What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Michael Barnes wrote: Umm...The Wild Bunch?

100%

Other intro sequences I find noteworthy:

A Touch of Evil
The Place Beyond the Pines

You people...

Mad Max (1979)

Well, he did say "in modern film." How you define "modern" is certainly debatable, but at least my suggestion was within the last 10 years.

Wild Bunch and A touch of evil would have been outside of what I meant by Modern Film. Checking the release dates, I "guess" I meant 25 years (damn, it's been that long!). I'm not a huge movie watcher so I haven't seen Drive or The Place Beyond the Pines.
But, fuck it, stretch it to 1979 because, damn, Not sure is right "Mad Max" rates right up at the top.

Opening scenes (relatively recent)....

-I am partial to the pre-credits sequence on RAISING ARIZONA, but that's neither here nor there.
-THE DARK KNIGHT's opening heist is really good, as is DRIVE's, and BABY DRIVER's
-MAD MAX FURY ROAD sets a solid tone.
-Altman's THE PLAYER opens with a tracking shot in which the characters discuss tracking shots
-INCEPTION's opener is also solid, kudos to Nolan, I guess

Modern film to me is anything starting in the 80s. Someone called Gladiator an old movie the other day and I found that shocking. In my mind it’s super recent

I wouldn’t consider Alien a modern film but I would for Aliens

Opening scenes from City of Lost Children and the Dawn of the Dead remake are bananas. Hudsucker Proxy too.

Omg, city of the lost children. Need to dig out my DVD

Going to punt HBO for Criterion Channel. Come snoot with me.

www.criterionchannel.com/

Already signed up. I can’t do without Hausu streaming. Also, they are about to do Police Story 1 & 2 so those will likely be on the service.

Tonight is the last night IT is playing on HBO and Crave. I haven’t seen it yet so I think I’ll make an attempt, watching it alone

Wish me luck

Watched two films this weekend....
Velvet Buzzsaw on Netflix. The creator of Nightcrawler, one of my favorite films, heads this film, also starring two people from that movie, Jake Gylenhaal and Renee Russo. Art dealers happen upon some sinister paintings, and unfortunate events start occurring.

I liked it, but it's no Nightcrawler. Jake G crushes it as usual, but I feel like some elements are missing or could have been expanded. Well worth watching though.

Vice in the theater. I don't think I have ever seen a film with better makeup production than this. Christian Bale's performance as Dick Cheney is so wild. I was left wondering how much of the film is true, and they come out and say that it's as truthful as they could make it, but some info is just not available. This movie could have been called "Rich White Dudes Pull the Strings." It's really well done, but don't expect to finish it feeling great.

I saw The Dirty Dozen at the library and decided to watch it to scratch an old war movie itch. It was fairly entertaining, but the seams were sort of showing and it was a little cliched, perhaps. I felt like I was watching a reenactment of a Heroes of Normandie scenario. We're all so jaded at this point that the film's anti-war message seemed a bit obvious. Also, the film felt edited. There was not a scene involving burning bodies at the end that Ebert described in his review, and the euphemism "lovers" was used instead of the f-bomb. I wish I had watched a better movie.

Head 3/5 Heart 3.5/5

Time Bandits: Been forever since I watched it. Still prefer Brazil.

Finally got to see Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old which is a documentary about World War One where he took grainy, herky jerky footage from the Imperial War Museum and gave it a full on modern day restoration.

The cleaned up and colorized footage is indeed fantastic but as marvelous as it is the wonder soon fades. The movie itself is a bunch of voice overs from WW1 veterans, presumably from the War Museums archives as well, relating their remembrances of the war.

The movie has no real narrative and gives little to no information on how or why the war was fought. The remembrances can be interesting but can also be a tad droning and banal.

Overall I hate to say that I found it a bit boring. A shame because I had high hopes.