What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Wally_Hood]

The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews. Garner gets top billing, though Andrews' character's name is part of the title.
What was this movie supposed to be? Dark comedy? Cynical attack on capitalism, the military, and America? Very wordy with characters I didn't much like. Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay, so maybe it was supposed to be a "message" film.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Red Dawn. The original one.

 

[jamespowers]

That's a good movie to watch late at night.
An altered Mark III was the star of the film btw.

And the danged thing is still around today.
The 1977 clothing---including bell bottoms was really offensive though.

 

[jamespowers]

The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews. Garner gets top billing, though Andrews' character's name is part of the title.
What was this movie supposed to be? Dark comedy? Cynical attack on capitalism, the military, and America? Very wordy with characters I didn't much like. Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay, so maybe it was supposed to be a "message" film.

It was HUGELY a message film. All of his films are. What do you expect from a guy who was involved with The Passion of Joseph D?

 

[Fading Fast]

It was HUGELY a message film. All of his films are. What do you expect from a guy who was involved with The Passion of Joseph D?

I have seen this movie at least twice, but not in the last ten years and my memory is that you are right that it is a "HUGELY" message film and the other gentleman is also right in that the message is, to be very kind, muddled. I enjoy a message film - whether I agree with it or not - if the message is intelligently conveyed with some respect shown for opposing views. But my memory of this movie is that my mind got tied in knots trying to figure out what the message was. Maybe if I saw it again, it would crystalize, but it is funny, my memory of that film is (1) good cast, (2) odd story / message in that it never seemed to make a clear point - and that was before I read these current posts.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Lawless. I didn't like it. The story and characters are so flat...it would work as an 10 minute RRL image movie but not as full length feature.

Before that I saw Papermoon. It still is a beautiful and almost perfectly made movie. Camerawork, actors, everything

 

[DavidJones]

Waterloo, (1970) the new Russian Import DVD.

 

[Gregg Axley]

Madagascar 3.
We have a free movie channel weekend, and the only thing worth watching is this movie.
Oh well, we saw the other 2 and thought they were good.

 

[Worf]

"Metropolis" (the restored version) and "Things to Come" Both get "A" ratings! - Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is as relevant today as when first shown. Amazing flimcraft and a timeless story. I loved the scene when the machine stoked by endless lines of workers transforms into a fire breathing, flesh eating god called "Moloch" eagerly devouring hordes of chained slaves being fed into it my overseers.

"Things to Come" based on an HG Wells book rightly predicts the coming of WWII but quickly leaves the prediction motif to become a tale wherein Science and the reasoned and compassionate use of it finally frees man from the chains of ignorance, violence and war... or does it. One could almost view it as an alternate birth story for Rodenberry's United Federation of Planets!

Both are masterful films. Every Friday this month TCM will be focusing on futuristic pre-histories. I personally can't wait!

Worf

 

[Gregg Axley]

The Party (1968) with Peter Sellers.
One of my personal favorites.

 

[DesertDan]

Buckaroo Banzai.
"Nothing is what it seems, but everything is exactly what it is."

 

[Widebrim]

"Metropolis" (the restored version) and "Things to Come" Both get "A" ratings! - Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is as relevant today as when first shown. Amazing flimcraft and a timeless story. I loved the scene when the machine stoked by endless lines of workers transforms into a fire breathing, flesh eating god called "Moloch" eagerly devouring hordes of chained slaves being fed into it my overseers.

"Things to Come" based on an HG Wells book rightly predicts the coming of WWII but quickly leaves the prediction motif to become a tale wherein Science and the reasoned and compassionate use of it finally frees man from the chains of ignorance, violence and war... or does it. One could almost view it as an alternate birth story for Rodenberry's United Federation of Planets!

Both are masterful films. Every Friday this month TCM will be focusing on futuristic pre-histories. I personally can't wait!

Worf

I first saw Metropolis at a Star Trek convention in Los Angeles many years ago; I think it was about 5 in the morning...Great film. Things to Come is also quite a story and film production. Love Raymond Massey in it.

 

[KY Gentleman]

"Metropolis" (the restored version) and "Things to Come" Both get "A" ratings! - Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is as relevant today as when first shown. Amazing flimcraft and a timeless story. I loved the scene when the machine stoked by endless lines of workers transforms into a fire breathing, flesh eating god called "Moloch" eagerly devouring hordes of chained slaves being fed into it my overseers.

"Things to Come" based on an HG Wells book rightly predicts the coming of WWII but quickly leaves the prediction motif to become a tale wherein Science and the reasoned and compassionate use of it finally frees man from the chains of ignorance, violence and war... or does it. One could almost view it as an alternate birth story for Rodenberry's United Federation of Planets!

Both are masterful films. Every Friday this month TCM will be focusing on futuristic pre-histories. I personally can't wait!

Worf

Bought the Kino BluRay of this a year ago or so. Love this film and it's still relevant.

 

[rjb1]

Definitely agree about the quality of "Metropolis". I show that to my freshman-engineering "History of Technology" class.

 

[jamespowers]

 

[jamespowers]

Great idea. A musical western. :rolleyes. PU!

 

[Two Types]

Nowhere to Go

One of the final films made by Ealing Studios. Utterly bleak. A fine example of what became known as 'British film noir'.


You can read about it in my British Cinema Blog.

 

[Fading Fast]

I saw the new version of "The Great Gatsby" last night.

There is a reason you don't let kids run free in a candy store. For the same reason, someone needed to rein in the the director of "The Great Gatsby." When you have a strong story from one of the finest novels of the Twentieth Century, you shouldn't bury it in noise, flash and technology; you should create a framework that appeals to modern audiences, but puts the original work front and center.

Instead, this latest Gatsby is a visual and auditory assault of computer generated images (CGI), modern and pounding music and over-stylized sets and scenes. CGI is so overused and exaggerated that many scenes look liked animation trying to appear lifelike. The club music combined with the whirl of fantasized 1920s images distracts from the narrative while the heavily choreographed scenes belong in a musical not a drama: It felt as if the director really wanted to make a musical version of Gatsby, but he didn't have the audacity to put the dialogue in song.

Buried in this welter of visual and auditory noise, are fine performances from Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Leonardo DeCaprio as Gatsby and, of course, Fitzgerald's tale itself of all-consuming love and madness playing out in a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches rise followed by a class-crashing induced fall. For fans of the story, you can find bits of it (and movie-making license that goes beyond the book), but the search is exhausting.

And for those dedicated to historical accuracy and attention to detail - as most members of this board are - the movie will be nails on a chalk board. But most members of the general audience aren't Fedora Lounge members. So fair enough, the director didn't have to be faithful to historical accuracy (see the TV show "Hell on Wheels" for an example of using modern music that is respectful to the history of the time period), but by intentionally affronting it, he created a cartoonish version that doesn't update, but instead overwhelms, the story.

When it was done, I wanted to pop in the 1970s version to make sure it was still there. Better still, I want to pick up the book and "see" it as it was originally intended with Fitzgerald's words creating the images in my mind.

Last point for FL members: the clothes have their moments as some of Nick Carraway's and Gatsby's outfits are striking, but as has been mentioned many times on this board before, and by members meaningfully more knowledgeable than I, their historical accuracy is suspect.

Away from that, I was bothered by how poorly tailored some of the outfits are. Gatsby's pants in the high-profile pink suit has too many breaks to count and there are several collars that do not fit and some of the jackets are so tight it looks as if just breathing is an issue for the actors.

Having recently seen Cary Grant in "Suspicion," it is clear that the elegant subtly of fine tailoring is something modern Hollywood has lost in its quest for surface impact and splash - not a bad metaphor for all that is wrong with this production of Gatsby.

 

[Blackthorn]

Appropriately for today, Zero Dark Thirty.

 

[Wally_Hood]

The Drum (1938) dir. Zoltan Korda, starring Sabu, Roger Livesy, and Raymond Massey as a tribal leader in northern India. Technicolor extravaganza of Highland troops battling insurgents.

The Baron of Arizona (1950) dir. by Samuel Fuller, with Vincent Price in the based-on-a-true story story of a con man who in the 1870's forged documents to prove he was the ruler of Arizona via Spanish land grants. Fuller being Fuller, there were some hard-boiled moments in a sort of cowboy procedural narrative.