Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The Hidden Fortress -- 1958 -- 4/5 -- will need to see it on disc, but it was pretty good on the Criterion Channel, probably not gonna renew my subscription there, streaming is not the thing for me.

Vengeance is Mine -- 1984 -- ?/5 -- didn't finish it yet, but i like it a lot, it's very much my kind of time capsule, Brooke Adams is a joy to watch. It's extremely serious in a normal way, like if Stephen Spielberg was trying his darndest to be like Bresson.

The Shakedown -- 1929 -- 4/5 -- love all the early Universal silents from Eureka, this was very homey, the orphan making faces with the mobster or whoever that shady character was had me feeling "this is the perfect era of filmmaking".

Regarding streaming and my preference for the disc, my plate is full as it is, true there would be loads of gems seen on my dinky lil computer, but it's not overall worth it for me, i will be buying what i watch on DVD and Blu-ray, will never upgrade to UHD, my present focus is silent films from the silent era, and then other focuses will be Film Noir (it's a pity i didn't collect those Indicator Columbia Noir sets, they're pretty pricey now), and basically boutique label stuff with an auteur focus, with the odd mega popular thing like The Lord of the Rings extended versions.

Yeah, it's bad. Li Gong almost saves it, though.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Flunky, Work Hard -- 1931 -- 3/5 -- embarking on a Naruse fest, and i may have found the ideal way to stream, sitting in bed, optimal for neck with tilting down instead of up for the tv. This is a charming short silent, which is thematically linked with The Shakedown, as both dealing with a kid and fighting. I just find it hard to be wowed by a film while streaming it, but that might change, i did in the past be wowed through this way of watching films.

Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)


I liked this slightly better on a rewatch. I really like all of the actors involved, and the storyline is heartfelt. The ending is still a bit too abrupt though.

Probably my favorite living director (along with Loach, Leigh) but only found a version with no subtitles but thinking to watch it anyway, since I have been waiting for over a year for this.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

Excellent movies, and on YouTube for free

That looks better than my Criterion DVD, thanks!! Youtube often has inferior visual quality, but that's good.

It's great to find a hard-to-find movie on YouTube - except when it's a foreign language movie and it doesn't have subtitles... like Tran Anh Hung's Cyclo.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman -- 1947 -- 5/5 -- getting into the streaming groove now, no one crafted a story like Ozu, what a first seems pretty simplistic becomes profoundly moving.

The Legend of Billie Jean -

According to a top tune of 1985, "we don't need another hero." What this movie presupposes is...maybe we do? It's easy to see why the impoverished and exploited youth whom Billie (Helen Slater) and her friends represent want someone to speak for and stand up for them. It's also easy to see why Billie's unfortunate experience with bully dad Mr. Pyatt (Bradford) forced that mantle upon her. From the obvious to his distrust of young people to having no moral center when it comes to making a buck, he's a worthy villain of his time. None of this may seem like material that is suitable for a funny and action-packed road movie, but it pulls it off pretty well and without diluting its message.

While I like a lot of the "kids rule and parents drool" entertainment of the '80s and '90s, I agree with other reviewers that this movie has more substance as to where this divide originated. It also deserves credit for letting our heroes retaliate like young people would, what with their marbles, toy guns, video cameras, etc., and in ways grownups do not and/or choose not to understand. On top of that, these scenes are so fun and inspiring - the mall chase in particular - with the soundtrack making you want to listen to Rebel Yell and Invincible over and over again after the movie is over. There's also Keith Gordon's horror-loving, aspiring movie maker Lloyd, which lesser movies like this one would relegate to weirdo status, but it makes him three-dimensional and gives him a chance with the girl!

As entertaining and inspiring as I found this movie, it's good, but not quite great. A bit more subtlety would have helped it, especially in terms of how it portrays adults. Except for Peter Coyote's sympathetic police officer, they're pretty much all bad and painted in broad strokes. I also feel there could have been a scene or two where Billie shares her thoughts about her newfound fame and responsibility. As much as I credit her for leveraging them to seek justice and help those in trouble, especially in the scene where she and her fans confront an abusive father, the lack of such revelations puts her at a distance. I still consider this a very pleasant '80s cult movie discovery, and this is coming from someone who has seen pretty much all of them.

No subs or terrible quality when better quality is available elsewhere. Watching films on YouTube should be the last resort.

1st Rewatch...Silly bordering on offensive lampoon of the growing up in the hood movies of the 1990's like Boyz in the Hood, Menace II Society, Poetic Justice, and Dead Presidents that is becoming hopelessly dated as the years pass and filled with offensive black stereotypes that I didn't find all that funny the first time I watched it and even less so this time. Shawn Wayans manages to maintain his dignity as Ash Tray, but his brother Marlon once again redefines excruciating as his BFF Loc Dog. For hardcore fans of the Wayan Brothers only. Lowering my original rating.

3nd Rewatch...This is the first movie I ever reviewed on this site and this is my first rewatch since doing so. This 1987 instant classic still holds up. Chris Columbus wrote this distaff re-imagining of Ferris Bueller's Day Off stars Elisabeth Shue, in the performance of her career as Chris Parker, a vivacious high school student who lives in a Chicago suburb. After being stood up by her scummy boyfriend, she agrees to accept a job babysitting for Brad (who has a mad crush on her), his little sister, Sara, and Brad's BFF Daryl. As soon as the parents leave, Chris gets a phone call from her BFF Brenda who is stranded at the bus station in downtown Chicago and asks Chris if she can come pick her up. Chris has no choice but to pack the kids in the station wagon and head downtown, but en route, they get a flat tire, which kicks off the wildest nightmare of babysitting you can imagine, which includes an encounter with an armed gang on a subway, some dangerous mobsters who are after a PLAYBOY magazine that Daryl confiscated, a respite at a college frat party, and scaling the outside of the building where Brad and Sara's parents are partying. You have to swallow a whole lot here, the story is overprotective of Chris and her charges and really shouldn't have gotten out of this alive, but Chris is so loveable and so serious about her job there is no way we can accept anything happening to them. And, of course, that scene in the blues club is worth the price of admission all by itself. NOTE: Daryl is played by Anthony Rapp, the actor who years later would accuse Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him at a party, right around the age he was when he made this film.

1st Rewatch....Director Terry Gilliam triumphed with this gut-wrenching, heart-pounding tale of guilt, love, remorse, forgiveness, and redemption that had this reviewer's stomach tied in knots and fighting tears. Oscar winner Jeff Bridges plays Jack, a radio shock job, whose verbal abuse of a caller into his show, causes the guy to go into a nightclub with a rifle and murder seven people. The story flashes forward three years where we find Jack has quit is radio job, is drinking like a fish, and is living with a needy woman named Anne who owns a video rental store. One night, a drunken Jack is on the verge of throwing himself off a bridge when he is attacked by a couple of bored muggers but is rescued by Perry (Oscar winner Robin Williams), a mentally shredded homeless man who it is revealed was married to one of the people who was shot in that nightclub. Jack decides he cannot move on with his life until he makes it up to Perry somehow, but it turns out to be a lot more difficult than giving the guy $70. This movie rips my guts out because as much as we feel for Jack, he is doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons, not to mention the fact we're never really sure if it's not too late to help Perry, especially through Jack trying to help Perry get with the woman (Amanda Plummer) he thinks he's in love with even though she's a stranger. Love that scene in the train station where she walks by him for the first time and all of people in the station grab partners and start waltzing...Gilliam blends magical and nightmarish fantasy sequences into the story. The demons in Perry's head are truly disturbing at time. The story is given an added richness with the Anne character, whose love for Jack touches on obsession, even though it's obvious from their first scene together that Jack doesn't love her. Bridges is brutally unhinged as Jack and Robin Williams' frightening and heartbreaking Perry earned him a Lead Actor Oscar nomination. Mercedes Ruehl won the Oscar for Best Supporting for her desperately needy Anne and Plummer is her usually loopy self. A riveting and disturbing motion picture that destroyed me. Upping my original rating.

This is why my example was a movie that: a) isn't streaming legally anywhere, and b) is OOP on DVD, with used copies going for up to $100

3rd Rewatch...Despite Oscar winning director Oliver Stone behind the camera and an incredible all-star cast in front of it, this allegedly hard-hitting look at the world of professional football through the orbit of a fictional team called the Florida Sharks, fails to completely engage the viewer due to a severely overstuffed screenplay that tries to cover way too much territory, requiring a scorecard of the viewer to keep up. Among the mini-dramas revealed are the hard drinking head coach (Al Pacino) butting heads with the new general manager (Cameron Diaz); the veteran quarterback (Dennis Quaid) in denial about his mortality as an athlete and his wife (Lauren Holly) who's not having it; the third string QB (Jamie Foxx) who finally gets off the bench and puts the team back in the thick of it but lets his success go to his head; a morally bankrupt team doctor (James Woods) who has been putting team needs above the actual medical needs of the players and a pair of defensive players (LL Cool J, Lawrence Taylor), who are willing to risk their lives in order to get the stats they heed for endorsement deals. Any one of these stories would have made a great movie all by itself, but when Stone throws them all together, including more I didn't even mention, it's just overkill. Pacino's character is just Tony Montana without the cocaine and Diaz is miscast. Somehow, Jamie Foxx digs out of the muck and delivers a star-making performance as Willie Beamen that makes this movie sitting through.

[quote=FilmBuff;2461590]
If Back to Black weren't based on the very real Amy Winehouse, the script would probably have been dismissed for being nothing more than a compendium of movie cliches about talented but flawed singers who died tragically young due to addiction or substance abuse.

That's why it's a shame that this biopic feels like exactly that. it has the feelings of a by-the-book repeat of almost every scene that you've ever seen in any movie about singers like her. It also doesn't help that the movie practically condones the awful way she was treated by some of the men in her life (the director has regrettably tried to justify it by claiming it's just showing how Amy saw these men).

In any case, unless you caught the one-time-only Dolby Cinema showing earlier in the week, the movie's best assets will not even sound particularly impressive in most movie theaters.

This one ranks right up there with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody as far as disappointing biopics about gifted singers who succumbed to their addictions.

It can't be any worse than the documentary which I watched last weekend and found to be a crashing bore.

Re-watch of an excellent movie. Both leads excellent, but Rory Kinnear was beyond. Great actor. Guessing @AgrippinaX has seen this?



Good French movie. How an actor embedded in this real French school as a teacher has me dumbfounded but it worked. Boy, who thought middle school American kids were wild.

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Didn't see this movie until yet. It's rather fine but could be better. The ending is like Mike Nichols didn't know what to do though.

7/10

Absolutely. Just pointing out that poor YouTube rips of films that are easily available somewhere else in a much better quality/release are a common phenomenon.

But yeah, if the keyword is legally, this can indeed be an issue.