What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[AmateisGal]

That and a couple of Aerosmith videos was Alicia Silverstone's 15 minutes of outsized fame.

Yep. I remember watching her videos on MTV in college.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

' John Wick' (2014) - above average action flick & although it pains me to say , Keanu Reeves was pretty good.......or prehaps I should say, Keanu's limited acting skills suited the character he was playing.
Pretty simple plot which moves along at a good pace, well filmed, the action scenes are very well done & it has an unexpected ending....and the icing on the gateau were cameo roles for Ian Mcshane & Willem Dafoe, who,admittedly, didn't have much to do but it was nice to see them.

 

[Worf]

' John Wick' (2014) - above average action flick & although it pains me to say , Keanu Reeves was pretty good.......or prehaps I should say, Keanu's limited acting skills suited the character he was playing.
Pretty simple plot which moves along at a good pace, well filmed, the action scenes are very well done & it has an unexpected ending....and the icing on the gateau were cameo roles for Ian Mcshane & Willem Dafoe, who,admittedly, didn't have much to do but it was nice to see them.

A great all around "shoot em up"!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Autumn in New York" from 2000, a love story about an aging womanizer - Richard Gere - falling in love with a young, physically sick woman - Winona Ryder.

It felt as if this movie's genesis was inverted. Instead of having / writing an interesting story, and then thinking about how to enhance it with visuals, locations, actors, etc., it seems the producers said, New York City looks romantic in the fall, hey, let's get two pretty people and have them fall in love in NYC in the fall.

Oh, I guess we'll need a story with a plot and some conflict. Well, let's get an older playboy to fall in love with a young innocent sick woman, we can throw in some "complicating" background - he had a romance with her now deceased mother - a few cliches about him not wanting to commit, the maudlin backdrop of heart disease stealing her youth and life and away we go.

It almost works as the city looks stupid gorgeous through the skillful eye of the director and Gere and Ryder are pretty to look at in their wonderful clothes, penthouse apartments and townhouses, while attending fancy balls and dining in luxurious restaurants - that they get to in their chauffeur driven cars.

All this pretty almost makes you not cringe at the hackneyed dialogue, contrived conflicts and the just-about-there creep factor of Gere being 640 years older than Ryder. Nope, not pretty enough to overcome all that, but still a pretty movie.

 

[Doctor Strange]

The Danish Girl. Well acted and beautifully produced, but everything about its POV and dialog was much too contemporary for 1926. And I see it was criticized for being a very fictionalized treatment of the actual historical couple. I was very impressed with Alicia Vikander (again), but Eddie Redmayne's performance, as usual, left me cold.

 

[AmateisGal]

All About Eve. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to watch this. What a wonderful film. Everything was perfection: the actors' performances, the script, the story itself.

 

[Fading Fast]

All About Eve. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to watch this. What a wonderful film. Everything was perfection: the actors' performances, the script, the story itself.

As you said, a top-notch movie through and through. You'll find more things in it, the more times you watch it. I've seen it, I'm guessing, half a dozen times and am never bored and always discover something new.

The last time, it was Bette Davis' almost threatening delivery of the line "fire and music" as she kept referencing back to Eve's performance. It's almost chilling how much menace she puts into that line. Also, what a great description of a performance: "fire and music."

 

[Touchofevil]

The Thrill of it All on TCM because it is James Garner Day on TCM. Nowhere near my favorite movie, but it does have Garner in it.

 

[AmateisGal]

I'm watching 36 Hours on TCM. Never seen it before, so I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm watching 36 Hours on TCM. Never seen it before, so I'm looking forward to it.

One of my favorite Garner movies. Eva Marie Saint is excellent as well. If you happened to have read Nelson Demise's "The Charm School," you'll see that he might have gotten the idea, to some degree, from this movie. Enjoy

 

[SurfGent]

 

[SurfGent]

Re watched this lastnight.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

All About Eve. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to watch this. What a wonderful film. Everything was perfection: the actors' performances, the script, the story itself.

Agreed, it's an outstanding film, from script to performances. It' right up there with Casablanca or His Girl Friday for snappy dialogue and memorable quotes. "Fasten your seat-belts, it's going to be a bumpy night-"

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

An early Frank Capra film via TCM, American Madness from 1932 - no masterpiece, but a fascinating depths-of-the-Depression artifact.

Walter Huston plays a bank president who - anticipating George Bailey's Bedford Falls Building & Loan - gives out "questionable" loans to people he trusts vs. just looking at their financials. After the bank is robbed, fast-flying rumors lead to a bank run with hundreds of panicked customers trying to close their accounts, and the fat-cat board of directors refuse to loan their own fortunes to prevent running out of cash from shutting down the bank. The ultimate resolution is exactly the same as in It's A Wonderful Life 15 years later: when they hear of Huston's troubles, all those little people he trusted come running to make deposits into their accounts, providing the cash to satisfy the withdrawals.

Director Capra (and screenwriter Robert Riskin) hadn't quite reached maturity, and some aspects of the film, notably a romantic problem that complicates the main plot, are awkward. But Huston is great as always, the bank set is outstanding... and oh, those hats on the hundreds of extras in the bank run scenes!

I watched this many years ago and realized that a lot of the plot showed up in IAWL. A particular Capra touch was choreographing crowd scenes, such as people rushing from one side to another in the bank in American Madness.

 

[AmateisGal]

Really, really enjoyed 36 Hours. Solid plot and great characters. I loved how a small paper cut was the undoing of the entire Nazi subterfuge.

 

[Bushman]

"A Raisin in the Sun" with Sidney Poitier. I've been feeling a Poitier kick lately, having just watched "The Defiant Ones" last week, and "In the Heat of the Night" the week prior to that. This one surprised me in that I'd been used to Poitier playing the film's hero. Here, though I found a selfish, short sighted man who nearly brings his family to ruin through his own recklessness with money. The ending was truly beautiful though, as Walter rejects his own self interests in money for doing right by his family.

 

[Fading Fast]

Really, really enjoyed 36 Hours. Solid plot and great characters. I loved how a small paper cut was the undoing of the entire Nazi subterfuge.

The paper cut was a smart tell, but they made way, way too much noise hanging that gun on the wall in the first act. Either the director forced it or Garner over played it, but you knew immediately, even without knowing how yet, that the paper cut was going to play a crucial part in the story because he made such a hullabaloo when he got it. Still love the movie, but that wasn't handled well.

I mentioned it briefly above, are you familiar with Nelson DeMille's "The Charm School?" The plot riffs on the same idea as "36 Hours," but set in the Cold War. DeMille was (haven't read him in many years) one of my favorite "page-turner" authors - good, solid, spy-adventure reads with enough history, military information or government inside baseball to give it some heft - much like Clancy back in his early days.

 

[Fading Fast]

"A Raisin in the Sun" with Sidney Poitier. I've been feeling a Poitier kick lately, having just watched "The Defiant Ones" last week, and "In the Heat of the Night" the week prior to that. This one surprised me in that I'd been used to Poitier playing the film's hero. Here, though I found a selfish, short sighted man who nearly brings his family to ruin through his own recklessness with money. The ending was truly beautiful though, as Walter rejects his own self interests in money for doing right by his family.

Poitier was on fire in the '60s - I never tire of watching "To Sir, With Love," "In the Heat of the Night," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," or - and this one gets less mention, but is no less a movie - "A Patch of Blue -" where the volume is turned down a bit, but the message and impact are equally effective. Like his contemporary, Paul Newman, Poitier was not only a talented actor and handsome, but had that one extra variable that makes you a star: the camera just loved him.

 

[MisterCairo]

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I love Jane Austen.

I love zombies.

This was pretty good, though, ironically, it bothered me a bit that they didn't follow the book all that closely.

Yes, I've read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies... (as well as the original, of course...)

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

The Danish Girl. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I thought it was both interesting and pretentious the way they kept shooting these scenes as if they were typical Copenhagen canal and boat paintings. Quite a few shots where lines and shapes were set as paintings like that; in part, to create arty atmosphere and pace . Vikander was very good. Redmayne was so-so. Decent movie, but I know better than to give it much thought.

In the Heart of the Sea. Moby Dick is an important story to me, so I'm sensitive to how it is used. I watched part of this movie and then shut it off. I'm not sure I'll finish it. Too much CGI and an ugly feel to the color palette. Action packed, which I feel is unnecessary the way it was delivered.