Last Movie Watched Thread

Whiplash(2014) So tense that I still feel like I have to puke even though the movie is over. I'm not exaggerating at all, I feel miserable. I don't really want to add much more because the film just hits way too close to home for me. Just go watch it, it is great.

My spoiler, which was a guess and not an actual spoiler, in the above post was right!

Inherent Vice with Iffy at a free screening last night.

Loved it. It was hilarious, intricately shot, and occasionally felt like being in someone's bizarre but fascinating dream. Even when I had no clue what would happen next (and I've read the book) or thought "wow, this movie feels long" I was throughly engrossed.

I was, however, very annoyed at the person in front of us on Facebook half the time, and the people who randomly left five minutes before the end.

I watched Coherence again, because I decided my sister needed to see it. It was still good the second time. Apparently it made her bite her nails.

I saw Selma last night and what a fantastic movie. It's a film filled with great performances, expert directing and a harsh sense of reality that makes the whole proceedings go the extra mile in quality. 

Tombstone. Michael Biehn was always great, why hasn't he done anything I've heard of since Grindhouse?

I remember why I don't like watching movies on TV because of all the commercials. So it felt like I spent the past 5 years watching Looper. The latter half with Emily Blunt was great. It was like 2 different movies in one so the movie in the first half was the "weaker" part, but overall I liked the movie a lot.

Inherent Vice. This is a movie for such a very, very specific audience (not your regular old Paul Thomas Anderson superfan, as I've seen many whom hold this as his first failure, but a P.T. Anderson superfan who, if they haven't read Thomas Pynchon, can at least get on the Pynchonian wavelength, with lots and lots of funny names to remember, plots that eventually become a mass of tangled connections and actions, and regular detours forwards, backwards, and sideways, and among the Pynchon fans that remain in the audience, ones that don't mind a streamlined version of the source novel) that it might as well be mailed directly to those people's doors without consideration for anyone else. And I am definitely not "anyone else". This is my favorite movie of 2014, with some of the best acting (especially from Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin, who are a better Doc Sportello and Bigfoot Bjornsen than I could have ever imagined) and cinematography (courtesy of Robert Elswit, shooting California as a pleasantly hazy place, contrasting nicely with the after-hours nightmare he shot L.A. as in his other 2014 film, Nightcrawler) of the year. 

(Of all the things Anderson cut from book to film, I definitely missed Sauncho Smilax's monologue about the confusion caused by the transition from sepia to color in The Wizard of Oz the most. I hope that he filmed it, and that he sees fit to include it on the DVD.)

(Also, it was amusing to hear the chuckles of recognition that came about when Belladonna made her appearance.)

I found it more harrowing because the young protagonist actually wants to be there.

I too am part of this audience. And am also now wondering if @iffy heard my chuckle of recognition when Belladonna showed up.

Yes, it's in my top 10 of 2014. I thought it was fantastic.

Busy day yesterday.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya
Absolutely stunning. The animation is so beautiful it makes you think that they used thousands of individual paintings to make the film. The characters are pretty wonderful and I went through the entire range of human emotions watching the film. My one complaint is the long monologuing, but it is a folk tale so that is understandable.
4/4

Selma
Wonderful performances, especially from David Oyelowo and Tom Wilkinson, who are really the only two characters and Johnson is barely so. It's a powerful film, however I felt the directing wasn't so great. There were a few scenes in particular that I found jarring. When King is talking to a father about the man's son King is framed to the left and the father is framed to the right and it cuts between the two and I felt my eyes going form left to right every time it cut from one face on view to the other. It was like watching a tennis match, and I found it really distracting in what was supposed to be a really moving scene. This was the worst individual scene, but in general I felt there were too many close ups, like the crowd scenes would constantly go from face to face, which felt weird when most of these people barely spoke, if at all.
3/4

Mr. Turner
Good performances in this one as well, but much less affecting. I thought there might be more time spent on the artistry, but it's really about Turner's personal life and him grunting all the time. The one affecting scene was SPOILER the death of his father END SPOILER. Otherwise it was just a lot of charming grunting. The old people in the theater with my seem to get a huge kick out of it though, and it was pretty and well shot, although not to my mind particularly so.
2/4

Inherent Vice
As the Narrator said, it's a film for a very specific audience, and I am not in that audience. I do have to say that my estimation of Joaquin Phoenix has gone up considerably since Her and this film. I didn't much like him in the Master, but I thought he was really great in this. Most of the people in the theater found this film utterly hilarious, whereas I did not. It felt like arthouse stoner humor, which is a weird combination. Anyways, Phoenix was great, but the rest of the cast wasn't in the film much. It's a large and distinguished cast, yet most of them have only a few scenes. Brolin is in it a bit and he gets some good stuff out of it, but it's a broad performance so I don't know how much is him and how much is the script. Katherine Waterston maybe gets the most after Phoenix and Brolin, and it felt like she's there just to be mysterious and attractive.

Which is another thing. The women in this film made me feel like this was the Wolf of Wall Street Part 2 where it's a bunch of attractive women in skimpy clothing surrounded by men of varying degrees of attractiveness. It's a clever enough story and PTA tells it well, but it was light on character and heavy on sexy girls, which I found kind of boring.
2/4

Snowpiercer. Ho-lee-shit. Best sci-fi movie concept since Cube.  Chris Evans and whatacast, damn.

Finally saw John Wick, I've been waiting for watch it for a while. It was everything I wanted and more, the kind of action that puts a giddy smile on my face. Fantastic action, great setting, solid acting all around, even for Keanu. He delivers so hard in his little "Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back!" speech. Actually, the entire cast was great, lots of familiar faces, each one adding just enough character to their role. Great visuals as well. The night club sequence especially is just gorgeously lit. I'd be down for a sequel or spin-off.

Lost Highway

I've been on a David Lynch kick.

On more thing about John Wick that I keep thinking about: the spa scene. It's just amazing. John Wick kills a bunch of dudes in a spa, and there's this neon blue and pink lighting, and this soft electronic pop song plays over top. It doesn't fit with the visuals at all, and yet, the contrast is perfect. There's one part where he stabs a guy up from the bottom of his mouth, and they lock eyes as Keanu pulls him down to the ground slowly. I think it's the first time the film causes you to question the morality of the whole thing. The scene reminds me of very much of Dredd's use of slow-motion, in how it takes all this violence and makes it dreamlike and weirdly beautiful.

I could be misconstruing his words, but I think this is what Manny Farber was getting at when he talks about termite art. John Wick is solely devoted to its genre and nothing else, and in doing so creates all these scenes where the action and cinematography just all coalesce into this incredible aesthetic that's surprisingly affecting in a way. I don't think you would ever find a sequence that striking in a non-genre film. I've rewatched that scene alone multiple times since watching the full film last night, and I can't wait to rewatch it again in its entirety.