What was the last movie you saw?

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Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

Tonight I watched Burn After Reading, a nice black comedy/spy film from the Coen Brothers. CIA analyist Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) quits the Agency and starts writing his memoirs. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) and is preparing to divorce Osbourne. When her divorce lawyer advises her to find out about Osbourne's financial affairs, Katie copies a bunch of files onto a CD-ROM. The lawyer's secretary inadvertently leaves a copy of the disk at Hardbodies, a gym, where it finds its way into the hands of dim-witted employees Chad and Linda (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand), who mistake Osbourne's memoirs for genuine classified material. They try to blackmail him for $50,000; meanwhile, Linda has met Harry, a congenital womanizer, via an online matchmaking service. Got all that? :)

This wasn't one of the Coen Brothers' Oscar contenders, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. McDormand, Malkovich and Pitt are all in good form, but the star performance comes from Clooney as a man capable of coming apart at the seams at the slightest hint of adversity.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Edwards Ragazza
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Edwards Ragazza »

Red Riding Hood. The first time I watched it I thought it was ok but I was also trying to do my homework knowing I had to turn in the movie the next day. My point I wasn't even paying attention so after a few months I picked it up the other night sat down and actually enjoyed it very much. It is now on my wish list.
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Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

My movie tonight was Ladyhawke, a romantic adventure set in an alternate Middle Ages where at least some magic exists. The lady is Isabeau d'Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter of a count. The man is Etienne Navarre (Rutger Hauer), captain of the guards for a bishop. And drawn into their orbit against his will is Philipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), a thief who escapes the bishop's jail, and learns of the terrrible curse the malevolent bishop placed on the lovers. By day, he is human while she is trapped in the form of a hawk; by night she resumes her natural form but he becomes a wolf, so that they never see each other in human form. But perhaps, at just the right time, the curse can be reversed. This one was pretty good. Broderick seemed a little bit miscast, but Hauer and Pfeiffer are quite good, the story is compelling and Richard Donner handles the action very well.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

The Argentine director Fabian Bielinsky made only two features before his premature death; tonight I watched El Aura/The Aura, the second of the two. Esteban Espinosa (Ricardo Darin), a taxidermist, has always been obsessed with the idea of a perfect crime. One day, a strange sequence of events puts him in a position to take part in an armored car robbery. How he handles the situation and how it affects him is the core of the film. Don't expect a Hollywood-style crime film if you watch this one--it's more a psychological character study, somewhat like some of Claude Chabrol's films. I thought it was pretty good but I like Bielinsky's other film, Nine Queens, better.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

College is not one of Buster Keaton's best features, but it's quite good. It covers much of the same ground as Harold Lloyd's The Freshman, but I find Keaton's film more entertaining overall. Ronald (Keaton) is the star student at his high school, and disdains athletics. But when he heads off to college, the girl of his dreams rejects him, preferring the company of sports stars. In an attempt to win her over, Buster goes out for various varsity squads, with hilarious results. His attempt to try out for the track team is an absolute stitch.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

John Dahl generally came up with interesting, contemporary variations on classic film noir themes, and Red Rock West is a good example. Michael Williams (Nicolas Cage) is a classic noir drifter, who drifts into the tiny Wyoming town of Red Rock. Because of Michael's Texas plates, bartender Wayne (J.T. Walsh) mistakes him for contract killer Lyle from Dallas, and gives Michael a down payment on a contract to off his wife. Being a decent sort, Michael instead goes to warn Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle); she offers to up the ante if Michael will kill Wayne instead (and gives him another down payment). Before Mike can split with his unexpected bounty, he is in a traffic accident, and learns that Wayne is more than a bartender--he's the local sheriff (we learn later that he's also seen, and learned a trick from, a movie called The Law and Jake Wade). And then, who turns up but the real Lyle from Dallas (who is played by Dennis Hopper, so you know he's bad news). All of this takes us barely to the 30 minute mark; Dahl has several more twists before we reach the end. All four leads give very solid performances, and this is a very enjoyable 90 minutes or so for any fan of the genre.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

Tonight I watched Macao, a good little thriller set in, of course, that little slice of Portugal called Macao, which was located off the coast of China, a few miles from the little slice of Great Britain called Hong Kong. Arriving on the boat from Hong Kong one morning are, among others, down on his luck drifter Nick Cochran (Robert Mitchum), would-be showgirl Julie Benton (Jane Russell), and traveling salesman Trumble (William Bendix). All of them soon cross paths with Vince Halloran (Brad Dexter), the American who runs the colony's largest gambling house. Halloran is badly wanted back in the States, so badly that the NYPD might send a detective halfway around the world to trap him.

Macao suffers from a somewhat muddled story, probably a consequence of having two directors (Nicholas Ray reshot a lot of the film after Josef von Sternberg, the director of record, was fired by RKO), and, according to Mitchum's biographer Lee Server, at least seven writers. But Mitchum and Russell (close friends in real life for almost 50 years) had great onscreen chemistry (their first kiss comes within about a minute of their first meeting) and Bendix gives a solid performance as well. Very enjoyable.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

Of all the movies made in the past 20 years or so that were adapted from old TV series, The Fugitive was one of the few that were any good. Not great, but good. It is, of course, the story of Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), the man fighting to clear his name and find the one-armed man who was the real killer of his wife. Ford is satisfactory as the titular fugitive, but the things that really make the movie work are Andrew Davis's sure hand in the action sequences, and Tommy Lee Jones' vibrant, Oscar-winning performance as Kimble's pursuer, Deputy US Marshal Sam Gerard.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

Tonight I watched a zany, funny spy film parody called OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions/OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. In the 1950s and 60s, a French novelist named Jean Bruce wrote dozens of books about a fictional spy code-named OSS 117. This film is ostensibly a revival of a film series based on Bruce's novels, but it's clearly meant to parody them, as well as the James Bond films (especially Sean Connery's). In 1955, Agent OSS 117 (Jean Dujardin) is dispatched to Cairo to investigate the disappearance of his old colleague Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre). Once there, he combines his espionage work, running Jack's front business, and juggling two women, Jack's secretary Larmina (Berenice Bejo) and an Egyptian princess (Aure Atika). There were a couple of slow scenes, but I generally found this one fun, inventive and fast-paced.
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
Jestak
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Re: What was the last movie you saw?

Post by Jestak »

The original Narrow Margin was a minor classic of film noir. When Peter Hyams remade it in 1990, he stripped out virtually all the noir elements, converting it into a satisfactory, well-executed action thriller. Carol Hunnicut (Anne Archer) goes on a blind date, only to be shocked out of her shoes when her date is killed by a mob executioner. When Carol flees to a family cabin in remote Canada, Deputy DA Robert Caulfield (Gene Hackman) tracks her down so she can testify against the mob. Unfortunately, the mob has a mole in the DA's office, and after an ambush at Carol's cabin, she and Robert find themselves on a train heading across northwest Canada, with a pair of gunmen on the train with them. Or, maybe, more than just a pair. While it lacks the distinction of the original, this is a solid thriller, with a very good performance from Archer, even if she is a bit more of a distressed damsel than I normally like. It's also noteworthy as a film with appearances from those two veteran character actors J.T. Walsh and M. Emmet Walsh (no relation).
"May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather"--Scottish blessing
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