Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Mid-Spring Edition. Happy Beltane!

[Chili]

I completely forgot Cockburn was involved. I've seen him at least a half dozen times in concert, and he has never sung that song.

I love Bruce Cockburn. Great songs, a surprising muscular political stance given his religious beliefs (If I Had a Rocket Launcher, The Trouble with Normal, for example), and just a wonderful guitar player. One of my desert island albums is Lord of the Starfields. I have a ton of respect for him.

Cool. Don't know why I never went to one of his concerts, had chances and definitely enjoy his music. Favorite song is an early one 'Going to the Country'. I posted a video in my last post of the beginning of Goin' Down the Road which includes the song, still sounds great.

 

[kihei]

Now that's new! ;-)

10 album deserted Island collection

Isolated Island: 5 movies, 5 TV series, 5 books and 5 songs

How do you dig this stuff up? I have a lot of desert island albums to choose from, way more than ten, and Lord of the Starfields is definitely among them and in good standing.

 

[kihei]

Cool. Don't know why I never went to one of his concerts, had chances and definitely enjoy his music. Favorite song is an early one 'Going to the Country'. I posted a video in my last post of the beginning of Goin' Down the Road which includes the song, still sounds great.

This is my favourite song of his:



I'm not religious in any way, shape or form, but I respect the beauty and purity of expression of this song.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Pink Mist, Spring in Fiala, Pranzo, Kallio, Osprey, Puck, Chili-- curious about all your top tens. Put your cards on the table

Oh jeez...I'm awful with recency bias but I'll take a shot. Vague order to the whole thing.

Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
Lolita (Kubrick, 1962)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Sonatine (Kitano, 1993)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover (Greenaway, 1989)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)
Zelig (Allen, 1983)
Buffalo'66 (Gallo, 1998)
The Idiots (Von Trier, 1998)

HM:
Love Exposure (Sono, 2008)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976)
The King of Comedy (Scorcese, 1982)
Fallen Angels (Kar-Wai, 1995)
Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992)
Boiling Point (Kitano, 1990)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998)

I could be totally off and forgetting stuff. A number of them are films I watched in the last couple of years so...I don't know.

 

[kihei]

Oh jeez...I'm awful with recency bias but I'll take a shot. Vague order to the whole thing.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Resnais)
Lolita (1962, Kubrick)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Sonatine (1993, Kitano)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover (Greenaway, 1989)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)
Zelig (Allen, 1983)
Buffalo'66 (Gallo, 1998)
The Idiots (Von Trier, 1998)

HM: Love Exposure (Sono, 2008), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976), The King of Comedy (Scorcese, 1982), Fallen Angels (Kar-Wai, 1995), Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959), Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992)

I could be totally off and forgetting stuff. A number of them are films I watched in the last couple of years so...I don't know.

Very eclectic list. I guess I better see The Idiots which I never got around to.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Very eclectic list. I guess I better see The Idiots which I never got around to.

Oh boy, I truly wonder what you're going to think of it. It's...original, to say the least but it's definitely polarizing as hell. Original bet is that you'll hate it. I find Von Trier ridiculously hit and miss and equally capable of churning out a masterpiece as he can an insane trainwreck but that one knocked me on my ass.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Oh jeez...I'm awful with recency bias but I'll take a shot. Vague order to the whole thing.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Resnais)
Lolita (1962, Kubrick)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Sonatine (1993, Kitano)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover (Greenaway, 1989)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)
Zelig (Allen, 1983)
Buffalo'66 (Gallo, 1998)
The Idiots (Von Trier, 1998)

HM:
Love Exposure (Sono, 2008)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976)
The King of Comedy (Scorcese, 1982)
Fallen Angels (Kar-Wai, 1995)
Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992)
Boiling Point (Kitano, 1990)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998)

I could be totally off and forgetting stuff. A number of them are films I watched in the last couple of years so...I don't know.

By really far the closest to my tastes. I really dislike Kitano, but the rest of that top-10 is gold.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Still thinking about it...I feel like I may have been able to squeeze a couple of others somehow...Dreams by Kurosawa was a big contender but that Scorcese appearance is such a major clunker...still...some of the best images I've ever seen in a film. Un zoo la nuit by Lauzon I adore but I've never watched it in first-rate quality...oh God, Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett would definitely fit somewhere in my top 10...

On an unrelated note, lordy have the playoffs been awesome so far. Tampa-Florida is a hell of a game. Hope we get OT.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Still thinking about it...I feel like I may have been able to squeeze a couple of others somehow...Dreams by Kurosawa was a big contender but that Scorcese appearance is such a major clunker...still...some of the best images I've ever seen in a film. Un zoo la nuit by Lauzon I adore but I've never watched it in first-rate quality...oh God, Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett would definitely fit somewhere in my top 10...

On an unrelated note, lordy have the playoffs been awesome so far. Tampa-Florida is a hell of a game. Hope we get OT.

I haven't seen Killer of Sheep, but will make it a priority. I thought Un zoo la nuit was a little overrated - still a good flick, but not deserving of the praises it got here - and I too have a difficult relation to Dreams, but in the end, still love it.

 

[nameless1]

Big Trouble In Little China (1986) - 7/10

There's a collection of action-ish blockbuster type films, usually cheesy ones from the 80s, overrated by dudes that are now either older millenials or Gen-Xers who say them when they were young maybe, I dunno. I was expecting this to be along those lines (*cough Back To The Future). What I got instead was something truly truly bizarre. Kurt Russell is fun, Kim Catrall can't act, and everything else is just batshit insane. It looks good, it often makes no sense, and it moves along at a fairly decent pace. Decently fun idiocy helped by how it looks.

Carpenter is a B-movie director through and through, but his movies are so much fun in his heydays. He manages to strike the perfect balance between camp and good storytelling.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I haven't seen Killer of Sheep, but will make it a priority. I thought Un zoo la nuit was a little overrated - still a good flick, but not deserving of the praises it got here - and I too have a difficult relation to Dreams, but in the end, still love it.

Killer of Sheep is about just as good as anything I've ever watched save my top 3. Un zoo la nuit is the prime example that I can point to where the director actually made good use of outright melodrama (the elephant's shooting) and as for Dreams, its preaching is sometimes a tiny bit off-putting, but its imaginative sets and pacing is so extraordinary.

 

[Pink Mist]

On an unrelated note, lordy have the playoffs been awesome so far. Tampa-Florida is a hell of a game. Hope we get OT.

Yep, if the playoffs keep up the intensity like the tampa-florida game I'll be watching a lot less movies these coming weeks

 

[kihei]

Oh boy, I truly wonder what you're going to think of it. It's...original, to say the least but it's definitely polarizing as hell. Original bet is that you'll hate it. I find Von Trier ridiculously hit and miss and equally capable of churning out a masterpiece as he can an insane trainwreck but that one knocked me on my ass.

There are a few Von Trier projects/movies that I really like: Antichrist; The Kingdom; The Five Obstructions; Europa; and Breaking the Waves. It's his more recent stuff that I find obnoxiously misanthropic. So we shall see.

 

[kihei]

Cadaveri Excellenti (1976) Directed by Francesco Rosi 6B

Francesco Rosi is sort of Jean Pierre Melville’s Italian counterpart and contemporary. Like Melville, he specializes in cop/gangster/crime movies that focus on a stoic anti-hero and are pared down to essentials. Unlike Melville, he is not beholden to American film noir; his films borrow more from his native neo-realism and they very often have a strong political or social context. In Cadaveri Excellenti (means exactly what you think it means), a Sicilian detective (Lino Ventura) begins to investigate the murder of three judges, and his clues are taking him into ever deeper waters. Ventura is a super-minimalist actor but a good one—perfect for tough guys, hard cops and crooks. If it wasn’t for the difference in language, he and Robert De Niro could swap roles in every cop/gangster movie either has ever been in and the flick wouldn’t skip a beat. There are even times when Ventura looks like De Niro’s Italian cousin, very near a family resemblance especially around the eyes. Cadaveri Excellenti isn’t an inspired mystery, but it is good enough to deserve a mild recommendation.

subtitles

YouTube

 

[Osprey]

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) - 4/10 (Disliked it)

Lara Croft helps a boy being hunted by Littlefinger. OK, seriously, Angelina Jolie plays a firefighter stationed at a fire lookout tower in Montana who encounters a boy being chased by two hitmen, one played by Game of Thrones' Aiden Gillen. It's an "action thriller" that doesn't have much action and isn't very thrilling. There's an attempt at adding some emotional depth by having the firefighter haunted by the death of three kids that she couldn't save (do you smell a redemption storyline?), but it feels tacked on and falls flat. The story takes half of the movie to get going and, well, it never really gets going, and then it's over. Everything--the story, the dialogue, the acting, the effects, the direction--is mostly unremarkable. The lone bright spot is the boy, who out-acts everyone else in the film, especially Jolie, but he can't save it. I found the whole thing mildly boring, enough that periodically singing to myself "Those who wish me dead... we salute you!" was more entertaining. It was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, who wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water and wrote and directed Wind River, but it's closer in quality to Without Remorse, another generic action thriller, which he recently co-wrote. Anyways, it's in theaters and on HBO Max, but I wouldn't recommend the former. See it on HBO Max if you see it at all.

Spoiler

If it wasn't embarrassing enough for poor Aiden Gillen to be killed in Game of Thrones by two teenage girls, he gets killed in this one by a pregnant woman... and a pregnant woman who can reload faster than him, a mob hitman. How's he going to top this, by having his next character be killed by a granny with a walker?

 

[ItsFineImFine]

A top 5 I can do, a top 10 is hard though because I can replace 5-10 with 10-20 easily:

12 Angry Men
Adaptation.
Dial M For Murder
Double Indemnity
Frances Ha
Groundhog Day
High & Low
Inception
Manchester By The Sea
Interstellar

I like entertaining well paced movies don't judge.

edit: swapped out Paths of Glory with Interstellar

Drugstore Cowboy (1989) - 6.5/10

Am I the only one that finds Hollywood 80s - 00s movies and depictions of druggies to be lame? Matt Dillon trying to talk like he's stoned throughout doesn't help. Movie takes a turn for the better in the second half and especially the final third when Dillon decides to try to rebound but its attempts at being deep about the whole thing really aren't very deep. Kind of convinces me of my point that if you're doing a film about drugs then stop trying to be profound about it and just have fun, Boogie Nights style.

 

[kihei]

A top 5 I can do, a top 10 is hard though because I can replace 5-10 with 10-20 easily:

12 Angry Men
Adaptation.
Dial M For Murder
Double Indemnity
Frances Ha
Groundhog Day
High & Low
Inception
Manchester By The Sea
Interstellar

I like entertaining well paced movies don't judge.

edit: swapped out Paths of Glory with Interstellar

Hey, no worries. That's a fine list.

 

[kihei]

Another voice of support for Killer of Sheep. Might make a US top ten for me.

 

[Puck]

I really don't have a top ten list for movies and it would be difficult to invent one.

Here is a list of first movies to come to mind (not in any order of quality, just the ones that popped in my head at first). Nothing special here for a cinephile, the list is mainstream.

Lawrence of Arabia
Apocalypse Now
Lion in Winter
Lilies of the Field
African Queen
Driving Miss Daisy
Bridge on the River Kwai
2001 A Space Odyssey
City of God

These were the first that came to mind. I thought of many more after jotting those down, some I liked a bit better maybe but it was all too close to filter and sort. There's nine in that list, consider the missing tenth a place holder for the dozens of others I thought of later that could knock out some of the first-to-come-to-mind in order to make room.

I noticed most are older films, I started sorting by time I suppose. Noticed that City of God is the only 21st century film to enter. But believe me, there are many more in my 'movies' upper quadrant. Ask me again in a year and the list would change completely. A list of best Non-English foreign films would be different. Doing lists by genre or by decade could also lead to different results.

 

[Puck]

I just noticed this trailer. Never heard of this film project. A Summer release. Looks quirky, so I think I will like it. It's going on my watch list lol.

 

[nameless1]

Oh jeez...I'm awful with recency bias but I'll take a shot. Vague order to the whole thing.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Resnais)
Lolita (1962, Kubrick)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Sonatine (1993, Kitano)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover (Greenaway, 1989)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)
Zelig (Allen, 1983)
Buffalo'66 (Gallo, 1998)
The Idiots (Von Trier, 1998)

HM:
Love Exposure (Sono, 2008)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976)
The King of Comedy (Scorcese, 1982)
Fallen Angels (Kar-Wai, 1995)
Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992)
Boiling Point (Kitano, 1990)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998)

I could be totally off and forgetting stuff. A number of them are films I watched in the last couple of years so...I don't know.

I actually see Fallen Angels and The Killing of the Chinese Bookie as the lesser work of those respective director. In fact, I often use The Killing of the Chinese Bookie as a divide for Cassavetes' career, as that is the point he wants to break into the mainstream, and I become a little mixed on his subsequent works.

 

[nameless1]

I really don't have a top ten list for movies and it would be difficult to invent one.

Here is a list of first movies to come to mind (not in any order of quality, just the ones that popped in my head at first). Nothing special here for a cinephile, the list is mainstream.

Lawrence of Arabia
Apocalypse Now
Lion in Winter
Lilies of the Field
African Queen
Driving Miss Daisy
Bridge on the River Kwai
2001 A Space Odyssey
City of God

These were the first that came to mind. I thought of many more after jotting those down, some I liked a bit better maybe but it was all too close to filter and sort. There's nine in that list, consider the missing tenth a place holder for the dozens of others I thought of later that could knock out some of the first-to-come-to-mind in order to make room.

I noticed most are older films, I started sorting by time I suppose. Noticed that City of God is the only 21st century film to enter. But believe me, there are many more in my 'movies' upper quadrant. Ask me again in a year and the list would change completely. A list of best Non-English foreign films would be different. Doing lists by genre or by decade could also lead to different results.

City of God is a very worthy entry. I watched it recently, and I am very impressed by it, especially with the slick editing and the inspired music choices in the first 30 minutes that really hooks the audience into the story. Thus far, I have it as a 9+ film, but I may bump it to 10/10 in the years to come. The film stands up incredibly well, because even after about 20 years, it does not look out-of-place compared to recent fares.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Drugstore Cowboy (1989) - 6.5/10

Am I the only one that finds Hollywood 80s - 00s movies and depictions of druggies to be lame? Matt Dillon trying to talk like he's stoned throughout doesn't help. Movie takes a turn for the better in the second half and especially the final third when Dillon decides to try to rebound but its attempts at being deep about the whole thing really aren't very deep. Kind of convinces me of my point that if you're doing a film about drugs then stop trying to be profound about it and just have fun, Boogie Nights style.

I for one think Gus Van Sant is overrated as hell. Elephant was pretty good though.

 

[frisco]

The Caine Mutiny (6.5/10.0)-Movie holds up pretty well. Bogart is good, as is most of the cast. I normally don't read fiction but I did read TCM and the movie gets to the heart of the book without shaving too much off. The romantic aside was a little forced and probably took away from more stuff that could of been covered in the area of the drama aboard the ship. The lead ("Willie Keith"/Robert Francis) is basically an unknown as he passed away at the age of 25 in an airplane crash so this was one of his few roles. I think the military trial was template for movies like A Few Good Men. Anyway, very good, but not quite great overall.

I spend an absurd amount of time of flickchart.com --TCM ranks #217 of the 792 movies I have ranked there. Here's my top 50 in order if anyone cares:

Mulholland Dr. 2001 David Lynch
Bullitt 1968 Peter Yates
Eyes Wide Shut 1999 Stanley Kubrick
The Thomas Crown Affair 1968 Norman Jewison
Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola
The Great Escape 1963 John Sturges
The Deer Hunter 1978 Michael Cimino
The Godfather Part II 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
Glengarry Glen Ross 1992 James Foley
Once Upon a Time in America 1984 Sergio Leone
Saturday Night Fever 1977 John Badham
Network 1976 Sidney Lumet
Scarface 1983 Brian De Palma
A Clockwork Orange 1971 Stanley Kubrick
Moneyball 2011 Bennett Miller
Ben-Hur 1959 William Wyler
Leaving Las Vegas 1995 Mike Figgis
Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood 2019 Quentin Tarantino
Planet of the Apes 1968 Franklin J. Schaffner
The Godfather 1972 Francis Ford Coppola
Lost Highway 1997 David Lynch
Papillon 1973 Franklin J. Schaffner
The Cincinnati Kid 1965 Norman Jewison
Chinatown 1974 Roman Polanski
Boogie Nights 1997 Paul Thomas Anderson
Bohemian Rhapsody 2018 Bryan Singer
The Getaway 1972 Sam Peckinpah
2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick
The Towering Inferno 1974 John Guillermin
Chicago 2002 Rob Marshall
The Social Network 2010 David Fincher
Hannah and Her Sisters 1986 Woody Allen
The Rapture 1991 Michael Tolkin
Band of Brothers 2001
The Magnificent Seven 1960 John Sturges
Love Story 1970 Arthur Hiller
The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 David Lean
Midnight Cowboy 1969 John Schlesinger
Badlands 1973 Terrence Malick
Jackie Brown 1997 Quentin Tarantino
The Sand Pebbles 1966 Robert Wise
The Omega Man 1971 Boris Sagal
The Omen 1976 Richard Donner
The Player 1992 Robert Altman
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 Stanley Kubrick
Dog Day Afternoon 1975 Sidney Lumet
The Thin Red Line 1998 Terrence Malick
Office Space 1999 Mike Judge
St. Elmo's Fire 1985 Joel Schumacher
Reservoir Dogs 1992 Quentin Tarantino

That's flickchart.com Not exactly how I would rank them but very close.

My Best-Carey

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Lawrence of Arabia
Apocalypse Now
Lion in Winter
Lilies of the Field
African Queen
Driving Miss Daisy
Bridge on the River Kwai
2001 A Space Odyssey
City of God

City of God is up there for me in terms of international films. It has really an amazing rhythm to it, I kind of prefer films that are a bit more on the profound side than pure entertainment which it was to me so I that's why it doesn't quite crack the top but it's worthy of its high praise.

Same with the rest of that list though I think African Queen is closer to good than great and I haven't seen Lilies of The Field and have yet to see Lion In Winter (though I think it's on Kanopy so I'll catch it this month or so).

The 2nd and 3rd acts of 2001 are top 10 worthy for me.