Last Movie Watched Thread

Two straight flops is nothing to brush off, but it's only been a couple years since Young Adult. Maybe he needs to reteam with Diablo Cody. Also, could anybody have possibly expected Diablo Cody to remain relevant ten years following Juno? That's a surprise!

Jason Reitman is like Cameron Crowe: he made such good stuff that I'm convinced he HAS TO make one more good movie. Some day. Seriously, though, how can the guy who did Almost Famous not have one more great movie in him? He should have Harper Lee'd it.

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.

I just discovered the pinnacle of cinema: Josie and the Pussycats.


Give up, other movies. Just quit trying. 

That's well articulated.  It was very good.  I feel like noir films with that successfully create that kind of atmosphere aren't being made anymore.  Or at least I don't know of them.

Watched Black Narcissus (1947). SO GOOD. Anglican nuns posted to palace atop a mountain in the Himalayas which once housed a harem. They succumb to the strange atmosphere of the place and are driven mad with lust. MAD. At least one is. One of the most beautiful looking films I've seen.  Far more erotically charged than anything in 50 Shades I suspect.

Bound, which was great fun. The acting is on point all around, especially Jennifer Tilly. Her character was the best part. It's got a really great progression, the romance hooks you in the beginning, and then it slowly becomes this crazy thriller. The set ups are really tense, but I'm a sucker for movies that take place in single location, and the grand majority of it was all set within one or two different apartments. There's some stylish and occasionally energetic camera work too, great movement and set design. Some nice wallpapers. I loved how timeless it felt in a way; aside from the bulky old school cellphone in a couple scenes, I got this vibe like it could have been set in any number of decades. I really enjoy noir and this was such a perfect example of neo-noir, it feels old school but is still modern in ways. Funny how it was allegedly criticized for violence, but is really quite tame in comparison to a lot of other stuff we have these days. It's not a really ambitious film though, it's just pulpy fun and it knows it, and it never tries to be anything more than a perfect example of its type. I think the Wachowskis should go back to more small scale stuff like this.

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.