What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Worf]

The Human Condition (1961), Criterion Collection
A sobering portrait of war (WWII)..almost 10 hours long.
In the spirit of Japanese film ( at that time), no happy endings.
A must watch, but not the type I can watch very often.

Heard of it... but not a lot. Short synopsis (no spoilers please). Is it really 10 hours? A mini-series BEFORE they invented them? Is it a documentary or a drama? I'm curious.

Worf

 

[steve u]

Worf,
I'm not a typer or english speller so bare with me...
The movie's in six parts. Its a drama.
synopsis: A "humane" business exc is in charge of a (section in the) labor camp in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation. His Treatment of the Chinese gets him in trouble with the Japanese Army.
Forced in to the Army for re-eduation it goes from bad to worse. Much worse...not a good time to be a "humane" human.

 

[Fading Fast]

Midway from 2019 with Ed Skien, Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid

Maybe they don't know how to make war movies anymore. You have a lot of options - tell a geopolitical-macro-strategy story, tell a this-is-how-it-effected-the-lives-of-these-people story, focus on one key event or family or battle or defining figure or...the list is almost endless.

And when you do any of those, you have to personalize the story - let the audience get to know the characters a bit so when they are in the cauldron of war, making life-and-death decisions, dying or coming home - we care because we've become vested in them.

In Midway, they tried to cover the overall geopolitical strategy of the war in the Pacific and a crucial theater-of-war-defining battle and, perhaps, bit off more than this movie-making team could chew. And despite many of the characters being famous historical figures, none of them felt real as no hard work was done to personalize them / to build their backstory / to have us care about them.

Be it the "big" guys like Charles Nimitz (Harrelson) or William Halsey (Quaid) or less-well-known ones like the dive bomber commander, they all just pop up either fully formed or with cliched moments to, one presumes, give them backstories. Seeing a pilot put a picture of his wife and kid on his dashboard means nothing if you don't know and feel his relationship with his wife because the few times they are together was a montage of cookie-cutter moments.

The acting talent is here, but even the really good ones can only do so much with trite dialogue and cliched stories. Lines of heroism ring empty when the movie is, mainly, lines like that strung together. It's as if someone watched a lot of good war movies and took all of their stirring moment and stitched them together here without realizes those moments won't be stirring if the movie hasn't done the background-building work.

Okay, so forget caring much about the characters; how was the big-picture story? Despite starting out promising with a few reasonably well done scenes in Japan in the late '30s explaining the Japanese view, most of the story flies by in brief vignettes that tells the very big picture - if you knew all but nothing about WWII - but left any nuance or complex-war strategy out.

Well then, how were the battle scenes? The CGI stunk. Based on looking over my nephews' shoulders at Christmas time, the action sequences felt like ten-year-old video-game images where, often, the explosions and resulting fires seemed superimposed on the battleships, etc. Being bored by the characters and sloppy story telling, unfortunately, leaves you more bandwidth to notice the poor graphics.

Midway is a confusing as heck battle that is hard to follow even in a well-written book (multiple ships and carrier groups on both sides going this way and that / ditto the planes / submarines here and there / strategies shifting mid battle multiple times / a lot of different weapons and technology in play / all happening over a large area), so it would take a skilled team to bring control to that chaos on screen - and Midway was not made by a skilled team (nor, for that matter was the 1976 version). The bad news - they tried and failed; the good news; a great Battle of Midway movie is still waiting to be made.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Footlight Parade" from 1933, on in the background on mute.

The swimming scene is pretty darn close to soft porn. Today, movies are much cruder and explicit about sex; pre-codes got their gratuitous sex in just a bit less aggressively - but it was there.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A.L.I.E.N.S

DVD Extended Cut, on my brilliant CRT TV.

The best Vietnam-movie on Sci-Fi.

Still breathtaking optics.

 

[Trenchfriend]

It always gets me. Just unbelievable scene.

 

[Touchofevil]

Errrr... I think there's a mental health term for that kinda behavior.... It's a longish word that starts with an "M"? Hmmm wat was it?

Worf

Yeah maybe, but it’s kinda fun too. Actually no, it is fun. Steven Seagal is fun too. His bulky jacket to hid his bulk. His hairline and its ability to morph into a widow’s peak shape and move forward instead of receding as would be normal.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ronin, DVD.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Steven Seagal is fun too. His bulky jacket to hid his bulk. His hairline and its ability to morph into a widow’s peak shape and move forward instead of receding as would be normal.

Both he and his hair were a lot thinner three decades ago.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) dir. by Orson Welles, with Joseph Cotton, Dolores Costello, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Anne Baxter, and Welles' stock company from the Mercury Theatre. Strong blend of stagecraft and cinema, yet flawed by Welles's visual and thematic darkness, and the studio's re-edit without Welles' knowledge.
The Missus was looking forward to seeing the film version, having enjoyed our read-aloud of the novel. She agreed it was a good film, but liked the book better.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Heard of it... but not a lot. Short synopsis (no spoilers please). Is it really 10 hours? A mini-series BEFORE they invented them? Is it a documentary or a drama? I'm curious.

Worf

If you have the time and inclination, the films can be moving. At times remarkable in the story and visuals, and at other times mired in politicizing, they nonetheless tell an out-sized story. An insider's view of Japanese imperialism, the de-humanizing effect of it and the wars that attends it, the films require a lot from a western viewer. (My major was East Asian Studies, so I got some book learning to help out in parts). I hope it doesn't dissuade you, but perhaps give it a try.

 

[Worf]

Yeah maybe, but it’s kinda fun too. Actually no, it is fun. Steven Seagal is fun too. His bulky jacket to hid his bulk. His hairline and its ability to morph into a widow’s peak shape and move forward instead of receding as would be normal.

SPEW!!!!! That last line was comedy gold! You made my evening! Mwa ha ha ha ha.... What kills me about both those guys is that they take this crap so SERIOUSLY! Segal looks like an ape tackling Shakespeare... Snort!

Da "You're killin' me man" Worfster

 

[Worf]

View attachment 234258
Midway from 2019 with Ed Skien, Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid

Maybe they don't know how to make war movies anymore. You have a lot of options - tell a geopolitical-macro-strategy story, tell a this-is-how-it-effected-the-lives-of-these-people story, focus on one key event or family or battle or defining figure or...the list is almost endless.

And when you do any of those, you have to personalize the story - let the audience get to know the characters a bit so when they are in the cauldron of war, making life-and-death decisions, dying or coming home - we care because we've become vested in them.

In Midway, they tried to cover the overall geopolitical strategy of the war in the Pacific and a crucial theater-of-war-defining battle and, perhaps, bit off more than this movie-making team could chew. And despite many of the characters being famous historical figures, none of them felt real as no hard work was done to personalize them / to build their backstory / to have us care about them.

Be it the "big" guys like Charles Nimitz (Harrelson) or William Halsey (Quaid) or less-well-known ones like the dive bomber commander, they all just pop up either fully formed or with cliched moments to, one presumes, give them backstories. Seeing a pilot put a picture of his wife and kid on his dashboard means nothing if you don't know and feel his relationship with his wife because the few times they are together was a montage of cookie-cutter moments.

The acting talent is here, but even the really good ones can only do so much with trite dialogue and cliched stories. Lines of heroism ring empty when the movie is, mainly, lines like that strung together. It's as if someone watched a lot of good war movies and took all of their stirring moment and stitched them together here without realizes those moments won't be stirring if the movie hasn't done the background-building work.

Okay, so forget caring much about the characters; how was the big-picture story? Despite starting out promising with a few reasonably well done scenes in Japan in the late '30s explaining the Japanese view, most of the story flies by in brief vignettes that tells the very big picture - if you knew all but nothing about WWII - but left any nuance or complex-war strategy out.

Well then, how were the battle scenes? The CGI stunk. Based on looking over my nephews' shoulders at Christmas time, the action sequences felt like ten-year-old video-game images where, often, the explosions and resulting fires seemed superimposed on the battleships, etc. Being bored by the characters and sloppy story telling, unfortunately, leaves you more bandwidth to notice the poor graphics.

Midway is a confusing as heck battle that is hard to follow even in a well-written book (multiple ships and carrier groups on both sides going this way and that / ditto the planes / submarines here and there / strategies shifting mid battle multiple times / a lot of different weapons and technology in play / all happening over a large area), so it would take a skilled team to bring control to that chaos on screen - and Midway was not made by a skilled team (nor, for that matter was the 1976 version). The bad news - they tried and failed; the good news; a great Battle of Midway movie is still waiting to be made.

You're the second person (who's opinions I value and TRUST) to tell me essentially the same thing. I saw the 60's version of this story with Chuck Heston in "Sensurround" and that was hardly a "masterpiece" so I wondered why they felt the need to tackle it again. Normally I'm a sucker for almost any battle movie from WWII but I'd heard it was all bad CGI and no heart. I'm not gonna waste 2 of the hours I have left on that. I NEVER forgave myself for watching "Pearl Harbor" so I wasn't about to repeat the experience.
Thanks.

Worf

 

[Seb Lucas]

Both he and his hair were a lot thinner three decades ago.

Who wants fat hair?

 

[Fading Fast]

Young Man with a Horn from 1950 with Kirk Douglas, Juano Hernandez, Doris Day, Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren BaCall

There are two movies here. There is the ostensible story of a young tortured artist and it's a good one, even if it does crawl a bit here and there. But there is an even better story within the main one that really lifts off.

In the main story, we meet a young man with talent, in this case, a jazz trumpet player whose music is so far ahead of its time that few care about his exceptional talent; instead, he has to make a living playing popular music that saps his soul.

Okay, we've seen this story before and this one, like all of them, has its own spin. Here, our tortured artist - a basically good guy with a volatile temper - falls for and marries the really wrong woman. It takes a bad marriage (to angry, crazy, spoiled BaCall), too much booze and having to play too much pop music to break him. And, sadly, all along, the good women (Day) - who "gets" him and his music - is right in front of him. Of course, as these things go, he doesn't see her until he's made all the wrong decisions first.

But here's the better and, for the time, daring movie within a movie: it's the story of a black man (Hernandez) who effectively raises a white kid, a street urchin with a talent for music, but with no one to love or guide him.

With dignity and quiet persistence, Hernandez, a successful trumpet player himself, tutors his protege in life and music. He uses an impressively soft touch as he rarely scolds, just teaches with understanding, by his own example and with a street-smart socratic method that continuously forces a young Douglas to see the errors in his thinking.

After building this foundation, there is a later-in-life scene when Hernandez tries to rescue a broken Douglas that is soul crushing. Douglas lashes out at the most important man in his life. Hernandez doesn't become angry, but is sad because he can't reach Douglas and because he knows Douglas is not really mad at him. Hernandez has a maturity and understanding of life and people that few of us ever achieve.

And knowing the time, one assumes Hernandez has not had an easy life. The scars are written on his face at crucial moments (acting talent at its best), so to see a man come out of those experiences not outwardly bitter, but wise, not outwardly angry, but hopeful, is impressive and humbling.

There is no doubt that the writers and the director knew what they were doing: they made a movie about an incredible black man guiding a lost white boy through life, but they made it inside another movie as it was, undoubtedly, the only way they could get it done.

Sure, the Douglas tortured-artist story is good, but the hidden gem is the story of a black man standing as a model of decency, character and Christian charity (talk about turning the other cheek). An almost subversive story for its day hiding in plain sight inside a movie made in 1950.

 

[steve u]

Cobra Verde 1987
Werner Herzog-director
Klaus Kinski-actor

 

[Worf]

Who wants fat hair?

Google "No Neck Ed" the mayonnaise king.

Worf

 

[steve u]

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

 

[belfastboy]

Our cable company offered "The Lighthouse" as their special dollar of the week movie...….watched it just now......I want my dollar back! How this movie ended up on so many Best of 2019 movie lists is a head scratcher.

 

[Fading Fast]

A Modern Hero from 1934 with Richard Barthelmess and Jean Muir

• For the first sixty minutes of this fast seventy-one minute movie, we see a poor, young circus performer (Barthelmess), first, dream about and, then, achieve a better life by leaving the circus and building a successful automobile manufacturing business through hard work, smart risk taking, offering a better product and by treating his employees, partners and customers with respect - you know, leveraging personal freedom and capitalism the right way

• As a young man, Barthelmess had an affair with a local farm girl (Muir) whom he wanted to marry, but she wanted to stay on the farm and knew he needed to move on to grow, so she married a local farmer, but when Barthelmess becomes successful and learns (for the first time) that she had his son, he tries to help the boy - the opposite of a deadbeat dad (he tries to help when it isn't even asked for)

• That's the first sixty minutes (plus some stuff about his circus-performing mother thinking he should have stayed in the hardscrabble world of circus performers - "thanks mom") and, then, it's as if the writers decided they wanted to make a different movie, so (spoiler alert) our heretofore hero risks everything he has in an out-of-character stock-market scheme (nothing illegal, just risky), loses everything and has to humbly return to his mother who tells him, effectively, I told you it was wrong to, paraphrasing, "step over people and only care about money -" two things he didn't do when he was successful

• For whatever reason - ideology, market-testing - it's as if they decided at the last minute to slap a Depression-era morality-tale ending on a capitalism success story

• Despite being a modest effort, Barthelmess gives his all and rises above his usual soporific performance; while Muir - looking absolutely stunning at 5'9" - shows more acting promise than her reasonably successful career delivered

• Well worth the seventy one minutes even with the forced ending