Last Seen Movie - The Latest Movie You Have Seen; ratings

[Precious Doll]

Séraphine (Martin Provost)

Lovely, beautifully acted, low-key film about creativity, identity, self-worth, outsiderness, loyalty, madness, passion, faith, love.

8/10

One of the few upcoming films I'm looking forward to seeing.

[Damien]

Séraphine (Martin Provost)

Lovely, beautifully acted, low-key film about creativity, identity, self-worth, outsiderness, loyalty, madness, passion, faith, love.

8/10



Edited By Damien on 1249541716

[Penelope]

Another Time, Another Place (1958; Lewis Allen) 5/10

Bland melodrama with Lana Turner as WWII correspondent who has an affair with married BBC reporter Sean Connery; after his death, she pretty much stalks his widow (Glynis Johns). Picks up considerably when Johns turns up--she's fantastic--but the ending is incredibly rushed and pat. More famous as the film where Connery (making his debut) decked Johnny Stompanato, Turner's lover at the time; the film was rushed into theaters after Turner's daughter killed Stompanato.

[Precious Doll]

The Girl in the Park (2008) David Auburn 4/10

Surveillance (2008) Jennifer Lynch 1/10

That Girl From Paris (1936) Leigh Jason 4/10

My Sister's Keeper (2009) Nick Cassavetes 1/10

Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) Lawrence Turman 4/10

To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die (2006) Djamshed Usmozov 4/10

Take a Letter, Darling (1942) Mitchell Leisen 4/10

[Penelope]

Sounder (1972; Martin Ritt) 8/10

Gently effective tale of a black sharecropping family in 1933 Louisiana. Inspirational, but never maudlin and sentimental, thanks to Ritt's restrained direction and the strong performances of Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson.

[Bog]

Some of the older, more traditional voters, I suspect, hadn't even bothered to see the film, just wrote it down on their ballots because it sounded like something that should have an Oscar nomination.

And these are the awards we agonize over and we let exasperate us...where a statement about them such as this could even be uttered let alone to be assumed true.

Don't get me wrong, I believe the Thin Red Line may even have been the best film of the decade. But further and further into irrelevance the Oscars fall if this is why it received its heft of hominations.

[Big Magilla]

The Thin Red Line was one of the most eagerly awaited films of all time.

It was based on a well regarded novel by James Jones (From Here to Eternity) which had been filmed once before in 1964 in a truncated version. The director of the new version (Terence Malick) hadn't made a film since his critically acclaimed and award winning Days of Heaven twenty years earlier.

Reviews were mixed. For everyone who loved the film, there was at least one who was greatly disappointed in it. I was one of them for reasons I've gone into many times and which you can probably find around here somewhere but this was NOT a small film by any means. As BJ says, it had the LOOK of a traditional Oscar film while as OG says it had a cult following. The two usually diametrically opposed voting groups joined together to get it nominated in seven categories including Best Picture. Some of the older, more traditional voters, I suspect, hadn't even bothered to see the film, just wrote it down on their ballots because it sounded like something that should have an Oscar nomination.

[OscarGuy]

What we may have been seeing with The Thin Red Line was the new beginning of a 70s-like period in Academy history where the smaller, better-reviewed films had enough of a cult-like following to manage nominations that wouldn't have been apparent previously. Before that, the '90s really felt like it was more akin to the 50s and 80s in terms of selections, though even The Crying Game could have been considered a small beginning of the period. But The Thin Red Line, although in my predictions for a nomination, was certainly not being pushed by someone like Harvey Weinstein and thus is more akin to the current '00s period of nominations and even, to a lesser extent, wins.

[The Original BJ]

I've often felt that hip, auteurist movies that LOOK like traditional Oscar movies can often overcome the curse that plagues hip, auteurist movies that don't.

I think this is a key factor in the large nomination totals for films like The Thin Red Line and There Will Be Blood, and going further back, Barry Lyndon and Cries and Whispers (and maybe to a lesser extent stuff like The Piano, Gosford Park, The Elephant Man, Apocalypse Now, etc.)

I think a period-y or epic element gives these kind of films a huge leg up over movies like Leaving Las Vegas and Eternal Sunshine, which are hardly inaccessible, but lacking in the superficial elements Oscar voters seem to gravitate toward first.

[Sabin]

More than ever, it's apparent to me that this is one of the strangest Best Picture nominees ever from the Academy. I don't know what they were thinking, because it's so far from what they usually go for, but I'm glad they were thinking it.

I don't get it either. I could very easily see this film paying off with noms for Director, Score, Cinematography, Editing, and maybe Sound Mixing. It's not the kind of film that attracts attention for Screenwriting let alone attention from the largest voting bloc in myopic Hollywood. I remember at the time thinking about The Truman Show and Gods and Monsters were probably safer bets than The Thin Red Line and Elizabeth. In retrospect, Elizabeth makes perfect sense. It's a historical drama with conventionally dramatic narrative, totally accessible. Beyond that between Gods and Monsters, The Thin Red Line, The Truman Show, and Waking Ned Devine, I think Malick's film might be the least likely choice.

[dws1982]

Watched The Thin Red Line for the ?th time today. This is one of the most important, formative films of my lifetime, and it's one of the few films that, in many ways, feels like I'm seeing it for the first time every time. (A couple of John Ford films give a similar feeling--Liberty Valance and How Green Was My Valley especially--but very few others.) More than ever, it's apparent to me that this is one of the strangest Best Picture nominees ever from the Academy. I don't know what they were thinking, because it's so far from what they usually go for, but I'm glad they were thinking it.

[The Original BJ]

BJ:

SPOILERS

Now you've gotten me thinking about it and I'm not 100% sure myself. I saw it for the first time several weeks ago and I believe it has something to do with the will, but I can't recall at all what happened there.

SPOILERS ABOUT WHITE BELOW

I know, right? I don't understand why just because the protagonist changed his will to give all his earnings to his ex-wife she would be accused of murdering him.

[Reza]

Le Choc (Robin Davis, 1981) 5/10

B thriller about an assassin for hire on the run and the woman he meets along the way. Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve's on screen chemistry makes the cliched plot bearable. Nice cameos by Stephane Audran and Alexandra Stewart.



Edited By Reza on 1249318279

[OscarGuy]

BJ:

SPOILERS

Now you've gotten me thinking about it and I'm not 100% sure myself. I saw it for the first time several weeks ago and I believe it has something to do with the will, but I can't recall at all what happened there.



Edited By OscarGuy on 1249313686

[Zahveed]

Watch it again. Manhattan is wonderful. Savor the nuance of supporting characters being given their own movie.

I think I will.