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

[BigBadBruins7708]

Salem's Lot (2024) - 6/10

I really wanted to like this one more, but they just tried to cram way too much material into a movie run time.

I love the novel and the original mini series. At this point Salem's Lot needs to be done as a 1 season series like Chernobyl to properly tell the story and fit all the material in. The original mini series does a very good job of it in its 3 hours run time, but even that had to drop subplots and combine a few characters into one (notably the adultery angle and the amount of time between Danny disappearing and the next attack). The latest attempt unfortunately cuts out pretty any character development moments to where to where they're all just faces on the screen with no identity to connect to. It simply jumps from big moment to big moment from the book and plays out like a book report written by a 6th grader.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - 5/10

Finally got around to taking the boys and some of their friends to see this. Had them watch the original a month or so ago. Overall, it's (obviously) all about the nostalgia and the main reason it even got the 5 rating. As a stand-alone movie, there are a number of different plots that make the movie jumbled and confusing at times. I think Burton had all these ideas over the years, and when it was finally greenlit, he decided to cram all of them into one movie. Plus, not a shocker as it's Tim Burton, but parts were just really weird.

Overall, it's a fun trip down memory lane and they did a good job bringing back characters and linking to the first one. Got a few chuckles too. However, it was a mess as it jumped from one story to another.

 

[kihei]

Conclave (2024) Directed by Edward Berger 4A

Handsomely mounted, well acted, elegantly photographed, oozing gravitas like a supertanker leaking oil, a peek into the inner workings of the Catholic Church when it comes to electing a new Pope, Conclave is a fun ride until near the end when it gives way to the dumbest, most preposterous, totally ludicrous self-inflicted ending that I have seen in many a year. This papal thriller has other problems, too.

Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), Dean of the College of Cardinals, is tasked with organizing the conclave of Church Cardinals that always follows the death of a Pope. Though I would have expected the Dean to be neutral, he actually is wheeling and dealing to ensure that a more progressive candidate (Stanley Tucci) wins the vote rather the racist arch-conservative Italian candidate whose skullcap could very well read Make Catholicism Great Again. Like victims in a murder mystery, various candidates bite the dust not because of poison in their tea but because of scandal. All this culminates in said stupid ending that caused snickers and the odd guffaw of laughter in my theatre. Now to the other problem: Conclave doesn't even disguise the fact that it is about the upcoming US presidential election as much as it is about electing a new Pope. Clearly the good guys are the progressives and the bad guys are the fiendish conservatives who want to turn back the clock and take away all the Church's reforms. To say the least, the movie is ill-served by this stacked-deck, grandstanding political maneuver. Well, you do get an excellent performance from Fiennes, but the flaws of Conclave are too overwhelming to ignore.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Motivated by the Best Horror Movie of the 70s thread, I knocked out the two movies on that list that I hadn't seen before.

The Tenant. It's kinda reductive to parallel this to Rosemary's Baby and yet you can't not given that it's about a tenant in an apartment building who may or may not be going crazy and whose neighbors may or may not be up to some supernatural shit and how those things may or may not be related. I liked it in general. Roman Polanski is a masterful crafter of a paranoid thriller/horror and this has some wonderful moments and some interesting themes/meanings that loom over the story. The weakness is that he also happens to be the star. He's not really a bad actor, but I couldn't help but feel this is a better movie with a better actor in the key role. Not to mention having Polanski himself at the center of a movie about a man who may or may not be the target of persecution ... well, real life intrudes a little too much for me there. I'm a fairly liberal separate-the-art-from-the-artist person and this was made before his legal issues ... but let's just say he's a hard person to really feel for.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Holy crap I loved this. A weird, dark fairy tale of a movie with maidens and lurking evil (wonderful swirling, enveloping cape work in this!) and a castle of a sort. The kinda dreamy movie that makes me wonder if Ingmar Bergman and David Lynch like it. It feels like they'd really dig it. (There's a rather obvious character reason in the movie for me making those specific connections, but the feel and themes all match as well). Beyond seeing future David Lynch in this, I also got a lot of Ken Russell as well. Engaging if you're stone-cold sober, but is probably also gangbusters if you're trippin' balls too. Also would play well in the background of a party or bar. Real four-quadrant movie for me.

 

[kihei]

Daughters (2024) Director by Angela Patton and Natalie Robinson 8A (documentary)

At a medium security prison in Washington D.C., four young girls, aged five to eleven, prepare to meet their incarcerated fathers in a prison programme called Date with Daddy Dance. Both groups prepare in their own way for what has the potential to be a wrenching though perhaps life altering experience for both sides. This particular prison, like many for-profit prisons in the US, no longer allows inmates personal visits (contact is allowed via infrequent telephone calls or skype-type hook ups--is this not crazy as hell?). So the result is that neither parent nor daughter may have had anything more than cursory contact with one another or no contact at all. Obviously this is a big, big deal for the hopeful little daughters who count the years until Daddy comes home, but it is also a big, big deal for the nervous dads who agree to undergo a ten-week training programme to get ready for the big day. When the big moment arrives, believe me, you are going to need Kleenex, though the documentary, a model of restraint really, goes out of its way not to unnecessarily tug at your heartstrings. Daughters also shies away from any kind of elaborate political statement about the controversial prison environment in the US where black convicts make up slightly over 37% of the inmates while representing roughly only 13% of the general population. The focus is entirely on the daughters and fathers and what the aftereffects are of the Date with Daddy programme. The documentary claims that 95% of the participants in this programme do not return to prison after they are released. Daughters is well worth everybody's time. I can't think of the last documentary that I found as moving as this one.

Netflix


Best of '24 so far

1. Anora, Baker, US
2. Flow, Zilbalodis, Latvia
3. Caught by the Tides, China, Zhang-ke
4. All We Imagine As Light, Kapadia, India
5. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude, Romania
6. Green Border, Holland, Poland
7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof, Germany
8. Daughters, Patton and Robinson, US (documentary)
9. Here, Devos, Belgium
10. Pictures of Ghosts, Filho, Brazil

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Tenant. It's kinda reductive to parallel this to Rosemary's Baby and yet you can't not given that it's about a tenant in an apartment building who may or may not be going crazy and whose neighbors may or may not be up to some supernatural shit and how those things may or may not be related.

It is refered to as the "apartment trilogy" (with Repulsion - three amazing films).

Glad you liked Valerie too! Love both these films, but have a preference for The Tenant (I included it in the Panic thread).

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

It is refered to as the "apartment trilogy" (with Repulsion - three amazing films).

Glad you liked Valerie too! Love both these films, but have a preference for The Tenant (I included it in the Panic thread).

I didn't put that trilogy together but that certainly makes a ton of sense