Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[cigar joe]

I love everything in between. Probably one of my 10 favourite movies.

Touch of Evil is a visual feast. I directly enjoy every shot in it.

Agreed pretty much.

Road House(1947) Ida Lupino as sort of a female Bogart in a bizarre road house 7/10 DVD has an entertaining commentary will review in depth later.

[Groggy]

Is that the one where Lupino beats up Patrick Swayze?

[cigar joe]

Is that the one where Lupino beats up Patrick Swayze?

No Lupino comes between Richard Widmark and Cornel Wilde, 

[Groggy]

It's her way or the highway!

[Senza]

- Taras Bulba (1962) - 2.5/5

[Kurug3n]

LA Confidential

I enjoyed it.

[drinkanddestroy]

LA Confidential

I enjoyed it.

that's very informative. I suppose that could mean the movie could rate anywhere from, say, a 7/10 - 10/10?   

[Kurug3n]

that's very informative. I suppose that could mean the movie could rate anywhere from, say, a 7/10 - 10/10?   

Maybe a 6 or 7. I shouldn't have read the novel before watching the film.

[drinkanddestroy]

The Champ (1979) 9/10

Have you ever seen a performance by a child actor that you can say was better than Ricky Schroder's here? Maybe there are a few that are as good, but none are better, IMO. Forget about child actor, this performance is one of the greatest you'll ever see in any movie, period.

If I have one criticism of this movie, it's the music during the closing moments. There's this big, sweeping score, which is appropriate for an epic, maybe a Western like The Big Country, as the camera is pulling back over a sweeping vista... As nice as the music may be, it's just not appropriate for the closing moments of this movie.

The boxing scenes here are really, really good.

I noticed this movie has a very low rating on imdb (currently 6.3/10), and then I saw that this is actually a remake of a 1931 movie with the same name, starring Wallace Beery (that one has a solid 7.1/10 rating). Generally, audiences are hostile to remakes of popular movies, and I wonder if that's why this movie has such a low rating. This is a damn good movie 

[Senza]

The Battle Of Algiers (1966) - 4/5 stars.

[drinkanddestroy]

Just saw Double Indemnity for the second time, on TCM.

I liked it much better this time (though I still feel it could have been better if the narrator didn't tell you everything that would happen before you saw it. And that moment where Stanwyck says (paraphrasing), 'i didn't think so either.... until right now," is still bullshit. No fucking way. (The equivalent moment in Body Heat[/i -- where the girl says no matter what you think, I do love you -- works much better).
I still prefer Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice, but I do believe Double Indemnity is a damn fine movie.

[Groggy]

Reversal of Fortune - 8/10 - Solid legal drama focusing on Alan Dershowitz's attempts to exonerate Claus Von Bulow. Nothing terribly flashy but does a good job depicting a complicated case. Ace acting from Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Ron Silver.

[drinkanddestroy]

Reversal of Fortune - 8/10 - Solid legal drama focusing on Alan Dershowitz's attempts to exonerate Claus Von Bulow. Nothing terribly flashy but does a good job depicting a complicated case. Ace acting from Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Ron Silver.

yes, very good movie. If there had never been an OJ Simpson, the von Bulos case would have been considered the trial of the century. A landmark case for law school classes, legal ethics classes, tv shows about murder cases, etc.
Sunny von Bulow just died in 2008, she was sadly in a vegetative state for all those years.


if you liked the movie, you may enjoy watching this 1986 interview Dershowitz did with Bryant Gumbel after the book was released (before the movie was made) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GA1vZSvDA0
 
Dershowitz is a very honest person; he is a brilliant lawyer without all the lawyerly bullshit; this is about as honest an interview as you will ever find a criminal defense attorney give about his client

Whether you agree with him as a lawyer, or his political opinions, etc. one things is certain about Dershowitz: he is one of the most brilliant human beings on planet Earth.

p.s. I saw him speak once at Fordham Law School, criticizing the Goldstone Report  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43sXmRlGSnk (I'm one of the guys in the corner, handing the microphone to people asking Dershowitz questions after his speech

[Groggy]

Thanks for the videos drink. I watched the Dershowitz interview - really cool.

As for the movie, I was pleasantly surprised how it handled the case. Granted it was from Dershowitz's POV, but it easily could have gone the "Claus was a rich bastard who got away with it" route. Certainly what reading I've done on the case slants that way. Well, Claus was/is a rich bastard but so was Sunny. And there's a perfectly plausible alternative theory which the movie shows (though doesn't explicitly endorse). It's a very difficult case but a fascinating one. I may try and track down Dershowitz's book between TEL readings.

[drinkanddestroy]

Thanks for the videos drink. I watched the Dershowitz interview - really cool.

As for the movie, I was pleasantly surprised how it handled the case. Granted it was from Dershowitz's POV, but it easily could have gone the "Claus was a rich bastard who got away with it" route. Certainly what reading I've done on the case slants that way. Well, Claus was/is a rich bastard but so was Sunny. And there's a perfectly plausible alternative theory which the movie shows (though doesn't explicitly endorse). It's a very difficult case but a fascinating one. I may try and track down Dershowitz's book between TEL readings.

Personally, I don't have any problem with someone just cuz he/she is rich. If someone can afford to pay great lawyers to investigate a case (and he had all those Harvard law students doung all that research), I don't resent that any more than a rich person being able to afford paying a top doctor and living longer than a poor person would have with the same disease cuz of great medical care. I'd love it if the poor person was able to have access to the same care and I feel terrible if someone dies due to being unable to access good care, but that doesn't mean I should resent the rich person for being able to afford it. And Dershowitz makes that exact point. That if von Bulow was able to afford a top-notch defense that exonerated him (if he was innocent), the sad thing is that a poor innocent person in the same situation may never have been able to afford that and may be sitting jail. what can you do, life is tough when you don't have money. But I don't hodl it against someone in any way if he/she is rich and can afford the best legal team, just as I wouldn't hold it against a rich person who could afford the best doctors, the best food, or house.

When Dershowitz said he dislikes the lifestyle and he wouldn't have been allowed to join it, it seems to me that he is implying a "Gentleman's Agreement" type of situation that wouldn't have allowed Jews to be there. Just a guess, it seems to me that that is the implication.

As for Sunny: yes, the movie certainly doesn't make you very sympathetic to her, she was a major substance abuser, (and if I recall correctly she was not exactly the best wife either, right?) However, that doesn't affect the underlying issue for me a single iota, that she has no more right to be murdered than anyone else. So I definitely didn't have an "either way, she got what she deserved" attitude toward Sunny. (Personally, I have no problem with drug addicts, I'm a libertarian and believe if anyone wants to screw themselves up, that's no one's business but their own. Although once someone has children, they certainly have a moral obligation to be stable functioning human beings and proper parents.

Here's the most important question about the most controversial aspect of the movie: DID YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE MOVIE USING SUNNY AS THE NARRATOR?

p.s. fun fact: one of Dershowitz's students working on the case was.... Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money