Rate The Last Movie You Saw

A second watch to understand who's who may be needed, but a great film. I think quite a few noir films are similar. Plots move so fast it's sometimes hard to keep track.

RE: Run, it has a pretty good Tomato score. I'll check it out.

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Suspect's Reviews

They just made it too easy.

Also, I am all for everyone rewatching or watching Hold the Dark until they realize it’s brilliant.

I liked it, despite only grasping like 70% of the plot.

It is junk food, but fun junk food. It's also really short and moves at a very quick pace. For me it pretty much flew by.

I will concede that I am very drawn to mysteries, and so when presented with a film like Hold the Dark, my instinct is to focus on the literal aspect of the plot. And that is . . . not what Hold the Dark seemed to be after.

Indeed. HTD is beholden to the Coen Brothers MO of using a crime story to explore the epistemological nightmare of human existence. No Country and A Serious Man being the most obvious in its DNA, the film is more about observing and accepting the chaos of certain people and events than the understanding of them that a mystery usually tantalizes as its payoff.

And I’m not just naval gazing. I made a similar tweet and it was liked by Saulnier himself. VALIDATION!

The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957

This nearly three-hour long epic follows a group of WW2 prisoners of war who are forced to help construct a bridge while being held in a Japanese POW camp. For one of the officers in the camp (played by Alec Guiness), building the bridge becomes a point of pride and leads to a tragic clash with an Allied plan to destroy the bridge.

This film was great, really well acted, and the final 20 minutes made me incredibly anxious!

Guinness does a wonderful job portraying Colonel Nicholson, a man for whom military duty overlaps dangerously with personal ego. The film centers the humanity of the story through the use of several observer type characters: a doctor (James Donald) who cares for the sick and injured at the POW camp and an unnamed group of women who accompany the Allied soldiers on their mission. The heart of the film is a man named Shears, a pessimistic American soldier whose cynicism both helps and hinders him.

The film contains several breathtaking sequences, including a night-time parachute landing and a final sweeping shot that speaks volumes.

Exactly. And this is something I realized around halfway through the film. But by that time, it was a little late to mentally shift gears.

The film it makes me think of the most is .

Such a good movie. Alec Guinness was so amazing in this.

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I can definitely see the connection there thematically. The two are so stylistically far apart that it hadn’t crossed my mind but I like the comparison. In particular with...



Though Trier uses this element for a more pointed critique of misogyny and Saulnier uses it for a more broad assessment of violence.

I suppose I’ll have to rewatch both.

Dunno why my spoiler format isn’t working. I’ll just keep that vague as well and hope people avoid it.

It's an amazing portrayal of the power and danger of ego.

I mean, on an even more literal level, I was thinking of .

It’s certainly operating with similar content and themes. It reminds me of the much more overt connection between Sunset Blvd and Mulholland Dr.

Parallels in plot and theme but the style and structure is so different, it can be hard to see. But once seen... Very intriguing.

I think both Antichrist and Hold The Dark deserve better reputations, with the former getting lost in the discussion of “elevated horror” and the latter getting lost almost entirely (damn you, Netflix! I doubt a Criterion release is on the way for this one...).

That's one of my all-time favorites. Glad you also loved it. I'm a huge fan of Lean, overall.

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I like Lean too though I would have to think carefully which movies of his I have seen.

In addition to this one, I've seen Lawrence of Arabia, Brief Encounter, and Great Expectations. I consider all of these films to be great and among my favorite films of their respective decades.

Same. He has a talent for the epic and a talent for the intimate. I think that Lawrence of Arabia is the best example of him combining the two, but Bridge on the River Kwai certainly had its moments.

In terms of his intimate films, I recommend Great Expectations. It's not quite as strong as Brief Encounter, but it comes pretty close, in my opinion.

A COLT IS MY PASSPORT- dope out of dope. Heck of a climax.

You need to put an "s" at the end. Right now your front tag says "Spoilers" but your end tag says /spoiler. I fixed it when I quoted you, which is why it's working in my post.

I've seen it and quite liked it!

Thanks! One of those brain autocorrects that makes self editing so difficult.

Have you seen his Oliver Twist? It's as good as it is (unintentionally?) anti-Semitic... Very!

Fun fact: David O. Selznick assaulted David Lean at a party due to how Anti-Semetic Guinness' portrayal of Fagin is in Oliver Twist.