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

[Rodgerwilco]

If you watch the "Milli Vanilli" documentary on Paramount+ or AppleTV+, you can get all of their songs stuck in your head.

I heard that was pretty good! I do have to say calling them "their" songs might be a bit of a stretch though.

 

[Osprey]

I heard that was pretty good! I do have to say calling them "their" songs might be a bit of a stretch though.

You actually started it by saying "Milli Vanilli's 'Girl I'm Gunna Miss You'".

 

[Rodgerwilco]

You actually started it by saying "Milli Vanilli's 'Girl I'm Gunna Miss You'".

Damn you, Osprey. Got me there lol.

 

[johnjm22]

THE SUBSTANCE (2024)

Director Coralie Fargeat's 4 favorite films:

-The Empire Strikes Back
-Brazil
-The Great Dictator (1940)
-Mulholland Drive


In 'The Substance' David Lynch and Mulholland Drive are obvious influences. Our story navigates the dark side of Hollywood through the duality of lead female character(s) while featuring Lynch style claustrophobic sets, camerawork and line delivery. There's even shots reminiscent of Lost Highway.

Whereas you might watch a Lynch film and wonder what the hell it was about, there's no such mystery here. Fargeat's film is similarly absurdist and bizarre, but its themes and messaging are clear. It satirizes women's beauty standards through the lens of aging and uses body horror to hyperbolize what women will put themselves through to achieve it.

The premise is simple. Aging Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) takes a mysterious drug (The Substance) to create a prettier younger version of herself. The story is somewhat predictable; rules are set for how the substance is supposed to be used, thus we know those rules will eventually be broken leading to catastrophe.

The film manages to be both disgusting and sexy at the same time. Fargeat treats the male gaze the same way Verhoeven treats violence. There are ridiculously overt shots of Margaret Qualley’s perfect ass for us to indulge in, only to be undercut by something gross or visually off-putting a short time later. The film is an exercise in contrast. The score won’t let you off the hook either. It repeatedly smacks you with harsh abrupt dissonant walls of sound when Fargeat decides to shift gears.

There are also themes of self love and acceptance here. A person who truly accepts them self would never take the substance in the first place. Elisabeth’s lust for youthful beauty and fame means she can’t help herself. You can probably guess how that ends up working out for her.

The film becomes increasingly bizarre and unhinged as it approaches its insane final act. This isn’t for everyone. There were audible laughs in the theater and a handful of people made it clear they didn’t like what they were seeing.

I think Fargeat enjoys making her audience feel uncomfortable. Mission accomplished.

7.5 / 10

 

[CDJ]

Megalopolis

Incredibly ambitious, it felt all over the place but overall it came together alright I guess. I could see people looking back at it in 50 years and thinking it’s more profound than it is now. But it was weird and at this point in time I wish I had watched it on mushrooms.

5.8/10

 

[kihei]

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof 7A

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a political thriller about a missing gun, but the context is out of the ordinary to say the least. Iman is promoted to Inspector in the ultra-fundamentalist Revolutionary Guard in Iran in 2022. The next step up is judge and that means a much improved life for his wife Najmeh and two daughters. The first day on the job Iman, a conscientious man, is told that he is not expected to inspect anything, just sign execution orders, hundreds of them a day, as there is a raging protest going on in the streets of Tehran among students appalled by the death of a girl who allegedly wore her hijab improperly. Iman and his wife Najmeh convince themselves that signing the death orders is God's will, and with that decision the family not so slowly begins to fall apart. After one of their friends is brutalized by the police, their two daughters Rezvan and Sana grow sympathetic to the resistance. Tensions run even higher when Iman believes he has lost his gun at home. Suddenly the three people whom he loves most in the world are suspects and seem to be turning against him.

The focus of the movie is split between Iman's dilemmas at the office and Najmeh trying to cope at home with her two increasingly pissed off daughters. The tension ratchets up in a nice steady flow until the third act culminates in indeed a very suspenseful ending though it seemed to me to suit a very different kind of thriller than I had been watching up to this point. Chalk the ending up as an unforced error, but not an egregious one. The Seed of the Sacred Fig intercuts some of its early scenes with actual footage from the riots, demonstrating the Revolutionary Guard's deliberately out-of-control brutality, all in the name of Allah. Iman's growing paranoia and depression seem a very understandable response to the tyranny of an arch-conservative religious and political movement that places insane demands upon its citizens, especially women. What makes the movie so effective is that it is a double whammy--the thriller part is first rate but what we learn about what it is like to live in Iran is eye opening.

subtitles


Best of '24

1) Flow, Zilbalodis, Latvia
2) All We Imagine As Light, Kapadia, India
3) Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude, Romania
4) Green Border, Holland, Poland
5) Here, Devos, Belgium
6) The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof, Germany
7) Pictures of Ghosts, Filho, Brazil
8) Hit Man, Linklater, US
9) The Substance, Fargeat, US
10) The Breaking Ice, Chen, Singapore

 

[kihei]

The Apprentice (2024) Directed by Ali Abbasi 5A

The Apprentice is an aptly titled unauthorized biography of Donald Trump's early years in New York before he became interested in politics. The time period covered is from his puppy years learning to deal in the big city to the beginning of his autobiographical The Art of the Deal in the mid-eighties. The movie is principally about his mentor/student relationship with the remorseless Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the brains behind Senator Joe McCarthy's Communist witch hunts in the '50s. At first, the young Trump is a little reticent about Cohn's methods, but he quickly begins to see the wisdom of Cohn's advice as it applies to him. Cohn has three ironclad rules to live by: 1) attack, attack, attack; 2) admit nothing, deny everything; and 3) most importantly, never admit defeat. These quickly become Trump's standards, and, really, for better or worse, they have made him the man that he is today.

Most of the movie focuses on their relationship, and I would think that even some Trump supporters would find these extended sections plausible and persuasive. The proof is in the pudding after all. The other claims the movie makes regarding Trump's relationship with his father and brother, his alleged assault on his first wife Ivana, and the sour end of his relationship with Cohn all strike me as too rushed and too sketchy to be convincing. These things might have happened, but it they did, the movie doesn't convince me they happened in the manner shown, if at all.

The Apprentice is highly watchable in a snappy gossip-column kind of way. The acting is excellent. Sebastian Stans brings just the right dollop of humanity to his Trump, enough for him to appear human but not not enough for him to be sympathetic. Maria Bakalova is wholly believable as Ivana. And Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn is almost certainly headed for a well-deserved Academy Award nomination. His Cohn is thoroughly repellent but ruthlessly true to his code. Trump by learning how to add charisma, some New York street smarts and a good comedian's timing to this mix takes Cohn's precepts to the next level. And, obviously, beyond.

 

[Spawn]

Smile 2 - 6/10

Where as the first Smile deals with themes of mental illness and guilt over past actions, Smile 2 deals with themes of addiction and guilt over past actions. Very different.

There’s a brilliant cold open set 6 days after the events of the first film with Scream King Kyle Gallner reprising his role from the first film. After that it kind of all goes down hill imo.

We have a new protagonist, a pop idle, who has spent the past year recovering from drug and alcohol addiction while also healing from a car crash that killed her fiancé. While looking to score some illicit pain killers from her drug dealer friend she witnesses his violent death at his own hands.

If you’ve seen the first movie, you know what’s coming next. This one hits a lot of the same notes and reuses quite a few of the same scares. I wouldnt say the scares aren’t effective, they just aren’t particularly new.

The new lead gives a solid performance, it’s a well made movie, and if you’re looking for a decent and accessible horror this is a good one to watch.

That being said, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d rather have watched the events with Kyle Gallner leading up to the cold open as a sequel, or hell even a movie focused on Louis, the new main characters drug dealer friend. This one felt a bit too recycled to me. And about 30 minutes too long.

Still an enjoyable watch for me during spooky season, but wish they hadn’t played it so close to the first one.

If you liked the first one, probably worth watching. If you didn’t, or just didn’t see it, I’d skip it and go watch Kyle Gallner in Strange Darling. A much better and much more original horror film that came out a few weeks earlier.