Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I think maybe that was my issue with it. It is true that I have not seen the film since it's first video run, after walking out of the theater angry when I originally saw it. I was a fan of the graphic novel and thought the movie took a huge dump on it and I was furious. I thought it was cartoonish and silly and over-the-top and desperately chasing Batman and I hated that about it. Also way too glossy and 90s. But I should really re-watch it and get a fresh perspective as I've low-key hated that movie for years for being everything I thought was wrong with movie-making at that time.
Meanwhile, I had to accept that Babe is essentially perfect at being what it is, even though I watched it kicking and screaming.

Peeping Tom - Making this movie had to have been a ballsy move on the part of Michael Powell. It was released in Britain in 1960 and was roundly excoriated, damaging Powell's reputation and effectively ending his career in the UK. Hitchcock's Psycho was released in the US two months later with different results. I never figured the US in the late 50's/early 60's to be a laidback sort of place so this surprises me. I figured both countries had more than it's share of bluenoses at the time.

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a focus puller working at a London film studio. He's shy and withdrawn and doesn't really socialize. He's also never seen without his ever present film camera. As the movie opens a man approaches a streetwalker while surreptitiously filming her with a hidden camera. He procures her services and follows her up to her apartment where he reveals his camera and, meticulously recording her reactions, murders her.

As it is gradually revealed, Mark was the son of a noted psychologist who used him as a guinea pig in his studies concerning the effects of fear inducing stimuli on the nervous system. He also made sure to capture the results on audio recordings and film which of course tidily explains Mark's voyeurism fetish. With both of his parents dead Mark lives in his old family home and rents out the downstairs rooms. He makes the acquaintance of Helen (Anna Massey) and her blind mother Mrs. Stephens (Maxine Audley) and finds himself drawn to Helen's compassionate nature. In the meantime the police are hot on the trail of what they now consider to be a serial killer with a distinctive calling card. The victims are all found with the same look of abject terror on their faces.

Before his death in 1990 Powell's reputation was somewhat rehabilitated when director Martin Scorcese personally championed the film after first watching it in 1970. It went on to gain a cultlike status both here in the states and in it's native England. For not only what it did but, more importantly, the time it did it in I think it has earned it's cult status.

80/100

I think it's because Peeping Tom is a more sexual, seedy and lurid film which, explicitly, focuses on what's being done and makes the viewer part of 'the crime'. To have the filmmaker showing you something 'disgusting' or 'perverted' is one thing, to make you complicit in it is another. There's also the fact that these reviewers are writing for their audience. Or, rather, the audience of the paper their audience is buying. It would've taken a lot to stand out among these people and tell them something good about something everyone else is saying is disgusting. After that, it's a competition as to who can come up with the most descriptive, attention grabbing sentence.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

You're absolutely right. I read some of the reviews and, even factoring in the era and the film dealing with something that just wasn't talked about in polite circles, a lot of it came off as contrived overkill.

Mature comedy drama that totally works on both levels. Great performances especially from the two leads. It's 2 hrs and 40 minutes and not a minute too long. #64 on the female directors list and that's way too low

Mother!, 2017

In this highly allegorical film, a woman (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in a sprawling home she is restoring as her husband (Javier Bardem) struggles to write a book of poetry. One day a man (Ed Harris) arrives at their home and the husband invites them to stay. Soon thereafter, the man's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) also arrives. The couple becomes increasingly intrusive into the lives of the main characters, but it's just a preview of what is to come.

I remember reading a review of this movie that gave it an F. As with any movie that gets scored this way, it kind of makes you want to check it out. For me, where the film was very successful was in the way that it managed to exist in a very blatant figurative mode while at the same time evoking repeated visceral and emotional reactions from me.

I won't claim to have freaked out at any point during this movie, but it was a solid two hours of shuddering recognition and "ugh, don't remind me" moments. There are some basic nightmare premise moments, such as a person coming into your personal space and treating you and your things with disrespect. There are some gender-specific nightmare moments, such as a man whose flirting attention turns vicious when he's rejected or the notion of giving birth in chaotic and dangerous circumstances.

It took me a while, honestly, to pick up on the religious aspect of the film. For a large part of the runtime I was reading it more as an allegory about environmental damage with the house being the Earth and the intruders being people and their lack of care for the home. Looking at it through a lens of connecting to Christian mythology, I see those connections, but that's not really the level on which I was interacting with the movie, if that makes sense.

I thought that Lawewnce's performance was really stunning. At so many turns, she is disrespected, but forced to put a smile on her face out of the rules of civility. What she really gets across is someone who thinks that they can grit it out, only to realize that what's happening has no end and is only going to escalate. Bardem is maddeningly effective as her awful husband, who not only totally disregards her feelings, but fails to act in any meaningful way until it is far too late.

I did like the way that the film was shot, moving around the space of the house so that even something as simple as the woman turning to look at her husband comes across like a jump scare. The house has many layers, and manages to feel both too large to keep track of and claustrophobic.

This film was quite the barrage. It certainly held my attention! I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again, but I'm very glad I checked it out.

mother was one of those films I didn't know exactly how I felt about. Which is, I guess, a good thing.

Same. For a lot of it I was like "Is this terrible or great? Or maybe neither?".

So in the end it was just sort of about how it made me feel in my emotions.

Yes, this was more stressful for me than most horror films (in a good way).


I also missed some of the symbolism but I was completely on board with the film from the beginning. One of my favorites of that year.

LOL. I barely blink when someone takes an ax to the head, but during this movie I was like "Why are they still sitting on the sink?! IT'S NOT BRACED YET!!!!!"

I knew as soon as I read this you people were talking about MOTHER! definitely a wild ride.

By May be found at the following website: https://www.imdb.com/media/rm3445799680/tt0072251, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8245506

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - (1974)

I shoved three films out of my schedule because I'd much rather watch The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - a film I'd never seen before, and one with a gripping story about the hijacking of a New York subway train. Who better to do that (for our enjoyment) than Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and a young Héctor Elizondo. Working with and against them are Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller! The hijackers (who are demanding a million dollars, lest they start executing the hostages) call themselves Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown etc. The movie is great - engrossing and entertaining. The villains are cut-throat, and won't hesitate to shoot and kill innocent people - the good guys are beleaguered, and the mayor (played by Lee Wallace) is a doofus. This all coming a year before Dog Day Afternoon, which has a similar feel, even though the hostage-takers in that film were amateur fools, and the ones in this have planned everything down to the smallest detail, and three out of the four are professionals. There's nothing silly in this film - Pelham One Two Three plays everything straight (thought we get our light moments with the aforementioned mayor - and there's one hell of a lot of wisecracking jokes), and we get to see how each character's distinct personality affects what happens moment by moment - with tension strung tight. It has a jazzy, cool kind of score which fits the movie perfectly. Great stuff - loved it.

8/10

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Yeah, I love this one. To me it's everything that was right about filmmaking in the 70s in that it's really an action film but there's lots of great dialogue and the characters are good and the lead is a distinctly un-handsome person and yet the film is excellent. Matthau is so great in this, as is Shaw and I liked Hector Elizondo a lot in this too. And that last scene.

McVicar (1980)

The story of John McVicar, bank robber, prison escapee. This has all the hard edges of a Brit film of the time (try and think of an elongated "Sweeney") but is a really enjoyable film. With Adam Faith, Billy Murray and Roger Daltrey (who is excellent as the titular character). The soundtrack (sung by Daltrey) is fitting as he is covering different songs by different artists. It really is quite a tale and tightly told. The violent parts are not *too* violent and the emotional parts (especially the scene where his son calls him daddy) are powerful. Daltrey did a great job here IMHO.

I agree with everything you've said here...first rate entertainment this movie.

It has been many many moons since I have seen a film with Daltrey in it as an actor, but I always love to hear him sing. I feel like people fawn over Townshend's songwriting so much and his status (right or wrong) as a legendary guitarist and (definitely right) as a rock pioneer, that Daltrey gets lost in his shadow. Certainly I think Daltrey always gets left out of discussions of the great male rock vocalists, certainly he has dropped far, far down from when I was young and he was considered almost shoulder to shoulder with Plant (who in my day was still considered No.1).
But when Townshend wrote, "... and I still sing a razor line, every time", for Daltrey, he was not just whistling Dixie. It is such a pleasure to listen to him sing, and not just his astonishing, genre-defining Rock Scream, but his melodic, sometimes honey-like normal register as well. I remember watching the movie Quicksilver with Kevin Bacon and hearing Daltrey's voice cut through, "I am light-ning!" Such a pleasure.

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There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?

After 61 straight days of watching movies specifically to review and sitting and take notes during the films and analyzing everything about the movies, I find that I can't just stop on a dime, so here is a brief write-up of an unlikely film.


I thought that Lethal Weapon really launched the "buddy-cop" craze of the late 80s and early 90s, but this film actually predates it by a year. I could not find, on Wikipedia, a buddy-cop film that pre-dates this one however, apparently the buddy-cop genre actually came from television and was so popular it ended up getting translated to the big-screen. Director Peter Hyams, of Outland, The Star Chamber (a personal favorite), and 2010: TYWMC fame, looking to do something a bit more grounded, took a script from MGM about to elderly cops in NY who wouldn't retire and had it transformed to two young cops in Chicago (a city not frequently filmed in at that time) considering early retirement over the frustrations of their job.
By modern sensibilities, this movie probably has a lot of pause-giving moments about how cops should be able to handle criminals and how loose they should be able to play with the letter of the law, but if you accept that their behavior was contemporaneous to the attitudes of the times, this is a pretty entertaining and enjoyable film. Largely this is because of the undeniable charisma and chemistry of its two leads (though I liked Jimmy Smits in this quite a bit too as a one-dimensional but very credible post-Scarface arch-villain).


Hines, we've talked about recently, was such a talented man he added to every film he was ever in, from History Of The World to The Cotton Club (god, his tap scene is just breathtaking). And Hines fought hard for this role, which was written as a white cop, apparently, saying, "I just campaigned and campaigned for it until I got it. I'm proud because this is the first film that stars a black guy and a white guy - and the black guy has all the sex scenes. Usually, the black guy has no sexuality at all." And his talent was not lost on Crystal, who helped tweak the dialogue and did a good bit of improv, saying, "You can't do those kinds of things unless you have an actor like Gregory Hines who is there to catch you." It was not lost on Hyams who, despite apparently being hard to work for, praised both leads for their performance and chemistry. I thought it was also noteworthy that, while the two main female characters were only in service to the male leads (as all supporting characters are in service to the leads of films regardless of gender), they had actual personalities and lives and the film took the time to make you actually like them both. To a lesser degree, the new up-and-coming rival cops were a little bit more than one-dimensional. That matters in a film.

Finally, the thing that I need to say about this film is that it's totally competent and coherent. Everything occurs for a reason and not just to rush to the next set-piece. For example, the climax doesn't take place where it does just because it's a cool-looking building, it is chosen by the villain and when you see it, you totally understand. It is a wide-open space that has clear sight-lines in every direction and the walls are glass... so the hero cannot bring any backup and cannot sneak in or pull any shenanigans (though they find a really amusing way). The point of this is the difference between a well-made film like this and how bad mainstream filmmaking has become.
After spending two months watching movie after movie from '99 or earlier (in some cases, much earlier), I think I am finally succumbing to Modern Mainstream Filmmaking Sucks Syndrome. To see a film like this, which received mixed reviews in its day, and realize that I have not seen a mainstream studio film this good in years, is a splash of cold water to the face. In the shadow of the once character-driven but now dismal Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems like nothing is good at the cinema anymore. I mean, the last few Marvel and almost all of the DC films make the early Transformers movies, movies I refused to see because of how bad they were in their day, seem like Citizen Kane. So now, outside of the occasional populist film about some war veteran, we have small, independent films that occasionally break through but mostly you have to find at a smaller theater or at home.

It is funny to me that it didn't take a Great Film but a film with a 59% on RottenTomatoes (before Review Inflation began), to finally break me of any notion that mainstream cinema wasn't dead.
But also, this movie's fun.

The House on Telegraph Hill, 1951

Victoria (Valentina Cortese) has lost her home and her family in WW2, and has been put into a concentration camp. There she befriends a fellow Polish woman named Karin (Natasha Lytess) whose son, Chris (Gordon Gebert) was evacuated to the US and lives with a wealthy aunt. When Karin dies days before the liberation of the concentration camp, Victoria takes Karin's identity and uses it to immigrate to the States. There she ends up marrying a man named Alan (Richard Basehart), a distant relative of her now-deceased aunt and the guardian of Karin's son. But things are not right in the big house on the hill . . .

I watched this film years ago, and I had basically forgotten everything about it except for the harrowing opening act. There are plenty of films that deal with characters who are grappling with the after-effects of WW2, but those characters are most often men who served in the military. I can't say that I can think of another thriller/noir that centers a woman who is a survivor of direct violence from the war. The entire premise of the film rests on a woman making a decision to lie and steal out of desperation, and that lie will color the rest of the proceedings.

I was very pleasantly surprised to remember that the rest of the film is really solid as well. Victoria is a very engaging lead character. She carries with her a fear and paranoia that is more than earned from her time in the concentration camp. She has already known what it means to be in danger of losing her life, and so we understand that her sense of her own safety may have been skewed by her experiences.

I love that every character in this movie who matters has some great nuance. There's Victoria, of course, laying claim to a fortune and a child that don't rightfully belong to her. But there's also Alan, who likewise doesn't want to give up tremendous wealth. Even if it is obvious that Alan romances Victoria with the objective of keeping himself in the inheritance chain, that doesn't necessarily mean that he would wish her harm.

But even better than Alan is the character of Margaret (Fay Baker), the woman who has been Chris's caretaker all his life and is very obviously having a sexual/romantic relationship with Alan. The wicked housekeeper is a trope in these kinds of films, carrying the potent DNA of Rebecca. But Margaret is much more than just a steely, cold-hearted woman. She genuinely cares for Chris and is naturally jealous of Victoria taking her place in the household. Again: does this necessarily mean that she is actively trying to harm Victoria? (It's important to note that Gebert is really good as Chris, and is so likable and fun that you believe someone would be heartbroken at the idea of being taken away from him).

One character that's a bit more shallow is a man named Marc (William Lundigan) who by a very large coincidence was at the liberation of Victoria's concentration camp and just happens to be an old childhood friend of Alan's. Marc ends up serving as a friend and investigative ally to Victoria, but he feels more like a plot necessity than a fully realized character. But without getting into too much detail, I appreciated that he is mostly sidelined in the final act, leaving Victoria to handle her business.

And if the first act is great, I also have to call out the last act. It is SO GOOD! And very specifically there is one part where you don't understand a certain character action and then it all becomes very clear. It's honestly kind of unlike any other noir/mystery conclusion I can think of. There are so many character dynamics at play, and characters living up to their own desires and personal priorities.

I'd remembered this film for its excellent and unique premise, but I was really pleased at how solid the entire thing is from beginning to end. Highly recommended.

I got huge into studio vehicles from the ‘80s and ‘90s during the pandemic, and it really stands out how much these movies have a baseline of craftsmanship that’s pretty much evaporated today.