What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[JohnnyL]

I saw The Kite Runner last night. An excellent movie about true friendship. It will arouse every emotions you have.

Just watched Kite Runner yesterday afternoon. Wonderful movie. Very true to book. Performances were excellent all around. The father was close to how I pictured him mentally from the book but my mental image was a little burlier.

 

[JohnnyL]

Went to the theater to see "Miss Pettigrew lives for a day". Don't take it seriously as its somewhat of a farce. Just enjoy the good performances from Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. Nice period piece taking place around the immediate pre-WWII period. Somewhere between 1939 and 1940, I'd guess. Great soundtrack and the costumes should be an attraction to the members of this forum.

 

[AmateisGal]

As I was sick all weekend with a bad cold (and it's still hanging around, darn it) I had the t.v. on the whole time. Watched quite a few movies, but one of my faves was The Holiday witih Jack Black, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, and Jude Law. Light and fluffy, and had a bit of a Golden Age flair, too, since Kate Winslet's character made friends with a Golden Age screenwriter.

 

[Matt Crunk]

Saw Street Kings last night at the theatre. It was a good suspensful flick and worth a watch, but nothing about it demands a theatre experience. I'd have been just as happy waiting for the DVD.

The wife and I have become addicted to this new PRIV'E VIP theatre in town and really just went for the great martini bar and sushi. I hate to say it but the movie was inconsequintal. This place makes theatre going fun again. I'm hoping The Red Baron will play there soon.

 

[Caroline]

Well I watched the Polanski Vampire picture. I'm not one to disrespect a movie. I love high and low culture both. Let me just say that the font used in the credits was really great. Drugs are bad, everyone.

Tonite it's "Le Samourai" with the dreamy Alain Delon.

 

[A.R. McVintage]

The Birds. A Hitchcock classic, and influencial on so much horror that ame after (among other genres).

 

[MaryDeluxe]

No Country for Old Men.

Interesting + Violent = Good time!

 

[A.R. McVintage]

It is... but the sense I've gotten from reading about it is that parody wasn't what Polanski was really after when he conceived and shot it.

I'm sure Polanski knew exactly what he was going to get when he made the picture. The promotional materials alone are firmly toungue-in-cheek.

 

[Mike1939]

Across the Pacific (1942) Directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet. If only Peter Lorrie and Elisha Cook Jr. had not missed the boat it would have been a true Maltese Falcon reunion. Although not as acclaimed as other Bogart movies this is one I can watch over and over again. The banter and chemistry between Bogart and Astor is what gets me, definitely classic 1940's style all the way.

 

[DDibling]

Yes, Across the Pacific is a great movie. Bogart can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned!

I'm excited because my copy of Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels just showed up in the mail today! Hopefully in a few minutes I'll be settled in my chair watching it! I've never seen it but I've heard it's good.

Anxiously,
Dean

 

[Patrick Murtha]

The Birds. A Hitchcock classic, and influencial on so much horror that ame after (among other genres).

The Birds is, Fellini said, one of the greatest poems in world cinema. It is almost too bad that Hitch didn't hang it up after that, because the last five films he made don't inhabit the same universe (nor do most anyone else's, I hasten to add). One wouldn't care to lose Marnie and Frenzy, and the other three have points of interest; but still, what a come-down.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

My recent illness slowed down my viewing, but I nonetheless caught three classics in the past few days:

The Curse of the Cat People, Robert Wise, Gunther von Fritsch (1944) -- There is absolutely nothing puffed-up about the reputation of the nine "horror" films that Val Lewton produced in the Forties; they are that good. The Curse of the Cat People is a most unusual sequel to Cat People in that it launches into an entirely different direction while still being carefully grounded in the events of the earlier film. It is a delicate, thoughtful film about the sensitivities of childhood, and finally very moving: this guy was in tears during the final scene.

The Palm Beach Story, Preston Sturges (1944) -- The other nonpareil series of the Forties is the sequence of eight films that Preston Sturges wrote and directed for Paramount. I have seen The Palm Beach Story more times than I can count, and it still cracks me up: during one of Claudette Colbert's and Joel McCrea's lightning-fast bits of repartee I did a beer spit-take all over my pyjamas!

Panic in the Streets, Elia Kazan, 1950 -- Here is a film noir whose concerns are so strikingly contemporary that I am really flummoxed as to why someone hasn't remade this. Not that there's anything wrong with the original, mind, but the scenario is still thought-provoking and commercial. Criminals smuggled into New Orleans are carrying highly communicable pneumonic plague; can the Public Health Service and the NOPD avert a crisis by finding them all in time?

The film benefits from strong performances (Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes), sharp location filming in New Orleans, and a crackerjack Oscar-winning screenplay. A very literate touch is that the plague carriers came aboard their ship at Oran in Algeria -- the plague-ridden city of Albert Camus's great novel The Plague (which came out in French and English a few years earlier).

Widmark has a great moment late in the film as he tussles with officials about the risks to the New Orleans community. He points out that within ten hours the disease carriers could be anywhere in the US; within a day, in Africa (or, by logical extension, anywhere):

"Then think of that when you talk about community. We're all in a community. The same one."

Anyone who has read The Hot Zone or similar books will see exactly what Widmark is driving at, but it is startling for a character in a 1950 movie to be so amazingly prescient about the nature of future world health crises, and the way that air travel creates a "global village."

Terrific movie.

 

[Matt Crunk]

Well I watched the Polanski Vampire picture. I'm not one to disrespect a movie. I love high and low culture both. Let me just say that the font used in the credits was really great. Drugs are bad, everyone.

It's been a few years since I saw it but I think the camp was obviously intentional. Reminded me a lot of Warhol's horror flicks.

 

[Caroline]

It's been a few years since I saw it but I think the camp was obviously intentional. Reminded me a lot of Warhol's horror flicks.

Well, I love camp, but there was just something ... it seemed to lack heart. There were points were the film literally seemed abandoned by the director and film was just shot. I guess there is a place for that in Warhol films.

Now inexplicably adding a bird to the sleeve of one of your actors, now that takes a doting director!

 

[Lulu-in-Ny]

Just watched Road to Perdition; I have somehow managed not to see it until now. Beautiful film, amazing cinematography. I think I shall have to read the graphic novel now...

 

[KY Gentleman]

Just watched Road to Perdition; I have somehow managed not to see it until now. Beautiful film, amazing cinematography. I think I shall have to read the graphic novel now...

I loved this movie and I have to say that each time I watch it I find more reasons to like it. I haven't read the graphic novel either but you've made me want to check it out again! Thanks.

 

[TessTrueheart]

The Birds. A Hitchcock classic, and influencial on so much horror that ame after (among other genres).

Oh, I LOVE The Birds, I watched it again just the other week. :eusa_clap

 

[Bugsy]

I just saw two film on TCM--Wuthering Heights and The Country Girl. I have trouble coming up with a woman more beautiful than Grace Kelly.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

I didn't care for Kill Bill Volume One at all. That's my review.

A much better use of my and your time is the excellent documentary Storm the Skies, directed by Jose Luis Lopez-Linares and Javier Rioyo, on the subject of Leon Trotsky's exile in Mexico and his eventual murder by Ramon Mercader, a Catalonian who imbibed Stalinism with his mother's milk (quite literally; the mother, Caridad Mercader, was a piece of work). Absolutely everything about this content is completely fascinating, and the material is put across exceptionally well; my only complaint is that the directors really needed to run tags for all the interviewees -- they're great, but who are they? Sometimes you can figure out from context, sometimes you can't. Names and descriptors would have helped. Still, that's a minor blemish on a terrific film. The movie is readily accessible through Netflix.

I have a particular affection for the culturally and geographically vast world of the Iberian-speaking peoples (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin American, Caribbean, Brazilian, Luso-African, etc.). I just wish my Spanish was better!

 

[Feraud]

I started watching Juno but turned it off after 5 minutes. Unbearably horrible dialogue. A waste of 5 minutes of my life.