What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Zombie_61]

We're starting a week's run of "Still Alice." Julianne Moore is one of my favorite modern-era actresses, and she's excellent as always, but it bugs me that it's yet another movie about a crisis facing an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman. Would Alzheimer's be any less tragic for the victim or the family if Alice worked in a factory instead of being a Columbia University linguistics professor?

I don't disagree with this being an over-used characterization in movies that is possibly bordering on cliché, but in this case the movie is based on the novel "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova (who has a degree in Biopsychology and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University) in which Alice is a cognitive psychology professor and linguistics expert. As such, it appears the filmmakers were simply trying to stay faithful to the original material, so maybe the "blame" lies with the author's limitations.

 

[ChiTownScion]

We're starting a week's run of "Still Alice." Julianne Moore is one of my favorite modern-era actresses, and she's excellent as always, but it bugs me that it's yet another movie about a crisis facing an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman. Would Alzheimer's be any less tragic for the victim or the family if Alice worked in a factory instead of being a Columbia University linguistics professor?

Saw the film, and I think the point was to show the extreme ravages of early onset Alzheimer's on someone who was (perhaps almost to stereotype) a hard driven educated professional (tenured professor of linguistics at Columbia married to medical researcher) who had international peer recognition. The point of relying upon that stereotype is that the disease can reduce anyone- no matter how high and mighty others may regard them, or invulnerable they deem their own person- to a state of total dependency.

What amazed me about the performance of Moore was the nuance she demonstrated throughout the progression of her character's condition. A factory worker suffering from Alzheimer's would have been no less heartbreaking but I don't think that it would have permitted that nuance.


On a personal note: my admittedly short stint as a factory worker was one of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life: I really began to appreciate what Marx railed about regarding the worker being reduced to little more than a means of production in the capitalist's game plan. Hour, after hour, after hour, performing the same single production assembly: the chimp that couldn't perform the task with the other 999 at typewriters of producing the Encyclopedia Britannica could have easily performed it...but I think he would have demanded more in bananas than the wage I was paid. A union journeyman machinist hit by Alzheimer's perhaps could be woven into a movie plot... but someone doing what I did? They wouldn't have noticed until I was so far gone that I had forgotten my way to work.

 

[Harp]

Movies used to be made by people who had experienced a far broader cross section of life than the film-school crowd of today. I'd take any of the Warner Bros. proletarian dramas of the early thirties any day of the week over the poor-me-I'm-a-spoiled-white-girl-in-Manhattan indie pictures that flood the market today

Seen Bluebird? Amy Morton and James Slattery; northern Maine blue collar logging mill town tale.
Opens Friday here in Chicago. On my list. :coffee:

...but I will see any flick with Julie Moore.

 

[Bushman]

Watched Fury again, this time with the folks. Unfortunately, I remembered why I don't like watching movies with my Dad. He couldn't stop reminiscing about his time in the service, and how he remembers "being the new guy and getting f****ed with." Had to replay a few key lines several times because he couldn't stop talking. Ah well, I'll probably miss it some day.

 

[Touchofevil]

Watched Fury again, this time with the folks. Unfortunately, I remembered why I don't like watching movies with my Dad. He couldn't stop reminiscing about his time in the service, and how he remembers "being the new guy and getting f****ed with." Had to replay a few key lines several times because he couldn't stop talking. Ah well, I'll probably miss it some day.

Miss it, you will. You will wish for it.

 

[jamespowers]

Off Monterey Bay, February 12, 1935. Only two crew men died. The Akron lost 73 of 76 crew men. The Shenandoah lost 14. The Los Angeles died in her bed! She was built by the Zeppelin Company. The Lakehurst, New Jersey hanger, of Hindenburg fame still stands. [video=youtube;IWoEQRl8dCs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWoEQRl8dCs[/video]

Big Sur is off Monterey Bay. The Macon went down with her sparrowhawks too......:doh: That was one heck of a storm.

 

[Stearmen]

Big Sur is off Monterey Bay. The Macon went down with her sparrowhawks too......:doh: That was one heck of a storm.

Closer to Carmel By The Sea, but same general area. Non of those places were very big back then. The Akron, was the greatest loss of life in any airship accident. More then the Hindenburg.

 

[Fading Fast]

Watched Fury again, this time with the folks. Unfortunately, I remembered why I don't like watching movies with my Dad. He couldn't stop reminiscing about his time in the service, and how he remembers "being the new guy and getting f****ed with." Had to replay a few key lines several times because he couldn't stop talking. Ah well, I'll probably miss it some day.

My girlfriend's father does that sometimes and over the years, I've grown to love it - it makes him happy, sometimes the information or story is interesting (sometimes not) and he is more valuable as a wonderful human being than whatever silly thing is on TV. I am not beating you up as I used to think the way you did, but once I thought about it in the big picture, I've come to appreciate what I have in him and am glad he is with us - if that means he likes to talk during a TV show, so be it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Saw the film, and I think the point was to show the extreme ravages of early onset Alzheimer's on someone who was (perhaps almost to stereotype) a hard driven educated professional (tenured professor of linguistics at Columbia married to medical researcher) who had international peer recognition. The point of relying upon that stereotype is that the disease can reduce anyone- no matter how high and mighty others may regard them, or invulnerable they deem their own person- to a state of total dependency.

What amazed me about the performance of Moore was the nuance she demonstrated throughout the progression of her character's condition. A factory worker suffering from Alzheimer's would have been no less heartbreaking but I don't think that it would have permitted that nuance.


On a personal note: my admittedly short stint as a factory worker was one of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life: I really began to appreciate what Marx railed about regarding the worker being reduced to little more than a means of production in the capitalist's game plan. Hour, after hour, after hour, performing the same single production assembly: the chimp that couldn't perform the task with the other 999 at typewriters of producing the Encyclopedia Britannica could have easily performed it...but I think he would have demanded more in bananas than the wage I was paid. A union journeyman machinist hit by Alzheimer's perhaps could be woven into a movie plot... but someone doing what I did? They wouldn't have noticed until I was so far gone that I had forgotten my way to work.

I figured that same point on watching it, but as a general approach it still bugged me. Not being someone particularly concerned with "achievement" or "success" in the way bourgeois society reckons it, I focused more on the impact her disease had on her family, and on her relationship with her family.

I'd think a picture portraying a patient who was considered by society to be an essentially disposable replacement part, but who deeply loved and was loved by the people in her immediate circle would have been, to me anyway, much more affecting. "She doesn't matter? She matters to *us*!" To say nothing of portraying the struggle such a family would have with even getting access to treatment compared with the ease with which Alice and her family take for granted that they can just glide in the door of the best hospital in the city and get any treatment they want. This kind of unconscious privilege bothers me in real life, and in a movie it's overwhelmingly distracting.

As for factory work, the year I spent in the t-shirt factory radicalized me more than reading any book or listening any speech ever possibly could. It was almost thirty years ago, but it still affects me to this day.

 

[Fading Fast]

...To say nothing of portraying the struggle such a family would have with even getting access to treatment compared with the ease with which Alice and her family take for granted that they can just glide in the door of the best hospital in the city and get any treatment they want. This kind of unconscious privilege bothers me in real life, and in a movie it's overwhelmingly distracting..

The divide in the haves and haves not in access to medical care is becoming one less of economic class (yes, those at the top with large sums of money will always have access and those with very modest resources will always struggle) and more of what healthcare plan do you have from work. I work for myself now, but in the last few years of when I worked at a large financial institution, the employees who had spouses that worked in the public sector (teachers, policemen, firemen, etc.) all passed on getting health care from the financial institution and instead used their spouse's plan.

So you had employees of a large financial institution, some of them making in salary much more than their spouses, but all of them using the spouse's healthcare because it was better and less expensive. And you can feel it becoming more of a public issue as in some states now voters - many who work in the private sector and contribute a lot to their healthcare premiums - getting angry at public employees - who in theory are paid for by the private sector's tax dollars - voting to have the public employees pay more for healthcare and the public employees fighting back.

I absolutely, positively do not want to start an argument of how we should fund healthcare in this country (there are many, many places one can do that if they want), but I did want to point out that, today, the divide in healthcare quality, access and cost can be more about the type of plan one's job gives one access to than the wealth of the business and, in many cases, traditional blue collar or government plans are better than what the upper-middle class private sector has (even in my family I see it where my teacher relatives have better access to care than I do as a "finance" guy).

I even wonder if some of these movies that show upper middle class people gliding through the health field without unfettered access and no regard for cost isn't a worn out trope as I know many cases of friends of mine who have very good private sector jobs that have incredibly frustrating stories of woe regarding healthcare access and the bills.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The divide in the haves and haves not in access to medical care is becoming one less of economic class (yes, those at the top with large sums of money will always have access and those with very modest resources will always struggle) and more of what healthcare plan do you have from work.

Which, of course, leaves out the vast swaths of the public who don't have any healthcare plan from work at all. Most of the people I know personally, and most of the people who are important to me personally, fall into this category. I myself am one of only two people at the theatre who have any kind of coverage beyond the Obamacare minimum. Our sound guy was able to get a quadruple bypass recently only because he'd kept up his IATSE membership from when he was a union stagehand in New York. God help any of us who actually get sick.

To get back to the movie, it's provoked a lot of talk around the theatre about what any of us would do if we ended up in Alice's situation. It hit especially close to home for me, because I'm a fiftysomething woman who's become increasingly forgetful in recent years and often lose words that I know should be there, to the point where it's become kind of a joke among the kids. But nobody's laughing now. I doubt it actually *is* the same type of situation as portrayed in the film, because we have no family history of it, but it's gotten us thinking about the subject, and how much of who we are is tied to what's inside our heads. So that, at least, is a worthwhile result.

 

[1mach1]

H.G Wells' Things To Come (1936)

 

[Worf]

H.G Wells' Things To Come (1936)

Great movie... Raymond Massey shines in it. I also love the guy that plays... "The Boss"! Known a great many folks like him. The special effects for its day were marvelous... absolutely stupendous!

"Mr. Wings Over Your Wits!"

Worf

 

[SGTROCK]

Watching Sunset Boulevard right now

 

[Ghostsoldier]

The Strawberry Blond (1941)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034236/



Rob

 

[Gregg Axley]

Rush-2013

Set against the sexy, glamorous golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s, the film is based on the true story of a great sporting rivalry between handsome English playboy James Hunt (Hemsworth), and his methodical, brilliant opponent, Austrian driver Niki Lauda (Bruhl). The story follows their distinctly different personal styles on and off the track, their loves and the astonishing 1976 season in which both drivers were willing to risk everything to become world champion in a sport with no margin for error: if you make a mistake, you die.

I cannot say enough about this movie.
The racing sequences (some recreated and some archived), the story of these 2 drivers trying to beat each other in points, and the events that lead to greater safety for Formula 1 racing. Ron Howard put a lot into this movie and it shows, plus the casting was top notch.

 

[Stearmen]

Mr. Roberts

 

[Fading Fast]

Great movie... Raymond Massey shines in it. I also love the guy that plays... "The Boss"! Known a great many folks like him. The special effects for its day were marvelous... absolutely stupendous!

"Mr. Wings Over Your Wits!"

Worf

Raymond Massey is outstanding. He's something we don't have today - he's not a male lead, but he is definitely more than a character actor. In "The Hurricane," "The Fountainhead," "East of Eden" and so many more, he plays complex characters - usually foils to the lead - which are always interesting and enjoyable. I love when he pops up in a movie because I know that at least his role will usually have some grit to it.

 

[Worf]

Rush-2013

Set against the sexy, glamorous golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s, the film is based on the true story of a great sporting rivalry between handsome English playboy James Hunt (Hemsworth), and his methodical, brilliant opponent, Austrian driver Niki Lauda (Bruhl). The story follows their distinctly different personal styles on and off the track, their loves and the astonishing 1976 season in which both drivers were willing to risk everything to become world champion in a sport with no margin for error: if you make a mistake, you die.

I cannot say enough about this movie.
The racing sequences (some recreated and some archived), the story of these 2 drivers trying to beat each other in points, and the events that lead to greater safety for Formula 1 racing. Ron Howard put a lot into this movie and it shows, plus the casting was top notch.

View attachment 25223

I loved this movie as well. Two completely different people doing the same thing in completely different ways. I was riveted and I'm completely uninterested in Formula 1 or Grand Prix racing... Very well done. Unsure why it didn't do better at the box office.

Worf

 

[Doctor Strange]

I liked it too, which surprised me: I have zero interest in auto racing, and roughly half of Ron Howard's films don't work for me at all. But this one definitely did. (But geez, that sex scene between Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Dormer burned my eyes from too much attractiveness in one single shot!)