a few spots. Is that a pattern with Ford’s westerns because I feel like I’ve seen that before? Fonda is the bee’s knees here. He’ll place highly on my 1948 Retrospot ballot.



Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Listless alienation in the modern world, sure, whatever. The real attraction here is how exquisite the industrial wasteland is rendered, which interestingly seems at odds with the film’s bleak central thesis; an ambivalence that turns my crank. I was completely enthralled by the mid-century modernity - architecture that redefines space with only utilitarianism in mind. Structural forms so surreally cold that Antonioni has no choice but to make beautiful. Vitti’s impossibly stunning, yet sad face mirrors these contradictions, but I was too dumbfounded by the presentation of the environment to pay much attention to her psychological and spiritual torment. I’m sure others don’t skip that and experience this film properly.   



T.A.M.I. Show - Steve Binder, 1964

Tickets were given free to local high school students. Wowza! The Anglophilia on display here is pretty abhorrent. Having a pre-Satisfaction Stones follow James Brown is of course the most obvious offense, but Gerry & the Pacemakers finishing Chuck Berry’s set is perhaps even more distasteful.




Volver - Pedro Almodovar, 2006

A master class of tone balancing as it transitions from melodrama to farce, and then back again. Narratively speaking its revelations and twists are wonderfully bonkers, yet it somehow doesn’t feel that way as it unfolds. The rich, bold palette is totally embracing and beautiful - elevated camp of the highest order. Women as a life force, and the cast completely realizes this doctrine. Definitely the first women-centred Almodovar drama (The Skin I Live In is more of a thriller, and Banderas struck me as the focus) I’ve fully gone for, rather than merely admiring from a distance.   
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Junior

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1954 on: May 28, 2014, 04:28:34 PM »
Fort Apache – John Ford, 1948

The film meanders in a few spots. Is that a pattern with Ford’s westerns because I feel like I’ve seen that before? Fonda is the bee’s knees here. He’ll place highly on my 1948 Retrospot ballot.

Yes. Also noticeable in The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
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roujin

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1955 on: May 28, 2014, 04:30:19 PM »
The meandering parts are the good parts.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1956 on: May 28, 2014, 04:31:03 PM »
Sometimes, certainly! Other times (Fort Apache...) not so much.
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1957 on: May 28, 2014, 05:18:34 PM »
Belle (Amma Asante, 2014)

The period drama is a tried and true genre, with romance aplenty. A lot of times, these films are based on either actual events, or famous novels by one or more of the Bronte sisters. They have been done well, they have been done poorly, they have been done to a mediocre level. They have been done a million times over, and yet they have their audience, devoted and loving. It's a genre that may tread on familiar themes time and again, but these are good themes, and when done well can be extremely effective. Belle turns the tables on these conventions by adding a new layer: an aristocrat who happens to also be black.

Based on a true story, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the illegitimate daughter of a man with status (Matthew Goode) and an unknown black woman. When her father is about to set off on a nautical journey, he comes to collect his daughter, who by birth is due her status in the family. As her surrogate sister (Sarah Gadon) is seeking a wealthy husband, Belle's attractiveness brings suitors and bigots alike. But when her uncle (Tom Wilkinson) faces a challenging verdict as supreme judge, her romance flourishes with a young man whose passion for equality challenges the establishment.

Belle is a film that surprises on a number of different levels, but first and foremost it is a film fueled by its central performance. Gugu Mbatha-Raw shines as Belle, from start to finish. It is her power and conviction that carries not only the role, but the film. Her struggle, her passion and inner turmoil is what makes the film tick and work. Mbatha-Raw hits every scene and every emotion in an extremely powerful performance from a young actress. Without such a strong titular performance, the film very easily could have fallen apart at the seems of its beautiful period costumes. Without the sympathy and empowerment provided in that character, the rest of the film becomes much more trite and conceived in the same test tube all the mediocre period films were born.

Without the material to dig her teeth into, however, Mbatha-Raw would have just been a pretty face looking out of place in Victorian England. Amma Asante and screenwriter Misan Sagay also deserve credit for crafting a film with such depth. Belle's complex character development lets us in to her experience as an out of place aristocrat. The film examines women's self-doubts and self-esteem with great care, managing to draw parallels to the same issues women go through today, the same horrors they face from men. Belle faces most of this, but Elizabeth faces some too. Not much has changed from then to now, with socio-economic status, race, and other factors affecting relationships. When we get down to it, love should most always win the day. Belle celebrates this.

The case in which Belle's uncle is involved seems a it of a shoehorn into the greater part of the story, but Asante treats it with enough heft to not make it seem too out of place or forced in, deciding to focus much more of her attention on the romances and Belle's personal development. Another issue I found with it was the character of Mr. Davinier, who comes across as too ideal, to the point that he becomes unrelatable. In a way he serves at the manic pixie dream boy, instead of girl, whose actions only serve Belle and not his own motives. Perhaps this is an overstatement, and honestly it does not bring the film down much, especially since it's refreshing to see this role out of a man for once instead of always the woman. These two petty issues are not nearly enough to trump the amazing performance from Mbatha-Raw, or the depth of story presented by Asante and Sagay. Belle is a wonderful, delightful, thoughtful film.

*** - Very Good
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1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1958 on: May 28, 2014, 06:35:28 PM »
Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Listless alienation in the modern world, sure, whatever.

I wonder what draws filmmakers to make films about loneliness and isolation, and how it's often met with ambivalence. I just watched 2 by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that have that as a theme. Plus there's Tsai, Akerman, Bergman, Kieslowski and Sofia Coppola to name a few. This isn't the only subject in their films but it is a recurring idea. One of the reasons why I liked Un homme qui dort is the kid hadn't given in to his situation.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1959 on: May 28, 2014, 06:43:51 PM »
Because life is awful.