What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[robertlouis]

Typical... can't be bothered to come to London with all it's treats and delights. Provincial through and through...

Northern and proud, you soft southern git.

Now, excuse me, I have to walk the whippet by the canal, buy new clogs for the cat, polish up my cornet (ooh matron!) and breathe in some tar fumes for my emphysema.....

[robertlouis]

In fact, this is where I now live, and when you see the pics you'll understand why I moved.

[Prospero]

so leaving aside your new found Northern pride how was the film RL?

[robertlouis]

so leaving aside your new found Northern pride how was the film RL?

Going later today, after I've mucked out the pigeons.

[Prospero]

"12 Years A Slave'.... phew, an emotional tour de force. Women in the film business were weeping at the screening I attended last night. This is almost unrelenting in its grimness, in its presentation of a story that takes us to the very heart of the inhumanity that was the slave trade. Some scenes are almost unwatchable. It is a terrific antidote to Tarantino's crass "Django Unchained" film on the slave trade from last year which presented it as a mass entertainment shoot-em-up film. (It did have its moments - but only as a cartoon). This film is NOT entertainment. Chiwetal Ejiofor might well win an Oscar for his portrayal of the central character in this true story, but that is beside the point really. So might Steve mcQueen the director. It's focus is unrelenting. His directing awesome in creating a mood of intense oppression. (The river journey into slavery is haunting and clever in its use of thrashing paddles and noise to evoke the journey from freedom to enslavement). And one scene captures perfectly just how cowed and terrified slaves were. The main figure, Soloman Northrup, faces a near lynching. He is left dangling in a sunny glade near the plantation house his feet scarcely touching the muddy ground and keeping him from death. The afternoon passes as he dangles almost choking, his face a rictus of agony. In a single long long shot McQueen shows us the other slaves coming and going, children playing, but no one daring go to him and help.

In some ways the film echoes some of the issues that Primo Levi dealt with in "The Drowned and the Saved" - his last book about the Holocaust. In another scene the central character is forced to whip someone. He does it eventually after some resistance. Not to save his own life but because of pressure to protect others. The film is unflinching at looking at the compromises and cowardices that are forced upon the wretched at the hands of their oppressors - forcing complicity from those who are powerless. But at a terrible loss to the sense of self of those who do survive.

The viewer's salvation from despair is to remember that, in the West at least, this is now history - even if the complex legacy remains a festering sore at the heart of our culture. But it is also a reminder that inhumanity and cruelty are at the heart of human affairs. Not entertaining - but a film of majesty and demythologising power.

[dderek123]

I'm watching Prisoners at the moment. It's really intense and definitely not a happy movie.

Prisoners (2013) - IMDb

[dderek123]

Holy fucking shit it was a good movie. Best movie I've seen in a really long time. Definitely worth a watch if you're up for a suspenseful gritty drama.

Hugh Jackman is really intense and Paul Dano is excellent as a creepy simpleton.

[Prospero]

Paul Dano is finding a niche in that sort of role. He is a creepy slaver in "12 years a slave"

[robertlouis]

Paul Dano is finding a niche in that sort of role. He is a creepy slaver in "12 years a slave"

Apprehensive about seeing the film. But Dano was very memorable in There Will Be Blood.

And I haven't seen Gravity yet.

[Prospero]

I saw "The Act of Killing" yesterday. Perhaps two grim films in a row is destined to make a person feel very bleak indeed. It had that effect on me. This is a remarkable piece of documentary making. It features a host of now quite elderly "gangsters" as they style themselves talking at length and recreating the murders they committed on behalf of the regime in Indonesia in the 1960s when a million or more so-called Communists were slaughtered by the military regime. These guy joke and laugh and reminisce about they killed people - casually talking about beheadings and garottings. They recreate a scene where they killed a man by crushing him - sitting on a table singing and giggling. They drive through Jakarta giggling about throwing bodies into a river "they were beautiful - like a parachute falling" and are unrepentant. What is so remarkable is that the film makers got them to talk so freely and create weird dramatic re-enactments of their crimes. A truly chilling film about the bestiality humans can enact. These guys are now national heroes in a movement called Pancasila Youth - which is close to government. Truly horrifying

http://www.smh.com.au/world/filmmake...123-29ypj.html