What was the last movie you saw?

[Jestak]

Tonight I watched a vampire movie--a very unusual one: Låt den rätte komma in/Let the Right One In, a Swedish film. 12 year old Oskar (Kare Hedebrandt) is an unhappy loner, the target of bullies at school. One night he meets his new neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson), who looks to be about his age. The two of them bond, and Eli begins to give Oskar the mental toughness to stand up to the bullies at school. But Eli has a dark secret of her own, that has something to do with a hunger/thirst for blood. This is a dark and disturbing film in many ways, but it's very well made. The two young leads, neither more than 12 at the time of filming, pretty much carry the film, as few of the other roles are much more than bit parts. Both of them are outstanding. I'm not sure I want to ever watch this one again, but I'm glad I watched it.

[Jace]

I saw" Inception" the last time we went to the theater. You really have to pay attention to this film as there is a lot going on in each scene. The ending of the film made everyone in the theater go "awww!", cool.

[Jestak]

I watched Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes tonight. It's one of his best films ever, his best from the 1930s along with The 39 Steps. Iris (Margaret Lockwood) is a young Englishwoman returning from a European vacation, who is distraught when Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), the elderly lady she shared tea with, seems to have vanished from their train. Only musicologist Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) believes her; everyone else on board denies having ever seen Miss Froy. Lockwood and Redgrave make likable leads, and this one has perhaps the best ever "clue that gives things away" in a nun wearing high heels, and to ice the cake, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as a pair of scene-stealing British cricket fanatics who can think of nothing but making it home in time for the test match, until the chips are down and they come through for the good guys. All in all, this is another "must see before you die" film.

Radford and Wayne's characters were so appealing that they were brought back a couple of years later in Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich (which is also a pretty good movie).

[funkidiva]

Superbad on TV last night and is a few years old - funny comedy involving Amercian teenagers trying to get alcohol for a party. Odd film at times and a couple of jokes and moments made me cringe but still fun all the same. Ive since seem some of the main actors in other films.

[Jestak]

The Iron Mask was the last of Douglas Fairbanks' silent swashbucklers, and maybe the best of them all. Fairbanks returns to the role of D'Artagnan, who must reunite with his old Musketeer friends (that's Athos, Porthos and Aramis, for anyone who needs reminding) to save King Louis XIV from his evil twin brother's attempt to usurp the crown. This one holds up very well today, with director Allan Dwan joining with Fairbanks to supply brisk pace, good action, and some moments of humor. Fairbanks made a handful of attempts at adapting to talkies, without real success, but I think it's best to see this film as the fitting end to a great career for one of the most charismatic film stars ever.

[Jestak]

Tonight I watched what is probably doomed, for the next several years at least, to be known as "the other film" titled Twilight. This one has a terrific cast struggling with a subpar script. Harry Ross (Paul Newman) is a washed-up ex-cop and PI, now working for dying actor Jack Ames (Gene Hackman) and his wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon), doing things like bringing home their teenage daughter Mel (Reese Witherspoon) when she runs away to Mexico with a boyfriend. In support of this quartet of past or future Oscar winners you have Stockard Channing, Giancarlo Esposito, James Garner, Liev Schreiber and M. Emmet Walsh. The script, however, manages to be both thin and murky; it seems to be about a blackmail scheme related to the death of Catherine's first husband many years ago. Newman and Hackman manage to rise above the story's limits to a degree, and have some nice scenes together. On the other hand, Witherspoon is wasted in a tiny role that any moderately competent young actress could have played, while Walsh fares even worse--he dies without a single line of dialogue. Not one I plan to see again.

[Jestak]

The Long Kiss Goodnight is an implausible but not unlikable action thriller from the mid 90s. Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) is a small town schoolteacher and single mom with an 8-year-old daughter. Her problem is she doesn't remember much further back than 8 years or so--until the day when past memories start to surface, of a life as a CIA assassin named Charly Baltimore. Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L. Jackson) is the cheap PI she hires to help dig up her past; meanwhile, her former Agency colleagues may be out to kill her if she interferes in their plot to stage a terrorist incident to get a budget increase (?!?). Unfortunately, Shane Black's script focuses on the latter element, which is truly hard to swallow at times. Fortunately, Geena Davis rises above teh script to make Samantha/Charly a likable heroine who you can root for, and Samuel L. Jackson, as ever, is able to make a movie better just by being in it.

[Jestak]

Ni pour, ni contre/Not For or Against is a slick, visually stylish contemporary French noir. Caty (Marie Gillain) is a low-on-the-totem-pole camerawoman for a French TV news team who is sucked into a life of crime, not really against her will, when a gang of small-time robbers hires her to film one of their stick-ups. Events sort of wander until the final third, when Caty and her new friends try to pull a big heist. I enjoy this one because I've become a big fan of Belgian actress Gillain, who is lovely in this film and gets you to like her character even as she explores her dark side.

[pennybug84]

Eclipse. Only my 3rd time seeing it. I love my Robward.

[Jestak]

Tonight I watched Quantum of Solace. I suppose it was inevitable that, after Casino Royale was the finest James Bond picture since the 1960s, that there would be a bit of a letdown in this one, but I'm sad to see how big a dropoff there is. The big problem can be summed up in two words--Marc Forster. Forster (Monster's Ball, The Kite Runner) is a well-regarded director, but he seems lost at the helm of an action film. Many of the action sequences, especially in the first part of the film, are so chaotic they are almost impossible to follow--a crippling shortcoming in a Bond movie.

Quantum is a direct sequel to Casino Royale--picking up literally moments after the end of the previous film, with Bond racing through Italian streets, Mr. White (Jesper Christensen, whom he took captive at the end of Casino) locked in his trunk, White's men in pursuit; it helps to have seen the previous film recently so you can tell what's happening. From there, the only idea the writers seem to have had was to set Bond out on a vendetta, pursuing the parties responsible for the death of Vesper Lynd in the last film. So we follow Bond from action sequence to action sequence, with the links holding them together barely explained.

While the story and direction are weak, the cast is a brighter spot. Daniel Craig remains a good Bond--more believable than any other Bond, I think, as a realistic, ruthless intelligence operative. Judi Dench contributes yet another excellent performance as M, Giancarlo Giannini returns as an empathetic Rene Mathis, and it is nice to have Olga Kurylenko as Camille, a heroine who can take care of business on her own (I hesitate to call her a Bond Girl since she and Bond don't have a romantic relationship at all--they connect because they're both out for personal vengeance). On the other hand, Mathieu Amalric makes little impression as the primary villain. Gemma Arterton is a nice fresh face as MI-6 agent Strawberry Fields, but she has little more than a cameo role (plus, why must we wait for the end credits to learn her first name?). Jeffrey Wright also returns as Felix Leiter, but again, for little more than a cameo.

On the whole, a middle of the pack Bond at best.