The Last Film You Saw in the Cinema?

The Saloon
521

[quote=“valenciano, post:517, topic:2027”]Once upon a time in the West was just seen. I still have goosebumps from the final duell.
First time I have seen it in a cinema but the probably 6th time I have seen it. It is even better when you know, which line comes next and what scene to look forward to. I love this film and it is my favorite Western for sure. Might not be my favorite Spaghetti, as it is almost larger than all the other ones and does feel like an american Western at times.
And I love Harmonica he is the truly man with no name and even lesser words.
Great Cinema experience[/quote]

I would love to see this on the big screen. Where was this?

522

The King’s Speech

Nice film with some good acting in the leads. 6,5/10

523

[quote=“Stanton, post:522, topic:2027”]The King’s Speech

Nice film with some good acting in the leads. 6,5/10[/quote]
Despite good acting, it only warrents a 6.5 then ::)?

524

Well, good acting does not make a classic, and it wasn’t a film I was very interested in. Entertaining stuff, but nothing special.
In the end the acting wasn’t fascinating, the story was ok, as was the directing (but several of the wide angel shots looked pretty bad and somehow wrong imo).

525

Rango

Watched this with the kids and they loved it, hell I loved it too. You got a bad guy rattlesnake modeled after LVC, you got a awesome nod to the SW with the “Spirit of The West”, badass camera angles, great characters, I’ve said it before this flick oozes with spaghetti sauce. It’s no masterpiece, but it is well worth a watch.

526

I agree, acting alone doesn’t make a film a classic, but 6.5/10 makes The King’s Speech scarcely above average in your estimation.

527

Saw an awesome double feature last night: Dark of the Sun, which was terrific (Another one of those movies I cant believe there no DVD for) and Tactical Guerrilla a Yugoslavian WW2 movie with Adam West playing a Nazi Captain and using a hilariously bad German accent! They showed a number of trailers and the one that got the most applause was Take a Hard Ride, especially when it said “starring Lee Van Cleef” :slight_smile:

528

Films with 4 or 5/10 are not average for me, but still light entertainment.

I think I gave e.g. The Social Network a 8, so The King’s Speech must be somehow below it. And I won’t give too much films a 10 or 9.
Well, I don’t know …

529

[quote=“Hoover Valentine, post:525, topic:2027”]Rango

Watched this with the kids and they loved it, hell I loved it too. You got a bad guy rattlesnake modeled after LVC, you got a awesome nod to the SW with the “Spirit of The West”, badass camera angles, great characters, I’ve said it before this flick oozes with spaghetti sauce. It’s no masterpiece, but it is well worth a watch.[/quote]

My kids saw it a few days ago and really enjoyed it too. They tell me there is a blonde haired hunchback in it too which I like the sound of. :slight_smile:

530

Yeah you should check it out. There’s even a little Fear & Loathing gag in it.

531

True Grit

I’ ll post something more substancial about it later one, but my initial thoughts are

1: it’s a reasonable movie a good Western among the genre, but not by far the best of the Cohen brothers film;
2: I liked more than the original, except there was no Robert Duvall;
3: The film cleary gains in being a remake;

532

I have seen True Grit also 2 weeks ago, and yes, it is not one of the Coen’s best. Bridges is good but Wayne was better, and generally all the actors in the old one were much better.

And funnily the Wayne film was in parts closer to the novel than the Coen version.

533

True Grit Coen Brothers

Finally managed to find a little time and go to the cinema, after one of those pointless meetings where I only gained lost time

It’s a good western a nice film to watch but far from a masterpiece work. The story is of course very good to put into the screen, I confess my ignorance about Charles Portis, I’ve never read the book, and really didn’t known much about the man, something I must change in the future, even more with the comparisons that were made. I real can not say if the film follows the books closer to the original True Grit, it seems so at least for the narrative style, but without reading the book nothing done on that point.

Starting with the actors it’s not difficult to say that having Matt Damon as Laboeuf was an improvement to the original cheesy Glen Campbell, the girl was on the same level, being this young actress less comic than the original one, Jeff Bridges was great, but his performance for me was not that natural too calculated, I’m not the biggest “Duke” fan, but he was a natural, for him playing a cowboy with more or less Grit was a natural thing, totally contrary to Bridges a more cerebral actor, and that is very notiacble when you are making an inevitable comparison. Pepper is no Duvall (other charismatic actor in the original film) was alright, on Brolin I thing even if I like him, a more type of character actor, with a less modern face as Petroni said in his interview, would be IMO a more effective as Tom Chaney.

In both films I always liked the way the Indian Territory was treated as if it was some sort of The Stalker Zone, in the Cohen film the wander about in the Indian Territory was for me the highlight of the film, with the character they found along the way and the clashes between Laboeuf and Cogburn.

The Cohen brothers only way was to be more closer to book at least in spirit if not in the narrative, and get better actors, but replacing legends like Wayne and Duvall is just asking too much, but at least they managed to put a more modern feeling, a real like the west was to the story, and I guess that’s why I like this version better than the original, it’s cause of its more modern approach, they could have chose the normal reverential path on the remake, and at least for me they were able to avoid that trap.

I have to say that I was not a big fan of the original film, the all the film depends on Wayne, this one for me it’s an improvement I guess, but not the best of the Cohen works, in any case I take my hat to them for tasking a huge risk on remaking a film with a western myth, not an easy task, that at least even if not totally successful, wasn’t a disaster either.

3.5 stars

P.S. five stars to the make-up department, they really made like everyone teeth in the film have not seen a dentist or tooth paste (already existed by that time?) in their all life

534

I agree, Stanton. Matt Damon was a vast improvement on Glen Campbell, though.

535

Campbell wasn’t a great actor, but he did well enough in the role. Damon doesn’t give the role more substance. A tie for those.
But I preferred Wayne, Darby, Duvall and Corey. And also a lot of the supporting cast like the carking bandit or the Mexican.

Interestingly Rooster is in the book a man of only 40 years, looking older than 40, but still only 40, while Bridges looks older than necessary. The encounter with the hanged man and the Indian is not in the book, while the ambush at Ned Pepper and his gang is in the novel like in the Wayne film. Also an interesting dialogue where Rooster reneges a promise he gave to a dying man and tries to sell his belongings for himself is in the old film, but not in the new. That’s in so far interesting as the Coens didn’t wanted to make a remake, but instead a film which stays closer to the novel. Tricky, as the Hatahway one was already very close to the novel.
And some of the alterations of Hathaway’s film were very good, like the closing scene on the cemetery in winter and the freeze frame of Wayne’s leap with his horse over the fence. Also the different fate of Labouef.

536

[size=12pt]The King’s Speech[/size]

A bit of strange experience. The film is a joy to watch, if only for Firth and Rush.

Like most people, I tend to call Firth Mr. Darcy, after the character from the Jane Austen adaptation that made him famous. He threatened to be identified forever with that one (impressive) performance, and to be cast as a Mr. Nice Guy who looked troubled into the camera. The stammering King is not only an excellent performance, but might also free him from this acting cuirass. Rush is a good actor but needs a director who prevents him from using his assortment of acting tricks. Mr. Hooper did a fine job in this aspect; Rush only lost all inhibitions in a few scenes, in which he was clearly asked to do so (early on in the movie, during those training sessions – anyway, I didn’t like those scenes, but most people in cinema did, judging from the laughs).

There were also a few good supporting roles for Michael Gambon, Guy Pearce (it took me at least ten minutes to figure out it was him) and Timothy Spall as the Great Winston.

So Hurray for Hollywood then (for giving it the Oscar for best Picture)?

I don’t know. I don’t think the film scores many points as a study of the British class society, nor really as a character study. The two actors are great, but the characters are a bit stereotyped. There are a few nice observations, but nothing world shaking. What wondered me most while watching it (and in this aspect it was a very satisfying experience) is why this film is so popular around the world, why on earth does it touch people, wherever they live? Okay, it’s a sort of feel-good movie, but in fact most films are, or try to be one, and leave most people cold. It is very popular among people of – let’s say – over forty, and I guess the movie manages to create a certain feeling of things that are irrevocably lost. To me it was, for instance, the English spoken in the movie, a bright, classical English I learned in school and which can otherwise only be heard in Jane Austen adaptations. For older Brits there were no doubt a few other things, such as this feeling of being united by a voice coming from the radio. For younger Brits it might have been the experience of seeing things they have often heard of. I remember my mother telling stories of her youth, about the war, and listening to Radio Free Orange. This movie somehow manages to transmit similar things, to launch such memories.

537

Wer wenn nicht wir - Andres Veiel

Another German movie about the RAF terrorists Baader and Enslin. Veiel is a well know documentary filmer, who already made the famous documentary BlackBox BRD, which compares the biographies about another terrorist and a banker he killed.
In his first fiction film Veiel shows mainly the years before Gudrun Ennslin went into the terrorist underground, and tries to explain why she maybe did it.
Unlike the lukewarm and shallow The Baader / Meinhof Complex this is a much more serious and unspectacular attempt to describe these fascinating events and characters. But imo not completely successful. 7/10

538

Once again, I only can report the reviews I’ve read of the film, the best ones (the majority) said it’s was a good film even if not a memorable one, the worst ones said that it looked like and an upgraded BBC TV film (wich is not a bad thing, by itself) but a bit far from the masterpiece it was said to be. Also read that for Firth playing an British upper class character was a walk in the park, and that his last films had more demading parts i.e. A single man for him.
Anyway a must see for me, if not for more, at least for historic reasons. I’ve recently watched Martin Donovan 1988 Apartment Zero a very strange film with a young Firth, if I have time I’ll post my thoughts about it

539

[quote=“El Topo, post:538, topic:2027”]Once again, I only can report the reviews I’ve read of the film, the best ones (the majority) said it’s was a good film even if not a memorable one, the worst ones said that it looked like and an upgraded BBC TV film (wich is not a bad thing, by itself) but a bit far from the masterpiece it was said to be. Also read that for Firth playing an British upper class character was a walk in the park, and that his last films had more demading parts i.e. A single man for him.
Anyway a must see for me, if not for more, at least for historic reasons. I’ve recently watched Martin Donovan 1988 Apartment Zero a very strange film with a young Firth, if I have time I’ll post my thoughts about it[/quote]

I deliberately did not check too many things before watching the movie, and write down my impressions, but I’ve just read that director Hooper did a lot of work for television. He did, among other things, the excellent Daniel Deronda. Like you say, looking like an upraded TV-movie isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There have been several excellent adaptations of literary novels in the past decade. Not only Jane Austen (although the craze was launched by Pride and Prejudice with Firth), but also George Eliot, Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Anthony Trollope and others. For younger directors (and screenwriters) those adaptations are a good school. The usually fall short on two things: storytelling and dialogue. Those novels offer them excellent stories and most of them (especially Austen and Dickens) have great, often witty dialogue. Hoopers previous film, The Damned United was also very good (and a mustsee for you as a football fan), and it also had good dialogue and storytelling: it is exciting even if you know exactly what is going to come.

The film (The King’s Speech) is no masterpiece for sure, but I didn’t expect it to be one. It was, in fact, better than I had expected. Stanton mentions the wide-angle shots that look wrong. I don’t know if they’re wrong, but they look odd, and it would be interesting to hear from Hooper what he had in mind with them, what effect he was after. Probably he wanted to illustrate that the world felt bigger and at the same time smaller in those days (directors usually come up with similar explanations)

I haven’t seen A Single Man

540

Hooper uses this wide angel shots very well in several scenes to visualize the fear of Firth in front of the crowd, to make the fear to fail again palpable.
But there are also a lot of wide angle shots which looked only pretty odd and somehow ugly imo. Unlike in the wide angle masterpiece Touch of Evil.
I like the use of short focal lengths to stylize images, but a constant use of it is more risky than a constant use of a long lens.