Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}

[Osprey]

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - 9/10
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - 8/10
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - 10/10

 

[ItsFineImFine]

They Cloned Tyrone (2023) - 7.5/10

Enjoyed this one. Funny blaxploitation dark comedy with a bit of sci-fi thrown in. It falls apart a bit if you start thinking too hard about the sci-fi such as the real reason for the clones but it's more of a ride is better than the destination films. Three leads here (Boyega, Foxx, and girl who plays Monica Rambeau in Marvel nowadays) are a great trio. I know modern screwballs aren't a thing but this at times is the closest we have to their sharp one-liner writing. Final act might not live up to the hype, is borderline silly, and the runtime suffers from being 10-20 mins longer than it needs to be as most similar films do these days but one of the better ones of the year for me regardless.

Great Expectations (1946) - 7/10

Solid classic British drama directed by David Lean, who else would you want to give the stiff British upper lip for this sort of Dickens adaptation. Like with most other classic book adaptations, I think the ending falls really flat on film but Lean does a good job of constantly having colourful actors come and go around the bland protagonist to keep the film engaging. His cinematography's always been mediocre though compared to a Powell so he doesn't make the most of the shots from the countryside or from London but he always keeps his films moving along well and prevents them in general from getting too melodramatic.

 

[Chili]

Room at the Top-1959

Smoker of a drama (literally and figuratively). A brash young man, Joe (Laurence Harvey), arrives in town to start a new job. He takes a fancy to a young girl who happens to be the daughter of one of the most powerful men in town. He is also attracted to Alice, a married woman (Simone Signoret who won the best actress award over the Hepburns, Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day). Her husband is a philanderer and not a very nice guy. Real strong performance from her, much of it conveyed through her eyes and expressions during a 'Mrs Robinson' type of affair with the younger Joe (although Alice has a heart). Greed, power. lust, passion, infidelity. social climbing and ultimately a morality play. The film covers a lot of ground and does it all so well.

Running on Empty-1988

A family on the run from the FBI for a Vietnam war protest bombing of a Napalm laboratory many years before. Father, mother and their two boys have become used to pulling up stakes and moving on from a town at a moments notice if they feel the law closing in. Liked this film many years ago and it has aged well. Several moving performances, highlighted by a scene with Christine Lahti meeting her father for the first time in many years and the heartfelt emotions exchanged. The script was written by Naomi Foner (mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal). River Phoenix as the older son is so good. Although his piano playing is dubbed, he spent ~6 months learning the keys to give the illusion that it really was him playing the music. One reason that I like Sidney Lumet films is his judicious use of music. He loved classical but had stopped listening for a while because it made him sad. Great film about family.

Nights of Cabiria-1957 (subtitles)

The film starts out with a scene that seems innocent, a man and woman running in a field, hand in hand, heading towards the riverbank. And then a sudden shocking twist.He's running off with her purse and she's helplessly floating down river. A day in the life of a Rome prostitute and the film grabbed my close attention from the start. Cabiria may be diminutive but she is full of life. Like others in her circle of ladies of the evening, she seeks the dream of a better life. Was trying to think of great films where a director directed their spouse and she starred. There is probably a bunch on looking it up (i.e. Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking, Joel Coen & Frances McDormand in Fargo etc.). Director Fedrico Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina as Cabiria is a knockout here, what a beautiful smile. A pretty masterful job of sound, the train, church bells, grandfather clock, music nicely mixed in. Memorable film, I could imagine Chaplin giving his thumbs up to the ending.

As a sidenote, I noticed that there is a classic silent Italian film called Cabiria (1914), set in the third century BC. Would like to check it out at some point if I can track down the restored version. Roger Ebert wrote a great review on the film:

The stuff of dreams movie review (1914) | Roger Ebert

On my last night at Cannes 2006, I climbed to the fifth floor of the Palais du Cinema to see a 180-minute silent epic made in 1914. Giovanni Pastrone's

www.rogerebert.com

 

[Hierso]

Two Thousand Maniacs!

Every so often i get a hankering to watch some old movie and this time around i had fun but it's not a great movie by any means. The director Herschell Gordon Lewis is kinda famous in low-budget movies because he was one of the first well known exploitation directors here with Blood feast. Anyway the movie is about ghosts from the civilwar holding a festival where they kill northerners.

If your going to watch the movie, be prepared to have the god damn theme song stuck in your head. The god damn banjo music is stuck in my head YEEE-HAAW

2/5.

 

[Nakatomi]

eXistenZ - 5/10

A very dated feeling late 90s Cronenberg film starring Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The latter is the world's greatest video game maker and the film kicks off with her introducing her latest video game to some fanboys.

It was a bit heavy-handed in its messaging but some of the world building and little visual jokes were fun.

All in all, I think Jude Law was the only one taking this thing seriously.

 

[Avs2022]

Can anyone who's seen Oppenheimer comment if the dialogue was easily understandable without subtitles or if it would be better to wait for the streaming release so it can be watched with subs?

It's also 3 hours long and I'm not looking too forward to sitting in the theatre for three hours but I know I'll like the film based on reviews and the director, just wanna be able to watch it so I can actually understand it.

I watched it. Easily understandable without subtitles. The 3 hours pass very fast also.

 

[kihei]

Hidden Blade (2023) Directed by Er Cheng 6C

After I wrote this review, I looked up how the film did on Rotten Tomatoes. Hilariously, the blurb that summarized the movie had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. It must have been written by the Chinese government and everybody just cut and pasted it without watching the movie. Director Er Cheng is a wannabe Christopher Nolan and his movie is about spies maneuvering for position in China in the late '30s and early to mid '40s as Japanese influence begins to wane. Hidden Blade (unfortunate title, sounds like a samurai movie) is largely impenetrable in its first hour though eventually I was finally able to sort things out. It is an espionage story about a fairly obscure subject told from a Communist perspective which is in itself something that you don't see every day at the movies. Despite Cheng's confusing, often context-free time jumps, Hidden Blade is well worth seeing for its abundance of well directed, brilliantly acted and very stylish scenes--Cheng just puts them together in a needlessly convoluted fashion. If he ever loses the Christopher Nolan fixation, he well might become a major director. A great cast including Tony Leung and pop star Yibo Wang (who is an excellent actor--maybe the next Tony Leung) create fascinatingly complex characters who sometimes seem to be on all sides at once. Scene after scene is riveting even though it does take considerable patience to put them together in a manner better than the director did. If ever a movie's sum of its parts was greater than its whole it is this one.

subtitles

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Inside - 1/10

Probably one of the worst and most boring movies I have ever seen.

 

[shadow1]

Maniac Cop (1988) - 6/10

A man dressed as a police officer is on a killing spree in New York City.

Tom Atkins stars as Frank McCrae, a detective investigating the string of killings. When an eyewitness sees an officer killing one of the victims, McCrae is instructed to withhold this information from the media. When he does the opposite, panic ensues, resulting in patrol officer Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) being falsely arrested for murder. Believing Forrest to be innocent, it's up to McCrae to figure out who within the department is responsible for the slayings...

Maniac Cop was directed by William Lustig, and written by Larry Cohen. This exploitation features a who's who of B-movie stars - including Atkins, Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, and Robert Z'Dar - and has gone on to become a cult classic over the years. Viewing it 35 years later, how has it aged?

Fairly well. For a genre film of that era, Manic Cop has decent kill sequences, and also mystery elements that keep you guessing. The film isn't a whodunit per se, but the mystery surrounding what's driving the killer and who else may be in on it kept me intrigued. Maniac Cop also has a midpoint twist, which is probably the most famous part of the film.

However, Maniac Cop still has its fair share of weaknesses. The dialogue is bad, with lots of on-the-nose exposition where characters are really speaking to the audience rather than each other. The Maniac Cop character has a flushed out backstory, but the protagonists are cardboard cutouts; Tom Atkin's character has some backstory with a crammed in line about him being suicidal, but we see no evidence of this and it never comes back in any meaningful way. Finally, I thought the third act - set in broad daylight, as opposed to the night setting of the rest of the film - was the weakest part of the movie, with action sequences that look like something you'd see on an 80's TV show like Magnum P.I.

Overall, Maniac Cop is a good slasher-esque exploitation film. I've heard a lot about this movie over the years, and though I don't think it's a film I'll return to often, it was still well worth the watch as a fan of genre films. Maniac Cop spawned two sequels in the proceeding five years, with Lustig and Cohen both returning to direct/write.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Maniac Cop (1988) - 6/10

Maniac Cop spawned two sequels in the proceeding five years, with Lustig and Cohen both returning to direct/write.

That's very generous of you. I haven't seen the original one in years, but I did comment on the sequels on here. Thinking back of the chase scene of the turd one got me laughing alone, I guess it might have deserved the 1/10 so bad it's good grade.

 

[shadow1]

That's very generous of you. I haven't seen the original one in years, but I did comment on the sequels on here. Thinking back of the chase scene of the turd one got me laughing alone, I guess it might have deserved the 1/10 so bad it's good grade.

I almost have it a 5, but in the end figured it was decent enough for to eke out a 6.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I almost have it a 5, but in the end figured it was decent enough for to eke out a 6.

If you look at my post just before the Maniac Cop sequels, I'm pretty sure that's the only 10/10 I gave on here.

 

[shadow1]

If you look at my post just before the Maniac Cop sequels, I'm pretty sure that's the only 10/10 I gave on here.

Nice review!

But I'm pretty sure you gave also Halloween Ends a 10/10, though I think you forgot to type the "0" in the numerator...

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) - 7/10

Somewhat redeemed for me in the end with a cheesy Capra-esque courtroom scene but the rest of the film is a mixed bag. The Mr. Deeds character is hard to read played by the usually flat Gary Cooper (shame Jimmy Stewart couldn't be used here like he was in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington). At one moment, the title character is a wise honest earnest soul and at the next, he punches someone in the face. The Adam Sandler re-make might actually have more character consistency. It doesn't help that Jean Sinusface Arthur is the love interest, I'm not her biggest fan.

 

[Ceremony]

Deep Impact (1998): Emotionally manipulative bullshit. Morgan Freeman is the leader of the free world and I'm cheering for the meteor to destroy the earth.

Rain Man (1988): The Wikipedia page for this film claims the film raised awareness of autistic spectrum disorders when it was released. I can only hope this is true, because watching it just made me feel very uncomfortable. Tom Cruise is an android who learns how different humans think. The day after I watched this Lisa's Substitute was on TV, so the film remains the second best thing I've seen which ends with Dustin Hoffman leaving on a train as the main character ponders how he altered their view of the world and themselves.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001): I went to see this on a school trip when it was released. It was probably the first film I'd seen based on a book I knew, and since I was 9 I'd obviously read however many books there were at that time enough to know them off by heart. The film was not a perfect recreation of what I had seen in my mind, so naturally it was the worst thing in the world. Watching it now, I realise I misunderstood it. Absolutely hysterical. No wonder Americans think British people all talk that way.

Underwater (2020): Kristen Stewart has seen Alien at some point in her life and obviously felt like shaving her head and running around a narrow, poorly-lit engineering location in her undies. The main difference is that Alien has tension, suspense, action, characterisation, coherent camerawork and good acting. I've just looked it up and discovered it apparently cost at least fifty million dollars to make. It must have gone on waterproofing Kristen's eyeshadow which remains flawless throughout.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019): I saw about ten minutes near the end of this when it was on TV as I went to bed. I decided to watch until I could understand what was going on. Someone who isn't Tobey Maguire does some extremely unconvincing CGI to try and stop a guy from using a bunch of drones to make it look like Tower Bridge is being attacked. My understanding of Marvel is that there about a hundred films that are all like this. God help us all.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

In The Heat of The Night (1968) - 8/10

Great mystery-drama made right after the Hays code ended in the few years before Hollywood directors had too much freedom and went up their own ass later in the 70s. Strong acting by Rod Steiger playing the police chief which I appreciated more after seeing his completely different character from The Pawnbroker made a few years before and also by Poitier. The actual scenes set at night have a really moody small shithole town atmosphere and the scenes showing blatant racism are well done too but what I liked the most is that the actual mystery investigation here despite it almost being a background, is done far better than it is in many actual mystery films....speaking of which:

Murdery, My Sweet (1944) - 6/10

Found it hard to pay attention to this noir Phillip Marlowe story. It's a mystery with an extremely convoluted and dissatisfying plot but I would say the same applies to the other Marlowe stories I've seen adapted to film outside of maybe The Big Sleep which was at least strongly acted. You have a tonne of noir film lingo and one-liners but they aren't as witty as they were in earlier screwball comedies and obviously they aren't funny either. The film also completely fails when it comes to suspense, there's basically none which is what you need to make a noir good and when there is, it's shrouded in a really complicated mystery which was apparently pieced together through multiple short stories.

 

[OzzyFan]

Underwater (2020): Kristen Stewart has seen Alien at some point in her life and obviously felt like shaving her head and running around a narrow, poorly-lit engineering location in her undies. The main difference is that Alien has tension, suspense, action, characterisation, coherent camerawork and good acting. I've just looked it up and discovered it apparently cost at least fifty million dollars to make. It must have gone on waterproofing Kristen's eyeshadow which remains flawless throughout.

 

[Ceremony]

You barely even see the things! They're all underwater and cloudy and obscured because they're at the bottom of the ocean! God knows what the computers were doing.

You barely even see the things! They're all underwater and cloudy and obscured because they're at the bottom of the ocean! God knows what the computers were doing.

 

[Raging Bull]

Once Upon a Time in America:

This is one I've put off watching my whole life. The last few years I'd see it all the time scrolling through Prime, and almost commit to it but the 4 hour runtime meant I kept shying away. Finally just started it on a whim thinking I'd get maybe half way through it, stayed up til midnight finishing it. Four hours passes by quick, what a terrific film. More than a gang/mob movie, the best parts of it to me are the coming of age stuff at the beginning.

 

[OzzyFan]

Barbie (2023) Directed by Greta Gerwig 8A

Discovering that her feet are suddenly flat and that her legs are developing cellulite, Barbie (Margot Robbie) suffers an existential crisis. She is advised to leave Barbieland and rectify the rift that is occurring between her matriarchal, idealized doll world and the real world outside, still largely dominated by patriarchal authority figures. Ken (Ryan Gosling) goes along for the ride. Turns out he thinks patriarchy is a pretty good idea, and he returns to Barbieland with plans to reform the place. Barbie is still trying to figure things out, but she knows a bad idea when she sees one. Still, she has a lot of thinking to do before she can work out what to do next.

I have to go back to Doctor Strangelove to think of a satire this clever and this thoroughly realized. I think Barbie is especially brilliant when one considers the tightrope that director Greta Gerwig had to walk given the fact that Mattel, maker of Barbie, is one of the major producers of this film. She has to take into account Barbie's history as an idealized sex object with an hour-glass figure and her feet permanently deformed so that she can wear high heels. Then there is the fact that Barbie remains a much loved figure to many of the girls/women who grew up with her and remember her fondly. Add to this a very light, almost frothy, yet still pointed critique of patriarchy and a healthy dose of female empowerment, and it is a heady achievement to pull all this stuff off and look graceful doing it. The material is handled with wit, humour and a candy-coloured tonal palette and supported by set direction and costume design that are already locks for Academy Awards. The result is a special movie that says something important and has a whole lot of fun doing it. As well, the acting is top notch with Robbie perfectly calibrating her performance somewhere between clueless doll and emerging consciousness, and Gosling largely stealing the second half of the movie with his suddenly conflicted Ken. All and all, a tour-de-force for Gerwig and the best American movie so far this year.


Best of '23 so far

1) Riceboy Sleeps, Shim, Canada
2) Barbie, Gerwig, US

Yeah, Barbie was pretty great. I half went in as devil’s advocate thinking maybe people were wrong about its success, maybe people were pushing it as a movement statement and I could possibly get lecturing and over the top “girlie” stuff happening, but I did not. It has to be one of the funniest and most disarming/affable feminism movies one can see. The vast majority of the film has a contagious fun and joyous tone while surprisingly getting its numerous messages and points across cohesively and with great logic that leads to a shrewd conclusion. Those topics include feminism, patriarchy, existentialism, consumerism, gender norms/gender roles, realism, and socio-politics. Robbie and Gosling are great, and the visuals are spot on. It’s so odd though, because the film’s subject matter and conclusions as a whole are paradoxical or bittersweet, which might be the point.

Edit: Yes, the Mattel producer balance is an interesting one, because there is some obvious Mattel bashing within the film but also some light brought to a lot of it.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The Narrow Margin (1952) - 7/10

Want a solid no-bullshit 70 minute film? This is it....it's not a noir but same plot style with a witness/woman who has to be protected by a cop on a train which happens to have the bad guys trying to knock her off. Some tension (but never an unnerving amount which I appreciate) and some one-liners follow. Nothing glorious here just solid film making with no big name actors but it's decently acted.

Spartacus (1960) - 7.5/10

Would've watched this one sooner had I realized it was directed by Kubrick. Beautiful film, was worried it would have the pacing issues of Ben-Hur but it was better done although it never had any scene as good as that chariot-horse race. There's a really good fight scene done well in the first third but it never follows it up with any further ones of the same strength unfortunately. The final third of the film is a bit of a let down compared to the first two thirds but it's still a solid epic.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Haven't watched a movie in two months (Raging Bull on the big screen) and Barbie seems to always be full when my wife and I show up (three trips, each time it filled up while we were in line!). Thinking of going on a Jean-Pierre Melville run and I've never watched a single of his film. Is it worth it?

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The Others (2001) - 6/10

I think this film tried to capitalize on the trend of The Sixth Sense and couldn't do it well at all. Sets up decently but falls into dullness, maybe overrelies on Nicole Kidman (whose acting in the first half isn't exactly riveting as she's playing a bitchy part), and the ending isn't exactly riveting or thrilling in 2023. I say that as someone who doesn't watch horror films in general....this never really falls into horror and isn't much of a thriller either, just an average film and one with some very dull colours. Almost felt it would've been better as a black and white classic.

Haven't watched a movie in two months (Raging Bull on the big screen) and Barbie seems to always be full when my wife and I show up (three trips, each time it filled up while we were in line!). Thinking of going on a Jean-Pierre Melville run and I've never watched a single of his film. Is it worth it?

I never have problems if I go during the daytime or on the first Sunday show but I live in the suburbs and wait till the film's been out for 2 weeks at least.

I've only seen 7 of Melville's films so far. Bob The Gamber and Le Doulous were overrated (but not bad). Army of Shadows and The Silence of The Sea were good. Le Cercle Rouge and Leon Morin, Priest were very good. And Le Samouraï is one of the greatest classics imo.

 

[LeafalCrusader]

The Gray Man 2/10

Lets see if I can explain the paper thin plot. Gosling is a CIA assassin hunted by another assassin (Chris Evans doing his douchebag role from Knives Out) protecting his mentor Billy Bob Thornton and his mentor's niece with the help of Ana De Armas (who's in everything now days it seems).

Basically a bunch of fight scenes. Every five minutes they go to a new country shoot up a bunch of stuff then move on.

I like dumb actions flicks but at least make it fun not dull. Wouldn't recommend.

 

[kihei]

Talk to Me (2023) Directed by Danny and MIchael Philippou 8A

Talk to Me starts out like a fun, low-budget teenage horror movie with a damn good premise. One of the characters comes into possession of a preserved severed hand that when grasped by some one causes hallucinations (or so the characters think) of dead people. The "game" the kids make of this is in the nature of a dare: Can an individual hold the hand for 90 seconds without freaking out too much? Will each teen be brave enough to "let in" the spirits for the full time duration? The kids find all this trippy as hell, great creepy fun, Then, Mia (Sophie Wilde), the most charming member of the group, takes up the challenge, and holds on to the hand a little longer than she should. Serious consequences ensue, and not just for Mia.

While Talk to Me stays a horror movie all the way through its running time, and a pretty decent one at that, the story slowly wades into deeper and far darker waters. Sort of in the background initially but moving steadily into the foreground is a narrative about the debilitating nature of grief and the consequences for other people, people you care about, that come when grief is embraced too deeply and for too long. All this works beautifully because of the wonderful, star-making performance by Wilde who creates a thoroughly believable and sympathetic character. For once a horror audience has a character that they can deeply care about. In fact, Talk to Me contains a welcome absence of cannon fodder for the sake of cannon fodder. No one is there just to be wasted in gruesome ways. This, of course, makes what happens all the more powerful. And the ending has a nice, lingering sting in its tail.

I don't want to oversell this movie. It's no masterpiece. But it is a good, well-constructed horror movie that might stick in your head for a while.


Best of '23 so far

Riceboy Sleeps, Shim, Canada
Barbie, Gerwig, US
Talk to Me, Philippou brothers, Australia