Last Movie Watched Thread

Watched Secretary last night amidst all the 50 Shades hoopla. And for how little they actually show, it's still a very engaging sexual movie. I really liked it and hope that more people get around to watching it.

I would have loved a full season of what he was up to during that year long gap where he befriended Stephen Root and somehow became a certified dentist.

I've been wanting to watch that again but couldn't find it streaming somewhere. I also loved Bettis in the episode of Masters of Horror she was in. 

Room 237.

I believe.

I watched The Graduate for the first time last night and found it....creepier than expected, mainly thanks to Ben stalking a woman all the way to her college campus and bus ride. Dustin Hoffman was great in it though, and the directing and Simon & Garfunkel tunes were a treat.

It's a classic, but very much a product of its time, hence why certain parts ring… odder than was likely intended. 

I know Roger Ebert said it was one of the best films of the year when it came in 1967, but 30 years later, his opinions of the film had noticeably changed.

Edge of Tomorrow or whatever in the name of fuck it's called. Not my sort of thing, though I'd heard it wasn't a typical example of this sort of thing. That may be true, but it still didn't edge far enough into being my sort of thing.

Unforgiven. Pretty great, and maybe the only Eastwood film (and performance) I'm unreservedly fond of. The final showdown is a masterpiece of taut writing. And English Bob, c'est moi.

Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi, 2012)

The Girl (dir. Julian Jarrold, 2012)



Films that debuted (on cable and in theatres) within a month of each other, with Alfred Hitchcock as their subject matter and focused on successive film projects (Psycho, The Birds, Marnie) through the lens of his complex – and perhaps hostile and abusive – relationships with his leading ladies, including Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Tippi Hedren and Alma Reville Hitchcock, his wife of 53 years.

There's a lot to be appalled and/or puzzled by between these two works. Between them, Anthony Hopkins and Toby Jones came close to a great performance (or as good as one can get in so-so films). Jones nailed the voice but his unfortunately shaped head and facial prosthetics were difficult to look past; Hopkins' voice seemed to hit one note (Hopkins being Hopkins) but he looked slightly more like Hitchcock than Jones - although Hopkins too was saddled with some terrible make up more suited to a Halloween Outlet than a major motion picture.

The contrast in Almas is stark; Imelda Staunton is an absolute dead ringer for Hitchcock's wife and her demeanor – observant, thoughtful, enabling – is in line with much of what has been written. Mirren's Alma is, well, more Mirren than anyone else: surprisingly sexy, playing with fire in her relationship with screenwriter Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), stepping in for her ill husband to direct a crucial scene in Psycho and finding her relationship with him renewed by his need to have her work her magic editing the final cut of his new film.

Even the dueling Peggy Robertsons – Peggy was Hitchcock's long-time assistant – are day and night. In The Girl, the then 44-year-old is played by Penelope Wilton, more than two decades Roberton's senior; wise and sympathetic but ineffectual and ritually subjected to the director's abuse for being ugly. Hitchcock casts the more age-appropriate and glamourous Toni Collette and it's difficult to image any insults leaving her slumped over her desk in tears.

I doubt it was an accident that Peggy was "aged up" in The Girl; she is shown as being more indifferent than sympathetic to Hedren's victimization (of which Wilton's Peggy is aware) and it's not hard to imagine we are to think her attitude was borne of jealously of a younger girl - one of the most boring, but predictable, tropes. Alma, who was an older woman at this time, is shown as scouting Hedren for her husband's approval, and if you completely buy into the film's thesis that Hitchcock was predatory, there's no missing the film pointing the finger at Alma for being an accomplice to his "crimes" - specifically with Hedren, sexual assault, harassment, stalking, and demands for sex in exchange for working with him. (Three of Hitch's most famous leading ladies - Doris Day, Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint - have disputed Hedren's description of the director, though of course, they were not on the sets of The Birds or Marnie; Hitch's AD on those films, Jim Brown, did give an interview prior to passing away that repudiated much of Hedren's experience, though this was not reflected in the film - he is shown as witnessing and being sympathetic to the abuse Hedren says she endured.)

Curiously, for a film whose object of sympathy, Tippi Hedren, is still alive (and thus could provide substantive color and depth to the situation beyond the headline-grabbing horror stories that are the film's raison d'être), The Girl gives a terribly disinterested view of the personal toll that the alleged abuse took on her life, even before she was essentially blacklisted from working again. Sienna Miller's Hedren as an individual is as stiff emotionally as Hedren was as an actress in character as Melanie Daniels and Marnie Edgar.

If you're a cinephile in general and a Hitchcock buff in particular, there's enough intriguing material to keep your interest sustained throughout both; it was interesting to watch them as a pair and in succession. You will definitely want to pull up your favorite Hitchcock movies when you are done, though, because there's nothing like the real thing.

Somebody mentioned the ending of Kingsman over on the AV Club, and I thought it was a typical AV Club joke, but no! That was actually what happens! This movie was almost Inglourious Basterds-level of batshit insanity.

Highlander 2, Renegade version so no Zeist, which I heard so many bad things about but that Michael Ironside random roles had me curious. And Michael Ironside is great! The movie is not great, but not as bad as I was expecting. Pretty sure it doesn't make any sense though.

What We Do In The Shadows
It was very funny, but a bit too short. I wanted to see more of the things in this world, and I felt like it had more story to tell. My one big negative is that I felt like a lot of great jokes were ruined by the trailer. The context of how the jokes come up in the film are much funnier than the trailer gave them credit for, but I had seen so many of them. I wish they had just filmed an entirely new scene for the trailer. Also, Stu is amazing. I want a Stu in my life.
3/4

Timbuktu
There were some incredibly moving scenes in this film, and that is largely the reason for the high grade. Otherwise, I felt like there was little tying in all of the pieces. There were a number of different stories told in the film, and they don't really fit. I guess you could see it as a view into a community going through a big change or resisting that change, but there seems to be a main plot that and many smaller pieces which don't fit together, as wonderful each of them may or may not be. It was still neat to see though.
3/4

Fifty Shades of Grey IMAX
This was better and worse than I expected, but let's start with the things that were good. Dakota Johnson as promised was charming, but I was happy to see she was really sassy throughout. Lines that maybe should have been read as more willing or mousy or submissive, instead come off as sarcastic and playful which made the dialogue much more palatable. The story is actually not that bad, and Jamie Dornan has great body language throughout. The soundtrack was also great.

So then why the low grade? Well the biggest problem is that the pacing is atrocious, especially in the first half. Once they get to having sex it gets better, but the scene transitions suck throughout, and the terrible pacing pre-sex ruined any momentum it might have had. I heard the sex scenes were tasteful and a bit removed, but they aren't anywhere near being tittilating. Having seen it, I can perfectly understand why the French thought it was suitable for 12 year olds. The only possible arousing thing is the nudity, if that, as the sex felt passionless. Everything was just too clean, and nothing seemed lived in, is I think part of the problem.

Dornan, while he had great body language, had the weirdest elocution. I'm guessing it's because he had to say everything in an American accent, but everything he said sounded really weird and wrong. All of his sentences were clipped, as if he was being cut off at the end of every sentence and he was therefore rushing to say everything under a time limit. Any chemistry that might be forming between the actors I kept feeling was negated by the way he said things rather than anything they did or didn't do.

The one sex thing that kind of worked was the "punishment" at the end, but even that was kind of a bust. The part that worked was Dornan sweating, as for once someone in the film looked a bit human and messy. But sound of the spanking should have been way louder if I was supposed to feel that it was too much and painful for Anastasia to handle. The sound just didn't crack in a satisfying way.
1/4

I didn't find it funny at all. Also, the characters (apart from Amy and the Oprah stand-in) didn't really strike me as larger than life, just dull.

'Deserve's got nothin' to do with it'.  Wonderful McCarthyesque line.

Did you watch it in a theater or at home? Because I saw it with an audience and most of us were laughing along with the film. It has a pretty dark sense of humor, but there are definitely lots of jokes throughout.