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

[Shareefruck]

^ Oh, I actually completely missed that distinction, and thought we were talking about getting caught up in hype in general.

I'm not sure why the same thing wouldn't happen for 9s or 10s specifically, though (where it ends up being actually an 7 or 8 after thinking about it)

 

[kihei]

West Side Story (2021) Directed by Stephen Spielberg 7A

West Side Story was originally a Broadway musical from 1957 that updated Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet tragedy and set it in mid-50s New York during a turf war by opposing street gangs, the Jets, the white guys, and the Sharks, the Peurto Rican guys. With music by New York Philharmonic conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and choreography by Jerome Robbins, it quickly became among the greatest watershed events in Broadway history. Since its initial production, it has been revived five times in New York with countless road companies popping up frequently the world over. So it is not so surprising that director Stephen Spielberg would have interest in making a new version. And it's a pretty good try. Keeping the action in the '50s proves a little problematic, though. The Peurto Ricans still get stereotyped; worse the stereotypes are 60 years old now and should not see the light of day at this late date. Some Latin American critics are not happy about that, and I can't blame them. As well, Spielberg has tried to make the gangs more acceptable by today's standards and the rooting interests less one-sided. Some of these attempts just seem obvious and prissy.

It was rumoured that one of the signature songs (there are many) I Feel Pretty was going to be excised from the film because girls are not supposed to worry about being pretty any more, but, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the song makes the final cut here, if in somewhat hurried form. But the tunes are still great, the dance routines aren't as riveting as in the original but they are still damn good, and Spielberg moves the package along at a brisk rate. As the director has commented, West Side Story was one of the first movies to capture his imagination as a child, so making this movie is in part a nostalgia trip for him. Who will want to go on this nostalgia trip with him remains to be seen. My guess is that the movie will be a hit, especially with older audiences. Spielberg has not improved on the original, but he has done it justice.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Huh. I never knew I Feel Pretty was from that. Guess I'd had to have actually watched it at some point to know that. I remember reading through some of it at school; English...10? 11? Somewhere in there. Anyway...

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Train to Busan: Peninsula.

with Korean people. Some depressed, some hamming up every inch of screen.

Four years after the original, and North Korea has finally done something useful for the rest of the planet: sealed the border with South Korea and prevented the zombie apocalypse from reaching the outside world. Jung-seok is a former marine and refugee being treated like shit in Hong Kong with his brother in-law, both of whom are wracked with PTSD and memories of the families they had to leave behind. They're offered a classic zombie movie mission: retrieve a large stash of cash from the dead zone for local gangsters and go free! Yay! A cut of the action, and they can buy their way to anywhere! Also yay! Super easy job, no sweat, right? Of course not. The ruins of Inchon still house lots and lots of zombies as well as the remnants of an abandoned army battalion setting up shop in the local mall in the finest post-apocalyptic Mad Max fashion. Jung-seok escapes the inevitable crash and initial failure with a local family who are also still surviving, but his bro is caught by the army guys and sent into their zombie Squid Game arena. Koreans are mean, man. But there is still a ship coming...anyone getting on?

A definite step down from the first. Called literally every plot point 2 or 3 minutes from when it happened. The vehicle combat is ridiculous. I tell you, man, those Hyundai and Kia sedans and crossovers are some badass machines. They can sit there gathering dust for years, but you can fire them right up, stomp on the gas, and they accelerate like F-15 fighter jets. Several hundred zombies running towards you? No prob at all, just crank the wheel, yank up the e-brake, go into a power slide and you can just mow them down like nothing. Many thousands of pounds of decaying flesh will bounce harmlessly off the quarter panels and sail off into the blood-spattered distance. Unless the plot stops needing them to. While the cars have plot armour though, I swear they sped the animations up like 2 or 3 times normal. Doesn't even bother trying to make it look like actual cars on actual roads. I mean, it's a zombie movie, you have to have some suspension of disbelief, but the third or fourth time the cube van takes off like a scalded cat and sends zombies hurtling off into the background, it gets a bit much. A couple of times I naturally expected them to be in right-hand drive cars, that's how much it went for Mad Max during the driving scenes.

Oh, and the humans all suck as well. Also, Busan and Incheon are as far away as it's possible to get in SK. Huh.

On Prime.

I want off the train, bro.

 

[OzzyFan]

West Side Story (2021)
3.20 out of 4stars

"An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds."
Never saw the original, had no knowledge of the story's depth going in, and I was very pleasantly suprised. It's definitely a story worth telling and well done at that, widely regarded as one of the greatest musicals of all time. The sympathy and relationships created for all the characters was done excellently, which made the tragedy(-ies) and turns even the more powerful. It's visually charming, well acted, non-stop energetic, nice and tightly choreographed, and has mostly great memorable songs. There were a couple songs I'd heard before that I never knew came from this play. I have no idea what the changes were from the original/earlier versions, so I can't comment on that or if this was mostly done for a newer generation or as a passion project for Spielberg/his father(which it clearly sounds like it was in large part). But any way, it's a great film and worthy of it's existence imo.

Insomnia (2002)
3.10 out of 4stars

"In Nightmute, Alaska, seventeen year old resident Kay Connell is found murdered. Two Los Angeles Robbery Homicide police detectives, Will Dormer and Hap Eckhart, are called in to assist in the investigation. Both Dormer and Eckhart are facing some professional issues back in Los Angeles. Dormer has a major case of insomnia due to a combination of the incessant midnight sun and from a secret he is carrying. Forced into a psychological game of cat-and-mouse by the primary suspect, events escalate and the detective finds his own stability dangerously threatened."
A great psychological crime drama, with great performances from Pacino and Williams. As much as this story is about solving the murder, it is also equally about the conflict of conscience Pacino's character is having, and the gray areas police officers/detectives face and deal with in their jobs. It's a great conversation/debate starter and gives you an idea of the moral dilemmas and situations detectives live through and accumulate over their career. What is justice? What should or could be done if/when justice fails? Even leading to the old: should doing questionable, immoral, ''illegal'' things for the right reasons (arguably) be acceptable? It has to be hard staring "evil"/"the dirtiest" parts of humanity day in and day out and not let it affect you personally or professionally. Also, this is apparently a remake of a 97' Norwegian film that I have not seen, so I can't comment on that.

Inside Man (2006)
2.90 out of 4stars

"A police detective, a bank robber, and a high-power broker enter high-stakes negotiations after the criminal's brilliant heist spirals into a hostage situation."
A great cerebral heist thriller. Well cast, well acted, and full of moving parts, twists, and layers. I don't want to ruin anything, but it's quite different from most heist movies, as stated by it being more mentally engaging than, I'll say "actiony" or "over the top". It's satisfying mental popcorn entertainment, albeit I'd say the concept would not work in real life and at least one of the twists would not be possible or "presently available" for a few reasons.

Miami Vice (2006)
2.20 out of 4stars

"Based on the 1980s TV action/drama, this update focuses on vice detectives Crockett and Tubbs as their respective personal and professional lives become dangerously intertwined."
Again, never saw the TV show so I can't comment on that (beating a dead horse at this point watching films based off previously made material). If nothing else, it's another example that Michael Mann has an excellent eye for direction action (and flair for making the inbetween parts more intriguing than they appear) and affinity for the crime drama genre. This is one of those movies where the side stories of it's creation were more fun than the movie itself. Colin Farrell doesn't remember filming a frame of Miami Vice because of drug and alcohol addiction, "the second it was finished (filming, he) was put on a plane and sent to rehab as everyone else was going to the wrap party”. Jamie Foxx was a drama queen whose antics included or caused: script rewrites from the actor spontaneously leaving the set and the country, arguments with Mann, only flying by producer paid private jets, demanding top billing, and complaining about his salary which led to a raise and Farrell taking a pay cut. Ironically, it was Foxx's idea and pitch for Mann to write a movie screenplay for Miami Vice originally. Quite crazy to think a never sober Farrell was less of an issue with filming than a diva queen in Foxx. And the movie went over production budget and lost/rescheduled 7 non consecutive days of filming due to hurricane weather conditions (from Katrina, Rita, and Wilma).

 

[Pink Mist]

Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2010)

Mina (Ariane Lebed) is a 23-year-old who lives in a desolate industrial Greek city with a father dying of cancer. Emotionally stunted (for unexplained reasons) and uncomfortable around people other than her father and her best friend, with her father dying Mina dips her toes into her sexuality. Attenberg is an off-kilter and weird Greek film full of characters who have awkward sex and make strange animal sounds and dances, not unlike the films of Greek Weird Wave turned Hollywood director Yorgos Lanthimos (who has a role in this film and who Tsangari has produced films for). Comparisons between Attenberg and Lanthimos’ Dogtooth are easy to make as they both are strange films about emotionally stunted and repressed people, but I found it a bit warmer than Lanthimos’ work. Attenberg is a good eccentric take on the coming of age story and coming to terms with one’s sexuality and the passing of one’s parents, though I am beginning to wonder if there are any so called “normal” films that come out of Greece.

The most shocking part of the film and something that I did not expect to see, was Oscar nominated director Yorgos Lanthimos giving full frontal male nudity in what seems to be his only acting role of his career.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Spencer. This is my kind of "biopic." Ditch the chronological greatest hits, shrink the timeline to a few days and let a talented actor simply act rather than running them through a rote string of story beats. This is an impression or an interpretation, not an impersonation. I find efforts like this far more interesting than the more common alternative. This is a ghost story. Slap it on a double bill with Repulsion.

Torn Curtain. It is unfair of me to want/expect every Europe set 1960s thriller with high-wattage movie stars to be Charade and yet I expect every Europe set 1960s thriller with high-wattage movie stars to be Charade. It is perhaps, a tad unfair, and yet I can't help but feel like the charms of Paul Newman and Juile Andrews are utterly wasted in this drab looking thriller that's just a turn of the dial or two more serious than it needs to be. Maybe with a heavier gravitas duo like Richard Burton and Julie Christie this works a little better? It doesn't help that Andrews' character is pretty thin. Still, it's Hitchcock so it has a few genuinely riveting sequences — the farmhouse, a pseudo-interrogation between Newman and and German professor, an exceedingly tense bus ride, the surprise appearance of a young Vigo the Carpathian. (It's Vigo!). Kinda flabby and low energy though. I want more from all involved.

Between the Lines. I thought this movie of a few days in the life of a 1970s Boston alternative-weekly on the verge of being acquired was a real gem. A journalism movie that isn't about a huge story, but rather the odd hodgepodge of folks doing that work, their relationship to the industry (and to each other). Altman-esque. Well observed characters and a true sense of the realities of the business and those who decide to make it their career.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Arlington Road (1999) - 6.5/10

Middling 90s film which tries to take the Hitchcock approach but with that overly bombastic 90s enthusiasm including an over-reliance of suspense. I wonder if it'd been better done as a 70s paranoia thriller. Jeff Bridges is quite boring running around here but Tim Robbins does a solid job of playing the creep as he can.

Decent bit of psy-ops if you believe in that sort of thing, even mentioning Bin Laden in a section of the film.

 

[Chili]

Torn Curtain. It is unfair of me to want/expect every Europe set 1960s thriller with high-wattage movie stars to be Charade and yet I expect every Europe set 1960s thriller with high-wattage movie stars to be Charade. It is perhaps, a tad unfair, and yet I can't help but feel like the charms of Paul Newman and Juile Andrews are utterly wasted in this drab looking thriller that's just a turn of the dial or two more serious than it needs to be. Maybe with a heavier gravitas duo like Richard Burton and Julie Christie this works a little better? It doesn't help that Andrews' character is pretty thin. Still, it's Hitchcock so it has a few genuinely riveting sequences — the farmhouse, a pseudo-interrogation between Newman and and German professor, an exceedingly tense bus ride, the surprise appearance of a young Vigo the Carpathian. (It's Vigo!). Kinda flabby and low energy though. I want more from all involved.

.

Not sure quite what they did but I read that Hitchcock said he wouldn't work with big stars again after that film and I don't believe he did. I think Newman and Andrews were imposed on him by the studio.

 

[Stylizer1]

Watched Finch last night and it was meh. Spent all of their money on Tom Hanks and A.I.. Could have been so much better.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I'm not sure why the same thing wouldn't happen for 9s or 10s specifically, though (where it ends up being actually an 7 or 8 after thinking about it)

I guess that depends on what would constitute a 9 or a 10 after your first experience of a specific piece. To me, it's potential tears in my eyes, dreams, slaps on the knee, tingles, goosebumps and rambles to my wife or an attentive friend (but ultimately kindly uncaring/non-understanding) about how singular the thing is is what deserves a number that high. Anything in art that's gotten that out of me on a first experience (i.e., some of the movies I mentioned, listening to Beefheart's Peon for 16 hours straight for roughly 400-480 listens or VU and Nico, Blood Meridian, The Metamorphosis, Spring in Fialta) has never lessened upon further thoughts or rewatch/rereads/relistens. Some of these things just hit forever and you know the moment it's done and not only is it not going away, neither will you get complacent. You're always as attentive without breezing through it or enjoying it on instinct.

 

[heatnikki]

Space Sweepers (Korean film). Not bad. The atmosphere reminds me of TV show called The Expanse with a similar plot line of Ready Player One.

 

[Shareefruck]

I guess that depends on what would constitute a 9 or a 10 after your first experience of a specific piece. To me, it's potential tears in my eyes, dreams, slaps on the knee, tingles, goosebumps and rambles to my wife or an attentive friend (but ultimately kindly uncaring/non-understanding) about how singular the thing is is what deserves a number that high. Anything in art that's gotten that out of me on a first experience (i.e., some of the movies I mentioned, listening to Beefheart's Peon for 16 hours straight for roughly 400-480 listens or VU and Nico, Blood Meridian, The Metamorphosis, Spring in Fialta) has never lessened upon further thoughts or rewatch/rereads/relistens. Some of these things just hit forever and you know the moment it's done and not only is it not going away, neither will you get complacent. You're always as attentive without breezing through it or enjoying it on instinct.

Hmm... I guess that's true. Like if something is only considered a 10 if it feels like a lasting life-long thing to begin with, then the standard is so high that it would be closer to fool-proof. Makes some sense.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Where Eagles Dare (1968) - 7/10

Solid WW2 blow and shoot nazis up flick. Not much acting required from lead Richard Burton or the female lead who starred with him in Look Back In Anger a decade earlier. Clint Eastwood is mostly just there to squint and kill nazis. The suspense is really well handled though, it persists throughout without going to unbearable Hitchcock extents because scenes aren't generally dragged out and there's solid consistent movement with action following. The outdoor scenes look really dated in colour, maybe it could use a restoration to clean it up and improve contrast.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Jodorowsky's Dune

with people who have various weird accents

Documentary look at Chilean/French avant avant avant garde cult filmmaker/artist/creative freak Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt to film Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi opus Dune back in the mid 1970's. Jodorowsky's so far beyond the avant garde, by the time the avant garde folks even show up somewhere, he's already miles away doing some other weird creative shit on some weird drug nobody's even heard of yet, and in the early 70's he was an up and coming weirdo director of primo weirdo stuff. Naturally the French loved him, so he was tapped with with the task of filming this sci-fi monolith...which he hadn't read. No matter, he was off and running, gathering the cream of the crop of visual effects, artists, actors, musicians and other creative types to be his "spiritual warriors" to make his masterpiece. HR Giger, Chris Foss, Moebius, Dan O'Bannon, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd, Magma, David Carradine...the list went on and on. And so would the budget and script, which ballooned out to a brisk 14 hours. Jodo wanted to simulate the effects of LSD in his audience and create a primal experience that would change cinema, society and the world. Nobody ever accused him of thinking small.

The story of one of the lost masterpieces that was never made, but remains influential. The visual FX team went on to win Oscars for Alien, the costumes appeared in Flash Gordon, and of course the story itself has now had a few adaptations which bear almost no resemblance to what Jodorowsky would've put on film. It must have been a real ride while it lasted; he promised Dali $100,000 per minute he was onscreen, he promised Orson Welles he'd have his favourite chef make every meal for him every day he was filming as Baron Harkonnen, he made his son train six hours a day for two years to get ready to play Paul...but you're always waiting for the bomb to drop. Because we all know there's no way in hell any Hollywood studio is going to fund a freaking 14 hour movie made by some oddball South American/European experimental director.

Well worth watching, and save a laugh for Jodorowsky's reaction to Lynch's version.

On Prime.

The flaming giraffe would have been the most normal thing in the movie.

 

[kihei]

The Hand of God (2021) Directed by Paolo Sorrentino 8B

The Hand of God is one of those Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, coming-of-age things that roll out every couple of years like clockwork. This one has been criticized as disjointed and undercooked, but I disagree with both of those estimations. The movie is about Fabietto, just completing secondary school, and his family. The first half or so of the movie, which reminded me a bit of Fellini's biographical family drama Amarcord, is funny and almost tender. Fabietto is growing up in a loving environment where even internal family tensions don't seem like any big, overwhelming deal. His mom and dad obviously still love one another very much, and his mom is a practical joker of some originaltiy. Life seems to centre on whether Diego Maradona will sign with Naples. Though all pray he will, no one expects him to do so. But if that is the biggest problem in your life (that and losing your virginity) then your life is pretty damn good. Then something dire happens, and Fabietto is suddenly living in a very different world and what was once simple has now become increasingly complicated. Some critics object to this tonal shift in the movie but I thought director Paolo Sorrentino handled it very well. If the final part of the movie seems a bit out to sea, well, Fabietto is a bit out to sea. For Fabietto. like the rest of us, life is full of tonal shifts, and we survive them or we don't. Gorgeous cinematography and fine performances add to the film's melancholy remembrance of things past.

subtitles

Netflix

Best of '21 so far

1, The Power of the Dog, Campion, New Zealnad/US
2. Drive My Car, Yamaguchi, Japan
3. Annette, Carax, France/US
4. The Cloud in Her Room, Zheng, China
5. The Hand of God, Sorrentino, Italy
6. Bergman Island, Hansen-Love, France
7. Identifying Features, Valadez, Mexico
8. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, Jia, China (documentary)
9. Azor, Fontana, Argentina
10. Velvet Underground, Haynes, US (documentary)

 

[Puck]

Holy smokes kihei, you are really pumping them out lately and never has the world experienced such numerous changes to your top ten list at the end of the year.

(it's just a matter of time before Velvet Underground disappears)

 

[Pink Mist]

Aniara (Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 2018)

The concept of humans having a future on Mars once we’ve exhausted all our natural resources and made Earth uninhabitable has been an idea that has been kicking around a lot in recent years. Aniara, based of a Swedish epic poem which is the only science fiction work to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, explores the what ifs of this idea. In a near future, the Earth has become completely uninhabitable due to natural disaster after natural disaster has been unleashed from climate change. Humans instead are now settling on Mars to escape these disasters and start anew. However, one ship (which essentially is like a big shopping mall/hotel) goes off track and loses all its fuel trying to dodge some space debris and drifts out into the vast unknown of deep space where it might be years, decades, and centuries before they get into the gravitational pull of another planet and can realign to head towards Mars. Part disaster movie, part contemplative and depressing space movie, its dark mood and themes make an easy comparison to High Life, and it is a very haunting and existential film. Solid production value and some great cinematography, but carried by a lead performance from Emelie Jonsson, Aniara is a good film to watch as we head into the longest nights of the year.

 

[kihei]

Holy smokes kihei, you are really pumping them out lately and never has the world experienced such numerous changes to your top ten list at the end of the year.

(it's just a matter of time before Velvet Underground disappears)

I'd call it a very slow developing year and definitely not vintage. I'm also not writing up a lot of the bad ones, like Being the Ricardos-- going more with the cream of the crop. Unless something really pisses me off.....

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) - 7/10

Really nice sweet little film and the docucomedy style feels really odd here but it works well. Too bad it devolves into a bit too much of slapstick but it felt quite nostalgic. I ended up surfing Bostwana and South Africa on Google Streestsview and Youtube and went to bed at 2 AM as a result.

 

[Mrfenn92]

The Gentleman
2019

Just a great movie.

 

[kihei]

Nightmare Alley (2021) Directed by Guillermo del Toro 4A

Nightmare Alley is a remake on steroids of the original 1947 carny/noir thriller. This conman-with-Daddy-issues number came in at a fairly lean 111 minutes in the original but takes 150 minutes in the new version. Director Guillermo del Toro has made a number of changes that embellish his career-long preoccupation with the fantastic (if you look at his filmography, he is to the fantastic what Hitchcock was to suspense). One result is that the first half, especially the set design, is more fun than the second half, which, once the story leaves the carnival, goes by at a sluggish pace. I was sufficiently disengaged that my mind wandered, musing on, among other things, just how thoroughly Cate Blanchett has weaponized high society-style classiness. It is not so much that she has cornered the market as it is that she has made all other wannabes, the Blake Livelys of the world, seem ersatz in comparison. She gives a "brand" performance here, nothing more. And then I started thinking how Bradley Cooper is a good actor, but not an especially entertaining or interesting one. I mean compare him to Jack Nicholson, for instance. Just not in the same class. Harrison Ford probably isn't as good an actor as Cooper but I would prefer to watch Ford all seven days of the week in just about anything. And, then, I wondered whether Nightmare Alley was the rare movie that might have been better off with less of a budget. So, yeah, that's the way it pretty much went.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Power of the Dog was a hell of a film.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The French Dispatch (2021) - 7/10

This is solid but it's maybe a bit TOO Wes Anderson. Starts to feel redundant half-way in. The 2020s so far are all about what neat tricks directors can do with their camera and sound effects so it's pretty overloaded with that but the story isn't as captivating as Moonrise Kingdom or Grand Budapest Hotel or the two animation films.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Power of the Dog (2021) - Flawless but probably lacking a bit of that extra oomph that would make it a classic. Benedict Cumberbatch's performance almost puts it over the edge. With that said, there isn't anything that the movie doesn't do right: its acting performances are all knockouts, Jonny Greenwood moonlighting as a scorer of films should not be regarded as such anymore and its cinematography + whoever scouted those locations deserve a ton of credit. The sparse script contrats well with those candy-blue skies behind them black mountains. The thing is, it's hard not to feel like it's something that's been done before, albeit rarely as well. The structure is familiar and its cadence is aggressively classical (numbered chapters, each ending with a scene that serves as a dramatic exclamation point) but the intensity is sharp and comes at you like a fast whip. Fictional cowboys are great but there's no great Raylan Givens hero/badass here. Naturally, there'll never be a time where Raylan Givens won't have me muttering hell yeah under my breath when he's doing some cowboy shit, but his types will also never hold the emotional pull that those from The Power of the Dog do.

With that said, the film captures one's attention immediately and everyone involved in the film deserves a hell of a cheer.