What are the best films you have seen this year? Why did you like them so much?

Hugh Quarshie. This is a link to the website.

http://onscreen.rsc.org.uk/othello/default.aspx

Thanks. I'm 50 miles from the nearest venue. I will have to think hard about this one, particularly since the end of this month will be busy.

The next one up is Henry V. There's a big Agincourt anniversary coming up. I love it, but it's a very English play. Probably not the best one to see if you're not English.

I've seen both the Branaugh and the Sir Larry versions as well as a minimalist life staging of the play using both modern dance and mime to represent the battles and frequent costume changes for the cast of 8.

I don't think either version were that good to be honest. A few years ago the BBC packaged four History plays together under the banner Hollow Crown. They were very good.

Just saw an ad for hollow crown!

Olivier utterly sucks in every Shakespeare film I've ever seen him in. Apparently his live perfor were wonderful and obviously very different.

I don't mind Branagh in some Shakespeare.....but I have never seen anything to match a young Ian McKellan as Richard II. wow.

And the Mercutio in the Zefferelli Romeo and Juliet.

An internet educational organization in Britain is offering a free, online minicourse on Agincourt. The organization is called FutureLearn.

I saw a live production of Henry V this summer which was probably performed as it was in Shakespeare's day.

I was never a fan of Sir Larry. Mercutio can make or break a production of Romeo and Juliet. I saw a live production with my then 10 year old granddaughter that illustrated that the play is not about the young lovers but about two families who hate each other but who have completely forgotten why.

Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing is brilliant and his Hamlet is one of my three favs, with the other two being Richard Burton's and Ethan Hawke's modern dress, corporate take.

This pub in what was once the city centre, now it's more docks area, is where the traitors were condemned to death.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_Plot

I haven't seen it yet, it's just being reviewed, and don't know when if ever netflix will carry it, but this is one want to see movie that might get me back to using netflix anyway, for other movies (I do it the old fashioned way, discs, unless they've stopped with that).

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/22/nanni-moretti-mia-madre-director-interview

Cannot WAIT for Fassbender's Macbeth!!!! Showing to my kids. We do a Readers' Theatre of the play (half in "American!")

Beautiful!!! Cotillard!!!

https://youtu.be/RgH_OnrYlCk

I started to watch Lawrence of Arabia and found it unbearable.

St Vincent with Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy.

It didn't get great reviews but it moved me.
Naomi Watts was a hoot as a pregnant pole dancer.
Worth a watch if it comes on the late night movie channel.

As for 2008, I liked AA winner for best picture, "No Country for Old Men". loved it because it was an edge-of-the-seat experience for almost all of the movie. Plus I couldn't predict the end. Superb acting and directing all of the way.

"Wall-E was great too from that year. Never expected I'd love so much an animated movie. This movie created such empathy for non-human subjects and had no significant dialogue but yet had plenty to say.

"Hotel Rwanda" from 2004. Gripping. true empathy for the min protagonist and main subjects. Upsetting subject but treated it in a way that wasn't exploitative. Superb acting and direction.

"Cinema Paradiso" 1988 (I own the DVD) Loved it so much I bought it. All heart and you felt the main characters and related to them easily. (I own 4 movies)

This year I like "A Walk in the Woods" (read the book). Tree-huggers will love it...but so will others who are trying to understand what aging and finding/refinding one's passion is about.

Oh yeah! Loved loved loved st Vincent!

Yes. No country was a great film imho.

Cinema Paradiso! Woot I adore it. Who else agrees that the older protagonist cannot love because he learned to live via cinema and the priest cut all the love out....the projectionist gives him the gift of love when he gives him all the scenes the priest had forced him to cut out?

To me that was the bleeding obvious interpretation but nobody I saw the film with noticed it.

A walk in the woods....don't know it. I will look Who wrote it?

I'll watch for it.

A new Macbeth is always interesting...but by fassbinder? Oh my

I saw the Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet as part of the National Theatre Live series. As someone said, he ought to be the Hamlet of his generation, but the production is so odd. YEs, the production is odd but Cumberbatch does not disappoint. This is a theatre-of-the-absurd Hamlet which I actually think Shakespeare would like.

I agree....in reflection about your interpretation of Cinema Paradiso.

A Walk in the Woods is written by Bill Bryson. It was a well-known best-seller in 1998. Tree huggers love it...but so do others.

The recent (late summer) movie is starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte (of all the people). I was happy Redford signed on to this more than a decade ago and hung in there all these years to make this movie.