Last Movie Watched Thread

It's a shame the Best Actress race was so crowded this year and Cotillard was left out. It was a terrific performance, for all the reasons you mentioned. Plus, given English isn't her first language, I think she beautifully held her own with Shakespeare's dialogue. 

I'm watching Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's on Logo. I've never seen it before and I don't know what is even happening here!

Macbeth

The Polanski version, starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis. Jon Finch, as a fun fact, was set to play the Kane character in Alien, until an illness forced him to withdraw, allowing John Hurt to step in. Finch's career never really took off.
To my mind, this is quite easily the best adaptation. Despite some poor special effects, a distracting appearance for Brits by a young Keith Chegwin, and an unnecessary stinger, no other film captures the texture of the play - or of Dark Ages life - like this one. It's not just the sets, locations, and the costumes; it's in the lighting, the framing of shots, and even the filming of the skies (best skies outside of a John Ford western in this film). You get the air and the dirt.
Finch is strong in the role, capturing the headstrong youthfulness of the character, and how it's believable that this could all be a terrible misjudgement. Francesca Annis is good, especially in the breakdown scenes, but overall not quite as good as Judi Dench or Marion Cotillard.
It also handles the text better than the others. The pacing is perfect, with just the right amount of cuts, and letting the battle scene at the end breathe. Banquo's ghost is superb here, and the violence is just right: Macdonwald hanged by chains, a soldier getting a dagger ripped down the face, another getting an axe to the nuts, and Macbeth's hands coming up when he's beheaded, as if to catch it. Some of the violence may have been an exorcism on Polanski's part, this being his first film after the death of Sharon Tate: the Macduff 'home invasion' massacre must've been difficult to film, and apparently Polanski was able to advise the designers on how much blood to spread around ...
All in all, and grand claim though it might be, I think Shakespeare himself would be pleased with this version. 


 

What about Throne of Blood?

I've only seen this version and the new one. I'll have to watch the others too.

Isuzu Yamada makes for a great Lady Macbeth and Toshiro Mifune is at his wildest and best.

It's great, utterly amazing and spellbinding, and would be second only to Polanski's in my ratings. But it doesn't use the text of the play, so I skipped it this time. 

I haven't got it. I haven't seen it, in fact. Does it use Shakespeare's language or is it modernised?

Maybe one day - I'm brimful of it at the minute. Thanks for the info though!

Watched the new Star Wars movie at last. Decent fun, maybe fans liked it more. It felt a bit incomplete, it was painfully obvious that it was the first part of a series. Finn was so cute and I loved the little robot.

I'm rewatching the prequels for the first time in years tonight. I don't know why I'm doing this to myself.

It's a complete and utter hot mess of a film, and yet... I have to admire it for being a film that is so unapologetically honest in its trashiness. 

It's no Wild Things, but it's still fun, IMO. 

Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1979)

All-star cast. Incredible acrobatics. Beautiful sets.

Hush

Gritty, hand-held Brit horror-thriller, in which a couple driving see a glimpse of a caged woman in the back of a lorry. Tension follows, nicely done, though the dialogue never felt too convincing, especially in the early stages. Not much is explained, hints only, adding well to the menace.

Confirmation 

I have a feeling airing this so soon after the conclusion of the far superior American Crime Story likely colored my expectations and subsequent disappoint of the film. Like ACS, Confirmation focuses on a highly publicized, seamy episode of the 90s, but unlike the series, its message and interest are only skin deep. This undoubtedly the result on being a film as opposed to a miniseries, but everything here just feels like a soft-balled checklist of 'big moments,' (the film apparently opted to make Joe Biden more likeable) without much to anchor it and make it a searing look at how he system failed Anita Hill. The performances are solid, the direction is fine, the message hasn't lost any of its importance. And yet, it feels like just another Movie of the Week. It could have been so much more.

Gotta love arthouse theatres. After checking out Silent Running earlier this week at one - as dopeily earnest as the film might be in places, Doug Trumbull's special effects work still look glorious in 70mm and its portrayal of loneliness of space travel and the tragedy of Lowell's earnestness still make it a pretty good movie in my eyes.

They just don't make movies with Joan Baez interludes anymore.

Then at the other theatre, three anime films. The first was The Case of Hana and Alice, which was a delightfully understated film about investigating a school rumour and the oddball budding friendship of its two teen leads (itself a prequel to a live action film from 2004 I've never seen). The film has beautiful, rich backgrounds (as one can see in the trailer, below) and also some rotoscoping which is a little more fluid than other examples I could name, and becomes pretty acceptable very quickly. Consistent to its prequel-from-2004 thesis, the teens are using flip-phones, but there's nothing else I'd notice as from over a decade ago.

(Tea Rex if I was gonna recommend one of these, it'd be this one.)

This film was followed by When Marnie Was There, which is as dependably sweet and touching as one expects from the Ghibli brand - another film by the guy who directed The Secret World of Arietty, and, like that, is based on a classic work of British children's literature (the influence is a little clearer here than in Arietty, given Marnie's observed foreign origins; but as I read the Borrowers as a child that gives that earlier film little extra brownie points from yours truly.)

Finally, The Empire of Corpses, one of a trilogy of films based on the work of the late science fiction writer, Project Itoh; this one is a bit confused in its jumble of plots jumping from Afghanistan by way of India (in a Great Game Kiplingesque adventure) to Japan and back to London, dropping in the odd steampunk flourish like of course Thomas Edison has built President Ulysses S. Grant (a supporting character in the film) some toys!

But as messy as it is, and as conventionally anime-ish as its conclusion is, it has an interesting premise - what if after Frankenstein's Monster got away Frankenstein's ideals were applied to create corpses to be used as functional mindless second class citizens throughout the world, and but those corpses are little better than zombies in their responses and some bold scientists are trying to bridge the gap between life and death itself - and whether they could, or even should. There's a good movie lost in here somewhere (and its nineteenth century steampunk style is provided by Wit Studio, and is consequently very similar to their popular Attack on Titan series) but what we actually have is at least a dependable action piece.

Still I regret nothing. Good time at the theatres.