What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Stavros]

Maybe I'll get that one during the next Criterion sale. But I figured I didn't need it since I've already seen The Magnificent Seven....

John Sturges does a version that works as a standard western, but the Kurosawa is superior on every level -from the photography and editing, to the script and the acting- and has a more trenchant social message than the Western. Both films concern justice, but in the Japanese film there is a more subtle treatment of the concept of 'honour' that gives the conclusion to the film an unexpected degree of bitterness. Seven Samurai is a much darker film than The Magnificent Seven.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Seven Samurai is a much darker film than The Magnificent Seven.

Oh, I can imagine that.

Last night I watched London Boulevard, an English gangster film directed by the screenwriter of The Departed. It's very dark and pretty good, but a little self-consciously hip in terms of blasting music over certain sequences. It's also a warped take on Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd.

[Robinhood81]

Spotlight. It was excellent!

Yep excellent film, shocking too, I knew about this but I didn't know how high the numbers were

[Fitzcarraldo]

Last night I watched the Russian Stalingrad from a couple years ago. What a stinker! The music is relentless and slo-mo is really overused in cliche-ridden battle scenes.

The story is crap, too. For some reason it has a framing story that opens with an earthquake in present-day Japan. WTF?

It's also loaded with bad CGI, including a scene early on of Russian soldiers on fire charging Germans and fighting as they burn.

The propaganda aspect of it is laughable as well.

There's a German movie called Stalingrad from over 20 years ago that's much better and had to be more challenging to make, as it's a film with no heroes.

[Stavros]

I have not seen this film as it has not yet been released in the UK but it will be showing at the Toronto International Film Festival which begins on the 8th of September. The link below is to the TIFF website but not the best way to arrange its programme. If I am in Toronto at the time I would consider seeing it as I have liked a lot of Walter Hill's films: this is the intro:

(re)Assingment
This jaw-droppingly audacious revenge thriller from the great Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) stars Michelle Rodriguez as a lowlife killer put through full male-to-female gender reassignment surgery by a score-settling surgeon (Sigourney Weaver).
http://www.tiff.net/films/re-assignment/

http://www.tiff.net/?filter=festival

[Fitzcarraldo]

I watched The Eiger Sanction last night. Great Clint Eastwood flick. For such an in-demand pro, his first hit is kind of sloppy, though. Decent amount of gratuitous nudity and Clint getting it on with an African-American woman (Vonetta McGee!) and a Native American woman, plus violence and mountain climbing. What more could you want?

[runningdownthatdream]

I have not seen this film as it has not yet been released in the UK but it will be showing at the Toronto International Film Festival which begins on the 8th of September. The link below is to the TIFF website but not the best way to arrange its programme. If I am in Toronto at the time I would consider seeing it as I have liked a lot of Walter Hill's films: this is the intro:

(re)Assingment
This jaw-droppingly audacious revenge thriller from the great Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) stars Michelle Rodriguez as a lowlife killer put through full male-to-female gender reassignment surgery by a score-settling surgeon (Sigourney Weaver).
http://www.tiff.net/films/re-assignment/

http://www.tiff.net/?filter=festival

Cool - you might be in Toronto! September is an excellent time to be here.....

[redtiger]

Star Trek:Beyond! Over-hyped and lousy plot! Wait til it comes out on dvd and then either rent it or check it out from your local library. It's not worth wasting your money to see at the theatre!

[fab]

[Stavros]

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 196
For reasons I cannot explain I had never seen this film before last night, even though I have seen most of Leone's films several times, they are that good. Nevertheless, I do always feel there is in Leone's films a lack of bite, perhaps because he prefers to create moods and impressions the most common of which is the lowered head (usually wearing a hat) rising to look at someone or something in the distance, accompanied by a short musical motif. Leone spent much of his early years working on productions of opera, and I wonder if the motifs -particularly those associated with curses, or fate- that one finds in the operas of Verdi and Wagner influenced him throughout life. Revenge, and the woes that follow men in search of money by any means is a repetitive theme in Leone films, but he does it well, though the women in his films lack depth of character. Leone died too soon to make more than about 12 films, but they stand up to repeated viewing, I can't imagine anyone making a western this good in 2016, it is hard to believe it was made in 1967 and released the year after.