What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[goatman]

Battlestar Galactic: Blood & Chrome[2012]

[Odelay]

American Hustle (David Russell 2013)
Russell directed Silver Linings Playbook and uses Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and an uncredited Robert de Niro in this film, but as with some of his earlier films (Spanking the Monkey, 1994; and I Heart Huckabees, 2004) the film promises more than it delivers. The plot is of little interest, the characters even less so, and when a character is given the name of of an Italian cheese I think you realise this film came from nowhere, has the same rythmn and tone throughout and ends up disappointing. If you do want to see films about hustling and deception, The Grifters (Stephen Frears 1990) and the Argentinian film Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens, Faien Bielinsky 2000) are both superior.

Pity as I like Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and hope they make interesting films.

The best part of this film is that David O Russell obviously has a huge foot fetish and likes to show it on the big screen. Love all the foot scenes and foot play. The 70's outfits and music were great too. Stavros, your basic criticism isn't necessarily wrong, but as Prospero sort of said... it's a mad caper. More Fish Called Wanda than Casino.

But yeah, I love con movies dating back to The Sting as a 13 yr old on its first run in the theatres. Grifters was indeed a good one. I also think House of Games and The Last Seduction are two underrated movies from this genre. The con in American Hustle isn't all that elaborate and so I wouldn't put it on a par with the best of the genre. I'll have to check out Nueva Reina. Thanks for the tip Stavros.

[Odelay]

Nebraska. Funny and moving. Terrific film making. A possible oscar for Bruce Dern

Pleased to hear it. On the list for this week!

Alexander Payne has become the master of the quirky road movie.

So RL, did you ever see Nebraska? Was definitely quirky/funny, especially the mother character, but not necessarily my favorite Payne movie. Part of my view is affected by a lack of objectivity - I grew up in the Great Plains, and spent quite a bit of time in Billings, Montana where the movie starts out. The regional characterization is mostly right with Payne's skewed wit thrown in. But I guess any small town/rural region of the world has common elements to what is shown here.

[south ov da border]

I wend on a childhood bender and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2 today

[Jimmy W]

Dallas Buyers Club: Matthew Mcconaughey and Jared Leto have possibly done permanent damage to their health having lost so much weight portraying victims of HIV AIDS in the late 1980s and I wish that wasn't my first reaction because their performances, once you get past their startling weight loss, are simply beautiful. Imagine a cowboy homophobe and a drag queen and a situation where they are forced to form a relationship in order to survive. Thankfully, this film discards all those preconceived notions and cliché's and for that reason alone I give this an 8 of 10. My only problem is the overnight transition from drunken idiot to sober scientific scholar with the Mcconaughey character. This will get ignored unfortunately because it doesnt have robots or old guys boxing but it is worth seeking out.

[Jimmy W]

The Wolf Of Wall Street: If you want to be entertained by a tall tale of the excesses of Wall Street moguls from a few decades ago, it's a fun and entertaining movie. But, nothing new here from Scorcese. However, Margot Robbie appears nekkid which gives it a 10 out of 10 review!

[mrLemon]

last night was Waynes World!
a 1992 classic, haven't seen for years and loved its childishness!!
'if she was presedent, she'd be Babereham Lincoln'
a classic of its time!!
NOT!! ahh that's where it came from and we still use it today!!

[pantybulge69]

lone survivor

great film, very well done by peter berg. it's simple and very direct.
watch for the dedicated memorial at the very end. some scenes can be bloody brutal...

[Dino Velvet]

Abdullah The Butcher in a way you haven't seen him before.

[Stavros]

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
For some reason this film is not being widely distributed in the UK and as it is not scheduled to play in my town until the end of January I went to Birmingham to see it. I also read the original book before going. Solomon Northup's account, also 12 Years a Slave can be read for free at this link:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html

The book is not too long and can be read in a morning or an afternoon. It is written with considerable verve and confidence by a man who refused to be beaten into submission by slavery, and whose potent sense of justice gives the book an important dimension in the decade before the Civil War. Northup after his captivity often muses on the Constitutional right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' as something denied to Black Americans, yet never loses faith in either constitutional or natural law as his route to freedom. The contradictions between the Constitition and reality are as stark as the fact that Northup prospered among white Americans in the North yet was betrayed by two of them desperate for money, treated harshly by them in slavery yet in time emancipated by them. Similarly, the Christian faith which he professes is also used in the South to justify both slavery itself and violence. Crucially, perhaps, Northup argues that slavery brutalises the slave owners and that the only remedy is abolition.

McQueen is fairly faithful to the book but edits in scenes of a sexual nature that are not in the book; and edits out other characters: he replaces a key figure, Henry Northup, the man who emancipated Solomon's father, with the trader Parker; the black slave who is murdered on the boat heading south in the book dies of smallpox; the proud Black woman Eliza, who, separated from her children slips into despair, dies in the book, but not in the film. Solomon has three children in the book, only two in the film. If anything, there are more beatings and lashings in the book than in the film, and Solomon's attempt to escape is not featured as an event in itself. I would rather have seen more time developing Solomon's character as a free man in Saratoga and filling in the background on his skills as a carpenter and raft-maker; and more time with the pivotal figure Bass (played by Brad Pitt in the film), whose encounters with Solomon are dealt with in more detail in the book. In effect he has one short and one long scene in the film. The figure of Uncle Abram is lost in the film although the scene at his funeral where they sing Roll, Jordan, Roll is one of the most moving in the film, not least because at first Solomon resists joining in. The photography is superb, the acting outstanding and the overall impact of the film is intense and powerful. It is useful to contrast this factually based and serious film about slavery with the meretricious hysterics of Django Unchained. One is a film worthy of attention, the other worthy of the bin.