What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Stavros]

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018 )

From IMDB-

"In the mid 1990's, 20 French urban dancers join together for a three-day rehearsal in a closed-down boarding school located at the heart of a forest to share one last dance. They then make one last party around a large sangria bowl. Quickly, the atmosphere becomes charged and a strange madness will seize them the whole night. If it seems obvious to them that they have been drugged, they neither know by who nor why. And it's soon impossible for them to resist to their neuroses and psychoses, numbed by the hypnotic and the increasing electric rhythm of the music. While some feel in paradise, most of them plunge into hell."

As you would expect from Noé, the aim is to shock, but as you would expect from Noé, it fails because it is so contrived. It may be that members of the cast were genuinely drunk, and that in a later part of the film the sexual intercourse glimpsed in passing is real, but I doubt even Noé would have drugged a child for cinematic effect. The dance routine at the start of the film is actually rather good, and would probably have won Britain's Got Talent as they seem to like that sort of thing. And there is some clever filming towards the end when, with their world turned upside down, the cast appear like bats hanging from the ceiling. That said, in the end this film is about a collective united by dance, that falls apart owing to their sexual preference, their desire/lust, their attitude towards women, or, in a nutshell, the lack of solidarity provoked by their good and bad trips. Does it mean we would be better off it if we were not 'intoxicated' by external forces imploding inside us? Or are we always doomed to be individuals first and last? I don't think Noé has the answer to these questions, and the 'chapter' headings, made up of pop psychology or just pop the weasel, don't help.

Final note, I think one of the cast, Gazelle/Giselle Palmer, is transgendered, but I can't be sure.

[sukumvit boy]

Watching the new miniseries ,"The Queens Gambit" ,it is quite good .I understand that it has spawned a new 'chess boom' with sales of chess sets and books 'through the roof'. The last great chess boom was in the 1770's with Bobbie Fisher ,in which I participated .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Qu...t_(miniseries)

[Torris]

In Vegas last week. Wanted to see a movie on the big screen. Covid be damned.
Saw the Last Vermeer. A World War II art forgery legal case. Guy Pearce was good as the forgerer.

[Stavros]

Watching the new miniseries ,"The Queens Gambit" ,it is quite good .I understand that it has spawned a new 'chess boom' with sales of chess sets and books 'through the roof'. The last great chess boom was in the 1770's with Bobbie Fisher ,in which I participated .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Qu...t_(miniseries)

Hmmm, fascinating scoop from the archives -do you think George Washington asked Fischer for advice on strategy? Perhaps this was the one time when a Pawn took a King?

[sukumvit boy]

LOL,sorry about that . I meant the 1970's of course.

[danoblue]

Tenet...confusing. Might be a little too smart for its own good.

[Stavros]

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018 )

I went to a VIP dinner in the Raffles Hotel ten or so years ago, sharing a table with three people from Singapore -two lawyers (female) and a banker (of Indian descent), an elderly Australian who made a fortune cleaning office buildings, and the beauty queen I was with who flunked out after the fish course much to my annoyance. What struck me that evening was just how dull Singapore Chinese seemed to be. You can see some svelte, well-heeled Chinese 20-somethings at Clarke Quay most nights, but my guess is that the super-rich would never go to places like that when they can buy private spaces -rather like the people in this film, which is unoriginal, and though reasonably well acted is, with a bland script, like 'Jane Austen with Chinese characteristics'.

Much as I admire Raffles, and their Singapore Sling is worth trying, next time I go I shall probably head in the opposite direction of the awful people in this film, and try those 'four floors of whores' in Orchard Towers. If we learned anything from 2020, it is that time is short, and not be wasted on dramas featuring pearl earrings, perfectly made dumplings, and a Singapore stripped of its Filipino maids, its forests of tower blocks where most people live.

[sukumvit boy]

Most interesting,pardon my curiosity but just what do you mean by "flunked out" ? After 15 years of traveling back and fourth to SE Asia each year for a month at a time I'm ashamed to say I never made it to Singapore but I remember hearing about the "four floors of whores " and thinking I should definitely add that to my list of destinations. Then again it seems like most of those SE Asian travel destinations have their "floors of whores" like the "three floors of whores " at Nana Plaza in Bangkok,LOL.
I would definitely love to go to Raffles Hotel though.

[Stavros]

Most interesting,pardon my curiosity but just what do you mean by "flunked out" ? After 15 years of traveling back and fourth to SE Asia each year for a month at a time I'm ashamed to say I never made it to Singapore but I remember hearing about the "four floors of whores " and thinking I should definitely add that to my list of destinations. Then again it seems like most of those SE Asian travel destinations have their "floors of whores" like the "three floors of whores " at Nana Plaza in Bangkok,LOL.
I would definitely love to go to Raffles Hotel though.

She flunked out because there were too many stuffed shirts, preferring stuffing of a different kind. Her ego, mostly.

BBC 2 showed The Godfather Part One last night, the only thing I can say about this classic, is that the print quality was superior to the one I have on the 'Coppola Restoration' set of DVDs that I have been watching, mostly interesting for Coppola's audio commentary.

[sukumvit boy]

"The Silk Road" 2019 miniseries ,very good.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12064332/