Last Movie Watched Thread

Great film.  The attacks they mounted were pretty staggering in their ambition and number.  It's been a while since I've seen it but I remember finding their training visit to the Fatah base in Jordan and the female nudity and general licentiousness which annoyed their hosts amusing.  I can't be sure, but I seem to remember it depicting the Socialist Patients' Collective, that weird R. D. Laing-ian group recruited from mental hospitals.

They were murderers, of course, and campaigns such as theirs are only ever wildly counter-productive to the cause they wish to advance, because the violence alienates their would-be supporters.  Even where they ostensibly succeed, such as Russia in 1917, they fail, because vangardism of that kind invariably turns against the proletariat itself.  On the other hand, as a kind of pure social revenge fantasy, one can share in some of their frustration with the drift of society, and also appreciate how they did have a legitimate sense of how the Gramscian superstructure secures haute-bourgeois hegemony.  Murdering the chairman of Dresdner Bank and blowing up the Axel Springer offices are obviously evil, and yet watching the film did underline to me the fact of the mentality of individuals within coercive, anti-democratic institutions: that so long as they are a cog in the machine and never see the ultimate consequences of their actions, they aren't culpable as moral agents for anything they do, and are frequently confounded if anyone suggests they're doing something morally wrong.

I always try to see every movie nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture. I had little interest in seeing American Sniper but after taking a piss on every other movie ever released in January and securing six nominations, I had to see it.

And I pretty much hated it.

Bradley Cooper is great. He's pretty much the only reason to see the movie. For the first hour and a half I would say the movie is perfectly fine. Nothing revolutionary but not inherently terrible either. Then, there is a certain kill that occurs that really rubbed me the wrong way. The story, and the way the scene was directed, made it that when this individual died, you should want to stand up and cheer. I didn't go to a theater (sorry, I just didn't want to give the movie more money) but I have a sneaking suspicion that many people did applaud when this person died. To me, that's ridiculous and offensive.

Other than that moment, the movie just feels half baked. The supportive wife character is given nothing to do and is paper thin. The movie touches on PTSD, it alludes to the horrors of war, but it doesn't delve very deep. It just paints a particular person as a hero and that's about it.

I don't think the film is actually very political. Chris Kyle isn't portrayed as a bible thumper and politics don't play much of a role, so it's interesting that the movie has essentially become the beacon of hope to many right wingers. 

With its box office dominance, and the large amount of respect Eastwood has in Hollywood, I fear this might take the top prize at the Academy. It would be a darn shame. This is basically Eastwood's version of The Hurt Locker except way, way shittier.

They Came Together


I have kind of mixed feelings about this one.  On one hand, there are parts of the film that are very, very, very funny.  However, other parts make the same mistake that SNL, Family Guy, and the various Seltzer/Friedburg movies do, in that thinking of specifically pointing out a stupid trope substitutes for a joke.  That said, They Came Together, even in its weakest moments, is far, far better than anything I've seen from any other spoof film since the heyday of The Naked Gun, probably because of the sheer amount of talent both behind and especially in front of the camera.  So, I guess I did really like it, but I wish it was even better than it was.

Just watched Frank. Holy shit. This blew me away. I'm not sure I'm ready to crown it my favorite of 2014 over Whiplash, but holy fucking shit, you guys. It's the weirdest, most wonderful little movie. And the soundtrack is incredible.

That movie OWNS. Plus it has the best chase scene of all time.

Watched Calvary.  Brendan Gleeson was great for the part of the older, mostly unflappable, world-wise priest.  The beauty of the natural landscape is put to great use.  Very well-written and uncompromising.  It's variously sweet, humorous and quite sinister.  Some of the characters who were meant to be darkly humorous struck me as purely perverse and threatening, but I'm not a fan of black humour.  Still, it has a lot of sincerity and heart in spite of all that, which is likely the point and which I respect.  A key event seemed contrived (I couldn't discern any rational purpose for it), but I'm not sure if that's a criticism or not.  I'm never sure to what extent contrived events and characters are justifiable or not as an artistic device.  A couple of scenes really stick in my mind to think about, but I suppose this movie did less so overall than Ida, despite the latter being far more oblique and implicit in its themes.  It didn't hugely move me, but it's a very good film, well-worth watching. 

It seemed somewhat anachronistic inasmuch as it depicted a community at which the priest and parish church were the acknowledged center of a community, but a character in the film makes that point himself; there's a general lack of reverence accorded Gleeson's character; and one of the most arresting scenes in the film depicted the outright hostility and distrust that every individual member of clergy are now viewed with by some as a result of the sex abuse revelations.  But it's not a very tendentious film in any regard.

Coherence - Stuck together real well for me. Superb.

The Bolsheviks were the same as Baader-Meinhof? Come on! They were an enormous mass membership party! Not defending them after Stalin took over and purged Lenin's supporters, but it's just a flat out lie to compare them in any way to a tiny terrorist organisation.

I'd direct a little more of my ire at what those banks did to generations of working people and a little less at the people who took revenge on them.

Or was that entire post a joke? It's sort of hard to tell.

With A Most Violent Year and Ex Machina I just had two nights of back to back Oscar Isaac. Two very different but both actually very good films, Isaac is great in both.

Watched Rocky as my first pick for this Gender and Sexuality in Film class I'm taking. I love 70s cinema, I really really do.

I've been sick with either a cold or a flu, so yesterday I stayed in bed and watched Point Break. It's really a perfect Saturday afternoon movie. I'd never seen it before, but it had been on my list for a while and the other movies I had on hand seemed too deep to watch while fever-tripping (Atonement, The Sound of My Voice, Never Let Me Go).

I'd forgotten how shitty the early 90's looked. The clothes and the boxy cars gave me a feeling of constriction and heat stroke, like I was wearing too-tight clothes in a noisy office with no air conditioning. And it's got that L.A. River again from Terminator 2, probably one of the crappiest rivers in the world.

I do wonder how the surfing scenes were shot. It would have been hilarious if the director had used the same trick as Elvis in Blue Hawaii, but the actors and their doubles were actually out there on the waves. And kudos to all for the sky diving scenes. They make no sense and are barely justifiable in plot terms, but they do tie in thematically to the whole "freedom" thing the surfers are into. I must mention that my only exposure to surfer talk is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so it was kind of weird hearing people say "radical" unironically.

I also have to give props for how the action unfolds. The movie zips along from scene to scene with nary a slow part. The biggest negative to the movie is, once again, Keanu Reeves' acting. I forget every time how wooden he is and am reminded whenever I see a new movie with him in it. But overall, I found this movie diverting.

No, no, no, no. That simply will not do. Not without Coup de Torchon or After Dark, My Sweet. I'll allow dismissals of The Killer Inside Me. Coup de Torchon is classic: "Oh, the French get it, and a little better with more nuance than some ham-fisted-American-Dream-is-its-own-penalty Yank would."

*lights cigarette* I'll look into it. *walks away*

My mom and I watched that. And by watched that we played on our phones the whole time (in the comfort of our home not at a theater). I do remember wondering what on earth was stopping anyone from overthrowing Julia Roberts. She was absolutely not a threat.