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

[shadow1]

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) - 6/10

A year after a hit-and-run, four friends are stalked by a mysterious killer.

Jennifer Love Hewitt stars as Julie, who along with friends Barry (Ryan Phillippe), Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is celebrating at a secluded party before her friends split up and head off the college. However, on the drive back, the crew hit a pedestrian with their car, and in a moment of weakness flee the scene. One year later, the now fractured group must reunite after they each receive accusatory letters...

I Know What you Did Last Summer was directed by Jim Gillespie, and written by Scream (1996)'s Kevin Williamson. Written years before Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer was quickly greenly after the former's massive success. With the same writer, how does the film fare against Wes Craven's classic?

Unlike the very self aware Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer plays it straight. It's a non-nonsense slasher whodunit, with the principal characters investigating the events as other characters get picked off. This is a formula I enjoy, though the execution here is bumpy (more on that later). The film has the dream team of recognizable late-90's actors, which includes supporting roles from Johnny Galecki, Anne Heche, and Bridgette Wilson. Overall the cast does a good job, and is probably the most notable thing about this film. I also think the killer has a cool look, though we see very little of them on screen.

As mentioned, I Know What You Did Last Summer struggles in its execution. It's a slasher film, but there are no memorable kills or scares. I'm no gore hound, but the violence here is so tame I was stunned to discover this film earned an R rating. Furthermore, the mystery element is bungled a bit. The filmmakers do a good job at setting it up initially, but red herrings are quickly removed and the final reveal is extremely unsatisfying, as you'd need a crystal ball to figure it out.

Overall, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a movie. It's popcorn entertainment that kept my attention throughout, but managed to underwhelm in the end. It is an easy watch at least, and barely ekes out a 6 from me. Though I think it's an extremely average movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer was a big box office hit, earning $125M against a $17M budget.

 

[Neil Racki]

Dang ... yall are some cinemaphiles talking about movies ive never heard of

Lean On Pete - 6.5/10. A straight forward character piece about a good 15 year old boy trying to find something to eat/something that resembles a normal childhood while the adult world seems ready to welcome him early. Set in the backdrop of the world of low end horse racing. Boy befriends an older horse, runs off with it when its time to send it to the glue factory.

Im sure there is some in your face symbolism or parrallels btw the horse figure and his father figure. Horse situaiton and the boys situation. Boy never gives up on people despite people not being worthy ... people fail the boy but he stays optimistic and never fails them

Decent but was hoping for more, movie came with some hype

 

[kihei]

For those intrigued by Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais has a host of other interesting films, including:

Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Muriel
La guerre est finie
Je t'aime, je t'aime
Providence (in English)
Mon oncle d'Amerique

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

For those intrigued by Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais has a host of other interesting films, including:

Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Muriel
La guerre est finie
Je t'aime, je t'aime
Providence
Mon oncle d'Amerique

Mon oncle d'Amérique is another 10/10 for me, and I love Je t'aime, je t'aime, Providence and Hiroshima, (some of them borderline 10s too). I'd add On connaît la chanson to that list, and some of the best short films ever made too: Nuit et brouillard (of course), Toute la mémoire du monde, and Les statues meurent aussi (made with Chris Marker).

Smoking/No Smoking is an experimental piece that goes on for way too long, but that has some interesting elements.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Hiroshima, mon amour would rank extremely high for me as well. There's a couple of things that felt a little off/unnecessary about it to me (mostly the woman's flashback in her youth, they felt clunky/melodramatic) but what a film.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I’d like to suggest for those that have not seen Last Year at Marienbad to not read my review below. As Spring in Fialta has said, the movie is so interpretable and subjective that knowing nothing and being tilted toward no views is far and away the best way to get the most out of the film, especially on a personal level.


Last Year at Marienbad (1961) (subtitles)

“Part mystery, part fever dream, and possibly a ghost story, Last Year At Marienbad follows a married woman, A, and a man, X, through the empty rooms of a luxurious, baroque hotel that time forgot. X tries to persuade the incredulous A that they met in the same place the year before.”

An excellent art film with stylishly stunning cinematography, brilliant narrative approach/enactment, and persistently poetic surrealism. It’s hypnotic. The beginning portion feels like a commentary on how there is so much going on in the world at once from so many different opinions and for so many different reasons, that life itself has endless possibilities and actualities. I can understand why it is amongst the top of many’s all-time best film lists, because if you open up to the film and really absorb it, it’s incredibly rewarding (and challenging). It’s good overwhelming, yet basic in premise. Continuously pulling you in but making you question every word and everything occurring along the way. It’s heavily psychological. Thematically I felt the film was about the objectivity of truth/reality and memory, and/or the power of obsession/love/lust on the mind, and/or a combination of those 2 in motivated perception…the process by which people’s active desires, needs, and motivations shape their perceptual experiences. Also thematically, it seems to be about how powerless people can be on impacting other people at times and about fate itself. No matter how hard the man tried or wanted, it felt like he was never going to change the woman’s mind, in the future or past or present. We are only in control of ourselves, and even then still limited by fate and external factors. The film is just about perfect in its manipulations and obscurities. Legitimately the man and woman can be explained by extreme ends of the spectrum in their identities/personas and backgrounds or anything in between and it would not feel out of place. For example, the man could be a psychotic serial rapist meeting an old victim/coming upon one that got away/foreseeing a future account or a tender cultured hopeless romantic that is in the presence of his true love/remembering his true love/dreaming of what his true love would be like. He could be everything from a complete and absolute liar to “one hundred percent” truthful with some recollection and confidence issues. As Spring in Fialta said, the possibilities are endless in interpretation. My take on the literal story is about a seemingly rich (given the setting) lonely depressed man reliving inside his head, or possibly even a tangible long stay at the hotel in which he is recalling, a fling he had in the supposedly past year with another woman patron. Everything is playing out inside the man’s head as he’s hopelessly tortured by the love and high he experienced alongside eternal questions of what possibly went wrong or seemed off to end that relationship from becoming something more. It’s “a game he can win, but always loses”. It’s “past” and “too late”, arguably bittersweet but in the end tragic and haunting. The audience has no idea on the why or any of the woman’s point of view, but only knows what the man felt and now deals with internally.

Awesome review. I have to do it like this because I troll too much on other boards.

 

[Bahama Mama]

I knew of this movie since I was a child but never saw it until recently. Absolutely delightful and very funny,some great lines in it. The stars in that day had charm and charisma and found nothing wrong with the film,nothing is ever perfect so I'll give it a 9

Ein Hauch von Nerz (1962) ⭐ 6.6 | Comedy, Romance

1h 39m | 16

www.imdb.com

 

[Osprey]

Overall, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a movie.

This is the kind of analysis that keeps me reading all of the way to the end of shadow1's reviews.

 

[kihei]

In Resnais' work, Je t'aime, je t'aime is the real sleeper. I have never been quite able to get it out of my head even after all these years.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

In Resnais' work, Je t'aime, je t'aime is the real sleeper. I have never been quite able to get it out of my head even after all these years.

And if anybody tracks it down to see it, just don't look up anything about the film beforehand. It's certainly not what you think it is.

 

[OzzyFan]

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
3.15 out of 4stars

“Recently released from prison, Dix Handley concocts a plan to steal $1 million in jewels. Dix gathers a team of small-time crooks, including a safecracker, a muscle, and a lawyer, and the heist is a success until a stray bullet kills one of the men and starts the cycle of everything going sideways.”
A great noir that tells a thoroughly developed heist story with fleshed out characters. There was some minor discussion on the film’s “entertainment value”/quality a couple months ago, and I can see why. The film is told in a straightforward no frills/minimal thrills sort of way and you kind of have an idea how most of it will play out given so much foreshadowing going on. That can be off putting for some and does give the film a milquetoast undercurrent throughout. Not to mention, all the characters feel very human and believable, which both helps and brings relatability but also hurts if you are looking for flash and grandeur. That said, there is a lot to like. As stated, this film is heavily detailed, smartly written, contains great dialogue, and has a stable of characters that entice in one way or another (with quality acting). It’s an admirable achievement all around and quite entertaining. Supposedly very influential in the heist film subgenre and on criminal perspective told crime films.

High Plains Drifter (1973)
3.10 out of 4stars

“A gun-fighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.”
A great western that is an unusually dark, eerie, and at times vile Clint Eastwood tale. The anti-hero Clint plays here may well be the nastiest and evilest character he’s ever portrayed. Tonally bipolar, but it works quite well through a mixture of charm, black humor, and wickedness. Very cleverly, the dialogue often has meaning as well as being comedic. The script is sometimes so good, that even the manner and aftermath of one sexual encounter subtly ties to another event. And the mysterious protagonist aside, the character development for the whole cast is superb. Thematically the film is about accountability, cowardice, and judgment. Evil can have many faces, and startlingly be just as powerful in sly and weak inactive manners as flamboyant and strong physical ones. There are many scenes, a couple huge ones, that you originally think you are viewing in one context but actually should be discerning in a different way. Such a great script flipper/convention twister.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Grumpy Old Men (1993) - 6/10

It's not particularly grumpy and imo the scenes with Anne Meredith take away from the better scenes between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau which provide the actual comedy here. My grade 11 science teacher was a bit of a Red Green type and had a giant poster of this up in the class, I can see why now as the basic humour in this film probably appealed to middle-aged men in the 90s.

I do wanna add that this film has a really unnecessary black character death. No guns or real violence in this movie just a black character that gets killed off-screen for really no reason that contributes to the plot. I can see why they say the black guy always gets killed first.

 

[Chili]

Death of a Salesman-1951

'A salesman's gotta dream, it comes with the territory'

The classic Arthur Miller play of a salesman of many years, Willy Loman (Frederic March), his devoted wife (Mildred Dunnock) and two sons Biff & Happy (Kevin McCarthy and Cameron Mitchell). After 36 years on the road, Willy is tired and the trips are getting harder. His long time clients have moved on or passed on, he is now on straight commission. His mind is starting to wander, drifting back to key points in his life.

The 'American Dream' of working hard and achieving success for yourself and family only to realize one day that life has dealt you a different hand. A father who has done his best but has little to show for his efforts. Sons trying to live up to the loftly expectations of their father. And a mother caught in the middle. Believe the story is still relevant and a sad one. The aging employee realizing where he stands with a company reminded me of another great film from the '50's, Patterns. The opening credits used a backseat view Of Willy crossing what may be the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the cast had performed the play on stage, they all excel here. First class film.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
3.15 out of 4stars

“Recently released from prison, Dix Handley concocts a plan to steal $1 million in jewels. Dix gathers a team of small-time crooks, including a safecracker, a muscle, and a lawyer, and the heist is a success until a stray bullet kills one of the men and starts the cycle of everything going sideways.”
A great noir that tells a thoroughly developed heist story with fleshed out characters. There was some minor discussion on the film’s “entertainment value”/quality a couple months ago, and I can see why. The film is told in a straightforward no frills/minimal thrills sort of way and you kind of have an idea how most of it will play out given so much foreshadowing going on. That can be off putting for some and does give the film a milquetoast undercurrent throughout. Not to mention, all the characters feel very human and believable, which both helps and brings relatability but also hurts if you are looking for flash and grandeur. That said, there is a lot to like. As stated, this film is heavily detailed, smartly written, contains great dialogue, and has a stable of characters that entice in one way or another (with quality acting). It’s an admirable achievement all around and quite entertaining. Supposedly very influential in the heist film subgenre and on criminal perspective told crime films.

High Plains Drifter (1973)
3.10 out of 4stars

“A gun-fighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.”
A great western that is an unusually dark, eerie, and at times vile Clint Eastwood tale. The anti-hero Clint plays here may well be the nastiest and evilest character he’s ever portrayed. Tonally bipolar, but it works quite well through a mixture of charm, black humor, and wickedness. Very cleverly, the dialogue often has meaning as well as being comedic. The script is sometimes so good, that even the manner and aftermath of one sexual encounter subtly ties to another event. And the mysterious protagonist aside, the character development for the whole cast is superb. Thematically the film is about accountability, cowardice, and judgment. Evil can have many faces, and startlingly be just as powerful in sly and weak inactive manners as flamboyant and strong physical ones. There are many scenes, a couple huge ones, that you originally think you are viewing in one context but actually should be discerning in a different way. Such a great script flipper/convention twister.

I have an all over the place relationship to Eastwood and his movies (as actor and director) but I've always thought this is among his true best. Pale Rider treads a lot of the same ground and is better liked but I much prefer the weirdness and rawness of this to the polish of that movie.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I’d like to suggest for those that have not seen Last Year at Marienbad to not read my review below. As Spring in Fialta has said, the movie is so interpretable and subjective that knowing nothing and being tilted toward no views is far and away the best way to get the most out of the film, especially on a personal level.


Last Year at Marienbad (1961) (subtitles)

“Part mystery, part fever dream, and possibly a ghost story, Last Year At Marienbad follows a married woman, A, and a man, X, through the empty rooms of a luxurious, baroque hotel that time forgot. X tries to persuade the incredulous A that they met in the same place the year before.”

An excellent art film with stylishly stunning cinematography, brilliant narrative approach/enactment, and persistently poetic surrealism. It’s hypnotic. The beginning portion feels like a commentary on how there is so much going on in the world at once from so many different opinions and for so many different reasons, that life itself has endless possibilities and actualities. I can understand why it is amongst the top of many’s all-time best film lists, because if you open up to the film and really absorb it, it’s incredibly rewarding (and challenging). It’s good overwhelming, yet basic in premise. Continuously pulling you in but making you question every word and everything occurring along the way. It’s heavily psychological. Thematically I felt the film was about the objectivity of truth/reality and memory, and/or the power of obsession/love/lust on the mind, and/or a combination of those 2 in motivated perception…the process by which people’s active desires, needs, and motivations shape their perceptual experiences. Also thematically, it seems to be about how powerless people can be on impacting other people at times and about fate itself. No matter how hard the man tried or wanted, it felt like he was never going to change the woman’s mind, in the future or past or present. We are only in control of ourselves, and even then still limited by fate and external factors. The film is just about perfect in its manipulations and obscurities. Legitimately the man and woman can be explained by extreme ends of the spectrum in their identities/personas and backgrounds or anything in between and it would not feel out of place. For example, the man could be a psychotic serial rapist meeting an old victim/coming upon one that got away/foreseeing a future account or a tender cultured hopeless romantic that is in the presence of his true love/remembering his true love/dreaming of what his true love would be like. He could be everything from a complete and absolute liar to “one hundred percent” truthful with some recollection and confidence issues. As Spring in Fialta said, the possibilities are endless in interpretation. My take on the literal story is about a seemingly rich (given the setting) lonely depressed man reliving inside his head, or possibly even a tangible long stay at the hotel in which he is recalling, a fling he had in the supposedly past year with another woman patron. Everything is playing out inside the man’s head as he’s hopelessly tortured by the love and high he experienced alongside eternal questions of what possibly went wrong or seemed off to end that relationship from becoming something more. It’s “a game he can win, but always loses”. It’s “past” and “too late”, arguably bittersweet but in the end tragic and haunting. The audience has no idea on the why or any of the woman’s point of view, but only knows what the man felt and now deals with internally.

Just wanted to go back a portion of this post for a bit, mostly because I agree with so much with it. Robbe-Grillet was notorious for disdaining any form of psychological analysis of his work but they obviously are and I always loved this explanation from Vladimir Nabokov, a notoriously difficult critic for whom the only writers who obtained uncompromising praise were Pushkin, Borges, Kafka and Robbe-Grillet:

"Do you think Robbe-Grillet's novels are as free of 'psychology' as he claims?

Robbe-Grillet's claims are preposterous. Those manifestations, those dodoes, die with the dadas. His fiction is magnificently poetical and original, and the shifts of levels, the interpenetration of successive impressions and so forth belong of course to psychology—psychology at its best."

And on Marienbad:

"In March [of 1962] he saw one of the very few movies he sought out in the nearly twenty years of his final European period: Robbe-Grillet's [sic] L'Année derniere a Marienbad, a film that delighted him not so much by its labyrinthine compulsiveness as by its originality and its romanticism."
—Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov, The American Years, Princeton, 1991

To read one master of memory recognize another (Chris Marker another) despite vastly different styles is a fun read.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Air (2023) - 7/10

This felt a bit too....corporate masturbatory not to mention sportswashing Michael Jordan. Felt like Affleck is a fanboy of Nike/Jordan and was also not allowed to be too critical in his portrayal.

It is a good film though. The chemistry between Wahlb...I mean Damon, Bateman, Affleck, etc is pretty enjoyable and this feels almost like a Gen-X dad film in the sense of playing up some of those tropes and making it look like Moneyball for sneakerheads as one person described.

 

[End of Line]

Air (2023) 8/10

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Air. Competently made and generally entertaining. Has an almost heist-movie vibe of putting a team together, executing a plan. I guess the more appropriate metaphor would be basketball ... well-assembled team, everyone knows their role, makes their play when it's their time.

The weird thing I really bumped against was the soundtrack like when Sonny is driving in the country and In a Big Country played or when they needed a miracle and All I Need is A Miracle plays or when Phil is fighting his feelings and I Can't Fight This Feeling plays. Movie soundtracks are often very obvious but it was really getting to me this case. (I forgive the use of My Adidas because of course and I'm not a monster).

The oddest bit to me was the use of Born in the USA over the postscripts considering a character in the movie talks about how the cheery music masks the fact that the song is a serious criticism of the U.S. So is the use of the actual song over the victorious notes a joke or commentary? USA actually bad? But everyone wins. Am I just being dense about this? Why underline the point of the song then use the song in a way that feels like misusing the song? Not mad. Just find it odd and funny.

 

[Unholy Diver]

Sisu - 8/10

If you see one movie where a Finnish senior citizen slaughters a bunch of Nazis this year, make sure it's Sisu

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Interview With The Vampire (1994) - 7/10

Wait, Kirsten Dunst is 19 years younger than Brad Pitt? Anyways, this is quite a moody brooding film which could alternatively be synopsized as "Tom Cruise attempts to grooms Brad Pitt as a vampire in a homoerotic melodrama."

Really isn't an interview at all as Christian Slater's character is underutilized and more of Brad Pitt just narrating scenes that move slowly then suddenly. I don't think there's really a satisfying end to Pitt/Cruise's relationship here nor is some of the intentionally abstract dialogue enough to make this movie stick but it's better than the usual vampire campiness.

 

[kihei]

The Five Devils (2022) Directed by Lea Mysius 6C

Get a big cauldron. No, skip that--I don't know what this movie has to do with devils; I think the title is a metaphor for the five central characters. Okay, so instead, get a big pot. Pour into said pot the worries of a child who can time travel by recreating people's smells in mason jars; a father, mother and aunt who have a very complicated past; a family drama about a dissatisfied and rather bratty mother; a past error in judgement that threatens everything; a lesbian romance defying time and circumstance; a child, the same child with the weird smell thing, who fears the dissolution of her family; a pinch of xenophobia, a dollop of racism, a soupcon of horror, a large helping of atmosphere, and the odd dead bird. Stir until mixed thoroughly and pour out on a non-linear cookie sheet. Baking time is under two hours. On the one hand, The Five Devils is a neat narrative and genre mash up. On the other hand, it's juggling so many balls in the air at the same time that it feels overly ambitious and emotionally inert. Stuffed to bursting with themes, none stand out over the others as having anything more than a superficial credibility. With the exception of the kid, I had a devil of a time caring about any of these people.

subtitles

 

[OzzyFan]

Air (2023) - 7/10

This felt a bit too....corporate masturbatory not to mention sportswashing Michael Jordan. Felt like Affleck is a fanboy of Nike/Jordan and was also not allowed to be too critical in his portrayal.

It is a good film though. The chemistry between Wahlb...I mean Damon, Bateman, Affleck, etc is pretty enjoyable and this feels almost like a Gen-X dad film in the sense of playing up some of those tropes and making it look like Moneyball for sneakerheads as one person described.

Air (2023) 8/10

Air. Competently made and generally entertaining. Has an almost heist-movie vibe of putting a team together, executing a plan. I guess the more appropriate metaphor would be basketball ... well-assembled team, everyone knows their role, makes their play when it's their time.

The weird thing I really bumped against was the soundtrack like when Sonny is driving in the country and In a Big Country played or when they needed a miracle and All I Need is A Miracle plays or when Phil is fighting his feelings and I Can't Fight This Feeling plays. Movie soundtracks are often very obvious but it was really getting to me this case. (I forgive the use of My Adidas because of course and I'm not a monster).

The oddest bit to me was the use of Born in the USA over the postscripts considering a character in the movie talks about how the cheery music masks the fact that the song is a serious criticism of the U.S. So is the use of the actual song over the victorious notes a joke or commentary? USA actually bad? But everyone wins. Am I just being dense about this? Why underline the point of the song then use the song in a way that feels like misusing the song? Not mad. Just find it odd and funny.

Is Air the new movie of the week?

 

[shadow1]

Is Air the new movie of the week?

I got confused and watched the wrong thing last night...

 

[Osprey]

Is Air the new movie of the week?

It certainly seems hot right now.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Awww crap. Meant to watch this!