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Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +2

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Live in the Now said:
I haven't seen this yet, but it's a satire about the time in question. The characters and songs are not at all meant to be taken seriously.
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I realized that it was satire and didn't take any of it seriously. It's not that I didn't understand the film or misunderstood it, but that I simply didn't like it. I'm not willing to give a film (or TV show or novel) praise or even a pass for being unstructured, unengaging and unentertaining just because the satire is on point. To me, a satirical masterpiece is one that communicates its themes while also being a skillful and entertaining example of the chosen medium. Dr. Strangelove is an example of a great satire that's still a very entertaining film, even if you don't get the meaning, and Planet of the Apes is another. Nashville may be great satire, but I found it unenjoyable and hard to get through as a film. It seems to me that the 70s had quite a few films like that.
 
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Trap Jesus said:
Ya, Basterds is my favorite as well. It's just jam packed with memorable scenes, it's Tarantino's funniest movie, and it has one of the greatest characters of all-time IMO with Hans Landa.

I love Pulp Fiction and it's VERY close, but I think Basterds is just a step above, and I find myself going back to it more often.
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Landa in particular is an even more enjoyable character if you know any gregarious but snobby Europeans ("western" europeans anyway). One of my mom's high school classmates is strikingly similar to Landa in that sense. Obviously he doesn't have the more insidious traits, but I found myself even more delighted in Christoph Walz's performance for that reason.
 
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Inglorious Basterds - 9.5/10

I adored this movie. I was tense from beginning to end. Waltz absolutely killed his role. I had watched part of this before and knew it had a chance to be my favorite movie of Tarantino's, and it delivered.

All 5 movies I've watched of Tarantino's over the past week have delivered. Every single one has worked for me.

Going to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tonight, and will also watched Hateful Eight this weekend. Those seem to have more mixed reviews, so I'm interested to see how I feel about those.
 
Wrigley said:
I'm thinking about watching Becket. What do you guys think of it?
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I quite liked it. It's a film that I wasn't familiar with until about 10 years ago, when it was finally restored and put on DVD after, apparently, not being restored or even released on home video for decades. I watched it for the first time then and it felt sort of like discovering a minor gem. I'm a sucker for the extravagant period piece dramas of the 50s and 60s, so finding one that I hadn't seen, and with such pedigree, was a delight. It's much more of an intimate, personal drama than the big ensemble pieces and relies entirely on Burton and O'Toole, but they're in top form, as kihei said.
 
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Redcon 1

with nobody you'll ever remember or want to see again.

A zombie virus devastates London yet again, and a supposedly elite military squad is sent into the quarantined zone to find and rescue the doctor who made the virus so they might find a cure. The clock is ticking on the air strike that's going to wipe the whole area clean; zombies, survivors, wardrobe coordinated gangs and all. Sometimes the zombie virus creates zombies who evolve to work together, shoot guns, drive tanks, and herd human livestock into trailers...sometimes they're the mindless kind who wander blindly into minefields and machine gun fire. Sometimes the rescue squad has a tank and work together themselves, sometimes they're on foot and arguing to the point of furious fistfights. The mandatory cute little girl sometimes realizes it's the zombie apocalypse and steels herself for action, sometimes she's helpless screaming luggage who begs the dead guy to wake up. It's usually plot-dependent. The rescue squad is specifically told the virus is bloodborne...and half the time they put their guns away to splatter zombie juice everywhere with their fists, bats, swords, and whatever blunt objects they have handy. They're really on the ball, these folks.

Yet another zombie movie that saw an oversaturated marketplace and said: "Me too!" This one borrows from literally every other zombie movie ever made and combines them to create one of the worst cinematic experiences I've ever seen. It's not just the ordinary kind of bad where you sigh and turn the tv off halfway through. It's beyond even the low standards of zombie movie fare. Every time you think it's hit rock bottom, it plunges lower. It's the Trump Administration of zombie movies. It's that bad. You're watching in wonderment that it could have even been made. It shakes your confidence in the whole industry of making movies, that's how bad it is. Like, how could anyone making this not have realized how bad it is? From the shaky cam to the maudlin montages and violin-laden tributes to characters you care nothing about to the total abandonment of judgement and consistency by every character in the film, it's a special kind of calamity all the way through. I just don't have any explanation as to how it exists. Acting, plot, music, writing, direction, editing...just all jaw-droppingly bad. No internal logic at all. Like...at all. How can this be green-lit? How can anyone show up to work on it day after day? No idea.

My wife rates it as worse than Battlefield Earth...I'm not quite ready to go that far. But it's close. Holy shit, it's really down there. My life is measurably worse for having seen it. Top five worst movies I've ever seen.

On Netflix. Must be seen to be believed, but that might encourage whoever made it to make more movies. So don't watch it.
 
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OhCaptainMyCaptain said:
Inglorious Basterds - 9.5/10

I adored this movie. I was tense from beginning to end. Waltz absolutely killed his role. I had watched part of this before and knew it had a chance to be my favorite movie of Tarantino's, and it delivered.
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I found the juxtaposition between the more serious scenes and the almost comical slapstick of the Basterds at times rather jarring.

I get that it's supposed to provoke a reaction but I almost felt like the comedy diluted the overall effect. There's no way the hapless Italian disguises would have worked.

The shootout in the basement restaurant, the chilling opening scene, the actress and the shoe, the projection room conflict, these scenes were absolute gold.
 
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Last Year at Marienbad (1961) - A work of sheer genius. The narrative construct is familiar to Robbe-Grillet's (the screenwriter of the film) novel Jealousy, which I've read recently and which I believe helped with my approach to the movie. I may have been a bit more lost or baffled if I hadn't been familiar with a previous work. Still, the film, released four years after the book - and it's important to know that the film is not an adaptation. They're two different stories, in two differenr mediums, with a style that relates to the other - seems to nail the aesthetic just a little more. The sets and costumes are at once sumptuous, sordid and mysterious which accompanies the movie's narrative to perfection. I adore the way the movie was constructed, with the man and the woman creating a story or their stories as they interacted. Rarely have I seen a movie nail its atmosphere - and not just on a visceral level - and imagery as well. I had knots in my stomach. I could feel the entire weight of the film creeping upon me, and it was a transcendent experience. Anyone who tries to approach the film with a linear line of thinking is ultimately going to end up shorting themselves here. It is not interested in Point A-Point B at all. It is interested in Point X, having already arrived to destination by the beginning of the film. This makes for a circular narrative, which is executed with consistent masterstrokes by both the writer and the director, Resnais, who accentuates the fluid, dreamy plot with technical brilliance. The movie wouldn't work without it, since the pacing, editing and scene order are just as important to the narrative as the dialogue and narration. Many shots are absolutely breathtaking. A unique aesthetical experience, and I mean this in a way that goes far beyond the images shown on the screen.

Maybe this is just the shock from a first viewing speaking but it might possibly be my favorite movie of all-time. I've recently started getting into Alain Robbe-Grillet and he's quickly rising up amongst my favorite artists, even though I haven't read/seen too much of him. His novel Jealousy is also a unique experience.
 
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Once Upon A Time....In Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino's 9th film is an interesting case. It's perhaps his most patient and "normal" film since Jackie Brown, but it's also self-indulgent, even moreso than most Tarantino films. I thought Leo was solid, but Brad Pitt really stole the show for me. I've heard complaints about the slower pace and lack of "plot" so to speak, but that actually enhanced the experience for me. We just watch two guys on the downswing of their career lament about their lives. I did have a few issues with the ending, and with how Sharon Tate was handled. But overall, a very good film.

8/10

Tarantino ranking (still have not seen Hateful Eight or Death Proof, and I'm counting Kill Bill as one film):

Inglorious Basterds
Pulp Fiction
Jackie Brown
Once Upon A Time...
Django Unchained
Reservoir Dogs
Kill Bill
 
Pulp Fiction
Kill Bill
Hateful 8
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs
Django Unchained
Inglorious Bastards
Once Upon A Time...
Kill Bill 2
 
Tau

with a couple of people. Francis from Deadpool for one (I thought he looked familiar...).

Julia is a cute, young, and poor thief making her way cuddling up to guys in nightclubs and helping herself to their valuables when one day she's suddenly assaulted and wakes up in...some weird, futuristic prison/lab place. She's now got some implant in the back of her neck connected to her brain, and there's a non-communicative guy herding her around. She and her two fellow prisoners manage to cause an explosion and escape into the upper levels of the facility...briefly. Their adventure in the mad scientist's living quarters is cut short by the intervention of a watchdog robot which folds out menacingly from a sculpture in the main room and only Julia is left alive. Their captor is Alex, eccentric billionaire AI computer researcher who's just one more innocent victim brain upload away from a lucrative DARPA contract, and it's just so damn inconvenient how Julia blew up his lab! So she'll just have to crash in the living areas...watched over by Tau, the sentient AI watching the house, cleaning the surfaces of excess blood left over from the dead bodies, and operating Ares, the watchdog bot. Alex is on a strict time limit, and the board is getting antsy. He's under pressure, and with the destruction of his lab he has no choice but to farm out Julia's brain game training to Tau after he goes off to do his computer magnate stuff. But how sentient is Tau? And how resourceful is Julia?

Actually not bad. Several cuts below Ex Machina but still enjoyable. Alex is basically Sheldon Cooper crossed with a Nazi camp Kommandant, and he has a very convenient way of punishing Tau. Also, he clearly doesn't date much. Yeah, worth watching. Was pleasantly surprised. My wife picked it.

On Netflix now.

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Also as a note to everyone, I'd like to advertise my newly discovered useless superpower: picking horribly bad movies on Netflix. If you want to watch a really, really bad movie on a streaming service, just pm me the choices you're thinking about and I'll choose one for you that will be the worst possible thing you could ever have seen. Cuz I'm all about that, apparently.
 
ProstheticConscience said:
Tau
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I hadn't heard of this. I think that I'll check it out just because I like sci-fi and a poor man's Ex Machina doesn't sound half bad. I see that the RT scores aren't very good, though, so I'll keep my expectations low. Thanks.

Actually, this film reminds me of another Netflix sci-fi film from last year: Mute. That one was written and directed by the man behind Moon and has Alexander Skarsgard as a mute guy tracking down his kidnapped girlfriend in a Blade Runner-esque future city. If you just love the Blade Runner and future city aesthetics, you might be interested, but I don't recommend it as a movie. It just doesn't work, much of it due to the fact that a main character that doesn't speak is really hard to connect with. It occasionally has nice visuals, though.

ProstheticConscience said:
Also as a note to everyone, I'd like to advertise my newly discovered useless superpower: picking horribly bad movies on Netflix. If you want to watch a really, really bad movie on a streaming service, just pm me the choices you're thinking about and I'll choose one for you that will be the worst possible thing you could ever have seen. Cuz I'm all about that, apparently.
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Thank you for the generous offer, but I have my hands too full hating on critically acclaimed films to have much time for horribly bad ones.
 
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Osprey said:
I hadn't heard of this. I think that I'll check it out just because I like sci-fi and a poor man's Ex Machina doesn't sound half bad. I see that the RT scores aren't very good, though, so I'll keep my expectations low. Thanks.

Actually, this film reminds me of another Netflix sci-fi film from last year: Mute. That one was written and directed by the man behind Moon and has Alexander Skarsgard as a mute guy tracking down his kidnapped girlfriend in a Blade Runner-esque future city. If you just love the Blade Runner and future city aesthetics, you might be interested, but I don't recommend it as a movie. It just doesn't work, much of it due to the fact that a main character that doesn't speak is really hard to connect with. It occasionally has nice visuals, though.
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Mute sucked. The Skarsgard guy was decent in it and the overall aesthetic of neo-Germany was okay, but Paul Rudd and his buddy were too annoying for words. Didn't think it did much with the few assets it had.
 
47 Meters Down (2017) - 3/10 (Really disliked it)

Two sisters (Mandy Moore, Claire Holt) are trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a shark cage with their air running out. That premise appealed to me because it's different and I like films in confined settings. Unfortunately, the film is stupid, predictable and boring. For one, it's filled to the gills with manufactured suspense (ex. obstacles popping up just when a character thinks that she's in the clear), so much that it drowns out any real suspense and immersion that might've otherwise been had. Also, despite being highly concerned with their levels of oxygen, the girls seem to pay no mind at all to conserving it (by slowing their breathing, as they were instructed earlier) and, instead, act panicked and chatty for most of the film. It really killed my ability to put myself in the characters' shoes when I repeatedly wanted to grab them, shake them and tell them to remember what they were told and calm down. Finally, there are some head scratching parts, like how one girl's air level drops 30 bars in just a couple of minutes and then only 20 over the following 10 minutes. The thought that she should be dead by now was distracting. For a brief moment, I actually liked the ending... until it wasn't the ending; there was a twist for the sake of a twist. Anyways, it's a watchable film, but it really insults your intelligence. Apparently, a sequel is coming out in a few weeks, which is a scary thought if sequels are usually dumber than the originals.
 
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The Eightful Hate (2015) by Quentin Tarantino – 1.5/10

I disliked this film so much I misconstructed the title on purpose. Only reason it gets 1.5 and not 0.5 is because I love Ennio Morricone, but this isn't even Morricone at his best, quite far from it actually.

Nothing interesting happens in this film. A good actor like Tim Roth is hidden behind a stupid beard and a peculiar voice. The pretty boy actor is hidden under the floor for most of the film. Michael Madsen just sits in a corner and looks like a middle aged lady the whole film. Samuel L. Jackson holds a long monologue about his big black dick. And then there's a lot of violence (of course) including two other actors (Kurt Russel and some other guy) and the female lead.

This is the only post 90s Tarantino film I've actually seen in whole, all the others I have either given up on after a short while or not given a chance at all. Only reason I saw this one from start to finish is because I had company.

Best thing with the film? When it ended.
 
Death Proof - 6.5/10

Definitely my least favorite of Tarantino's film, but I ended up liking it a bit more than I expected to, honestly. The overall plot of the movie wasn't much, and the dialogue was extremely hit or miss, but the car scenes were fantastic. I just didn't you weren't almost halfway through the movie before you finally get one. Glad I watched it, but I will probably never watch it again unless it's on TV and nothing else is on.
 
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) by Don Siegel – 7.75/10

Really nice little film, from the whole small town set up to the acting, settings, flow of the story, et cetera.

Dana Wynter's real stylish too. That scene towards the end of the movie where she

wakes up in Dr. Miles' arms

is pretty chilling.
 
Arizonan God said:
Tarantino ranking (still have not seen Hateful Eight or Death Proof, and I'm counting Kill Bill as one film):

Inglorious Basterds
Pulp Fiction
Jackie Brown
Once Upon A Time...
Django Unchained
Reservoir Dogs
Kill Bill
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My rankings so far (still have to finish Hateful Eight and Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2):

Inglorious Basterds
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Once Upon a Time...
Jackie Brown
Death Proof

Feel like I could move all of those expect Death Proof around depending on the mood I'm in. Only thing for sure is I think Death Proof is the worst (though still had enjoyable parts), and Inglorious Basterds feels pretty solid as my #1. I got about halfway through Hateful Eight the other day and something came up. I was actually enjoying that quite a bit, so I'm interested to see if I like how it finishes. Would probably place it right around the Django Unchained / Once Upon a Time area so far.​
 
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