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

[Osprey]

I'd like to take a moment to applaud the use of "bifurcated" in a film review.

 

[kihei]

radically wrong thread

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Mr. Klein. This Paris-set identity mystery set on the verge of the Holocaust is perhaps an odd choice of a movie to watch for someone whose beliefs were on the losing side of the 2024 US presidential election. Told a friend that's what I am doing and his text response was "JFC dude." But ...

I actually found the movie to be pretty cathartic. Alain Delon's Mr. Klein is a cold opportunist, profiting on the artwork and possessions of Jews forced to flee Paris becuase SOMETHING is coming ...He is not himself a Nazi or a direct collaborator, but he operates and profits from his willful ignorance of the things going on around him. I found the ending to be incredibly fitting and, honestly, satisfying. Active supporters of fascists and passive enablers like Klein always believe the horrors will stop before it gets to them but this movie shrewdly spins a compelling story that builds to the question ... what if it doesn't?

 

[Bahama Mama]

Funny movie,lots of laughs.

 

[kihei]

Mr. Klein. This Paris-set identity mystery set on the verge of the Holocaust is perhaps an odd choice of a movie to watch for someone whose beliefs were on the losing side of the 2024 US presidential election. Told a friend that's what I am doing and his text response was "JFC dude." But ...

I actually found the movie to be pretty cathartic. Alain Delon's Mr. Klein is a cold opportunist, profiting on the artwork and possessions of Jews forced to flee Paris becuase SOMETHING is coming ...He is not himself a Nazi or a direct collaborator, but he operates and profits from his willful ignorance of the things going on around him. I found the ending to be incredibly fitting and, honestly, satisfying. Active supporters of fascists and passive enablers like Klein always believe the horrors will stop before it gets to them but this movie shrewdly spins a compelling story that builds to the question ... what if it doesn't?

I think that may be Delon's best performance.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I think that may be Delon's best performance.

I think I agree

 

[kihei]

Pedro Paramo (2024) Directed by Rodrigo Prieto 4B

Pedro Paramo is based on a highly influential Mexican novel of the same name. What makes the novel important is that it introduced the style of magic realism to fiction and influenced Nobel Prize winning Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera; Of Love and Other Demons) who took the form to majestic heights. Fulfilling a promise he made to his mother on her deathbed, Juan attempts to find his father, Pedro Paramo, in a remote deserted village that he finds is populated totally by ghosts. It is through these different figures that he learns the extent to which his father was a brutal tyrant. The movie incorporates his strange journey through the village with flashbacks that show us Pedro's story.

So here's the rub. While the story sounds interesting, the way that first-time director Rodrigo Prieto (Martin Scorsese's current cinematographer) presents it is dull and boring. I was tempted to turn the thing off. There was just a bare minimum of scenes and visual touches that enabled me to continue watching. Part of the problem is that Prieto doesn't always know how to frame a scene, but a bigger problem is that there is nothing magical about the realism on display whatsoever. We just slog along, Prieto telling the story devoid of any emotional resonance or dramatic interest. If I learned that Pedro Paramo had been directed by an AI, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least.

Netflix

subtitles

 

[Babe Ruth]

Poolman (2023)

Chris Pine basically plays "the Dude". A middle-aged Angeleno with little to no income, no wife or kids.. but with a reverence for old Hollywood and petty complaints & obsessions about LA mass transit.
I saw this got a lot of negative reviews and comments online, but I thought it was okay. Just the old stoner/slacker depiction is kinda tired. A lot of nods to vintage Hollywood, Pine becomes a noir detective thru the movie.
Pretty dumb, but still entertaining in spots. This movie probably would've landed better back in the 80s or 90s.

 

[kihei]

Heretic (2024) Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods 7A

Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, two young Mormon missionaries, knock of the door of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) who greets them with good humour and curiosity and invites them in for a piece of blueberry pie that his wife is making. Or is she? Is she even there? First the missionaries' faith is sorely tested, followed closely by their very lives as there seems no way out of Mr. Reed's strangely spooky house. And that blueberry pie only materializes in the damnedest way much later in the movie. The horror builds gradually over the first two acts which consist of increasingly tense scenes where Mr. Reed lectures the girls on religion in a way that is intended to undermine their beliefs and values. His arguments are surprisingly well considered ones, but the presentation becomes increasingly more unhinged. The young missionaries growing sense of alarm escalates because though Mr. Reed remains affable, even seemingly normal, they start to realize they are butterflies stuck in a very diabolical spider's web. The horror escalates in the third act.

I thought Heretic was a delight, a horror movie that is intellectually engaging and well acted. Mr. Reed has some very firm views on organized religion, craftily arguing that they are all iterations of much older texts that owe more to myth than to divine revelation. He does believe religion serves a purpose but it is anything but a nice one. Hugh Grant is wonderful in the role. All his trademark mannerisms are intact but he has turned their purpose from charm to villainy of a rather engaging kind--that is, until more and more is revealed about what is going on in the basement. It is one of his best performances in years. The more we get in to true horror late in the movie, Heretic gets a little messy intellectually as well as in terms of gore, but not enough to spoil the fun. Heretic provides a lively ride, and people might even discuss the ideas and symbolism after leaving the movie theatre.


Best of 2024 so far

1. Anora, Baker, US
2. Flow, Zilbalodis, Latvia
3. Caught by the Tides, Jia, China
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. Heretic, Beck and Woods, US
8. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof, Germany
9. The Shadowless Tower. Lu, China
10. Here, Devos, Belgium

 

[kihei]

This is the first year on a long time in which there is not a strong favourite to win the Academic Award for best movie. Kind of refreshing.

 

[NyQuil]

Hugh Grant has actually picked some good roles recently.

On the less artistic front, he was a wretched and unprincipled journalist in the Gentlemen, and a surprisingly engaging antagonist of sorts in Dungeons and Dragons who stole virtually every scene he was in.

He seems to genuinely enjoy playing bad guys for a change and it shows in his performances.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Watched Bodies Bodies Bodies (1/10) on a flight to NY this past weekend. Was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Had a bunch of older actors (like Pete Davidson) trying to act like highschoolers which was over-the-top annoying. It had the worst acting.

As for the plot, it's yet another take on the kids partying in a remote mansion-sized cabin during a storm when they start dying and their phones and cars stop working, story. About 90% of the movie is them arguing with each other while screaming and crying. I held out for a possible good twist at the end, and it was terrible. Should have picked Twisters instead.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Watched Bodies Bodies Bodies (1/10) on a flight to NY this past weekend. Was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Had a bunch of older actors (like Pete Davidson) trying to act like highschoolers which was over-the-top annoying. It had the worst acting.

As for the plot, it's yet another take on the kids partying in a remote mansion-sized cabin during a storm when they start dying and their phones and cars stop working, story. About 90% of the movie is them arguing with each other while screaming and crying. I held out for a possible good twist at the end, and it was terrible. Should have picked Twisters instead.

Interesting to see an A24 film get such a bad rating. I generally can't imagine anything with Pete Davidson will be any good. I'm sure at some point my wife will force me to see this, as she has an obsession with A24 Studio lol. I'll report back

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Interesting to see an A24 film get such a bad rating. I generally can't imagine anything with Pete Davidson will be any good. I'm sure at some point my wife will force me to see this, as she has an obsession with A24 Studio lol. I'll report back

Please do! Would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[kihei]

Small Things Like These (2024) Directed by Tim Mielants 7A

In 1985 in a small village in Ireland, Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), who delivers heavy bags of coal to different residences, makes a stop at the local nunnery and sees something he shouldn't, a young woman being forced through the door of the convent. Still struggling with his own past demons, he is deeply troubled by this. He believes he has witnessed one of the Catholic Church darkest transgressions, the Magdalene Laundries, abusive places where unwed pregnant girls (around 57,000 in total) were forced to go and where their infants were almost invariably taken from them at birth. The rest of the movie is basically a quiet tour de force for Murphy as Bill struggles with his conscience about what to do. His wife, indeed, even the local bar keep, wants him to forget what he has seen because he might do something that could harm the Church whose power in small-town Ireland even at this late date is still all encompassing. His will is pitted against the Mother Superior of the convent played chillingly by Emily Watson who has no qualms whatsoever about wielding her power.

This is a small thing itself of a movie, but its impact is formidable. Most of Bill's plight is communicated visually as we watch Murphy painfully contend with his own misgivings. He is part of a culture that ignores the abuses of the Church, and it is obviously no small feat to contemplate doing something which could affect at great personal cost his wife and five daughters, whose schooling the nuns have control over. What a follow-up this is to Murphy's Oscar winning performance in Oppenheimer. I'm not sure that Murphy's performance here isn't superior. He manages to communicate a whole lifetime of reticence and emotional restraint, a man not used to making waves of any kind. Like the novel that it was taken from, Small Things Like These bears eloquent witness to the importance of a good man not allowing himself to look the other way.


Sidenote: I was surprised that the movie was set as late as 1985. I then remembered that the last infamous Residential School in Canada wasn't closed until 1997.

For those who do not know, Residential Schools refer to Canada's state sponsored schools, affecting around 150,000 indigenous children, run primarily by the Catholic Church but including significant involvement from other Christian denominations where abuse was rampant and not infrequently fatal (at least 6509 deaths for sure, but it is impossible to know the complete number as the children were usually buried in unmarked graves). Canada's House of Commons in 2022 unanimously concluded that what occurred in these schools was genocide.


Best of 2024 so far

1. Anora, Baker, US
2. Flow, Zilbalodis, Latvia
3. Caught by the Tides, Jia, China
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. Heretic, Beck and Woods, US
8. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof, Germany
9. Small Things Like These, Mielants, Ireland
10. Here, Devos, Belgium

 

[Babe Ruth]

Neighbors (1981)

A Boomerish dark comedy.. John Belushi plays an unexpectedly square character.. a repressed suburban father. But his unfulfilling life is quickly turned when a pair of insane, swinging neighbors (Dan Akroyd) move in next door.
Humor and cultural commentary that was very typical of the time. Not bad.. not very funny my opinion, but interesting. I watched it on Tubi.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Brothers (2024) - Directed by Max Barbikow. (1/10)

Such a waste of time. Despite having an incredibly strong cast... (Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Marissa Tomei, Brendan Fraser) this film is one of the most basic and lame films I've seen recently. Jady Munger (Dinklage), and his twin brother Moke (Brolin), play two career twin brother criminals... Blah Blah Blah..... (What is it with Peter Dinklage's fixation with playing brothers who one of them is little and the other is average size?) The brothers and their criminal mom(Close) ..... try to pull off a job to make some "career ending money" and then it goes sideway, shockerrrrrr..... Brendan Fraser is a jail worker who tries to make some money on the deal.......Yada yada yada....

In rare form for me I'm going to go with a Kojima-esque review for this film.

"Watched Brothers today. It was a film"

I don't need to say any more. This movie sucked