What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Jericho]

The Wild Bunch (again).
Love the set-up to the final shoot-out (puts me in mind of the 'walk' in Reservoir Dogs).

[aprilian]

I compared the two versions of Solaris -I avoided watching the Steven Soderbergh version of Stanislaw Lem's novel from 2002 because Tarkovsky (1972) is one of my favourite directors even though he wasn't satisfied with the film. Soderbergh has filleted out the key element of Lem's book which fascinated Tarkovsky -what happens if humans are given extraordinary powers? In Solaris the impact of a distant planet on the consciousness can resurrect the dead, or give scientists the power to realise something previously beyond their ability -it drives the scientists on the space station to madness or a non-productive stasis -the psychologist who arrives to decide if the station should be shut down re-encounters a wife dead for ten years; ultimately he dispenses with her, but she re-appears, and at the end it isn't clear if Kelvin ever made it back to Earth...by contrast, Soderbergh is only interested in the love story of a man who re-discovers his wife and can't let her go. A superficial neutering of a story about absolute power. Tarkovsky returned to this theme with greater success in Stalker.

So true of many Hollywood movies. I go to the line "Without the love story, Titanic is just a movie about a sinking ship"

[robertlouis]

"Blue Jasmine", the newest Woody Allen movie with a quite wonderful performance by its leading lady Cate Blanchett. Surely a serious contender for an Oscar. This has to be the first film I've seen by Allen that is not recognisable as a Woody Allen film. There is no character who is Woody by any other name. You forget his directorial style and ticks. But it is scarcely a comedy. It is I suppose, at best, a tragi-comedy about a woman destroyed by mishaps in her life.

Surely inspired by he aftermath of the Bernie Madoff affair and the plight of his wife, (though Woody denies it) this really is a very moving film.

I rather fancy this film too, but in all the chaos of moving house it's almost certainly going to be another one to pick up later on DVD.

[ymb469]

Outpost 11. But just in general, movie4k.to... Click-throughs but nothing too bad...

[fred41]

Les Miserables (Tom Hooper, 2012)
Hugo's bloated novel at over 1,000 pages does at least allow some character development; it may be unfair to expect a musical, even one as tediously long as this to offer anything comparable in substance, but this train wreck of a film suggests the book of this musical is more a set of light sketches joined together by a diluted plot which has no drama.
Fatally, for a musical, it has only one memorable song, I dreamed a dream; in addition I think there are three upbeat numbers where everything else is a ballad, big mistake. It all sounds the same, from beginning to end. The male singers are all tenors, where a dark bass or baritone voice would have suited either Javert or Valjean, not least because both Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman strain to reach the notes even in falsetto, though since they can't sing anyway this is an academic point. So on the big song Ann Hathway barks and sobs her way through it, not having had a coach to teach her how to either sing, or phrase a word. One of the songs, the one at the end sung by Valjean a reprise from earlier on, is frankly too close to the Humming Chorus of Puccini's Madama Butterfly (it closes Act II).

Think of the great musicals -My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Oliver!, South Pacific, The King and I, heavens even The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins -they all have five or six hit songs, there are happy songs, ballads, dance routines, choruses, songs for sopranos, songs for baritones, and so on and so on. What does Les Miserables have?
I screamed a scream...

Stavros, I figured I'd try to review this film from a perspective of someone who actually liked the musical. I saw it on Broadway and watched the Broadcast of the 25th anniversary of the show on PBS...and loved it.

Well...I can't give a complete critique of the film because I didn't get very far. I made it a third of the way through then I turned it off. It's bad. Why?...because they put together a cast with enough modern day star power that seemed like a perfect fit on paper. It seemed like a good cast for a Les Miserables movie...and it is....if you want to make yet another film based on the Victor Hugo novel..(what the hell - there's already a ton out there, why not one more ..right?).
...but it doesn't work as a musical. They chose hammy overacting to the music...which is always a fatal mistake. Everything Stavros said is pretty much true. Russell Crowe can't sing any better than the average person belting out a tune in their car on the way to work....and at the very least, they should have picked an actor who was perhaps a Baritone (watch the Norm Lewis version of Javert in the 25 anniversary edtion...he's the actor that plays Sen. Davis, Kerry Washington's former love interest in the television show "Scandal"). Anne Hathaway sobs her way through the centerpiece song to the point where you can barely feel the music through her snot filled diction.
I will probably try this movie again at a later date to view Samantha Barks as Eponine (I'll just fast forward)...she's got a good voice and she's a total cutie-pie.
That's it.

[Odelay]

I was one of the countless hoard who saw Gravity this weekend. The movie runs 90 minutes, the plot is spare and simple, and 98% of the dialogue is spoken by only two characters, which makes the movie an example of storytelling stripped down to bare essentials.

No spoilers here, I'm just saying I think this movie lives up to the hype and good reviews it's getting.

[Prospero]

Re Les Miserables. I got only about 15 minutes in before turning it off. Terrible. Can't say if it has any good songs. But I've never heard any and it has been around as a stage show for years.

[fred41]

Re Les Miserables. I got only about 15 minutes in before turning it off. Terrible. Can't say if it has any good songs. But I've never heard any and it has been around as a stage show for years.

If you didn't like the music to begin with, why would you even for a moment think that a movie version of the musical (featuring the exact same music...it's not like they were going to add any new tunes...lol) would even stand a chance of appealing to you?

[Ben]

Documentary: Long Distance Revolutionary....

[Tiffany Starr]

I watched Mulan. Apparently Audrina has never seen a bunch of the classic disney movies and since Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD remix just came out I made her watch some, but then when we arrived at Mulan I realized I have never seen that movie either. So we sat down and watched it together.