Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[dave jenkins]

Lonely Are the Brave (1962) 5/10

The plot was ridiculous. A cowboy in the present-day who can't adjust to society? puhleez. it's 19friggin62!

The acting was pretty solid all around (except Michael Kane, who I couldn't stand as Paul Bondi) -- Kirk Douglas is always great; Walter Matthau as the sherriff; and Gena Rowlands as Jerry Bondi were good. But the story was absolutely ridiculous and not believable one bit.

That's pretty much how I see it. Kirk Douglas gets himself thrown into jail on purpose and then has to escape? Huh?

[drinkanddestroy]

That's pretty much how I see it. Kirk Douglas gets himself thrown into jail on purpose and then has to escape? Huh?

yup. and a sheriff can't just "decide" to sentence a man to a year in jail. There has to be a formal arraignment, followed by plea negotiations and possibly a trial. It's utter nonsense that Douglas gets arrested, "sentenced" -- by the sheriff! -- to a year in prison, and then escapes and is gone before one night is out  

[titoli]

3 Supermen Against Godfather (1979) This has surprisingly the return of Nick Jordan, talking and not jumping, with the action moving to Turkey. But the result sucks as the preceding ones. I give it 3\10 because of a couple of gags unfortunately badly developed and a couple of pretty girls in bikini.

[cigar joe]

They Drive By Night (1940) dir Raoul Walsh, with George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, and Alan Hale. Two wildcat truckers, brothers Joe and Paul Fabrini (Raft & Bogart) struggling to make it in the hauling business. First half of the film is mostly about their trials and tribulations, triumphs and failures. Joe meets redhead waitress Cassi (Ann Sheridan) and they eventually hit it off. After Bogart looses his arm in a wreck Raft goes to work for his old friend Joe Carlson (Hale) as a traffic manager. Complications ensue when Carlson's wife Lana (Ida Lupino) an old flame of Joe's starts to come on to him.  Ida looks pretty good in this one, Raft & Bogart and Sheridan are entertaining. 7/10

[dave jenkins]

A pretty good flick, a shame about George Raft. If only he'd turned down every part he was offered.

[cigar joe]

Maria Chapdelaine (1934) French Canadian melodrama. Director: Julien Duvivier, with Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud, an interesting flick to me because it  takes place on the Canadian Frontier and looks as if was actually shot there. Story is Maria Chapdelaine must choose between three suitors Gabin is one of them. 6/10 

[drinkanddestroy]

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION 8/10....any time you get Paul Newman and Henry Fonda on the same screen, it's awesome. the supporting cast is good as well. I'd definitely recommend that anyone who hasn't seen it should put it on their Netflix queue :-)

[drinkanddestroy]

99 RIVER STREET (1953) 6.8/10

This noir starts out promising, but doesn't finish as strongly. Still, a decent watch. Very good performances all around

[dave jenkins]

Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) - 10/10. Raul Ruiz's four-and-a-half hour HD adaptation of a famous 19th Century Portugese novel. The decision to go digital must have been economically motivated (Ruiz shot it very quickly for Portugese television), and the results, while generally appealing, reveal the shortcomings of the technology (especially on quick tracks and pans, where backgrounds tend not to read correctly). Nonetheless, there are a number of still lifes in the "film" that are the equal of anything in The Leopard or Barry Lyndon (but with much paler hues). The plot consists of not one but several interlocking tales about ill-fated love and abandoned children, and each is told in flashback. Structurally the movie resembles The Saragossa Manuscript, though with less whimsy and without recourse to supernatural explanations. Memory is the story's great theme. Of course, Ruiz has done an adaptation of Proust, but there were times during my viewing that I was reminded of that other masterwork on the subject, Once Upon a Time in America (especially when the camera lingers on clocks or the numerous doors). Even so, I was thunderstruck at the end when Ruiz, reaching for some kind of meta-literary statement to cap his work, virtually lifted the entire ending from Leone's film. Well, you should always steal from the best, so I can't really fault him for that. Ruiz has just died; however, I hear another of his films is on the way. The guy just can't stop!

The Devil's Double (2011) - 8/10. The story of Latif Yahia, the man who was forced to work as Uday Hussein's body double. The film does a good job of walking a fine line: Latif is used as the viewer's surrogate to witness--and recoil at--Uday's monstrous acts, without implicating Latif himself in those acts (the reason that Latif was able to observe so much is explained by Latif himself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX33JHoLTZk). Audience sympathies remain with Latif throughout, and things get particularly exciting when he finally makes his bid for freedom. The film was shot mostly in Malta (although LoA fans will note some footage from Jordan) and looks great. My only caveat is that director Lee Tamahori has--no doubt for dramatic reasons--re-ordered history and conflated some very-well-known events. SPOILER: WasLatifreallytheprincipaltriggermanonthe1996assassinationattemptonUday?Ohwell,itmakesforagreatfinalscene.SPOILER END

[titoli]

Germany Year Zero (1948) One of the undisputed masterpieces of italian cinema, Rossellini's most accomplished with Louis XIV.

[Groggy]

Germany Year Zero (1948) One of the undisputed masterpieces of italian cinema, Rossellini's most accomplished with Louis XIV.

 

[Groggy]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 7/10 The good: amazing motion capture/CGI, good handling of the ape characters, Frieda Pinto, modestly clever ties to the original. The bad: lame human characters, questionable plot elements, some cringe-inducing dialogue, banal music. The ugly: the jerk kid from Harry Potter quoting Charlton Heston lines. Verdict: worthwhile.

[moviesceleton]

I caught the last half of The Return of the King by complete chance, and cried even harder than in 2003. I'm quite convinced that I'm conditioned to it.

[dave jenkins]

The Guard (2011) 7/10. An FBI agent goes to the West of Ireland and partners with a local cop to bring down a drug gang. It's Don Cheadle and Brendan Gleeson, together again for the first time. Interestingly, the focus is not on the fish-out-of-water character, but on the local man.  Director John Michael McDonagh--Martin's older brother--commisioned Calexico for the score because he felt he was making a Western, and I guess it works, even with all the ultraviolence, as a kind of parody. Anyway, Laughed My Royal Irish Ass Off (and I'm neither royal, nor Irish. Nor have I ever been an empire). Afterwards, needing more Gleeson, I ran home and watched In Bruges again.

[titoli]

together again for the first time.

Sounds interesting.