The Official Last Movie You Saw Thread (Part 2)

[KCKUKFan]

Saw Patriots Day yesterday....good movie but I warn you if you don't like the F word this movie is not for you

Something tells me that if you were on Boston on the day of the bombing, the "F word" was all you would've heard.

[TrueblueCATfan]

Something tells me that if you were on Boston on the day of the bombing, the "F word" was all you would've heard.

I am sure .....movie is really good but then again I have a soft spot for mark Walhburg

[CATHYnKY]

Saw A Dogs Purpose today. Good movie. If you are a real softy, might want to have a tissue handy. Moves along nicely and has a happy ending 🙂

[KCKUKFan]

Paterson - On surface, it would seem like nothing happens in this movie. But look a little deeper and you'll find a true gem.. Quiet and understated, this is a Jim Jarmusch film about a mild-mannered bus driver who writes poetry. There is literally no drama in the movie -- he shares a happy domestic life with his beautiful wife, and they never even raise their voices to one another -- rather, we follow him through a week in his life and soak in his experiences. The movie is like a poem itself. Adam Driver (who had a hell of a 2016) was fantastic as the titular character. Highly recommended.

Live By Night - Critics savaged this film and audiences ignored it, but I thought Ben Affleck's fourth directorial effort was a solid genre pic, if not on the level of his first three movies. A 20s gangster flick that follows almost all the beats. There's a warmth in familiarity, though, and I liked this movie a great deal. Not amazing and not a must-see, but you could do worse. Beautiful to look at with some striking cinematography and a car chase for the ages.

Nocturnal Animals - Fashion designer Tom Ford wrote and directed this captivating murder mystery/domestic drama. Feels like somebody made a mash-up of the best work of David Lynch and Adriene Lyne. This film takes you to hell and back in two different realities. Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams are, as usual, fantastic. Highly recommended.

Silence - Long, boring, painful slog that is easy to respect but hard to enjoy. Martin Scorsese reportedly has been trying to make this for years, and while it might be extremely cathartic to him, it's painful to anybody expecting an actual movie. Skip.

Hidden Figures - You've seen this before, but again, there's something to be said for familiarity and the movie is well made and well acted. Shines a light on three unheralded black women that were integral in NASA's space race. Recommended if you like these inspirational, feel-good true stories.

Split - M. Night Shaymalan's best movie in seventeen years. Of course, that's not saying a lot. There are some good ideas peppered in here, but as usual with his movies, there are a lot of plot holes and ridiculous dialogue. However, James McAvoy is simply excellent as the lead with twenty-four different personalities. If it wasn't a January release, I'd say he'd deserve award consideration. Mild recommendation.

[George]

Split - M. Night Shaymalan's best movie in seventeen years. Of course, that's not saying a lot. There are some good ideas peppered in here, but as usual with his movies, there are a lot of plot holes and ridiculous dialogue. However, James McAvoy is simply excellent as the lead with twenty-four different personalities. If it wasn't a January release, I'd say he'd deserve award consideration. Mild recommendation.

Lavender's gonna be fired up about the ending.

[Joneslab]

Anomalisa.

I love Charlie Kaufman. He's made two of my favorite movies--Being John Malkovich and the masterpiece Adaptation--but for some reason I've never understood how or why Kaufman just disappeared off the map a few years ago. For six years he pretty much toiled in obscurity, and then he returned with...an adult-themed animated movie, obviously.

Anomalisa is a hellaciously difficult film. It's not only hard to watch but there's also a lot of subtext here, as there is in all Kaufman. But this subtext is heavier, denser--the movie offers no answers and seems to not even include the questions. The movie is about isolation and loneliness, but there are also suggestions that the main character is having a mental breakdown. The animation is a bit off, and the characters are all voiced by the same male actor--even the females. This creates a hugely disorienting experience, and by the end you just sort of sit there blinking at the screen without any clear idea of what you were supposed to take away.

For all this the movie is disturbing and thrums with this weird intensity. You can't stop watching if only to figure out what it is you're supposed to be seeing. Because of that it's worth a watch, but it's a shell of Kaufman's best movies.

[Joneslab]

Beware the Slenderman.

HBO documentary about the famous stabbing of a young girl by her two 12-year-old friends. Afterward the friends claimed that the Internet meme Slenderman made them do it, and the case went national. The movie works in three ways, first by explaining what Slenderman is, and then by talking about the psychological mechanisms that play into why young children can mistake fictional characters for reality. In its second half the movie gets into the harrowing account of how and why the stabbing occurred. Needless to say the incident had a little more to it than the press reported, and these revelations--at times given directly to the camera by the parents of the two suspects, which must have been brutal--are almost too hard to watch.

A difficult movie about the blurring of reality and fiction, this is an interesting look into the adolescent brain and a worthwhile primer for parents of young kids who are just starting to spend time on the Internet.

[Joneslab]

Kate Plays Christine.

Documentary about the infamous Christine Chubbuck on-air suicide that was the basis for the movie Network. Chubbuck shot herself on live television in 1975, and this movie uses the strange technique of telling her story by taking a young New York actress to Sarasota, Florida, and letting her research Chubbuck's life. But about midway through something interesting happens in this movie: you realize that this isn't really a documentary at all. The young actress playing Chubbuck is also playing a role, and the movie becomes this sort of overlapping series of set pieces about both Chubbuck's and the actress's life.

I don't really know what to feel about this, mainly because there's no way to judge what's real. At times the actress seems to be having a kind of breakdown herself, but I'm not sure to read that as true or as part of the film. I don't know if the message at the end is what the filmmaker believes about the subject or just another piece of the illusion.

For all this it's a hypnotic movie and one of the most inventive documentaries I've ever seen, but beware because it's highly unusual.

[KCKUKFan]

Anomalisa.

I love Charlie Kaufman. He's made two of my favorite movies--Being John Malkovich and the masterpiece Adaptation--but for some reason I've never understood how or why Kaufman just disappeared off the map a few years ago. For six years he pretty much toiled in obscurity, and then he returned with...an adult-themed animated movie, obviously.

Anomalisa is a hellaciously difficult film. It's not only hard to watch but there's also a lot of subtext here, as there is in all Kaufman. But this subtext is heavier, denser--the movie offers no answers and seems to not even include the questions. The movie is about isolation and loneliness, but there are also suggestions that the main character is having a mental breakdown. The animation is a bit off, and the characters are all voiced by the same male actor--even the females. This creates a hugely disorienting experience, and by the end you just sort of sit there blinking at the screen without any clear idea of what you were supposed to take away.

For all this the movie is disturbing and thrums with this weird intensity. You can't stop watching if only to figure out what it is you're supposed to be seeing. Because of that it's worth a watch, but it's a shell of Kaufman's best movies.

Didn't care for this movie, which is a shame because I think Charlie Kaufman is an absolute genius.

One of my all-time favorite films is "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind," which gets the minutiae of relationships and memories better than anything I've ever seen.

"Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind," "Adaptation," and "Being John Malkovich," are all nearly perfect.

When he runs into trouble is when he directs the movies himself: "Anomalisa" and "Syndecdoche, New York" are both full of great ideas, but are nearly impenetrable films. He's obviously a writer who needs a director to make his ideas work in a narrative fashion. George Clooney, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry all were able to work that magic.

[Joneslab]

Saw this on Reddit today and it interested me because we talked about it a little in this thread. This is how they did the tsunami scene in the movie The Impossible.

http://i.imgur.com/xsMNM9G.gifv

[George]

I tried to watch Clockers last night and couldn't finish it. I read the novel years ago and liked it, but I never got around to watching the film adaptation.

It's bizarre. A lot of over-acting that produced strange gobs of sentimentality, sweetness, and sometimes campiness that I thought was way off the mark.

[KCKUKFan]

I tried to watch Clockers last night and couldn't finish it. I read the novel years ago and liked it, but I never got around to watching the film adaptation.

It's bizarre. A lot of over-acting that produced strange gobs of sentimentality, sweetness, and sometimes campiness that I thought was way off the mark.

It was sort of a "Spike Lee Joint" more than a direct adaptation of the source material. Still didn't mind it, though.

Richard Price, who write the novel, also wrote a number of episodes of "The Wire." You could see some of that in "Clockers."

[Joneslab]

I never read Clockers but I read a couple of other Price novels. Freedomland is one that was very good.

My tastes over the years in mysteries thrillers have moved away from the gritty to the more Hitch****************ian. I don't like straightforward "crime" novels now for some reason. Haven't read one in years.

[George]

It was sort of a "Spike Lee Joint" more than a direct adaptation of the source material. Still didn't mind it, though.

Richard Price, who write the novel, also wrote a number of episodes of "The Wire." You could see some of that in "Clockers."

Yeah, I'm a casual fan of Price. I've only read two or three of his novels and recognized some material from Clockers in a few episodes of The Wire. The scene when Herk asks the hopper where he can get hats with the bill on the side is a direct lift from the Clockers novel. A few guys in Strike's crew (in the film) also wound up in The Wire (Wee-bey and Bird).

[George]

I never read Clockers but I read a couple of other Price novels. Freedomland is one that was very good.

My tastes over the years in mysteries thrillers have moved away from the gritty to the more Hitch****************ian. I don't like straightforward "crime" novels now for some reason. Haven't read one in years.

Lush Life was all right, too.

I'd almost like for you to read Clockers just so we could talk about one incredibly bizarre scene.