Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[drinkanddestroy]

WILD RIVER (1960) 6.5/10 ...Maybe 7/10 max.
But ratings are just the beginning of a discuussion. I'd like to continuue this discussion about this fascinating movie: abouut its subject matter, politics, characters, performannces, CinemaCope ... Lots to discuss when i have the time. In the meatime, I'd like to hear what y'all have to say, then i share my opinions soon, when i have the time.

[Dust Devil]

I don't get this at all. Connery dominates the screen like very few.

I consciously slightly belabored that...


The problem is that he's only my third favorite James Bond, and that his movies from the seventies (in whose his best work is to be found, if you ask me) were severely underrepresented over here, which didn't help his cause. Since then I've seen them, yes, and I agree with your statement.

Here he gives maybe his best performance, subtle and intense where needed. Certainly much more substance than in his 60's macho phase, and later post The Name of the Rose old-lion-king flicks.

[T.H.]

I watched The Untouchables for the first time in years recently and it wasn't until then that I realized Connery is probably one of my favorite actors. He was so unbelievably good. I think people take him for granted because of how effortless his acting appears. 

[cigar joe]

WILD RIVER (1960) 6.5/10 ...Maybe 7/10 max.
But ratings are just the beginning of a discuussion. I'd like to continuue this discussion about this fascinating movie: abouut its subject matter, politics, characters, performannces, CinemaCope ... Lots to discuss when i have the time. In the meatime, I'd like to hear what y'all have to say, then i share my opinions soon, when i have the time.

Whats to discuss? I agree with the 6.5 maybe 7 rating, its not a film that I would actively seek out again, I stumbled upon it on TCM.

[dave jenkins]

Whats to discuss? I agree with the 6.5 maybe 7 rating, its not a film that I would actively seek out again, I stumbled upon it on TCM.

I'm with Joe on this. Not a film that held my interest. Yeah, I like Lee Remick, but she wasn't enough for me.

[noodles_leone]

INTERSTELLAR - 7,5/10

Best Nolan appart from Memento. The good parts were really really good. The bad parts weren't as bad as I feared. Far too predictable though. Also, none of the Nolan brothers have enough imagination (yet) to properly deal with the topics they've tackled lately: the best dream they could come up with in Inception was a Russian base from a James Bond movie, and now their unknown planets are just as dull. Just talk with real scientists, they know far more interesting planets, constituted of ice so cold it's harder than most of our rocks, rains of mercury and under the surface oceans of liquid metal. We also know none circular satellites, which days vary in lengths and which gravity depends on where exactly you stand. That's better than a water world and a ice world and I got it from a radio interview a year ago.
Still, Interstellar has a lot of stuff going for it: mostly good to great acting, top notch directing (not half as good as gravity but still very adult and somewhere between Spielberg and Terrence Malick... in a good way) and, most important, a true adventure feeling.

I saw it in Houston, just after visiting the Space Center, which was cool. Today was space day. However, the IMAX screening was pointless (this movie is far too grainy for its own good, even without IMAX) and the IMAX theater of Houston has terrible screens.

[drinkanddestroy]

WILD RIVER, it's interesting, ultimately I'm not so excited about the story so I don't give anymore than a 6.5/10, or 7/10 max, but it was beautiful to look at. Really good use of CinemaScope here. One of the usual problems with CinemaScope is that in the big panning shots, the image looks curved, but here it didn't.
Btw, Netflix doesn't have the DVD, so I rented this on iTunes and watched it on my laptop. I paid the extra dollar ($3.99 vs. $2.99) to rent the HD version and I am happy that I did. Cost an extra buck, and took up a couple of gigs extra on my laptop till I watched it, and took longer to download ... but it looked gorgeous. (Haven't seen the non-HD version to compare.)

RE: the politics: when the movie opened with the heartbreaking real-life scene of that man speaking about his family being killed, and because I know Kazan is a liberal, I assumed the movie would be all for the TVA. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the politics were handled, pretty evenhandedly: Ultimately, as much as the gov't may act as and believe they are your friend, it's backed by force: you can smile and try to convince someone that something is in their best interest, but at the end of the day, the only thing really behind the gov't's power is force. As Clift says, "That's progress." The old woman is ultimately seen as quite the opposite of the senile thing Clift assumes her to be. And while those locals are rightfully criticized for their treatment of blacks, their right not to have the gov't force them off their land is presented nicely. I've never been to Tennessee but I wonder if virtually every person in these towns is really a dumb old buffoon with overalls.

Jo Van Fleet is marvelous here; the makeup people did a great job, she was only 45 when this movie was made.

I had little use for Remick, and her character's story, that whole love story between her and Clift, was pretty useless. Montgomery Clift, post-accident, face reconstructed, ain't the same guy.

Ultimately the story didn't interest me that much, but the movie is pretty to look at and I was pleasantly surprised at kazan's handling of the subject of central planning.

[PowerRR]

INTERSTELLAR - 7,5/10

Best Nolan appart from Memento. The good parts were really really good. The bad parts weren't as bad as I feared. Far too predictable though. Also, none of the Nolan brothers have enough imagination (yet) to properly deal with the topics they've tackled lately: the best dream they could come up with in Inception was a Russian base from a James Bond movie, and now their unknown planets are just as dull. Just talk with real scientists, they know far more interesting planets, constituted of ice so cold it's harder than most of our rocks, rains of mercury and under the surface oceans of liquid metal. We also know none circular satellites, which days vary in lengths and which gravity depends on where exactly you stand. That's better than a water world and a ice world and I got it from a radio interview a year ago.
Still, Interstellar has a lot of stuff going for it: mostly good to great acting, top notch directing (not half as good as gravity but still very adult and somewhere between Spielberg and Terrence Malick... in a good way) and, most important, a true adventure feeling.

I saw it in Houston, just after visiting the Space Center, which was cool. Today was space day. However, the IMAX screening was pointless (this movie is far too grainy for its own good, even without IMAX) and the IMAX theater of Houston has terrible screens.

Glad you liked it, I think I like it more now that I've registered a bit. A shame about your Gravity opinion though

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - 8.5/10
One of my favorite comedies, but it loses some points due to redundancy toward the end. There's not a subgenre I hate much more than the musical biopic (or in most cases, biopic in general) and Walk Hard absolutely tears them apart. It mocks everything from the rise and fall structure to the color palette to the "unexpected revelations" that reveal well-known career turning points. John C Reilly is one of the most talented actors/comics out there. Plus Eddie Vedder is in it. Fuck yeah

[dave jenkins]

20,000 Days on Earth (2014) - 8/10. 1080p. A fictional 20,001st day in the life of singer-songwriter-graphomaniac Nick Cave. Eschewing the typical approach to rock documentaries, we travel up close and personal as Cave goes about his business in and around Brighton, where, I was shocked to discover, the transplanted Australian lives. Interspersed with a few rehearsals and performances, the film is mostly made up of conversations he has with people: his shrink (or is that someone pretending to be his shrink?), Warren Ellis (his chief collaborator these days) the curators at the Nick Cave Archives (I kid you not). Cave spends a lot of time in his car, so the filmmakers add an interesting device of having people suddenly appearing in the vehicle to chat with Nick. He doesn't stop and pick them up, they're just suddenly there. First there's actor Ray Winstone (in the passenger's seat), then former band member Blixa Bargeld (in the passenger's seat) and finally Kylie Minogue (in the back seat). Does one have to be a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds fan to enjoy the film? Well, I'm not all that interested in the guy and I found it interesting. It helps, I suppose, to like the recent album (Push the Sky Away), because the soundtrack features a lot of material from it (especially "Jubilee Street").

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/20000-Days-on-Earth-Blu-ray/116003/#Review This comment on the video quality is worth noting:

According to IMDb, 20,000 Days on Earth was shot with the Arri Alexa, which is consistent with the film's appearance on Drafthouse Films' 1080p AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The credited cinematographer is Erik Wilson (Submarine, The Double). Perhaps as a counterpoint to the rough features and haunted eyes of the film's subject, the directors and cinematographer have opted for rich colors and a beautiful, smooth surface wherever possible. The image on Drafthouse's disc is as good as they come, sharp and clear without any digital edginess, free of noise or artifacts, and moving easily between the deep blacks of the nighttime closing shot on the beach at Brighton and the pastoral daytime scenes in the English countryside, along with everything in between. Fine detail is evident in Cave's distinctive wardrobe, in the stacks of books and photos on his desk, in the tiny handwriting that is legible in his archive, and in dozens of other small touches. 20,000 days is a tribute to the possibilities of digital photography. (For obvious reasons, footage taken from archival sources looks only as good as the original material will allow.)

Although the film is only 98 minutes long, Drafthouse has placed it on a BD-50, allowing for an average bitrate of 30.98 Mbps. Most studios would have tried for much tighter compression, especially with digitally originated material. There is no way to be sure without access to the original uncompressed master, but perhaps the extra bandwidth is one of the reasons the Blu-ray looks so good.

[PowerRR]

The Babadook (2014) - 7.5/10
Takes the conventions and cliches of the generic throwaway horror movie that every teen girl loves, but instead lessens the amount of jump scares and adds a more interesting curve toward mental illness. Add some impressive editing techniques, great direction, and - get this - well developed characters, and you get a pretty damn good horror film.

[Dust Devil]

Play Dirty (1969) - 8/10

I think, in all seriousness, this must be a better movie than TDD (and I love that one). If for anything, then for the fact it doesn't detour to be funny when everybody around expects it. Plus it's wonderfully cynical... and solidly directed with the scenes set in exotic places a tad slower in order to be played with and finally enjoyed... and with memorable if not excellent performances... and yeah - it's very good for ya.

[drinkanddestroy]

I just saw Gone Baby Gone. THIS POST IS ALL SPOILERS
and btw I haven't read any of these books so I am focusing entirely on the movie. Forget the book-movie comparisons.
 And I am incredibly disgusted.
I was really loving the movie until the final twist of Freeman doing the kidnapping. (Not that I think cops are any better people than any average person, but for a movie to have a top cop something like this, as if he'd really get away with it, wtf do they take the audience for? Chalk this up to "suspension of disbelief"?  Roll Eyes Now here is something a million times worse than even that: the fact that Casey Affleck's girlfriend decides to take Freemna's side. yes, let the girl stay with Freeman. No friggin way. That is ludicrous. It's a screenwriter telling teh audience, "I can write whatever I want and say, haha I fooled you, you are an idiot." When the girlfriend, Michelle Monaghan, tries convincing Casey Affleck to let Freeman keep the kid and leaves him over that, forget it. SHE SPENDS THE WHOLEMOVIE LOOKING FOR THE KID THEN LEAVES AFFLECK WHEN HE FINDS THE KID AND DECIDES TO RETURN HER TO HER MOM?? talk about movie contrivance/lunacy/bullshit. Stick whatever word you want in there. I prefer BULLSHIT.
In this movie that twist leaves a real bad taste in my mouth for everything. UGh. I was all set to give this movie at least an 8/10, maybe an 8.5/10, depending on the ending, but after these last ten minutes, I don't know how low I can possibly go to register my disgust.

The acting was really wonderful all around (with the exception of perhaps a couple of scenes, a few lines by Affleck and Harris), overall I thought the cast up and down the line was terrific, Casey Affleck, Harris, the women. Really good. Casey Affleck was really good also in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. That guy should get more lead roles.
We've debated the acting merits of Ben Affleck before – I've said he is a good actor, i know n_l doesn't like him; and I thought he was real good acting in Argo – but IMO Casey Affleck is really good, deserving of lead roles. Amy Ryan and Miclelle Monaghan were really good here. Especially Ryan - she got the movie's one Oscar nomination. Well deserved.

Btw, even without that final twist, this movie ain't in the same conversation as Mystic River. Few are. MR is one of my all-time faves. But this had a chance to be really good before the writer tells the audience he is gonna laugh at them in the last ten minutes.

p.s. some people were comparing this movie in the conversation with Gone Girl. Once we are maikng that comparison: I enjoyed Gone Baby Gone a lot more than Gone Girl. Sure, the last ten minutes ruined Gone Baby Gone for me, but Gone Girl wasn;t good in the first place to be ruined

[cigar joe]

Django Unchained re-watch on Netflix 8/10.

[dave jenkins]

L'avventura (1960) - 10/10. 1080p. Great performances from all concerned: Lisca Bianca, Sicily, Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Gabriele Ferzetti's toupee. Dispensing with the conventional story-making of the first hour, Antonioni presents us with Two Characters in Search of a Plot, a move that allows the director to indulge his predilections: photographing both architecture and the architecture of the human face. A shame he felt the need to reintroduce a bit of shopworn melodrama at the end, but then, he hadn't quite found his way to the brilliant post-Humanism of his later work. What beautiful images, though. The new Criterion deserves an 11/10.

[Kurug3n]

They Live 1988

5 out of 5. Carpenter probably at his best.