What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Ada Veen]

I watched 'a handful of dust' this weekend - has anyone seen it? The costumes are to die for! I think the female lead 'land Brenda' was a worthy style icon, even though she wasn't really a nice person. She had a gorgeous peach outfit on at one point, and a lovely beige hat.

 

[carebear]

Finally saw I Am Legend. Now, I didnt read the book, and all my friends who have just say the movie is ick, and keep on going, but what struck me were the couple of things I couldnt get past:

Why did Legend think this was his burden? Didint the scientist at the beginning of the movie create the virus? Wasnt he there just to evacuate the city?

Spoilers contained

Here's what I got from context within the movie:

He wasn't there to conduct the evacuation, he was a military doctor, a virologist, who's job it was to defend the US and its people against biological warfare attacks. He lived locally and was also the lead scientist assigned at the beginning of the outbreak to understand and counter what was happening.

He stayed because it was his duty, his very identity. That's what it means to be a soldier. Scientifically, being at ground zero would give him the best chance to analyze the virus at its source, without a bunch of mutations, also, that's where his lab and prior work was ( the virus had been indecting people for several months prior to the movie's start). At the beginning of the movie, the city had quarantine procedures in place for homes but the virus hadn't broken out. The evacuation order, if not a surprise, certainly came on faster than planned.

That's the duty and "logic" part. As a man and character, he also appeared to be a bit obsessive anyway, with the death of his family in the evacuation, he had nothing else to live for, which only reinforced his desire to fulfill his duty and "fix this".

Also, Legend notes an 'unusual character trait' of the male coming into the sunlight after the female is captured, yet it never gets mentioned again. How could a big strong male like that not get to the blood in the trap first unless he was offering it to the female? The creatures are labeled as having no touch on their humanity, yet they show this hierarchy, and command structure and this alpha male (as listed in the credits) in essence relentlessly sends in troops to defeat Legend (and releases the dogs after him) all I would think to get his woman back and kill the man who took her. But they are just blank monsters?

You remember the scene where he's talking into his laptop about the "change in behavior" when the male deliberately exposed itself to sunlight? He concluded that the lack of survival motivation meant the last vestiges of their "residual human behavior" was gone. That was telling, as my first thought, as well as that of everyone I've talked to and yours apparently, was that it showed the male cared about his mate and was enraged by her "kidnapping", that the infected's humanity, or some form of personality/intelligence at least, was returning. The fact that Dr. Neville misses that obvious explanation shows how mentally exhausted and blindered he has become.

All that goes without saying how rubbery and non-bone-having the creatures were, how artificial and almost non finished some of the backdrops looked, and just how empty and emotionless I felt the movie was.

It was cool seeing the Van Gogh Hanging in his house

*sigh*

LD

I liked the Van Gogh too, and the way it wasn't made a big deal of. It was just there. I think the emptiness feeling was deliberate, cities are defined by their people, the word for city in Greek, polis, originally meant "community".

Take away the people suddenly and it becomes something not a city, merely a collection of buildings, something unique and wrong to our experience.

 

[Lady Day]

Thanks for the added info Carebear.

I totally noticed his maticilous nature (him chaging out the pasta sause jars, the timing of his watch, at the bacon table, reciting shrek, the video store etc) those were nice touches.

I honestly thought he spent too much time outside driving around, and such. I was hoping to see if he had set up more sanctuaris for himself, such as fishing at the museum, and if he had different places to camp like when he was caught outside when he 'forgot' he set up that trap and got caught in it (or did the alpha male fix that trap...).

I dont know, it felt hollow in a way. Where did he dispose of the bodies from his research? Are the pumps in NY still working, otherwise a lot of the city would be covered in water by now (3 years later), stuff like that.


LD

 

[carebear]

Thanks for the added info Carebear.

I totally noticed his maticilous nature (him chaging out the pasta sause jars, the timing of his watch, at the bacon table, reciting shrek, the video store etc) those were nice touches.

I honestly thought he spent too much time outside driving around, and such. I was hoping to see if he had set up more sanctuaris for himself, such as fishing at the museum, and if he had different places to camp like when he was caught outside when he 'forgot' he set up that trap and got caught in it (or did the alpha male fix that trap...).

I dont know, it felt hollow in a way. Where did he dispose of the bodies from his research? Are the pumps in NY still working, otherwise a lot of the city would be covered in water by now (3 years later), stuff like that.


LD

I took it that the alpha male set the trap, he came out that night, studied it, and set up Neville for revenge and to get his mate back. That the infected were getting more intelligent, more human.

The original book is worth reading, as it explores that.

I also would have expected him to set up numerous "hides" with redundant facilities. That's just good tradecraft.

I think the pumps failed, as shown by the mouth of the tunnel in the opening. He just doesn't go to the flooded parts.

He has water in his house from a generator-driven system tapping into something, he hits a switch when washing the dog.

Driving around? I think that was partly to stave off getting stir-crazy, also to "keep an eye on things".

Dumping bodies? Burn them or put them where the insects can dispose of them. I assume he'd want to keep them away from animals and out of the water.

There are plot holes and questions, but in general I enjoyed watching it.

 

[PADDY]

Lonely Hearts.

John Travolta in 'Lonely Hearts.' Got it out on DvD. Set in the 40's, it's a true story about a con man, who falls prey to a pretty gal who is even more warped than he is, and they go on a killing spree bumping off widows with cash in the bank! Travolta is the detective on their case.

The 'hats' are great :eusa_clap

 

[Patrick Murtha]

John Travolta in 'Lonely Hearts.' Got it out on DvD. Set in the 40's, it's a true story about a con man, who falls prey to a pretty gal who is even more warped than he is, and they go on a killing spree bumping off widows with cash in the bank! Travolta is the detective on their case.

The 'hats' are great :eusa_clap

This notorious true story has been filmed twice before: superbly as The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970) and cross-culturally as Red Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996) (which I haven't seen, but which got great reviews).

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I just caught Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited." It was fantastic and I loved every minute of it.

Highly recommend it.

Be sure to watch "Hotel Chevalier" before it (it's on the dvd); you need to see it to understand some things in the film.

 

[A.R. McVintage]

The Crawling Eye.

Holy geez, whatta pile to sit through. I started surfing the net inbetween taking glances just so I could get to the Ed Wood-esque climax of footage of an airplane intercut to look as if it were dropping bits of fire on a pile of flaming garbage bags sitting on a model of a laboratory.

 

[KY Gentleman]

I watched "I Am Legend" last week and enjoyed Lady Day and Carebears take on the flick. I thought about it for several days afterward as well. I thought Will Smith was great and the two scenes that really struck me were a)when he had to deal with his dog Sam, and b) when he said "hello" and waited for a response from the DVD store "friend". I liked this movie.
Tonight I'm watching "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". Great one!

 

[Spiffy]

Watched Spider Baby and I really can't decide if it was awesome or terrible.

 

[Avalon]

Watched Spider Baby and I really can't decide if it was awesome or terrible.

My vote is for awesomely terrible! lol

Tell me, when Emily woke up in the woods calling for Ralph...did you think she'd gone mad and wanted to be his girlfriend? :eusa_clap

 

[Caroline]

I just finished "Underworld Beauty." Not bad, but it has a really bizzare score to it! My husband and I then started to watch "Klute" which I thought I had seen, but it quickly became clear that I had not! At first I had thought I had been thinking of "Clue" but then I added "you know, the Michael Caine movie with the fisherman puppets" and he told me I was thinking of "Sleuth". Oh well it's been a long week!lol

 

[Feraud]

We watched I Am Legend the other night.
Meh..it was barely o.k. I was sitting there waiting for something to happen but it just plodded along.
A good enough plot but a slow, and hole filled telling of the story. This seemed like another heroic vehicle to put Will Smith in. He seems to have found his niche and sticks to it. I am waiting for him to stretch his acting chops a bit.

See 28 Days Later for the real deal.

 

[DeeDub]

Be Kind Rewind

It's a quirky sort of film. Bizarre comedy with a touching end. Jack Black was over the top, but still enjoyable. Mos Def is surprisingly adept and believable as the straight man. And Melonie Diaz is very sweet.

Afterward, I felt there there were other, parallel stories I wanted to see. At the very end, there seemed to be a love interest between Danny Glover and Mia Farrow that was there all along, but overlooked.

This is a fun film; see it when you feel quirky.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

My movie watching slowed down a bit last week because of busy times at work and a couple of evening commitments. But I did catch up with the Best Actor and Actress of 2006, Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker, who won every statuette and critic's award out there. I have the greatest respect for both actors, but although their award-winning performances were quite good, the movies that featured them were less than exciting.

The Queen is smooth and watchable, but despite good efforts from the entire cast -- Michael Sheen is delightful as Tony Blair -- it doesn't amount to much finally; it doesn't seem to have a point of view. Peter Morgan's screenplay hedges its bets so you can't tell whether the movie is meant to be pro-monarchy or anti-monarchy; and it needs to be one or the other, since it doesn't have the artistic distinction to be interesting and, simultaneously, neutral. This feeling of being nowhere in particular plays out awkwardly in a couple of ways: there is a symbolic sub-plot about a stag that is frankly embarassing in a first-year play-writing class kind of way (and Morgan is an acclaimed playwright); and late in the film Sheen is saddled with a little outburst defending the Queen that comes out of the blue and should have stayed there.

Elizabeth II is not the most difficult role that the marvelously accomplished Helen Mirren will ever play. Take a stiff character, apply a little shading, a little subtlety -- any A-list actor had better be able to do that. Mirren's praise for this role is disproportionate to that for the more challenging roles she has played, but goes along with the recent tendency for the Academy Awards to reward the best impersonation of a famous person (Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote, Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles, Cate Blanchett's Katharine Hepburn).

As does the acclaim for Forest Whitaker's Idi Amin. Although Whitaker is tailor-made for the part and is undoubtedly commanding in it, the Amin of The Last King of Scotland has no internality, and so again, the assignment is only so difficult. Dramatically, the film (which is based on a novel, people may be surprised to learn, not on the actual historic record) is a sorry mess, starting somewhat promisingly but quickly descending into melodrama and ludicrousness. As in The Queen, the supporting cast -- James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney -- is first-rate. But the film falls far short of an obvious model, Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously. Interestingly, the same Peter Morgan who wrote The Queen co-wrote this screenplay -- although blame for the maladroit plotting may fall on the source novelist Giles Foden.

On the more positive side of the ledger, I watched another of the famous Val Lewton horror productions, Bedlam, starring Boris Karloff and directed by Mark Robson. A good rule of thumb is that any film that starts with William Hogarth prints under the opening credits is going to be wickedly cool, and that is exactly right in this case. This story of the infamous Bedlam insane asylum is cleverly thought out and beautifully executed, with wonderful and believably-in-period art direction, photography, acting, and direction. There is actually no fantasy element to the film at all; it is a historical film about real horrors, and an uncommonly effective one. The Lewton films live up to their legend!

 

[Spiffy]

I'm about 20 minutes into The Lives of Others, and can't decide to keep going or give up and send it back to netflix. Anyone know if it's worth it?

 

[Jovan]

Diary of the Dead

 

[KY Gentleman]

I just tried to watch "Jimmy and Judy". Do not waste your time.

 

[Tron1968]

I picked up a copy of Barton Fink last week. I've loved everything I've seen from the Coen brothers, but had not yet got around to this one.
I don't know how period accurate it is, but I loved the look of 40's Hollywood in this one. In particular the old hotel Fink lives out of. Great stuff, I'm glad I watched it. Next is Miller's Crossing.

 

[Lady Day]

Helvetica, a darling little documentary on that typeface and modern design.

LD