What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[hamdasl]

Manchurian Candidate (original).

[Stavros]

Locke (Steven Knight, 2013)
I watched this film on tv last night. Apart from some panoramic scenes of a motorway at night most of this film is shot inside a car that is taking Construction Engineer Ivan Locke from the Midlands to London roughly between 8-10pm and consists almost entirely of telephone conversations, other than the imaginary chats Locke has with his absent father. Although this is a film, it ought really to be a radio play, though I doubt this would improve it. I give it 2/10.

[Stavros]

Takers (John Luessenhop, 2011)
As in 'taken to the cleaners' or 'taken for a ride'. This confusing film tries hard to merge Tarantino with Michael Mann and ends up making one wonder if there is a reason why some films are put on tv late at night which is where I saw it.
One wonders what the police in Los Angeles are doing while two gangs wage world war three (to romantic music!) in a hotel not far from police HQ...and is anyone else fatigued with the tendency these days to make every really really bad drug dealing, bank robbing crooks Russians? Or is this part of the new cold war?

[runningdownthatdream]

Takers (John Luessenhop, 2011)
As in 'taken to the cleaners' or 'taken for a ride'. This confusing film tries hard to merge Tarantino with Michael Mann and ends up making one wonder if there is a reason why some films are put on tv late at night which is where I saw it.
One wonders what the police in Los Angeles are doing while two gangs wage world war three (to romantic music!) in a hotel not far from police HQ...and is anyone else fatigued with the tendency these days to make every really really bad drug dealing, bank robbing crooks Russians? Or is this part of the new cold war?

Where have you been the past 50 years! Hollywood bad guys run in cycles dependent on who is making big news in the mainstream American media. In the 70s it was Arabs - because of the energy crisis. In the 80's we had the Japanese and Russians as bad guys - the Russians were obvious but the Japanese were bad because they were threatening American jobs by producing desirable products much cheaper. In the 90s it was Jamaicans and Colombians because they were 'flooding' America with drugs, and pimps, and gang violence. In the 2000s we were back to Russians but not for political reasons - now freed from Communism they were invading with guns, gangs, human trafficking, and extreme violence. More recently its been the Chinese and again for threatening American jobs. Throughout that time, the most constant enemy has been Muslims and 'urban' African-Americans who pose everyday threats to the goodness of America (read: White America)

[BlüeKarma]

Patient 7, a horror anthology set in a mental institution, kind of meh but it did have Michael Ironside.

[Stavros]

Where have you been the past 50 years! Hollywood bad guys run in cycles dependent on who is making big news in the mainstream American media. In the 70s it was Arabs - because of the energy crisis. In the 80's we had the Japanese and Russians as bad guys - the Russians were obvious but the Japanese were bad because they were threatening American jobs by producing desirable products much cheaper. In the 90s it was Jamaicans and Colombians because they were 'flooding' America with drugs, and pimps, and gang violence. In the 2000s we were back to Russians but not for political reasons - now freed from Communism they were invading with guns, gangs, human trafficking, and extreme violence. More recently its been the Chinese and again for threatening American jobs. Throughout that time, the most constant enemy has been Muslims and 'urban' African-Americans who pose everyday threats to the goodness of America (read: White America)

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.

[MrBlackbeard]

Sausage Party

[broncofan]

-not only are the villains American, they are all male, and in The Usual Suspects, the arch-villain Keyser Soze is...American, surely?

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.

[Stavros]

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.

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...

[broncofan]

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...

Amazing. Thank God you speak Turkish or we'd have never figured that out. Screenwriter thinks he's so clever using everyday Turkish words for names. What's next. Someone thinking they can sneak an Icelandic subjunctive verb into a film...just kidding everyone knows Icelandic doesn't make heavy use of the subjunctive.