Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[noodles_leone]

Ha, you don?t like to feel young?
Anyway, your loss. It?s one of the greatest hour of cinema that was ever made.

[PowerRR]

Last Night in Soho (2021) - 6.5/10

Spoilers.

The first half was like magical smooth butter flowing goodness, like a restrained and way more interesting Baby Driver. Then the murder mystery stuff starts and uhh? it makes you think, what was the point of the first hour introducing all that interesting stuff? Although it turns out the murder mystery was a misdirect, the actual final act takes a turn even more for the worse with an awful "twist" monologue and a generic studio horror ending. A lot of the themes the movies wants to talk about - men sucking, nostalgia being overhyped, identity... were all kinda washed away and forgotten, or if not forgotten than diminished into one-note nothingness. Everything just became so linear whereas the first half was the epitome of art/entertainment that our friend Sergio talks about so much

[noodles_leone]

the first half was the epitome of art/entertainment that our friend Sergio talks about so much

and that our not-friend DJ hates so much.

[dave jenkins]

The Jinx (2015) 1080p - 11/10. True crime doesn't get any better than this. Robert Durst, a multi-millionaire who has committed 3 murders and remains at liberty, is the subject of this 6-part HBO series. As the filmmakers assemble pieces of the project--including interviews with Durst himself--they make an amazing discovery. This is an engrossing documentary in which observers gradually become participants. And it's all true.

From The New York Times

Robert Durst Charged With 2nd-Degree Murder in His Wife?s Disappearance

Mr. Durst, who was sentenced to life in prison in California two weeks ago, now faces another trial in New York.

By Charles V. Bagli

Kathie McCormack Durst, the young wife of a real estate scion, returned to the couple?s weekend cottage in South Salem, N.Y., on the evening of Jan. 31, 1982, and after yet another argument with her husband, she vanished.

There was no note to her mother, Ann, to her sisters and brother, or her friends. Her disappearance started a nearly 40-year-long saga that has included criminal investigations, breathless media coverage, books, a film and a documentary, much of it centered around her now-notorious husband, Robert A. Durst.

Now, decades after her disappearance ? and just weeks after Mr. Durst was convicted of murder in another woman?s death in Los Angeles ? prosecutors in Westchester, N.Y., say they can finally prove what many have long suspected.

Mr. Durst, a one-time heir to a real estate empire whose towers are strung across Manhattan, was indicted in White Plains on Monday on a single count of second-degree murder that accuses him of killing Kathie Durst when she was 29 and months away from fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor.

?For nearly four decades there has been a great deal of speculation about this case, much of it fueled by Robert Durst?s own highly publicized statements,? Miriam E. Rocah, the Westchester district attorney, said in a statement. ?An indictment is a crucial step in the process of holding wrongdoers accountable for their actions.?

Mr. Durst, who has since been tried for two different murders and convicted once, has long insisted that he did not kill his wife, whose body has never been found. Chip Lewis, a Houston criminal defense lawyer who represented Mr. Durst at trials in Texas in 2003 and Los Angeles in 2021, called the new charge ?fake news.?

But Mr. Durst has acknowledged that he was violent toward his wife on the night of her disappearance. He told the producers of the 2015 documentary, ?The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,? that he engaged in a ?pushing, shoving argument? with Kathie Durst that night in South Salem, about 50 miles northeast of Manhattan.

The case, the first in which Mr. Durst was implicated, in some ways represents a fitting conclusion to the long, strange legal odyssey surrounding him. Over the years of suspicion that followed his wife?s disappearance, his bizarre affect and disarming manner in interviews made him an irresistible subject for true-crime stories.

For the investigators who long pursued him, Mr. Durst proved to be a challenging adversary. Only this year was he finally convicted of murder. Just two weeks before the Westchester County indictment, Mr. Durst, 78 and frail, was sentenced in Los Angeles to life without parole for the murder of his confidante Susan Berman in December 2000. The jury in that case found that Mr. Durst had shot Ms. Berman in the back of her head because he feared she was about to reveal to investigators what she knew about the disappearance and murder of Kathie Durst.

Ms. Berman, a journalist and screenwriter who was living in New York in 1982, arranged interviews with the city?s tabloids for Mr. Durst at the time his wife disappeared. Both of them told police and reporters that Ms. Durst was drug-addled and in danger of flunking out of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, contrary to school officials and academic records.

Absent new physical evidence in Ms. Durst?s disappearance, the Los Angeles case is likely to provide a road map of sorts for prosecutors in New York.

Many of the prosecution witnesses in Los Angeles are likely to show up in Westchester, including Mike Struk, the now-retired detective who first got the case; Karen Minutello, the building manager who said that Mr. Durst threw out Ms. Durst?s textbooks and other belongings days after she disappeared; medical school classmates in whom Ms. Durst confided her fears about her husband?s violence; and Ms. Durst?s sister Mary and her husband Tom, who discovered the so-called Dig Note in a wastebasket in the South Salem cottage.

Mr. Durst testified in Los Angeles that the note was not a to-do list for getting rid of a body, but rather shorthand for ?digital,? an uncommon word in 1982.

Fadwa Najamy, one of the last people to see Ms. Durst alive, testified in Los Angeles that Ms. Durst had shown up at her family?s house in Connecticut before she disappeared and that Mr. Durst had phoned there asking her to come home. After Ms. Durst?s disappearance, her close friend, Gilberte Najamy, Fadwa Najamy?s sister, frantically searched for clues to what happened to Kathie and told police that Mr. Durst was responsible.

?May he live to be 100 so he can spend more time in jail after what he did to Kathie and my sister,? Fadwa Najamy said in an interview last week. Gilberte Najamy is no longer alive.

Ruth Mayer, who lived next door to the Dursts in 1982, said she was fond of Ms. Durst and has long felt ?an obligation to do whatever I can do.?

On the Sunday morning when Ms. Durst was last seen, Ms. Mayer brought her a hat to fend off the icy temperature, she said.

?It is justice delayed,? she said of the indictment.

Robert Abrams, a lawyer representing the McCormack family, declined to comment.

Mr. Durst, who was briefly on a ventilator after testing positive for Covid-19, was transferred Oct. 27 from Twin Towers Correctional Facility to the California Health Care Facility, a prison for inmates with long-term or severe health problems in Stockton, Calif., 90 miles east of San Francisco. It is the same prison where Phil Spector, the once-celebrated music producer, spent his final years after his conviction for killing a woman in his home.

Now, Mr. Durst faces the prospect of extradition to New York and a cell in the New York prison system. His credibility has been shredded by the conflicting accounts that he offered to investigators and interviewers, especially after he admitted in Los Angeles that he lied five times in sworn testimony and twice while testifying in a separate trial in Texas.

The story of Robert Durst is as much a string of mysteries stretching over four decades as it is a story of wealth and privilege. His marriage to Kathie McCormack in 1973 had a fairy-tale quality, her family said. She was from a lower middle-class family on Long Island. He was the son of a wealthy New York family, who showed her exotic vacations and the best tables at restaurants and discos.

But after he forced her to have an abortion, their marriage descended into bickering, multiple affairs, pushing and violence.

After Ms. Durst disappeared, Mr. Durst said he had put her on a Manhattan-bound train because she planned to attend a clinic rotation the next day. He waited until Friday to report her missing at a police precinct on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

An elevator operator at their penthouse apartment in Manhattan reported seeing Ms. Durst; and a woman who identified herself as Ms. Durst ? but who police came to believe was Susan Berman ? called Ms. Durst?s medical school to say that she was ill.

?It?s clear that Berman and Durst duped us,? the retired detective, Mr. Struk, said in an interview. ?I?m not ashamed to admit it.?

There was never a forensic search of the Dursts? cottage in 1982, because the investigation was centered in Manhattan, where Mr. Durst reported his wife missing.

The case against him in New York is circumstantial. There is no witness, no weapon and no body. And Mr. Durst has acknowledged lying to police about his whereabouts at the time his wife disappeared. ?I wasn?t used to anyone questioning my veracity,? Mr. Durst told The Jinx.

[dave jenkins]

The first third is as exhilarating as it gets. I had never experienced such a contagiously joyful ride on a big screen. This NEEDS to be seen and heard in a movie theater: they're remastering classic songs from the 60's, you'll never ever hear Cilia Black's You're my World the same way after. The second third keeps the same virtuosity but the horror parts are a big fail (looks more like Disneyland's haunted hosue than like the ialian horror movies that inspired Wright) and the "behind the scenes of the Soho dream" parts aren't half as disturbing as they should. The last part mostly sucks, it becomes stupid, we start spending way too much time with underdevelopped characters for stupid twists. But I don't really care. The first part is just so, so good. It radically changed my mood for days.
Also, I now see how Edgar Wright is one of the very few direct Leone inheritors (and not only because of the beautiful transitions between different periods).

The first half was like magical smooth butter flowing goodness, like a restrained and way more interesting Baby Driver. Then the murder mystery stuff starts and uhh? it makes you think, what was the point of the first hour introducing all that interesting stuff? Although it turns out the murder mystery was a misdirect, the actual final act takes a turn even more for the worse with an awful "twist" monologue and a generic studio horror ending. A lot of the themes the movies wants to talk about - men sucking, nostalgia being overhyped, identity... were all kinda washed away and forgotten, or if not forgotten than diminished into one-note nothingness. Everything just became so linear whereas the first half was the epitome of art/entertainment that our friend Sergio talks about so much

In a surprise reveal we learn that noodles Leone and PowerRR are the same person! Noodles is played by Diana Rigg (at 83, very crusty), whilst Mr. Power is played by Anya Taylor-Joy (lovely in pink chiffon). But which one holds the knife? Of course, they both do! Shock cut to: double penetration! Quelle horreur!

[noodles_leone]

You?re the same person we are too, you?re just being a meanie to Fincher and Wright to hide that you?re a French commie living next to the Eiffel Tower.

[dave jenkins]

Here's the thing. I could have saved the picture if Edgar had simply included me in the story conferences.

Spoilers from here.

The main problem is the landlady's motivation at the end. After all these years she's worried about getting caught, worried enough to kill? And yet she waits patiently in the fire to be consumed with the house.

It's more believable that she's tired and ready to die. So what if she gets caught? She's in her 80s! By the time of the trials and and all the appeals she'll be dead anyway.

Also, why try to kill the girl? All the attacks in the past (many, many years past) were against men. She was just getting rid of the pigs; striking blows for womankind. Why turn on a sister now?

Better: she should have gone after the boyfriend. After all, he came into the house to do to the girl what the many pig men had done, or tried to do, to her. I can't believe that Edgar missed this move. The (rather effete) male character becomes the focus of the attack, and the girl has to butch up and defend him. It would have been great to see the guy running through the house screaming while the girl and the old woman go mano a mano with knives.

And in terms of mise-en-scene, there would have been some great opportunities here. In 1965, we learn, there was a mirror on the ceiling in the girl's room. For the end of the film everything in the house would have reverted to 1965, or maybe gone into an even more elaborate realm where there are mirrors everywhere. Now when the old woman and the girl fight the young Sandy is present as well, in reflections. Artful cutting reproduces the climax from The Lady From Shanghai; we can't tell who is stabbing who. Finally, the old woman falls down with a knife in her throat. But who got her? The girl was on the ropes at the time. It appears that young Sandy, accidently, got the old woman. But that's impossible!

The girl and the boy flee the burning building. Things proceed as originally scripted: the girl triumphs at her fashion show. But this time, when she looks in the full-length mirror at the end, she sees not only young Sandy, but also the old woman. And they are both smiling evilly. Massive sting: hard cut to black.

As I say, it would have saved the picture. Somebody give Edgar my contact info so I can help him out next time.

[PowerRR]

All correct DJ.

And yeah, wtf, I hadn?t even read N_Ls review here - eerily similar.

The French Dispatch - 5/10
Wes Anderson?s Inherent Vice, Mank, Tenet. Wildly confusing, overly dense, and alienating even to the fan base. But also not as good as those three movies. Beautiful visually though, some of his best work in that sense.

[noodles_leone]

This is indeed a MUCH better ending than the stupidity we got. And Edgar was so good with mirrors and transitions in the first part that I would have loved to see him play with them more radically during the climax. We had the Stanton Cuts, are we gonna have the DJ scripts now?

That being said if that ending would have saved the movie it means you didn?t hate the first part.

[dave jenkins]

That being said if that ending would have saved the movie it means you didn?t hate the first part.

I hate the first part. If the last part had been good, I would have loved the first part. Happy?

[noodles_leone]

Nonsensical, but I guess that's the best I will get from you on this one. NOW BACK TO MANK.

Actually, back to a western:

First Cow (2020) - 8/10
Great naturalistic western. Both the story and the 4/3 16mm are put to great use to depict the nature, the sets and costumes (there is even a 3 scenes sequence about buying new boots and having to hide them because people notice too much and the character cannot abide to be noticed), the accessories (i love the way they play checkers), the (terrific and non Stetson) hats, the economy of the area, the diversity of the old west. It would make an incredible double feature with There Will Be Blood: it shows the birth of the american capitalism, but this one is from the standpoint of the weak while PTA follows the strong and powerful. The movie is so much with the weak that it refuses to depict violence: all physical violence takes place off screen (either blurred out, or right outside of the frame, or inside when the camera stays outside or outside when the camera stays inside) and even psycological violence isn't highlighted by the editing or the camerawork. Also, great, great bromance. It would make an incredible double feature with The Master. But in First Cow, none of the two friends is trying to seduce anybody. They're just friends. Automatically. Freely (it all the possible meanings of the word). It's a movie that's as sweet as it is cruel. Even in its crualty, it's sweet. The main flaw is that the pacing is off. It's very slow but this isn't an issue: the issue is that it keeps the same pacing the whole time. There is much more to say about it but has anybody here seen it apart from Roy?

[T.H.]

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) - A gorgeous looking hang-out, all-nighter noir that features unbelievably beautiful late 50's NYC exteriors with the typical high quality frenchie interiors that you would expect from the great Melville -- with a phenomenal jazz score. It starts off a touch slow but the visuals and atmosphere carry this through. There's just enough plot, and intrigue, for this to work really well. Godard tried to capture the look of this movie in the boring Alphaville but failed. A-

[PowerRR]

Once Upon a Time in America - 10/10
This has been my favorite movie for many years - probably since I?ve been posting on this board, a month short of 15 years ago. Still is. And even more incredibly so, I discover drastically new things about it every single time. There?s
plenty of dents and flaws in there, it?s not the most ?perfect? Leone movie, but it is his best. And the best movie ever made, and probably the best movie that will EVER be made.

[drinkanddestroy]

Once Upon a Time in America - 10/10
This has been my favorite movie for many years - probably since I?ve been posting on this board, a month short of 15 years ago. Still is. And even more incredibly so, I discover drastically new things about it every single time. There?s
plenty of dents and flaws in there, it?s not the most ?perfect? Leone movie, but it is his best. And the best movie ever made, and probably the best movie that will EVER be made.

So what did you discover this time? Saying you discovered new things doesn?t inspire conversation; why not actually discuss what you discovered? 

[noodles_leone]

He discovered that the dream theory got it wrong: the dream is when they're children. Everything else is real.