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What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Stray Cat

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Over the past couple of days I have seen:

Conan - actually quite good, rather than amusingly rubbish as I had expected.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - superb stuff.

REALLY?!
They're worth watching? Then, I might take a look at those.. :)

12 Monkeys. Bruce Willis. Good flick, but weird.

Oh, yes.. Weird, but in a good way. I liked it. ;)
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,116
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London, UK
REALLY?!
They're worth watching? Then, I might take a look at those.. :)

If you're into the sword and sorcery genre, and appreciate things like the Ray Winstone / Agelina Jolie Beowulf, that kind of take on it (rather than Elves and Goblins), yes, Conan is worth a look. I happened to see it in 3D and it works just fine in that format (as seems to be the standard now, it was subtly used for the most part), though I wouldn't feel I was missing anything if I saw it in 2D. Far and away better than the last two cinematic efforts with the character, and as a bonus here you don't have to see Arnie's sex face either.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is very well done, and sits well within the established canon. I hear tell that they plan to work it up to a trilogy that will in effect form a prequel set to the original films. A lot of folks seem to have been keen to dislike it for using CGI rather than prosthetics, but if you can live with that (they do it well, and it looks great), then it is well worth seeing. Some very good acting turns in it, particularly from Andy Serkis as Caesar. He really should be up for an award for that, but because we can't see his own face in it, no doubt he'll be snubbed.
 

Nathan Dodge

One Too Many
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1,051
Location
Near Miami
Twelve Monkeys is my all time favorite film....If you see the French short it was based on, it gives a bit more dimension to Cole and the Dr.
LD

Heh. It figures that the short reveals more about the characters than its Hollywood feature-length equivalent, wouldn't it?
------------

An Unmarried Woman (1978)

Laughably bad but deliciously dated! Horrendous attempt at relevance--the kind of films that date the worst, or best---this tries to be an unflinching attempt at showing what (Boomer) women go through when their wretched husbands dump them for a younger model. An Unmarried Woman is more "message" than movie and has several excruciatingly directed and performed scenes; in particular the interminable bit with the female shrink and the attempt at humor during the "casual sex" scene. Bill Conti's score is among the most laughably inapropriate and melodramatic of any era.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen, considering the critical praise (I mean you, Roger Ebert!). Only Michael "The Quintessential Baby Boomer Weasel" Murphy acquits himself well.
 

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,262
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
Nathan, I can tell you personally that it seemed to be a very good movie when it was new. It took a then-seemingly new and more honest approach to the material from the under-represented female POV, and it came off as pretty bold. (No film before it had ever shown the leading lady vomiting from emotional shock!) There were some things about it that seemed like cheap shots (Alan Bates' impossibly sensitive artist shows up as her new boyfriend/savior), but it was considered a bold, hip movie in its time, and Paul Mazursky an important observer of social mores. (This movie explored/satirized the relationships of its time just as his earlier Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice had the swinging sixties.)

That it doesn't play well today isn't all that surprising. Most films from the seventies look like period pieces now. But it was widely perceived as a groundbreaking success back then. (I was in my early twenties and was just as impressed as everybody else. Geez, I'm not sure how we survived the stupidities of the seventies... or the sixties, eighties, nineties, now...)
 

Nathan Dodge

One Too Many
Messages
1,051
Location
Near Miami
Nathan, I can tell you personally that it seemed to be a very good movie when it was new. It took a then-seemingly new and more honest approach to the material from the under-represented female POV, and it came off as pretty bold. (No film before it had ever shown the leading lady vomiting from emotional shock!) There were some things about it that seemed like cheap shots (Alan Bates' impossibly sensitive artist shows up as her new boyfriend/savior), but it was considered a bold, hip movie in its time, and Paul Mazursky an important observer of social mores. (This movie explored/satirized the relationships of its time just as his earlier Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice had the swinging sixties.)

That it doesn't play well today isn't all that surprising. Most films from the seventies look like period pieces now. But it was widely perceived as a groundbreaking success back then. (I was in my early twenties and was just as impressed as everybody else. Geez, I'm not sure how we survived the stupidities of the seventies... or the sixties, eighties, nineties, now...)

"I can tell you personally that it seemed to be a very good movie when it was new."

I said that to my wife while we were watching it. In fact, I watched the film strictly for whatever '70s time capsule enjoyment I could get out of it. The film is worth watching if only for its authentic NYC locations. I love 1970s NYC movies (The French Connection; The Seven Ups; Three Days of the Condor; Taxi Driver, et al.) but this film was simply poorly directed with static scenes galore--and this is coming from someone who watches countless films and TV shows from that period, so it's not a case of me being accustomed to fast cut editing or anything.

The scenes with the shrink were absolutely hilarious in that wonderfully bad way, especially since I knew that this was supposed to be "cutting edge."

Relavance always dates poorly, whether it be movies like An Unmarried Woman or TV (The Defenders [E.G. Marshall version), Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, or St. Elsewhere).

This movie was Sex in the City twenty years before that show ever existed, however!

I was only seven when An Unmarried Woman was released and it seemed relentlessly "grown up" when I recall my parents watching it on HBO in 1979 or so.

Jill Clayburgh was good in the title role, but it was all so over the top.
 

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