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

[Damien]

It's a near perfect movie, so a Kubrick version would not have been as good.

And as things worked out, Kubrick's last movie was his one great film.

[OscarGuy]

Easily better.

[Sabin]

Not as good.



Edited By Sabin on 1252951297

[Zahveed]

I wonder how much different Kubrick's film would have been if he lived to complete it.

[Sabin]

/A.I. Artificial Intelligence/ (Spielberg) - 11/10

This goes on the All-Time list for me. Just as Blade Runner meshed science-fiction with noir, Spielberg creates the science-fiction fairy tale. This film is perverse in its challenging the nature of man/child vs. God, man/child vs. child, man/child vs. father (and not mother), man/Oedipal child vs. mother, man/child vs. spouse, man/child vs. creations, man/child vs. self; every scene asks something else devoid of conventional platitudes. Through David, Spielberg does something ostensibly spiritual in positing that we are all children in the face of God and self, and therefore trembling. This is a sad vision of the future touched by magical imagery. If not asked outright, then conveyed through the most imaginative and mature visual filmmaking of the director's career, with frames that haunt the mind. This is gorgeous myth-making visual cinema that would survive as silent cinema.

Which brings us to the ending. As Rosenbaum states: "It sounds like typical Spielberg goo–for better and for worse–and when you’re watching the film it feels that way. But the minute you start thinking about it, it’s at least as grim as any other future in Kubrick’s work. Humankind’s final gasp belongs to a fucked-up boy robot with an Oedipus complex who’s in bed with his adopted mother and who finally becomes a real boy at the very moment that he seemingly autodestructs–assuming he vanishes along with her, though if he survives her, it could only be to look back in perpetual longing at their one day together. Real boy or dead robot? Whatever he is, his apotheosis with mommy seems to exhaust his reason for existing. As Richard Pryor once described the death of his father while having sex, “He came and went at the same time.” Like the death of 2001’s HAL, which might be regarded as David’s grandfather, it’s the film’s most sentimental moment, yet it’s questionable whether it involves any real people at all." To end in the risen seas with the Blue Fairy would be ironic and nihilist. The epilogue works. It's just a little blunt.



Edited By Sabin on 1252950265

[Precious Doll]

Three Monkeys (2008) Nuri Bilge Ceylan 6/10

Blessed (2009) Ana Kokkinos 6/10

(500) Days of Summer (2009) Marc Webb 4/10

Separation (1968) Jack Bond 7/10

[Penelope]

Bay of Angels (1963; Jacques Demy) 8/10

Jeanne Moreau is in total glamor movie star mode as a divorcée/gambling addict who hooks up with neo-phyte gambler Claude Mann. Gorgeously photographed and so very moody, but the end doesn't ring true.

[Penelope]

I always found it amusing that Janet Suzman's 1 minute scene is over *before* her name appears in the "all-star" opening credits!

[Reza]

She's actually not bad in Voyage of the Damned, but it was a forgettable role (among too many other stars) in a forgettable movie.

I don't know if the film was all together forgetable. It has a certain camp appeal to it which is hard to resist. Faye Dunaway wearing a monocle and Lee Grant in an Oscar nominated performance. The latter's hair cutting scene was a doozy. LOL.

[ITALIANO]

She's actually not bad in Voyage of the Damned, but it was a forgettable role (among too many other stars) in a forgettable movie.

[Big Magilla]

I thought her last decent performance was as Jon Voight's mother in 1974's The Odessa File.

[ITALIANO]

I hope that at least the scene where she keeps falling down in the snow was kind of staged, too. It's painful to watch.

I'd say that Gervaise and a little known German movie called Die Letze Brucke are Schell's best performances. They showed a promise that was never truly fulfilled, that she could become a major international star (the fact that she could act in German, Italian, English and French could have helped). Schell DID become a star, she made several successful romantic movies in Germany and her native Austria, but when she tried to go international something didnt work. She had a wonderful "movie face", and of course THAT smile, but soon it became clear that her range was rather limited. The new Ingrid Bergman she wasn't.
Even in Le Notti Bianche, one of Visconti's early masterpieces, where she had a wonderful role, she isnt always convincing, and is clearly overshadowed by Marcello Mastroianni in his first truly great performance.
Of the movies she made in Hollywood none was really memorable. It's true that the best was probably The Hanging Tree, but her really big chance came when she was offered the role of Grushenka (one of the greatest female characters in Russian literature) in Richard Brooks's film of The Brothers Karamazov. It was Marilyn Monroe's dream part, and while I doubt that Monroe would have been right for it, it turned out that Schell wasnt that good either. She lacked Grushenka's obvious sexuality, she was just too frustratingly ethereal, except in a justly famous scene where she seduces Yul Brynner dancing in front of him to music played by gypsies. She was good in another forgotten movie called The Mark, but that one really belonged to Stuart Whitman playing with surprising honesty a child molester (Schell is the woman who "saves" him, of course, and with her healthy central European beauty she definitely wasnt miscast).
Back in Europe, her moment was over. She still had a few hits, married a (bad) director, did her share of Eurotrash, including that classic of "woman's prison" movies, 99 Women, whose incredible cast includes an unforgettable Mercedes MacCambridge, and some tv work before fading into a not completely deserved obscurity. Her last "important" movie were Voyage of the Damned, where she plays Katharine Ross's mother, and of course Superman.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1252877957

[Big Magilla]

Gervaise (1956) Rene Clement 8.5/10

I saw this several days ago and still can't get Maria Schell out of my head. They say as she slipped further and further into dementia in her last years she watched her old films over and over simulteanously on 11 different TVs. I wonder how often she watched this and whether she knew the difference between her real life and her reel one.

There is an interesting, and sometimes moving, documentary about Maria Schell's final years, made by her brother Maximilian, Meine Schwester Maria. The portrayal of the old former actress (and former star, because Schell was VERY popular at least in Europe during the 50s) only three years before her death is heartbreaking.
No Sunset Boulevard grandeur about it. Maria Schell is shown living in this small, simple wood house in a small, forgotten village in the Austrian Alps, surrounded only by snow, silence, and several tvs which show the movies she made when she was young and beautiful. The contrast between the images of the healthy blonde with the famous arresting smile and the old, poor and slightly demented woman (who looks like so many old peasants from the Alps) is maybe a bit too obvious, but undeniably effective.
The movie is about Maria, of course, but it's also about Maximilian, the exasperated brother, always there to help her (even by selling some of his most valuable paintings), maybe more out of duty than out of love. The complicated bond between brother and sister (two famous brother and sister, but that's not important in this case) is quite subtly depicted.
It's about getting old, and the different ways one can get old. In a very German way, it doesnt force you to cry about Maria Schell's sad destiny, it also shows how unbearable she could be at times. Still, a profound affection is clearly there.
The movie has another fascinating side (and this is why I keep calling it a "movie"). You can never be really sure about how much of it is a true documentary, and how much was planned and acted; in other words, how much Schell, demented or not, was at least in some moments intentionally playing herself, still an actress despite everything, in the last, most painful role of her career. This may make the movie more ambiguous, but it also makes you think about acting, and about truth as told by a camera.
And it ends with a beautiful image of Maria Schell's old face flashing once more that famous smile which made her a star.

I haven't seen the documentary yet but I will. Maximilian Schell's earlier one on Marlene Dietrich was quite fascinating.

According to comments on IMDb. Maximilian had to sell his beloved art collection in order to pay the bills on the family home where Maria lived spending money she didn't have to buy expensive chandeliers and TVs - she had 11 of them.

My Sister Maria apparently took three years to film with parts of it re-enacted by a stand-in. Obviously the scene where she accidentally burns down the house wouldn't have been done in real time or they would have been able to stop her but the scene where she falls in the snow is the real Maria.

Her best Hollywood film was The Hanging Tree opposite Gary Cooper. It's good to know she considered him her favorite actor. It's a wonderful film shockingly not on DVD in the U.S., though it is available in Europe.

[mlrg]

The Way We Were (1973) - Sidney Pollack

6.5/10

[ITALIANO]

Gervaise (1956) Rene Clement 8.5/10

I saw this several days ago and still can't get Maria Schell out of my head. They say as she slipped further and further into dementia in her last years she watched her old films over and over simulteanously on 11 different TVs. I wonder how often she watched this and whether she knew the difference between her real life and her reel one.

There is an interesting, and sometimes moving, documentary about Maria Schell's final years, made by her brother Maximilian, Meine Schwester Maria. The portrayal of the old former actress (and former star, because Schell was VERY popular at least in Europe during the 50s) only three years before her death is heartbreaking.
No Sunset Boulevard grandeur about it. Maria Schell is shown living in this small, simple wood house in a small, forgotten village in the Austrian Alps, surrounded only by snow, silence, and several tvs which show the movies she made when she was young and beautiful. The contrast between the images of the healthy blonde with the famous arresting smile and the old, poor and slightly demented woman (who looks like so many old peasants from the Alps) is maybe a bit too obvious, but undeniably effective.
The movie is about Maria, of course, but it's also about Maximilian, the exasperated brother, always there to help her (even by selling some of his most valuable paintings), maybe more out of duty than out of love. The complicated bond between brother and sister (two famous brother and sister, but that's not important in this case) is quite subtly depicted.
It's about getting old, and the different ways one can get old. In a very German way, it doesnt force you to cry about Maria Schell's sad destiny, it also shows how unbearable she could be at times. Still, a profound affection is clearly there.
The movie has another fascinating side (and this is why I keep calling it a "movie"). You can never be really sure about how much of it is a true documentary, and how much was planned and acted; in other words, how much Schell, demented or not, was at least in some moments intentionally playing herself, still an actress despite everything, in the last, most painful role of her career. This may make the movie more ambiguous, but it also makes you think about acting, and about truth as told by a camera.
And it ends with a beautiful image of Maria Schell's old face flashing once more that famous smile which made her a star.