Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched (2013-2016)  (Read 973304 times)

pixote

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4880 on: April 24, 2015, 01:26:29 PM »
Atari: Game Over

Agreed on all points, MartinTeller. It made me wish the whole six-part series was just about Atari. Seemed like there was so much more interesting material there.

pixote
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smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4881 on: April 24, 2015, 02:27:05 PM »
The Big Street (1942)
* *

I'm not sure I get the tagline: "Love is what gives you one room, two chins and a long washline". ???

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4882 on: April 24, 2015, 03:35:12 PM »
There's a line in the film where Gloria says, "Love is what gives you one room, two chins and three children." Is that any more clear? The title also makes no sense. There's the street of the nightclub where Gloria is injured. There's the apartment where she rests for a while. Then the last third is on Miami Beach. So obviously not a literal interpretation, but then I don't know what it's supposed to represent. Perhaps Love is The Big Street?

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4883 on: April 24, 2015, 06:23:56 PM »
I now realize Morgan Freeman plays a lot of scientists.
and Humphrey Bogart played a lot of nightclub owners.

Tokyo Joe (1949)
* 1/2
Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart) owned a Tokyo nightclub before WW II. He returns years later to start a new business, but is sidetracked by an old flame who is now with someone else. They had a song she used to sing just for him. Sound familiar? There are times when I thought I had walked into a remake of Casablanca. However, this has none of the colorful characters. Just Bogie, out there by his lonesome.

It can be interesting watching how a really good actor stays alive while the film dies around him. Even playing familiar beats, being hobbled by obvious rear projection and a photo double who can't even walk away from camera in a trench coat or flick a cigarette convincingly, there are still moments. Bogart's star power remains intact. (Has there ever been a less attractive, less appealing actor who repeatedly worked as a romantic lead?) By the final 20 minutes, my wife and I weren't even sure what was going on. All the conflicts got resolved off camera as it goes into a smuggling and kidnapping finale. For completists only.

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4884 on: April 24, 2015, 07:11:20 PM »

After being very amused and impressed with Ilha das Flores, I wanted to check out more by this Brazilian director.  Neither of these are as impactful, but they're still good. In O Dia em Que Dorival Encarou a Guarda, Dorival (João Acaiabe) is a military prisoner in solitary confinement.  He wants to take a shower, but there are "orders" against it.  Dorival keeps threatening and insulting his way up the ranks in order to achieve his goal.  This is early in Furtado's career (his second film) but he makes crafty use of footage from King Kong and Casablanca (and also a scene based on the Italian comic book character Tex Willer, but I can't tell if Furtado shot it or if it's from an existing western).  Particularly when the voices of Dorival and a guard are coming out of the mouths of Bogart and Dooley Wilson!  The film tries to balance humor and social criticism -- on issues of both power and race -- and doesn't quite succeed, but there are strong elements and a solid ending.  Rating: Very Good (81)

In O Sanduíche (The Sandwich) we see a couple going through a break-up.  The man (Felipe Mônaco) is moving out and having a parting conversation with the woman (Janaína Kremer Motta).  Suddenly we learn they're a pair of actors rehearsing for a play.  The woman makes the man a sandwich and the two start talking about their own past break-ups.  And then.... well, it gets meta.  In an almost annoyingly predictable way at first, but it keeps escalating until it becomes pretty clever.  I think Mohsen Makhmalbaf would dig this.  It doesn't have a lot of heft to it but it works on a lot of different levels.  And it's fun.  Rating: Good (79)


In looking for more Furtado to explore, I discovered he directed The Man Who Copied, a film I started watching a couple years ago and got bored with.  I may have to give that a second chance.

oldkid

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4885 on: April 24, 2015, 07:52:20 PM »
I watched it as a $3 rental on youtube from warnervod.

Found it.  Thanks.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4886 on: April 24, 2015, 08:15:48 PM »
There's a line in the film where Gloria says, "Love is what gives you one room, two chins and three children." Is that any more clear? The title also makes no sense. There's the street of the nightclub where Gloria is injured. There's the apartment where she rests for a while. Then the last third is on Miami Beach. So obviously not a literal interpretation, but then I don't know what it's supposed to represent. Perhaps Love is The Big Street?

Movies titles are funny like that sometimes eh. Hard to tell if they're really deep or really simple. :))

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4887 on: April 25, 2015, 01:31:07 AM »

Mr. Nobody (2009)
"Every path is the right path. Everything could've been anything else.
And it would have just as much meaning."


I can see why this film's been slowly building a cult of devoted fans since its release. It's a philosophical look at the way we live our lives and the choices that help to shape them wrapped inside a bold, magical, visual style that I might've lapped up myself when I was younger and a devotee to directors like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. It belongs in a conversation with Wes Anderson and films like Bram Stoker's Dracula, except those films and filmmakers have a consistency. You immediately know who's at the helm. Mr. Nobody is visually stacked but there's nothing tying the vision together.

I could sum this movie up in four words: Young Adult Cloud Atlas. Mr. Nobody lives outside of time and whenever there's a difficult choice to be made, his story splits into alternate paths. He meets three women who all become his wife at various points in his lives. Some disappear only to return many years later. There's also his parents, who force him to make a life-altering decision with no time to consider. (That moment, which is the core of the film, is ridiculous in its set-up.) All of this allows the film to hop, skip and jump to different places in time and space, including the distant future and the planet Mars.

Frankly, I'm surprised the final product isn't very confusing, though it's highly schizophrenic. Funny that Cloud Atlas has 3 directors but plays like a single vision while this is a Frankenstein of ideas from one Jaco Van Dormael. Often, JVD isn't inspired in his choices. He was just trying to come up with a way to keep everything spinning. So we get WTF moments like a fantasy filmed in pseudo 8mm where Leto is a caveman protecting one of his wives from a bear. Whenever the story runs into a wall, they flood the set and Leto pops out of a bathtub where a man is waiting to shoot him dead. (Still not sure what this is about.)

Time and again, emotional points are undercut by camera magic. I never felt for the characters because the director was too busy adjusting his smoke and mirrors to let me get close to them. (It also hurts that Jared Leto's character is named Nemo, recalling a popular Pixar film every time somebody shouted his name.) Even Birdman, for all it's one-take moxie, would often just pick a spot and let the characters breathe in the frame. This isn't as fortunate, though some of the performances still manage to make an impression, especially Jared Leto.
RATING: * * 1/2

oldkid

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4888 on: April 25, 2015, 09:28:35 AM »
I was rolling with this film and was ready to put it on my top 100 until the last half hour or so, when it started to give us the point of the madness and it all ended up so shallow.  I was disappointed at that point, but I'd be happy to watch it again for the first half, which was exhilarating.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #4889 on: April 25, 2015, 09:02:24 PM »
Interstellar - I want to start with this: I am not a Nolan hater.  Granted, I am not a big fan like so many others are, and I thought The Dark Knight Rises was pretty damn weak, but most of his movies I've enjoyed on some level.  I even think The Prestige and Memento are quite good.  But this... this is just awful.  I mean laughably bad.  I liked the stuff about relativity, I found that rather intriguing (and I joked to my lady that 3 hours of this movie was like 26 years, though I'm sure I'm not the first to make that crack).  And some of the visuals are very striking.  But otherwise I'm at a loss for anything nice to say.  So much terrible dialogue, so much bad exposition, SO MUCH CRYING.  Nolan can be great with ideas but he's utterly inept with emotion.  This movie tries so hard to make you feel something and fails every single time.  I don't know if I should blame the writing or the performance, not a one of which was any good.

I went into this film with somewhat low expectations, but it was far worse than I'd imagined.  If it wasn't reaching so much for poignancy it might have worked, but even the basic storytelling is riddled with cliché and nonsense.  Heck, even the scientific aspects are sketchy.  And oh lord, I never thought I could despise Dylan Thomas so much.  Rating: Crap (32)

 

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