Last movie you watched......

Rewatched Chinatown

What a great movie. It was kind of confusing the first time I saw it, but you see how it all comes together for Jack Nicholson.

Love the music, dialogue and the old-timey LA vibe.

The script is great and Robert Towne won an Oscar, but supposedly Towne originally turned in a overly long mishmash that never even mentioned Chinatown and was mostly rewritten by Roman Polanski and Robert Evans.

 

I've only seen it once, many years ago and I was not impressed. Like you said, it was kind of confusing.

 

It, Glengarry and Bridge/Kwai are the three movies I watch every year.

 

If you read some background or see a documentary on the history of water in LA it begins to make sense. It was more enjoyable for me after I learned about that issue.

I had never heard that about the script. Syd Field in his book about screenwriting thinks the Chinatown script is almost perfect, the best example of what he believes a script should be.

 

It's really stripped bare. Not a lot of dialogue. Very little explaining or narrating.

One jarring part was when Gittes/Nicholson says:

"Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier."

And I thought, would this guy say métier? And I thought he probably would, depending on the audience. He could get in the gutter but was smart.

Also liked how Gittes corrects rich guy Noah Cross on how to pronounce his name (with two syllables). Cross corrects himself, then says it wrong the rest of the movie.

 

Watched "Carol" on DVD ... a movie about a lesbian relationship and society's rejection of it in the 1950s.

Very good film based on a groundbreaking, early 1950s book called "The Price of Salt" (and re-released later as "Carol"). Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett do very well playing two women different in age, social status and relationship experience. The journalist in me was rooting for Mara's character, Therese, who wants to be a photographer for the NY Times.

There are obvious comparisons between Carol and "Far From Heaven," the 2002 film starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid about a closeted gay man in the 1950s and the complications his secret life causes his wife. Todd Haynes directed both films, and while I liked them both, I think he did a better job with "Carol" because the story is stronger and you feel sympathy for both main characters and their predicament. Also, there's (slightly) more sympathy for other characters in "Carol" who go along with the overwhelming social mores of the 1950s.

One final point: the consummation of Carol and Therese's relationship is shown in a very classy way. If you're looking for something else ... that's what the Internet's for!

 

Very well done film. Good sense of the time and place.

Social mores suck.

 

Take Shelter
I'll pretty much watch anything Michael Shannon is in now. He's amazing. And he's such a weirdo. He seems like he's about to flip out at any second. He was on the Nerdist podcast earlier this year and came across as a little odd.

12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
These WWE Studios action movies are like the lamest 80s action movies you can imagine. No budget. No style. No script. It's so generic. I would at least expect something more off the wall from a movie studio connected to pro rasslin'.

 

I love Michael Shannon and thought he was great in "Take Shelter," but about 600 pages back Dick and I disagreed on how we perceived the ending. His interpretation was far more satisfying than mine and I hope his is the correct one. I may have rewatch it sometime. I think the film was marketed poorly as a thriller and my expectations were far out of whack from what the movie turned out to be. It took a lot of my enjoyment out of what was a really well-made film.

I'm curious about your take on the end. Maybe post a spoiler warning and tell us what you think?

 

Wasn't sure where else to put this, but thought it was worth sharing. Mad Max Fury Road is a great-looking film, in no small part because George Miller relied heavily upon practical effects instead of CGI. This reel of raw footage shows just how much of the action they were able to pull off without the use of a computer. Pretty cool to see it stripped down and realize how badass these stunts really were.

 

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is on Amazon Prime.
Love this movie.

 

TNT is showing all of the Star Wars movies in order this week so I watched the "first" two the last two nights.

Now, I was disappointed when I saw them in the theater, but good lord, they are terrible.

The special effects look cheesy, there's the whole Jar-Jar thing, the acting is uniformly wooden and terrible.

Is there another director alive other than George Lucas who could have assembled such a talented cast and made them all stiff and humorless?

Yoda truly is the only character in the movies who seems to display any acting chops.