Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[noodles_leone]

The Marathon Man was the stuff (especially with that cast) for a masterpiece. It's a good film though, but somehow still very, very wasted. 6/10

The directing is amazing too. I think the production who supervised the script (not even the writer) is accountable for the waste.

[dave jenkins]

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) - 8/10. Does for the espionage thriller what The Long Goodbye would later do for the PI film. The new Blu-ray from Network (Region B) seems a good transfer, but the print it's sourced from is quite faded. A pity, but we're unlikely to ever see this film restored. Happily, Harold Pinter's amusing dialog is in no way affected. George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max Von Sydow, Senta Berger, Berlin '66: great cast and setting.

[stanton]

The directing is amazing too.

Really? 

I don't remember it to be special, I remember that Schlesinger doesn't make much of some scenes which should inspire a director. But I haven't watched it for a zillion years. Maybe I would spot now things i did not care for then, or wasn't able to see.

If the script has a problem the director has to be blamed anyway, cause he is responsible for the screenplay, no matter who wrote it.
But here Goldman wrote it after his own novel. As an experienced screenwriter he should have known what his story needs for a film adaptation. But I also just read that (as usual) some parts were changed, including the ending.

[moviesceleton]

Really?  

I don't remember it to be special, I remember that Schlesinger doesn't make much of some scenes which should inspire a director. But I haven't watched it for a zillion years. Maybe I would spot now things i did not care for then, or wasn't able to see.

I think the whole first half of the film is well directed. Great building of suspense. SPOILER But it goes down the drain around Hoffman's first escape from the Nazi.

EDIT: Sure, it's nothing flashy, but it's very precise and effective.

[noodles_leone]

The torture scene is still the only example (I'm talking about the directing) that beats Reservoir Dog's cut ear. The car race at the beginning is among the greatest opening I have seen. The standoff at the house has a great western feel to it. The seduction scenes are very simply shot but it's very, very effective. The scenes between Hoffman and his brother are getting a little old (especially the last one) but were great at the time. Etc.

[dave jenkins]

Drink and I attended an atrocious performance of Jean Genet's The Maids last night. Afterwards I had to get it out of my head, so I went home and watched this:

The Maids (1975) - 6/10. Two women, Solange (Glenda Jackson) and Claire (Susannah York), work for a third (Vivienne Merchant), whom they despise. While their mistress is away, the two maids do some bizarre role playing, Claire taking the part of the absent woman, and Solange keeping to the role of a servant. The role playing consists largely of hurling abuse at each other. Solange, presumably, says everything she's ever wanted to say to her employer, and Claire, presumably, voices what she takes to be the woman's true attitude toward her subordinates.  The volleying back and forth of invective soon becomes tiring, but then the mistress comes home and there's a brief respite (it turns out her actual invective is cloaked in false pleasantries and backhanded compliments). Then the woman leaves again and the two maids go back to their role playing, which by now is hysterical and rather boring. The play is flawed but in this production the performances--especially the one by Ms. Jackson--are very good. [Drink, you can actually understand all the dialog in this.] AmazonPrime members can stream the film free here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009SGFN4A/

[drinkanddestroy]

Maybe Broadway was counting on people liking it cuz the actresses run around in underwear; do all sorts of sexual-related stuff like sticking a rose up their skirt, humping the bed, and spraying perfume on their panties; and every other word is either "fuck" or "cunt." Maybe that's why those 2 idiots in front of us loved it so much .......

[dave jenkins]

Even the idiots had to shut up after a while, no doubt because they couldn't understand Ms. Huppert's accented English any more than we could. What a weird production. What was with all those video images of the actresses' shoes?

[cigar joe]

Obsession (1949) aka The Hidden Room catch this Robert Newton noir while you can, 7/10 on Youtube.

[drinkanddestroy]

I'm gonna move this discussion of The Maids to the Broadway thread

[drinkanddestroy]

Paul Muni day on TCM's Summer Under the Stars. Always interesting to see a good movie that's not available anywhere except on TCM, and here is one:

The World Changes (1933) 7.5/10



I hardly ever do a extended plot synopses, but what the hell, most of you will never see this movie and I wanna discuss the story/theme, I think it's funny, so I'll do an extended plot/discussion. read as much/little as you like, it won't be that interesting  


In 1856, a pioneer man and his pregnant wife traveling west in covered wagon pick a spot, raise their eyes heavenward and say, "Praise God, here may we live and prosper," and set up a homestead. Soon the woman gives birth to a son named Orin (played by Paul Muni). Then another family passes by, and sets up house, they have a baby daughter named Selma. Fast-forward a couple of decades, and it's grown into a nice little town, called Orinville, everyone assumes Orin will marry Selma, etc.

Orin hears that there's money to be made by driving cattle from Texas, so leaves the little town he's known all his life, blazes a trail thousands of miles north with thousands of head of cattle. That's right - 15 years before John Wayne blazed The Chisolm Trail, Paul Muni did it! Then Orin decides to move to Chicago and go into the cattle business. His parents protest his leaving them, they say, we left our home and came here to start a new life, but you are leaving home just for money!   As if wanting money is a bad thing  

So Orin leaves Orinville and goes to Chicago. He marries his boss's daughter Ginny (Mary Astor) and becomes very rich. Time goes by, the world changes, the globe spins on the screen and the years flash by ... And if you're worried about spoilers, stop reading right about now, cuz I'm gonna be discussing the whole story, right up till the end


Ginny is a snob who is embarrassed her husband makes his money from cows and pigs. They have two sons, and there is a clash for their sons' souls: Orin wants them to work in the stockyards with him; Ginny forbids them to go near there. Ginny wins this battle, and the sons never go to the stockyards: one of them becomes a good-for-nothing nobody who tries to live off daddy's money; the other one marries the daughter of a distinguished wealthy family in New York, which of course makes Ginny proud. The globe spins, the years tick by, and  eventually, we come to 1929: The good-for-nothing son has remained a bum all his life. The other son, who married the rich girl, now lives in NY with his family, working on Wall Street, of course with dishonest business practices; his own crooked son is making side deals with the company's money, his wife is having an affair with one of his clients, his daughter is getting married to some nobody opportunist with a bullshit title (the always-funny Alan Mowbray  ) etc. At this point, Orin is an old man, he is estranged from his family cuz he knows they are a bunch of degenerates. Then Orin's very old mom comes from Orinville for the wedding; she meets her descendants for the first time, and realizes they are a bunch of degenerates.
Since Orin's mom is so old, a young neighbor from Orinville has accompanied her on the trip to New York; it's the granddaughter of Selma - the girl Orin would have married had he not gone east - she is also named Selma, after her grandma.
Orin sees the young Selma, who looks just like her grandma whom Orin had been supposed to marry , and we are supposed to think he would've been better off staying west and marrying her. That he went east for the big bucks, but he paid for it with a family that is a bunch of no-good bums.

On the day of the wedding, the stock market crashes, the groom (Mowbray) ditches the bride when he hears her family is now bankrupt – Orin's son, the father of the bride - son kills himself upon discovering his wife's affair; and the bride's crooked brother who was playing with the company's money flees to South America cuz he knows he will go to prison for financial crimes.

In this whole family of bums, there is one normal good guy – one of Orin's grandsons who has also been named Orin, after his grandpa – and he falls in love with the young Selma, the girl who had accompanied his great-grandma on the trip from Orinville to New York.  And so this grandson, Orin Jr. is obviously gonna marry Selma Jr.

Orin Sr. pleads with this grandson, Orin, Jr.  to go west with Selma, to go back to Orinville,  and says that for their sake, he will restore the family name... so he takes all his life savings, and uses it to pay back the money that his son an crooked grandson had stolen from the the clients of the company that bears the family name.

So  Orin Jr. and young Selma Jr.  come back to Orinville with the great-grandma, and as they get off the train, great-grandma says,  "Repeat after me: 'Praise God, here may we live and prosper.' " THE END

-

So,  basically, only blue-collar work is good and pure, bankers are all bad guys, Wall Street is full of crooks, not real businessmen, just gamblers, all a bunch of thieves. And if Orin had done the "right" thing" and stayed in Orinville, worked the land by the sweat of his brow, and married the sweet Selma, he's have raised a nice hard-working family. But when he went east, to the big city after - how dare he - MONEY, that was his downfall; instead of marrying the sweet girl and staying home, he married the sexy daughter of his boss, took over the business when her father died, and that led to riches but misery cuz his wife was a snob and the kids grew up to be degenerates. So staying home with the simple life brings happiness and is good, whereas going to the big city to try to become rich = misery and unhappiness.
And at the end, Orin Jr. marries Selma Jr.  and settles down in Orinville – as we are supposed to believe Orin Sr. should have done with Selma Sr. years ago - and now they'll live happily ever after. So it was good for Orin's parents in 1856 to move west in search of a new life. And it's good for Orin's grandson in 1929 to move west in search of a new life. But for Orin himself to have gone EAST in search of MONEY? BAD BAD BAD   Good guys  stay in the west and do hard work, bad guys go east and working in banking  

I got a kick out of how silly that is. Of course,  this movie was made in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression – which certainly is no laughing matter – and obviously, the movie is a backlash against Wall Street. But the message is so dumb, even using the word "caricature" wouldn't properly capture its absurdity   (Come to think of it, in many ways the world doesn't change: the same arguments this movie implies, were made in the wake of the recent "Great Recession," how basically all bankers are evil crooks full of GREED.  )


So, I laughed at the dumb theme, but forget that, this is an enjoyable movie to watch. Even if Warner Bros. archive were to release it on DVD, I wouldn't advise that you have to rush out to buy it, but next time it plays on TCM, it's worth giving a look  

[dave jenkins]

And of course, Hollywood was almost completely made up of people who refused to stay "on the farm" and escaped to Tinseltown with the hope of gaining fame and fortune. I've never seen the film you've described, but it is obviously another exercise in Bad Faith, a Hollywood specialty.

[drinkanddestroy]

And of course, Hollywood was almost completely made up of people who refused to stay "on the farm" and escaped to Tinseltown with the hope of gaining fame and fortune. I've never seen the film you've described, but it is obviously another exercise in Bad Faith, a Hollywood specialty.

of course you've never seen it; you don't have TCM. Dumbass. You can get cable and a dvr for the price of two BRD's a month. (1.5 Criterions  )

[dave jenkins]

Death in the Garden (1956) - 7/10. Luis Buñuel's only action-adventure film. Shot is Mexico, but set in a South American shithole, the film features a small group of characters fleeing the political turmoil of the region. The group is composed, naturally, of a cross-section of society: a "rouge" (Georges Marchal), a whore (Simone Signoret), a priest (Michel Piccoli), a diamond prospector (Charles Vanel), and the prospector's deaf-mute daughter (oh, the humanity!). Soon they are lost in the jungle, exhausted, starving, dispirited. But, hey, shorn of the "debilitating" advantages of civilization, they are more human that ever before. Then, on the point of dying, a seeming miracle occurs . . . one that is just as likely to damn as it is to save (thank you, Don Luis). The 2009 US DVD is supposed to sport an HD transfer from an archive 35mm print, but it looks really strange (DNR'd to death, perhaps?). Worth a look anyway, for the sake of the film.

[PowerRR]

Boyhood - 9 or 10/10
It's more or less perfect, and almost a masterpiece of subtly. The two alcoholic stepfathers goes a bit too far in the realm of cliche, as does the "hipster being a photographer" aspect (though it works well with the whole "moment in time" message). Other than that it manages to make the '12 year filming' thing actually effective without feeling like a gimmick at all. It comes ever-so-close to the "coming of age film" cliches for 3 hours straight and for the most part strays away from submitting to them all at the perfect time. It's one of those long movies that I could have still tolerated for at least another hour. Essentially everything you'd expect from this type of story is toned down and made realistic instead of into sentimental Hollywood mish-mosh. I'd especially like to comment on the scenes of Mason and his father - they're perfect. The final respective scenes of Mason and his dad / Mason and his mom couldn't have wrapped up the film any better. A potential masterpiece on a repeat viewing, and for once, a movie that truly deserves it's overwhelming praise (unlike Gravity, which is just a decent, pretty-looking survival movie: sorry noodlesleone).