What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[runningdownthatdream]

If referring to light-weight, flimsy action films which have no real story you might be right, but consider my argument from a different perspective. I would argue that the best action/drama films out of the US endure over time and stand up to repeated viewing because, amongst other things, the good guys are as interesting as the bad guys, and in almost every case, 'the enemy within' has dominated. This is true of the gangster classics of the 1930s shaped by issue such as prohibition and the depression; the films noir of the 1940s and 1950s where Americans who fail to realise their 'American Dream' take it out on other Americans, or the films from the 1960s where institutional corruption often shapes the plot. Even in a classic like The French Connection the French villain is working with American villains; in The Godfather the enemy is within in the sense that much of the drama is shaped by the conflict between and within the Mafia families. In Dirty Harry, a Conservative critique of liberal law, namely Miranda, the bad guy is that all-too familiar American -the madman with a gun.
There have been divergent examples, in Blade Runner the 'bad guys' are Replicants; in the Matrix trilogy laid low by its Messiah-complex, the enemy is a computer system and then its virus. But look again at Tarantino's queer fantasies -not only are the villains American, they are all male, and in The Usual Suspects, the arch-villain Keyser Soze is...American, surely? In fact, it seems that it is when the action/drama film relies on foreign intruder stereotypes that they fail, at the level of drama, and rely on an orgy of killing to replace the plot.
The one case where the villain is truly problematic is the American woman, as in dire films such as Basic Instinct, Presumed Innocent and Fatal Attraction, with the worst being the abysmal sample of a man dressed as a woman Dressed to Kill. What was Michael Caine thinking of, other than the pay cheque?

Other than the examples of misogyny, I hope you see my point.

Agreed........a film like Takers surely falls into the category of lightweight.....it stars Chris Brown AND Hayden Christensen FFS. Such films are made for a certain type of movie-goer.......the type who enjoys WWE-style 'pro' wrestling for example.

The better action/dramas like those you mentioned usually keel to a deeper meaning. And likewise the pseudo-intellectual films that you mentioned are all silk-covered manure which DIDN'T seem to be quite that at the time they were released. I recently watched 'The Killing of a Chinese Bookie' as well as 'The Long Goodbye'. Both were hailed as brilliant when released but seeing them now for the first time I find them to be just pretentious and transparent, lacking honesty and depth. Unlike let's say 'The French Connection' and 'Blade Runner'.

[runningdownthatdream]

Agree with all of your points. But that still means there's been a lot of cheap stereotyping in Hollywood movies simply because so many are poorly done. No surprise that when a screenwriter or director relies on a national or cultural stereotype instead of character development, the other aspects of the film are not well executed.

Small point is that in the flashback Keyser Soze is revealed as a Turkish man whose family is killed. In this case, probably not a stereotype, but just a way of connecting a mysterious name with a culture. Certainly Kevin Spacey's character had no trace of a Turkish accent and the back story was told as something of a rumor or legend.

I think I get your point here and I agree. There was no need for the stupid name - it was a cheap trick.

[Stavros]

Arrival (Denis Vileneuve, 2016)
Given the choice between peace and war, we should always choose peace.
This film, which presents itself as a palindrome, is about language and time, and how, if we only learn how to communicate with each other, we can live in peace and harmony, and how we entertain the illusion that we can move through time through memory, but in fact are condemned to live it in only one direction. If there is a major flaw in the film, which has a few (the voice over; and the 12 apostles arrive, they remain, they communicate, and then they...), it is the failure to link the audience to Louise Banks' ability to understand the language of the extra-terrestrials -we can see what is happening, but there is no child-like explanation for a dim audience, which is what you would get, say, in a Spielberg film. Nevertheless, on a scale of 7/10 this is a well-made film that is worth seeing, with a choice of lighting that helps, as it were, to illuminate the story.

[Absarokah]

[sukumvit boy]

Let me help you here: Keyser or Qaysar is Turkish for Emperor/Caesar; Soze means Speech, thus: Keyser Soze = Caesar/Emperor of Speech = the man who talks his way out of police custody. Maybe Roger 'Verbal' Kint has had dealings with Turkish drug dealers...
You know nothing, John Snow...

Fucking amazing , I always wondered about that !

[sukumvit boy]

I just finished reading John Le Carre's ( real name David Cornwall) newest book ,The Pigeon Tunnel : Stories From My Life
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts...7d4a5f19b0b149
So I decided it was time to rewatch The Third Man , Orson Wells (1949) . That film never gets old for me , I'm so lucky to have a stunning black and white Criterion Collection edition because I see it's no longer available at Amazon.I also never tire of the wonderful zither sound track by zither virtuoso Anton Kares.




Also decided to watch The Spy Who Came In From the Cold , Richard Burton (1965).I had read the book but never saw the movie. I see that's available on Youtube , plan to watch it tonight.

[Stavros]

So I decided it was time to rewatch The Third Man , Orson Wells (1949) . That film never gets old for me , I'm so lucky to have a stunning black and white Criterion Collection edition because I see it's no longer available at Amazon.I also never tire of the wonderful zither sound track by zither virtuoso Anton Kares.

I once considered watching The Third Man just to count the number of times that damn zither plays the theme tune. It was going to be part of a superficial study into the abuse of music in films. I would also have had to sit through Bo Widerberg's Elvira Madigan (1967) to count the number of times one passage from the andante of Mozart's Piano concerto k467 is played, ditto Visconti's film Death in Venice (1971) in which the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony is massacred so many times I think I stopped listening to the symphony for years thereafter, and it is still my least favourite Mahler.

Why would anyone play one portion of a piece of music 100 times in succession, and then stick it in a film -to drive the audience mad?

Karas plucked the theme tune from a guitar practice book and far from enhancing it, gives The Third Man a layer of irritation to add to the cynical plot with its glaring hole -why does Lime invite Holly to Vienna when Lime is making money from crime, the kind of activity Holly frowns upon? I guess Lime doesn't know his friend very well.

The film is contrived and cut from cardboard. Graham Greene based Lime on Kim Philby, which doesn't really chime in with the crime element. You may also want to check your running times as the British version is 11 minutes longer than the US version which also has a voice-over at the beginning to explain that Vienna is divided into four zones controlled by the Russians, the Americans, the French and the British, though the thought of an extra 11 minutes with that damn tune is more than I could bear.

There is also a scene in Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) in which the contract killer justifies his job on the basis that life has no meaning. It is actually a better scene than the one on the Ferris wheel in the Prater given that Switzerland has in fact produced more than the Cuckoo Clock, and Michael Mann is usually better at making films than Carol Reed.
The Third Man -a film for the dustbin of history.

[Vladimir Putin]

"Rules Don't Apply" at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, with a Q&A with Warren Beatty afterwards.

[sukumvit boy]

Very interesting and amusing comments Stavros , thanks . Yes ,I am familiar with the British version.
I was hoping to hear your take in the Burton "Spy" movie.

[Stavros]

Very interesting and amusing comments Stavros , thanks . Yes ,I am familiar with the British version.
I was hoping to hear your take in the Burton "Spy" movie.

Have only seen it once many years ago and cannot recall much of it. I don't rate Burton as an actor- too much ham- but willing to see it again, though I do think it is one of Le Carre's better books.