What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 196
For reasons I cannot explain I had never seen this film before last night, even though I have seen most of Leone's films several times, they are that good. Nevertheless, I do always feel there is in Leone's films a lack of bite, perhaps because he prefers to create moods and impressions the most common of which is the lowered head (usually wearing a hat) rising to look at someone or something in the distance, accompanied by a short musical motif. Leone spent much of his early years working on productions of opera, and I wonder if the motifs -particularly those associated with curses, or fate- that one finds in the operas of Verdi and Wagner influenced him throughout life. Revenge, and the woes that follow men in search of money by any means is a repetitive theme in Leone films, but he does it well, though the women in his films lack depth of character. Leone died too soon to make more than about 12 films, but they stand up to repeated viewing, I can't imagine anyone making a western this good in 2016, it is hard to believe it was made in 1967 and released the year after.

Yeah, that's a great movie! And it has a wonderful Morricone score as well. I like it better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Jason Robards is great in it, and of course Claudia Cardinale is a goddess.

I had to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory last night, in memory of Gene Wilder.

[Stavros]

A Fistful of Dynamite (Sergio Leone, 1971) aka Duck, You Sucker!
The last of the Leone films I had not seen before, and for all the trademarks -the whistling theme tune as a motif for fate, the sweaty faces peering out under hats, the cynical realist counterposed to the doubting idealist- the film is probably half an hour or even an hour too long. The film with its Mexican revolutionaries and criminal underclass bears some comparison with Damiani's A Bullet for the General (196 which is a darker, meaner film than Leone's, but one admires -or dislikes- the slow pace of Leone's films, his near obsession with the contrast between landscape and close-ups, and the way he tries to unravel moral arguments in situations where they either do not exist, or ought to. Unusually I think are the scenes of mass murder in the film, and quite uncommon in westerns.

[Stavros]

Yeah, that's a great movie! And it has a wonderful Morricone score as well. I like it better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Jason Robards is great in it, and of course Claudia Cardinale is a goddess.

I had to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory last night, in memory of Gene Wilder.

Cannot add a positive word on Gene Wilder, as The Producers was so wretched an experience Wilder became an actor to avoid.

[sukumvit boy]

Wow , surprised to see your comment on Wilder ,Stavros.
For me , there are a few actors and comedians I just cannot watch. It is usually because of something about their personal style I just find annoying .
I can understand why some people might find Wilder's style hackneyed , but those Mel Brooks comedies never seem to get stale for me.
However ,I respect your apparent reluctance to speak unkindly of the recently deceased .

[Stavros]

Janis: Little Girl Blue (Amy Berg, 2015)
This biographical film about the singer Janis Joplin aired on the BBC last night, and offered an insight into what it was that both motivated Janis Joplin and ultimately killed her. From a middle class home in Port Arthur in Texas, Janis was ridiculed and abused in school to the extent that one year she was voted 'the ugliest man', a devastating judgement for a teenager, and one that may have haunted her for years thereafter. In addition to her 'tomboy' looks she was a rebel and graduated naturally to the folk-bues-rock scene that was emerging in Austin at the time, an era coincident with the growth of the 'counter-culture' that became the expression of the first generation to have been born during or after the Second World War. It became evident too that Janis had a natural blues voice, and she moved from Austin to San Francisco where in addition to feeling she was in a different world and growing into the music scene that led to her first group -Big Brother and the Holding Company- she was turned on to heroin by a boyfriend. She found love of a sort in the adulation of the public she played to, and needed both that and the intensity of live performance to feel fulfilled, albeit temporarily, but after the excitement of a live gig with no means of 'coming down' heroin became the means of doing so. There were times when she managed to get off the habit, and she found an all-consuming love with a man she met in Brazil in the last year of her life, but their commitments took them apart. What the film does not explore is what impact Janis Joplin's death had on her family, notably her parents who were both happy that she had found something she was good and successful at, but probably appalled by her behaviour and reputation. What the film does provide is an example of a voice that in its prime was thrilling in its raw intensity, a core sound from the 1960s as vital as the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, Cream and Hendrix. Indeed, and even though the genre might be different, it is hard to think of a better singer emerging from the US since the 1960s, as most of the female singers since then have been bland, safe, and in many cases not even real singers, the exception being Alison Krauss. I would go so far as to say that the sound of Janis Joplin resembles a firework display of raw emotion, where the sound of Adele or Beyonce resembles a pile of shit.

[Stavros]

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)
I saw this worthless garbage on the red eye from Toronto, in the murky hours before midnight. A revenge drama in which a posse of real American Trumps who discard the law in favour of 'direct action' against the drug cartels heads down to See-You-Dad Whore-ez, where they shoot up a couple of cars full of tattooed gun-slinging cartelinos (no complaint from Mexican government of course) and then head off to a tunnel in Arizona while elsewhere the 'man of mystery' (not-so Benicio del Toro) obliterates the cartel hombre who murdered his wife and daughter. Into this risible crap the English actor with a Merry Can accent, Emily Blunt, is plunged to offer a moral compass- or come, pass (because she is FBI who are, in this case, literally pussies) which has no relevance as there are no morals in this film at any time. DJ Trump must love this film, which replaces law with action, even though, or because the Gosh! Brolin character admits that until Merry Cans stop shoving white powder up their nose, the trade and its war will go on, and on, and on. This does rather beg the question -who is good, who is evil? Without an answer. Had I not been 35,000 feet over the Atlantic at 11pm, I would have been inclined to leave before the end. Reader, I stayed.

[hardiron4u]

Interesting insight into the true story of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters in the late 1940's.

[Stavros]

Interesting insight into the true story of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters in the late 1940's.

This topic has been tried before with Guilty By Suspicion, an Irwin Winkler film from 1991 with Robert de Niro that to me was a bit too righteous and lacking in both a good script and drama.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101984/...nm_flmg_act_74

[Budweiser]

Sully.

[hardiron4u]

Red Corner


A interesting story about criminal justice in China involving an American lawyer accused of murder. Be careful who you pick-up when thinking with the wrong head!!!!!