<p>Another huge thumbs up for Argo. Saw it today with H. </p>
<p>Funny thing was, the older Alan Arkin gets, the more he looks like my dentist. So I kept expecting him to pull up a face mask and put on protective goggles every time he was in a scene!</p>
<p>Another vote for Argo. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a while.</p>
<p>Next on my list is Seven Psychopaths. Friends of mine saw it last night and gave rave reviews.</p>
<p>Glad to hear Argo is good, the local weekly gave it mixed reviews.
I have been infatuated with Alan Arkin ever since I saw him in * Wait Until Dark & The Heart is a Lonely Hunter * 44 years ago. I think I was eleven.
He does look like a dentist now though. Losing your hair will do that.
;)</p>
<p>D & I didn’t go see a movie.
she came home to get her high school notes from chemistry. Glad she didnt toss them as she did much of her old school work.
But today she is taking me out to breakfast for a belated birthday present. :D</p>
<p>Excited to see Argo.</p>
<p>Just saw Argo, really good movie. The right balance between serious and comedy. All the main characters are great.</p>
<p>I enjoyed Argo too and though I thought it dragged a bit in the middle, the ending was riveting! The movie theater was full and many people applauded at the end. DH said it was the most patriotic he’d felt since getting citizenship!</p>
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<p>justamom, CBS Sunday did a story on Rodriguez last week and it is a fascinating story. When it finished, I immediately went to Amazon and ordered one of his CDs. I hope to see the film someday.</p>
<p>Interesting comments about Argo. I saw it at TIFF and thought it was a good movie but found the revisionist history somewhat annoying.</p>
<p>Just saw Argo this weekend. It’s a fun, witty, entertaining movie which is what makes it horrifying at some deep level. Like a fun movie about Hitler and those brave SS soldiers. By retelling this history in this way, Affleck flips the larger truth on it’s head emotionally. Because we were the bad guys in Iran, not the good guys as this movie makes out. So at some level, this is a deeply reactionary movie - that I thoroughly enjoyed. I hate when that happens.</p>
<p>To give Affleck credit, the first starts out with a very clear expository about the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government in Teheran to install their puppet, Shah Reza Pahlavi. And it mentions Savak, the brutal secret police that the US trained and armed to keep him in power, and that they engaged in torture. And yes, there are even a shot, midway during the hostage crisis, of wahoo Americans beating up an Iranian student-type. But all of this gets lost in the emotional drama of the story where Americans are clearly the good guys. For example, you see Embassy staff maniacally shredding documents as the rioters breach the embassy walls, but it doesn’t say that the documents shredding was probably to protect informers who kept them and Savak up to date on who was trying to oust Pahlavi. It shows rioters who hate westerners and abusive soldiers torturing embassy staff - but it doesn’t explain how much that hatred was deserved, if not by those individuals, then by the US govt. So you end up rooting for the wrong people - and not apologizing for the US’s role in undermining a legitimate fledgling democracy and installing a dictator.</p>
<p>So lots of fun to watch. Clever dialogue. A hero who, as usual, bucks the chain of command to honor his commitment to rescue his people. A movie that works primarily because cell phones didn’t exist. And yes, the rescue itself was heroic because those embassy workers did not deserve to be held hostage for 444 days and threatened. (Some were innocent. Some were ‘just following orders’ by keeping Savak up to date.) And yet it is going to add fuel the current rage against Islamic cultures by making them out to be brutal, reactionary, a bit comical in their incompetence, and in desperate need of a shave.</p>
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<p>The actual good guys were the Canadians who were more instrumental in the safety and rescue of these Americans than the CIA operatives as depicted in this film.</p>
<p>The only recent film that I can think of which is worth a mention would be We Need to Talk About Kevin. Some of my other favourite films:</p>
<p>The Page Turner is a French film about a young girl’s cruel revenge on an unsuspecting musician.</p>
<p>Sophie Scholl - The Final Days is a German film about one of the great heroines of WW2.</p>
<p>Anna M. is a French film about a woman who is obsessed with her doctor.</p>
<p>The Stoning of Soraya M. is an Iranian film about the true story of a woman who was framed for adultery and executed by her neighbours. </p>
<p>Kontroll is a Hungarian black comedy about a man who works in the Budapest subway. </p>
<p>Withnail and I is a very funny English film about two unemployed actors living in London in the late 60s who take a holiday to a remote farmhouse.</p>
<p>Sense and Sensibility …just because Ang Lee’s version is sublime.</p>
<p>In regards to Sophie Scholl, the movie The White Rose about that futile, doomed resistance group is very good. </p>
<p>We recently saw Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film, Blackmail, with musical accompaniment. Really excellent movie. Only recognizable actor was Cyril Ritchard, remembered by all as Captain Hook.</p>
<p>I came to this thread because H and I am joining a “movie group” (like a book group) and have to come up with some proposals (movies must be on DVD-not new). Thanks to Dionysus58 I am seriously considering proposing “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Everyone in the group is the parent of an older teen boy. I’m thinking the movie will generate a lot to talk about :eek: (My bookclub read the book when it came out, so I think I know what I’m setting myself up for!)</p>
<p>^Dionysus58, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility is perhaps my favorite movie ever. I also love Withnail and I, and I liked Kontroll.</p>
<p>Going to check out your other recommendations!</p>
<p>I like Sense and Sensibility, too. But my favorite film version of a 19th Century novel, by far, is Iain Softley’s The Wings of the Dove. It’s maybe the only film I know where the director consistently created a visual language equivalent for the original author’s prose (in this case Henry Jamers).</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . my DH and I tend to watch a handful of films at least a couple times per year. They are just old favorites, and now that I think about it . . . quite romatic!</p>
<p>Last of the Mohicans – the Michael Mann version, we also love the soundtrack in and of itself</p>
<p>The Year of Living Dangerously – such a surprising film from Peter Weir, not perfect but we find it absorbing, gorgeous, terrifying, romantic. And again a great soundtrack.</p>
<p>Children of a Lesser God – William Hurt and Marlee Matlin, made in a perhaps less jaded time in our society? The New England setting is stark and delicate and exquisite. Oh yes, another great soundtrack.</p>
<p>Sense and Sensibility – An Ang Lee masterpiece. Who would change a thing in this exquisite film? And I, for one, adored Hugh Grant in it. And again – a superb soundtrack.</p>
<p>The Lady Eve – An oldie but goodie. A quintessential screwball. Fonda and Stanwyck are perfect together. Not much of a soundtrack, though.</p>
<p>The Year of Living Dangerously is SUCH a great film for me – the combination of steamy romance, sophisticated political intrigue, and exotic location. I don’t know why there aren’t a thousand films like it (I would watch them all), but there are hardly any.</p>
<p>^ I read somewhere once that Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson got along very, very badly throughout filming. And I think that might have helped the overall sense of tension in the film.</p>
<p>Another film with something of the same sense of political upheaval and exotic location is Beyond Rangoon made by John Boorman, but it really isn’t a romance. Quite haunting though.</p>
<p>Sukarno, feed your people.</p>
<p>Another foreign drama from real life is The Killing Fields-Cambodia.
[Revisiting</a> Haing Ngor’s murder: ‘Killing Fields’ theory won’t die - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/21/local/la-me-ngor-murder21-2010jan21]Revisiting”>Revisiting Haing Ngor's murder: 'Killing Fields' theory won't die)</p>
<p>And after you see The Killing Fields, you really have to see Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray’s one man show.</p>
<p>H & I saw Argo this afternoon- he really enjoyed it, I did too, but I couldn’t help remembering two friends of mine ( brother & sister) who returned to Iran in 1980 and were killed. They were both beautiful and sweet and I can see their faces like it was yesterday.</p>