What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MikeKardec]

a movie narrated by a dog

I added a very brief and not nearly so intelligent review of Ford vs Ferrari in its own spot on this forum. In this case I was the dog ... er, actually child. To a slight extent I lived on the edges of FvF in that my uncle was mentored by Ken Miles, I think from his interest in racing MGs, and then later they all (uncle, Miles, and Shelby) worked on the Shelby Daytona effort. I think that was in the year between Le Mans races portrayed in this film. No fictional Hollywood film is the "truth" but FvF really feels right. It's got a very accurate atmosphere and sense of how many of the races, like those at pictured at Willow Springs, and even LeMans, were slightly ramshackle affairs. The truly great days of racing. When the drivers changed out the cuffs of their fire suits would be gushing accumulated sweat and you could see in their eyes that their body might be out of the car but their brain was still out in the wilderness of the track. Today you could probably program an autonomous car to drive the "perfect lap."

 

[LizzieMaine]

I went over to the sticky-floored multiplex to see "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood," the Tom Hanks-as-Mister Rogers picture that figures to loom large at Oscar time.

Now, Mister Rogers is not just a pop-culture figure to me. He played an important role in my upbringing -- he was more of a moral guide to me than anyone in my family other than perhaps my grandmother -- and I consider commercial exploitation of his persona and image to be deeply offensive. He was sacred to me as a child, and he still is. It's like having the Pope do commercials. Or the Dalai Lama. Or whatever religious figure you prefer. It's gauche, inappropriate, and Just Isn't Done. So I went into this film with a good deal of skepticism.

It's based on a legendary Esquire magazine profile of Rogers by writer Tom Junod -- a piece that's well worth reading if you've never seen it -- but it uses that article only as a starting point, turning into a story of rage-and-redemption between a fictionalized journalist and his drunken lout of a father, in which the writer's encounter with Mister Rogers changes his entire worldview. Now, this sort of thing did happen in the real world -- it happened in a different way to Junod himself -- but I'm not sure I buy the change in the writer character depicted in the film. There's something just a bit skeevy about him even when he becomes nice, and you find yourself wondering if the "change" will be permanent or if it's just a phase.

And then there's Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. Now, everybody thinks this is ideal casting, given Hanks' real life nice-guy image. But I don't think he quite gets who Fred Rogers was -- he's trying, and you can tell he's trying, but he isn't quite there yet. When you saw the genuine article on screen there was no layer of interpretation or pretense. There was no "character" being portrayed, and as a child I instinctively recognized that. But you can never quite get past the fact that it's TOM HANKS playing the "character" of Mister Rogers up there -- he never quite vanishes into the persona the way he needs to for the film to work. At least he didn't for me.

The picture is oddly structured -- it's framed as if it were an actual episode of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," with the little model town, the piano-jazz underscoring, and the stare-right-into-the camera presentation by Hanks as Rogers. He's come to tell you about his troubled friend the writer -- at this point people in the theatre started to snicker -- and when we transition out to the next scene, you again see the little model town dissolving into a little model of the real Pittsburgh, and ulitimately New York, complete with little model planes. When this device was used on the real show, it worked, because it fit the handmade, no-budget 1960s educational-TV aesthetic of the program. But used here, in what you know to be a big-budget Hollywood feature picture, it comes across as just a bit twee.

It's not a bad film, by any means, and if it convinces one parent to expose her kids to the real Mister Rogers, then it's done some good. But it doesn't quite come up to the mark of "Won't You Be My Neighbor," last summer's Rogers documentary, and that's not such a good feeling...

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Where Danger Lives (1950) dir. by John Farrow, with Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, and Claude Rains. We watched it on the TCM streaming app, but since it was part of TCM's Noir Alley, it included the intro and outro of Eddie Muller interviewing Chris Mitchum, Robert's son. The movie was uneven, but enjoyable.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Das Boot, 1981 cinema cut.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just a note if you all like the Ford vs Ferrari storyline.
Check out “24 hr War” currently on Netflix.
It’s a 2016 documentary of Ford vs Ferrari with outstanding footage and interviews of anybody who was anything in the development of the Ford/Ferrari wars.
It is truly an in depth view which covers the beginnings of Ferrari and of Ford. It ends in 2016 with Fords 50th anniversary of the LeMans win by repeating the victory.
In general this film answered so many aspects of what the battles were all about and who did what and the enormity of the efforts on both sides. The interviews are amazing!
Highly recommended.
Bowen

Fantastic recommendation and wonderful follow-up watch to the movie "Ford v Ferrari."

As AbbaDatDeHat said, it provides a bigger perspective than the movie to the Ford-versus-Ferrari racing battles of the '60s, while filling in a lot of the gaps that a two-hour movie can't.

That said, there are a ridiculous number of moving parts to this story that even this documentary can't fully cover; that's not a fault, it's just a reality.

Technological advancement has moved the apogee of many of mankind's achievements from men and women with hands on feel and analog skills to computer coders. Even Hollywood hasn't figured out how to make writing code as exciting as mechanics and engineers building and testing engines and cars at the extreme through dint of will, guts and skill.

And while computer code rules today, as can be seen in the documentary, when it closes with a brief segment on 2016's Le Mans, that takes much of the drama out of the story.

The 1960s' Ford-versus-Ferrari battle has so much drama because it has so much humanity for you to see and feel. Write all the brilliant strings of zeroes and ones you can, it will still never move you the way you'll be moved seeing a driver going 200 miles an hour downshift because he felt an almost imperceptible miss in an engine.

I guess it's there in the computer code, but it sure feels like a bit of humanity has been lost to our digital world.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Donnie Brasco

 

[steve u]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...with Gary Oldman
I've watched several times and hopefully several more.
steve

 

[regius]

The Irishman followed by Mr Rogers, completely different sentiment yet historical stories


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[tonyb]

Drove a bit more than an hour each way to see “The Irishman” on the big screen.

It was worth the drive. And worth the more than three hours of running time. I’m confident I’ll watch it again. And again.

 

[Zombie_61]

Funny, my wife and I watched The Irishman on Netflix this afternoon. Good, but I do think Mr. Scorsese could have trimmed 30-45 minutes and made it a tighter movie. Otherwise it's pretty much what you'd expect from Martin Scorsese directing Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, etc..

 

[Touchofevil]

Stumbled upon Red Rock West on some channel yesterday. It had been quite some time since I had last viewed it and enjoyed what I did see.

 

[Touchofevil]

A number of the Harry Potter movies over the past few days. Visually entertaining, I wish the stories and acting were better.

 

[Farace]

We're into our holiday movie run, and have already watched Polar Express and A Christmas Story, but we always like to find movies we never saw, and last night came up with The Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart and Maureen Sullavan.

 

[tonyb]

Somehow I missed watching “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” over the Thanksgiving weekend this year.

It’s not that I’ve made a tradition of watching it every year, but I’m guessing I’ve watched it something approaching a dozen times now, the first time when it was a first-run film, at the Cinerama in SEA, with my then girlfriend of a lengthy on-again, off-again standing. We had a great time that night. A lovely lull in the storm.

She has been dead since early in 2013, as I was informed a year or so after the sad fact.

“P, T and A” is a silly film, really, and shamelessly so. That’s a large part of its charm. And I gotta wonder if an even larger part its charm for me is the memory of all that accompanied that first viewing.

 

[Fading Fast]

We're into our holiday movie run, and have already watched Polar Express and A Christmas Story, but we always like to find movies we never saw, and last night came up with The Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart and Maureen Sullavan.

"The Shop Around the Corner" is one of our favorite Christmas movies that flies a bit below the Christmas-movie radar. I really enjoy "The Polar Express" story and the artwork in the book is incredible, but somehow, while I like the movie, I find its animation a bit off. Recorded, from TCM, two of our all-time Christmas movie favorites yesterday, "Holiday Affair" and "The Bishop's Wife."

 

[Farace]

"The Shop Around the Corner" is one of our favorite Christmas movies that flies a bit below the Christmas-movie radar. I really enjoy "The Polar Express" story and the artwork in the book is incredible, but somehow, while I like the movie, I find its animation a bit off. Recorded, from TCM, two of our all-time Christmas movie favorites yesterday, "Holiday Affair" and "The Bishop's Wife."

If you haven't seen it, you might like a more recent film, Lost Christmas starring Eddie Izzard. It's a little bit Christmas Carol-ish crossed with a touch of Doctor Who, while still being entirely its own thing. We stumbled across it by accident a couple of years ago and now it's in our regular holiday rotation. We'll probably watch it this week.

I like how well they were able to expand Polar Express from a rather short book into a full-length movie without losing any of the sense of wonder. The only part I don't at all like is the shoehorning of Aerosmith in there. If they recut the film without that segment I'd run right out to get it.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Blade Runner from my self-recorded VHS from 2000 on my CRT-TV from 2000.

 

[Fading Fast]

Blade Runner from my self-recorded VHS from 2000 on my CRT-TV from 2000.

Methinks you see this one regularly as I seem to remember you referenced watching it recently. My apologies if I'm wrong.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Methinks you see this one regularly as I seem to remember you referenced watching it recently. My apologies if I'm wrong.

I watch it often.

Go away, with Director's Cut and Scott's Final Cut, bah... Blade Runner without the voice-overs is not Blade Runner.

 

[belfastboy]

We sat down to an earlier dinner last night and right after settle in for the evening to watch "The Irishman" on Netflix. Oh, where to start? At my most charitable I would say it was decidedly just okay. Had a hard time getting past the thought it was a vanity project for actors well past their 'best before date'. I think since Taxi Driver and Mean Streets I have had a hard time abiding the DeNiro school of acting......facial ticks substituting for real human emotion. I think since The Godfather I can't abide Pacino's over the top acting. In his world if a little is good then take it over the top and make it even better. On the plus side I thought Peci's performance an understated gem. Anna Paquin delivered her 7 words flawlessly!!! Harvy Keitel was wasted on such a nothing character......I guess at that age you can't turn down a paycheque.

Had a very hard time with the ending. Was Martin attempting to portray Frank as somehow sympathetic and deserving of our compassion at the end of his days? I think the most off putting was the CG effects of ageing. At one point my wife exclaimed 'they looked like they were animated cartoon characters'. If the movie is all of this troupe's swan song I shall not shed a tear for the passing of the era.