What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Stavros]

Paul Morrisey has died at the age of 86. He emerged as an independent film maker in New York in the 1960s, and as well as being associated with the Velvet Underground (about whom he made a film, see link below), he was asked by Andy Warhol to make films under the Warhol brand when the artist partially withdrew from public life following the assassination attempt.

Where Warhol himself merely turned on the camera and let it roll for hours, Morrisey at least attempted to tell a story, mostly about young rootless people in New York taking drugs, living on their wits, and often having sex with each other and arguing. It was at the time the only place where you would see a transgendered person as they were in real life, the most famous being Holly Woodlawn, the person cited in Walk on the Wild Side and maybe the most famous Trans person of the Stonewall era. The quality of the films was not great, given their budgets, and today they are seen more as satire than straight forward stories about people in the less glamorous neighbourhoods of Manhattan, sort of Lower East Side before Alphabet city became the core of the Punk scene -it was like Punk before Punk.

Women in Revolt is a bit of a daft film, but has its moments, and at one screening at the ICA in London, a German woman sitting behind me was evidently so outraged by the non-Feminist aspects of the film as she saw it, screamed the word Scheisse! as the film ended. Many of the films were not licensed for public viewing and I saw them under 'private club' conditions either at the ICA, or the New Cinema Club.

Some trailers can be found in this link, plus other things and the Wikipedia article.

Paul Morrissey – Movies, Bio and Lists on MUBI

Paul Morrissey - Wikipedia

[Yvonne183]

Cannot stress too much what an amazing book Hubert Selby Jr wrote, I urge you to read it if you haven't, but it is significantly more explicit that the film could be. It helped convince me I was right to judge my desires to be natural, not some weird fetish.

Hi Starvos. I read the book some time in the 80's and my wasted brain doesn't remember much about it. I do remember some older guys in the hood talking about the book, cause of what you mentioned. Maybe "City of Night" was similar in that way.

I just watched "Parting Glances" partly about coping with AIDS in the 80's. With Steve Buscemi.

[Stavros]

Hi Starvos. I read the book some time in the 80's and my wasted brain doesn't remember much about it. I do remember some older guys in the hood talking about the book, cause of what you mentioned. Maybe "City of Night" was similar in that way.

I just watched "Parting Glances" partly about coping with AIDS in the 80's. With Steve Buscemi.

Are you sure your brain is 'wasted' when it might just be resting? City of Night is a gay classic, if I recall mostly set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and a lot, a lot of cubicles in the 'Head'...gay or not, it's a great read.

[Stavros]

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023)

This is the kind of film that appeals to those who have read their Barthes, Foucault, Lacan and that generation of philosophes, as over two and half hours it presents an event which has at least three different points de vue, with the added delight that a German woman who lived in London with a French man has removed with him to an alpine chalet outside Grenoble where they converse, most of the time in English before and after his mysterious death. Half or more of the film is set in Court, and the conclusion of the Court is not necessarily a conclusion of anyone watching the film. For some reason, the Border Collie in the film is called Messi.

It could have been a pretentious disaster, but the editing, camerawork, and the script that has won most of its awards, make this a fascinating film, the only let down for me was the Prosecutor who I thought was too young, and too aggressive. I give this 8/10.

Not as impressive the second time around, clever though it is. To clarify, the dog is Messi in real life, but named Snoop in the film.

[MrFanti]

The most ridiculous "Where The Scary Things Are"....

[Stavros]

A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018 )
A Quiet Place II (John Krasinski, 2020)

I had only seen parts of the first in this sequence, so decided to revisit both, and I think there is another one out there. It is classed as 'Horror' as genres go, though I think it is more a 'Thriller' via SciFi though these are loose categories. Given how manu poor films with aliens there are, these films are very good indeed with regard to character building, the tensions created by the dangerous environment they are in, and I like that we don't know how this invasion happened or when. If there is one criticism in the first film, I don't think Emily Blunt would look to clean after giving birth -her hair doesn't look any different, for example.

Bears comparison with Bird Box (2018 ) in which the danger is not in sound but sight, but also a film that has a terrific performance from Sandra Bullock and is as believable as A Quiet Place.

[BlüeKarma]

[Stavros]

A Quiet Place: Day One (Michael Sarnoski, 2024)

The story is thinning out, but it is quite an effective film, shot mostly in London rather than New York City. At one point the two main characters are running away from Canary Wharf underground, but it doesn't matter. The visuals are great for a film about the world in melt down, albeit with some reference to the condition parts of Manhattan were in on 9/11.

Then there is the cat (they used) that doesn't meow. Not a bad watch, an affecting performance from Lupita Nyong'o.

[Ben]

Hustlers... w/ Jennifer Lopez. I liked it. Was impressed w/ Jennifer Lopez's performance too. It's entertaining, interesting too....

[Stavros]

Hustlers... w/ Jennifer Lopez. I liked it. Was impressed w/ Jennifer Lopez's performance too. It's entertaining, interesting too....

Not a fan, and still can't understand why they used the music of Chopin. But if you enjoyed it, good for you.