Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +5

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Just saw Cuties. One, people are morons if they're blaming the director or Netflix for the production. I was expecting a far more shocking presentation of the subject, and more aggressive pieces have been produced in the past. Two, I don't know if it's because I'm a terrible person and am part of the problem, but I wasn't shocked, mostly because I thought those girls looked dumb and goofy and their presentation was sometimes worthy of a satirical video. I'm born in '92. I guess, in a way, I grew up with that shit. I was 11 in 2003. I remember/hearing of girls doing crazy, sad acts on MSN webcams and of one in particular who got caught by her parents and got in the newspaper (which does not seem helpful to me?). It's a problem and it's sad but I guess as a young millenial, when you grow up so used to something, it doesn't shock you as much, hence the problem. I guess I can see both sides of the medal on whether it was necessary or not to have closeups on these girls buttocks throughout the flick and might lean towards the 'weird and not necessary' side. I'll readily admit to being someone who doesn't really give important to art as a public service (although I'm not against it either) but on a purely cinematic level, this didn't do much for me at all. I guess I was amused by the little Ismael boy, who I found oddly majestic and thought that shot of him picking up lingerie off the streets behind the celebrating girls as to be amusing in a goofy way. Outside of that, I find these movies extremely to write and not particularly original, albeit probably useful to some people, and certainly useful to point out a moron.

I get that, I am really not a fan of films that go for social matters for the sake of it. I thought there was more to it here, but as said before, I came in with a strong bias. I don't think the girls look dumb and goofy, though they certainly are, they are really valid portraits and I see them with a lot of empathy. I agree though that the film shouldn't really be shocking to anyone who hasn't been asleep for the last 15 years, but it's always easier to deny the problem and "blame it on Marilyn" (as Eminem said).

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I get that, I am really not a fan of films that go for social matters for the sake of it. I thought there was more to it here, but as said before, I came in with a strong bias. I don't think the girls look dumb and goofy, though they certainly are, they are really valid portraits and I see them with a lot of empathy. I agree though that the film shouldn't really be shocking to anyone who hasn't been asleep for the last 15 years, but it's always easier to deny the problem and "blame it on Marilyn" (as Eminem said).

Oh, absolutely. Empathy is certainly there. What I meant by goofy is just the sheer image of it. They looked like little clowns and not in an insulting way. I think there is more to say here about irresponsible adults than there is about the little girls is all. But then again, I am a childless twenty-eight year old male who is married to a 26 year-old woman and lives with a dog in a 'hip' neighborhood instead of a project. I'm so far removed from that milieu that these girls may as well be inventions to me and while I'm not proud of it, I also don't have any point of reference for this to hit home with me in a relatable way that I imagine a middle-aged parent could.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

One thing though, what are the closeups supposed to accomplish? They're not necessary to understanding just how young, frail and twiggy these children are. I don't think the director had any gross intentions there but it seems careless.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

One thing though, what are the closeups supposed to accomplish? They're not necessary to understanding just how young, frail and twiggy these children are. I don't think the director had any gross intentions there but it seems careless.

I think she (the director) was clearly rubbing it in because she knew it would cause malaise (unease?). As I said before, I think it's also a facilitator in showing the extreme ways of the counterpart to all this: the rigid traditions of the family. It's easier to shook people and get a reaction with sexualized young girls and close-ups of their bottoms than with cultural traditions (that might be just as harmful), and I think that's where the film is brilliant: in showing how she gets to do the grand écart between two opposing cultural paths that ask of her the same thing, to put aside and lose her childhood.

 

[member 51464]

Are you sure that you weren't just thrown off by Mel Gibson's accent? When you're used to his American accent from the mid 80s onward, his original Australian one can sound like a bad dub .

Haha, I swear it is not that. Check the reference to it here saying it is the first 7 minutes:

What I wish I'd known about this blu-ray release.

Though I recalled, in my case, it was the first 15 to 20 minutes that were off, so I stopped watching. But this Criterion Channel is sounding increasingly intriguing. It may be getting subscribed to soon!

 

[kihei]

Haha, I swear it is not that. Check the reference to it here saying it is the first 7 minutes:

What I wish I'd known about this blu-ray release.

Though I recalled, in my case, it was the first 15 to 20 minutes that were off, so I stopped watching. But this Criterion Channel is sounding increasingly intriguing. It may be getting subscribed to soon!

Check out the MUBI site, too. I find them both excellent.

By the way, The Year of Living Dangerously will be only available to the end of the month,

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

The new Bill and Ted is most non-henious, I watched all 3 in order and it surprisingly syncs together perfectly.

The Deathstroke animated movie was very good also.

 

[sr edler]

I agree though that the film shouldn't really be shocking to anyone who hasn't been asleep for the last 15 years, but it's always easier to deny the problem and "blame it on Marilyn" (as Eminem said).

As with a lot of other controversial social topics, a lot of people play shocked or indignant as a defense mechanism, it's easy to jump on the train where everyone else is already sitting, instead of trying to sort out the actual topic and the nuances.

I haven't seen this particular film myself (and don't plan to because it seems quite boring) but from the trailer, yeah those type of things definitely occur among the age group. It's also quite obvious the film is trying to deliver some kind of message regarding different cultures meeting each other, or perhaps the extremes of different cultures.

 

[kihei]

24 Frames (2017) Directed by Abbas Kiarostami 9B

24 Frames is a unique movie. It is an experimental film by the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami that takes a series of 24 minimalist images and devotes four and a half minutes each to what happens just before the main image or just after the main image. The end result is 24 short movies that deal almost exclusively with scenes from nature involving mainly seascapes, snowy landscapes and a variety of animals in their natural setting, cows, birds, sheep, deer, and horses. In all of these vignettes not much actually happens at all—yet, except for the first one, each can be seen as a parable. For instance, in one sequence we watch cows walk by a fallen cow on the seashore. The viewer can see that as about nothing or as about something. The animals that make up the “characters” in these landscapes are often very subtly animated. For instance, shot usually from some distance, tiny birds look like tiny birds and move like tiny birds, not like some Disney cartoon birds. But Kiarostami manipulates the image just a fraction to allows us, if we choose, to anthropomorphize the animals slightly. For example, in one bit, a bunch of chickadees fight over a little hole in the snow that provides a tiny cave of shelter for whichever bird can defend keeping it. Different birds come and try to stay there. Finally, having fended off the others, one chickadee settles in, victorious. End of story? Nope. In the final seconds a cat comes out of nowhere and grabs the bird. Thus, there is a moral to the story a bit different than the one I expected about perseverance. I hasten to add, though, that this is the most explicit, least subtle “comment” in all of the vignettes. The other 23 bits will require more of you. But figuring them out is not only fun, it is somehow deeply satisfying.

I found myself asking seemingly inessential and mundane, but suddenly important questions like “Why is that deer just waiting there?”; “Is that seagull engaging in a vigil for a fallen comrade?”; “Did the return of that motorboat make the birds fly away?” Not exactly the kind of questions one asks oneself in a Fast and Furious movie. However, most, maybe all, of these little natural vignettes tell tiny tales if we choose to let them. Or we can just contemplate the sequences like they were a form of visual haiku verse. Kiarostami leaves the choice up to us. Most movies want to excite us in some way, viscerally or intellectually. This one seems to want to calm us down and let us smell the roses. For viewers who prefer their movies to be the cinematic equivalent of macaroni and cheese, this serving of escargot will not be welcome. For the adventurous, 24 Frames will provide a totally different experience than you have ever had before at the movies. For some reason, I suspect this is a very good movie to watch during a pandemic.

Sidenote: Fittingly 24 Frames was Kiarostami's last film. What a perfect way to say goodbye.


Criterion Channel

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (Hickox, 1989) - When I saw Hickox had made a film I didn't know about between his Waxwork films, I just had to see it (I'm just that dumb). It just confirmed what I thought about him. The guy had one good idea and delivered it almost correctly, and almost made a career out of it. Sundown is an original take on the vampire story, Dracula survived, bought a whole town to get vampires to live there on factory manufactured blood produced locally. It's not a horror film by any means, it's a mix between a comedy and a western, using horror tropes. In the hands of someone else, could maybe have been worth something, but Hickox is highly incompetent and the result is ridiculous (it fails at being either a comedy or a western). His biggest flaw, his actors' direction, shows up here x100, having to direct non-actor kids who end up unbearable, but are still better than Bruce Campbell, a reknown non-actor in need of heavy direction (I love the guy, had he had an ounce of talent, he would have had an amazing career - here his fake laugh at the end might just be the cheesiest and worst acting I've seen). 1.5/10

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Ghost In The Shell (2017 live action version) - 7/10

ScarJo isn't my favourite action actress (she's great in stuff like Marriage Story or JoJo Rabbit though). I feel this movie is unfairly maligned because it's a remake of a beloved anime. I don't remember much from the original so I went into this with a fairly open mind and enjoyed it for the most part. We often overrate good looking films due to cinematography and this has one of the best looks any modern action movie has so it deserves a lot of points on visuals alone. The storyline gets cliched in the final third partly stemming from a hard-to-believe premise but people had no issues with that on the anime. It's a better than average action flick.

 

[Osprey]

Souls at Sea (1937) - 7/10 (Really liked it)

In 1842, a seaman (Gary Cooper) stands trial for the murder of passengers on a cross-Atlantic voyage. We then get a flashback to see what happened. It starts a bit like Mutiny on the Bounty and ends like Titanic, being partly based on the real life sinking of the William Brown. In between, there's more talking than action, but it stays interesting enough because it remains a mystery until the very end what exactly Cooper's character is on trial for. Also, he must keep a secret, but another passenger knows it and threatens to get in the way of his mission and expose him to the girl that he's taken an interest in (you knew that there had to be a romantic subplot). Cooper is his usual wooden self, but it sort of fits the character, and George Raft plays the best friend. Supposedly, this was a popular movie at the time--Laurel and Hardy even parodied the title with Saps at Sea a few years later (see below)--but it has been somewhat forgotten. It's no classic, but I liked it, partly because I'm drawn to movies that take place largely at sea, especially if they're loosely historical.

Spoiler: Full movie

Saps at Sea (1940) - 7/10 (Really liked it)

On doctor's orders to get some fresh sea air and drink goat's milk, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy (played, coincidentally, by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, respectively) rent a boat and bring aboard a goat, only to end up trapped at sea with a wanted killer. Hilarity ensues.

Spoiler: Full movie

 

[kihei]

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Directed by Peter Yates 8A

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best small-time gangster movie that nobody has ever seen. Director Peter Yates made this movie five years after he directed Bullitt, a major hit with super cool Steve McQueen. For my money, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the better movie. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is an aging hood who still dabbles in the game and has a sentence pending in New Hampshire. He gets stuck between a rock and a hard place and may have to turn informer for a smart, sneaky detective named Foley (Richard Jordan) if he wants to stay out of prison. Eddie is becoming old and he just wants to get on with life. In too deep, he just doesn’t have the resources he once did. Robert Mitchum is simply great in the role, no other adjective will do. A massively underrated actor his entire career, this might be his best performance. The dialogue in this movie must have been a major influence on Tarantino; The script of The Friends of Eddie Coyle has all the authenticity of the best of Tarantino but divorced from his smug glibness. Filled with vivid performances in secondary roles, The Friends of Eddie Coyle gets better every time I see it.

Criterion Collection

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Directed by Peter Yates 8A

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best small-time gangster movie that nobody has ever seen. Director Peter Yates made this movie five years after he directed Bullitt, a major hit with super cool Steve McQueen. For my money, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the better movie. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is an aging hood who still dabbles in the game and has a sentence pending in New Hampshire. He gets stuck between a rock and a hard place and may have to turn informer for a smart, sneaky detective named Foley (Richard Jordan) if he wants to stay out of prison. Eddie is becoming old and he just wants to get on with life. In too deep, he just doesn’t have the resources he once did. Robert Mitchum is simply great in the role, no other adjective will do. A massively underrated actor his entire career, this might be his best performance. The dialogue in this movie must have been a major influence on Tarantino; The script of The Friends of Eddie Coyle has all the authenticity of the best of Tarantino but divorced from his smug glibness. Filled with vivid performances in secondary roles, The Friends of Eddie Coyle gets better every time I see it.

Criterion Collection

Co-sign all of this. Really stellar Mitchum performance amid a great movie.

 

[Langdon Alger]

The Social Network - 2010

Couldn’t really get into this one too much. Jesse Eisenberg was good though. I know this movie got really good reviews, but I’m not sure what the average person thought. I found a lot of it to be pretty boring to be honest.

 

[sr edler]

3615 code Père Noël (Dial Code Santa Claus) (1989) by René Manzor – 5.5/10

So this is the French film Home Alone was accused of ripping off. The moral story of the two films is that if you're a filthy rich parent you should focus more time on your kids and less time on Christmas related stress.

This is not really a family friendly film, as its American counterpart, but more like a French Scream but with kids as kids instead of adults playing teenagers. So in that sense the two films aren't remotely comparable.

There are some weird shots & angles throughout the film with a bit of a cheap feeling to it, but it does have some nice things too. The villain is pretty villainous, for instance.

 

[Jussi]

I wondered about that scene, too. I thought the scene was justified and it makes a fair amount of sense to me. As Violenza earlier pointed out, it is a confrontational film, and the final dance scene is sort of the show-stopper of that confrontation. Why so heavy, though? Viewers should be, of course, appalled, and Doucoure shows us some of the audience in the movie near the stage react in revulsion and disgust. But we also see the judges and their mixed feelings about what they are looking at while other members of the audience looked shocked or amused but not repulsed. I would guess, only a guess, that it is this degree of passive acceptance that Doucoure is angered by and the point of the film is don't blame the kids (or the filmmaker), blame the forces in society that allow the sexualization of children to occur, even be encouraged, and that is what the audience should really be upset about. It might have been an extreme way of making the point, but I think it was the way to go given what the rest of the movie was building toward. As I said earlier it is a movie where people need to ask questions, and perhaps part of the audience won't see past this sequence to the bigger issues. That may well be a deal breaker for some. For me, Doucoure may have judged correctly that the only way to get people talking about the issues is to shock them into a violent reaction--and a more thoughtful and less-heated debate might follow in the wake of the initial hysteria. Let's face it most movie about social issues leave no footprint at all. Cuties just might. If Congress wants to talk to her, I'm absolutely sure they won't have to ask twice.

I fully agree that the shots of audiences varying reactions is a collection is how the society would/should react. I finished the movie last night and I fully agree that Netflix marketing for this was horrendous. Absolutely the opposite of what the movie was like. It was a nice little film that highlighted very well the pressures of young kids with different social backgrounds can face. I'd rate it 8+ or 8½. Some things felt like they happened a bit too quickly or without explanation. Best parts for me were in the beginning with Amy hiding under her mom's bed while her mother is told by the aunt to inform her friends that her husband is getting a new wife. When she hears her mother breaking up in tears between calls and beginning to cry herself, it hits home the pressure of her family's culture. And man, the scene at the end between them... As someone who no longer has a mother, it hit home perhaps a little more. Now for the dance scenes, over here we have a term for these type of kids "pissis" or the longer term "pissaliisa". Kids trying to act more adult and failing miserable at it. I was laughing my ass of during the dance scenes. The zoom-ins were intended to imitate how these videos are shot with adults (millions of twerking vids etc.) and I wound up laughing even more. But yeah, the society that pushes these types of examples or role models for kids is clearly the target in this movie and it mostly succeeds in it. Amy's confusion between the cultures was really well brought up by the actress.

Oh yeah, one more thing about the dance scene. I actually found this to be more offensive back in the day:

 

[kihei]

The Lighthouse (2006) Directed by Mariya Saakyan 8A

Lena, now living in Moscow, returns to her grandparents’ village in rural Armenia for a visit. With war raging in the region, she tries to get her grandparents to return with her to Moscow. Despite the great, ever present danger they are reluctant to abandon their home where they have spent their entire lives. Take away vehicles, electricity and televisions and this little village could still be in the 19th century--to its inhabitants, the prospect of moving to a modern city is a fearsome unknown. Her planned brief stay becomes a long one as Lena becomes more involved in the villagers’ lives as the war worsens and threatens to consume them. The Lighthouse is more than just a realistic account of civilian hardship in time of war. Director Mariya Saakyan isn’t just trying to show us what this situation looks like, she wants us to feel it—the sense of displacement, the emotional destabilization, the hopelessness. Saakyan doesn’t focus on the war so much as people’s inevitable frailty in such unforgiving situations. The Lighthouse is much more a head trip than I expected. I was continuously amazed at how with what must have been a modest budget and using mostly villagers as actors, Saakyan could construct not just complex scenes but such remarkable interior landscapes and emotions. The Lighthouse takes its place beside the great anti-war films.

Sidenote: Sadly Saakyan's career was a brief one as she died of cancer a decade later. The Lighthouse was the first movie from Armenia directed by a woman.

subtitles

MUBI

 

[kihei]

Loving You (1957) Directed by Hal Kanter 2A

The King of rock and roll, the man who made rock seem dangerous, the guy whose nickname was Elvis the Pelvis because of his below-the-belt gyrations, the singer whose music was banned, at least briefly, in dozens of small towns in the States, that guy made 31 movies, all of which basically have vanished from existence. There are no Elvis Presley move festivals, at least not serious ones. Indeed, there is no real interest in these works whatsoever. How could that be? How could movies starring such a gigantic icon disappear so completely from a pop culture that he helped to spawn? According to IMDb only one of these movies is a good one (King Creole), the only movie to garner a ranking of seven and that just barely (7.0). In addition to this singular achievement, 15 of Presley’s movies are rated in the “6” range, 13 are rated in the “5” range, and two are rated in the “4” range. The average score is about 5.9. In other words, beyond abysmal. An avid movie goer of a certain age would be lucky if he or she recalled three or four of the titles (I recognized three). I wanted to see one anyway. Elvis” movies are seldom available on any streaming service but I found one, Loving You, on YouTube (with Dutch subtitles, I think).

Yeah, it's awful. "Corny" would be the word (and when is the last time anyone heard that adjective used); corny beyond belief. Elvis plays a hayseed who is discovered in some hick town by an unscrupulous agent who almost ruins him before he goes back to his girl on the farm. Elvis is terrible, pouting, posturing and looking clueless in general. He is self-conscious in ensemble scenes though reasonably effective in one-on-one dialogue exchanges. Somebody should have got the poor guy acting lessons before throwing him to the wolves. The songs are mostly pablum. While there is at least one good rocker (Mean Woman Blues), the emphasis is on non-aggressive schlock like Teddy Bear and Loving You, tunes that Elvis’ squeaky-clean alter ego Pat Boone could have recorded and nobody would have blinked an eye. In one way Loving You is typical of Presley’s entire movie career. That career was an attempt by others to soften, sterilize and de-sex everything about him that made him special in the first place. Why? Because he was perceived as a social threat to American decency. With Presley's passive consent, it worked, too. The makeover left a lot of lousy movies in its wake, of which Loving You is certainly one.

YouTube

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The King of rock and roll, the man who made rock seem dangerous, the guy whose nickname was Elvis the Pelvis

Speaking of him... I just got my hands on this (!):

If anybody's interested, I think I could share...

 

[Chili]

Loving You (1957) Directed by Hal Kanter 2A

The King of rock and roll, the man who made rock seem dangerous, the guy whose nickname was Elvis the Pelvis because of his below-the-belt gyrations, the singer whose music was banned, at least briefly, in dozens of small towns in the States, that guy made 31 movies, all of which basically have vanished from existence. There are no Elvis Presley move festivals, at least not serious ones. Indeed, there is no real interest in these works whatsoever. How could that be? How could movies starring such a gigantic icon disappear so completely from a pop culture that he helped to spawn? According to IMDb only one of these movies is a good one (King Creole), the only movie to garner a ranking of seven and that just barely (7.0). In addition to this singular achievement, 15 of Presley’s movies are rated in the “6” range, 13 are rated in the “5” range, and two are rated in the “4” range. The average score is about 5.9. In other words, beyond abysmal. An avid movie goer of a certain age would be lucky if he or she recalled three or four of the titles (I recognized three). I wanted to see one anyway. Elvis” movies are seldom available on any streaming service but I found one, Loving You, on YouTube (with Dutch subtitles, I think).

Yeah, it's awful. "Corny" would be the word (and when is the last time anyone heard that adjective used); corny beyond belief. Elvis plays a hayseed who is discovered in some hick town by an unscrupulous agent who almost ruins him before he goes back to his girl on the farm. Elvis is terrible, pouting, posturing and looking clueless in general. He is self-conscious in ensemble scenes though reasonably effective in one-on-one dialogue exchanges. Somebody should have got the poor guy acting lessons before throwing him to the wolves. The songs are mostly pablum. While there is at least one good rocker (Mean Woman Blues), the emphasis is on non-aggressive schlock like Teddy Bear and Loving You, tunes that Elvis’ squeaky-clean alter ego Pat Boone could have recorded and nobody would have blinked an eye. In one way Loving You is typical of Presley’s entire movie career. That career was an attempt by others to soften, sterilize and de-sex everything about him that made him special in the first place. Why? Because he was perceived as a social threat to American decency. With Presley's passive consent, it worked, too. The makeover left a lot of lousy movies in its wake, of which Loving You is certainly one.

YouTube

There are a few of Elvis' movies I enjoyed: Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and Blue Hawaii, some good songs in there. From memory, most of the rest seemed formula type: Babes, Beaches and a lot of forgettable music.

Seems like Bing Crosby made a lot of those movies too. He and Sinatra had some classic films though (i.e. Going My Way, Bells of St Marys, From Here to Eternity, The Man with the Golden Arm).

Guess whatever sold albums was the priority in a lot of cases, couldn't have been the scripts.

 

[Osprey]

There are a few of Elvis' movies I enjoyed: Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and Blue Hawaii, some good songs in there. From memory, most of the rest seemed formula type: Babes, Beaches and a lot of forgettable music.

Seems like Bing Crosby made a lot of those movies too. He and Sinatra had some classic films though (i.e. Going My Way, Bells of St Marys, From Here to Eternity, The Man with the Golden Arm).

Guess whatever sold albums was the priority in a lot of cases, couldn't have been the scripts.

Bing Crosby made a lot of forgettable movies in the 30s, when he was cast because he was a popular singer, similar to Elvis, but I would argue that he proved himself as an actor and was on a whole other level starting in the early 40s. As kihei said, hardly anyone remembers or re-watches Elvis movies, but I don't think that that's the case with Crosby. Besides the two classics that you listed, he also had the holiday classics White Christmas and Holiday Inn and all of the popular "Road to..." movies with Bob Hope. Of course, he also won Best Actor and was twice more nominated for it.

He and Elvis were both singers-turned-actors who produced a lot of formulaic movies, but Crosby also eventually turned out to be a very good actor, which is the difference, IMO. Elvis kept churning out movies basically because he was a rock and roll star while Crosby made so many in the 40s and 50s because he had genuinely become a star actor by that point.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The Human Condition III (1961) - 6/10

I'm too lazy to write a review my own review so I'll copy this this one which succinctly articulates my exact thoughts:

"Feels more like an (drawn-out) epilogue, than than the climactic finale, since Kaji already hit rock bottom in act 2, and what's left is a somewhat tedious "going through the motions" trying to return home. In no way as elegantly told as superior 1st act (or the lesser 2nd), and as an analogy of the broken spirit of post-war Japan, it becomes a bit too morbidly self-flagellating for my taste."

I would recommend the first one but this one really just feels like a tiring case of 'waiting for it to finish'.

 

[Langdon Alger]

Fast Times At Ridgemont High - 1982

Decent movie. I thought Sean Penn would be in it more. Some funny moments, but hardly anything great.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Fast Times At Ridgemont High - 1982

Decent movie. I thought Sean Penn would be in it more. Some funny moments, but hardly anything great.

I think Cameron Crowe is pure trash but that's one good piece he's made.