Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +4

[Jussi]

Da 5 Bloods (2020) Directed by Spike Lee 7A

Four black soldiers return to Viet Nam to find and bring home the remains of a fallen comrade and to hunt for millions in gold if only they can figure out where they buried it. Da 5 Bloods resembles a black The Deer Hunter much less than it does an imaginative reinvention of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a movie where the search for gold drives a man mad. Of the returning soldiers, Paul (Delroy Lindo) is the most psychologically scarred by his experience in what the Vietnamese in the movie refer to as The American War. When things begin to go wrong, his paranoia begins to endanger everybody. His three pals have fared better over the years, now mostly thinking that they should have been more concerned with their own freedom back in the USA than in fighting against people with whom they had no cause to argue whatsoever. While throughout the movie director Spike Lee makes explicit political references to black blood spilled at home and abroad without recompense, Da 5 Bloods is not a preachy film. The emphasis rests primarily on the gold the old friends are trying to find and how that changes their relationships for better or for worse. With Lindo giving an awards-calibre performance as Paul, Da 5 Bloods is probably Lee's most successful movie since Do the Right Thing. True, the group of ex-soldiers is often unbelievably lucky in finding things in the middle of nowhere, but, otherwise, Lee does an excellent job controlling a movie with a lot of sprawl. Da 5 Bloods is likely the best movie of the new year, although admittedly the bar has been pretty low so far.

Available on Netflix

I agree, it was Spike Lee's best in years and clearly the best movie of the year so far. As I mentioned in it's own thread, felt it was too long. Some scenes went on too long and began to drag. 10-15 minutes less would have helped. I also thought there was a couple of scenes that were a bit preachy. The two times a certain character talked to the camera took me out a bit. Once would have have been ok but when after the second one it cuts to him

Spoiler

suddenly digging his own grave out of nowhere

, it felt weird. But man, Delroy Lindo's performance... I can't remember the last time I saw someone with PTSD and emotional pain depicted so brutally strong. I don't know if the rest of the movie deserves much Oscars but he surely does.

Jasper Pääkkönen's best contribution: "Kännissä kuin käki. Vitun amerikkalaiset..."

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Cats (yes, that one)

with CGI cat/person Eldritch abominations

So...yeah. This is a thing that I just watched.

The now-infamous movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's venerable musical is now officially out on video. So help me, I just had to watch it to see if it was as bad as it was supposed to be. And it's...I just don't know how to describe it. It's so utterly weird. You admire the cast's boundless enthusiasm in the same way you smile/wince as your toddler is thrilled to perform their first trumpet recital. They're all super into things, and you're just sitting there in horror.

I saw the stage adaptation of Cats a couple of times with my parents when I was...what, 7? 8? and I still have an affection for the soundtrack. Some of the choreography is genuinely impressive at times, and in some parallel universe there might be a watchable film version that could have been made from the source material, but here? Uh...no. The human/cat things were just so utterly bizarre it's really hard to understand how nobody who worked on the CGI for what must have been hundreds or thousands of hours just sat back and said: "What the hell are we doing?!" They don't look like cats or people. They don't move like cats or people. They're CGI monstrosities that gravity sometimes forgets. Taylor Swift is given large, furry cat-boobs. Nobody else is. There's a musical number with dancing mice and cockroaches that have faces. Rebel Wilson's fat indoor tabby cat eats a couple. In the number featuring the tap-dancing railway cat, they all tap-dance on a railway line, suddenly two inches tall. Idris Elba, Ian McKellan, Judi Dench, and Ray Winstone need to fire their agents. It's just...yeah. On one hand, it's definitely a unique cinematic experience. One the other, it's two hours out of your life you'll never get back. I did get some nostalgic memories from the songs...but I now have no desire to hear them ever again.

They went from this:

To this:

Don't say I didn't warn you.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Never saw Grand Prix. Guess I should.

Well now I worry I'm overselling it ... but I did dig it quite a bit.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Cats (yes, that one)

RELEASE THE BUTTHOLE CUT!

Cats VFX Editor Confirms the “Butthole Cut” Was Very Real, Very Terrible

 

[NyQuil]

Never saw Grand Prix. Guess I should.

Well, it still feels like a film made in the 1960s. So sometimes there are some jarring moments of cheese.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

RELEASE THE BUTTHOLE CUT!

Cats VFX Editor Confirms the “Butthole Cut” Was Very Real, Very Terrible

Honestly, it wouldn't even make it much stranger. The "cats" aren't anatomically correct, so instead of furry, dancing barbie dolls, it'd have furry, dancing barbie dolls with buttholes.

And the really weird thing about all of it is, all they had to do was just dress the cast up like the stage cast, and it would've been probably okay. Redundant, but still something that might be watchable. It would've saved them doing countless hours of cgi work, god knows how much money, and might not have been the critical and commercial debacle it was.

 

[kihei]

Intimate Lighting (1965) Directed by Ivan Passer 7A

I'd call this movie a homely comedy, a sliver of a film, really, but immensely charming in a completely natural way. Intimate Lighting is about Peter, a cellist with the symphony in Prague, who returns to his little village, cute younger girlfriend Steta in tow, where he will be the guest artist in a performance with the local amateur orchestra. Peter and Steta just spend a day with his family before the concert is to take place, and not much happens. The kids are unruly, a funeral procession takes place, brother Bambas and Peter get drunk together and act like kids. We get a comfortable glimpse of ordinary lives. Music is everywhere. Bambas is a talented violist, just not Prague Chamber Orchestra talented. Dad plucks along as best he can. And a family friend is something of a ringer on violin. Together the four play passably well through parts of a Mozart string quartet. But even snoring becomes a form of music in this house. One can sense the tiniest bit of tension between Peter and Bambas who is his older, slightly less talented brother, but nothing that is going to get in the way of how much they like one another. The odd chicken makes a fateful appearance here and there. In short, the movie seems almost like nothing at all, and yet it communicates so generously about the wonder of simple pleasures and the importance of family, not to mention the necessary balm that music can provide to almost all wounds. Intimate Lighting is a lovely little film that clearly likes people.

Note: Director Ivan Passer, a member of the Czech New Wave, eventually expatriated to Hollywood where he had a fairly undistinguished career except for Cutter's Way, a real sleeper of a thriller with John Heard (his best performance ever) and Jeff Bridges. Well worth picking up.

subtitles

available on Criterion Channel

 

[kihei]

Grand Prix: well, guys, I absolutely hated it. I thought the beginning and ending racing sequences were good. Everything else I thought was a disaster. Cardboard characters who talk and talk but never get more than one dimensional; one of the most laughably bad scripts I've seen; stilted dialogues for stilted characters read by actors not the least invested in their roles and who can blame them?; oceans of time wasted with almost no tension generated in any of it.

I didn't even think the middle racing sequences were that good. One was annoying lyrical, only made noteworthy because of the hilariously grotesque crowd reaction shots from poor Eva Marie Saint. Most of the other middle sequences were a case of red car passes black car and black car passes red car over and over again with seemingly not much at stake. Oh, that, and endless shots of the open road whizzing by, a very effective worm's eye view of speed in action, but the only reason there was so much of that shot was because the movie was made for a Cinerama 180 degree curved screen and this was the easiest way to get a roller-coaster type cheap thrill for an audience who paid big bucks (at the time) for their tickets. Had I stopped with the opening Monaco sequence, I probably would have been better off. But, hey, you pay your money and you take your chances. It wasn't like I was going to cure cancer this afternoon anyway.

 

[NyQuil]

Grand Prix: well, guys, I absolutely hated it. I thought the beginning and ending racing sequences were good. Everything else I thought was a disaster. Cardboard characters who talk and talk but never get more than one dimensional; one of the most laughably bad scripts I've seen; stilted dialogues for stilted characters read by actors not the least invested in their roles and who can blame them?; oceans of time wasted with almost no tension generated in any of it.

I didn't even think the middle racing sequences were that good. One was annoying lyrical, only made noteworthy because of the hilariously grotesque crowd reaction shots from poor Eva Marie Saint. Most of the other middle sequences were a case of red car passes black car and black car passes red car over and over again with seemingly not much at stake. Oh, that, and endless shots of the open road whizzing by, a very effective worm's eye view of speed in action, but the only reason there was so much of that shot was because the movie was made for a Cinerama 180 degree curved screen and this was the easiest way to get a roller-coaster type cheap thrill for an audience who paid big bucks (at the time) for their tickets. Had I stopped with the opening Monaco sequence, I probably would have been better off. But, hey, you pay your money and you take your chances. It wasn't like I was going to cure cancer this afternoon anyway.

You've just encapsulated real life auto racing in two paragraphs. I spent my youth hoofing it around Europe with my Dad and brother watching race after race and that's pretty much it.

I warned you about the ham and cheese though, so I don't feel too guilty about it.

I thought it had a sense of style and a European sensibility to it which is usually lacking from auto racing films.

 

[Osprey]

FWIW, I'm a fan of Grand Prix, as well. I haven't seen it in years, but I remember quite liking it. Of course, I also like just about everything with James Garner.

 

[NyQuil]

I enjoyed Rush but mainly because of Daniel Bruhl’s sublime performance as the notoriously prickly Niki Lauda.

Hemsworth was playing pretty close to type.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Grand Prix: well, guys, I absolutely hated it. I thought the beginning and ending racing sequences were good. Everything else I thought was a disaster. Cardboard characters who talk and talk but never get more than one dimensional; one of the most laughably bad scripts I've seen; stilted dialogues for stilted characters read by actors not the least invested in their roles and who can blame them?; oceans of time wasted with almost no tension generated in any of it.

I didn't even think the middle racing sequences were that good. One was annoying lyrical, only made noteworthy because of the hilariously grotesque crowd reaction shots from poor Eva Marie Saint. Most of the other middle sequences were a case of red car passes black car and black car passes red car over and over again with seemingly not much at stake. Oh, that, and endless shots of the open road whizzing by, a very effective worm's eye view of speed in action, but the only reason there was so much of that shot was because the movie was made for a Cinerama 180 degree curved screen and this was the easiest way to get a roller-coaster type cheap thrill for an audience who paid big bucks (at the time) for their tickets. Had I stopped with the opening Monaco sequence, I probably would have been better off. But, hey, you pay your money and you take your chances. It wasn't like I was going to cure cancer this afternoon anyway.

Hahahaha. Thanks for trying it!

 

[Puck]

Some people really hate Artemis Fowl. (I didn't think it was that bad, better than most of the latest Nicholas Cage movies out there).

Review: Artemis Fowl is a crushing disappointment

 

[Osprey]

Some people really hate Artemis Fowl. (I didn't think it was that bad, better than most of the latest Nicholas Cage movies out there).

Review: Artemis Fowl is a crushing disappointment

Ars Technica reviews movies now? I think that I'll wait to see what AnandTech's take is.

Seriously, I was thinking that I might watch it, but the 9% critic / 21% audience ratings at RT are making me seriously reconsider .

Artemis Fowl (2020)

 

[Ramboshaw]

Fiddler on the Roof. Get at me ‍

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I enjoyed Rush but mainly because of Daniel Bruhl’s sublime performance as the notoriously prickly Niki Lauda.

Hemsworth was playing pretty close to type.

Enjoyed it as well. The best of the recent blockbusters, despite deep flaws. Still, in terms of racing films, the best one I've ever seen is the impressive Senna. The only way not to enjoy it is if your name is Alain Prost.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Ad Astra

with an emotionless android wearing a Brad Pitt mask, and other people.

Soporific sci-fi plod with Brad Pitt as an astronaut in the near future looking for his missing astronaut father, neglectfully played by Tommy Lee Jones, still doing his best impression as the world's unhappiest catcher's mitt. Some interesting set pieces and sequences, such as the chase with the moon bandits. Yeah, there are moon bandits and the movie still manages to be boring as hell. Plot involves Pitt going to Neptune to stop a malfunctioning deep space ship run by crazy dad, which is causing energy surges that threaten Earth. All the way from Neptune.

An exercise in tedium. Pitt constantly narrates the movie with the charisma of Mr Rogers on mood stabilizers. Idiot lapses of logic and physics abound. Bases on the Moon and Mars look like really boring airports. Future Space Force discipline is pretty damn lax. Movie is highly recommended for those suffering from insomnia.

In space, no one can hear you yawn.

 

[NyQuil]

Enjoyed it as well. The best of the recent blockbusters, despite deep flaws. Still, in terms of racing films, the best one I've ever seen is the impressive Senna. The only way not to enjoy it is if your name is Alain Prost.

I grew up as a big Senna fan so the film was an absolute treat.

I found it a bit uneven (which is not surprising given that they had limitations in what footage they had) but fascinating nonetheless. I liked all of the behind-the-scenes footage with the drivers. I was a little less interested in his personal life, although the degree of his anonymous charity is mindblowing.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Harder They Fall
Man this is a bitter, cynical movie. So of course I dug it. Humphrey Bogart's last movie finds him playing a washed up journalist-turned-boxing-PR man. He winds up learning way more about the sport than he thought he knew. What will win: Money or his moral code? This is a pretty compelling argument to burn boxing to the ground ... and it's from 1957. I am truly not sure how much has changed. Maybe the fix isn't in as much (probably, right?). But it's still a sport that finds and exploits many a poor and uneducated participant, leaving them as battered husks as others make out financially. I think a lot of sports do this, but none perhaps more dramatic as boxing. A really great world weary Bogart who is matched by a perfectly pitched (for him) Rod Steiger as the beyond crooked promoter.

 

[Osprey]

Da 5 Bloods (2020) - 2/10 (Hated it)

Four American veterans return to Vietnam to recover a fallen squad mate and gold bars that they looted and buried 50 years before. I'll start with the good. Delroy Lindo gives a strong performance. Unfortunately, the good ends there. It has the look and feel of a TV movie. It's melodramatic and a little cheesy, the flashback sequences look especially bad, some of the camera angles and editing choices are strange and the soundtrack doesn't feel right. It's also too long. It feels like an amateurish directing job, not one by someone who was up for Best Director only two years ago. On top of that, the script is utterly laughable. It doesn't make sense that these men somehow waited until they were in their 70s to recover their fallen friend and the millions in gold that they could've better enjoyed when they were still in the primes of their lives. Also, they discover the gold only because one of them goes halfway down a mountain to poop and digs his hole where a lone gold bar just happens to be a few inches below the surface. Later, the "voices of reason" among them propose giving the gold to community activists back home instead of making themselves rich, as if that's the ethical thing to do with the millions that they stole from the Vietnamese locals. There are also huge coincidences (besides the discovery), with people appearing out of nowhere at the perfect times, and dumb revelations.

Then, there's Lindo's character, Paul, who proudly voted for Trump, even wears a MAGA hat through half of the movie and is given all of the worst character traits of the bunch: xenophobia, ignorance, selfishness, rudeness, aggressiveness and contempt (even for his own son for some reason). Spike Lee is as subtle as a brick and doesn't stop there. He also has another character put on a MAGA hat while turning villain, has a character refer to the "clansman in the Oval Office," has the Vietnam War referred to as the "American War," uses North Vietnamese propaganda as his own (including an incorrect "fact" about the percentage of black troops), uses archival footage to condemn America, even over subjects that have nothing to do with race, and more. It often feels less like Spike Lee is telling a story and more like he's lecturing America. It may be the preachiest film that I've ever seen. Instead of trying to change hearts, it preaches to the choir and shames the rest. Many will agree with its commentary, but I don't think that that excuses overlooking the movie's heavy handedness and many, many flaws. A mediocre movie with even a good message is still a mediocre movie.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Stranger Than Fiction (Forster, 2006) - Such complex themes and ideas, dumbed down to the point of being consumable and forgettable (and indeed, I had seen it before and forgot all about it). Remains here and there traces of undeniable originality. Ironically, the film would too have been better had it been a tragedy. 5/10

 

[Jussi]

Da 5 Bloods (2020) - 2/10 (Hated it)

Four American veterans return to Vietnam to recover a fallen squad mate and gold bars that they looted and buried 40 years before. I'll start with the good. Delroy Lindo gives a strong performance. Unfortunately, the good ends there. It has the look and feel of a TV movie. It's melodramatic and a little cheesy, the flashback sequences look especially bad, some of the camera angles and editing choices are strange and the soundtrack doesn't feel right. It's also too long. It feels like an amateurish directing job, not one by someone who was up for Best Director only two years ago. On top of that, the script is utterly laughable. It doesn't make sense that these men somehow waited until they were in their 60s to recover their fallen friend and the millions in gold that they could've better enjoyed when they were still in the primes of their lives. Also, they discover the gold only because one of them goes halfway down a mountain to poop and just happens to dig his hole where a lone gold bar is a few inches from the surface. Later, the "voices of reason" among them propose giving the gold to the black community instead of making themselves rich, as if that's the ethical thing to do with the millions that they stole from the Vietnamese locals. There are also huge coincidences (besides the discovery one), with people appearing out of nowhere at the perfect times, and dumb revelations.

Then, there's Lindo's character, Paul, who proudly voted for Trump, even wears a MAGA hat through much of the movie and is seemingly the embodiment of every unflattering stereotype that Spike Lee has about the right. Paul receives all of the worst character traits of the bunch: xenophobia, ignorance, selfishness, rudeness, aggressiveness and contempt. He even hates his own son for some reason. Spike Lee doesn't stop there. He also has another character put on a MAGA hat just before becoming a villain, has a character refer to the "clansman in the Oval Office," has characters call the Vietnam War the "American War," uses North Vietnamese radio propaganda to deliver his message (and an incorrect "fact" about the percentage of black troops), uses archival footage to condemn America, even over subjects that the movie isn't about, and more. It often feels less like Spike Lee is telling a story and more like he's delivering a lecture. It may be the preachiest film that I've ever seen. It's certainly not a film meant to change hearts, but to preach to the choir and shame the rest. Many will agree with its commentary, but I don't think that that excuses overlooking the movie's heavy handedness and many, many flaws. A mediocre movie with even a good message is still a mediocre movie.

The son explains it at the end when talking to Hedy. His mother died while giving birth to him, Paul loved his mother more than him and blames him for her death. Though in that letter admits to loving him.

 

[kihei]

Hour of the Wolf (1968) Directed by Ingmar Bergman 7A

This is about as close to a horror movie as the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman ever made, though the horror is psychological in nature. Johann, an artist of some renown, and Alma, his partner, live on a remote island where he paints and she leads a quiet life. Suddenly an old woman appears and tells Alma to read her husband's diaries. When she does so, she finds that he is beset by literal demons, strange creatures out of Hieronymus Bosch who torment him around the island. Things deteriorate from there. She begins seeing people herself, mysterious figures who live in a castle on the other side of the island who invite Johan and Alma to dinner. They attend and meet a host of eccentric and damaged people. Are they real? How can it be that Alma now seems to literally share her husband's madness? A creepy and disturbing movie is made more effective by the performances of Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman in the pivotal roles. When it comes to actors who have played couples opposite one another in several movies, they really are the ultimate gold standard. Though there are other contenders, for sure, one could build a reasonable case that either Von Sydow or Ullman is the best actor in movie history as both certainly have the pedigree to support such a hypothesis. Here there intensity is what gives Hour of the Wolf its strange, disquieting power.

subtitles

 

[Osprey]

The son explains it at the end when talking to Hedy. His mother died while giving birth to him, Paul loved his mother more than him and blames him for her death. Though in that letter admits to loving him.

Thanks for the explanation. I missed that because my attention was waning in the end. It was definitely longer than it needed to be.

 

[nameless1]

Stranger Than Fiction (Forster, 2006) - Such complex themes and ideas, dumbed down to the point of being consumable and forgettable (and indeed, I had seen it before and forgot all about it). Remains here and there traces of undeniable originality. Ironically, the film would too have been better had it been a tragedy. 5/10

I might be the very few people who actually enjoyed the movie.


Personally, I really liked the premise, but I agree with your assessment. The romance is rather weak too, and the ending is absolutely a cop out. Still, I appreciate the attempt, because at the very least, it was different.