What is the last movie you saw at the cinema?

[Deleted]

Nov 16, 2009 22:34:02 GMT lola said:

I couldn't make it all the way through watching with my husband, but came in for the ending credits dance. Tickled me so much I watched it 6 times in a row. This gives the flavor of it.

Absolutely one of the finest roles of that wretched actor.

This week I saw "The Road" and "Paranormal Activity." Both were excellent in completely different ways.

[lola]

Don't his dance moves make you want to give him another chance? They do me.

Glad to hear you liked "The Road." May give that one a try.

[Deleted]

Naturally, it is extremely depressing. Among the filming locations, they used some of the devastated areas of New Orleans.

[lola]

I wondered how they could film such a book. The fact that they were able to use NO is depressing, of course. I got the impression reading the book that there wasn't anything green left in the land, though, no living things.

[Deleted]

Well, that bit was done with computer trickery. You could tell that they had just bled the color our of a lot of the landscapes. But they obviously also needed plenty of ruined neighborhoods.

[lola]

If you decide to see Up in the Air, notice the church where Clooney attends his sister's wedding. It was shot a block from our house, and caused quite the stir around here this early spring. Coworkers of mine, intelligent professionals, stood in the street for hours to watch the filming and catch a glimpse of GC. My girls were thrilled because they happened to be walking by when Himself was filmed walking out of the church door, then went back in and did it again.

It was fun to see how they transformed the street into a snow scene for that week.

Thanks, K. I keep forgetting about computer trickery. Speaking of Clooney, I enjoyed the CD special feature for O Brother etc where they showed how the scenes were bathed in that golden light, digitally.

[lola]

I went to see The Road last night with a couple of other book club members. Well done, I thought, except for the schmaltzy music, and true to the book. I'll be working tomorrow during Book Club time, but we had a mini-discussion afterwards where I learned this was the only book ever that made the guy who suggested it cry. Another of the men said much the same. It's really about the father-son thing and not so much about the apocalypse, I guess.

[Deleted]

That's quite strange. I shed tears quite regularly when absorbing "stories" (whether in print, TV or cinema) and yet "The Road" left me dry eyed. Everything played out as it should and no unexpected emotion punched me in the gut.

[lola]

Maybe it only works if you're the kind who never cries and you're reading the book.
The men in our book club spent a few hrs once discussing father/son issues, which was interesting.
I remained unmoved by both book and film, though I admired them. Yet I've been known to cry at the drop of a handkerchief.

[Deleted]

Considering that fact that I cried reading the end of "Lord of the Rings" (among other works), that is certainly not my category.

[lola]

Ha. That's me, too.

One odd thing that gets to me: when I read or listen to something about the Civil War and I get to the part where Lee surrenders at Appomatox I start tearing up. (Sorry; I know this is not recent film related info.)

[bixaorellana]

It is strange how certain periods or even just pieces of history will grab one, Lola. Lee is certainly one of the most complicated and interesting people in American history.

[lola]

Yes. I think a lovable personality, and one of the first to be widely loved partly because of his good looks and photography.
But also just the waste of it all by the time they got to Appomattox.

[bixaorellana]

The waste, the carnage, the devastation to lives and to the countryside, the sheer sadness ........ hard to imagine how it's been so glamorized.

[lola]

We saw Up In the Air tonight. Much of it was shot in St. Louis, so it was fun watching for the local scenes. It is a grownup comedy, well-done and funny, but somehow loneliness-inducing later, even in a house full of people.

George Clooney made a good impression on people around town, and shook hands with those lining the sidewalks hoping for him to emerge.

[tillystar]

Every morning I wait for my tube in the same spot on the platform. I am tired and grotty and I look up and George Clooney is peering at me over the top of a coffee cup. Every morning I foget he is there staring at me until I look up and every morning he cheers me up.

[Deleted]

I went to see "Nobody Knows About Persian Cats," an Iranian rock movie, filmed clandestinely. The two stars of the film are now living in exile. Unfortunately, the movie has only been released in France, although it will also come out in Belgium in February and in the Netherlands in September 2010.



However, it is reputedly downloadable free and legally at The Pirate Bay. But no subtitles.

www.thepiratebay.org/torrent/5235148/No_one_Knows_About_Persian_Cats

[tillystar]

Went to see Sherlock Holmes last night. It was FANTASTIC!

Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law play Holmes and Watson just fabulously! They have taken them on an given them their own twist and just feed off each other so well. They give a lot of humour and an edginess to the characters that might not appeal to Sherlock purists but I just loved them, great film!

[lola]

Glad to hear that, tillystar. I've been hoping it would be good. There's always room for new interpretations.

[bixaorellana]

Ohhhhhhhh ~~ I saw the previews for that, and I'm dying to see it. Thanks, Tilly -- now I definitely will not miss it.

[hwinpp]

I'm still waiting for it to come out.

Recently saw the last 'Terminator', my nephew bought it and made me watch through it with him. Must have been the worst out of the series yet.

[suzanne]

We saw "An Education" last week. I was wooried that my husband would not like it. He and I both loved it. It was one of those movies that was cause for discussion on the way home.

[bixaorellana]

Hi Suzanne!

I love this thread because it so often alerts me to movies I wouldn't hear of otherwise. That's the case with "An Education", which I just looked up online. (Avoid the wikipedia article, which gives away the entire plot.)

The script of the movie is by Nick Hornby, so should be really good. The author of the autobiographical article in Granta (now a book) on which the movie was based is Lynn Barber, a British journalist.

[lola]

I want to see it, too. The critics love the lead actress.

[Deleted]

I saw The Book of Eli yesterday, and it is definitely over the top WTF crap. I was really amazed how chic and clean Mila Kunis could be compared to every other survivor on the planet. And I have my doubts about KFC wet wipes still being useable after 30 years, since I often come across such packages in forgotten jacket pockets maybe 18 months later and they went dry long ago.

[bixaorellana]

Saw The Road yesterday and, while there is some good stuff in it, overall I had the same reaction as Lola & Kerouac -- very well-done movie that never grabbed me emotionally. It was also one of those movies that I felt dragged out some things and skimmed over others. For instance, maybe the tedium of the road could have been expressed a little less in order to show the tedium & detail of foraging.

SPOILER: Click to show

Ditto the whole thing with the wife. It just sort of happens, without really giving the viewer a chance to identify with her despair. I also felt the ending -- dad's dead, what are we gonna do with the kid now that we've run out of movie time? -- was too movie-ish and wasted some good suspense & plot opportunity.

[lola]

In The Road's defense, the ending, like most of the movie, was true to the book. But, yeah.

Also,

SPOILER: Click to show

Yes, the wife.
and
The dog at the end. I don't know whether it was mentioned in the book, but really now. When people are eating mummified crickets, they're going to feed a dog, too?

[spindrift]

If you have ever wondered how life is lived on the steppes of Kazakhstan then see this movie ~ TULPAN.


Tulpan in Kazakh means 'tulip'...an entrancing image in a landscape that is only flat sand and scrub for hundreds of miles in every direction. The elements rage across the empty steppes having no regard for the wretched settlements of paddocks and yurts in which huddle poverty-stricken nomads who rely on the welfare of their sheep as much as the sheep rely on them.

So we see a young man, until recently a sailor in the Russian navy, returning to the steppes to claim a flock of sheep but there is a condition - he must first find a wife. This documentary-type film shows how he goes about this task. On the steppes life is at its most difficult and every single thing is interdependent. He cannot manage without a wife and the only single girl in the area does not want him.

This excellent movie shows Kazakh life in the raw. I recommend that you see it.



Kazakhstan is the largest land-locked country in the world.

[bixaorellana]

Oh, Spindrift ~~ I will not rest until I see that! In the two minutes of the trailer I was completely drawn in, and your review is compelling and explains the background so well. (& there's part of one of my absolute favorite songs in the preview!)

I'm very drawn to survival situations and dramas, which includes real-life settings such as the Himalayas, so I know I will totally enjoy this.

And speaking of survival, one more comment about The Road:

SPOILER: Click to show

I see what you mean about the dog, Lola, but this is how I took it:
The sad truth was that the dad (Vigo M.) was a screw-up. That is indicated more than once -- early on, why did he let the guy from the truck see him, for instance? -- then such incidents increased as the story progressed. You wonder why they were still hanging on at their homestead so many years after the boys birth. How come Dad didn't follow up when Son saw the little boy in the ruined apartments? (I'm sure that was N.O., incidentally.) Why didn't he team up with the robber that he stripped and abandoned? Instead, he had no one to watch his back, to help him forage, and to help the kid if anything happened to the father.
The couple with the kids and the dog were all too happy to receive the orphan. It wasn't spelled out, but I got the idea that family belonged to a group -- a group that wasn't starving because they'd figured out a way to farm or make sprouts or had chickens or something. Anyway, they had something the boy's dad missed with his inexorable trudge towards the coast. You had to wonder if the wife didn't give up only after trying in vain to get him to strike out for the coast much earlier.

[spindrift]

Thanks Bixa. I'm sure you'll love the film. I actually wrote the review myself, didn't copy any of it....

I also want to see 'The Tale of the Weeping Camel'...and 'The Cave of the Yellow Dog'..(or something like that).... have you seen them?


'The Road' would be far too depressing for me.