The 'Recently Watched Films' Thread

[Bottle Rocket]

And I thought I was invincible!

LOL.

Will you settle for bulletproof??

(According to my four-year-old nephew, I have been gifted with "jumping powers," by which I think he means he believes I can fly ... if only, but really I'd prefer to be able to become invisible at will. Oh well -- I find that my own inner four-year-old is convinced that wearing sunglasses makes me translucent if not totally not-there-at-all)

BRocket

 

[Igu Soni]

That hurts!

Why?

 

[Manuel76]

Why?

I was joking.
Poor Don quijote...insane perhaps but please not stupid...

 

[Liam]

Which I possess, and love, but without Nastassja Kinski... somehow it just wouldn't make it.

I see what you mean. I was, like the rest of you, absolutely hypnotized by the "mirror" scene--very eerie, visceral, and emotionally exhausting. And I simply loved both actors SO much at that moment! My favorite scene, however, is at the end, where she reconnects with her little boy (made me cry, which isn't a sure proof of quality in itself, since a lot of things make me cry ).

Definitely need to see it again though--



On a side note, my favorite Wenders so far is Wings of Desire. I enjoyed Until the End of the World and was bored with A Million Dollar Hotel; haven't seen the rest yet.

It's funny how canonical Bruno Ganz's angelic role became later on. When the Icelanders were making their own foray into Oscar-territory in 1991, they asked Ganz to make a cameo appearance at the end of Children of Nature, where he appears to the main character (an old man) in the guise of an angel.



L.

 

[Igu Soni]

I watched a 2001 hindi movie called Censor by the legendary Dev Anand. This movie was so bad yet so compelling that now I really want to watch his classic period (his peak was his adaptation of R. K. Narayan's The Guide).

Also, it abandons logic to make a good case that there is no role for censorship in a cosmopolitan society.

Only problem was that the payoff bit went on and on and on.


Today, I watched the second half of Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. Very good upto the climax, but again I was slightly bored by the time the end came around. Maybe it's better if I watch the whole thing.

 

[Igu Soni]

Just watched a 2007 Romanian film called 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, about a woman getting an abortion. It was very, very good. I want to write about it but I don't know if there's enough meat interesting enough for me to write.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
Reelviews Movie Reviews

 

[Clarissa]

I too enjoyed Un Proph?te (outstanding) and Julie and Julia (Meryl Streep is brilliant, as usual) Went to see S?raphine yesterday. A bit too long but a magnificent performance from the most unHollywood actress imaginable in the title r?le, Yolande Moreau,. The biog. of a painter who I had never heard of. An extraordinary destiny.

S?raphine Louis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[learna]

I too enjoyed Un Proph?te (outstanding) and Julie and Julia (Meryl Streep is brilliant, as usual) Went to see S?raphine yesterday. A bit too long but a magnificent performance from the most unHollywood actress imaginable in the title r?le, Yolande Moreau,. The biog. of a painter who I had never heard of. An extraordinary destiny.

S?raphine Louis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clarissa, I have just seen the trailer of "S?raphine." It looks attractive, thank you. Maybe the film about Modigliani( to my mind, marvellous) will be interesting for you:

YouTube - modigliani trailer - www.filmlounge.com

The background music is exellent:

YouTube - Modigliani, Amedeo

 

[Mirabell]

saw both the original and the new Hairspray
and Inglourious Basterds (again)

 

[miercuri]

Just watched a 2007 Romanian film called 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, about a woman getting an abortion. It was very, very good. I want to write about it but I don't know if there's enough meat interesting enough for me to write.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
Reelviews Movie Reviews

I'm glad you watched this Igu, although wouldn't call myself a fan of the so-called Romanian New Wave. I appreciate minimalism but in the past few years almost all Romanian films I've seen were in the same vein. It might be their trademark but I wish I could see something different one day.
However, there was one scene in 4,3,2 which I truly loved: the family dinner. It might not make much sense if I describe it as painfully Romanian, but it is exactly that. I don't think there was another Romanian director who could say so much about our culture in just one scene.

The same year 4,3,2 won the Palme d'or at Cannes there was another Romanian film which won the Un certain regard prize, Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin'. Sadly the director was killed in a car crash in Bucharest while his film was still in post-production. He was only 27. The crew decided to launch it without editing it any further. It is imperfect, uneven and messy overall, but I've grown very fond of it. Nemescu's style was closer to Kusturica's Balkan tradition but thematically different and I think it made him stand out. He also directed Marilena from P7 which I absolutely loved. It's only 40 minutes long, you can watch it on youtube with English subtitles if you want.

The last film I saw was Cloverfield. My boyfriend and I wanted to watch a Saturday night monster movie yesterday but it turned out better than we expected. I didn't think much of The Blair Witch Project its use of the handheld camrecorder/first person point of view, but I thought it worked perfectly in Cloverfield. Very intriguing and suspenseful, also the lack of mindless action sequences was much appreciated.

 

[Igu Soni]

I never get to watch a camera so calm, so it's something of a delight for me to watch these movies. Well, it would be if the subject wasn't so bleak.

I enjoyed what I watched of Cloverfield, a superior example of the opposite (though to be honest the whole movie was one shot, so it's not exactly the opposite).

I just watched the 88 John Cleese-Charles Crichton comedy A Fish Called Wanda. Hilarious movie.
"The London Underground is not a political movement."
You'll laugh at this line even if you watch it right now.

 

[SlowRain]

The girls write a blog for a year about Julia Child and her French cooking book,like she is a godess, doing all 524 recipies in 365 days, is quite successfull with it, but realize at the end the Julia, her mentor does not give a shite about her blog.More and under covered word thing it a pill of crap.
And what would be a major breakdown to any normal personne, is but a vague unoyance to the Julie girl.
Now Many of you have blogs and i can imagine if were to spend a year working on an authors then were called by the agent to tell you that your mentor though your work was worth a pigeon fart to him,your reaction would be more than a sleepless night, back to worship the next morning.

Yes, she does get a bit obsessed, but only a bit. Her hobby provided a very positive focus in her life. I never felt she was acting like a goddess, only that she was into it.

The other thing you single out as a negative is something I was quite pleased with. There is too much obsession with celebrity around us, to the point that the artist/creator takes precedence over the art/creation. Julie was able to put things into the proper perspective: the food and cooking was more important than the person who wrote the cookbook. It's a very wise realization she makes and a good example for people to follow: the ability to separate the art/creation from the artist/creator. Also, remember, it was a true story, so we must assume that is how it actually played out in real life.

 

[Loki]

I've just seen Il quarto tipo (The Fourth Kind). I must say that some scenes were quite shocking, but as I've remarked more than once during the film there was something more shocking than those, like the physical appearence of the main character (the "real" one)!
The film is about abduction, and is claimed to tell a true story.
Now I'm waiting for Paranormal Activity.

 

[Igu Soni]

I watched Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run. 3/4
Lola Rennt: Inter-cutting to cartoonation | PassionforCinema

 

[learna]

5 silent films:
"La passion de Jeanne d'Arc",1928( wonderful reaction shots and interesting camerawork),
"Nosferatu",1922(impressive character make-up and shocking Drakula's story),
"The General",1926(an innovative for those years directing element and one of the first battle scenes),
"City Lights",1931(a wonderful and tender story with glamourous sense of humor),
"Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari",1920( one of the first horror films).
Five thanks, Manuel.

 

[Bottle Rocket]

5 silent films:
"La passion de Jeanne d'Arc",1928( wonderful reaction shots and interesting camerawork),
"Nosferatu",1922 (impressive character make-up and shocking Drakula's story),
"The General", 1926(an innovative for those years directing element and one of the first battle scenes),
"City Lights", 1931(a wonderful and tender story with glamourous sense of humor),
"Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", 1920( one of the first horror films).
Five thanks, Manuel.

In the silent world, I would also add:

A Trip to the Moon (Melies, 1902)
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)
The Big Parade (Vidor, 1925)
Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
Pandora's Box (Pabst, 1929)​

• The first is brief but wonderful ... linked here to YouTube -- watch for the "Scientists," who are priceless.

• The second is a grim, realist glimpse of defeated post-WWI Berlin, with a tacked-on but satisfying happy ending.

• The third is arguably the first war movie, predating even Abel Gance's revolutionary "Napoleon," (1927) and a worthwhile companion piece to two others. The first, "Hell's Angels (Hughes, 1930) was originally begun as a silent but revised in mid-production when "The Jazz Singer" launched the sound era; it includes the only color footage of Jean Harlow, as well as the original of the line now usually misquoted as "... let me slip into something more comfortable:" "Hell's Angels" is one of the raciest pre-Code Hollywood movies, and also one of the only films ever to portray Zeppelins at war. The other is the first anti-war movie, the original "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Milestone, 1930), also an early talkie, which was banned by the Nazis and several other European powers.
  
  In passing, I should also mention "Today We Live" (Hawks, 1933), one of Joan Crawford's first talkies co-starring Gary Cooper, Robert Young, and Franchot Tone, which was adapted from a story by William Faulkner and one of very few movies to feature footage of First-World-War bomber aircraft and early Royal Navy motor torpedo boats. Also, of course, Chaplin's "Great Dictator," his first talkie (1940, rather late to the sound game).

• "Metropolis" is in a single word, awesome ... if you've never seen it, it should be your very next movie.

• "Pandora's Box" is among Louise Brooks's handful of roles, and I am always amazed by how very modern she looks even today, like a time-traveler visiting an older, fustier age.

BRocket

PS: sorry about all the notes and trivia; I just really, really love silent films that involve the Great War.

 

[Igu Soni]

Ten movies I've wanted to watch in two posts... wow.

I just watched Requiem for a Dream third time. After the first two times I thought this wouldn't be masochism. But this time the screen was larger and the volume louder. Now, it is.

Interesting fact: those to the left of me loved the movie and those to the right thought it was okay. I was the only guy who'd previously watched it.

 

[Liam]

"La passion de Jeanne d'Arc",1928( wonderful reaction shots and interesting camerawork)

Of course, that is only the surface of things. It is one of those rare works of art of great transformative power that make you lose your sleep for a few days, .

In the silent world, I would also add...

What, no mention of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans? I am shocked!

My personal favorites include:

- [

] Terje Vigen (Victor Sj?str?m, 1917)

- [

] H?xan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)

- [

] Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)

- [

] La Chute de la Maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)

- [

] Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (W. F. Murnau, 1931)

I just really, really love silent films that involve the Great War

Although not a silent film (alas, as I thought most of the dialogues were wooden), I would strongly recommend Les Croix de Bois (Raymond Bernard, 1932).

Robert Flaherty's mind-boggling Man of Aran (1934) is also not to be missed.




Cheers,
L

 

[Heteronym]

In the last days I watched:

Invictus: Hollywood doing what it does best: powerful, inspiring true stories. Enjoyed it in this context but it's hardly a great movie, although Morgan Freeman's performance as Nelson Mandela is unforgettable.

'Breaker' Morant: This is a masterpiece! A courtroom drama about three soldiers in the Bower War being trialed for killing enemy prisoners. In fact they're just scapegoats for many political interests, as the defense lawyer shows. Not that that saves them from the firing squad. A fascinating war movie that, without many war scenes, manages to say more about it than many put together.

Buffet Froid: A weird, Beckett-like comedy about killers, the emptiness or modern life, the absurdity of existence, etc. Very funny in a gallows sort of way, very nonsensical, little plot, but lots of atmosphere.

 

[Bottle Rocket]

Of course, that is only the surface of things. It is one of those rare works of art of great transformative power that make you lose your sleep for a few days, .
What, no mention of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans? I am shocked!

Trouble is, once you wind me up, the clockwork just takes forever to wind back down; I'm way too verbose as it is

My personal favorites include:
... Robert Flaherty's mind-boggling Man of Aran (1934) is also not to be missed.




Cheers,
L

Man of Aran is, as you observe, an utterly breathtaking film ... ever since the first time I watched it, the Celt in me -- I have a cousin in Dublin who by preference will speak only Gaelic -- has longed to retire to a s?ib?n in the Arans and quietly drink myself to death.


Another free-associative but very different visit to the same locale is Whisky Galore, which along with Passport to Pimlico is one of the most hilarious of the Ealing comedies.

uh-oh, here I go again ...

kthxbye

BRocket