What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[udontkno]

I saw Lockout last week and it was quite entertaining. Wasn't the best movie i've been but it was punch line after punch line and I was able to sneak in a few laughs

[buttslinger]

Goonland.

[robertlouis]

The Candidate. It's interesting. And says a lot about the political system, its structure.

I agree, Ben. And what's most striking, in the 40 years since it was made, is how the cult of personality that it picks up on is now more than 50% of the focus in any election. The issues, and the policies to resolve them, frankly, can go to hell.

BTW, Robert Redford is coming to the UK next week for the very first Sundance Festival London - hoping to get down there.

[buttslinger]

The Pledge

[Prospero]

Damsels in Disttess - the first new film from Wilt Stillman in 20 years. He produced a brilliant triogy of films Metropolitan, Barcelona and the Last Days Of Disco and then vanished for reasons unclear. Perhaps the studios didn't like his offbeat films. With this new film you can begin to understand why. It is a very strange beast indeed. Set on a campus somewhere in middle America, with its central characters a group of odd young women. In a sense it is a comedy and yet a baffling one for it seems to inhabit a world that is only distantly connected to any contemporary reality. All of the girls are, in their own ways, fakes and the young men are each and everyone of them a douffous (or as the girls argue Duffi or douffouses). Oddly appealing but bizarre.

[fred41]

"The Guard"....loved it...well written, well acted....very funny.

[runningdownthatdream]

Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris'. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams could have been playing Woody and Diane Keating playing the same parts. I thought it was funny, offbeat, and in the usual Woody way gives you something to think about without actually trying too hard to make you think.

On the other hand.......I tried to watch Tree of Life. Made the first 15 minutes or so but got completely disgusted by the stereotypical 'art' film approach. The overbearing music. The woe-begone expressions of everyone. The 'deep' soliloquies. How many shots of blue skies and falling water and open meadows can one filmmaker have in a movie? And in how many movies do you get away with it? According to Terence Malick, as often as you can.

[Stavros]

Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris'. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams could have been playing Woody and Diane Keating playing the same parts. I thought it was funny, offbeat, and in the usual Woody way gives you something to think about without actually trying too hard to make you think.

On the other hand.......I tried to watch Tree of Life. Made the first 15 minutes or so but got completely disgusted by the stereotypical 'art' film approach. The overbearing music. The woe-begone expressions of everyone. The 'deep' soliloquies. How many shots of blue skies and falling water and open meadows can one filmmaker have in a movie? And in how many movies do you get away with it? According to Terence Malick, as often as you can.

Two quite different directors, one whose work will not stand the test of time because of its superficial, inconsequential pretence that is about everyday reality, and Malick, whose films are crafted in a personal way that often seems to be indifferent to the viewing public -but whose films, to me, are visually stunning and profound. I think there are a lot of loose ends in his films, thats the way he films, but there aren't many Americans who make films like that. The Tree of Life is also quite a religious film so if you don't have an understanding of the way of nature and the way of grace a lot will pass you by. I guess its just not the kind of film you like.

On a different level, this evening I watched Sidney Lumet's Because the Devil Knows You're Dead -excellent acting from Marisa Tomei, Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman -two guys decide to rob a small jewelery store and it goes wrong and everything spirals out of control. Great story, great acting but it just didn't have an emotional core, it was not overwhelming.

[Prospero]

I thought before The Devil Knows You're Dead was a dreadful film - badly scripted and wholly ludicrous.

And I think you miss the point of Woody Allen - which is he has been and can be very funny.

[Stavros]

Ok Devil is not a great film, but the script wasn't that bad, and the acting was good, although I dont know why Albert Finney gets so many roles playing Americans.

Woody Allen funny? On Planet Earth? Rich people in Paris, rich people in New York, rich people in Barcelona. I never knew rich people could be so funny. He can't even do satire. How many films has he set in New York City that have no black or gay characters -in New York City!! I tried and tried with this meretricious pasticheur, but in the end his films are one thing only: a waste of money.