The "last movie I saw" thread

[Walter Sobchak]

Well the dude also had a fake FB birthday. So he was probably an asshole. #goodriddance

[Commando]

On FB, an old mission buddy of mine posted that BH6 is "the best Disney animated film of all time... even better than The Incredibles."

I responded: "No fucking way!" and then un-friended him.

[Jeff Lebowski]

On FB, an old mission buddy of mine posted that BH6 is "the best Disney animated film of all time... even better than The Incredibles."

I responded: "No fucking way!" and then un-friended him.

[Non Sequitur]

The Turing character made a reference early in the movie to the Polish Enigma breaking efforts. It seems by academic standards the Polish were attributed. Turing contributions go far and beyond the war effort. A lot of theoretical computer science is the study of his theorems. There is good reason why the highest award one can receive in that field is named after him.

The movie does make Turing out as a "Mr. Spock" like character that is initially unwilling to work with the group. In reality, it was indeed a group effort lead largely by Turing. In fact, Denniston was an experienced cryptanalyst and was part of the group that debriefed the three Polish experts that figured out how it was possible to significantly reduce the Enigma's key space and most likely fueled the Engima breaking effort in the first place.

What bugs me more about the movie was that Turing's "Hut 8" group was doing productive work nearly from the very beginning of the war. There were different versions of the Enigma. The ones that the German army and air force were using used less rotors and didn't have the extra plug settings. In other words, the key space was significantly smaller. Earlier versions of the bombe were breaking codes for these within a few years of the war. Therefore, the push back from the military leadership was most likely added by the film's writers. On the other hand, German Navy version were much more complicated and took a room full of "bombes" to break on a consistent basis. In fact, I recall reading toward the end of the war there were somewhere around 9,000 people working on the code breaking effort. The movie implies that it was the German Navy codes that were the first to be broken.

The role the weather reports from Norway (I believe) played was is that it reduced the attack to what is called a "known plaintext" one. There was also a known plaintext from Africa that was sent every morning stating something like "Nothing new to report". If you don't have a known plaintext then you have to resort to statistical methods which require decoding more of the message for each key trial. With known plaintext you can quickly rule out a key with a single letter or two. Turing's "Eureka Moment" in the movie concerning the weather reports was indeed really dumb. I am sure the group was looking for known plaintext messages from the very beginning.

Also, I don't know about the entire Soviet Union spying subplot of the movie. The history I have read on the subject didn't mention that. I am guessing the writers took that from the atomic bomb effort.

And I whole idea that Turing confused computers with his first love, Christopher, was pretty humorous.

Finally, if you like the movie then you will love visiting the NSA Museum at Ft. Meade, Maryland. They have one of the "bombes" (the US version that NCR designed and built) and a number of Enigmas on display. The last time I was there you could actually encode your own message on one of the working enigmas yourself. If you expecting a history lesson then you should watch one of the many documentaries and visit the NSA museum rather than watch this movie.

I loved the movie. It was a historical drama, not a documentary, so I forgive the inaccuracies. It was the best movie I've seen in a long time, and it will be a miracle if Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't win an Oscar. On a side note, more than a couple of my family members said they didn't like the movie because they said it promoted homosexuality. Sadly, that didn't surprise me.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Watch two really good movies over the weekend.

First one is a documentary titled Dear Zachary (on Netflix). IMDB rating = 8.6. For the greatest impact, I highly recommend you watch it without learning much about it. All you need to know is that it is a movie made by a filmmaker to the son of his best friend that was murdered. It is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. Probably the most emotionally impactful thing I have ever watched. Going to be haunted by this one for a while.

Also watched Jagten (The Hunt). IMDB rating = 8.3. Danish film with English subtitles (and a fair amount of English dialogue) about a guy in a small town falsely accused of a crime. Brilliantly-written script with outstanding acting. Highly recommended.

[MartyFunkhouser]

Watch two really good movies over the weekend.

First one is a documentary titled Dear Zachary (on Netflix). IMDB rating = 8.6. For the greatest impact, I highly recommend you watch it without learning much about it. All you need to know is that it is a movie made by a filmmaker to the son of his best friend that was murdered. It is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. Probably the most emotionally impactful thing I have ever watched. Going to be haunted by this one for a while.

Also watched Jagten (The Hunt). IMDB rating = 8.3. Danish film with English subtitles (and a fair amount of English dialogue) about a guy in a small town falsely accused of a crime. Brilliantly-written script with outstanding acting. Highly recommended.

Dear Zachary is great. Emotionally impactful is an understatement.

[Commando]

Watched Tusk. This might be Kevin Smith's worst movie yet (Dogma notwithstanding), but it's also good to see him branch out a bit into different kinds of narratives with different objectives. The Kevin Smith dialogue is still there and is as lazily written as ever-- it really sounds like he just formed the script based on the transcript from one of his podcasts or something. All the same, it was pretty creepy and disturbing at parts which was the goal, I suppose.

[RC Vikings]

A couple from the ward invited us out to the movies this weekend and since we had already gone to Unbroken they decided Into the Woods would be the best option. I had no idea what this movie was about but I knew when it started with singing I was in trouble. This was one of those movies where a little bit of gratuitous nudity would have helped.

[TripletDaddy]

A couple from the ward invited us out to the movies this weekend and since we had already gone to Unbroken they decided Into the Woods would be the best option. I had no idea what this movie was about but I knew when it started with singing I was in trouble. This was one of those movies where a little bit of gratuitous nudity would have helped.

"I still want to go to the Festival!"

[Green Monstah]

Watch two really good movies over the weekend.

First one is a documentary titled Dear Zachary (on Netflix). IMDB rating = 8.6. For the greatest impact, I highly recommend you watch it without learning much about it. All you need to know is that it is a movie made by a filmmaker to the son of his best friend that was murdered. It is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. Probably the most emotionally impactful thing I have ever watched. Going to be haunted by this one for a while.

Also watched Jagten (The Hunt). IMDB rating = 8.3. Danish film with English subtitles (and a fair amount of English dialogue) about a guy in a small town falsely accused of a crime. Brilliantly-written script with outstanding acting. Highly recommended.

Thanks for the recommendation, I've been looking for a gem on Netflix with little luck.

[Green Monstah]

Thanks for the recommendation, I've been looking for a gem on Netflix with little luck.

Watched Dear Zachary last night. JL was right to recommend it (and to refrain from learning the story beforehand). Exceptionally tragic.

[FN Phat]

Watched Dear Zachary last night. JL was right to recommend it (and to refrain from learning the story beforehand). Exceptionally tragic.

JL said it best, "emotionally impactful".

[Sizzle]

These are screen caps from the movie you are criticizing. if I am understanding you correctly, the woman pictured below removed her clothing during the movie, perhaps on multiple occasions. You disliked the movie.

Bump

[Walter Sobchak]

Dear Zachary... meh. Started watching and lasted about 10 minutes. Save yourself the trouble and just google the story and read about it in 5. I guess if you can sit through a cheesy episode of Dateline NBC then you will like watching Dear Zachary.

Bump

I watched this the other day. It sucked.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Dear Zachary... meh. Started watching and lasted about 10 minutes. Save yourself the trouble and just google the story and read about it in 5. I guess if you can sit through a cheesy episode of Dateline NBC then you will like watching Dear Zachary.

If all you care about is crossing off "whodunnit?" on some mental checklist, then yeah, just google the final outcome and save yourself two hours. But that is a really odd way to approach a story like this. The power of the documentary is not in the mystery of the crime story (it is obvious from the very start who is guilty). Rather it is an exploration of the power and meaning of relationships and how much impact one person can have on a large number of people. It also illustrates how people are capable of incredible good in face of incredible evil. (You couldn't even begin to explore these issues in the first ten minutes). This is why the documentary is 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.8 on IMDB.