Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Cinema at the End of the World Edition

[Osprey]

Dead Heat (1988) - 6/10 (Liked it)

Two LA cops (Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo) track down a high-tech laboratory that has unlocked the secret of bringing people back to life and is using its groundbreaking discovery to... make zombies to rob jewelry stores with. It sounds like the first thing that a 14 year old would think of using re-animated corpses for, but hey, it's a horror comedy. It's like if you combined Lethal Weapon and Return of the Living Dead and had half the budget to do it. Actually, for appearing low budget, it has a surprising amount of violence and gore, most of it pretty good. They even got Vincent Price for 10 minutes, which isn't much, but is more than most movies. He might not have read the rest of the script, though, because his scenes have more class than all of the others combined. That's not a bad thing, though, unless you think that fights with a fat zombie biker and re-animated butcher shop meat are bad things. One of my favorite things was Piscopo. He has a lot of funny one liners and I found the movie the most enjoyable when he was around and cracking them. Overall, the movie is rather silly and not very good, but I still found it fun. If you have similarly strange tastes and a soft spot for campy 80s movies, you can watch it for free on Tubi: Dead Heat (1988)

 

[Mario Lemieux fan 66]

black widow: 7.8/10

suicide squad 2: 7.5/10

The Guide to the Perfect Family: 6.8/10 average quebec movie

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Ugh the early reviews for Reminiscence (Hugh Jackman film which looks like a combo of Minority Report and Inception) aren't very good. They aren't awful so I'll watch it but thought this would have been a good movie then I realized they let some lady who hasn't ever directed a film and only done TV before direct this....WHY!? Why would you let someone inexperienced direct a $50M+ thriller nowadays they don't even get made that much like in the 90s/00s.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Dead Heat (1988) - 6/10 (Liked it)

Two LA cops (Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo) track down a high-tech laboratory that has unlocked the secret of bringing people back to life and is using its groundbreaking discovery to... make zombies to rob jewelry stores with. It sounds like the first thing that a 14 year old would think of using re-animated corpses for, but hey, it's a horror comedy. It's like if you combined Lethal Weapon and Return of the Living Dead and had half the budget to do it. Actually, for appearing low budget, it has a surprising amount of violence and gore, most of it pretty good. They even got Vincent Price for 10 minutes, which isn't much, but is more than most movies. He might not have read the rest of the script, though, because his scenes have more class than all of the others combined. That's not a bad thing, though, unless you think that fights with a fat zombie biker and re-animated butcher shop meat are bad things. One of my favorite things was Piscopo. He has a lot of funny one liners and I found the movie the most enjoyable when he was around and cracking them. Overall, the movie is rather silly and not really that good, but I still found it fun. If you have similarly strange tastes and a soft spot for campy 80s movies, you can watch it for free on Tubi: Dead Heat (1988)

A real treat of a z-movie!

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Some brief order in madness, I went back and completed Sergio Martino's first run in the genre and rewatched his (more) traditionnal early gialli. After that I should go back to random stuff and watch a few I haven't seen before.

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (La coda dello scorpione, Martino, 1971) – Martino followed his first vice film with another very conventional giallo that's just a lot less convincing to me (I'm sure many fans of the genre must appreciate this one just as much though, and it's still a very important early 70s giallo). It's probably the fact that every character here is unpleasant and unlikable, coupled with obvious borrowings from better films (Blow-Up, Psycho), but it just doesn't really work for me, even though the film has undeniable qualities and should work as an effective entry in the genre (it has pretty much every elements you could think of – and it nicely hijacks the argento-ian forgotten detail / focus on a detail). Things to learn from this film: solve the case and get the girl, and if a car speeds towards you to kill you, just drop to the ground (!). 3.5/10

All the Colors of the Dark (Tutti i colori del buio, Martino, 1972) – Probably the most ambitious of Martino's early gialli run, but also his weaker in execution. The film has great atmospheric moments, but also some really cheesy stuff. Whereas the cult scene in Short Night of Glass Dolls was short and restrained (and relevant), here Martino goes full cheese and kind of ruins the film's pace and tone (early dreamy/hallucinatory trips are not so convincing either). Also, Bruno Nicolai's score – a favorite of many giallo fans – is in my opinion one of his worst. Nicolai, once a close collaborator of Morricone, scored a huge number of gialli, always with debatable and uneven results, but here it stays pretty weak throughout (he even proposes a variation of the Rosemary's Baby lullaby, only underlying the film's major debt to Polanski's film). It has many interesting elements (sight, eyes, reflections), and I think it is more easily opened to different readings than most films of the genre (even though it's still limited by overexplanations), but it suffers from its weaker moments, and from a serious case of Fenech ovedoing it (but she's still amazing). I was very surprised to see that I had the film at 7/10 on IMDB. I graded all the others pretty close to my original scores, but here I can't go above 5/10.

Torso (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale, Martino, 1973) – I guess someone thought that this time they went too far with the original title (which Google translates to The bodies show traces of rape, but should probably be sexual violence). It's not really clear what the torso is supposed to refer to, but there's quite a few of those, ifyaknowwhatImean. Overall a pretty conventional giallo, Martino still shows his ability to break tone (though not as much as in his second vice film) and includes a pretty long sequence where one of the girls hides in the house while the killer cleans his mess up, unaware of her presence – without a doubt the best moments of the film. The film opens with promises of reflexivity, but doesn't really deliver – it still makes for a few interesting bits in the first part and unfolds into a fixation on the eyes and sight from the murderer, but without much to work with. The film marks the end of a great series of gialli by Martino. He'll come back to the genre a few times, but never with as much panache. 4/10

 

[Osprey]

Ugh the early reviews for Reminiscence (Hugh Jackman film which looks like a combo of Minority Report and Inception) aren't very good. They aren't awful so I'll watch it but thought this would have been a good movie then I realized they let some lady who hasn't ever directed a film and only done TV before direct this....WHY!? Why would you let someone inexperienced direct a $50M+ thriller nowadays they don't even get made that much like in the 90s/00s.

She also wrote it, so she probably insisted on directing it and the production company was happy to oblige because her involvement would greatly help to sell it. The movie poster even puts it directly underneath the title: "From the co-creator of Westworld." That mostly explains why they gambled on her, but I agree that a $68M budget seems like quite a bit to bet on someone who's only ever directed one TV episode.

When I first heard of the movie a few weeks ago, a British lady pronounced it as "Re-MIN-i-scence." I'd never heard it pronounced that way. Maybe it's like how they say "A-lu-MIN-ium."

 

[Osprey]

Key Largo (1948) - 8/10 (Loved it)

A veteran (Humphrey Bogart), a widow (Lauren Bacall) and her father-in-law (Lionel Barrymore) must wait out a hurricane in a tropical hotel with a notorious gangster (Edward G. Robinson) and his men. It's a John Huston-directed crime noir and an adaptation of a stage play. I really liked the tropical setting and that much of the film takes place during a hurricane. There isn't a lot of action, but it's very well paced and suspenseful. It gets especially tense as the gangsters intimidate the decent characters and the latter play a dangerous game by provoking them. If you're guessing that Bogart is one of those stirring the pot, though, guess again. This is one of his more cool-headed (or is it cowardly?) roles. Also, even though his real-life wife Bacall stars with him, there's less romance than in their other films together. I found it very enjoyable. I'm not even really a Bogart fan, but seemingly everything that he was in in the 1940s turned into a classic. This one's on the Criterion Channel.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Key Largo (1948) - 8/10 (Loved it)

A veteran (Humphrey Bogart), a widow (Lauren Bacall) and her father-in-law (Lionel Barrymore) must wait out a hurricane in a tropical hotel with a notorious gangster (Edward G. Robinson) and his men. It's a John Huston-directed crime noir and an adaptation of a stage play. I really liked the tropical setting and that much of the film takes place during a hurricane. There isn't a lot of action, but it's very well paced and suspenseful. It gets especially tense as the mobsters intimidate the decent characters and the latter play a dangerous game by provoking them. If you're guessing that Bogart is one of those stirring the pot, though, guess again. This is one of his more cool-headed (or is it cowardly?) roles. Also, even though his real-life wife Bacall stars with him, there's less romance than in their other films together. I found it very enjoyable. I'm not even really a Bogart fan, but seemingly everything that he was in in the 1940s turned into a classic. This one's on the Criterion Channel.

Just watched this as well. Agree completely. I'm a sucker for a good "everyone is stuck in one place" type story and this is among the better ones. Side characters are a little thin if one wanted to nitpick but the two-hander between Bogart and Robinson alone makes it more than worth watching.

Though it certainly doesn't NEED a remake, I 'm a little surprised it hasn't happened in the decades since given how juicy the two lead roles are and how relatively simple the story is. I know it's based on a play (hence the limited sets) and I read that Andy Garcia (in the Robinson role) gave a hell of a performance in a revival a few years ago. But still no film remake.

In the right hands I think it'd work pretty well.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Assault on Precinct 13. Early John Carpenter. It's cheap and rough but I still enjoy it. It's a real no nonsense movie, one of those films where its low budget actually probably helps. Doing more and showing more would make it less effective. The horror-like approach to the staging and filming is right on. Boppin synth score.

Class of 1999. A cable staple of my youth. Director Mark Lester takes bits of his own Class of 1984 and mashes it with The Terminator. The ostensibly badass punk lead is one of the least badass leads I've seen in a movie, but I still found this to be a nice slice of future shock ridiculousness that feels like it's about exactly as good as it should be, no more, no less.

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

Ugh the early reviews for Reminiscence (Hugh Jackman film which looks like a combo of Minority Report and Inception) aren't very good.

This falls into same category "The Tomorrow War" does for me, that being "movies I will assume are not good entirely because of their title."

Edge of Tomorrow is of course the exception to this, but I feel more often than not, movie titles are either generic or they're bad, and when they're the latter, the film quality usually reflects that (although with Reminiscence, maybe it was the combo of title + generic Jackman image on the front page of HBOmax. The blahness being greater than the sum of its parts. It's not a horrible title in a vacuum).

 

[ManofSteel55]

Old - 3.5 / 5 - acting was spotty at parts. As usual for a Shymalan film, the concept was unique and interesting. Good pace. Overall good, but not special film.

Free Guy - 4.5/5 - this was a home run to me. Not a life changing experience by any means but a quality film and just a fun time at the theater. If you don't like Ryan Reynolds films you won't like it though obviously. I don't know anyone who doesn't like him though. Atika Waititi is amazing.

 

[kingsfan28]

c/net, a computer and tech website, has a nifty article about the film CODA.

Apple's movie CODA lets you into an inner world of sign language

I'll have to check this out.

I know a lot of the sign language community wasn't too happy with the harshness/aggressiveness of the sign language in John Wick II. I guess a deaf assassin never occurred to them and how they would act.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Michael Clayton (2007) - 8/10

I am overrating it but it's because this sort of film subtly no longer gets made when it was fairly common in the 90s and 00s and I really miss it. It's a good well-acted script (Tilda Swinton mainly got quite a few nominations though I find her too alien-like to take seriously in this sort of role). The start is a bit too chaotic and I dunno about the narrative choice to go from the end to then the beginning to then the end again and I think it takes way too long to settle in but I really love the whole House of Cards type aesthetic and vibe which films like this had and found it to be better paced than most of its contemporaries.

Gone Baby Gone and The Diving Bell are my top 2007 films but I don't think this is that far and maybe is in the next tier which includes No Country, Zodiac, There Will Be Blood, etc. Pretty damn good year for film in 2007 and I haven't even mentioned Mr. Bean's Holiday.

This falls into same category "The Tomorrow War" does for me, that being "movies I will assume are not good entirely because of their title."

They have similar reviews. On imdb Tomorrow War is actually slightly higher at 6.6 which I feel is too high, it was a bad film and even more poorly acted, Reminescence has to be better.

 

[Puck]

Has anyone else watched The Green Knight? I've been waiting for months to see it and finally watched it today. I really don't know what to think. It's mesmerizing, but also somewhat depressing. I might have to read a few reviews to understand bits I did not understand then watch it again. I don't mind doing that for films I really like but this one does not fall in that category. Not dumping on it, it's a good film, eccentric (I usually like that) but hauntingly depressing, just like a previous David Lowery film, A Ghost Story. I remember a lot of people here liked that one, I wasn't one of them. Maybe I just don't connect with Lowery.

 

[Osprey]

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - 8/10 (Loved it)

A homeless man squatting in an opera house and too shy to show his face has the nerve to act like he runs the place and make unwanted advances on a singer half his age. This creep is named Erik, but signs his letters "The Phantom," probably because "Christine will sing or I'll curse your opera house. -Erik" doesn't sound quite as threatening. He also turns out to be one of the earliest catfishers, using his false identity and manipulation to try to make the poor girl fall in love with him (rather unsuccessfully, because she spends most of the movie leaning away from him). Once she exposes him as not being as handsome as his silhouette, though, he stops being so romantic and starts threatening her. Typical. Lon Chaney is phantastic, as well as unrecognizable and grotesque, which isn't surprising when a man does his own makeup. Seriously, the unmasking scene (at the 45-minute mark) is pretty memorable. Audiences in 1925 reportedly even screamed and fainted. Up until that point, I was enjoying the film mostly because it was unintentionally amusing. After, though, I was more engaged and appreciated how intense and dark it was. I had always thought that the story was more of a tragic romance, like Beauty and the Beast, perhaps a notion that I got from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version, but this film is very much a horror, especially in the second half. Its success apparently helped inspire Universal to make many more horror films in the coming decade, notably Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. I started out finding things to laugh at, but ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected and appreciate it now as a horror classic.

Spoiler: Full movie on YouTube

 

[member 51464]

Has anyone else watched The Green Knight? I've been waiting for months to see it and finally watched it today. I really don't know what to think. It's mesmerizing, but also somewhat depressing. I might have to read a few reviews to understand bits I did not understand then watch it again. I don't mind doing that for films I really like but this one does not fall in that category. Not dumping on it, it's a good film, eccentric (I usually like that) but hauntingly depressing, just like a previous David Lowery film, A Ghost Story. I remember a lot of people here liked that one, I wasn't one of them. Maybe I just don't connect with Lowery.

I did not care for changing the end away from the original.

 

[Puck]

I did not care for changing the end away from the original.

I'm not an English major, I was never exposed to the Poem of Gawain, so I'm not up on the original. I just assumed that the story has many interpretations and the Director was being enigmatic/equivocal enough to allow many of them, up to the viewers' own tastes.

I went in cold to view it (I dislike reading spoilers beforehand) but now that I have seen it, and read a few reviews, I can actually say I misunderstood a lot. There was too much in there to digest on the first view (a bit like Tenet). I disliked Tenet at first and enjoyed it better the second time around. Hopefully that will happen here too at some time in the future.

 

[Langdon Alger]

American Psycho - 2000

Watched this the other night. It was ok, but I’m not sure if Bateman actually killed people, or it was all in his imagination. I think Bale did a good job, but I didn’t really enjoy the movie that much.

5/10

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

American Psycho - 2000

Watched this the other night. It was ok, but I’m not sure if Bateman actually killed people, or it was all in his imagination. I think Bale did a good job, but I didn’t really enjoy the movie that much.

5/10

The director said her biggest regret about the film is not making it clear that Bateman did kill those people, which would then lead to an extra layer of superficiality and self-absorbment added to all the characters in the film (the realtor not caring that the apt. was a bloody crime scene, just wanted it cleaned up so she could rent it and move on, hence "I don't want any trouble," Willem Dafoe's character convincing himself he saw Paul since an unsolved murder would shatter his self-perception of how good he is at his job).

And yeah, I agree with her, it would've been a more effective ending to get rid of all ambiguity, since that leaves the audience focusing on the wrong things at the end.

 

[Langdon Alger]

The director said her biggest regret about the film is not making it clear that Bateman did kill those people, which would then lead to an extra layer of superficiality and self-absorbment added to all the characters in the film (the realtor not caring that the apt. was a bloody crime scene, just wanted it cleaned up so she could rent it and move on, hence "I don't want any trouble," Willem Dafoe's character convincing himself he saw Paul since an unsolved murder would shatter his self-perception of how good he is at his job).

And yeah, I agree with her, it would've been a more effective ending to get rid of all ambiguity, since that leaves the audience focusing on the wrong things at the end.

I read an interpretation of the film from someone that said he killed all those people except Paul, which would explain why Dafoe said he saw him.

I honestly didn’t find the film that entertaining.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The director said her biggest regret about the film is not making it clear that Bateman did kill those people, which would then lead to an extra layer of superficiality and self-absorbment added to all the characters in the film (the realtor not caring that the apt. was a bloody crime scene, just wanted it cleaned up so she could rent it and move on, hence "I don't want any trouble," Willem Dafoe's character convincing himself he saw Paul since an unsolved murder would shatter his self-perception of how good he is at his job).

And yeah, I agree with her, it would've been a more effective ending to get rid of all ambiguity, since that leaves the audience focusing on the wrong things at the end.

I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I would have loved for Cronenberg to direct his version of the film, with no violence and only a guy in love with his suits and social status.

 

[Osprey]

I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I would have loved for Cronenberg to direct his version of the film, with no violence and only a guy in love with his suits and social status.

You'd love to see a film with no violence? Who are you and what have you done with the real Pranzo?

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

For #16 & 17, I went with the two gialli of Antonio Bido, which I hadn't seen before but have been curious about for some time. Bido wrote a thesis on Italian horror cinema and seemed to have somewhat of a knowledgeable approach – and his films have a good following and reputation – but in the end, he's pretty much a poor-man's Argento.

Watch Me When I Kill (Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, Bido, 1977) – Am I in the wrong for expecting from a late giallo called Watch Me some forms of distanciation and self-awareness? Probably, especially since the original title (just as the film) has nothing to do with anybody watching – except for those unexplained fake cats eyes appearing in flashes in the murder scenes. At least, not explained to the spectator. Maybe it's weak storytelling, but the film uses a very strange form of narrative focalisation: the spectator always knows less than the characters. The result, in a whodunit, is weirdly frustrating, with deductions coming out of thin air (for example, the investigator makes a real complex deduction that one of the suspects is left handed, thus not the killer – but the spectator never knew the murderer was identified as right handed). With every actor trying real hard to look intense and suspicious, that narrative strategy quickly becomes exhausting, and even though you probably guessed who the murderer was, it's no use (and no fun) to try and solve the case. No sleaze and no aesthetic excess, but otherwise a very conventional giallo, which is kind of disappointing since it came in pretty late. 3/10

The Bloodstained Shadow (Solamente nero, 1979, Bido) – Contrarily to what Bido pretends about his second film, that having more freedom allowed him to really do things his way, it really only confirms his debt to Dario Argento's cinema (the painting part of the intrigue might make you roll your eyes). The music, composed by Stelvio Cipriani, is actually rearranged and played by Goblin, and even though it has a few bright original moments, it sounds like crap for most of the film (the first half has an electronic pulse leitmotiv that's just terrible). The film has similar flaws to Bido's first one, but mostly his plot is too complex for what he is able to convey (it also has the same ineffective jump scares used in Watch Me When I Kill, with random stuff coming into the screen). On the other hand, it's a way more stylized giallo, relatively more effective and certainly more engaging (even if a little too long and somewhat boring at times). The last part would have been great if not for the necessity for overexplanations caused by the number of plot points Bido just can't fit in his narrative. 3.5/10

 

[Communal Blood]

The Suicide Squad (2021)

7/10

 

[Puck]

Annette, Directed by Leos Carax, 6.5

I don't think the story is front and center here, it's more about the interesting genre (and perhaps Carax himself). I guess you could call it an operatic drama. It's a phantasmagorical sound and light show. Carax takes shots at the film industry, celebrity star system, toxic masculinity, and perhaps the audience too. The film starts with an introductory musical set in a recording studio directed by Carax at the sound mixer workstation and the real music writers for the show and their background musicians. The film is a vanity project, so why not take a bow at the start.

The story is about a self-loathing comedian (Adam Driver) and his slow descent into personal career hell after a bad encounter with the #Me Too movement. Annette is his daughter that inherits her Mother's (Marion Cotillard) singing gifts. I won't divulge the rest of the story so as not to spoil it but the one genius idea the writers had was to have the audience suspend belief as they cast a marionnete or puppet to symbolize the baby daughter throughout the film. Don't ask questions, you are on Planet Carax here. The puppet is symbolic I suppose because her Father uses her for financial gain later.

I found the film a bit discombobulated but I'm somewhat out of my depth to review this one. I figure the art-house film crowd will love it, mainstream audiences less so. It's crazy but it's Carax. Perhaps they (Director and writers) were subconciously doing a different modern take on Phantom of the Opera, I have no clue. It's definitely an interesting project for Carax, he won Best Director at Cannes with it this year.