Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Spring 2021 Edition

[Spring in Fialta]

Lars Von Trier is the epitome of an artist whose imagination is so big, unique and in love with itself that he can really, really strike on some things and then completely crash and burn on other things. Wildly inconsistent. Herzog has a bit of that quality too but he has a certain demure aspect to him that can save him from himself. Although to this day I still think he was an incorrigible liar about having blatantly ripped-off Bad Lieutenant. Though it might also have been a piece of performance art on his end - wouldn't put it past him. I still love that he has a deep respect for the genius of skateboarding. I don't know if he ever noticed, but it really is the sport (that I'm familiar with) that in practice - and not in success and achievement - relates the most to the arts. If you're not spending your session not landing and reworking what you want to do, you're doing it wrong. It's hightime a talented filmmaker took a shot at it - every presentation of skateboarding in cinema and its culture (that I'm aware of) has generally been very crass and/or corny.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

You are infinitely more generous than I was. I just thought this movie was self-indulgent and plug ugly.

I didn't enjoy it much either, but I respect a work that present itself with that much material and ideas. There's for sure something interesting to take out of it, even if I - for now anyway - fail at doing so. I thought at first that some of the dialogues were over-the-top (Thurman), or plain dumb or poorly improvised (Incident #2), but then Virgil underlines the same weaknesses in the serial killer's narration and it goes back to spinning the wheel... I couldn't really figure out what it was all about, but it got me playing. And that's more than most films do.

 

[Osprey]

Eden Lake (2008) - 4/10 (Disliked it)

A couple (Michael Fassbender, Kelly Reilly) takes a romantic holiday to a picturesque lake and angers a group of teenage hooligans. It's a British survival horror that's well acted and directed, but badly undermined by its storytelling, I felt. For one, it's hard to sympathize with the couple when they get themselves into their mess and repeatedly make bad decisions to make it worse, especially Fassbender's character, who can't seem to do anything that doesn't just anger the teens more. Also, you wouldn't expect an adult couple with a car to be at the mercy of teens with bikes and pocket knives, so everything that can go wrong must, and often just because of bad luck or carelessness (like getting stuck in the mud or crashing the car). There are also unbelievable close calls when we see the teens enter the space that the couple was just in and then see the latter safely hidden where it's hard to imagine that they could've gotten without at least being heard. Finally, it's rather predictable (at least until the very end), which is hard to avoid with this sub-genre and the easiest issue to excuse, but it didn't help any, either. As survival horror goes, it's fairly brutal and grim, but it didn't affect me much because I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters. In the end, it seems to try to be both smarter and more thoughtful than your average horror by touching on cycles of violence with perhaps a bit of social commentary on British class struggle, but it felt too dumb up to that point for me to be impressed. Overall, I found it watchable, but also a bit frustrating and disappointing, if only because it could've been better. If you want to give it a try, though, it's on Tubi with ads.

 

[kihei]

I didn't enjoy it much either, but I respect a work that present itself with that much material and ideas. There's for sure something interesting to take out of it, even if I - for now anyway - fail at doing so. I thought at first that some of the dialogues were over-the-top (Thurman), or plain dumb or poorly improvised (Incident #2), but then Virgil underlines the same weaknesses in the serial killer's narration and it goes back to spinning the wheel... I couldn't really figure out what it was all about, but it got me playing. And that's more than most films do.

I looked up my review and surprisingly a graded it a lot higher than I remember. Here it is:

The House That Jack Built (2018) Directed by Lars von Trier 6D (well made; requires perhaps more tolerance than it deserves)

This might have been the best portrait of a serial killer since, well, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. But von Trier has more ambitions than that. The focus here is on Jack (Matt Dillon, very good), a psychopath who has killed over 60 people. We look at five separate incidents from his life while Jack and a mysterious figure named Verge (Bruno Ganz) discuss Jack's tortured theories about art and his elaborate methods of cruelly killing people. The victims are almost always women--who are portrayed as some combination of dumb and/or bitchy and/or weak and/or trusting--killings that are clever, brutal and intentionally revolting. This might seem like an artsy Midnight Madness work, save for the fact that the film has intellectual pretensions that people just interested in shock and gore probably don't have the patience for. I found von Trier's musings about art and morality shallow and unpersuasive, but they give the movie a sheen of seriousness that it might otherwise have lacked. What to do with this guy? In most ways that count The House That Jack Built is an ugly movie. During the proceedings, I spent some time wondering about stuff like is "misogyny" covered by the term "misanthropy" or are they two separate things? I went with "two separate things" as my answer. To wit, Von Trier doesn't appear to like people at all, but he has a special disrespect for women in general. To be fair, in many ways the film is brilliant, possibly the best edited movie that I have seen this year. But it requires that its viewers have an open mind about von Trier and by this stage of his career such open minds may be understandably in short supply.

The next day: There is one despicable moment in this film that I wish I hadn't seen--and it doesn't involve a human. I think about it every time the film comes to mind. It is a really sick thing to do and it is really troubling that von Trier directs a child to do it.

These days I'd go with Daily Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin's take: "Two and a half hours of self-reflexive torture porn with an entire McDonald's warehouse of chips on its shoulder, and a handful of genuinely provocative ideas which, exasperatingly, go nowhere much."

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I looked up my review and surprisingly a graded it a lot higher than I remember. Here it is:

These days I'd go with Daily Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin's take: "Two and a half hours of self-reflexive torture porn with an entire McDonald's warehouse of chips on its shoulder, and a handful of genuinely provocative ideas which, exasperatingly, go nowhere much."

I pretty much agree with your original take. I don't know Collin or his background, but it seems pretentious to conclude that the film goes nowhere with everything that's in it - I think it sure goes somewhere, but the bread crumbs to follow is pretty thin and too demanding for the pleasure that I took out of the film. If you only take Verge, for example - Dante's Virgil's intertextual link to the Roman poet is pretty straightforward and the figure of Beatrice is a good example of the Power of women trope he is linked to, something LVT chose to scratch completely. I don't know enough about Dante to follow that path, but I'm sure it bears its fruits. The trope feeds LVT's film by its absence, and I think there's a lot of details that adds to it, which is coherent with the cumulative structure of the nursery rhyme he is "adapting". LVT built something out of dead things, his own past films and other dead works. Concluding that it goes nowhere would need a thesis of its own.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) - 3/10

-How is it possible to have such bad 90s-camp movie acting in such a big budget film in 2021? It feels like we're going backwards with blockbusters between this and Wonder Woman 1984.
-Speaking of bad acting, Millie Bobby Brown is not a good actress. She had her moments in Enola Holmes but the best acting she's done was as a mute, I know Hollywood is trying to make her an it girl and maybe she has some connections but I just don't see it. Mind you, no one in this film acted well, this should be embarassing for Rebecca Hall.
-I thought a lot of the CGI was fairly decent but the fights of the two monsters get really repetitive once you've seen one.
-The fights are sadly still the best part of the movie with the human bits in between being nonsensical and really badly written. I don't expect anything magical but every single line just made me roll my eyes which is not good.

I should've just watched Shin Godzilla instead, eugh.

 

[kihei]

I pretty much agree with your original take. I don't know Collin or his background, but it seems pretentious to conclude that the film goes nowhere with everything that's in it - I think it sure goes somewhere, but the bread crumbs to follow is pretty thin and too demanding for the pleasure that I took out of the film. If you only take Verge, for example - Dante's Virgil's intertextual link to the Roman poet is pretty straightforward and the figure of Beatrice is a good example of the Power of women trope he is linked to, something LVT chose to scratch completely. I don't know enough about Dante to follow that path, but I'm sure it bears its fruits. The trope feeds LVT's film by its absence, and I think there's a lot of details that adds to it, which is coherent with the cumulative structure of the nursery rhyme he is "adapting". LVT built something out of dead things, his own past films and other dead works. Concluding that it goes nowhere would need a thesis of its own.

Well, put it this way then, it goes nowhere I wanted to go.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Well, put it this way then, it goes nowhere I wanted to go.

Yeah, the investment was too demanding for me to want to follow through either.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Ewoks: Caravan of Courage, Battle of Endor. NOT MY WICKET! A pair of weird 80s Star Wars curios. You see why they were buried for years. Way more like Jim Henson movies than anything Star Wars and sporting an odd, almost Star Trek-like score.

The Gambler. James Caan as a self-destructive degenerate gambler. It’s a really towering performance, probably the best of Caan’s career. But there’s a quirk here — he’s a college professor and he feels very miscast in that role. He isn’t bad but he never seems like he fits that part of the movie. Caan looks like he’s going to bash your face in at any moment, not like he’s going to learn you some Shakespeare. So there’s an odd mix here of him being great throughout but ALSO feeling oddly miscast. Can’t think of another movie offhand with a similar dynamic — good/great performance but also miscast. Maybe Tom Hanks in The Road To Perdition?

Thief. Perhaps Caan’s second best performance. Another highly self-destructive character. Ya think Caan was dealing with shit? Michael Mann’s first theatrical film and Mann emerges nearly full formed. Dark blue/green, neon-accented palette; hard-ass highly skilled characters doing illegal things. This is my happy place.

Days of Being Wild. Stop #2 on my Wong Kar-Wai rewatch. First pairing of cinematographer Christopher Doyle with WKW so a lot of their visual style is present (funny enough also a lot of blue/green like Michael Mann) but the story here kinda flew by me without making much of an impression. Looked great, but was dull. Will probably take another crack at it in a few years, but just didn’t resonate with me much.

Kong Skull Island. A big dumb movie that’s about 25% better than it probably should be. The wonders of rounding up a good cast, particularly John C. Reilly, Shea Whigham and Samuel L. Jackson. If you squint, it’s kinda Aliens and it mostly works.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

What Lies Below (Duemmler, 2020) - I put that on last night thinking it'd be a cheap thriller about a sociopath boyfriend that only the daughter knows about with nobody believing her because, you know, he's such a cute gentleman. I really had no idea what to watch and I like Suvari, not only for American Beauty, but - and most of all - for making two films with Stuart Gordon. Turns out I was almost right on the money, except that it's not a cheap thriller, it's a cheap sci-fi/horror, with surprising old-school vibes. And we're really not too far from Gordon himself, with an obvious lineage from Lovecraft. Not very good, and way too soft (both with gore/creature effects and its erotic undertones) to be interesting, but I still kind of enjoyed it. 4/10

 

[Osprey]

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) - 3/10

I no longer feel like the most fun-hating person here for giving it a 3/10. It's a relief to have a little company.

Ewoks: Caravan of Courage, Battle of Endor. NOT MY WICKET! A pair of weird 80s Star Wars curios. You see why they were buried for years. Way more like Jim Henson movies than anything Star Wars and sporting an odd, almost Star Trek-like score.

Hmm. I'm upset that you disrespected my childhood and poor Wicket, but I haven't seen them again as an adult and am afraid that you could be right. Are you going to also watch Star Wars: Ewoks on Disney Plus?

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Alita: Battle Angel (2019) - 7.5/10

Slightly weird tone going on here which doesn't match the brutality of some of the action. I mean if you watch the trailer then it feels like a PG-13 film aimed at teens but man does it get dark in parts. But if a film ends and you go 'I wanna watch the sequel' then that's an automatic good rating from me. I think it takes over 45 minutes to really get going here, it feels like a teen film of that Maze-Runners ilk for large chunks but gets good whenever it kicks in along with the final climax. I'm often critical of films of this type and their generally pathetic attempts to be emotional but it actually rings through a decent bit in this movie, at least in the 2nd half.

We do have a case of 'too much backstory' going on here but like I said earlier, it leads to more in the storyline leaving way for a sequel.

 

[nameless1]

I know I am a little late, but if anyone wants a movie to celebrate Easter, I do recommend The Long Good Friday. The story and pace is tight, it incorporates then-current British events and sentiments into the storyline to create a deeper and more realistic portrait, and the music is both memorable and well-timed. Not only that, Bob Hoskins shows that he can be a credible leading man, and Pierce Brosnan also appears in one of his earlier film credits. While I do question why the director thought the audience would want to watch Bob Hoskins take a slow shower, from multiple angles, the movie is as solid as can be for a crime thriller, and I give it anywhere from 6.75 to 7/10.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Gambler. James Caan as a self-destructive degenerate gambler. It’s a really towering performance, probably the best of Caan’s career. But there’s a quirk here — he’s a college professor and he feels very miscast in that role. He isn’t bad but he never seems like he fits that part of the movie. Caan looks like he’s going to bash your face in at any moment, not like he’s going to learn you some Shakespeare. So there’s an odd mix here of him being great throughout but ALSO feeling oddly miscast. Can’t think of another movie offhand with a similar dynamic — good/great performance but also miscast. Maybe Tom Hanks in The Road To Perdition?

Somewhat forgotten in Dostoyevsky's bibliography because it's not one the bricks but it's hard to understate how stylish and perfect of a novella the book is. One of those novellas that confirmed my (likely) life-long admiration for the utterly underrated and underused format. The Wahlberg adaptation was awful. I did enjoy the Caan one.

 

[Osprey]

I know I am a little late, but if anyone wants a movie to celebrate Easter, I do recommend The Long Good Friday. The story and pace is tight, it incorporates then-current British events and sentiments into the storyline to create a deeper and more realistic portrait, and the music is both memorable and well-timed. Not only that, Bob Hoskins shows that he can be a credible leading man, and Pierce Brosnan also appears in one of his earlier film credits. While I do question why the director thought the audience would want to watch Bob Hoskins take a slow shower, from multiple angles, the movie is as solid as can be for a crime thriller, and I give it anywhere from 6.75 to 7/10.

I watched it last night. It was good. When I think of Easter movies, I think of murders, explosions, torture, nudity, sex, drugs and cursing, so it checked all of the boxes. I liked the mystery, though I was a little disappointed by the ending:

Spoiler

It spends most of the film building up the mystery of who is killing his men, only for it to end up being the IRA, who seemed likely responsible only 20 minutes in. I mean, an English gangster in late 70s London has one of his men blown up by a car bomb. Who else would it be? Well, OK, because that seemed likely, I assumed that it'd be someone making it look like the IRA did it. My guess was Helen Mirren's character, since she received 2nd billing and it would've been a good twist for it to be her all along. I ended up being wrong about her, which was a bit of a relief, but having it actually be the IRA was a bit of a disappointment.

Thanks for the recommendation... and the images of hairy Bob Hoskins in the shower that are now imprinted in my memory.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I know I am a little late, but if anyone wants a movie to celebrate Easter, I do recommend The Long Good Friday. The story and pace is tight, it incorporates then-current British events and sentiments into the storyline to create a deeper and more realistic portrait, and the music is both memorable and well-timed. Not only that, Bob Hoskins shows that he can be a credible leading man, and Pierce Brosnan also appears in one of his earlier film credits. While I do question why the director thought the audience would want to watch Bob Hoskins take a slow shower, from multiple angles, the movie is as solid as can be for a crime thriller, and I give it anywhere from 6.75 to 7/10.

God I love this movie. Hoskins is fantastic. A young Helen Mirren too.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Hmm. I'm upset that you disrespected my childhood and poor Wicket, but I haven't seen them again as an adult and am afraid that you could be right. Are you going to also watch Star Wars: Ewoks on Disney Plus?

Boycotting the Ewoks cartoon until they bring back Droids too. #RestoreTheThallJobenCut

 

[nameless1]

God I love this movie. Hoskins is fantastic. A young Helen Mirren too.

The ending where the camera focuses in on Hoskins' face shows a lot of acting chops. It completely changes my perception of him, and it turns a rather hammed up performance up to that point into a great one.

Mirren really is fine wine. She is a great actress now, but she was awfully green back in 1979. To be fair, her character is given very little to work with, but she also brings almost nothing to the table. Anyone could have been put in her role and be fine.

 

[nameless1]

I watched it last night. It was good. When I think of Easter movies, I think of murders, explosions, torture, nudity, sex, drugs and cursing, so it checked all of the boxes. I liked the mystery, though I was a little disappointed by the ending:

Spoiler

It spends most of the film building up the mystery of who is killing his men, only for it to end up being the IRA, who seemed likely responsible only 20 minutes in. I mean, an English gangster in late 70s London has one of his men blown up by a car bomb. Who else would it be? Well, OK, because that seemed likely, I assumed that it'd be someone making it look like the IRA did it. My guess was Helen Mirren's character, since she received 2nd billing and it would've been a good twist for it to be her all along. I ended up being wrong about her, which was a bit of a relief, but having it actually be the IRA was a bit of a disappointment.

Thanks for the recommendation... and the images of hairy Bob Hoskins in the shower that are now imprinted in my memory.

Jesus did get flocked (torture), got his clothes ripped up and shared (nudity), asked God why He had forsaken me (curse), and died (murder). Then he resurrected three days later, which is an explosion (of minds). Also, the Romans are notorious for their hedonistic lifestyle, so there is probably sex and drugs (somewhere). Indeed, all the boxes are checked.


I actually like the ending. For me, it is never about the mystery, because even though the truth is never revealed to the main characters until near the end, the identities of all the hitmen have never been concealed, and all the clues are rather obvious. Rather, the mystery is just a means to an end. When the movie was made, Thatcher just came into power, and the filmmakers likely foresaw that change was on the horizon. Thus, the movie is really about the end of an era, and how the old ways are rather obsolete in the new era of globalization. With the hindsight we have now, it is fair to say that they have been spot on, and that is why the movie stands up rather well nowadays.

 

[kihei]

Manor House (2021) Directed by Cristi Puiu 7D

Manner House takes place at an elegant Romanian estate in the wintry Transylvanian countryside where a small collection of Russian intellectuals discuss religion, philosophy, European culture, world politics, and the nature of goodness in all its intricate differentiation among conflicting scriptural beliefs. The time is near the end of the 19th century, and while these aristocrats don't yet realize it, their era and the belief system that accompanies it is about to come to an end in no uncertain terms. For 200 minutes, they talk and we listen, trying to keep track of the complex theological and philosophical arguments batted back and forth like tennis balls. Starting with a stunner of an establishing shot in a snowy field, the movie is gorgeous to look at and the interior of the manor house in which these discussions take place is practically another character in the movie. Director Cristi Puiu often uses long takes, cutting only when absolutely necessary as the scenes progress. However within these takes, his camera is gracefully mobile, so we really get a genuine sense of time and place. Think of Manor House as a more rigorous My Dinner with Andre, Louis Malle's film that simply records a dinner conversation between two New York theatre people. There is a lot to digest in this film, though obviously its lack of incident and reliance on complex discussions will not be everybody's idea of a good time. I watched it in two parts so as to better understand what the discussions were about. In some respects their very esoteric nature is part of what makes them so revealing concerning the characters' beliefs and the nature of their class. Manor House represents a very different approach to film making which I found very challenging but well worth doing, too.

subtitles

MUBI

Best of 2021 so far

1) Identifying Features, Valadez, Mexico
2) The Dig, Stone, UK
3) Manor House, Puiu, Romania

 

[Puck]

Manor House (2021) Directed by Cristi Puiu 7D

In a film where the conversation is most important, I suppose subtitles would be the more accurate way to translate but it's also more intensely difficult to focus on if the content is deep. (Might be less tiring if dubbed correctly) 200 minutes of that too. No wonder you split it in two viewings. If I watch it I might have to cut it in more parts than that. Was it difficult to follow?

 

[kihei]

In a film where the conversation is most important, I suppose subtitles would be the more accurate way to translate but it's also more intensely difficult to focus on if the content is deep. (Might be less tiring if dubbed correctly) 200 minutes of that too. No wonder you split it in two viewings. If I watch it I might have to cut it in more parts than that. Was it difficult to follow?

Excellent point. This is one movie where subtitles are a liability because there is so much talk. I wouldn't even call it conversation either, closer to polemic and response. The movie is broken up into six chapters, one per character, so you might consider taking a break after each just to keep your head clear concerning the different ideas addressed.

Just read a great line on Manor House from A. O. Scott of the New York Times, "Imagine a Chekhov play without drama, an Oscar Wilde farce without humor, a Visconti film without desire...". That is true, especially the Chekhov bit, but the movie will put you in the head of late 19th century Russian intellectuals at the end of their era like no movie I have ever seen before. It is certainly no In Search of Lost Time, Proust's mammoth achievement, but that was the first work of art that I thought of after seeing it.

 

[Puck]

Excellent point. This is one movie where subtitles are a liability because there is so much talk. I wouldn't even call it conversation either, closer to polemic and response. The movie is broken up into six chapters, one per character, so you might consider taking a break after each just to keep your head clear concerning the different ideas addressed.

Just read a great line on Manor House from A. O. Scott of the New York Times, "Imagine a Chekhov play without drama, an Oscar Wilde farce without humor, a Visconti film without desire...". That is true, especially the Chekhov bit, but the movie will put you in the head of late 19th century Russian intellectuals at the end of their era like no movie I have ever seen before. It is certainly no In Search of Lost Time, Proust's mammoth achievement, but that was the first work of art that I thought of after seeing it.

I don't have a MUBI subscription but I will keep an eye out for it now. Sounds like something I might enjoy getting into on a quiet night. I usually don't mind subs but this one looked like it might be a challenge. It might be best to view it in parts like you did.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Rock (Bay, 1996) - I had never seen this. First part is a lot better than what I expected, but as soon as the marines are executed and only the overacting Cage and Connery are left, it gets real silly. 3.5/10

 

[nameless1]

That movie is pretty much peak Michael Bay. He will not get any better.