What's the last movie you've seen?

[LBJer]

The Shawshank Redemption.  Very arguably the best movie of all time (although I would put it in second place, behind the first Godfather film).

[LBJer]

J. Edgar

I liked it.  It was an unusual movie, the way it went back and forth in time constantly, but I still liked it.  It wasn't on the order of Eastwood's Unforgiven, but that's not saying much--Unforgiven is simply outstanding.

It was amusing to hear Nixon call Hoover "that old c*cksucker" when he heard of his death, then go to the White House press room and make very respectful comments about him.  While some might condemn this as hypocritical, I think it's simply very human--all of us often have feelings we can't or won't say in public for obvious reasons.

[LBJer]

Speed, over the weekend on TV.  Great movie.  An excellent example of a movie that's greater than the sum of its parts.

[LBJer]

Last night I saw Titanic in 3D.   Great movie.  I had never seen it on the big screen before.  The movie has a more powerful effect when you watch it in a dark theater without commercials breaking it up.  The feeling one has at the end is similar to that at the end of Roman Polanski's The Pianist , which deals with the Holocaust--in both cases, while it's nice that the main character survived and went on to have a productive, fulfilling life, the main feeling is one of sadness and horror at what happened, and the realization that most people in both situations did NOT survive.

[LBJer]

Legends Of The Fall, last night.  I watched it because a woman who I like a lot said it's her favorite movie.  I thought it was very impressive, the music and the cinematography were very compelling.  You really get a sense of how much bigger the world was then (early 20th century) than it is today.  Judging by the comments on Imdb, people seem to either love it or hate it, but I would give it high marks--although I wouldn't put it in the same league as The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption.

[LBJer]

Legends Of The Fall, last night.  I watched it because a woman who I like a lot said it's her favorite movie.  I thought it was very impressive, the music and the cinematography were very compelling.  You really get a sense of how much bigger the world was then (early 20th century) than it is today.  Judging by the comments on Imdb, people seem to either love it or hate it, but I would give it high marks--although I wouldn't put it in the same league as The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption.

Was it anything like Far and Away?

I haven't seen Far and Away.

[LBJer]

Braveheart.  My feelings about this movie border on schizophrenic.  It's definitely extremely entertaining, although the characters are quite one dimensional.  It's fun to mimic Edward I's (Patrick McGoohan's) dialogue because of the way he modulates his voice (the "The trouble with Scotland is that it's filled with Scots!" scene is particularly noteworthy in this regard).  At the same time, however, I love history, and Braveheart is simply awful in terms of historical accuracy, even by Hollywood standards.  It's as if someone made a movie in 2700 about the Iraq War in which the war breaks out because George W. Bush finds out that Laura is sneaking into Iraq for trysts with Saddam Hussein.  As I've said before, I don't think historical movies need to be completely accurate.  It's more important to get the spirit of events right than the letter.  However, I believe there is a limit.  Real people suffered and died (and in William Wallace's case, died horrifically) because of the events depicted in Braveheart.  The fact that these events are now more than 700 years in the past doesn't mean that they were any less real.  I believe that we owe these people the respect of depicting their history an a reasonably accurate manner, rather than taking enormous and unnecessary liberties left and right.  The real story of the Scottish War of Independence is dramatic enough, one doesn't need to alter it to nearly the degree Mel Gibson does in Braveheart.

I gave Braveheart a 7 out of 10 on Imdb.  If it were pure fiction, I would have rated it much higher, but I feel I have to deduct some points because of the seriousness of the historical inaccuracies.