Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[dave jenkins]

the movie has such a lively, breezy atmosphere because of the constant camera movements which aren't Greengrass-y at all.

Altman said in interviews that it had been his intention for the camera to never stop moving, and once you realize that's the conceit it's really fun to observe. Zooms date the movie, the way high-key lighting dates 60s films, but you have to accept such things with older films. I have watched TLG maybe 50 times and I never get tired of it. It's Altman's greatest picture, Brackett's best script, Gould's premier performance. I'm not sure that flashing the film was such a good idea, but all other aspects of the image are exceptional.

[titoli]

Chandler's plots can certainly be considered messy, but TLG is a brilliantly directed movie imo - the zooms etc aren't distracting at all and the movie has such a lively, breezy atmosphere because of the constant camera movements which aren't Greengrass-y at all.

If you don't like the way this movie uses zooms don't ever watch a Richard Rush movie.

Makes me  want to watch the movie again to understand what you are talking about. I don't know what Greengrass is or who Richard Rush is. And I don't care. TLG is a great movie, the fact that the plot is messy is not important. Who cares about it when you  can watch Gould and his cat (just compare those scenes with those of Pitt and his dog) or Gould and the cops? I'll re-watch it asap.   

[noodles_leone]

Chandler's plots can certainly be considered messy, but TLG is a brilliantly directed movie imo - the zooms etc aren't distracting at all

I'll explain further in more details what I think about these zooms but I'll give you that: they are far less distracting than most of the zooms in the movies of the late 60's/early 70's (including some Leone ones).

and the movie has such a lively, breezy atmosphere because of the constant camera movements which aren't Greengrass-y at all.

If you don't like the way this movie uses zooms don't ever watch a Richard Rush movie.

Fully agreed, and dully noted for the Rush movies 

Altman said in interviews that it had been his intention for the camera to never stop moving, and once you realize that's the conceit it's really fun to observe.

Thanks for the info, I didn't think it was as conscious as that. It didn't bother me at all, what bothered me is that many of the camera movements weren't planned at all. There is a difference between a telephoto shot that is composed and one that just happens because the operator is trying to follow the subject. One could argue that at the time the idea of having an always moving camera was innovative enough, though. Only decades after filmmakers managed to really control (as much) movement.

Zooms date the movie, the way high-key lighting dates 60s films, but you have to accept such things with older films.

I'm pretty good at accepting what comes with older films, it wasn't the problem here for me. There are dated but good for the time uses of zooms in The Long Goodbye (the last shot being one of them) as well as terrible ones (when it's just a fake camera move among others because nobody planned how to follow the actors before shouting "ACTION") that almost look like something out of The Gods Must Be Crazy. I have no particular problem with the zooms, it's a shame they're not all (half) as good as the ones in the last shots. As is, they participate to the mess... as well as to the lively atmosphere TH was talking about. It's always a fine line between making things lively and making a mess, to me they went over the line.

I still liked it quite a lot and will watch it again, probably in a few months.

[noodles_leone]

This thread is turning into me and n_l reposting our Facebook message conversations, but...

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

As an fan's extension of the Breaking Bad universe & characters: 8.5/10
As a film: 6/10

As a massive Breaking Bad fan I'm very happy with it and will be rewatching several times throughout my life.

A very fun Sergio Leone homage in there.

And some Safdie Brothers:

So.

El Camino 6.5/10

First thing first, it's a 2 hours long and totally unnecessary Breaking Bad episode. It has nothing from a feature film apart from its length. I absolutely LOVE Breaking Bad, but it was already a 3 seasons show artificially made in 5 seasons, with a perfect and closed ending. Adding 2 others hours that don't bring anything new makes me feel like a cash cow and a consumer, ie not a human being. I don't think it's good when a movie makes you less human than you were before you watched it, but I may be wrong. I already have a Breaking Bad mug so maybe I'm a lost cause anyway.

As a Breaking Bad episode, it's pretty good overall, with great and sometimes really moving moments. The pacing is wrong though, probably because it's made like a TV episode and not a 2 hours work of art. I'm talking a lot about the format because for some reason the whole thing didn't work for me.

The other big flaw, of course, is the elephant in the room: a depressed Aaron Paul isn't good enough to carry a whole film on his shoulders. Playing a depressed main character isn't easy, and no one should have asked him to do it for 2 hours.

Don't waste a second watching if you haven't seen all of Breaking Bad.

It was nice to see Robert Forster a last time (he died the day of the release of the film episode).

In the end, after Vince Gilligan redefined twice TV storytelling and brought so much cinema into TV, I thought he could at least put some cinema into a feature film. He didn't, he only brought 6 years old TV storytelling with him.


Being John Malkovitch 8.5/10
Third watch, I think, but first in more than a decade. I really liked it this time. Pretty unsettling.

[T.H.]

Altman said in interviews that it had been his intention for the camera to never stop moving, and once you realize that's the conceit it's really fun to observe. Zooms date the movie, the way high-key lighting dates 60s films, but you have to accept such things with older films. I have watched TLG maybe 50 times and I never get tired of it. It's Altman's greatest picture, Brackett's best script, Gould's premier performance. I'm not sure that flashing the film was such a good idea, but all other aspects of the image are exceptional.

Co-signed.

Makes me  want to watch the movie again to understand what you are talking about. I don't know what Greengrass is or who Richard Rush is. And I don't care. TLG is a great movie, the fact that the plot is messy is not important. Who cares about it when you  can watch Gould and his cat (just compare those scenes with those of Pitt and his dog) or Gould and the cops? I'll re-watch it asap.

Paul Greengrass is the guy who directed those Borne movies that never stops shaking the camera because he doesn't know how to shoot action, frame, compose a scene, edit, etc

Richard Rush is probably best known for directing The Stunt Man (1980) and his movies feature some crazy intricate zooms - ex: a shot would begin with a close up of an object on a desk and would end in a courtyard a story below and a 100 yards away from where the shot began. It's an exaggeration, but if I remember correctly, Getting Straight (1970) features a shot similar to that but it's been a long time since I've seen that movie.

[titoli]

Co-signed.
Paul Greengrass is the guy who directed those Borne movies that never stops shaking the camera because he doesn't know how to shoot action, frame, compose a scene, edit, etc

Richard Rush is probably best known for directing The Stunt Man (1980) and his movies feature some crazy intricate zooms - ex: a shot would begin with a close up of an object on a desk and would end in a courtyard a story below and a 100 yards away from where the shot began. It's an exaggeration, but if I remember correctly, Getting Straight (1970) features a shot similar to that but it's been a long time since I've seen that movie.

Thanx, though I'd have skipped those movies anyway.

[dave jenkins]

Taxi Driver plus The King of Comedy minus any semblance of subtlety plus an extra dose of heavy-handedness =

Joker (2019) - 4/10
I could write an essay about how dumb this cute little movie is, but I don’t need to. Just don’t watch it.

You forgot to include Death Wish and V for Vendetta in your list of references.

I had no interest in seeing another comic-book related movie until I saw Dr. Kermode's review and  then  I was interested. I  took the  wife and went down to the  local multi-plex and got tickets (we were three seats away from a sell-out). I enjoyed it a lot until the final act and then the plot stupidities began to overwhelm everything else. The cops investigating the subway shooting by a clown-faced man are interested in Joker because he works for a clown company from which he got fired for taking a gun on a job. So why don't they ask to see the gun? Don't they want to try to match the gun with the fired slugs? Joker wants to find out about his background so goes to Arkham Asylum where his mom spent time and he gets a guy to read him her file. Without any kind of authorizing document? And then he's able to rip the file out  of the employee's hands and run away with it? Dumbest of all: The Robert DeNiro character with the late-night show has his assistant call Joker and invite him on the show, not knowing anything about what his performance will consist of. They don't even preview it? And when it starts to go wrong, they don't cut him off and re-tape?

On the other hand, the mid-70s, pre-Guiliani ambience of "Gotham" is nicely rendered--did they actually shoot this on film? Everything has a great look. All the characters are either cruel or insane or both--not a bad approach, except it gets a bit wearing. (CJ, take note, it's a retro-neo-noir). Best of all was the central performance: except for the fact that Academy voters are going to hate the film, J.P. could be up for his second Oscar.

So, good until it wasn't, therefore worth a watch, I give it a 7/10.

[noodles_leone]

did they actually shoot this on film? Everything has a great look.

According to IMDB:

Arri Alexa 65, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses
Arri Alexa LF, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses
Arri Alexa Mini, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses

... which are 3 digital cameras, ranked from the highest end to the lowest end. They're mostly supposed to be the most film-like cinema camera of the market though (depending on who you ask).

[dave jenkins]

According to IMDB:

Arri Alexa 65, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses
Arri Alexa LF, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses
Arri Alexa Mini, Hasselblad Prime DNA Lenses

... which are 3 digital cameras, ranked from the highest end to the lowest end. They're mostly supposed to be the most film-like cinema camera of the market though (depending on who you ask).

They did something to make it all seem like a film from the 70s. A fun retro look.

[noodles_leone]

They did something to make it all seem like a film from the 70s. A fun retro look.

Yeah, since the first trailer Phillips talks about Taxi Driver, the King of a Comedy and more generally “movies from the 70’s” as the main inspiration. Which is exactly what a comic book movie needed to do to make me want to see it.

Which I’ll probably do tomorrow.

[cigar joe]

(CJ, take note, it's a retro-neo-noir).

Oh I'll keep an eye out for when it turns up free on Netflix or AmPrime, not gonna pay to see it. I'd rather pay to watch the real grindhouse stuff that's been forgotten. There are a lot of unexpected surprises out there.

[T.H.]

I respect Todd Phillips for making a comic book movie and blockbuster that doesn't appeal to the lowest common denominator and the PC outrage mob - though there's a decent amount of overlapping with those two groups. Joker would have to be a distinctly American movie and not fluffy fantasy for unsophisticated Chinese audiences. I should really give this movie a shot when it's an actual movie with stylistic choices that aren't catered to focus groups, teenagers and the Chinese government.

But I still haven't seen Once Upon a Time Hollywood so this will have to wait, if I get around to it.

[dave jenkins]

I should really give this movie a shot when it's an actual movie with stylistic choices that aren't catered to focus groups, teenagers and the Chinese government.

But I still haven't seen Once Upon a Time Hollywood so this will have to wait, if I get around to it.

They would both make a great Today Is Yesterday double-feature.

[noodles_leone]

They did something to make it all seem like a film from the 70s. A fun retro look.

More about the reason why they went digital and not film (spoiler alert: it's all about the format of the Alexa 65, which is even wider than full frame (24*36), while most cinema cameras (film or digital) are narrower than full frame):

“Todd was really adamant about shooting film, convinced we’d just shoot 35mm like we did on his previous films,” said Sher. “We drove around to three or four different places around the city and captured imagery with no lighting in both those formats. And when we looked at them side by side, we really loved the large-format aspect of the 65.”

“Joker” is principally a character study, one that relies on both Joaquin Phoenix’s performance and his relationship to his environment, which includes a large number of interiors. It was these compositional demands that made the celluloid-obsessed Phillips pick the digital Alexa 65 over 35mm film. “We were often going to be quite close to Joaquin physically, in proximity, in his apartment in some of those scenes,” said Sher. “A camera three feet away from him, which also has a real psychological effect of connecting you to a character and feeling that sense of intimacy, but now we didn’t need to shoot it on a 21mm or a 24mm.”

https://www.indiewire.com/feature/large-format-cameras-arri-alexa-65-film-language-joker-roma-midsommar-1202179944/?fbclid=IwAR3a-F-EOicYJEG32g7oCFrDMGWmPBWUrpTcVcXS931EMJRe6nxBVWS0Mho

Interestingly enough, the film equivalent of this format is of course the 35mm, which I don't think was very used in the 70's, especially not in the movies referenced by Phillips.

[stanton]

Interestingly enough, the film equivalent of this format is of course the 35mm, which I don't think was very used in the 70's, especially not in the movies referenced by Phillips.

You mean the standard 1,37:1 aspect ratio, not the 35 mm film format itself?