What is The Last Movie You Watched?

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 201 8 )

This crude, often hysterical film was broadcast on Film 4 last night. It concerns 4 high school girls, one of them Trans (Bex, played by Hari Nef) who become the targets of mob violence when one of them is accused of hacking the phones of high school students and the local Mayor, and leaking it online. The film does have at its core an argument about social media and its excessive influence on how people see each other, but goes further to ask what would happen if people not unlike what one assumes are the Proud Boys and other para-military groups, were to take over local law enforcement, in which they claim to be protecting their 'values'. That the film is set in a town called Salem may be a nod to the past, and I could see the point, but it didn't make the film enjoyable.

Assassination Nation (201 8 - IMDb

Miss Meadows with Katie Holmes

'Dungeons & Dragons'

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

'Dungeons & Dragons'

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thumbs up or down?

We were soldiers.

1917.

Everything everywhere all at once.

Two Tranny Mules For Sister Sara. An all time classic

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Originally Posted by zaphod

thumbs up or down?

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2 thumbs up!

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

2 thumbs up!

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TY...on watch list now

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Originally Posted by zaphod

TY...on watch list now

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You're quite welcome!

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Andy Serkis, 2021)

A friend logged into Netflix, so we watched it. It is a silly film, done with such absurd passion it entertains. But is quickly, and mercifully forgotten. One dreads to think what the first in this series was like.

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Early on in this film, J Robert Oppenheimer admits to a student that Quantum Mechanics is a paradox, and Nolan thus explores what he sees as a paradox in the man: the creative scientist who helps to create a physics of destruction. Oppenheimer did believe that the advent of nuclear weapons should lead to arms control negotiations between the US and the USSR, and he was opposed, mostly on financial and scientific grounds to the development of the 'H-Bomb' -but he was not opposed to the use of the Atom Bomb on Japan, so it is a mistake, in my view to think of Oppenheimer as some sort of 'Liberal'.

The film moves forward and backward in time, which is confusing for those not familiar with the pre-war attractions of Communism to American intellectuals -not just the Jewish ones intensely aware of what was happening in the Third Reich-; and the post-war attacks on Oppenheimer by so-called 'Realists' for whom arms negotiations were pointless and the development of 'weapons of mass destruction' an essential component of the Cold War. If you are not sure who Lewis Strauss is then about half the film will be confusing, and it is not to my mind made clear that Oppenheimer did not arrive in Princeton at Strauss's request until 1947, two years after the Manhattan Project's detonation of a bomb.

That bomb caused immense damage and long term medical problems for those in New Mexico living downwind, something the film ignores, just as it ignores the bi-sexuality of Jean Tatlock, the Communist Oppenheimer had an affair with, who committed suicide. The sex scenes with Florence Pugh are gratuitous and without meaning. Oppenheimer's wife Kitty was born in Germany but in the film has an American accent. The Senate confirmation hearing that denies Strauss a Cabinet post was not swayed by the vote of a 'young Senator' called Kennedy -JFK was already in his second term and his vote was not decisive, but plays into the Nolan scripture that by the 1950s Oppenheimer represented a 'Liberal' Science cohort with which the 'red-baiting' anti-Communists of Congress such as Senator McCarthy were at war.

Apart from a few minutes, the film is all but swamped in ominous, tense muzak whose aim is to make you feel 'This scene is VERY IMPORTANT'. Indeed, Nolan seems to think his film is VERY IMPORTANT, when it is really just a well-made film that actually avoids asking some of the really hard questions about post-war Nuclear Policy and the strategic thinking behind it.

Is it one of the best films ever made? No.
5/10 for effort.

Oppenheimer (Directed by Barry Davis for the BBC, 1980)

This seven episode series does what Nolan's little film does not - go into more depth with regard to the associations Oppenheimer had as a young academic at Berkeley in California, how he was elevated to lead the Manhattan Project because of the advent of the Second World War, and how those earlier political associations led to him being expelled from the US science administration in 1954 because of the Cold War.

It underlines the extent to which Oppenheimer's associations did not mean he was ever a Communist as such, though he had what might be termed 'Liberal politics' which in the context of the Depression, the New Deal and the growth of Fascism and Nazism in Spain and Germany was not such a big deal but became an obsession of J Edgar Hoover whose personal views led to the surveillance of Oppenheimer that created the 'damning' file on which his later career ended. But if Oppenheimer was warm to the Liberal social policies of the New Deal, he had no 'Liberal' problems in developing a weapon of mass destruction, even as he became conflicted by it when it was used on Japan, his famous remark being 'We have blood on our hands'.

But it also emphasizes that when leader of the Manhattan Project, he took the view that the 'Atom bomb' was more feasible than the 'Thermo-Nuclear' bomb advocated by Edward Teller. That Teller's view took hold after the war is in a way just one of those things, the science moved on and Oppenheimer's view was shown to be wrong. What is clear is that Oppenheimer and others involved in the Manhattan Project had to come to terms with the human costs of nuclear weapons, with the belief that to stop an arms race, international co-operation should take priority, something that was lost as the hysteria of the Cold War, albeit accelerated by the expansion of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe in the 1950s. It means Oppenheimer was not expelled from the Atomic Energy admin because of the science as much as his politics, at a time when anti-Communism was as hysterical as the supporters of Trump in Congress today, and just as myopic and crazy. But it also speaks to the emergence of the 'Realist' doctrine in International Relations that dominated US security and military policy, leading to the concept of 'Mutually Assured Destruction' and Deterrence. This took place at the same time that the more Conservative politics of the Truman and Eisenhower admins neutralized the UN and its agencies.

The series is this superior to the film, the scenes are longer, not smothered in muzak, though the music (by Carl Davis, who died this week) is just as bad. The film elevates Lewis Strauss to a significant figure, whereas in the Series he is merely a figure in Congress, and there is no hint of any bitterness or rivalry between him and Oppenheimer. General Nichols also is elevated in both film and tv series indeed he protested at his portrayal in the Series claiming he only worked with General Groves once being located at one of the other sites on the Manhattan Project. Sam Waterston gives a stunning performance as Oppenheimer, and David Suchet a venal and compelling Teller.

I would rate this 9/10. It can be seen here-

BBC Oppenheimer - YouTube

or on the BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer - Oppenheimer - Series 1: Episode 1

Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani, 2018 )

Another attempt to film Ray Bradbury's book, and a failure on every level. Wooden acting, feeble script.

The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, 2012)

Never been a fan of Redford, though Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All The President's Men (1976) are still worth watching. This film tries too hard to be serious and ask important questions about 1960s student radicalism and how time changes people. At the end one of the characters who, to remain in character should have disappeared, turns herself in to law enforcement. A dismal ending to a film that was never going to succeed with the permanently hysterical Shia LaBeouf

Fitzcarraldo :)
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Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo :)
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Again?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Again?

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Yes. It's magnificent.

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Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo :)

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No surprise there, but what about this one?
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Originally Posted by filghy2

No surprise there, but what about this one?
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Another case of the sequel not being as good as the first one, and that's not a recommendation. Can we not retain some class when contributing to this thread?

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Originally Posted by filghy2

No surprise there, but what about this one?
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Ha! I'm not familiar with it.

I have been buying DVDs of the man from Texas, Wes Anderson, to explore his work. In the past I have been disappointed by Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and it took some time for me to warm to The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). I was enraptured by Isle of Dogs (2018 ), and watched it again at the start of this retrospective, and it never fails, and I am always slightly amused that he got the idea from the actual Isle of Dogs in East London. These days smartened up a lot but when I worked in London's East End, briefly in the 1970s it was famous or notorious for its phantom bus service. Times change. They have buses and the DLR.

Thus The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) has been 2nd on the list, not having seen it before. It is typical Anderson, a gallery of mildly eccentric people who have to deal with the disruption of the status quo that has sustained them for a length of time and made them complacent and bored. The acting he gets from his crew is effervescent, comical, indeed comical-tragical, possibly comical-tragical-clerical, though I sometimes wonder if it is all superficial. But even if not profound, the films are, like whipped cream or Champagne, a delight to experience.

Does this make Wes Anderson an American genius, on the same level as Scorsese and Spielberg?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Does this make Wes Anderson an American genius, on the same level as Scorsese and Spielberg?

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No. He's a pretentious wanker who's well past his sell buy date. Asteroid City proves that.

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Originally Posted by bruce_willy

No. He's a pretentious wanker who's well past his sell buy date. Asteroid City proves that.

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I just bought the DVD of Asteroid City! Will give you my 10c at a later date....

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Originally Posted by bruce_willy

No. He's a pretentious wanker who's well past his sell buy date. Asteroid City proves that.

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I loved Asteroid City....

Last Movie: "The Mummy's Ghost"....

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

I loved Asteroid City....

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Why? What did you think was good about it?

Thunderbolt and lightfoot last night on tubi

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Originally Posted by bruce_willy

Why? What did you think was good about it?

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Quite a bit.
The fact that it was shot on 35mm film is one aspect...
The changing aspect ratios when the B/W scenes to color are other...
Loved the retro-future plot....

Just a few of the reasons..

Just watched The Exorcist for the first time since the early '80s.

Saw X

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Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo

Just watched The Exorcist for the first time since the early '80s.

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Aside from the nonsense about the Devil, the film has endured well and remains a compelling watch.

I was not that impressed by The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) when I first saw it, but I now think it is Wes Anderson's second best film, after Isle of Dogs. What it shares with Asteroid City (2023) is a familiar trope: the film about a film, or a film about a play, or a film about method acting, or a film with 'layers of meaning' or overlapping narratives that move forward and backwards in time. If pastel colours dominate TGBH, Asteroid City is mostly Pink, a Sandy Pink, as the US desert location of the story/play was actually filmed at Chichon in Spain, the Cacti being plastic imports, indeed, rather a lot of plastic in this film if you want to be critical/sarcastic.

I think this is the point, but is it Satire or Comedy? I fancy this is the kind of film that would have absorbed many hours of barely comprehensible scribblings in the now defunct Monthly Film Bulletin, which in the 1980s was taken over by Neo-Marxists, Post-Structuralists, Post-Modernists, and Post-It Notes obsessed with 'narrative structures', 'elision', 'vertical displacement' and so on, in the process alienating readers from the film being reviewed.

Asteroid City, with by now its roster of well-known actors/The Anderson Troupe -do they take a pay cut to be on screen for, like two minutes?- is whimsical, even frivolous, but whereas TGBH does at least evoke a past that has been submerged by defeat in war and modernization, and as a result has a melancholic tone, Asteroid City doesn't seem to be about much when the most interesting scenes involve an alien, and by the standards of contemporary cinema, a very plausible one too.

As for The Darjeeling Express (2007), 'Let's make an agreement' -to never see this film again.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Aside from the nonsense about the Devil, the film has endured well and remains a compelling watch.

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Friedkin was a masterful director.

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Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo

Friedkin was a masterful director.

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I agree, with regard to the two permanent classics, The French Connection, and The Exorcist. He made two films of plays, The Boys in the Band (1970) which seems tame now, but was considered edgy when it was on the London stage, and even when the film was released. Friedkin's film of Pinter's play The Birthday Party (1968 ) is superior to the TV film directed by Kenneth Ives in 1987 where Pinter plays Goldberg -this version has the execrable Joan Plowright making a dog's dinner of Meg, a role for which she was not suited, given she can't act.
I have only seen Cruising (1980) once, when it was released, and am not keen on To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) which a lot of people like, and as for Killer Joe (2011), let's just say you might not want to handle a chicken drumstick (let alone eat one) for a while after seeing it, deliciously wedgie though the film is, and maybe Matthew McConaughey's best film.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I agree, with regard to the two permanent classics, The French Connection, and The Exorcist. He made two films of plays, The Boys in the Band (1970) which seems tame now, but was considered edgy when it was on the London stage, and even when the film was released. Friedkin's film of Pinter's play The Birthday Party (1968 ) is superior to the TV film directed by Kenneth Ives in 1987 where Pinter plays Goldberg -this version has the execrable Joan Plowright making a dog's dinner of Meg, a role for which she was not suited, given she can't act.
I have only seen Cruising (1980) once, when it was released, and am not keen on To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) which a lot of people like, and as for Killer Joe (2011), let's just say you might not want to handle a chicken drumstick (let alone eat one) for a while after seeing it, deliciously wedgie though the film is, and maybe Matthew McConaughey's best film.

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He also directed Sonny and Cher's movie Good Times. There's a great biography of him titled Hurricane Billy.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts.

The Double w/ Jesse Eisenberg...

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Upgrade .One of the best that most people haven't heard of Logan Marshall-Green is brilliant and should be the next Bond if they can find a Daniel Craig dream sequence.

I just saw the Director's Cut of "Kingdom of Heaven" on DVD. It is very good. When it came out, it was poorly received, but 20+ years on, I think it is a classic.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, 2023)

Or: MI Greatest Hits. A re-hash of what we have seen in MI 1-6.

The only real talking point is that it is in sync with the panic over sentient AI, and the continuing development of invisible war machines (mostly airborne, but no reason for it not to be a sub).

I actually became confused as to who the characters were, and frankly, didn't care. Entertaining, that's as much as I can say,