What is The Last Movie You Watched?

I will often read a book after a movie, for possible enlightenment, when I didn't quite understand the film...or there were just too many holes to fill in. I read Clarke's book after the movie...and I suspect many people did when the movie first came out - judging by the slack jawed look on other people's faces after the film was over...lol. Reading it helped a lot.

I believe I read " A Clockwork Orange" after the movie also...but only to see if there was more to it ...and, for me, there wasn't. I did see it in a theater for the first time...but it must've been a special presentation - a midnight show perhaps or a university film festival - because I was only 9 when it came out and I believe I was in my late teens when I first saw it.My friends at the time liked it - but for all the wrong reasons (though probably the same reasons a lot of male teens liked it ). I didn't like it . Again...there was no one to like in the film. I realize that's kind of the point (and it's clearly intentional on Kubrick's part - in all his films)...but it's not the kind of entertainment I prefer in a motion picture.

I'll probably give these films another viewing one of these days to see if my perspective has changed with age.

Being a nerd in school I read the Tolkien books in my early teens. When it comes to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I would have to disagree with you Trish...I think Peter Jackson did an excellent job with the material...so much so that I watched them repeatedly.
...but "The Hobbit" is a different matter altogether...I don't know what the fuck he is doing there. Did he lose his mind? Is he hooked on opium or heroin?
...I don't know, but it's not good.

Oh,...I did like "Full Metal jacket"...again there was no one to really like and the characters were somewhat cartoonish...but here, to me, it worked.

[QUOTE=trish;1550966]I’d rather not forward an umbrella view on the entirety of Kubrick’s filmography. Instead I'll take the movies you mentioned singly, or in groups.
--But my point is that Kubrick repeats himself throughout his oeuvre -this is not uncommon, think of the recurring themes in the films of Ozu and Bresson and you can see how this works. Moreover, as I tried to point out, Kubrick also repeats specific shots which appear to suggest people are simultaneously moving and going nowhere, it happens more than once for it not to be an important motif for Kubrick.

Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket are anti-war films. Of course they are going to feature the horrors and idiocy of war and warn us of what the future could be if we continue the practice.
--The sense of futility is critical to Paths of Glory -not just because that is what the image of the First World War has become since the 1960s -and the European rather than the war elsewhere, eg in Africa and the Middle East- but emphatically in the final scene following the executions and the scene in the cafe when Kirk Douglas leaves, knowing that the slaughter will begin again the following day -no advance for mankind, condemned to destroy itself, as it does in Dr Stangelove.

The Shining is Kubrick’s treatment of the classic haunted-house story. The outdoor labyrinth mirrors the house’s soul-trapping interior to dark effect. So with this cinematographic mood setting technique is Kubrick telling us that all human endeavor is pointless and leads nowhere? Why is Jack (presumably from whom Danny inherited his shine) possessed and unable to escape the haunting maze that leads nowhere, while Danny and his mother get to play the modern day Theseus and Ariadne? Instead of saying life leads nowhere, suppose Kubrick is saying, “Life is a Labyrinth.” That interpretation holds out the hope that those who shine, those who examine their lives and seek the life worth living, might indeed find a path through the maze.
--Again, the last moments of the film in which the photo suggests Jack has always been in the Outlook tends to reinforce the idea that we are condemned to live our lives over and over again without 'correction' as it is put to Jack, in a toilet, obviously -to me 'the shining' itself is window dressing much as David Lynch introduces bizarre and freaky people and scenes into his dross just to divert the attention of the audience (rubbish like Twin Peaks on this basis could have gone on for years)

Where Clockwork is filled with humans violating humans, there is none of that in 2001. Who are the “bad guys” in the year 2001? There aren’t any.
--but the pretend human, HAL, is not a nice guy. Doesn't he kill all the astronauts in deep hibernation?

The most violent scene in the film 2001 is proto-man learning to use tools to commit murder and mayhem. After a prehistoric battle for a watering hole, a bone bludgeon is tossed victoriously into the sky. The camera follows it. As it rotates millennia pass by and it morphs into a space craft. The complexity of human thought, science, philosophy, art and technology are traced in this scene to the first time some “one” got the idea that an object (a bone) can be lifted from its context (source of marrow) and used to serve another function (bludgeon). That bone tool was used to kill tapirs (in the film) for food and to murder other tribes to hoard resources. Certainly nobody is unaware of the double-edged power of tools to do good and ill. Even the written word double edged. Yet in the year 2001 the film depicts a human species that had apparently subdued (for a time) its warlike tendency. We see scientists from different nation-states in friendly (though guarded) conversation. We see corporate types and military types and we sit in on one of their banal meetings to learn that the governments of the day have decided to keep secret the a possible discovery of extraterrestrial contact for fear of the panic that may ensue. So the world Kubrick depicts is not a perfect one. But what Kubrick holds out for us is the possibility of other transformative discoveries. He doesn’t know what those discoveries will be, or even how to point in their direction. How could he? But he does seem to indicate that those discoveries won’t be technological; they won’t be an extension of the tool idea that we’ve been tweaking and playing with ever since the first ape discovered the bone bludgeon. The technological singularity will not be the next big step in the evolution of thought. David Bowman is Kubrick’s Odysseus. This Odysseus doesn't go to war. He does embark on a transformative voyage and he returns to his world transformed. The Earth is his Penelope. This time Odysseus will not be slaughtering his wife’s suitors. But his story promises to transform our understanding of ourselves. Kubrick’s story is the story of that story, which is yet to be lived and told.
--Although this is a persuasive reading of the film, I think you are importing your own ideas into it. It is actually and pointedly irrelevant that mankind has advanced to technological supremacy if the end result of travelling through space and time is to end up where we began, on earth. It is there in the music for a reason, and the key to me is what Kubrick leaves out, particularly human compassion and religion, he just can't deal with it.

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Originally Posted by fred41

Since you're using "The Shining"as an example, it's worth noting that Stephen King absolutely hated the Kubrick version.
The book was flawed, but like most of King's works...worked on the reader's empathy using King's ability to make a reader invest in a character and emotionally connect. Kubrick doesn't seem to have this ability...or doesn't care to use it. The movie was cold and the characters overacting too comical to take seriously...as a matter of fact, there wasn't a likable character in the movie.
I didn't like the film...but I did like the book...to an extent.

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What I think is interesting is that you can make a successful film about unlikable people, but in the film overall if there is no alternative option it can be too bleak -hence the point Steiner makes about 'absolute tragedy' being the one that is interesting. Can humans take such emptiness? Now and then, perhaps. There is a lot of sadness in Ozu's films, but also a lot of tenderness and love; there are also acts of compassion in the 'Dollars' films Eastwood made which are mostly about nasty people, so it can be done. But I agree there is something cold in Kubrick's mentality. And it is cold enough right now!

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Originally Posted by Stavros

What I think is interesting is that you can make a successful film about unlikable people, but in the film overall if there is no alternative option it can be too bleak -hence the point Steiner makes about 'absolute tragedy' being the one that is interesting. Can humans take such emptiness? Now and then, perhaps. There is a lot of sadness in Ozu's films, but also a lot of tenderness and love; there are also acts of compassion in the 'Dollars' films Eastwood made which are mostly about nasty people, so it can be done. But I agree there is something cold in Kubrick's mentality. And it is cold enough right now!

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True, but a lot of that depends also, I think, on the strengths of the personalities, moral or not, of the characters in question. A strength that a viewer can often get behind, creating true antiheros, such as in the aforementioned 'Dollars' films.
I don't believe I've ever seen any Ozu films...I will have to give them a look Stavros. Thanks.

Dredd.
Like most sci-fi flicks it depicts a fairly bleak terrestrial landscape. Overcrowded cities, exploding crime rates etc., etc.
But I liked it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVIba2N6MTA

Hi everybody,

Last two i watched were just recently.
I watched this movie.
It's based in North America. They don't say in which year it takes place, but, they do say it's the 74th annual games. Before the games ever started, they say there was an uprising and a war and a rebellion which all led to the games being formed.
Gives me something to think about with all the fema camps and all the New World Order talk.

youtube.com/watch?v=wP_uGaNHIyw

And...

youtube.com/watch?v=csSZ-YmZwGc

It's pretty scary when the media reports how this movie will be made in to a musical. They really want us getting used to this whole idea.

Babe,
xoxo

The last three I watched: Guardians of the Galaxy (finally got round to seeing it, great fun), Non-stop, and Valhalla Rising, which was really interesting. I'd still like to go see Interstellar.

Of late:

Blade

Zulu

Birdman 2014

The best thing I can say about Birdman is that it was an interesting mash up of things, styles and performances. Beyond that, there was nothing that made this movie into any kind of cohesive narrative. Predictably, a movie about inside Hollywood, inside Broadway, and celebrity is a hit with the critics (93% Rotten Tomatoe rating). But the movie bounces around all 3 themes and a couple of more that after awhile it just seems pretentious.

One of the draws for me in the first place was the concept of Michael Keaton riffing on his own experience playing a comic book character from years ago, but that gets lost quickly in this movie. They did some interesting things around the sets (narrow hallways in a Broadway theatre) with a camera following the characters around in long continuous shots, but just as they lose focus thematically, they also lose focus cinematographically, as they eventually abandon the claustrophobic sets and close camera shooting.

The movie didn't work for me but it seems to have a lot of fans in the industry considering the award nominations it's been receiving.

One last thing... I don't normally go for the skinny look but Emma Stone is simply drop dead gorgeous. The fact that she would pop up every 3rd or 4th scene definitely made the movei more watchable.