Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNDJiZTQzN2UtYjE0MS00ODQ4LWI2NzgtODU3NTM2ZDc3Yjk0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjA0MzYwMDY@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.j pg


3.5

[Wooley]

Yes it is. But how about 'dem steel drums though? And Rae Dawn Chong looking foin in that business suit. And "What'd you do with Sully?" "I let him go." And me getting my mind blown when I found out Bennett was played by the same guy who played Wez in The Road Warrior. How 'bout dat?

I mean, it's all lovely, don't get me wrong. But this is like Italian Spider-man level. I was in shock even though I saw the movie, what, 4 or 5 times back in the day, maybe more. 35 years later, it's actually hard to believe that this was actually an intentional, mainstream, major studio film that sat at No.1 for 3 weeks.

[Wooley]

I barely paid attention to Pfeiffer. I was too busy checking out Kate Nelligan. For some reason I thought her character was just so hot.

Kate Nelligan was insanely hot.
I know her from Dracula and Eye Of The Needle and I can't even pay attention to anything else in those films.

[Rockatansky]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Frankie_and_Johnny_poster.jpg
By https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101912/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3840903

Frankie and Johnny - (1991)

I thought Frankie and Johnny was good - it reflected what middle-aged romance is really like, and expanded Terrence McNally's play into the real world - a play that I would have loved to have seen with it's original leads - F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates. By casting Michelle Pfeiffer as Frankie you've changed the whole story, because Frankie is meant to be "frumpy, fat, and emotionally defined by her unattractiveness." That's certainly not what we've got here. We do get her being reluctant and cautious about love however - while Pacino's Johnny is eager to just jump in and get things started. There are so many scars and so much damage that Frankie pushes Johnny away every chance she gets - and the film walks a dangerous line, because Johnny does cross a line or two, showing up at places Frankie has asked him not to. He comes on so strong I'm surprised this didn't turn into a horror movie. I think it would have played better if an actress less attractive than Michelle Pfeiffer had of played that part. Anyway, by the film's conclusion I thought it had wrestled with the whole subject of love for two damaged older people well enough that I gave it a thumbs up.

7/10
Not a great movie, but I like hanging out with Alpa and Michelle. Pairs well with Stanley and Iris starring Jane and Bobby D.

[WHITBISSELL!]

Kate Nelligan was insanely hot.
I know her from Dracula and Eye Of The Needle and I can't even pay attention to anything else in those films.I think it's the overbite. Sexy A ... F.

[WHITBISSELL!]

I mean, it's all lovely, don't get me wrong. But this is like Italian Spider-man level. I was in shock even though I saw the movie, what, 4 or 5 times back in the day, maybe more. 35 years later, it's actually hard to believe that this was actually an intentional, mainstream, major studio film that sat at No.1 for 3 weeks.I know, I know. It's just so goofy and over-the-top. Watch as Arnie wipes out an entire army single-handedly with just his rippling biceps. Well, that and a sh*tload of weapons that involve lots of buckling and snapping and strapping. Plus there's the camouflage face paint that he really doesn't need because he's mostly right out in the open. Come on guys!

[Stirchley]

My first ever dvd that I bought & played on my first ever DVD player. No clue when this was, but I revisited it last night for the first time.

Leaving aside the rather weak story line, what killed it for me was the over-acting of the majority of the cast. (Except the 2 leads who were fine.) Everyone in the cast chewed the scenery & shouted their lines rather than speaking them.

Very tiresome, but I finished it & re-filed it in my dvd collection never to be seen again.

Also, amazed to see they are working on MBFGW no. 3. Unbelievable. Nothing like milking something to death. :rolleyes:

89807

[Gideon58]

Not a great movie, but I like hanging out with Alpa and Michelle. Pairs well with Stanley and Iris starring Jane and Bobby D.


I LOVE Frankie and Johnny...Al Pacino has never been sexier onscreen. Stanley and Iris did nothing for me.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffilm-grab.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fphoto-gallery%2F08%2520(1223).jpg%3Fbwg%3D1547476722&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3fe884664f0224e0d99f8a051244461bc72d6fea8f3a5c97c4e562e80a1f27af&ipo=images

Time of the Wolf, 2003

In the midst of some undefined world-altering event, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to shepherd her children Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) through a devolving dystopian landscape. Dependent on the tenuous alliances and social structures forming in the countryside, the family holes up at a depot where they hope that a train will one day stop and take them away.

Thanks, I hate it.

Okay, hate is a strong word, but this movie was just an absolute misery slog with just enough of a handful of striking moments to make me hyperaware of how drab the rest of the film is.

At his best, Haneke makes the modern world feel like a dystopia straining under the surface of civilization. When actually placed in a real dystopia, I just kept feeling like what's the point?. Did you know that it would be really awful to live in a dystopia? Did you know that in times of need people are willing to act immorally?

There's just not much here to pull the film out of the mire of tropes we've all seen in every film with a similar plotline. There's a really lovely shot of a man holding a child by a bonfire as the camera slowly pans away, the darkness around them dwarfing the two figures. It's beautiful and despairing, and so little of the rest of the film rises to that level.

The film also loses points for the use of unsimulated animal cruelty, namely the killing of a horse. I actually skipped a chunk of the film to avoid this scene, and for a minute was seriously considering just ejecting the DVD altogether. In the end I stuck it out, but with very little payoff.

The acting is solid, there are a handful of powerful shots. But overall this was a miss for me, and I can't imagine wanting to recommend it to anyone.

3

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/Ghostbusters_-_Afterlife_official_theatrical_poster.jpg
https://www.movieposters.com/products/ghostbusters-afterlife-mpw-131213, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68790981

Ghostbusters : Afterlife - (2021)

Fine for what it is, and enjoyable - trading heavily on the nostalgia, which worked for me - Ghostbusters : Afterlife doesn't match what Ghostbusters did in 1984, but it sure felt like we were revisiting the home we grew up in. It doesn't try to replicate what the original did, and instead gives us a bunch of kids to cash in on their cuteness. Logan Kim, as Podcast, was a natural and the best of them. I'm really not going to remember any of the performances in this a week from now, let alone nearly 40 years after, but the call-backs, story, effects and general atmosphere is what brings the movie to life and makes it endurable. I like the fact that they simply went and totally ignored the risible Ghostbusters II - a sorry excuse for a cash-grab that film was. All-up, enjoyable - but although I'll see this movie perhaps twice in my lifetime, it won't get near the dozen or so times I watch Ghostbusters.

7/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cf/Taking_of_Pelham_123_%282009_film%29.jpg
By ImpAwards.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24399714

The Taking of Pelham 123 - (2009)

I'll tell you what comparison with the original did this remake in for me - the score. While the original 1974 film had one of the best scores you'd ever be likely to hear, this retread has one of the laziest, lamest and dithering scores I've heard this year. A flat imitation of a modern-day action score. Why did we even need a third version of Morton Freedgood's novel? This one adds a stock market side-plot (the real reason for the hijacking is so 'Ryder' (Travolta) can make $300 million on the stock market) - making the $11 million ransom simply a decoy. It also fills in a more complicated back story for the dispatcher, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) - I bet at Washington's insistence. Apart from that it goes on to retread the familiar path - with a more complex city-wide chase at the end - going to show that filmmakers rely on stuff like that instead of layering in more craftmanship and suspense. Luis Guzmán plays the role Martin Balsam did in the original, but while Travolta and Washington dominate the film he hardly gets a single line! Not good enough. For the average viewer, an average thriller. Give some of the other actors something to say you two line-hogs!

5/10

[beelzebubble]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffilm-grab.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fphoto-gallery%2F08%2520(1223).jpg%3Fbwg%3D1547476722&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3fe884664f0224e0d99f8a051244461bc72d6fea8f3a5c97c4e562e80a1f27af&ipo=images

Time of the Wolf, 2003

In the midst of some undefined world-altering event, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to shepherd her children Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) through a devolving dystopian landscape. Dependent on the tenuous alliances and social structures forming in the countryside, the family holes up at a depot where they hope that a train will one day stop and take them away.

Thanks, I hate it.

But why? It sounds so fun. ;D:nope:

[beelzebubble]

Okay, I think my tastes might be strange. Because Gideon58 hated the last movie I recommended. Gideon didn't even review it. I still loved it. Funny Pages on Prime. Yes it is disturbing that is part of its charm. Here goes my next rave.
Orgasm Inc (2022) 4/5 stars

This craziness is on Netflix. If you like documentaries about cults, (and who doesn't?) you will love this insanity. The Vow, Wild Wild Country, Keep Sweet all bangers about sociopaths and their sex cults, but they don't have what One Taste the sex cult that actively promotes itself as Feminist has; SEX as the draw.
It starts out as a yoga center that is offering OM, Orgasm Medititation. Basically, this woman, the sociopath in question, teaches men how to give women orgasms, and anorgasmic women to have orgasm. Which is fine. If Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley can do it, why not Nicole Daedone?

So this thing really takes off in the alternative world. Gwyneth Paltrow does a blog about it. Daedone is doing TED talks. They are setting up new centers or discussing it. And her followers are having far out, groovy times in San Francisco. What could go wrong?
Well sociopaths gotta sociopath and things turn dark. I loved it. For some reason there is nothing I enjoy more than watching a cult devolve. If you do too, than this is the Netflix movie for you. And yes it is a movie. They do not try to string it out into four parts. Enjoy! Tell them Beelzebubble sent you.

[ThatDarnMKS]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffilm-grab.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fphoto-gallery%2F08%2520(1223).jpg%3Fbwg%3D1547476722&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3fe884664f0224e0d99f8a051244461bc72d6fea8f3a5c97c4e562e80a1f27af&ipo=images

Time of the Wolf, 2003

In the midst of some undefined world-altering event, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to shepherd her children Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) through a devolving dystopian landscape. Dependent on the tenuous alliances and social structures forming in the countryside, the family holes up at a depot where they hope that a train will one day stop and take them away.

Thanks, I hate it.

Okay, hate is a strong word, but this movie was just an absolute misery slog with just enough of a handful of striking moments to make me hyperaware of how drab the rest of the film is.

At his best, Haneke makes the modern world feel like a dystopia straining under the surface of civilization. When actually placed in a real dystopia, I just kept feeling like what's the point?. Did you know that it would be really awful to live in a dystopia? Did you know that in times of need people are willing to act immorally?

There's just not much here to pull the film out of the mire of tropes we've all seen in every film with a similar plotline. There's a really lovely shot of a man holding a child by a bonfire as the camera slowly pans away, the darkness around them dwarfing the two figures. It's beautiful and despairing, and so little of the rest of the film rises to that level.

The film also loses points for the use of unsimulated animal cruelty, namely the killing of a horse. I actually skipped a chunk of the film to avoid this scene, and for a minute was seriously considering just ejecting the DVD altogether. In the end I stuck it out, but with very little payoff.

The acting is solid, there are a handful of powerful shots. But overall this was a miss for me, and I can't imagine wanting to recommend it to anyone.

3
I liked it. I watched it close to reading and watching The Road. I think they provided interesting counterpoints to each other, with each representing opposite sides of the parental struggle in the face of oblivion.

I consider it to be along the lines of Bergman and Trier (and well, Haneke, its his brand through and through), where it is almost comically bleak and unrelentingly depressing. Its not something I would find myself turning to often but there is something I find oddly comforting about cinema that lets me stare deeply into the abyss.

I also don’t see myself recommending it much, nor do I find it among Haneke’s best or most memorable works.

[Takoma11]

I liked it. I watched it close to reading and watching The Road. I think they provided interesting counterpoints to each other, with each representing opposite sides of the parental struggle in the face of oblivion.

I consider it to be along the lines of Bergman and Trier (and well, Haneke, its his brand through and through), where it is almost comically bleak and unrelentingly depressing. Its not something I would find myself turning to often but there is something I find oddly comforting about cinema that lets me stare deeply into the abyss.

I also don’t see myself recommending it much, nor do I find it among Haneke’s best or most memorable works.

I can handle bleak, but I can't handle bleak and boring.

And despite the performances being good, there was very little connection to the characters.

[ThatDarnMKS]

I can handle bleak, but I can't handle bleak and boring.

And despite the performances being good, there was very little connection to the characters.
I find Haneke’s craft and composition engaging even when his narratives leave something to be desired (something I find rare). I have a hard time recalling much of the plot beyond the premise but I can vividly recall images and sequences that conjure some kind of emotional response or engagement.

That said, its nowhere near the level of something like The White Ribbon or Amour. Closer to Code Unknown and a bit below Benny’s Video.

[Takoma11]

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), 2014

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is a former superhero franchise actor trying to breathe some life back into his professional life by writing, directing, and acting in a Broadway play based on a novel by Raymond Carver. Forced to hire a new actor (Edward Norton) when one of his leads is injured, Riggan grows more and more stressed as their opening night approaches. Oh, and maybe he's also developed some telekinetic powers.

There's a really nice thing that happens sometimes when I'm watching a movie and I suddenly realize I'm not sure exactly what the movie is about. Not what it's about, plot-wise, but what it's about. And then right on the heels of that thought is the realization that knowing or not knowing what it's about is having zero impact on my enjoyment of it.

Such was the case with Birdman. I'm sure I'll read a review at some point that will spell out some major themes that I missed, but whatever. This was an engaging, funny, propulsive ride and it more than lived up to the tremendous acclaim it received at the time it came out.

I've always been a fan of Michael Keaton. As a kid, he was one of the only actors who I could enjoy as both bad (Beetlejuice) or good/silly (Multiplicity) characters. The character he plays here--clearly aligning to Keaton's own foray as Batman--strikes just the right notes of self-aware fun. Riggan seems to know who he wants to be, and Keaton does a great job of showing a man who oscillates between the highs of confidence and the low lows of doubt.

The supporting cast is pretty terrific. Edward Norton is enjoyably hateable as the overly self-assured Mike, a guy whose notions about "truth" on stage are so important that he won't let unprofessionalism or even a little sexual assault interfere with his process. Emma Stone is her usual excellent, feisty self as Riggan's daughter, Sam, fresh out of rehab and still on spiky terms with her father. Zach Galifianakis does solid, funny work as Riggan's friend (and lawyer), who believes in Riggan but also knows that they need to make things work on the bottom line. Naomi Watts plays Lesley, Mike's long-suffering girlfriend. In smaller roles, Amy Ryan makes for a great scene partner for Keaton in some of the slower, more meditative scenes in which Riggan discusses his past with his ex-wife. Lindsay Duncan also makes the most of her limited screen time playing a theater critic whose hatred of celebrity culture has made her determined to sink Riggan's play.

I really enjoy films that deploy a limited degree of magical realism, and I thought that Birdman really hit the sweet spot in that regard. Is Riggan really moving things with his mind, or is it all in his head? The film is more than happy to leave the point ambiguous right until the very last moments.

I also appreciated the way that the film largely shifted its attention away from Mike's character in the last act. Don't get me wrong: Norton is great in the role. And all of Mike's bluster about truth and methods and limits makes him a great foil for Riggan. But his character adds a degree of absurdity that doesn't gel quite as well with the direction of Riggan's character arc as the film goes on. (I also found the whole subplot about Sam romantically/sexually pursuing him after he tried to sexually assault someone weird and gross, and while their scenes on the roof were beautifully lit, I didn't need any more of them).

I also really loved the in-your-face score, which could be summed up as DRUMS!, and yet it works really beautifully. On a technical level, everything about this film feels like it's firing on all cylinders, and as a piece of art it's just a joy to look at and experience.

4.5

[Takoma11]

I find Haneke’s craft and composition engaging even when his narratives leave something to be desired (something I find rare). I have a hard time recalling much of the plot beyond the premise but I can vividly recall images and sequences that conjure some kind of emotional response or engagement.

Really? Interesting. I mean, I just watched it a few hours ago, and there are only two visuals that are strongly in my mind. And one of those is just because it was a horse getting shot in the face.

[crumbsroom]

I'm a big Haneke defender and I thought Time of the Wolf stunk.


I've really like to loved everything else he's done. But this one left no impression on me whatsoever.

[ThatDarnMKS]

Really? Interesting. I mean, I just watched it a few hours ago, and there are only two visuals that are strongly in my mind. And one of those is just because it was a horse getting shot in the face.
I think it’s the way that Haneke idiosyncratically frames his shots, often obscuring what most films would focus on, in particular moments of violence (such as the lingering shot on Huppert’s face during the inciting murder), or during moments most filmmakers would either leave on the cutting room floor or not shoot altogether that capture the banality of existence (the shots of trains passing in the station).

I’m also intrigued by his paradoxical (and extremely European) sensibility toward’s animal killings, which he used in frequently in his early works (the pig in Benny’s Video, the cows in Code Unknown, and both the horse and goat here) despite him seemingly finding faked on screen violence between humans detestable. It's not an aspect I "enjoy" but I do find myself wondering why he (and many other European art filmmakers) are never mentioned in the same controversial breath as Deodato and Lenzi for their Cannibal flicks and animal killings.

On that note, I only remembered the horse when you brought it up. The one that stood out to me was the goat stabbing and the odd tenderness and embrace he chose to frame it with. Haunting and upsetting in a way that I could easily see inspiring hate but it's also an ugly truth of how we would and do acquire sustenance.

[ThatDarnMKS]

I'm a big Haneke defender and I thought Time of the Wolf stunk.


I've really like to loved everything else he's done. But this one left no impression on me whatsoever.
I'd put this near the bottom alongside Code Unknown (I've only not seen Seventh Continent and 72 Fragments for his feature work) but would say I really like to love everything he has done. No exceptions.

[Wooley]

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), 2014

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is a former superhero franchise actor trying to breathe some life back into his professional life by writing, directing, and acting in a Broadway play based on a novel by Raymond Carver. Forced to hire a new actor (Edward Norton) when one of his leads is injured, Riggan grows more and more stressed as their opening night approaches. Oh, and maybe he's also developed some telekinetic powers.

There's a really nice thing that happens sometimes when I'm watching a movie and I suddenly realize I'm not sure exactly what the movie is about. Not what it's about, plot-wise, but what it's about. And then right on the heels of that thought is the realization that knowing or not knowing what it's about is having zero impact on my enjoyment of it.

Such was the case with Birdman. I'm sure I'll read a review at some point that will spell out some major themes that I missed, but whatever. This was an engaging, funny, propulsive ride and it more than lived up to the tremendous acclaim it received at the time it came out.

I've always been a fan of Michael Keaton. As a kid, he was one of the only actors who I could enjoy as both bad (Beetlejuice) or good/silly (Multiplicity) characters. The character he plays here--clearly aligning to Keaton's own foray as Batman--strikes just the right notes of self-aware fun. Riggan seems to know who he wants to be, and Keaton does a great job of showing a man who oscillates between the highs of confidence and the low lows of doubt.

The supporting cast is pretty terrific. Edward Norton is enjoyably hateable as the overly self-assured Mike, a guy whose notions about "truth" on stage are so important that he won't let unprofessionalism or even a little sexual assault interfere with his process. Emma Stone is her usual excellent, feisty self as Riggan's daughter, Sam, fresh out of rehab and still on spiky terms with her father. Zach Galifianakis does solid, funny work as Riggan's friend (and lawyer), who believes in Riggan but also knows that they need to make things work on the bottom line. Naomi Watts plays Lesley, Mike's long-suffering girlfriend. In smaller roles, Amy Ryan makes for a great scene partner for Keaton in some of the slower, more meditative scenes in which Riggan discusses his past with his ex-wife. Lindsay Duncan also makes the most of her limited screen time playing a theater critic whose hatred of celebrity culture has made her determined to sink Riggan's play.

I really enjoy films that deploy a limited degree of magical realism, and I thought that Birdman really hit the sweet spot in that regard. Is Riggan really moving things with his mind, or is it all in his head? The film is more than happy to leave the point ambiguous right until the very last moments.

I also appreciated the way that the film largely shifted its attention away from Mike's character in the last act. Don't get me wrong: Norton is great in the role. And all of Mike's bluster about truth and methods and limits makes him a great foil for Riggan. But his character adds a degree of absurdity that doesn't gel quite as well with the direction of Riggan's character arc as the film goes on. (I also found the whole subplot about Sam romantically/sexually pursuing him after he tried to sexually assault someone weird and gross, and while their scenes on the roof were beautifully lit, I didn't need any more of them).

I also really loved the in-your-face score, which could be summed up as DRUMS!, and yet it works really beautifully. On a technical level, everything about this film feels like it's firing on all cylinders, and as a piece of art it's just a joy to look at and experience.

4.5

I love this movie and when I was on social media I went out of my way to champion it and try to get people to go to the theater and see it. Didn't work, but I tried.

[Takoma11]

I think it’s the way that Haneke idiosyncratically frames his shots, often obscuring what most films would focus on, in particular moments of violence (such as the lingering shot on Huppert’s face during the inciting murder), or during moments most filmmakers would either leave on the cutting room floor or not shoot altogether that capture the banality of existence (the shots of trains passing in the station).

In a few scenes, yes.

But frankly, if I'd watched this movie and someone told me it was a random low-budget flick they'd found in the dredges of Amazon Prime, I wouldn't have questioned it that strongly.

Aside from the occasional visual flourish or character moment, this was lacking on almost every level. My rating mainly reflects the acting and that powerful last image.

And all of his usual tics (like choosing what to put on screen or not) here feels random as opposed to purposeful. We can't see someone get shot but we can watch a woman get raped? We can't watch someone die but we can watch a horse have its throat cut?

In reading with kids, we talk about "What? So what? Now what?". And I never felt like this film did heavy lifting in the "so what" department and so it just ends up being a series of scenes that did very little for me.

[SpelingError]

I loved Birdman when I first saw it, but I haven't felt an itch to rewatch it for some reason. I'm sure it'll still hold up though.

[Rockatansky]

I remember nothing about Time of the Wolf, but I suppose it didn’t actively annoy me like Haneke usually does. Isabelle Huppert goes a long way, it seems.

I liked Birdman when I saw it, but haven’t thought about it since. I guess my one gripe is that I would have ordered the one-take visual style to stick with Keaton instead of hopping around to the whole cast.

[WHITBISSELL!]

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Dracula's Daughter - This 1936 Universal Pictures release was the official, studio sanctioned sequel to their 1931 hit Dracula. But their first choice for director, James Whale, ended up getting replaced by A. Edward Sutherland. He in turn was replaced by Lambert Hilyer who had mostly directed B Westerns. Additional financial wrangling with proposed star Bela Lugosi and Bram Stoker's widow Florence cost them their lead actor and access to Stoker's novel. The resulting compromises left them with this rather lukewarm and occasionally atmospheric effort.

The film opens in a promising enough way as two London policemen stumble across a dead body. It turns out to be Renfield and the film is keen enough to bring back Edward Van Sloan as Professor Von Helsing. He tells the two bobbies of another dead body in the next chamber. When the officer checks he finds a man impaled through the heart with a wooden stake. So this takes up right where it's predecessor ended. That opening though is the high-water mark as far as the plot goes.

Von Helsing is charged with murder but he argues his innocence by insisting that the corpse belonged to a man that had been dead for 500 years. Instead of a lawyer he requests that one of his old students, psychiatrist Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), come to his aid. Gloria Holden plays Countess Marya Zaleska and with the help of her uber creepy manservant Sandor (Irving Pichel) she spirits away the body of Dracula. She then burns it in hopes of freeing herself from her never ending thirst for blood. She meets Dr. Garth at a party and asks for his help in breaking her dead father's influence. He advises her to confront her fears and she's immediately convinced that he's the one person who can help her.

It all transpires in what to me seemed prosaic fashion even though there were small flashes of distinctiveness. Kruger's performance as the overweening Garth and his love/hate relationship with his secretary Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill). Pichel's dead on resemblance to Benicio Del Toro in his portrayal of the lugubrious Sandor. And, according to just about everyone but me, a heavy lesbian undercurrent that apparently flew right over my head. All in all though there's just not enough here for me to recommend.

65/100

[StuSmallz]

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By https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101912/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3840903

Frankie and Johnny - (1991)

I thought Frankie and Johnny was good - it reflected what middle-aged romance is really like, and expanded Terrence McNally's play into the real world - a play that I would have loved to have seen with it's original leads - F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates. By casting Michelle Pfeiffer as Frankie you've changed the whole story, because Frankie is meant to be "frumpy, fat, and emotionally defined by her unattractiveness." That's certainly not what we've got here.Sort of like when they tried to make her "unattractive" in Batman Returns (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/batman-returns/) by making her look like this, huh?:


https://i.ibb.co/KwsXggH/MV5-BMjhh-Mm-Q3-M2-Ut-OGU3-ZC00-MWFk-LWE0-ZTMt-Yzg3-Zj-Uy-M2-Nl-Yzhh-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Nj-Q4-ODE.jpg (https://ibb.co/9t4N00j)

[Wooley]

Sort of like when they tried to make her "unattractive" in Batman Returns (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/batman-returns/) by making her look like this, huh?:


https://i.ibb.co/KwsXggH/MV5-BMjhh-Mm-Q3-M2-Ut-OGU3-ZC00-MWFk-LWE0-ZTMt-Yzg3-Zj-Uy-M2-Nl-Yzhh-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Nj-Q4-ODE.jpg (https://ibb.co/9t4N00j)

This always makes me laugh because I'm one of the those guys that if you wanna make a hot woman even hotter, put glasses on her. And movies be like, "Oh, we need to make her seem not-hot, put glasses on her!"

[chawhee]

House of Gucci (2021)
https://media2.firstshowing.net/firstshowing/img12/GucciGroupshotsPostermixmain5993.jpg
3
I knew practically nothing of what this movie was supposed to be in terms of what the Gucci family history consists of, but the cast is what drew me in to watch. That feeling is still with me, where I don't feel like I have enough interest in learning the drama behind a fashion industry empire.

The movie itself was fine, though things like editing (something I usually dont notice, whether good or bad) and dialogue (accents were all over the place) seemed rather amateur. It also seemed light on some details, which is odd for a movie over 2 hours, but maybe there was more to tell if it was something like a mini-series on streaming.

[cricket]

Senna (2010)

3.5

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ChillyEasyAmericanavocet-size_restricted.gif

Blind pick because it was the highest placed film from the 2010's on our documentary list that I hadn't seen. I initially thought it had to do with laxatives until I saw the poster. It's about race car legend Ayrton Senna. I had no idea how this would end but given the subject matter I feared the worst. There's a ton of footage of this guy in interviews, getting ready for races, racing, and whatnot, so you really get to know him. That's what makes this a strong documentary but it's not a happy watch.

[matt72582]

The Lunchbox - 7/10
Saikh to me was the most interesting character, but he played 3rd banana. I didn't feel any romance. Partly because they didn't meet, and partly because it seemed like he was just a platonic pen-pal. Still a good movie.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/The_Lunchbox_poster.jpg

[matt72582]

Sort of like when they tried to make her "unattractive" in Batman Returns (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/batman-returns/) by making her look like this, huh?:


https://i.ibb.co/KwsXggH/MV5-BMjhh-Mm-Q3-M2-Ut-OGU3-ZC00-MWFk-LWE0-ZTMt-Yzg3-Zj-Uy-M2-Nl-Yzhh-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Nj-Q4-ODE.jpg (https://ibb.co/9t4N00j)


Hollywood not wanting to take a financial chance, and instead getting a good looking star...


Or "Marty" (1954) with Betsy Blair.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Mexnm4J-zPF37wIRdEhGTgHaDt%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=14620d3857300d6e01050dbaa1ed805798fbaf1f2b8b0e29b3a69410a3b77198&ipo=images

Death of Stalin, 2017

Josef Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) signs off on a list of citizens to be imprisoned, tortured, and/or executed, reads a nasty note from a woman who has had enough of his tyranny, and suffers a cerebral hemorrhage that leaves him sliding toward death. Facing the lost of their leader, various ministers and other higher ups in the government begin jockying for the crown, including Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), Beria (Simon Russell Beale), and Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor). The men play deadly, deceitful political games as they try to best position themselves.

This one came highly recommended when I asked for several 2010s movies to watch and it definitely delivered.

What works throughout the entire film is the contrast between the banal, middle-management waffling conversations among the various ministers and the ridiculously high stakes involved in those conversations. The men banter about whether or not to halt the latest slew of executions with little more passion than you'd expect from a debate over whether to order pizza or sub sandwiches for a lunch.

The barely controlled manipulations of the main cast gets tested by an assortment of far less controlled and predictable supporting characters, including a plain-spoken military general (Jason Isaacs), and Stalin's children Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) and drunk son Vasily (Rupert Friend). An air of uncertainty undercuts every decision, and the willingness of characters to betray each other leaves everything on a knife's edge for the entire run time.

While the film is a comedy, it is very dark at times. The realities of Stalin's regime are on display, including torture, sexual assault, sexual exploitation, kidnapping, executions, and general terrorizing of civilians. It's jarring to be asked to laugh at Beria sprinting to be the first to greet and hug Svetlana, when just moments earlier we watched him abduct and sexually assault a teenage girl, or when we've seen him torture a man and then demand the sexual assault of another man's wife.

Visually, the film looks great. The costumes and sets exits in a space of slight unreality, which pairs well with the decision to not have the actors speak with accents. It strikes just the right balance of history/not-history.

In terms of satire, I feel that the movie does an incredible job of showing the very warped nature of "loyalty" that emerges from a system of oppression and fear. It's miserable. No one can trust each other. No one feels fully free to speak their mind. I also thought that there was a powerful moment when a decision comes down to (at least temporarily) halt executions. As the news is delivered, a soldier executes one last man. The man next to that man looks down for a moment, processes that he would have been next. For me, part of the message of that moment relates to justice or civil rights movements and times that people are extolled to be "patient." Patience doesn't help that last person who took a bullet to the head.

A very solid dark comedy.

4

[PHOENIX74]

Sort of like when they tried to make her "unattractive" in Batman Returns (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/batman-returns/) by making her look like this, huh?:


https://i.ibb.co/KwsXggH/MV5-BMjhh-Mm-Q3-M2-Ut-OGU3-ZC00-MWFk-LWE0-ZTMt-Yzg3-Zj-Uy-M2-Nl-Yzhh-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Nj-Q4-ODE.jpg (https://ibb.co/9t4N00j)

This always makes me laugh because I'm one of the those guys that if you wanna make a hot woman even hotter, put glasses on her. And movies be like, "Oh, we need to make her seem not-hot, put glasses on her!"

Definitely lump me in with the "glasses just make her even more attractive!" grouping. I don't understand why movie-makers think glasses make a woman some kind of horrifying, deformed and hideous monster. I love Pfeiffer's hair in that Batman Returns picture too, all frizzied up, with that strand falling right down the center of her face. Looks super cute. So, yeah - the character of Frankie, with a central defining characteristic being her concern over how unattractive she is - so who do they get to play her? Michelle Pfeiffer.

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Quo_Vadis%2C_Aida%3F.jpg
By http://www.impawards.com/intl/misc/2021/quo_vadis_aida.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65554033

Quo Vadis Aida? - (2020)

So, a surprise yesterday, with this being the big stand-out winner of my movie marathon. I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise - it was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar at the 2021 Academy Awards (Another Round was the winner) but still, I wasn't expecting something that both stung so much, and provided compelling viewing from start to finish. Can't stop watching kind of stuff. Those of us old enough to remember the Bosnian War recall how low certain armies sank during that conflict - we're talking Nazi-level atrocities on a continent still hurting a little over the 2nd World War. This film shows us the Srebrenica massacre from the viewpoint of a United Nations translator who on the one hand has a kind of safe immunity, and on the other is trying to rescue her husband and two children as Serbian troops capture her town. The limp, impotent United Nations troops promise much, and deliver nothing - their officers humiliated by Serbian commanders who break every rule in the Geneva convention there is, and then end up being coerced into helping the Serbs commit atrocities. Frightening, and very sad, this film takes you right to the heart of the terror - and I really recommend it to everyone.

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Woman_in_black_ver4.jpg
By May be found at the following website: IMPAwards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34437182

The Woman in Black - (2012)

The Woman in Black, although effective, also tries a little too hard to scare us. The majority of the film takes place in a haunted house that just won't let up - sending Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) careening from one room to the next. I don't know why - I'd be running away from all the creepy stuff that's happening. For the most part it's pretty straightforward - the last living occupant of a strange house surrounded by a boggy sea-level marsh dies, and Kipps is the lawyer sent to organize the estate. The owner's dead sister has cursed the town the house is part of, with children willed into suicidal acts - and we unravel the secrets of a child's death that started it all. The movie just overplays it's hand a little, with either an apparition, suicide or spooky occurrence roughly every 20 seconds. There ends up being little suspense built up, and it's those rhythms mixed with the scares that fall flat that make this a little less than what it could have been - for some of it is excellent.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Woman_at_War.png
By https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7279188/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57484344

Woman at War - (2018)

Watched this last year and rated it 8/10 - it's really good, and has gorgeous cinematography - really stunning. A modern tale of a woman in the midst of her own personal climate war - destroying Icelandic infrastructure to prevent giant international conglomerations coming in to spoil the environment even further. At the height of her battle her name comes up on the adoptions list, and she has to choose between her battle, or saving a cute little girl in Ukraine. That's if she can stop - consequences be damned.

Old review :

"Neat little movie about a woman (an excellent Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir playing Hanna and her twin sister Ása) resisting industrialization in the beautiful Icelandic coast, mountains and rivers. As she ratchets up her pressure on authorities they call her a 'terrorist' and are determined to hunt her down. In the meantime she finally has the chance to adopt a gorgeous young Ukranian girl after 4 years of processing and waiting. Everything collides in a drastic way - will we get some kind of happy ending, or has Hanna completely wrecked her own life?

Another great film from Iceland (not from the makers of Rams) - they must have some kind of burgeoning scene. Worth the price of admission alone just to see Geirharðsdóttir ply her craft. She's really exceptional. The story is timely, and has everything from a First Blood-style chase in the wilderness to touching scenes between the sisters and their dreams being crushed by ill-considered actions. Still, you respect her for putting everything on the line to protect the Iceland she loves. Beautiful shots of the landscape. Not original - but I still love the device of musicians playing the score while they're literally included in scenes (coming mostly from Hanna's imagination - she's a musician herself.) Definitely one to look out for."

7/10

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmovies.mxdwn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F07%2FCaptain-Phillips.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=1ed780ad77c51f359dd1e629ddfd9f89a17080f5fbb10525c6a4df63983b2613&ipo=images

Captain Phillips, 2013

In this based-on-a-true-story thriller, Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) is the captain of a ship called the Alabama, a cargo vessel whose route takes them around the African cape where a string of hijackings has taken place. Sure enough, the ship is seized by a small group of Somali men, led by Muse (Barkhad Abdi), a smart but unpredictable young man determined to make a better life for himself.

I overall enjoyed this film, even if it seemed like it ran a bit long. Hanks gives an assured lead performance, and his calm, America's dad energy is well balanced by the jittery energy of Abdi's Muse.

I appreciate that the film, while it obviously changed some events for the sake of the film, kept the narrative in a scale and scope that felt real. The pirates didn't kill anyone aboard the Alabama, and the movie doesn't feel the need to exaggerate their actions for the sake of making them seem more evil.

Generally, I thought that the film did a good job of portraying the pirates as criminals but not as one-dimensional characters. They work for a warlord and live in a country where economic hardship makes criminal activity a very tempting path out of poverty. The film doesn't demand a ton of sympathy for them, but the fact that they are humanized to a degree makes the film more compelling.

I did enjoy the nature of the action sequence in the film, specifically the boarding of the ship in the beginning and the rescue attempt in the last act. They have this fast/slow dynamic where there is quick action and changing circumstances, but at the same time a real-life drawn out quality. This is maybe most effective in the boarding sequence, as the attacking boats draw closer and closer and the crew of the Alabama realizes that no one is coming to help them and they must rely on their own evasive maneuvers and limited defensive moves to protect them.

I really appreciated the way that the camera moved around the ship and inside the lifeboat. It both gives you a good sense of the layout and flow of the spaces, as well as creating a claustrophobic energy.

As far as "based on a true . . . " movies go, I thought this one was pretty good. Some liberties taken, yes, but still a compelling story.

4

[Thief]

The Lunchbox - 7/10
Saikh to me was the most interesting character, but he played 3rd banana. I didn't feel any romance. Partly because they didn't meet, and partly because it seemed like he was just a platonic pen-pal. Still a good movie.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/The_Lunchbox_poster.jpg

I felt quite differently about their romance, but beyond that, I liked what the film had to say about age and relationships in general. I'm a big fan of it.

[Gideon58]

https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/t_share/MTg4ODg1NzM3MTE3NTkxMDcy/is-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-already-the-best-movie.jpg

3.5

[skizzerflake]

:popcorn::popcorn:

It seemed really overblown to me. Wakanda Forever, an exercise in having handsome people strike poses, slim on plot, long on poses. There are two factions in this story. One are the Wakandans, based on land, and their conflict with another group, a bunch of amphibious "humans" who don't handle dry land very well, belong in the water.

The movie amounts to a nearly 3 hour conflict between them when it seemed, all along, easy to solve, like leave the water humans in the water and the dry land human on dry land.

Somehow, this got to be a big epic. Visuals are excellent, but it was way too long and, very unsatisfying when it was over (note the previous paragraph). Oh well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z3QKkl1WyM

[Thunderbolt]

89827
Point Break (2015)
There are very few films that I have started to watch and not finished but this is one. I managed an hour but it was too painful to continue. The original rules. This was bulls@#t.
0.5

[Marco]

Bad Boys (1983)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/Bad_Boys_%281983_film_poster%29.jpg
Seen this years ago and had a rewatch, all in all a solid film. With Sean Penn as lesser scumbag than Esai Morales' character. Of it's time and I thought took a lot of influence from "Scum" by Alan Clarke. Well put together but the love interest/rape part was needless.

2.5

[matt72582]

Clear History - 7/10
If you like "Curb Your Enthusiasm", you'll like this.. I love Chicago, and I like Larry David. I used to see this on HBO when I lived elsewhere, and thought it would be something easy to watch last night, to finish up today, without having to pay attention to every detail.

Interesting Chicago has been a band for 55 years, but all the songs were from the 1970s - just like God meant it to be.


"She blew Chicago"
"The city?"
"The band!"
"25 or 6 to 4 Chicago?" - Tibor

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Clear_History_poster.jpg

[Torgo]

Petite Maman - 5

This is a simple, elegant and bittersweet tale about a young lady, Nelly, who loses her grandmother. She stays at her house, which is in a seemingly magical forest, for a few days while her mom and dad clean it out. While exploring, she meets another girl who she bonds with immediately. If it's autumn where you live, I recommend watching it sooner than later because it will enhance the movie's appropriately autumnal vibes. I also don't recommend reading too much about it before going in because there's a moment that's best experienced firsthand. I know that doesn't give you much to chew on, but the movie definitely will, specifically about grief and childhood; i.e. that we sadly don't fully appreciate what's special about it and the connections we have during it until it's over. Fans of My Neighbor Totoro are especially bound to enjoy it.

[cricket]

The Silence (2010)

4+

https://images.kinorium.com/movie/shot/469766/h280_41910316.jpg?21589646641

German film with a typical thriller plot centered around 2 almost identical crimes committed over 20 years apart. But I didn't see it as a typical thriller because there's really no thrills to speak of. There is a lot of intensity but there's a bigger focus on remorse and grief. Definitely recommended and available on Tubi.

[Wooley]

Bad Boys (1983)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/Bad_Boys_%281983_film_poster%29.jpg
Seen this years ago and had a rewatch, all in all a solid film. With Sean Penn as lesser scumbag than Esai Morales' character. Of it's time and I thought took a lot of influence from "Scum" by Alan Clarke. Well put together but the love interest/rape part was needless.

2.5

I loved this movie when I was younger, watched it several times, but have not seen in in literally 30 years. Been thinking about revisiting it but your fairly low score gives me pause.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.theconversation.com%2Ffiles%2F232146%2Foriginal%2Ffile-20180815-2900-1ol1qts.png%3Fixlib%3Drb-1.1.0%26q%3D45%26auto%3Dformat%26w%3D1356%26h%3D668%26fit%3Dcrop&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=4b63d9b257221701d47ffff518343d88205e15229975729fcdf95f9b758d8459&ipo=images

Crazy Rich Asians, 2018

Rachel (Constance Wu) is a university economics professor, dating the kind, charismatic Nick (Henry Golding). But it turns out that Nick is more than just a nice guy---he's part of an incredibly wealthy family, something that Rachel discovers when they travel to Singapore for the wedding of Nick's good friend. Nick's family, including his imposing mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) all perceive Rachel as a gold-digger and do their best to drive a wedge between Nick and Rachel.

This was an overall very charming romantic comedy that was absolutely gorgeous to look at. While I felt that it left certain issues unresolved, it made for easy, fun viewing.

Constance Wu has good comedic and dramatic range, and she makes for a very sympathetic protagonist. Rachel is constantly provoked and criticized, even by those characters who are seemingly on her side, and she faces the challenge of being forced to decide whether to reinvent herself to please these people. Wu does a good job of portraying that tricky spot where someone is trying not to let something get to them, but only having moderate success.

Golding is fine, if maybe a bit bland, as Nick. The main flair in the film is delivered by Awkwafina, as family friend Peik Lin Goh. Michelle Yeoh is very strong as the family's icy second-in-command matriarch---the true queen bee is Lisa Lu's Ah Ma--who was once herself not considered worthy of being part of the family.

Fitting well the notion of people who have more money than they know what to do with, the settings and costumes are lush, colorful, and tailored to a T. Everything from the flowers to he furniture to the clothing to the food looks lush and lavish.

While I enjoyed the film overall, I'm not sure that it really resolved the central question that hangs over multiple characters, namely what it means to be an outsider coming up against a very wealthy, very insular group. We see this plot not only with Rachel and with Eleanor's memories, but also in a side plot about Nick's cousin, Astrid (Gemma Chan) and her husband's feelings of inferiority.

The movie sort of hand waves the issues away, but it seems really strange to me that Astrid's husband is seen to be a straighforward bad guy because of his feelings of not being enough. We have seen the way that Rachel is treated (and bullied, and harassed, etc), and I Can imagine that dynamic would put a tremendous strain on a person. Astrid's husband does have an affair, and it seems like that should have been more of the focus of Astrid's anger. And going back to the main pot, dear goodness, why would you want to be part of Nick's family?!

There's also never any kind of reckoning with the fact that the kind of wealth and excess we see in this film is pretty gross from just about any point of view: environmental, human exploitation, etc. The angle the movie takes is that Rachel would be scoring a victory to become one of these people, and I find that kind of a depressing thought.

Good times, but not a lot of depth.

4

[cricket]

Pariah (2011)

4

https://sfmoma-media-dev.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-media/2018/08/03212041/Pariah.jpg

Blind pick off the female director's list. A quick look tells me it's a coming of age drama about a teen's struggle to come out as a lesbian. I love coming of age films, but it's normally because of nostalgia or humor. There wouldn't be any of that for me in this film so I had my doubts. As I get older I increasingly minimize the problems of a younger age. I basically view it as if you have your health, and then youth on top of it, then you have everything. But this movie worked, it was an 86 minute powerhouse. Excellent performances and characters I cared about. Not the kind of film I would have picked out myself and that's a big reason why I find so many great movies on this forum.

[Marco]

I loved this movie when I was younger, watched it several times, but have not seen in in literally 30 years. Been thinking about revisiting it but your fairly low score gives me pause.
Nah Wooley, I'm no Barry Norman. It's a good watch, I was maybe comparing it too harshly against "Scum" which had much more social awareness but they are different films altogether. Both have their attributes.

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Cobra_Verde_poster.jpg
By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8840854

Cobra Verde - (1987)

During the slave trade there was a criminal element that, although not particularly racist or white supremacist, took advantage of circumstances and enriched themselves. They belonged on neither side of the debate, but being of criminal minds sunk to the level of the depraved in the whole rotten business. Klaus Kinski plays Cobra Verde (Francisco Manoel da Silva) with wearied debauchery in this, his last collaboration with Werner Herzog. The venom unleashed by him towards his director/nemesis and the entire crew making this film seethes into his performance itself, and while that isn't a bad thing, things had finally gotten to a point where the actor and Herzog would part ways permanently. We rocket through the story, but everything works really well and comes through vividly in this film, set towards the end of the trade in the Americas. This is worthy of a Kinski/Herzog collaboration - based on the novel 'The Viceroy of Ouidah' by Bruce Chatwin.

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/1982Garp_film_movieposter.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8203011

The World According to Garp - (1982)

My feelings towards The World According to Garp change a lot. I first saw it as a kid and loved it, going on to read John Irving's novel in my teenage years and feeling the same way towards that. Perhaps that ruined the film for me - because later viewings had me liking it a lot less. Now, rewatching it after many years, I'm back on the bandwagon - Garp says a lot to me, has a fine screenplay, and a cast that all come through - especially John Lithgow and Glenn Close, who were nominated for Oscars. The film has a cheerful, light surface but underneath is a really black comedy which explores the tribulations of life, love and our place in the world. It's not afraid to be a mainstream film exploring topics based on gender, sexuality and death. It features Amanda Plummer in a small, early role.

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Ten_canoes.jpg
By Poster found at http://www.impawards.com/2006/ten_canoes.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9141132

Ten Canoes - (2006)

Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland have a shared history and culture that goes back some 50,000 years, and survive in one of the harshest environments on the planet. Ten Canoes is an Australian Aboriginal language film and is in colour and black and white - delineating a moral story being told (in colour) and reality (black and white). You really get to know many things you had no idea of, considering the cultural differences and practices of these people. In a super controversial move, the film had a white director. Make of that what you will - but despite that, I still think it's an awesome film - and I recommend it highly. It swept the Australian Film Awards the year it came out, and every aspect of it casts a distinct spell that's not easy to compare to many other films at all. I implore anyone reading this to watch Ten Canoes.

8/10

[Takoma11]

Ten Canoes - (2006)

Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland have a shared history and culture that goes back some 50,000 years, and survive in one of the harshest environments on the planet. Ten Canoes is an Australian Aboriginal language film and is in colour and black and white - delineating a moral story being told (in colour) and reality (black and white). You really get to know many things you had no idea of, considering the cultural differences and practices of these people. In a super controversial move, the film had a white director. Make of that what you will - but despite that, I still think it's an awesome film - and I recommend it highly. It swept the Australian Film Awards the year it came out, and every aspect of it casts a distinct spell that's not easy to compare to many other films at all. I implore anyone reading this to watch Ten Canoes.

8/10

I reviewed it a little while back and I agree it is really compelling.

[FromBeyond]

Villain 2020


Surprisingly good for a Craig Fairbrass led vehicle, the British hardman who has made a slew of low rent Brit gangster flicks. Nothing very original, you know the story, a hardened criminal gets out of prison wanting to go straight but is pulled back into the criminal underworld for one last time. It was actually pretty good,simple but satisfying and with two really sinister villains. Good acting all round. I did guess what the ending would be about halfway through when something happened but that didn't really bother, it was pretty alright you know, I can see Fairbrass breaking into Hollywood at some time, possibly.. as a kind of Ray Winston figure

[LChimp]

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/H624f46567a3c43efa2664953b6bdc52fX/Mais-estilo-quente-terrifier-arte-o-palha-o-horror-cl-ssico-filme-arte-impress-o-de.jpg

I guess I can call it a work of Art?

[Marco]

Bloody Moon (1981)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/Bloody-moon-poster.jpg
This reminded me of a giallo but is more just a Spanish horror. The acting is ok but the editing could have been better I think. It drags in places and then picks up the pace absurdly but I liked it. Some bits (the version I watched) look like out-takes but I suppose you can only wee with the willie you have.;)

3

[Marco]

Villain 2020


Surprisingly good for a Craig Fairbrass led vehicle, the British hardman who has made a slew of low rent Brit gangster flicks. Nothing very original, you know the story, a hardened criminal gets out of prison wanting to go straight but is pulled back into the criminal underworld for one last time. It was actually pretty good,simple but satisfying and with two really sinister villains. Good acting all round. I did guess what the ending would be about halfway through when something happened but that didn't really bother, it was pretty alright you know, I can see Fairbrass breaking into Hollywood at some time, possibly.. as a kind of Ray Winston figure
I think if you go into these films knowing it's low-rent "Lahndahn" gangster stuff then they are a decent watch. You can at least play "he was in Eastenders/Grange Hill"🙂

[Gideon58]

https://static.metacritic.com/images/products/movies/2/ba8c742c16e76bf7eb58f6a869128f85.jpg


4.5

[beelzebubble]

Definitely lump me in with the "glasses just make her even more attractive!" grouping. I don't understand why movie-makers think glasses make a woman some kind of horrifying, deformed and hideous monster. I love Pfeiffer's hair in that Batman Returns picture too, all frizzied up, with that strand falling right down the center of her face. Looks super cute. So, yeah - the character of Frankie, with a central defining characteristic being her concern over how unattractive she is - so who do they get to play her? Michelle Pfeiffer.
Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham were in the stage version of Frankie and Johnny...

[cricket]

Inside Out (2015)

3

https://badgerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/giphy-21.gif

I'm not one who thinks that animated films are just for kids, but I felt like this was more suited for them. I liked the concept and the animation is great. I don't have anything negative to say at all, but I was never more than amused.

[Captain Steel]

Inside Out (2015)

3

https://badgerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/giphy-21.gif

I'm not one who thinks that animated films are just for kids, but I felt like this was more suited for them. I liked the concept and the animation is great. I don't have anything negative to say at all, but I was never more than amused.

There was a TV series a couple decades back called "Herman's Head" which was a very similar concept - it was a sitcom with 4 additional actors playing different aspects of the main character's personality & emotional make-up.

I enjoyed Inside Out, but thought some of the concepts might be over kids' heads - which wasn't a bad thing as it had enough for kids plus some concepts that adults could appreciate.

[Gideon58]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/1982Garp_film_movieposter.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8203011

The World According to Garp - (1982)

My feelings towards The World According to Garp change a lot. I first saw it as a kid and loved it, going on to read John Irving's novel in my teenage years and feeling the same way towards that. Perhaps that ruined the film for me - because later viewings had me liking it a lot less. Now, rewatching it after many years, I'm back on the bandwagon - Garp says a lot to me, has a fine screenplay, and a cast that all come through - especially John Lithgow and Glenn Close, who were nominated for Oscars. The film has a cheerful, light surface but underneath is a really black comedy which explores the tribulations of life, love and our place in the world. It's not afraid to be a mainstream film exploring topics based on gender, sexuality and death. It features Amanda Plummer in a small, early role.

8/10

Love this movie...I think it improves with each re-watch. Glad you're back on the bandwagon.

[chawhee]

The Platform (2020)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/b4/68/6db468f815a65a02bb0da989584a3e13.jpg
3
This movie almost made the 'couldnt even finish' list because of how grisly some of the violence and food consumption behavior was, but I wanted to get through the philosophical message it was trying to convey. It really didn't payoff, and I have seen a lot of other people criticize it similarly. The movie was fine, but the themes didn't go as deep as I may have liked them too.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.rogerebert.com%2Fuploads%2Freview%2Fprimary_image%2Freviews%2Fbridge-of-spies-2015%2Fhero_BridgeofSpies-2015-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=5bd72e665ae9cc9b677f283c46196ea8442d0ef5678a7eb587ae0f6a4098d473&ipo=images

Bridge of Spies, 2015

Lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is asked to act as defense counsel to a man named Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) who has been arrested as a Soviet spy. Donovan goes beyond just the rote defense of his client, and his impressive performance leads to a additional ask: he becomes the chief negotiator in trying to arrange a deal to trade Abel for a captured American pilot named Powers (Austin Stowell) and an American student (Will Rogers) who was arrested in East Berlin. All the while, Donovan's work takes a toll on his family.

This was a solid true-history film with engaging lead performances, though it somehow seemed to lack a compelling momentum.

In some ways, this movie feels like two different stories inside the same film. The first story is about a man defending someone who is supposed to only get a gesture of a real trial. The slow forging of respect between Donovan and Abel is nicely done, especially with the note that Donovan never asks Abel if he is guilty or not.

The second story is that of the tense prisoner exchange, as Donovan tries to triangulate between the German and Russian governments, everyone hypersensitive to whether they are perceived as coming out with the better deal. Donovan's "aw shucks" yet shrewd approach to these negotiations is entertaining as he comes up against much more tight-lipped representatives for the other countries.

With such a prestigious catalog of people working on this film--co-written by the Coen brothers, directed by Spielberg, etc--you expect it to look good and it does. The sets and costumes, especially the snow-covered streets of Germany, look great.

At the same time, the film seems to back off of one of its most interesting themes, namely the difficulty of doing the right thing even in difficult circumstances. When Donovan starts defending Abel, he quickly becomes a target of hatred, including people firing a gun into his home and nearly hitting his daughter. He's seen as being un-American and is criticized by the police who are meant to be protecting him. Donovan is living up to his duty as a lawyer and to the principles of democracy and due process, but a lot of people vilify him as if he is on Abel's side.

But at the end of the film, the hostage exchange complete, he becomes a hero. While this might honestly be true to life, it felt like a bit of a cop-out. Obviously we can respect him for following his values, but it feels overly convenient that he doesn't have to reckon with any difficulty. The films chooses to leave its last moments as Donovan watches children clambering over a fence, causing him to flash back to when he saw some young people gunned down trying to cross the Berlin wall.

While the film is willing to show some parallels between the two sides, it definitely hews toward the Soviets being cruel and the Americans being professional (if grudgingly so). Powers is tortured, Abel is merely questioned. Donovan's harassment is forgotten as strangers on the train now smile at him on their daily commute. It feels like it wraps up a little too neatly and loses some of the nicer nuances from the first half of the film.

A solid film, but not one I would imagine revisiting.

4

[Wyldesyde19]

Platform and Bridge of Spies are both good, but nothing that I plan on revisiting any time soon. If ever.

[Wooley]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.rogerebert.com%2Fuploads%2Freview%2Fprimary_image%2Freviews%2Fbridge-of-spies-2015%2Fhero_BridgeofSpies-2015-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=5bd72e665ae9cc9b677f283c46196ea8442d0ef5678a7eb587ae0f6a4098d473&ipo=images

Bridge of Spies, 2015

Lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is asked to act as defense counsel to a man named Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) who has been arrested as a Soviet spy. Donovan goes beyond just the rote defense of his client, and his impressive performance leads to a additional ask: he becomes the chief negotiator in trying to arrange a deal to trade Abel for a captured American pilot named Powers (Austin Stowell) and an American student (Will Rogers) who was arrested in East Berlin. All the while, Donovan's work takes a toll on his family.

This was a solid true-history film with engaging lead performances, though it somehow seemed to lack a compelling momentum.

In some ways, this movie feels like two different stories inside the same film. The first story is about a man defending someone who is supposed to only get a gesture of a real trial. The slow forging of respect between Donovan and Abel is nicely done, especially with the note that Donovan never asks Abel if he is guilty or not.

The second story is that of the tense prisoner exchange, as Donovan tries to triangulate between the German and Russian governments, everyone hypersensitive to whether they are perceived as coming out with the better deal. Donovan's "aw shucks" yet shrewd approach to these negotiations is entertaining as he comes up against much more tight-lipped representatives for the other countries.

With such a prestigious catalog of people working on this film--co-written by the Coen brothers, directed by Spielberg, etc--you expect it to look good and it does. The sets and costumes, especially the snow-covered streets of Germany, look great.

At the same time, the film seems to back off of one of its most interesting themes, namely the difficulty of doing the right thing even in difficult circumstances. When Donovan starts defending Abel, he quickly becomes a target of hatred, including people firing a gun into his home and nearly hitting his daughter. He's seen as being un-American and is criticized by the police who are meant to be protecting him. Donovan is living up to his duty as a lawyer and to the principles of democracy and due process, but a lot of people vilify him as if he is on Abel's side.

But at the end of the film, the hostage exchange complete, he becomes a hero. While this might honestly be true to life, it felt like a bit of a cop-out. Obviously we can respect him for following his values, but it feels overly convenient that he doesn't have to reckon with any difficulty. The films chooses to leave its last moments as Donovan watches children clambering over a fence, causing him to flash back to when he saw some young people gunned down trying to cross the Berlin wall.

While the film is willing to show some parallels between the two sides, it definitely hews toward the Soviets being cruel and the Americans being professional (if grudgingly so). Powers is tortured, Abel is merely questioned. Donovan's harassment is forgotten as strangers on the train now smile at him on their daily commute. It feels like it wraps up a little too neatly and loses some of the nicer nuances from the first half of the film.

A solid film, but not one I would imagine revisiting.

4

Of all movies, this is the one that made me hate Spielberg less. And Tom Hanks. I can't stomach either anymore and I don't know what even made me give this my time, but it was a very competent spy-thriller and I mean that as a compliment.

[Takoma11]

Of all movies, this is the one that made me hate Spielberg less. And Tom Hanks. I can't stomach either anymore and I don't know what even made me give this my time, but it was a very competent spy-thriller and I mean that as a compliment.

Big name, mainstream movies often don't get my attention. I've seen more of Tom Hanks this week (and still possibly have Sully on deck) than I have in the last 10 years.

This movie was a competent spy thriller, and it was fine. Maybe more than fine.

Glancing at their filmographies, I dd really enjoy the Tintin film and I liked Lincoln. Had no interest in Ready Player One, The BFG or The Post. I suspect I might enjoy West Side Story if only because I watched the original recently.

For Hanks, I thought he was really good in News of the World. I also really liked him (and everyone, honestly) in Cloud Atlas. Mostly he's been in a lot of stuff that hasn't interested me, like Inferno. I still dig him as an actor, but I feel like the material doesn't tap into what can make him a really interesting presence on screen. The scene at the end of Captain Phillips where he has a breakdown while being cared for by a young corpsman is the closest to that energy as I've seen from him in a good while. (Well that and, I'm not even joking, David S. Pumpkins).

[Guaporense]

Gladiator (2000)
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/rotQFyaeNQivUJOm3J3M7YqPNMx.jpg

I actually decided to re-watch Gladiator because I talked about it the other day.

It had been over ten years since I watched it. One of the best movies ever made, without a doubt. It's absolutely perfectly executed: 2.5 hours without a single wasted line of dialogue. Just epic line after epic line. It certainly is not a subtle movie, but it is not bad in any way: people who dislike it dislike it because they dislike what it is trying to be since it is EXACTLY what it is trying to be, executed to perfection. Absolutely unforgettable and one of Riddley Scott's best together with Blade Runner. Since I watched this one now, I decided to put it into my top 10.

Inside Out (2015)

3

https://badgerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/giphy-21.gif

I'm not one who thinks that animated films are just for kids, but I felt like this was more suited for them. I liked the concept and the animation is great. I don't have anything negative to say at all, but I was never more than amused.

Most Hollywood animated movies are for kids. Pixar's movies are well-made, but they almost never hit very high notes, either.

One that is not is Sausage Party. Not very good thought.

[Gideon58]

https://images.everyeye.it/img-cover/confess-fletch-50421-320x450.webp


2

[beelzebubble]

S&Man (2006) 3/5
This is part documentary, part mockumentary about voyeurism, horror movies and underground films. The filmmaker JT Petty was given some money to produce a film about a voyeur who was taking video of his neighbors. The guy had been arrested, but the charges against him were dropped when the neighbors found out that the video he had shot would be played as evidence in his trial. Doh!

Petty attempts to get the voyeur to allow him to film him but the guy is not biting. Petty has used most of his money. So what to do?
He decides to make a documentary about horror. He interviews some people in the industry, a sexologist and a psychiatrist.
The best thing about it is the way Petty weaves the documentary with the mockumentary. Dr. Clover assures as that in her experience all snuff films are fake while we watch, admitted stalker and horror filmmaker, Eric Vost kills his actresses on screen. Petty asks to speak to some of his actresses but Eric stonewalls him. Is Eric a murderer or are we being played by JT Petty? Either way it is an umcomfortable watch and an interesting essay on horror.

[Wooley]

https://images.everyeye.it/img-cover/confess-fletch-50421-320x450.webp


2

What a bummer. I was hopeful.

[Gideon58]

Yeah, so was I

[Corax]

https://images.everyeye.it/img-cover/confess-fletch-50421-320x450.webp


rating_2


God this was terrible.

[PHOENIX74]

Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham were in the stage version of Frankie and Johnny...

I'd like to have seen that - with those two playing those parts, a whole different feel would have permeated the story.

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/A_Very_Long_Engagement_movie.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1398268

A Very Long Engagement - (2004)

I'm going to need to watch this again I'm afraid - I had it pegged as a romance, but it really plays as a mystery and as such by the time I was well and truly lost it was too late. This isn't a film you can switch your brain off for - because each clue and person creates a complex tapestry that makes up Mathilde Donnay's (Audrey Tautou) investigation into the disappearance of her fiancé on the battlefield of the Western Front during the First World War. Chances are he's dead, but Mathilde feels in her heart he's not, and since there's no definitive proof either way she plunges forth into a world of intrigue that involves the destiny of a group of condemned French soldiers and the war's aftermath. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's whimsical style strangely suits the trenches well, with little flourishes and moments of focus on the various surreal and strange peculiarities of trench warfare. At the same time, love and desire entwine the fates of people as often happens during war. I found myself liking this far more than I thought I would, but feel the need to follow all the strands before I reach a final verdict - there's a lot here to like, even though I'm not sure about the sepia tone which drowns out all colour at certain times in the film.

7.5/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Mars_attacks_ver1.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9299106

Mars Attacks! - (1996)

I can say definitively that Mars Attacks! sucks. I've tried a few times, but no matter how much leeway I give the dumb gaudiness, there's just not enough genuinely clever comedy, or even remotely funny invention, on display. The rest is a bright confection of junk culture, ill-used celebrity and cheesy 50s sci-fi callbacks. I know it's meant to be a loving pastiche that celebrates the cheap science fiction young people would be drawn to in the early days of the genre, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the screenplay and performances miss their mark completely - making the whole endeavour look ill-considered and a very silly waste of $100 million. Some of the design looks fantastic - everything else about the film is horrible.

4/10

https://i.postimg.cc/VLx03pwC/the-velvet-queen.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67974172

The Velvet Queen - (2021)

Wildlife documentary featured during the 'Cinema for the Climate' section at Cannes, involving two men searching Tibet for the rare snow leopard, and coming across every other animal you can think of - from bears to wolves to things I don't even know the name of. Hate seeing those clips where wolves separate young beasts and take them down while the animal's mother fights desperately for it's life. Nature can be cruel. The rest of the film is a visual treat, and conveys exceptional beauty in wonderfully serene landscapes that tower and marvel.

8/10

[mark f]

Starfvckers (Antonio Marziale, 2022) 2.5+ 6/10
Presence (Christian Schultz, 2022) 1.5 4/10
Mister Scoutmaster (Henry Levin, 1953) 2.5+ 6/10
My Policeman (Michael Grandage, 2022) 2.5 6/10
https://64.media.tumblr.com/7b6caa27f29d403151a72155f0193aec/d55a39949c4002ee-1e/s540x810/4f5628a0bb50eacef2108b4ce0fcbd342276a9da.gif
In the 1950s, museum curator David Dawson and policeman Harry Styles have an affair which can get them both in trouble with the law and doesn't sit too well with the latter's future wife (Emma Corrin) who happens to be the former's sister. 40 years later the story continues.
Falling for Christmas (Janeen Damian, 2022) 2.5 6-/10
The Willowbrook (Zach Koepp, 2022) 1.5 4/10
Susannah of the Mounties (William A. Seiter, 1939) 2.5 6/10
The Lost King (Stephen Frears, 2022) 3- 6.5/10
https://www.startattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/the-lost-king-2022-movie-sally-hawkins-steve-coogan-american-netflix-amazon-apple-tv-500x300.jpg
Amateur historian Sally Hawkins wants to find the body of Richard III (Harry Lloyd) to reform his image as a usurper in the eyes of most of all England, but she encounters problems most of the way.
The Box (Lorenzo Vigas, 2021) 2.5 5.5/10
Cry Terror! (Andrew L. Stone, 1958) 2.5 6/10
Taurus (Tim Sutton, 2022) 2 5/10
Amsterdam (David O. Russell, 2022) 2.5 6/10
https://eastgatearts.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Amsterdam-845-2.jpg
WWI Veteran/doctor Christian Bale, ex-nurse Margot Robbie, and veteran/lawyer John David Washington who falls on love with her, try to solve a convoluted mystery involving the U. S. President, a mysterious businessman (Rami Malek) and Senator Robert De Niro.
The Sad Horse (James B. Clark, 1959) 2.5 5.5/10
Paradise City (Chuck Russell, 2022) 2 5/10
Rodin (Jacques Doillon, 2017) 2.5 5.5/10
Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949) 3 6.5/10
http://cinesavant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/6222d.jpg
Prostitute Cécile Aubry hurts several people through her desire of money, especially former French Resistance activist Serge Reggiani who turns into a murderer after he saves her.
The Lion (Jack Cardiff, 1962) 2.5 6/10
Deborah (Noga Pnueli, 2022) 2 5/10
The Peterville Diamond (Walter Forde, 1943) 2.5 6/10
It Happened Tomorrow (René Clair, 1944) 3 6.5/10
https://64.media.tumblr.com/5fa4345efc8f8b0641463933573ea55d/31fd6d50618ae105-2e/s400x600/6f8680c600a9a5f5295cd35d7059c23bee7710bb.gifv
Otherworldy Pop (John Philliber) gives a newspaper to turn-of-the-century newspaper man Dick Powell who learns that it has the news of the next day. This complicates the life of him and phony clairvoyant Linda Darnell.

[Gideon58]

God this was terrible.

Yeah, it was.

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTcwMzY2NDE0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjg2Njc2._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg
3

[Thief]

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
(1944, Lang)

https://i.imgur.com/lOad5YE.png


"It's not that, but... I was warned against the siren call of adventure at my age."



This Fritz Lang film follows Wanley, a married man that ends up meeting Alice Reed (Joan Bennett), the subject of a beautiful painting he and his friends were admiring on a shop window earlier. Unfortunately for Wanley, what might seem like an innocent meeting ends up leading into disaster, as they both end up with a murder in their hands. The two then try to cover it up while also trying to keep Richard's DA friend off their scent.

Robinson does a great job as the man unlikely drawn into things beyond his control. It only adds to the tension to see his seemingly well-conceived plans crumble under the most minuscule details. Bennett also adds a certain level of uncertainty, as we're never really sure where she stands, which is heightened when Heidt (Dan Duryea) enters the scene as a third party determined to blackmail both of them. Duryea easily steals the second half of the film which, based on the handful of films I've seen him in, seems to be the norm. He's excellent.

Grade: 3.5


Full review on my Movie Loot (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2346628#post2346628)

[WHITBISSELL!]

I watched Scarlet Street and when I researched it there were several mentions of The Woman in the Window. Same director and three leads. I'll have to check it out. :up:

[matt72582]

The Worst Person in the World - 7.5/10
She's the center of the movie, crises, but without the twists and turns. It felt very natural flowing, without explosions or overly dramatic scenes. It was very subdued and not that predictable. Although I knew what was on the character's mind, I wouldn't mind if there were a few scenes where she's unsure, or if the audience isn't unsure... One user critic described it as an existential crisis on film relatable to many 40-year olds who are trying to adjust to a world much different than the ones we were born in. The internet changed the world, but who's to say things would have worked out if it wasn't invented. People still have many of the same problems they did a thousand years ago.

And then when you add music from the 60/70s, it's going to make the movie better, especially two very good songs by Harry Nilsson.

https://youtu.be/4tXfQKPC3fo

[I_Wear_Pants]

Well I just finished Noroi this afternoon. It's my favorite horror film. It's effectively incredibly creepy with minimal to no jumps scares, and the last scene still haunts me after about the fourth time I've watched the film. Today when I finished Noroi, I actually stopped breathing a bit and my heart raced at the ending scene. I even knew to expect it, and it still scared me half to death. Is it weird I want to watch it again? Oh, a numerical value. 10/10.

[iwatchmovies]

Saw a couple of Disney movies over the past few days:

1. The Great Mouse Detective (1986) - 7/10

I remember watching this one when I was a kid, I am not really sure if it's the first Disney film I watched but it's the one I closely remember. I did a rewatch and still love the quirkiness of Basil and Dr. Dawson

2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - 5/10

I never got a chance to watch this film until now. A definite classic despite just having a so-so storyline

3. Mulan (1998) - 9/10

I also watched this one when I was a kid but I cannot remember much of the story. When I rewatched I never knew how good it was. Probably one of the best of all Disney Princess movies

4. Bambi (1942) - 6.5/10

I remember having a picture book of this film back then and was totally amazed by it. A very simple story but still good in my opinion.

5. The Sword In The Stone (1963) - 6/10

Similar to Bambi, I once owned a picture book of this film. I like the film but there are a couple of parts that are boring

6. Aladdin (1992) - 8/10

If Genie is not in this film or if someone voiced him other than Robin Williams the whole vibe will be totally different. Oh and out of all the Disney villains probably Jafar is my favorite.

[Guaporense]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTY1MDk4MDU5MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMTE5MjQxNzE@._V1_.jpg

Its a Ghost in the Shell movie and that's pretty much it: Ghost in the Shell now is basically a mediocre franchise that lives off the glory of its 1995 masterpiece movie, everything else is just derivative and stale by comparison. This movie, while well produced and well made (specially compared to most other anime which tends to suffer from low-budget) lacks anything to elevate it above being just a 6/10 movie.

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Polyester_ver1.jpg
By Impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12484454

Polyester - (1981)

I think I was in the perfect mood to watch John Waters film Polyester last night - every last moment of which was delightful in it's over the top melodrama and trashy battering of Americana. I haven't laughed all the way through a movie for ages, and this one had me from start to finish. I obviously haven't seen enough of his films - I remember catching Pink Flamingos many decades ago and loving that as well, but what I really should be doing is getting the Criterion of that and knuckling down to watching and appreciating his other movies. There's such abandon in Polyester - and John Waters seems to know exactly what he's doing - like some demented Mozart carelessly but brilliantly composing masterworks while sat on the toilet and laughing. There's nothing quite like it. My mind is refreshed and another cinematic avenue has opened up...

9/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/BILLtelevision_movie.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5320025

Bill - (1981)

I remember seeing this way back in the 80s, so this watch was more of a nostalgic revisit than anything - it's a television movie, and while movies made for the small screen can be quite dazzling today, back in 1981 they stuck to rigid, vanilla guidelines with little art or creativity. The story of Bill is a true one, and it still tugs at your heartstrings a little, while at the same time (and paradoxically) waking your inner cynic to chide the film for so shamelessly not even hiding the fact that this is what they were attempting. Mickey Rooney is great in this - I can't help but imagine what he was like when the cameras stopped rolling - and if the simple good-natured character was really a part of the actor himself - who amazingly still had 33 years of life left in him.

6/10

[Wooley]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/BILLtelevision_movie.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5320025

Bill - (1981)

I remember seeing this way back in the 80s, so this watch was more of a nostalgic revisit than anything - it's a television movie, and while movies made for the small screen can be quite dazzling today, back in 1981 they stuck to rigid, vanilla guidelines with little art or creativity. The story of Bill is a true one, and it still tugs at your heartstrings a little, while at the same time (and paradoxically) waking your inner cynic to chide the film for so shamelessly not even hiding the fact that this is what they were attempting. Mickey Rooney is great in this - I can't help but imagine what he was like when the cameras stopped rolling - and if the simple good-natured character was really a part of the actor himself - who amazingly still had 33 years of life left in him.

6/10

Also saw this when it came out, it was a sort of television event. And oddly, I just thought of it recently for the first time in years and here you are presenting it.
I don't know that I'll actually watch it again but it definitely brought back memories of 8 or 9 year-old Wooley.

[Raven73]

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
8/10.
I sensed that the tears that the actors spilled over T'Challa were genuine and that they thought of Chadwick Boseman to generate them.
WHAT I LIKED: How they incorporated various myths and legends, including Atlantis and the Feathered Serpent. I liked Shuri as the new Black Panther - she doesn't look like your traditional superhero (she isn't muscle-bound), but her brain is her muscle. I enjoyed Namor, and giving him the gift of flight makes him more versatile than Aquaman (yet his power is kept in check by his wet factor). I was at first perplexed about the way they used orcas, but I looked it up and it turns out orcas can live in many places in the globe, including both salt water and fresh water. WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: I didn't quite understand how Shuri survived a spear through the torso, while apparently missing every vital organ, and then she still went on to do flips and win the fight. Still, I found the movie very enjoyable and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Black Panther and Wakanda.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTM4NjIxNmEtYWE5NS00NDczLTkyNWQtYThhNmQyZGQzMjM0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODk4OTc3MTY@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.j pg

[I_Wear_Pants]

We watched Downton Abbey Dawn of a New Age last night. It's identical to the series, except a bit longer, so I liked it. The movie isn't quite as good as the show, but it's a nice continuation of the stories.

[pahaK]

It Follows (2014)
1.5
Sort of a Ringu rip-off with a hefty pinch of Elm Street thrown in. Sadly copying two good films doesn't make one. Maybe I'm too harsh with this one, but it's infuriating how all the ingredients are there, yet it still manages to miss practically everything.

--
Medieval (2022)
2.5
For some reason, I expected this to be about medieval armies crashing, but it was more like Flesh + Blood. The action is brutal and the settings are fine, but the cinematography changes from OK to awful.

--
Werewolf by Night (2022)
2
So predictable and stupid but short enough to avoid massive boredom. The retro look was good and I wish the story had been more retro, too.

--
Terrifier 2 (2022)
2
If the first Terrifier was a tribute to sleazy old-school slashers, the sequel takes a deep bow to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Even as it is, it's a better film than the first one, but trimming it down to old-school 90 minutes would improve it. In addition to enormous bloat, my main issue was the abysmal acting (excluding Art). There's probably a 3+ film hiding somewhere in that mess (and by the mess I don't mean the little girl clown's diarrhea).

--
Smile (2022)
1.5
I wish they had been more honest and named the film It Smiles. In other words, this was a complete rip-off of It Follows. Acts one and three were even worse than in It Follows, but the middle one leaned more heavily toward Ringu (i.e. it was better). Modern horror has been such a disappointment lately.

[Stirchley]

The Worst Person in the World - 7.5/10
She's the center of the movie, crises, but without the twists and turns. It felt very natural flowing, without explosions or overly dramatic scenes. It was very subdued and not that predictable. Although I knew what was on the character's mind, I wouldn't mind if there were a few scenes where she's unsure, or if the audience isn't unsure... One user critic described it as an existential crisis on film relatable to many 40-year olds who are trying to adjust to a world much different than the ones we were born in. The internet changed the world, but who's to say things would have worked out if it wasn't invented. People still have many of the same problems they did a thousand years ago.

And then when you add music from the 60/70s, it's going to make the movie better, especially two very good songs by Harry Nilsson.

https://youtu.be/4tXfQKPC3fo

Terrific movie. Best one of the trilogy.

[Tugg]

Rosaline (2022) 3
It was fine.
https://i0.wp.com/butwhytho.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Rosaline-But-Why-Tho.jpg?fit=800%2C410&ssl=1
Shame (2011) 3.5
I may like "shitty people doing shitty things to each other" paraphrasing Miss Vicky. Many years ago I didn't finish it, because it seemed too slow. This time I was in a different state of mind and quite enjoyed it. I think it portrayed sex addiction well.
https://venkatarangan.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/shame2011.jpg
Pearl (2022) 3
I prefer "X"
https://i0.wp.com/dmtalkies.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Pearl-Ending-Explained-Mia-Goth.jpg?resize=696%2C392&ssl=1
On the Line (2022) 2
I couldn't wait for it to finish.
https://wwwflickeringmythc3c8f7.zapwp.com/q:i/r:1/wp:1/w:371/u:https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/mel-gibson-on-the-line-600x337.jpg
Poker Face (2022) 2.5
It lacked focus, IMO.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSlL59fokKAOe_AMXGyfENPohJB7tLgqSOFag&usqp=CAU
Smile (2022) 3.5
Man, it was so scary, dude.
https://shweflix.org/wp-content/uploads/bqg1VR71vI0KdOJZAGeuZuOVA8l.jpg

[Stirchley]

Shame (2011) 3.5
I may like "shitty people doing shitty things to each other" paraphrasing Miss Vicky. Many years ago I didn't finish it, because it seemed too slow. This time I was in a different state of mind and quite enjoyed it. I think it portrayed sex addiction well.

Coincidentally my Netflix dvd just arrived & it’s Shame for a re-watch. :)

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDIyOTIwNmMtMjhlOS00NzMxLTkyYWItZjgyN2NkODJjN2ViXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTYzMjIxMjI@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.j pg


3

[WHITBISSELL!]

https://media.tenor.com/5erY88V3uuoAAAAC/enough-the-monster.gif
https://media.tenor.com/R-I3bUbLJPwAAAAd/come-on-ygor.gif
https://64.media.tumblr.com/4ad260025a1c8d8144eb9f480d99b0e1/tumblr_pfiydwE4ZM1tset9yo4_500.gifv

Son of Frankenstein - This 1939 release is the third in the Frankenstein series following the 1931 original and 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. In this one Basil Rathbone plays Baron Wolf (that's right, Wolf) von Frankenstein, the son of Dr. Heinrich (Henry) von Frankenstein. He's moved back to his ancestral home and brought along his wife Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson) and son Peter (Donnie Dunagan). Wolf swears up and down to the villagers who meet his train that they have nothing to fear and that he's only there to reconnect with his heritage. Needless to say, the citizens of the nearby village aren't too keen on the idea of having Castle Frankenstein once more open for business.

While checking out his father's old laboratory Wolf stumbles across Ygor (Bela Lugosi) when the crazed, misshapen hermit tries to drop a block of stone on him. He had been tried and convicted for grave robbing and summarily hanged which didn't quite take, leaving him with an off-kilter way of looking at things. Ygor is eager to make amends for the slight attempt at murder so he shows Wolf an underground basement where he's been keeping, you guessed it, the Frankenstein monster (once again played by Boris Karloff).

It isn't long though before the son is attempting to revive his father's moribund creation which is further hindered by the appearance of a suspicious Inspector Krogh (a marvelous Lionel Atwill). This movie stands up on it's own as a Universal pictures horror classic but it's so much more delightful if you've seen Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. You'll recognize most of what Kenneth Mars spoofed in Atwill's unwavering performance. All four of the leads (Rathbone, Lugosi, Atwill and Karloff) are fully committed to their roles with Hutchinson and Dunegan providing able support.

This might not hit the heights of Bride of Frankenstein but it's certainly a fitting end to an unofficial trilogy and closes it up on a high note.

85/100

[WHITBISSELL!]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JP-8q7blL1c/VTdYqXVeZMI/AAAAAAAAP_o/Nit_XN_P69Y/s1600/CityOfFearStill3.jpg
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uYhvyupWmiU/WvIoHeuRjhI/AAAAAAAAAyE/CbiLQ7gCquM3QggTQhQZWrynyR6CDCWUACLcBGAs/s1600/City%2Bof%2BFear_Vince%2BRyker%2Bsick%252C%2Bdying%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bstreet%252C%2Bclutching%2Bthe%2Bcani ster%2Bof%2Bcobalt-60.png

City of Fear - Low budget noir from 1959 and directed Irving Lerner. It's a short 81 minutes, shot in one week and stars Vince Edwards as escaped convict Vince Ryker. Despite all that it does get the job done as a straight ahead manhunt/thriller. Ryker escapes from San Quentin in a stolen ambulance with another convict and a metal canister filled with what he thinks is uncut heroin. But the jokes on him when it turns out to actually contain enough highly radioactive Cobalt 60 to infect and kill a good sized city. Ryker of course immediately heads to Los Angeles after first stealing a car and killing and burning both his partner and the stolen car's owner.

He contacts his old flame June Marlowe (Patricia Blair) and Eddie Crown (Joseph Mell), the money man behind his drug dealing business, all the while never letting the canister out of his sight. As he's slowly poisoned by radiation exposure the local cops with the aid of physicist Dr. John Wallace (Steven Ritch) hastily assemble a covert dragnet. They comb the city with geiger counters in hopes of locating Ryker and the unlined canister.

It's not prime noir or a classic by any means but the film will hold your interest as Edwards character slowly falls apart and the authorities just as slowly close in.

75/100

[EndlessDream]

https://i.imgur.com/baLWrJB.jpg

The Munsters' Revenge is an underwhelming TV movie that brought the monster family back after being off the air for 15 years. It's mostly a Herman and Grandpa caper as those two are framed for attacks by their robot duplicates from the wax museum. It's a fun premise and the returning stars slip right back into their famous roles, but the movie is ultimately let down by lackluster jokes. I was annoyed by their new uncle Phantom (of the Opera variety), who sings a lot and isn't funny. I think only diehard Munsters' fans should give this a whirl.

[Takoma11]

https://i.imgur.com/baLWrJB.jpg

The Munsters' Revenge is an underwhelming TV movie that brought the monster family back after being off the air for 15 years. It's mostly a Herman and Grandpa caper as those two are framed for attacks by their robot duplicates from the wax museum. It's a fun premise and the returning stars slip right back into their famous roles, but the movie is ultimately let down by lackluster jokes. I was annoyed by their new uncle Phantom (of the Opera variety), who sings a lot and isn't funny. I think only diehard Munsters' fans should give this a whirl.

We owned this movie on VHS when I was little, so I have entirely unearned affection for it.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-DN0kVMtb0ac%2FTxWszKJwIfI%2FAAAAAAAADhY%2FsZ3hhLv8xn0%2Fs1600%2Fa-separation-movie-images%2B%25252816%252529.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=17770b373c3627628ca4a0ac37a47f38fe29fe78f29472a1eb9e0cc47e4e8e18&ipo=images

A Separation, 2011

Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran with her husband and teenage daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). But her husband, Nader (Payman Maadi), is caring for his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who is in the grip of Alzheimer's. When Simin moves back in with her parents, Nader hires a woman named Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to help care for his father. But when the two have a confrontation that ends in Razieh miscarrying, Razieh's husband Hojjat (Shahab Hosseini) files a formal complaint against Nader.

Always nice when a film with a great reputation more than lives up to the hype.

Going into this film I had been under the impression that the plot centered on the divorce proceedings between the couple, but instead it is more of a combination of drama and courtroom film as the various stakeholders make repeated visits to the local magistrate to plead their case and introduce new evidence.

Asghar Farhadi, who did something structurally similar in Salesman, presents us with a genuinely tricky situation to navigate. Nader is physically rough with Razieh when he kicks her out of the house. Did he cause her to fall? Farhadi deliberately withholds exactly what happens on the landing and stairwell. Either way, Razieh has lost her unborn child (at 19 weeks, which is particularly rough), and the more we learn about her situation, the more sympathetic she seems. At the same time, does Nader deserve to be found guilty of murder?

What comes through most effectively in the film is the fact that this is a nightmare for all involved. Razieh has lost her baby and lives with a husband who is depressed and volatile. Hojjat is still stinging from an unfair firing from the year before, and now has lost a child, plus he has creditors looming over him. Because he is of a lower social class than Simin and Nader, his perception is that the entire system is stacked against him. Nader is facing jail time, something that would be disastrous in terms of caring for her father. Termeh wants her parents to be together, and she is potently aware of the ways that the adults she loves are bending or distorting the truth to serve their own narratives.

The movie presents no easy answers, and it seems as if there is no real way to reconcile the pain caused by the situation. There are so many levels at work in the film, from the class differences, religious differences, and the domestic strife between the two couples. At the same time, there are so many parallels between the couples: both have daughters, both are experiencing marital stress, both worry over money, etc.

The acting across the board is very strong, but I was particularly taken by Bayat's performance. Over and over her words and actions are litigated. When she honestly answers that she can't fully remember what happened on the stairs (you know, because she fell and was hurt and misscarried), this lack of a firm answer is held against her. Again and again her attempts to do the right thing and tell the truth end up harming her.

A potent film that balances drama with courtroom proceedings in a compelling way.

4.5

[FromBeyond]

Just finished watching Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet Of Curiosities.

Good fun

[Wooley]

https://media.tenor.com/5erY88V3uuoAAAAC/enough-the-monster.gif
https://media.tenor.com/R-I3bUbLJPwAAAAd/come-on-ygor.gif
https://64.media.tumblr.com/4ad260025a1c8d8144eb9f480d99b0e1/tumblr_pfiydwE4ZM1tset9yo4_500.gifv

Son of Frankenstein - This 1939 release is the third in the Frankenstein series following the 1931 original and 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. In this one Basil Rathbone plays Baron Wolf (that's right, Wolf) von Frankenstein, the son of Dr. Heinrich (Henry) von Frankenstein. He's moved back to his ancestral home and brought along his wife Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson) and son Peter (Donnie Dunagan). Wolf swears up and down to the villagers who meet his train that they have nothing to fear and that he's only there to reconnect with his heritage. Needless to say, the citizens of the nearby village aren't too keen on the idea of having Castle Frankenstein once more open for business.

While checking out his father's old laboratory Wolf stumbles across Ygor (Bela Lugosi) when the crazed, misshapen hermit tries to drop a block of stone on him. He had been tried and convicted for grave robbing and summarily hanged which didn't quite take, leaving him with an off-kilter way of looking at things. Ygor is eager to make amends for the slight attempt at murder so he shows Wolf an underground basement where he's been keeping, you guessed it, the Frankenstein monster (once again played by Boris Karloff).

It isn't long though before the son is attempting to revive his father's moribund creation which is further hindered by the appearance of a suspicious Inspector Krogh (a marvelous Lionel Atwill). This movie stands up on it's own as a Universal pictures horror classic but it's so much more delightful if you've seen Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. You'll recognize most of what Kenneth Mars spoofed in Atwill's unwavering performance. All four of the leads (Rathbone, Lugosi, Atwill and Karloff) are fully committed to their roles with Hutchinson and Dunegan providing able support.

This might not hit the heights of Bride of Frankenstein but it's certainly a fitting end to an unofficial trilogy and closes it up on a high note.

85/100
Absolutely, I think Son Of Frankenstein is just a ton of fun. And it really is the movie Young Frankenstein is most based on.
Also, the Igor character (spelled Ygor here) from most of Horror lore comes from this film and Lugosi's performance, which is another of his better characters (with Dracula and Murder Legendre).

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Working_Girl_film_poster.jpg
By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6141345

Working Girl - (1988)

Saw this at the movies way, waay back when it came out - and although I thought it was passable enough at the time, I don't recall it being as good as what I saw last night. (I also don't remember hair being that big - holy smoke.) Helped by a sweeping soundtrack and score, with first-rate performances from Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford, I'd say it's the best film of the latter half of Mike Nichols' career. Showing women in positions of power was a bigger deal back then, I'm sure - I see that a lot more now than in the 80s. The only bad note rang at the film's very conclusion - because it intimates that the ultimate goal for humanity is a mid-level office with a view of the city - really, the film makes out like Melanie Griffith's character has reached enlightenment by achieving this lofty goal. To me it looked like eternal misery. But otherwise I was entranced by the false-identity story, and the romance and grandeur of New York. Kevin Spacey gets a small role (only then did I learn that the thing on his face was real - he must have had it removed in the late 80s/early 90s) and Alec Baldwin features as Mick Dugan - a lousy philandering boyfriend. I went in expecting average, but got very good.

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/I_Know_What_You_Did_Last_Summer.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19005570

I Know What You Did Last Summer - (1997)

Now this is what I call average. This slasher was a huge hit in it's day - it helped cement Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar as stars and starts with a classic red herring turn by Johnny Galecki. As far as slashers go, you could find a mystery or two that are much, much worse. The only problem with this are the flat and unconvincing performances, and lack of really scary and horrifying deaths. In their fight for a non-too-restricting rating, I'm sure the makers went easier than they had to. Without those two crucial components, the film itself is only good for it's chases and satisfying puzzle - who knows what these kids did last summer?

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/On_deadly_ground.jpg
By May be found at the following website: http://www.impawards.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8178553

On Deadly Ground - (1994)

On letterboxd : "He came in a rising action movie star - and came out with his stocks considerably lowered and his reputation in tatters. On Deadly Ground isn't one of the worst films ever made, but it's peculiarities are what makes it worth watching instead of the action or story. Steven Seagal had advanced straight to a director's chair when he really should have given it more time, making novice mistakes and having nobody to reign in his more absurd impulses. The result came at a time when the internet was really taking off, and film lovers and critics had a ball pulling it to pieces. I still like to watch this film on occasion, because I never even really liked the actor after Under Siege, and if he'd wanted to send himself up, he could not have possibly done a better job." Couldn't resist getting it on DVD.

4/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Tickling-leo.jpg
By http://www.luredesigninc.com/images/work/Tickling-leo.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43149500

Tickling Leo - (2009)

Very low budget film about a Jewish family tackling survival guilt, having been saved from the Holocaust by the controversial Rudolph Kasztner, who negotiated with the Nazis for Jewish lives. Eli Wallach appears at the end as the family patriarch and adds some heft to what's an average screenplay with some okay performances.

5/10

[WHITBISSELL!]

Absolutely, I think Son Of Frankenstein is just a ton of fun. And it really is the movie Young Frankenstein is most based on.
Also, the Igor character (spelled Ygor here) from most of Horror lore comes from this film and Lugosi's performance, which is another of his better characters (with Dracula and Murder Legendre).It's so much fun watching Rathbone really sink his teeth into Wolf's steady deterioration. Some might accuse him of chewing the scenery but I thought his performance fit the film perfectly. Same with Lugosi. Director Rowland V. Lee must have given them free rein and to me it works. Atwill and the rest looked like they were having immense fun with their roles. Karloff, not to be left out, invested his creature with as much pathos as he could in what was essentially a smaller role. Fun movie to watch even without the added bonus of spotting all the Young Frankenstein references.

[Fabulous]

The Merry Widow (1934)

2.5

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/gbTyjM4dHlvkVtQ0Z1STI5aJKOF.jpg

[Yomi]

Moonfall (2022)
rating_3

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjk0OWZiN2ItNmQ2YS00NTJmLTg0MjItNzM4NzBkMWM1ZTRlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjMxOTE0ODA@._V1_FMjpg_UX400_.jp g

[honeykid]

The only bad note rang at the film's very conclusion - because it intimates that the ultimate goal for humanity is a mid-level office with a view of the city - really, the film makes out like Melanie Griffith's character has reached enlightenment by achieving this lofty goal.
It was the 80's. In America. That WAS the ultimate goal. Well, for a woman, anyway. For a man it was to own the company, but it's basically the same thing.

[Wooley]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/I_Know_What_You_Did_Last_Summer.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19005570

I Know What You Did Last Summer - (1997)

Now this is what I call average. This slasher was a huge hit in it's day - it helped cement Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar as stars and starts with a classic red herring turn by Johnny Galecki. As far as slashers go, you could find a mystery or two that are much, much worse. The only problem with this are the flat and unconvincing performances, and lack of really scary and horrifying deaths. In their fight for a non-too-restricting rating, I'm sure the makers went easier than they had to. Without those two crucial components, the film itself is only good for it's chases and satisfying puzzle - who knows what these kids did last summer?

6/10

Amen.
I watched this again like last year, thinking "I'll bet that movie is better than people think it is."
And I was wrong. It is the very definition of 90s mediocrity in every way. I think you're being kind with that 6, I couldn't go higher than 5.

[matt72582]

Air Doll - 7.5/10
If you liked "Her" or "Lars and the Real Girl", you'll probably like this.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbCyUi_pmGY

[WHITBISSELL!]

https://64.media.tumblr.com/2a9c64d272e03ff5eeef7420b2da52f0/tumblr_inline_pnk0hsTCDP1vnxoy3_540.gif
https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-06-2014/XShU8r.gif

The Devil Rides Out - This exemplary adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's 1934 novel is an erudite thriller despite it's rather lurid subject matter. Directed by Terence Fisher with a screenplay by Richard Matheson it stars Christopher Lee as Nicholas, Duc de Richleau, an aristocratic pathfinder of sorts with a hard earned knowledge of the occult. As the film opens he welcomes home his old friend Rex van Ryn (Leon Greene) in preparation for a reunion with the son of a fellow WWI pilot. The two men had made a vow to look after his son Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) and they're discomfited when the young man breaks off all contact with them.

When they track him down at his new estate they arrive in the midst of a private gathering of a purported astronomical society. They make the acquaintance of the enigmatic Tanith Carlisle (Nike Arrighi) but also the Machiavellian Mocata (Charles Gray) who seems to hold sway over both Simon and Tanith. The gathering and assembled partygoers immediately put the Duc de Richleau on heightened alert and a cursory search of Simon's observatory confirm's the Duc's worst fears. The so called astronomical society is actually a coven of Satanists with Mocata the high priest. With two crucial ceremonies for the coven rapidly approaching Nicholas and Rex race against time to liberate not only Simon but Tanith as well from the clutches of Mocata and the Satanists.

Wheatley himself was very pleased with this adapatation and Matheson's screenplay is careful to get all the occult terminology right. Lee turns in his usual stalwart and convincing performance and Richleau is arguably his best role and, as it turns out, his personal favorite. Charles Gray makes for a great villain as anyone who watched him in Diamonds Are Forever already knows. The rest of the cast perform ably but this is undoubtedly Lee's movie.

90/100

[Fabulous]

Alice Adams (1935)

2.5

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/iDskLegJ8VpZxB8CSwjXk7pj7DK.jpg

[Thief]

UPGRADE
(2018, Whannell)

https://i.imgur.com/YQT3Ku8.jpg


"A fake world is a lot less painful than the real one."



Set in a near future where automation is taking over, Upgrade follows Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), an auto mechanic who still tries to cling to some level of control on his life. But when tragedy hits him and he ends up a quadraplegic, he undergoes an experimental procedure that implants a chip on his spine which gives him back control of his body, and then some. With his "upgraded" powers, he sets out to take revenge against those that brought the tragedy upon his life.

Marshall-Green does a great job of showing the different shades of Grey that go from pain and suffering to disbelief, and eventually confidence and cockiness. Betty Gabriel is good as the detective that's trying to help, but then stop him, and Benedict Hardie is pretty effective as the main bad guy. However, it is Grey who's at the center of the film through all its run, and he owns it. Special mention goes also to Simon Maiden, who voices STEM, the automated voice on Grey's chip that walks him through everything that's happening to him.

Grade: 4


Full review on my Movie Loot (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2347062#post2347062)

[Takoma11]

UPGRADE
(2018, Whannell)

https://i.imgur.com/YQT3Ku8.jpg




Set in a near future where automation is taking over, Upgrade follows Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), an auto mechanic who still tries to cling to some level of control on his life. But when tragedy hits him and he ends up a quadraplegic, he undergoes an experimental procedure that implants a chip on his spine which gives him back control of his body, and then some. With his "upgraded" powers, he sets out to take revenge against those that brought the tragedy upon his life.

Marshall-Green does a great job of showing the different shades of Grey that go from pain and suffering to disbelief, and eventually confidence and cockiness. Betty Gabriel is good as the detective that's trying to help, but then stop him, and Benedict Hardie is pretty effective as the main bad guy. However, it is Grey who's at the center of the film through all its run, and he owns it. Special mention goes also to Simon Maiden, who voices STEM, the automated voice on Grey's chip that walks him through everything that's happening to him.

Grade: 4


Full review on my Movie Loot (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2347062#post2347062)

Such a solid film. Between this and The Invitation, I'm surprised we haven't seen Marshall-Green in more lead roles.

[Thief]

Such a solid film. Between this and The Invitation, I'm surprised we haven't seen Marshall-Green in more lead roles.

Yeah, I was going to mention something along that line. He did have that small role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but other than that, it seem he goes for these "under the radar" thrillers. He was also in the Shyamalan-penned Devil back in 2010, which seems to go hand-in-hand with these two, at least in terms of tone/vibe, if not in quality.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-edCcaI9fix0%2FVasU19old7I%2FAAAAAAAitxY%2Fr7_K6GGcIrw%2Fs1600%2FThe_Fault_in_Our_Stars-2014-MSS-65.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=a068d40eef0f37af8f8e8a8b5246930962e7757d1fe191e544a7f50ddca8c66f&ipo=images

The Fault in Our Stars, 2014

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) is a young woman whose cancer has left her with decreased lung capacity, as an experimental treatment temporarily keeps the disease at bay. At a meeting for teens with cancer, Hazel meets Gus (Ansel Elgort) who is in remission from the cancer that robbed him of his leg. The two bond begin a romance, but Hazel's anxieties about what will happen when she dies--to Gus, to her parents, etc--threatens their happiness.

Okay, fine, darned if this one didn't win me over about halfway through.

I'm not sure whether or not the movie intends for us to find the characters, and especially Gus, kind of cringeworthy. But you know what? Teenagers are pretty cringeworthy, never mind teenagers who are dealing with some incredibly heavy life circumstances. It's not about whether I'd want to spend time with either of these people, but rather whether you can believe that they would be drawn toward each other.

A real turning point in the film, and where it started to really get me, was when Gus uses his Make-a-Wish to get a trip for him and Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the author, Van Houten (Willem Dafoe) of a book that Hazel adores. When van Houten turns out to be a total jerk, his assistant (a charming Lotte Verbeek) takes Gus and Hazel on a tour of the city, including going to the Anne Frank house. Hazel struggles to climb the steep staircases of the house that's lined with quotes from another young woman who didn't get as much life as she should have.

It's a well-worn trope in romances that the person with the pessimistic outlook is brought back to the world. We've all had plenty of manic pixie dream girls waltz through our screens. Here at least we can say that the trope is gender swapped, with Gus being the (at times overbearing) ray of sunshine. But whoever the wacky one is, this isn't a trope that I love. But I did appreciate that the conversations between Gus and Hazel illuminated a theme that I did really like, which was Hazel coming to terms with what life is going to be like without her.

The movie doesn't just focus on Hazel being upset at being robbed of her later years. Instead it focuses on her grief over the uncertainty of what will happen to her loved ones. Hazel holds onto the weight of a memory from when she was younger and on the edge of death. Her mother (an excellent Laura Dern) exclaims in grief, "I'm not going to be a mother anymore!". This anxiety translates into an obsession with getting van Houten to tell her how he imagines the characters in his book would continue after the death of the main character.

I thought that the cast was really strong. I was happy to get a brief hit of Mike Birbiglia of the chipper and very religious leader of the support group. Ana Dela Cruz brings warmth and humor as Hazel's doctor, and likewise Sam Trammell as Hazel's father. (Quick sidenote: Trammell was in his mid-40s when he made this movie?! What?!?!?! We all need to learn this man's skincare routine, stat.)

I did think that the film takes a little bit to get gripping. I also had a slight quibble with the subplot about Gus's friend Isaac (Nat Wolff), whose girlfriend breaks up with him right before he is set to have surgery to remove both of his eyes. Obviously Isaac is very hurt by this. But I thought it was icky that the film gives absolutely none of the girlfriend's point of view. Let's be honest: being in a relationship with someone going through this kind of turmoil and physical change would be very stressful for a teenager (boy or girl). And what's she supposed to do: wait until after he has the surgery to dump him? I feel like there's no way for her to get out of that relationship without being guilt-tripped and treated like a monster. Then we're shown her house and car as if to imply that she's awful because she's rich? If she's so shallow, why was she dating this guy in the first place? While not a huge part of the film, this subplot left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall I thought that this was a solid teen romance drama.

4

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/The_Fighter_Poster.jpg
By May be found at the following website: IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29250199

The Fighter - (2010)

I usually like to lead with the best of the movies I'm mentioning and rating here - that was hard today. I'm also surprised that I'm handing that title to The Fighter. Before watching it I was beset with mixed feelings. "Ehh, I think I've seen this before, and it's one of those boxing movies - I'm rather sick of those." This film though, about family and their place in your life, really hit home and contained some performances that were up in the stratosphere. Based on a true story, it's about two half-brothers - Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund - and their trashier than average white trash family. Micky's doofus mother manages him, and his crackhead half-brother trains him, and as such he's continually being swindled, robbed, duped and stepped on. When girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) comes along, he's persuaded to cut ties, which results in all-out war - the only problem being that with a new trainer and his brother in jail, Micky's actually doing well for once and has a shot at the title. His family though, will not give up so easily. The onus is on them to step up their game if they want to reconnect. This was nominated for 7 Oscars, with Bale and Melissa Leo (who plays the mother) walking away winners. I have no idea why I was reluctant to watch it - it was great.

8/10

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Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8763961

The Rose - (1979)

This was another that I wasn't overly eager to see - but really ended up being worth it. It's really about Janis Joplin, but had to be tweaked and otherwise labelled due to the filmmakers being refused the rights to her story. It doesn't really matter - The Rose takes up the mantle of all the rockers, blues singers, pop idols and celebrities that got caught up in the maelstrom of their own fame and found that they couldn't escape it. Mary Rose Foster (Bette Midler) parties hard and drinks a lot, but has been clean for a while - the problem is her workload has her burning out. She's exhausted and needs rest, but her manager/boyfriend/promoter relentlessly pushes her from gig to gig, screaming to her to honor the contracts she's signed. She flies into the arms of a new lover, and drives closer and closer to the edge - on the verge of breaking, and dying. The whole film is just a super one woman performance from beginning to end - carried by a kind of genuine manic air that Bette Midler (Oscar nominated) gives it. I was never a big Midler fan - but this film deserves it's due.

8/10

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By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56104570

Sicario: Day of the Soldado - (2018)

I don't know if anyone was really crying out for a sequel to Sicario, as good as that film was, but here we are - another Taylor Sheridan-penned thriller about American/Mexican border troubles and cartel action. I've nearly seen every one of his films now. This one introduces terrorism as something "new" that's being smuggled across the border, but quickly falls back on America's vast military might finding small, hopelessly outmatched targets and destroying the hell out of them. Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Donovan, and Raoul Trujillo come back from the first film, and although it lacks the original's complexity, it's still slick and well-made.

7/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/%22The_Plank%22_%281967%29.jpg
By Unknown - http://www.comicbookandmoviereviews.com/2013/06/the-plank-1967.html#.VEQ4_PnF_K8, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44157231

The Plank - (1967)

I remember really enjoying The Plank once upon a time, but watching it now (especially after seeing Tommy Cooper literally die live on stage) leaves me pained and underwhelmed. At 45 minutes, it's a short film that really drags at times where the jokes aren't working - so my initial enthusiasm and laughter had me shifting uneasily with boredom after a while, and was topped off with a "fun with an unconscious woman" moment which made me distinctly uncomfortable. A beloved favourite that unfortunately wasn't a hit for me in 2022.

5/10

[Wooley]

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https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-06-2014/XShU8r.gif

The Devil Rides Out - This exemplary adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's 1934 novel is an erudite thriller despite it's rather lurid subject matter. Directed by Terence Fisher with a screenplay by Richard Matheson it stars Christopher Lee as Nicholas, Duc de Richleau, an aristocratic pathfinder of sorts with a hard earned knowledge of the occult. As the film opens he welcomes home his old friend Rex van Ryn (Leon Greene) in preparation for a reunion with the son of a fellow WWI pilot. The two men had made a vow to look after his son Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) and they're discomfited when the young man breaks off all contact with them.

When they track him down at his new estate they arrive in the midst of a private gathering of a purported astronomical society. They make the acquaintance of the enigmatic Tanith Carlisle (Nike Arrighi) but also the Machiavellian Mocata (Charles Gray) who seems to hold sway over both Simon and Tanith. The gathering and assembled partygoers immediately put the Duc de Richleau on heightened alert and a cursory search of Simon's observatory confirm's the Duc's worst fears. The so called astronomical society is actually a coven of Satanists with Mocata the high priest. With two crucial ceremonies for the coven rapidly approaching Nicholas and Rex race against time to liberate not only Simon but Tanith as well from the clutches of Mocata and the Satanists.

Wheatley himself was very pleased with this adapatation and Matheson's screenplay is careful to get all the occult terminology right. Lee turns in his usual stalwart and convincing performance and Richleau is arguably his best role and, as it turns out, his personal favorite. Charles Gray makes for a great villain as anyone who watched him in Diamonds Are Forever already knows. The rest of the cast perform ably but this is undoubtedly Lee's movie.

90/100

I enjoyed that movie, it was nice to see Lee as the sort of hero character.
And man I love Charles Gray. Obviously, I first encountered him in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where he's so game it really effects the whole film, but I enjoy him in everything he does, even as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever.

[StuSmallz]

I enjoyed that movie, it was nice to see Lee as the sort of hero character.
And man I love Charles Gray. Obviously, I first encountered him in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where he's so game it really effects the whole film, but I enjoy him in everything he does, even as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever.Well yeah, he was awesome as Blofield; I mean, why wouldn't you enjoy him in that role?



:D

[Fabulous]

Side Street (1950)

3

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/bLAnakZJtbQhYSiV52R9dUI0QsZ.jpg

[Marco]

Wonderland (2003)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Wonderland_%282003_film%29.jpg
The story of p0rn superstar (and scumbag) John Holmes' involvement in the murders of worse scumbags (the Wonderland Gang) after robbing off an even bigger scumbag (Eddie Nash). The dated thing is done well but the film is too reliant on flashbacks/forwards to really keep the interest. It's an interesting story for sure but I think it would have profited from a more linear approach. Val Kilmer is very good in this.
3

[Allaby]

I watched the new musical comedy Spirited today on Apple tv+. The film stars Will Ferrell as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Ryan Reynolds as his latest assignment, a manipulative businessman who is considered unreedemable. I really liked the music in the film. The song and dance numbers elevate the film and for me are the best parts. I thought Ferrell did a decent job in his role, not his best performance, but not one of his worst. Ryan Reynolds performance didn't really work for me though. It felt like he was playing a version of a character he has played before and it wasn't completely convincing. Octavia Spencer does a nice job as one of Reynolds's conflicted employees and Sunita Mani gets some laughs as the horny ghost of Christmas Past. The story goes in some interesting directions and there are some twists along the way. I did feel that the film was too long though. It didn't need to be 2 hours and 7 minutes. There was a lot going on at times and it felt a bit messy. Still there were enough laughs and effective moments to make this worthwhile. If you like Christmas musicals, this is worth checking out. My rating is a 3.5

[Stirchley]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-edCcaI9fix0%2FVasU19old7I%2FAAAAAAAitxY%2Fr7_K6GGcIrw%2Fs1600%2FThe_Fault_in_Our_Stars-2014-MSS-65.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=a068d40eef0f37af8f8e8a8b5246930962e7757d1fe191e544a7f50ddca8c66f&ipo=images

All I want to say is Sharlene Woodley is a beautiful young women who should never ever have short hair.

[WHITBISSELL!]

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The City of the Dead (Horror Hotel) - The second Christopher Lee/devil worship flick I DVR'd before Halloween. It's a rewatch but I remembered liking it's pared down story and B&W production values. Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and filmed in the UK but set in the US, with the majority of the cast required to speak with the requisite accents.

Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) is a student in history Professor Alan Driscoll's (Lee) class and is keen on making her term paper on local witchcraft as authentic as possible. Driscoll recommends she visit the nearby town of Whitewood where in 1692 a woman named Elizabeth Selwyn was burned at the stake. She bids farewell to her fiance Bill Maitland (Tom Naylor) and her brother Richard (Dennis Lotis), who is a firm skeptic when it comes to all things supernatural. Richard is also a teaching colleague of Driscoll's and his dismissive attitude towards Driscoll's interest in the occult is a source of friction between the two men.

Nan gets directions through the fog choked area from a country store attendant who warns her about staying away from Whitewood. This would be the first of an outrageous number of red flags that Nan encounters and then blithely ignores. So many warning flags that anyone watching can tick them off as they pop up. Her next misstep is picking up a courtly looking gentleman hitchhiker standing in the middle of the dense fog. He introduces himself as Jethrow Keane (Valentine Dyall) in a voice that sounds like it's emanating from the bottom of a deep grave.

The next uh-oh moment is the actual town and it's here where the limited budget really rears it head. But the filmmakers are adept at clever workarounds which not only camouflage the sparse set but actually make it work in their favor. Nan checks in at the sinister looking Ravens Inn where she meets the equally sinister Mrs. Newless (Patricia Jessel). And I just now realized that the spelling of her name also provides a clue as to her true identity.

Anyway, Nan keeps on stumbling heedlessly towards her fate despite serendipity and common sense yelling in her ear. Circumstances eventually require both her brother and fiance to come looking for her which of course sets up the big showdown between the nonbelievers and the dark practitioners. This might come off as a roast of the film but in spite of it all it does weave a convincing story with the resolution being both effective and somehow gratifying. It has enough atmosphere to fill a half dozen like minded movies with the gloomy and claustrophobic setting steadily working on you for it's entire runtime.

85/100

[Wooley]

Well yeah, he was awesome as Blofield; I mean, why wouldn't you enjoy him in that role?



:D

I've always been attached to Donald Pleasance's version.

[Fabulous]

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/8kkX9meDPhogxyQeiHtKIYcvpy5.jpg

[WHITBISSELL!]

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https://i.gifer.com/Gp5F.gif

La Bête Humaine - This 1938 crime drama is a fairly loose adaptation of an Emile Zola novel and directed by Jean Renoir. it stars Jean Gabin as Jacques Lantier, a train engineer who finds himself entangled with a married woman. Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) is the stationmaster at Le Havre where Lantier's Paris route culminates. He's married to the beautiful and much younger Severine (Simone Simon). When he discovers that Severine had an affair with the well off Grandmorin (Jacques Berlioz) while in his employ his long simmering jealousy erupts.

Having always thought Grandmorin was just his wife's harmless godfather he decides to kill him and have his wife come along to forever bind them together. The only problem being that Lantier is onboard the train and sees both of them exit the dead man's compartment. He lies to the police and tells them he saw no one in the corridor and this in turn ends up binding the three of them together. But Lantier has his own dirty little secret and the three unintended co-conspirators find that there is no way off of this particular track.

The movie finds several ways of using trains as an analogy and it turns out to be a novel metaphor. Both Renoir and Gabin insisted on as much realism as possible and Gabin learned to operate and run a locomotive with the help of an actual crew. The scenes with Lantier at the controls of his train give the film a welcome jolt of authenticity. And the grubby trainyard setting is a fitting embodiment of the squalid circumstances the three protagonists find themselves in. There are no unblemished heroes here and no one comes out looking good in the end.

To be honest I had confused Jean Renoir with Jean Cocteau (maybe because of La belle et la bête) so this is the first of his films I've seen. But La règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) and La grande illusion (The Grand Illusion) look intriguing so I'll keep an eye out for those.

80/100

[Takoma11]

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Magic Mike, 2012

Mike (Channing Tatum) works as a stripper in a nightclub run by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). While working a day gig as a roofer, Mike meets the impulsive 19-year old Adam (Alex Pettyfer) and recruits him as a dancer. Mike quickly becomes attracted to Adam's older sister, Brooke (Cody Horn), who worries about Adam's wellbeing in the nightlife scene. As Adam embraces the hard-partying lifestyle more and more, his impulsiveness threatens Mike's dreams for the future.

Overall I enjoyed this comedy-drama, though it contained two of my biggest stressors: people doing things that are theoretically sexy that I do not find sexy, and trying to get good rates on a small business loan.

What I think the film does best is tap into the way that someone can be trapped in a situation and not really see a way out of it. Mike is determined to get a furniture making business off of the ground. He's hustled to save a decently sized down-payment, but his poor credit history--partly a function of the nature of his work--means that he cannot get a loan. Whether his plan is actually tenable or not, Mike grows increasingly anxious as Dallas plans to move the club to Miami, but with less pay than originally promised.

In this regard, Mike is well-matched with Brooke, who is trapped in a very different way. Brooke feels responsible for Adam, but he is legally an adult and she has little power over what happens to him. She can't keep him from being around or taking drugs, nor does she have any say over who he spends his time with. The fact that he lives with her and their sibling relationship provides her with a bit of leverage, but as Adam sinks into casual drug use and surrounds himself with other people who make bad choices, even that power doesn't do much.

Performance wise, Pettyfer is appropriately obnoxious and frustrating as Adam. His initial shyness around the other dancers belies a personality that is inherently impulsive and selfish. We learn from Brooke that Adam blew a sports scholarship by getting into a physical altercation with the coach on the first day of practice. Adam chases his own pleasures, and his original hesitations are really just someone getting their sea legs.

The real standout, though, is Tatum. Reid Carolin's writing seems perfectly suited to Tatum's particular brand of charisma, which can be summed up as "is this guy really dumb? Wait, is he actually smart? No wait, I think he might be stupid after all? Or is he?!" (Something Tatum also leveraged really well in The Lost City). There are these little touches in the writing that Tatum delivers perfectly, like when he asks his grad-student girlfriend (Olivia Munn) if she's studying "social studies". There are these very real verbal miscues--like when he goes to introduce Brooke and introduces her as "Adam's brother"--that ground the character incredibly well.

Cody Horn's solid but subdued performance as Brooke was also really good. Her character's more withdrawn nature makes for a really strong contrast with the screaming bluster of the strip club sequences. She's like a patch of calm water in a storm, and it makes a lot of intuitive sense that Mike would be drawn to her. Late in the film he tries to draw a line between who is really is and what he does for work, and you can tell that she is the kind of person he wants to be around. Their slow-building romance was one of my favorite parts of the film.

As for the strip club sequences themselves? Meh. Like, don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of dance and I generally have a huge appreciation for athleticism. I was kind of disappointed that the dancing didn't seem to have more of a relationship to the story itself. Yeah, sure, we see Adam's increased confidence. But the sequences are all very brief and kind of redundant. There would be some good dancing, but then every third move was *aggressive pelvic thrusts and it got kind of tiresome. I'm not saying it's not realistic or whatever, just that it was unengaging. The sequences often felt rushed, and it almost felt like there was a discomfort with letting there be any slowness or sensuality as opposed to either going silly and over the top or going really aggressive and having the dancers air-humping the audience.

What did impress me in the dance sequences was the work that clearly went into them, and the extent to which we do get to see the dance skills that Tatum brought to the film. He's very athletic and a really good dancer, and the final sequence in the film was probably the best of any of the dance numbers, if only because it actually took a moment to breathe instead of two minutes of posing and then down to a g-string.

(SIDENOTE: But the numbers, tho!: typically, a film will have between 1 and 3% of 1/10 ratings on IMDb. The male voters of that site have over 4% 1/10 votes for Magic Mike. Is this is homophobia, or just anger at the idea of women being sexual consumers or what?)

Aside from being underwhelmed by the nature and purpose of the dance sequences, I have very few complaints. I was pretty impressed with the character work and thought that the balance between comedy and drama was pretty deft.

4

[crumbsroom]

I love Magic Mike. I also sort of love Magic Mike 2. And yes, the male hatred of this film seems to be deeply linked to the insecurity so many men apparently feel about watching movies where male are overtly sexualized. I am pretty sure I was one of, if not the only, man in both screenings. And the look of disgust I get from a lot of males when I say I like the series is very unlike the looks I get when people are not fans of other movies I openly appreciate. It's like I'm some kind of traitor.


Regardless, being a fan of Magic Mike is a role I relish.

[Takoma11]

I love Magic Mike. I also sort of love Magic Mike 2. And yes, the male hatred of this film seems to be deeply linked to the insecurity so many men apparently feel about watching movies where male are overtly sexualized. I am pretty sure I was one of, if not the only, man in both screenings. And the look of disgust I get from a lot of males when I say I like the series is very unlike the looks I get when people are not fans of other movies I openly appreciate. It's like I'm some kind of traitor.

Regardless, being a fan of Magic Mike is a role I relish.

Would you say that the sequel is at least close to being on par with the first film?

[Thief]

COMPLOT
(1999, García)

https://i.imgur.com/dlPGsUL.png


"You know what? I still don't understand what they're trying to do with all of these."
"That's what we all would like to know."



Set at the dawn of the new millennium, Complot follows a group of agents from an enigmatic government agency called S.E.C.T.O.R. 4 (Special Espionage Corruption Task Operational Resource :laugh: ). Their mission is to stop a, uhh, complot of mysterious forces to take over control of the world computer systems as a result of the Y2K "bug"; something that stumps them and prompts the above exchange.

But for all its faults, I gotta commend director and co-writer Raúl García for his confidence in launching a project like this, something that I don't think had been seen in Puerto Rican cinema before. His direction might feel amateurish at times, but there are some little nuggets of flair and panache through the film that make an impression. From several neat crane shots to a continuous shot as our heroes try to escape from a hotel only to be captured outside.

Grade: 1.5


Full review on my Movie Loot (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2347310#post2347310)

[crumbsroom]

Would you say that the sequel is at least close to being on par with the first film?


It's been awhile but my memory is the sequel was kind of what sequels do. It got more Magicer and more Mikeier. So a little sillier and a little less earnest. But I found it pretty entertaining even though it was being a little dumb (and probably intentionally so)

[Takoma11]

It's been awhile but my memory is the sequel was kind of what sequels do. It got more Magicer and more Mikeier. So a little sillier and a little less earnest. But I found it pretty entertaining even though it was being a little dumb (and probably intentionally so)

I don't know that I'd rush to see it, but I'll keep it generally on the back burner.

[crumbsroom]

I don't know that I'd rush to see it, but I'll keep it generally on the back burner.


I'm pretty sure there is also more dancing. But I think it is less sexy dancing and more garrishly over the top set pieces....I think


Certainly not anything essential, but the rare pointless good time I could enjoy

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Bolt_ver2.jpg
By May be found at the following website: http://www.impawards.com/2008/bolt_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19564310

Bolt - (2008)

I think Bolt came out at the wrong time - hot on the heels of some of Pixar's most incredible work, and other animated studios having wowed audiences through the 2000s. Even though it might have been Disney's best animated film outside of Pixar for a long time, and managed to be their first marginal success which led to bigger and better things it's generally looked down upon. I really enjoyed watching it last night - and, granted, it's story is predictable and clichéd, but the humour and joy seems to really be there since we were looking at a new generation of animators and writers. After John Travolta and Miley Cyrus were granted the leads for basically their names and drawing power, the rest of the cast were all unknowns who were chosen for how right they were for the parts. I was giving this one a chance, and it really would have been a big hit with me if I were a kid - it's funny and full of character, plus the watercolour backgrounds are unusual and add something different to the genre. Really liked this.

7.5/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Escape_From_LA.jpg
By POV - Impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3932776

Escape From L.A. - (1996)

I'd never seen this before yesterday - I knew it would be a hollow, upgraded repetition of Escape From New York. Well, it wasn't so bad as to cause me pain during it's 101-minute runtime - there are many moments where it seems to be aware of it's own limitations, and it also knows just how much to riff on the peculiarities of L.A. The CGI special effects are perhaps the most dreadful I've ever seen in my life, especially strange considering this was a $50 million dollar movie in 1996 - I guess producers had other priorities. Overall, I didn't hate Escape From L.A. - but unlike it's predecessor I won't be watching it numerous times, and perhaps never again.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Deep_Impact_poster.jpg
By Original paper poster, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=899083

Deep Impact - (1998)

This film is pretty hokey, but I always stick around for that sweet, sweet destruction at the end. It also happens to be way better than Armageddon (however, nearly all films are better than Armageddon.) At least we get to dream a dream about what things would have been like with Morgan Freeman as president of the United States - clutching his desk and looking at the floor in consternation, with his shirt sleeves rolled up. That inauguration speech must have sounded fantastic.

7/10

[Miss Vicky]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Bolt_ver2.jpg
By May be found at the following website: http://www.impawards.com/2008/bolt_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19564310

Bolt - (2008)

I think Bolt came out at the wrong time - hot on the heels of some of Pixar's most incredible work, and other animated studios having wowed audiences through the 2000s. Even though it might have been Disney's best animated film outside of Pixar for a long time, and managed to be their first marginal success which led to bigger and better things it's generally looked down upon. I really enjoyed watching it last night - and, granted, it's story is predictable and clichéd, but the humour and joy seems to really be there since we were looking at a new generation of animators and writers. After John Travolta and Miley Cyrus were granted the leads for basically their names and drawing power, the rest of the cast were all unknowns who were chosen for how right they were for the parts. I was giving this one a chance, and it really would have been a big hit with me if I were a kid - it's funny and full of character, plus the watercolour backgrounds are unusual and add something different to the genre. Really liked this.

7.5/10



This is one of my favorite movies. Glad to see some love for it.

[Takoma11]

This is one of my favorite movies. Glad to see some love for it.

I should probably rewatch this at some point.

I both remember really enjoying watching it AND don't remember anything specific about it except for the barest of beginning plot details.

[Miss Vicky]

I should probably rewatch this at some point.

I both remember really enjoying watching it AND don't remember anything specific about it except for the barest of beginning plot details.

I love all the main characters and there are some really touching scenes in it (especially when Mittens tells her story, waterworks every time), but weirdly my favorite part has always been the pigeons. This is especially odd because I don't like pigeons, but these ones crack me up.

https://www.angelfire.com/music6/walteregan/2000s/boltpigeons.gif

[Fabulous]

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

3.5

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/9ZnjObKokRCdSc1YmWrQQk7nCNg.jpg

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTRiMjhmMmMtOWQ2Ny00YWY1LWE3ZGMtOTBmZTAxNjY1NGQzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDI2NDg0NQ@@._V1_.jpg


4

[Thief]

Deep Impact - (1998)

This film is pretty hokey, but I always stick around for that sweet, sweet destruction at the end. It also happens to be way better than Armageddon (however, nearly all films are better than Armageddon.) At least we get to dream a dream about what things would have been like with Morgan Freeman as president of the United States - clutching his desk and looking at the floor in consternation, with his shirt sleeves rolled up. That inauguration speech must have sounded fantastic.

7/10

I think this gets often dismissed as "just another dumb disaster movie", but I think it's genuinely good. I agree it's hokey at points, but I do think it manages to balance the theatrics of being a disaster movie without losing the focus of the characters in a big ensemble cast. It's one of those films that I always sit down to watch when it's on TV.

(and yes, definitely better than Armageddon!)

[WHITBISSELL!]

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/qJWtc2XXLgl7EMGyPTmRYnLt321.jpg
http://www.movie-mine.com/photo/tension_1950-02.jpg


Tension - This 1949 noir was a fun watch for me. Lots and lots of intrigue, hidden motivations and unclear allegiances. And at the center of all these goings on are a pair of jaded, mismatched cops played by Barry Sullivan and William Conrad. Directed by John Berry it stars Richard Basehart as timid drugstore manager Warren Quimby. He's volunteered to work nights to save up enough money to afford a home for himself and his wife. However he had the misfortune to have married Claire (Audrey Totter), a venal and manipulative shrew. Claire is always on the lookout to tradeup to a rich sugar daddy and she finds one in liquor salesman Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough). Warren is despondent and eventually goes to Deager's beachside home in Malibu where he confronts the couple.

He's promptly beaten up and forced to leave and, finding himself unable to let go of his humiliating retreat, decides to set up a new identity that he'll then use to murder Deager. Careful to pick out a name that isn't listed in the LA phone book, he leases a new apartment as Paul Sothern, traveling cosmetics salesman. While there he makes the acquaintance of Mary Chanler (Cyd Charisse) and they eventually get romantically involved. This being a classic example of noir, where someone's best laid plans seldom if ever work out, an unexpected twist is introduced.

And this is where Homicide Detectives Lt. Collier "Collie" Bonnabel (Sullivan) and Lt. Edgar "Blackie" Gonsales (Conrad) join the festivities. I thought their world-weary insouciance really gave the movie an added spark. And I especially liked how they presented Conrad's Latino character with little fanfare as if taking for granted that there were very few non-Anglo roles in 1949. They did show him repeatedly snacking but it was more a personal quirk than a disparaging stereotype. But then they did this for both of the cops, setting up Collie as a coffee lover with an innate understanding of what makes people tick.

There were two other instances where the film seemed to emphasize diversity. They were fleeting but both involved pharmacy customers at Warren's drugstore. One was an African American woman and the other a young Asian boy who, when asked if his mother would be able to read the instructions in English, replied, "You kidding?" This might sound like a trifling thing to fixate on but to me the casting of the three characters made the film all the more distinctive.

Totter is her usual wonderful self as the uber femme fatale and, for someone who only knew him growing up from reruns of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Basehart continues to surprise me. After watching him in Moby Dick and two Fellini movies and as the bad guy in He Walked by Night I've come to realize that the man was a well rounded actor. But I do have to admit that Barry Sullivan sort of walks away with the movie. His Collie Bonnabel is a master manipulator and it's not till the bitter end that you can firmly grasp where his interests truly lie. This may not have been the best known or most successful of noirs but it certainly worked for me.

88/100

[Siddon]

https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/2022/10/untitled-1-recovered.jpg
Black Panther Wakanda Forever (2022)

Ryan Coogler returns to the billion dollar franchise Black Panther which is also a mediation on loss thanks to Boseman's death which is also a political thriller of sorts between two countries and the use of Vibratium.

The first Black Panther was a well written poorly executed film (not the directors fault) where Wakanda felt like a street the CGI Rhinos looked dumb and Black Panther fighting himself while losing his costume to show his face is the sort of thing that was okay 20 years ago not today. This film is a huge technical step up from the original...while the geography of the nation still seems weird to me (where do all those other tribes live). This film greatly improves on the physics of the powers of the character involved. We also get an undersea world that while still not perfect is better than the cartoonish Aquaman world we saw a few years ago.

Angela Bassett and Tenoch Huerta give standout performances. I can see Bassett getting a second Oscar nom as the first act of the story feels padded but also gives Bassett a lot to work with. Marvel has completely remade Namor into an entirely different character from the books but Huerta performance makes it work. It's somewhat a shame that the filmmakers didn't make him more of a focus point similar to Michael B Jordan's Killmonger.

The big issue with the film is that it's a black female super hero film with Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, and Riri Williams. All of which having different powers and positions in the story but also all sharing the same bland personality. It's a common problem with modern filmmaking where the fear of giving characters flaws and personalities creates a parade of blandness. These characters exist to serve the plot and to sell different versions of toys.

The second issue I had with the film was Disney's marketing objectives fault. The film has a rather large death count yet all the deaths occur off screen. The climax of the film has the Atlalians(now Takaonians) closing in on the named leads at the edge of the ships. Hundreds of Wakandans had died yet. There is something twisted about making a film about grief and treating hundreds of people like they are disposable and forgettable.

With the third issue being that several scenes in the film are just way to dark and blurry. This is an improvement visually from the first film but it's still an issue. A different filmmaker and studio could have fixed it's CGI shortcomings through a better shot selection but instead it's over and done with and off to the next set piece.

But it's still a good film, while it has it's issues the actual plotting is good. At three hours I wasn't really bored or felt the run time until about 2 hours in. While it lacks the interesting character work it does achieve in telling a different type of Super Hero film.

rating_4

[Captain Steel]

https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/2022/10/untitled-1-recovered.jpg
Marvel has completely remade Namor into an entirely different character from the books

Thanks, Marvel!

(Now let's see what they could do with a character like um... say... Dr. Doom. That's just a little inside joke for anyone who's seen the last four live-action Fantastic Four films. I always say the best version of Doom appeared in a little sci-fi fantasy film from 1977 called Star Wars!) ;)

[Fabulous]

Gidget (1959)

2

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/l1iQ1hkFYzKT2GyBIldCuJutYyM.jpg

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/Pirates_of_the_caribbean_2_poster_b.jpg
By http://www.impawards.com/2006/pirates_of_the_caribbean_dead_mans_chest_ver2_xlg.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24062458

Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest - (2006)

For years now I've been hearing about the slide-off in quality storytelling and enjoyability of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. I watched the original quite a number of years ago, but didn't go all out to see any of the sequels until now. To tell the truth, I was kind of expecting Dead Man's Chest to not match that first one - but it comes close, and has moments of gleeful comedy. For me though, the series is already starting to depend on the quality of villains and monsters. Orlando Bloom has an enormous deficit charisma-wise. Keira Knightley can hold her own, but is at the mercy of the writing. Johnny Depp's standout performance and amazing invention as Captain Jack Sparrow is just now starting to wear thin. But all up, with Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and The Kraken being introduced there is spectacle, fun and adventure enough to really pass muster and stave off the inevitable rot that usually sets in sequel-wise.

7/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Toy_Story_2.jpg
By http://www.movieposterdb.com/poster/a009978e, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=982254

Toy Story 2 - (1999)

Okay, so there was no Best Animated Feature Oscar for the year this was released? That category must have been still pending, but I'm surprised. I'd seen Toy Story 2 before, and just wanted to catch up so I could watch Toy Story 3. Fun, fun stuff. What more can I say? These Pixar films might have been made with kids in mind, but they're also pretty much solid as entertainment for absolutely any age. It introduced an interesting moral dilemma, but finds a way to circumvent it so as not to leave us on any sour note.

7.5/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Toy_Story_3_poster.jpg
By Toy Story 3 on Facebook, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28435474

Toy Story 3 - (2010)

So now I realise why none of the Toy Story films showed up in the 2000s Countdown - they have a leg each in the late 1990s/early 2010s. Somehow I'd seen the first half of this somewhere before, but not the second half for some reason. As always, these films are great and I enjoy them. I caught my own gleeful laugh when Lots-O was fastened to the grille of that truck, joining a couple of well-worn decrepit toys who warn him to keep his mouth shut. Well - I was pretty upset when he didn't push the button to stop the conveyer which was about to drop that gang into a fire pit.

8/10

[Fabulous]

D.O.A. (1949)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/xJCi3EqYHKUwNfSHhanrShOz1Je.jpg

[Marco]

Scum (1979)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Scum1979movieposter.jpeg
Following on from my review (or just view) on Bad Boys I had a look at this again. It's such a powerful, visceral film that really excels. There's an inherent tragedy about these boys lives whether they are aggressive or passive...or even just daft. Ray Winstone is excellent as the main protagonist Carlin and the ensemble cast were outstanding. It's a real piece of powerhouse film-making from Alan Clarke with a strong social theme. Even though we know Carlin is a "Backstreet Badboy" we still root for him. Such a powerful and well realiised film.
4.5

[Wooley]

By the way, effusive praise for a film called Aftersun has basically been flooding my feed for the last month. Effusive praise from pretty reputable sources.
Has anyone seen it? Anybody excited for it or anything? Anybody know if it's even out yet?

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcloud.filmfed.com%2Fmovies%2Fimages%2Fm_17eb35f7-c5d9-4d22-bc2e-93eb716e4b75.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=904bf295e347afea02dce741bec745f557a213b8c4d06ba6e80364f7eaa71a96&ipo=images

Almost Famous, 2000

William (Patrick Fugit) is an aspiring music critic who manages to find his way in to the inner circle of an up-and-coming rock band called Stillwater. His mother (Frances McDormand) agrees to let him follow the band on tour, and William is soon hired by Rolling Stone to do a cover story, not realizing they've hired a teenager. William's relationship with the band, and specifically its magnetic guitarist Russell (Billy Crudup), goes through many ups and downs, especially as William develops feelings for a "Band aid" named Penny (Kate Hudson) who also follows the band.

Overall this was a very charming, well-paced film that balances multiple character dynamics with grace and humor.

Fugit is really excellent in the lead role, exuding just the right mix of youthful enthusiasm with savvy observation. William writes down and remembers everything that he sees. As the film goes on, William begins to develop more of a discerning eye for the behaviors around him. The arc that he goes on is not one up straight-up disillusionment, but rather someone realizing that people are complex and that sometimes you need to decide where your loyalties lie.

This is also definitely a star-making role for Hudson. There's an inherent power imbalance between a band and a groupie, and her Penny Lane is just keen and placid enough that it does feel like she has some autonomy. There's no question that the band takes advantage of her and takes her for granted, but Penny is a forceful enough character that her character isn't tragic. You fully understand why William would fall in love with her, and you also fully understand that Russell and the band don't realize the value of her company.

Crudup strikes the right notes as Russell, who is generally an okay guy, but whose ego at times leads him to act in hurtful ways. Russell is exactly the kind of character you need at the center of a story like this---charismatic enough that you understand why William and Penny would be enchanted by him, but selfish in exactly the kind of ways you expect from someone who is fed a constant diet of adoration.

Of course, Frances McDormand is awesome as William's mother. Fretting from afar as her teenage child crosses the country with a rock band, she must settle for delivering a mix of threats and Goethe quotes to the people who she has entrusted with her child. In another supporting role, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as the magazine editor who gives William his start and who gives him key advice as William tries to wrangle his Rolling Stone piece into something real.

I think that a lot of the success of the film comes from the way that it treats its characters with respect, and that's especially true in the case of the female groupies. It would be easy to make the characters the constant butt of jokes as basically dumb sluts, but instead the movie lets them have personalities and comedic moments of their own. Their evolving relationship with William---which straddles an uncomfortable but not unfunny line between pesky little brother and boyfriend--provides a series of funny moments without dehumanizing the characters. Part of the central premise of the film is the way that Penny is devalued by Russell, and it would have been gross hypocrisy for the movie to take a contemptuous approach to their characters.

Overall this was a fun, character-driven film. I think that it comes off well because it really nails the final act in a way that leaves every character changed and evolved from when we first met them.

4.5

[Captain Steel]

All This And Heaven Too (1940)

https://www.istanbulsanatevi.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/all-this-and-heaven-too-filminden-bir-kare-01.jpg

The first half of this movie almost feels like shades of a precursor to The Sound of Music (1965), but in this story's case, the man of the house, a Duke (Charles Boyer) is neither widowed or engaged, but is married to the mother of his children (Barbara O'Neil) whose own insecurities have damaged her relationship with both her husband & children. The wife develops an irrational jealously & hatred for the new governess (Bette Davis) which only drives the Duke and the children further toward the kind, honest and upstanding governess.

This is also a period piece set in the 1840's and the family in the story is one of French aristocracy (which has a lot to do with the situations that develop).

The story turns quite tragic in the most classic sense with violence, passion, intrigue, court-room drama, etc. It was based on a true story.

One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie was the unexpected turn it takes; from almost feeling like a family film (like The Sound of Music) to something much darker.

4

[ueno_station54]

https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/634d6e64eeb19deae1b5c039/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&crop=1200,675,x0,y62,safe&width=1200
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler, 2022)

The first Black Panther was one of the worst films I've ever seen but I got taken to see this on a date and turns out its actually pretty alright. There's lots of lovely scenery and settings, the emotional elements hit, there's a lot of good music too. The action is hit or miss, especially in regards to the editing (or there was a lack of shots to work with idk) and its probably a bit too long as in it could have been trimmed in parts but its definitely too long in relation to the amount I was enjoying it if that makes sense.
3

[WHITBISSELL!]

https://i0.wp.com/streamondemandathome.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Tall-Target-1.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1
https://64.media.tumblr.com/a27f3ad56aea6dce7505ac03caaaff82/fa10a1558be4f901-ab/s500x750/80a159664e9e9a9e0f94cbfbc00d0c3291a48bec.gifv

The Tall Target - This 1951 historical conspiracy thriller turned out to be an absorbing watch. Based on it's description I expected something a little dry and somewhat predictable but it kept surprising me. But then I learned it was directed by Anthony Mann and that partly explained it. The screenplay however was co-written by George Worthington Yates and Daniel Mainwaring. Between them the two men were responsible for scripts from Them!, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Out of the Past and The Phenix City Story among others. And that explains Tall Target's sharp moments of wit and it's refusal to bend to the usual crime thriller formula. There was an actual "Baltimore Plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Plot)" to assassinate President-elect Lincoln on the way to his inauguration. It has since been discredited by some historians but it's still a plausible launching point for a cinematic thriller.

The screenplay does use it as a framework for this story of NYC police detective John Kennedy (Dick Powell). After going undercover and infiltrating a shadowy cabal of plotters, Kennedy tries to warn his boss, Superintendent Simon G. Stroud (Tom Powers), and is quickly rebuffed. He resigns in protest and chooses to board the train to Baltimore. The rest of the movie takes place on the train as it makes it's way from New York City to it's intended destination. To say that Kennedy has an eventful marathon of a trip ahead of him is putting it mildly. So many things transpire that if it wasn't for Yates and Mainwaring's unwavering screenplay you could easily lose your way. But the script also manages to throw in a healthy amount of social commentary and does a fine job of conveying just how splintered the country was in the days leading up to the start of the Civil War.

The cast is excellent with Powell leading the way as the indefatigable Kennedy. Adolphe Menjou also does a fine job as Colonel Caleb Jeffers along with Marshall Thompson and Paula Raymond as Southern sympathizing siblings Lance and Ginny Beaufort. Ruby Dee as their "servant" Rachel is given some trenchant and compelling dialogue and manages to convey volumes with a smaller role. Will Geer is also a crucial part of the story as conductor Homer Crowley. He is duty bound to get the train to it's intended destination in the face of unending delays, truculent customers and way too many weapons discharged on a passenger train.

This surprised me. I thought it was way too good a movie for it to be flying so low on everyone's radar. It did end up losing money for the studio but it might well be one of those arcane sort of thrillers that isn't meant for widespread appeal. I went in expecting one thing and got something else entirely.

85/100

[Raven73]

Bad Guys
6.5/10.
This is a cartoon akin to Looney Tunes: talking animals, fish that are not in fish in any way (they walk, they breathe air instead of water, etc.). I liked the protagonists well enough, but I found the main villain (the actual villain) boring.

https://ntvb.tmsimg.com/assets/p19688247_v_h8_ap.jpg?w=960&h=540

[Wooley]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcloud.filmfed.com%2Fmovies%2Fimages%2Fm_17eb35f7-c5d9-4d22-bc2e-93eb716e4b75.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=904bf295e347afea02dce741bec745f557a213b8c4d06ba6e80364f7eaa71a96&ipo=images

Almost Famous, 2000

William (Patrick Fugit) is an aspiring music critic who manages to find his way in to the inner circle of an up-and-coming rock band called Stillwater. His mother (Frances McDormand) agrees to let him follow the band on tour, and William is soon hired by Rolling Stone to do a cover story, not realizing they've hired a teenager. William's relationship with the band, and specifically its magnetic guitarist Russell (Billy Crudup), goes through many ups and downs, especially as William develops feelings for a "Band aid" named Penny (Kate Hudson) who also follows the band.

Overall this was a very charming, well-paced film that balances multiple character dynamics with grace and humor.

Fugit is really excellent in the lead role, exuding just the right mix of youthful enthusiasm with savvy observation. William writes down and remembers everything that he sees. As the film goes on, William begins to develop more of a discerning eye for the behaviors around him. The arc that he goes on is not one up straight-up disillusionment, but rather someone realizing that people are complex and that sometimes you need to decide where your loyalties lie.

This is also definitely a star-making role for Hudson. There's an inherent power imbalance between a band and a groupie, and her Penny Lane is just keen and placid enough that it does feel like she has some autonomy. There's no question that the band takes advantage of her and takes her for granted, but Penny is a forceful enough character that her character isn't tragic. You fully understand why William would fall in love with her, and you also fully understand that Russell and the band don't realize the value of her company.

Crudup strikes the right notes as Russell, who is generally an okay guy, but whose ego at times leads him to act in hurtful ways. Russell is exactly the kind of character you need at the center of a story like this---charismatic enough that you understand why William and Penny would be enchanted by him, but selfish in exactly the kind of ways you expect from someone who is fed a constant diet of adoration.

Of course, Frances McDormand is awesome as William's mother. Fretting from afar as her teenage child crosses the country with a rock band, she must settle for delivering a mix of threats and Goethe quotes to the people who she has entrusted with her child. In another supporting role, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as the magazine editor who gives William his start and who gives him key advice as William tries to wrangle his Rolling Stone piece into something real.

I think that a lot of the success of the film comes from the way that it treats its characters with respect, and that's especially true in the case of the female groupies. It would be easy to make the characters the constant butt of jokes as basically dumb sluts, but instead the movie lets them have personalities and comedic moments of their own. Their evolving relationship with William---which straddles an uncomfortable but not unfunny line between pesky little brother and boyfriend--provides a series of funny moments without dehumanizing the characters. Part of the central premise of the film is the way that Penny is devalued by Russell, and it would have been gross hypocrisy for the movie to take a contemptuous approach to their characters.

Overall this was a fun, character-driven film. I think that it comes off well because it really nails the final act in a way that leaves every character changed and evolved from when we first met them.

4.5

Great write-up.
I agree with everything you've said, especially about the groupies and how deftly the film really portrays and treats all of its characters.
And, as always, Frances McDormand shows, in an unlikely role for it, why she is one of the best int he business.

[Fabulous]

Blackmail (1929)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/x537dcaeZIxUpzHdKGEXfBZdueV.jpg

[Nausicaä]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71rs8qTFcvL._AC_SY550_.jpg

3

SF = Zzz


[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-ikE64-z0tSw%2FWQJrItTOecI%2FAAAAAAABop8%2F_40Bc1uCdR41_U6TwZubHC6LZLv-jRDHQCLcB%2Fs1600%2Fsilence-andrew-garfield-image-13.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ba0d5a168f1869e7256fb014daf25f212182e28df9ff2788e77d71ae0143166a&ipo=images

Silence, 2016

Jesuit fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) set off on a mission to Japan when they receive word that their former mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) has renounced his faith. The men are taken in and hidden by a small village with several Christian converts, but soon come to the attention of a local Inquisitor (Issei Ogata) who puts them through various physical and psychological tortures in an effort to get them to apostatize.

This is an emotionally intense film that, despite being grounded in the Jesuit faith, could apply broadly to anyone: namely, at what point does hewing to your beliefs intersect with the pragmatics of keeping yourself and others healthy and alive?

This is another movie for me that solidified Andrew Garfield as a force to be reckoned with. He made a big impression on me with tick tick BOOM, and once again he throws himself into a role with just the right moments of passion and reserve.

True to what would torment someone who is empathetic and cares about others, the torments inflicted on Father Rodrigues have very little to do with him directly. He is fed well and clothed well. But at random intervals he is pulled from his prison cell to watch one of his followers get beheaded or drowned or put under extreme torture. Even if his followers renounce their belief, the Inquisitor will not let them go until Rodrigues himself denies his faith.

We see over and over the way that the fathers, inspired directly by Christ, are, if not enchanted by, at least theoretically at peace with the idea of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. For them to die would be an inspiration to others and a symbol of their own faith. But it's quite another question when other people are losing their lives. Are you really doing the Lord's work if your silence leads to the deaths of dozens of people?

The theme of silence, and what it means at different points in the film, is really powerful. The first mention of it is the silence of a group of villagers who watch in silence as three men are executed by a combination of crucifixion and drowning. As the film goes on, it is the silence of Rodrigues as he watches the people who are being tortured and killed on his behalf. When the character of Ferreira reenters the film, it's the question of what it means to be faithful but silent. Can someone be religious only in their own heart and mind? Can someone act on the outside as a nonbeliever but still be a Christian (or whatever their faith might be)?

Most of the film is Rodrigues grappling with this question. And even from the sidelines we can see that it is a sliding slope. Early in the film, Rodrigues tells some villagers that if they must step on an image of Christ to prove their non-Christian status, they should do so. But this begs the question: how far can you go from the actions and words of your faith before you cannot be said to practice that faith? In your conception of your religion, how much will your god forgive? Is it enough to just believe in your heart?

The Japan in this film is a beautiful and brutal place. At the same time, there is a coldness to the look of it all that mirrors the anxiety and doom that hangs over the characters. There is no winning here for the Fathers. Or, rather, winning may be just as painful as losing.

This is a beautiful, sweeping film. It is certainly very emotional, and even in its happier moments it rests heavy on your heart. Certainly recommended.

4.5

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.openloading.com%2Fbody-of-lies-2008-movie-big-2-123movies.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b11c724a409514debdb46009f6e27e83e38cac8449d036f498beb03b2f196a61&ipo=images

Body of Lies, 2008

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) works in the middle east as an operative for the American government, taking part in different counter-terrorism efforts. He works for boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) who runs things via phone from back in the states. When Roger tries to coordinate with a local Joranian official named Hani (Mark Strong) to bring in a major Al Queda leader, things get complicated. Adding to the stress is the fact that Roger has taken a romantic interest in a doctor called Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani).

It's hard to say much about this kind of movie, because for the most part it was, like, fine.

I suppose the thing I would most commend it for is a handful of action sequences that are decently thrilling and tense. It's a movie full of crosses and double-crosses, and you never quite know who will turn out to be an enemy or an ally.

But fundamentally, this movie did very little for me. I thought that Farahani was very charming as Aisha. Oscar Isaac also makes a good impression as Roger's co-worker.

I think the real problem I had was that so many of the character choices irked me. There's a running joke whereby Roger will call Ed so that they can have a tense conversation while Roger runs through a market or something and then we cut to Ed dropping off his kids at school or doing other mundane parenting tasks. The joke wears thin very quickly, and the result is that the conversations between the two lack dynamism, even when DiCaprio is swearing a blue streak up and down.

Roger himself constantly puts other people in danger, despite spending a lot of time yelling about how he doesn't want to put people in danger. His courtship of Aisha might be the most engaging part of the film, if only because DiCaprio and Farahani have decent chemistry and Farahani provides some much needed feisty energy, but also he is putting her life in danger in multiple ways by wooing her so openly.

Finally, I had some really mixed (but mainly negative) feelings about Strong's portrayal of Hani. Even setting aside the fact that you have a white actor playing a middle eastern person (why?), Hani is queer-coded in a way that I did not care for. He constantly calls Roger "my dear" and it feels like an acting job and character type straight out of the 1940s.

The parts here are for the most part weak, and the sum of those parts is certainly not worth 120 minutes of screentime.

2.5

[Wooley]

https://i.imgur.com/b2iNkXr.jpg?5

A pretty charming little adventure from 1970s Disney.
I liked this one a lot when I was young. It took place largely in the swamp, called "Devil's Bayou" no less, resembling my home of New Orleans (though I think it's actually in Florida). It has two alligators as evil henchmen. It has dead-pirate treasure. A diamond called "The Devil's Eye". There's a lot to like.
Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor are perfect for their roles and Penny just breaks your heart, but it's actually Geraldine Paige as the utterly psychotic Madame Medusa who steals the show - as she is meant to.
A couple of things I wanted to mention from my notes.
I really liked the way the "swamp people" (actually animals) may be total stereotypes but they are portrayed as admittedly simple but genuinely good people (even the one wearing the Confederate soldier hat). I'm so used to everyone in the South being treated like garbage by mainstream media that this was nice to see.
Madame Medusa shoots a gun at Penny, a six year-old child, several times. Like with the intention of actually hitting her. It's pretty jarring in light of all the school shootings we've had to suffer through in the United States.
The Rescue Aid Society, from which Bernard (Bob Newhart) and Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) are sent to rescue Penny, is an international organization of mice dedicated to helping those in trouble, located inside the United Nations building. It's a pretty neat idea.
In our time when it seems many feel that only someone who IS whatever the character on screen is is supposed to play that character, I enjoyed it that Miss Bianca, the Hungarian delegate to The Rescue Aid Society, is voiced by Hungarian actress Eva Gabor.
Anyway, the movie is quite short at just 77 minutes and hums right along so anyone curious should feel undaunted. It's a cute film.

[Wooley]

https://i.imgur.com/U2nyhTR.jpg?5

Whoo. Man.
It's been a long time since I've seen this movie. I guess when I was younger, even though I sensed that the movie was pretty dumb, I thought the cartoonishness of this thing was tolerable. But man, it is a challenging watch in some ways. You have to keep resetting your tolerance for ridiculousness. I mean it's just so impossibly silly, it's like Italian Spider-man or something. Like I seriously couldn't believe how ridiculous this was for almost every ridiculous minute of its ridiculous run-time.

It's been a few weeks now and my opinion hasn't really changed, this is a movie that can really only be watched as a sort of joke. Which is fine, I have no issue with that. But I don't think I'll likely watch it again. I actually thought I remembered reading some ret-con where they claimed that they made it so absurd on purpose as some kind of statement, a satire that maybe I could laugh along with, but after doing some more reading apparently that is not the case, apparently this is just the movie they were trying to make. So I was really just laughing at it.
Anyway, if you want to watch something that is just absolutely laughable and perhaps the ultimate example of 80s excess, look no further, this is your film.

2.5

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/Office_space_poster.jpg
By Bemis Balkind - Impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11807247

Office Space - (1999)

There were a few recognizable faces in Office Space - Jennifer Aniston of course, John C. McGinley and a few others. I'm surprised though, that the film's main comedic sources never went on to bigger and better things. I know Ron Livingston is still around - but he's never hit really big. Office Space is exceedingly funny - nearly all of the comedy hits, and as such writer/director Mike Judge was in rare form here. If you need to have worked in an office to appreciate it, I once did - but I reckon on it's funny parts translating to most people who watch it, whether they've been in an office environment or not. God bless Stephen Root for that bizarre performance as the quiet nerd who gets pushed too far.

7.5/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Pirates_AWE_Poster.jpg
By The poster art can or could be obtained from Buena Vista Pictures., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12855092

Pirates of the Caribbean : At World's End - (2007)

I may have watched this a little too soon after Dead Man's Chest - but no matter what, it's 169-minute runtime would have impacted my comfort, enduring near non-stop sword fights and pirate talk ("arrr!!") This entry into the series doesn't descend into turkey territory however, and does just enough to clear the bar with it's eye-watering production values and ear-ringing sound and score. $300 million is hardly chump change, and since most of the Pirates films rake in around $1 billion producers can well and truly afford to make stunning epics. Worrying moments of silliness crop up now and then, but by and by this film seems a decent final entry of a trilogy - and had a satisfying ending. I still prefer the first and second films over this though - more evenly paced, crisp and sure-footed movies. I don't know if I should continue on to the 4th and 5th films.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/The_Little_Mermaid_%28Official_1989_Film_Poster%29.png
By The Little Mermaid, a production of Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Feature Animation and Silver Screen Partners IV. Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62485775

The Little Mermaid - (1989)

Great music, and perfect for little boys and girls everywhere. Zips along with a nice and short run-time with memorable songs and adorable animation that doesn't overwhelm the senses. Remember when a film could be less complex?

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/Anastasia-don-bluth.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1785819

Anastasia - (1997)

I wasn't so sure about Anastasia - it seemed like it wanted to be an old Disney film, and was a little stuck in the past. Bartok the bat however completely changed my feeling about what I was watching every time he opened his mouth. The comedy relief was fantastic - and indeed provided relief for me. I felt all the songs sounded the same and lacked originality - none of them being particularly memorable. If I were a different person at a different age I might feel really different about it - so don't take my rating as anything other than the film's worth to me.

5/10

[Rockatansky]

https://i.imgur.com/U2nyhTR.jpg?5

Whoo. Man.
It's been a long time since I've seen this movie. I guess when I was younger, even though I sensed that the movie was pretty dumb, I thought the cartoonishness of this thing was tolerable. But man, it is a challenging watch in some ways. You have to keep resetting your tolerance for ridiculousness. I mean it's just so impossibly silly, it's like Italian Spider-man or something. Like I seriously couldn't believe how ridiculous this was for almost every ridiculous minute of its ridiculous run-time.
It's been a few weeks now and my opinion hasn't really changed, this is a movie that can really only be watched as a sort of joke. Which is fine, I have no issue with that. But I don't think I'll likely watch it again. I actually thought I remembered reading some ret-con where they claimed that they made it so absurd on purpose as some kind of statement, a satire that maybe I could laugh along with, but after doing some more reading apparently that is not the case, apparently this is just the movie they were trying to make. So I was really just laughing at it.
Anyway, if you want to watch something that is just absolutely laughable and perhaps the ultimate example of 80s excess, look no further, this is your film.
Remember, Wooley, when I promised to kill you last?

I lied.

[Rockatansky]

Remember, Wooley, when I promised to kill kill you last?

I lied.
*drops Wooley off a cliff*

[Wooley]

Remember, Wooley, when I promised to kill kill you last?

I lied.

That is still my favorite line of the movie (as it has been the most memorable moment of it for me since I last saw it back in the 80s).
I just saw that you just watched it too and I read your write-up. I can see where you're coming from, I guess. I don't really have the same feeling about it but I can see it.

[PHOENIX74]

Anyway, if you want to watch something that is just absolutely laughable and perhaps the ultimate example of 80s excess, look no further, this is your film.

I made the switch over the years, from viewing Commando as a simple action film as a kid to growing up, realizing how silly it is, and then enjoying it as absurd, camp fun. In that regard, I'm thankful that the film they made is that crazy - if it wasn't then I'd have forgotten about Commando long ago. Films like this and Action Jackson I'm pretty fond of.

[Rockatansky]

I think the real problem I had was that so many of the character choices irked me. There's a running joke whereby Roger will call Ed so that they can have a tense conversation while Roger runs through a market or something and then we cut to Ed dropping off his kids at school or doing other mundane parenting tasks. The joke wears thin very quickly, and the result is that the conversations between the two lack dynamism, even when DiCaprio is swearing a blue streak up and down.
I think this dynamic is actually pretty key to the movie's view of the War on Terror. Crowe is making decisions at such a remove that it totally abstracts the stakes for him. From his perspective, he might as well be shopping for groceries or dropping his kids off at their game, while these things have a life or death impact for Leo and his contacts.

[Fabulous]

They Live by Night (1948)

3.5

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/yPP1V1z9Qti5XnAjEucqMDtApUL.jpg

[John-Connor]

A SUMMER'S TALE 1996 ‘Conte d'été’ Éric Rohmer
89908
1h 53m | Drama | Romance
Writer: Éric Rohmer
Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon

4+

[xSookieStackhouse]

5 rewatch 🙂
http://www.impawards.com/1994/posters/santa_clause.jpg

[LChimp]

https://rollingstone.uol.com.br/media/uploads/terrifier-2-poster-foto-divulgacao.jpg

[Fabulous]

Come Live with Me (1941)

2

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/3yQAJ0sfgrMK292VzJ8kqaqTQBn.jpg

[Iroquois]

Private Parts - 1.5

wow, we really need to redo the "directed by women" list

[Wooley]

I made the switch over the years, from viewing Commando as a simple action film as a kid to growing up, realizing how silly it is, and then enjoying it as absurd, camp fun. In that regard, I'm thankful that the film they made is that crazy - if it wasn't then I'd have forgotten about Commando long ago. Films like this and Action Jackson I'm pretty fond of.

Yeah, ya know, that's one thing I hope came across in what I said, that this movie is ridiculous beyond belief and, for me, it was kind of a struggle, but that I absolutely don't think it's something that wouldn't be enjoyable for a lot of people. In our discussions of whether or not movies have to be unique to be either Art of worthy of being Canon, this movie is unquestionably unique, so...


(I did just watch a much better Dan Hedaya film, though, more to come on that when I have time.)


Edit - Also, I do have a soft-spot for Action Jackson.

[Wooley]

Private Parts - 1.5

wow, we really need to redo the "directed by women" list

Wait, which Private Parts is this?

[Torgo]

Berlin Express - 3

An American, an Englishman, two Germans and a Russian board a train. Unfortunately, there's no punchline. In fact, something explosive happens. Set and filmed in the husk of post-World War II Frankfurt, it's a fun little thriller proving that some Germans were not so ready to give the win to the Allies.

This was the first feature to be filmed in Germany after the war ended and the resulting authenticity all but enhances it, especially the historically accurate set pieces like what's left of a brewery and an illegal cabaret. As for our band of heroes, while it's highly unlikely such a convenient cross-section of Allies would be on the same train, I appreciate the adorability and optimism. One of them says a line that resonates just as much as it likely did then: "sometimes, I think we shall never get together on this earth until we find someone on Mars to hate." I went into this hoping for lots of train action a la The Lady Vanishes or Murder on the Orient Express, but I felt a little baited and switched at the end since the bulk of the movie occurs in Frankfurt. The scenes on trains are the best ones, though, and with this cast and Jacques Tourneur at the helm, nothing in between them lacks for tension or intrigue. Movies that pick up World War II's pieces like The Third Man and The Best Years of Our Lives are among my favorites, especially ones like those that were made while the dust was still settling. While this one is hardly the classic that those are, it's still a worthy genre alternative.

[Stirchley]

89917

Re-watch though I don’t think I watched the entire thing before.

Good movie. Interesting storyline.

I have to wonder: McQueen is British. Ditto Mulligan. Fassbender is from the North of Ireland. So why did McQueen (who wrote this with another Brit) set it in NYC which necessitated Mulligan learning an American accent? Why not set it in London? It would have made no difference to the storyline.

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTUzZDg2ODItODNkMi00OTU3LWE4OTItNGQ3ZWExNzY4NTA1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTUzMTg2ODkz._V1_.jpg


4

[Takoma11]

I think this dynamic is actually pretty key to the movie's view of the War on Terror. Crowe is making decisions at such a remove that it totally abstracts the stakes for him. From his perspective, he might as well be shopping for groceries or dropping his kids off at their game, while these things have a life or death impact for Leo and his contacts.

Oh, I understand completely why this is a central part of the point that the movie is making. At every iteration, you have people making choices like it's some far off abstract chess game while other people have to be there to get the bone fragments sprayed in their faces.

But the point was made in their very first conversation, and from that point on those telephone calls were so redundant and entirely lacking in zest that it ground the film to a halt for me each time. And the conversations never evolved. Which might also be part of the point but it sure didn't make for interesting viewing!

[Fabulous]

Angels in the Outfield (1951)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/bENQVk1ex19NBPd8iUrn5sa4vNo.jpg

[Iroquois]

Wait, which Private Parts is this?

The Howard Stern biopic where he plays himself.

Mur Murs - 3

voila Varda

[Fabulous]

Silk Stockings (1957)

2.5

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/r1nK7g79gQgISxZJQeRNVPgfb3G.jpg

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/She_said_film_poster.jpg
By http://www.impawards.com/2022/she_said_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71294136

She Said - (2022)

Awfully hard to rate this one - I'm fully aware that I have a tendency to underrate investigative journalism films based on true stories - and this one has Spotlight/All the President's Men Oscar-bait written all over it. The film does do the right thing however, in highlighting just how the system protected sexual predators before the "me too" movement. With basically no hope of a win in court, a victim's only recourse would be to settle with a plaintiff - and in doing so they'd have to sign a "non-disclosure agreement", effectively gagging them. Because of this, movie producer Harvey Weinstein managed to get away with rape, sexual harassment and such for years - all the while destroying the careers of many a talented woman in the industry. This film starts with a 2016 Donald Trump moment that sets us up for a look at sexual harassment by The New York Times - and the name Harvey Weinstein keeps coming up in relation to that subject. Really important stuff - but what about the movie? I don't know - it did seem like a careful retread of Spotlight in more ways than one. My interest in the subject carried me to the half way point, but the movie kind of gets lost in the details, and it's nowhere near the incredible dramatic narrative we had with All the President's Men. I hope I'm wrong, and come back one day to give She Said a higher rating - but for now it seems a bit of a let-down.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Parenthood_%28film%29_poster.png
By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51486570

Parenthood - (1989)

Just as good as it's always been - Parenthood tackles it's subject from every conceivable angle, and fully utilizes the acting talent of Steve Martin, Dianne Wiest, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards and Tom Hulce (and more). Martin gets to showcase his unique comedic talents, and if I remember correctly it was a bit of a departure for him into a more serious area (though he was great in Pennies From Heaven in the early 1980s.) Well directed by Ron Howard, who had been getting better and better through the 80s - and with a great screenplay, this is a film I've enjoyed numerous times and one I still get laughs from. The "rollercoaster" scene near the end is brilliant. Check out the 14-year-old (and unrecognizable) Joaquin Phoenix!

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/HouseSitterpromoposter.jpg
By IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13302632

Housesitter - (1992)

Really not as good as I remember it - this comedy completely forgets to do anything funny in it's first 20 minutes, deadening the atmosphere considerably. It comes home with a wet sail - especially with Richard B. Shull and Laurel Cronin pretending to be the parents of Goldie Hawn (they were hilarious) - but that can't make up for the number of misfires and general story problems in this. Frank Oz and Steve Martin would normally be a winning combination, but this film lurches everywhere in tone and seems to be looking for improv and not quite finding it from the two leads. Really good in parts, but overall not worth investing time in.

5/10

[Fabulous]

The Four Feathers (1939)

3.5

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/epcA1B4ERK1qP2t7tkAF4QwuNjW.jpg

[xSookieStackhouse]

5 rewatched
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51RjPIpqD6L._AC_SY1000_.jpg

[Gideon58]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/She_said_film_poster.jpg
By http://www.impawards.com/2022/she_said_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71294136

She Said - (2022)

Awfully hard to rate this one - I'm fully aware that I have a tendency to underrate investigative journalism films based on true stories - and this one has Spotlight/All the President's Men Oscar-bait written all over it. The film does do the right thing however, in highlighting just how the system protected sexual predators before the "me too" movement. With basically no hope of a win in court, a victim's only recourse would be to settle with a plaintiff - and in doing so they'd have to sign a "non-disclosure agreement", effectively gagging them. Because of this, movie producer Harvey Weinstein managed to get away with rape, sexual harassment and such for years - all the while destroying the careers of many a talented woman in the industry. This film starts with a 2016 Donald Trump moment that sets us up for a look at sexual harassment by The New York Times - and the name Harvey Weinstein keeps coming up in relation to that subject. Really important stuff - but what about the movie? I don't know - it did seem like a careful retread of Spotlight in more ways than one. My interest in the subject carried me to the half way point, but the movie kind of gets lost in the details, and it's nowhere near the incredible dramatic narrative we had with All the President's Men. I hope I'm wrong, and come back one day to give She Said a higher rating - but for now it seems a bit of a let-down.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Parenthood_%28film%29_poster.png
By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51486570

Parenthood - (1989)

Just as good as it's always been - Parenthood tackles it's subject from every conceivable angle, and fully utilizes the acting talent of Steve Martin, Dianne Wiest, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards and Tom Hulce (and more). Martin gets to showcase his unique comedic talents, and if I remember correctly it was a bit of a departure for him into a more serious area (though he was great in Pennies From Heaven in the early 1980s.) Well directed by Ron Howard, who had been getting better and better through the 80s - and with a great screenplay, this is a film I've enjoyed numerous times and one I still get laughs from. The "rollercoaster" scene near the end is brilliant. Check out the 14-year-old (and unrecognizable) Joaquin Phoenix!

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/HouseSitterpromoposter.jpg
By IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13302632

Housesitter - (1992)

Really not as good as I remember it - this comedy completely forgets to do anything funny in it's first 20 minutes, deadening the atmosphere considerably. It comes home with a wet sail - especially with Richard B. Shull and Laurel Cronin pretending to be the parents of Goldie Hawn (they were hilarious) - but that can't make up for the number of misfires and general story problems in this. Frank Oz and Steve Martin would normally be a winning combination, but this film lurches everywhere in tone and seems to be looking for improv and not quite finding it from the two leads. Really good in parts, but overall not worth investing time in.

5/10


I agree with everything you said about Parenthood and Housesitter...will be adding She Said to my watchlist.

[EndlessDream]

https://i.imgur.com/yPUEwrm.jpg

In honor of Thanksgiving, I watched the cheesy slasher Blood Rage. It's about a pair of twins, one of which is evil. As a child, Terry murders someone at a drive-in with an axe and then frames his brother Todd. We fast forward years later to Thanksgiving dinner and Todd breaks out of the mental institution, sending Terry into a murderous rage.

Even for a slasher movie, this is pretty basic. I think more could have been done with the twin set-up. Characters mistake Todd for Terry a few times, but there's never any doubt to the audience which one is which (Terry has the awful hairstyle). I would've liked to have seen someone initially scared of Todd realize that he isn't the evil twin, but we don't get any of that.

The special effects are pretty good. Body parts flop on the ground a bit after being cut off, which is amusing. Terry likes to taste blood and say "that's not cranberry sauce", which was weird the first time and weirder the second. Overall, Blood Rage is entertaining, but doesn't do enough to stand out in the slasher genre.

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzNkODlkYjgtYWI4OS00MDBkLWFiZTYtNmU1YWIxZTcyZWZkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTMxMTY0OTQ@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.j pg



3.5

[Thunderbolt]

89941
The Menu (2022)
Ludicrous plot and an annoying cast. Nothing positive to say about this one.
1

[Little Ash]

https://i.imgur.com/yPUEwrm.jpg

In honor of Thanksgiving, I watched the cheesy slasher Blood Rage. It's about a pair of twins, one of which is evil. As a child, Terry murders someone at a drive-in with an axe and then frames his brother Todd. We fast forward years later to Thanksgiving dinner and Todd breaks out of the mental institution, sending Terry into a murderous rage.

Even for a slasher movie, this is pretty basic. I think more could have been done with the twin set-up. Characters mistake Todd for Terry a few times, but there's never any doubt to the audience which one is which (Terry has the awful hairstyle). I would've liked to have seen someone initially scared of Todd realize that he isn't the evil twin, but we don't get any of that.

The special effects are pretty good. Body parts flop on the ground a bit after being cut off, which is amusing. Terry likes to taste blood and say "that's not cranberry sauce", which was weird the first time and weirder the second. Overall, Blood Rage is entertaining, but doesn't do enough to stand out in the slasher genre.


I came away from Blood Rage feeling 100% certain that, that was indeed, cranberry sauce.

[Wooley]

https://i.imgur.com/yPUEwrm.jpg

In honor of Thanksgiving, I watched the cheesy slasher Blood Rage. It's about a pair of twins, one of which is evil. As a child, Terry murders someone at a drive-in with an axe and then frames his brother Todd. We fast forward years later to Thanksgiving dinner and Todd breaks out of the mental institution, sending Terry into a murderous rage.

Even for a slasher movie, this is pretty basic. I think more could have been done with the twin set-up. Characters mistake Todd for Terry a few times, but there's never any doubt to the audience which one is which (Terry has the awful hairstyle). I would've liked to have seen someone initially scared of Todd realize that he isn't the evil twin, but we don't get any of that.

The special effects are pretty good. Body parts flop on the ground a bit after being cut off, which is amusing. Terry likes to taste blood and say "that's not cranberry sauce", which was weird the first time and weirder the second. Overall, Blood Rage is entertaining, but doesn't do enough to stand out in the slasher genre.

I have a weird affection for this movie and especially the character of the mother.

[Wooley]

89941
The Menu (2022)
Ludicrous plot and an annoying cast. Nothing positive to say about this one.
1

Aw, I've been reading all these reviews of how good it is, I was getting excited.

[matt72582]

Variety Lights - 7/10
I think I saw part of this movie before, because a lot of it felt familiar.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Luci-del-varieta-italian-movie-poster-md.jpg

[Thunderbolt]

Aw, I've been reading all these reviews of how good it is, I was getting excited.

A couple walked out of the screening after 30 minutes. At least I went the distance.

[Torgo]

One star review aside, I'm still eager to see The Menu since John Leguizamo based his performance on Steven Seagal. (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/john-leguizamo-steven-seagal-the-menu-b2228979.html) Based on what John said about his experience filming Executive Decision, they didn't exactly get along (but does Steven get along with anyone besides dictators?).

[Captain Terror]

Thumbs-up for Del Toro's Pinocchio.

The children in the audience appeared to be enjoying themselves, but this goes to some heavy places. Religion, death, Fascism, war- all things you'd expect from a Del Toro film but probably not an animated kids' film. (Is this intended for kids? Probably, I'm not even sure.)

But yeah, as a stop-motion buff I was thoroughly charmed by the character design/animation. It is gorgeous and does not look like a Disney or Laika film. The story was engaging, even if it felt overstuffed a few times. I'm not sure the Mussolini/Fascism stuff was necessary. The "war is bad" message seemed to be pretty clear early in the film, so being so specific later on about which war we were dealing with seemed superfluous. But that's a minor quibble. I wasn't expecting musical numbers, but they weren't unpleasant. The voice cast was pretty great all around, with some surprising names in there. I'm an easy crier but I emerged from this one dry-eyed, which might be considered a criticism given some of the stuff that happens, or you can interpret that to mean it wasn't cloying. I'm leaning toward the latter.

So yeah, more crucifixions than I was expecting but a beautiful film nonetheless.

4

[Fabulous]

The Phenix City Story (1955)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/3J2QXtMF731B74uibHJZGVgcMrI.jpg

[SpelingError]

The Phenix City Story (1955)

3

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/3J2QXtMF731B74uibHJZGVgcMrI.jpg

This is the second time this week we've watched the same film on the same day (I watched Hitchcock's Blackmail pretty much the same time you did from a couple days ago). Maybe one of us is secretly stalking the other.

[SpelingError]

Come Drink With Me (1966) - 4

Being the second film I've seen from King Hu (the first being A Touch of Zen), there were definitely some clear differences with the ways both films handled the characters. The initial portrayal of Golden Swallow as formidable in combat and Fan as harmless, yet noble recalled the characters in A Touch of Zen, but as the film went on, the clearer it became that Fan had a lot to hide, both in regards to his superior fighting skills and his history with the bandit's leader. While Golden Swallow can fight well in combat by herself and kill a few bandits here and there (albeit taking some scratches in the process), Fan is shown to understand the craft far better than her and can kill his opponents much quicker. How surprising it will be when, given the strong emphasis on Golden Swallow's rivalry with Jade Faced Tiger, she gets overshadowed and pushed aside during the final fight by Fan's rivalry with Liao (a dynamic which was given comparably less screen time in the film). It's an unexpected change of focus and, while such an idea would normally be a flaw, it's a more than fitting narrative choice for this film, given how well Fan was developed throughout the film (if I could change one aspect though, I'd give Liao some more prominence since he lacked the memorable development which Fan had). Not sure I like this film more than A Touch of Zen, but the former film has sat better with me upon reflection. The idea of slowly revealing the true colors of a formidable fighter who eventually rips through the fabric of the narrative has resonated with me quite well.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-CJrsTbQk2gY%2FVGjjlk9Sl9I%2FAAAAAAAAAVA%2FdDm_QVLNon8%2Fs1600%2Fglass_key_3.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=10a95d89fcc7fd554d897007fb8716a9b465877edebaa4dc9efc32ef511f6bf1&ipo=images

The Glass Key, 1942

Ed (Alan Ladd) is the right-hand man to a bigwig called Paul (Brian Donlevy). There's a messy set of relationships at play, with Paul being in love with Janet (Veronica Lake), the daughter of a man Paul is going to try and help elect. But Paul's little sister Opal (Bonita Granville) is in love with Janet's brother, Taylor (Richard Denning). Not complicated enough? Well, someone goes and offs Taylor, and Ed must sort through the various players and motives to find the real culprit.

The most pressing thing I have to say about this film is, WOW, did anyone have a straight face for those sequences where it looked like Lake accidentally left a washcloth on her head before putting on her hat?
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fe9%2F56%2F23%2Fe956232eceff455af4fe768b63c7c576.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=943a65156813f7af9710f9db26b44b6110904aefd5420853963a17d7782bf97c&ipo=images

Anyway, this is a very solid film noir with all the typical trappings of the genre executed well.

Ladd (who described himself as having "the face of an aging choir boy and the body of an underfed featherweight") doesn't feel like your typical noir detective. He does look a bit young, and every time he put on his big coat it looked like he mistakenly grabbed a coat belonging to a man a size or two larger. But he kind of makes it work because there is something a bit "other" about Ed generally. There's a degree of detachment he has from what happens, a meta awareness of the games being played even as he is still trying to figure out the exact moves.

Lake also has some of this detached air, and the sequences where the two of them banter really stand out from the rest of the interactions. Lake is luminously beautiful here, and like any good femme fatale, she presents a constant temptation for Ed to betray Paul both personally and professionally.

The rest of the cast all make a good impression, particularly William Bendix as a tough guy who is repeatedly called on to beat Ed senseless. His character's interest in Ed is both funny and disturbing. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a queer/kink thing, or just a joke about how this guy who is a tough would naturally see his victims as almost co-workers. Either way, there's certainly a vibe to their interactions. A sequence where Ed is taken captive and repeatedly beaten unconscious is particularly brutal and vicious, punctuated by banal or even humorous dialogue ("My first wife was a second cook at that third rate joint down on 4th street") between the men holding him hostage.

The central mystery itself unfolds in a pretty satisfying way, and honestly right up to the last few minutes I wasn't totally sure how everything would shake out.

My only real struggle with this one was how often I found Ed kind of smarmy and unlikable. And not in the fun, "flawed noir detective" way. A man dies of suicide and Ed delivers the news to the man's wife with a smirk he doesn't bother concealing. When he is in the hospital recovering from his beating he treats his nurse like a secretary, flirts with her and kisses her (don't worry--a man wrote this movie so she LOVES IT when her patient puts the moves on her and she never gets a name because why would she?). The side effect of this aloofness and occasional smarminess is that I found it hard to have any interest in his possible romance with Janet and spent a good deal of the hospital scenes rolling my eyes.

Overall, though, this one was very satisfying. I read quite a bit of Hammett's work about 15 years ago (Red Harvest might be my favorite book). I thought I'd read this one but the plot was not at all familiar to me so I guess I must have missed it somehow during my Hammett binge.

4

[Takoma11]

Come Drink With Me (1966) - 4

Being the second film I've seen from King Hu (the first being A Touch of Zen), there were definitely some clear differences with the ways both films handled the characters. The initial portrayal of Golden Swallow as formidable in combat and Fan as harmless, yet noble recalled the characters in A Touch of Zen, but as the film went on, the clearer it became that Fan had a lot to hide, both in regards to his superior fighting skills and his history with the bandit's leader. While Golden Swallow can fight well in combat by herself and kill a few bandits here and there (albeit taking some scratches in the process), Fan is shown to understand the craft far better than her and can kill his opponents much quicker. How surprising it will be when, given the strong emphasis on Golden Swallow's rivalry with Jade Faced Tiger, she gets overshadowed and pushed aside during the final fight by Fan's rivalry with Liao (a dynamic which was given comparably less screen time in the film). It's an unexpected change of focus and, while such an idea would normally be a flaw, it's a more than fitting narrative choice for this film, given how well Fan was developed throughout the film (if I could change one aspect though, I'd give Liao some more prominence since he lacked the memorable development which Fan had). Not sure I like this film more than A Touch of Zen, but the former film has sat better with me upon reflection. The idea of slowly revealing the true colors of a formidable fighter who eventually rips through the fabric of the narrative has resonated with me quite well.

Love this movie, it's so much fun.

I was so stoked when I watched Lilting and saw the credits and was like "GASP! Pei-Pei Cheng!"

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Angelas_ashes_ver2.jpg
By POV - Impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20372284

Angela's Ashes - (1999)

Taken by itself, Angela's Ashes is a fascinating film, not holding back when it comes to the filth and deprivation of growing up poor. It's based on a 1996 memoir by Frank McCourt, who went on to win a Pulitzer for his book. So good is the read, that many people feel let down by the film, but as I've never read it I enjoyed watching this immensely. It's one of my family's favourite films, but I'd yet to watch it. First of all, the slums look so real in all their filth, as does the terrible life of the McCourt siblings who have an alcoholic father who drinks all the money he earns - leaving his entire family starving and without recourse. When Malachy (Robert Carlyle) gets some money for a new baby, he goes straight to the pub, even though his kids try to stop him. The baby goes without. There's a lot here that really got to me - the desperation, humiliation and painful sadness of a family destitute. The death of Frank's siblings due to disease and starvation. The typical growing pains of a young Irish boy. Maybe if I'd read the book I'd feel differently, but I thought this was really good.

8/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/The_Dirties_poster.jpg
By Phase 4 Films - http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/images/2014/05/Dirties-UK-Poster.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40724174

The Dirties - (2013)

I really didn't like Matt Johnson's found footage film Operation Avalanche - the idea and it's execution seemed a little too juvenile and unrealistic for me. His debut feature however (also found footage) - The Dirties - is an interesting look at school shootings, growing pains and childhood friendship. It's also much more realistic than his follow-up feature. The film had an extraordinarily low budget - which goes to show that if you have a good idea, there's nothing stopping you from making a good found footage film. Filled with various film references - and it's nice to see some young filmmakers who are already in love with great films from yesteryear.

7/10

[Rockatansky]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-CJrsTbQk2gY%2FVGjjlk9Sl9I%2FAAAAAAAAAVA%2FdDm_QVLNon8%2Fs1600%2Fglass_key_3.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=10a95d89fcc7fd554d897007fb8716a9b465877edebaa4dc9efc32ef511f6bf1&ipo=images

The Glass Key, 1942
My big takeaway from this was that there wasn't enough Veronica Lake.


Then I watched The Gun For Hire and was satisfied with the amount of Veronica Lake.


Sometimes you need two movies for your daily dose of Veronica Lake.

[Rockatansky]

Come Drink With Me (1966) - rating_4

Being the second film I've seen from King Hu (the first being A Touch of Zen), there were definitely some clear differences with the ways both films handled the characters. The initial portrayal of Golden Swallow as formidable in combat and Fan as harmless, yet noble recalled the characters in A Touch of Zen, but as the film went on, the clearer it became that Fan had a lot to hide, both in regards to his superior fighting skills and his history with the bandit's leader. While Golden Swallow can fight well in combat by herself and kill a few bandits here and there (albeit taking some scratches in the process), Fan is shown to understand the craft far better than her and can kill his opponents much quicker. How surprising it will be when, given the strong emphasis on Golden Swallow's rivalry with Jade Faced Tiger, she gets overshadowed and pushed aside during the final fight by Fan's rivalry with Liao (a dynamic which was given comparably less screen time in the film). It's an unexpected change of focus and, while such an idea would normally be a flaw, it's a more than fitting narrative choice for this film, given how well Fan was developed throughout the film (if I could change one aspect though, I'd give Liao some more prominence since he lacked the memorable development which Fan had). Not sure I like this film more than A Touch of Zen, but the former film has sat better with me upon reflection. The idea of slowly revealing the true colors of a formidable fighter who eventually rips through the fabric of the narrative has resonated with me quite well.


I will recommend checking out Legend of the Mountain at some point. It's probably my favourite King Hu (although I'm overdue for rewatches of a few and haven't seen a bunch of others). It applies that sense of movement that's especially pronounced in A Touch of Zen, but in a more fantastical, ethereal context. And while you're at it, check out Dragon Inn and The Fate of Lee Khan, which have killer back halves. Hsu Feng features in all of these, and is especially good in the latter, where she plays an utterly ruthless villain in a cute hat.


https://64.media.tumblr.com/0b5c8f98316fdb67b0feb745d2dc815e/f564591c00a556d0-64/s1280x1920/f5649d4342c479d4613f14fed298f525d8d26cba.png


I will also recommend Chang Cheh's sequel to Come Drink With Me called Golden Swallow. Surprisingly it downplays the heroine's role (I recall MKS had some good words back on RT about its importance in the history of Hong Kong martial arts cinema), but I will add that its transitional quality also manifests in the tone (stately with bursts of schlock) and action direction (occasional injections of handheld to shake up the clean sense of composition). Then you gotta work your way through Chang's work from the proto-heroic bloodshed of the earlier films (Vengeance, The Boxer from Shantung to name two) to the more cartoonish yet no less impressively directed stuff he's best known for (Crippled Avengers, Five Elements Ninjas to name two). Their stilted dramatic sense will register more clearly as a deliberate narrative choice if you work through them relatively chronologically.

[SpelingError]

I will recommend checking out Legend of the Mountain at some point. It's probably my favourite King Hu (although I'm overdue for rewatches of a few and haven't seen a bunch of others). It applies that sense of movement that's especially pronounced in A Touch of Zen, but in a more fantastical, ethereal context. And while you're at it, check out Dragon Inn and The Fate of Lee Khan, which have killer back halves. Hsu Feng features in all of these, and is especially good in the latter, where she plays an utterly ruthless villain in a cute hat.


https://64.media.tumblr.com/0b5c8f98316fdb67b0feb745d2dc815e/f564591c00a556d0-64/s1280x1920/f5649d4342c479d4613f14fed298f525d8d26cba.png


I will also recommend Chang Cheh's sequel to Come Drink With Me called Golden Swallow. Surprisingly it downplays the heroine's role (I recall MKS had some good words back on RT about its importance in the history of Hong Kong martial arts cinema), but I will add that its transitional quality also manifests in the tone (stately with bursts of schlock) and action direction (occasional injections of handheld to shake up the clean sense of composition). Then you gotta work your way through Chang's work from the proto-heroic bloodshed of the earlier films (Vengeance, The Boxer from Shantung to name two) to the more cartoonish yet no less impressively directed stuff he's best known for (Crippled Avengers, Five Elements Ninjas to name two). Their stilted dramatic sense will register more clearly as a deliberate narrative choice if you work through them relatively chronologically.

Those are a lot of recs to get through, but I'll keep an eye out for them.

[Rockatansky]

Those are a lot of recs to get through, but I'll keep an eye out for them.
Watch them all! Watch them all now! Watch them until your eyes fall out!


j/k


Once upon a time a bunch of Shaw Brothers movies were on Canadian Amazon Prime. Perhaps they are on some of your streaming services, but if not, most of them are available for HD rental on YouTube.

[SpelingError]

Watch them all! Watch them all now! Watch them until your eyes fall out!

https://i.imgur.com/AG2nset.gif

[ThatDarnMKS]

Watch them all! Watch them all now! Watch them until your eyes fall out!


j/k


Once upon a time a bunch of Shaw Brothers movies were on Canadian Amazon Prime. Perhaps they are on some of your streaming services, but if not, most of them are available for HD rental on YouTube.
Who is your favorite Shaw Brother? Run Run? Runme? Robert?

[Rockatansky]

Who is your favorite Shaw Brother? Run Run? Runme? Robert?
Alia Shaw....kat.

[Wooley]

Thumbs-up for Del Toro's Pinocchio.

The children in the audience appeared to be enjoying themselves, but this goes to some heavy places. Religion, death, Fascism, war- all things you'd expect from a Del Toro film but probably not an animated kids' film. (Is this intended for kids? Probably, I'm not even sure.)

But yeah, as a stop-motion buff I was thoroughly charmed by the character design/animation. It is gorgeous and does not look like a Disney or Laika film. The story was engaging, even if it felt overstuffed a few times. I'm not sure the Mussolini/Fascism stuff was necessary. The "war is bad" message seemed to be pretty clear early in the film, so being so specific later on about which war we were dealing with seemed superfluous. But that's a minor quibble. I wasn't expecting musical numbers, but they weren't unpleasant. The voice cast was pretty great all around, with some surprising names in there. I'm an easy crier but I emerged from this one dry-eyed, which might be considered a criticism given some of the stuff that happens, or you can interpret that to mean it wasn't cloying. I'm leaning toward the latter.

So yeah, more crucifixions than I was expecting but a beautiful film nonetheless.

4
I expected this to be good, glad to hear it.

[Wooley]

https://i.imgur.com/AG2nset.gif

Holy shit, that's amazing, what's that from?!

[SpelingError]

Holy shit, that's amazing, what's that from?!
The Fly II. I haven't seen it (afraid of it messing up my love for Cronenberg's film), but I've seen that gif a bunch of times.

[ThatDarnMKS]

The Fly II. I haven't seen it (afraid of it messing up my love for Cronenberg's film), but I've seen that gif a bunch of times.
It's a more than solid horror sequel that gets ignored because it's

1) not made by its auteur originator
2) isn't as good as the original
3) is more exploitative

So basically, it's Psycho 2 all over again.

[Wooley]

The Fly II. I haven't seen it (afraid of it messing up my love for Cronenberg's film), but I've seen that gif a bunch of times.

Ah, I only saw this once, like 30+ years ago.

[Little Ash]

My big takeaway from this was that there wasn't enough Veronica Lake.


Then I watched The Gun For Hire and was satisfied with the amount of Veronica Lake.


Sometimes you need two movies for your daily dose of Veronica Lake.


One of my main take aways from The Glass Key was, "put this on the list of movies that directly fed into Miller's Crossing."

[ScarletLion]

'Fire of Love' (2022)

Director : Sara Dosa

Extraordinary, moving, beautiful documentary about a couple (Maurice and Katia Krafft) who dedicate their lives to getting up close and personal with boiling bubbling volcanoes.

Some of the footage of old lava flows and explosions is stunning and looks like it could be shot by an old master like Kubrick. These two people are kindred spirits and the film, narrated by Miranda July, delves deep into their powerful bond.

One of the best documentaries of the year. 9/10

[Not to be confused with Werner Herzog's recent documentary on the same married couple!!]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_7XADmKVL0

[Rockatansky]

One of my main take aways from The Glass Key was, "put this on the list of movies that directly fed into Miller's Crossing."
It was on my list of movies that fed Veronica Lake.*

By providing her with a paycheque.*

Okay, this list is just every movie she’s ever acted in.

[Torgo]

Clean (2004) - 3

This is a pretty good drama about addiction recovery and the arduous process of starting over. Forced to do this is Emily (Maggie Cheung), a former VJ and heroin addict who is traveling with her musician partner in Canada when something tragic happens. What follows is a series of two steps forward, three steps back as she relapses, takes various low-paying jobs and reaches out to her few remaining connections in the music industry, some of whom want nothing to do with her. Besides getting back on her feet, Emily has another goal: take custody of her estranged son, who is living with her father-in-law (Nick Nolte).

The movie starts with beautifully shot yet grim footage of power plants and factories in Canada belching steam into the sky, and the impressive cinematography continues until the end, which is aided by having Paris, London and San Francisco as locations. The parallels between these industries' actual toxicity and the other kind of toxicity in the music industry is apt, especially the commentary about how it encourages drug use. That real musicians have cameos in the movie is a bonus; they include Tricky, James Johnston of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (who plays Emily's partner), David Roback of Mazzy Star and one of my favorite bands, Metric. The real star here, though, is Maggie Cheung, who gives a strong performance that lets her exhibit the gamut of emotions and that proves she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. While she was no longer romantically involved with director Olivier Assayas at the time, it wouldn't be wrong to assume that the role is a gift to her since it's the kind that wins awards, which she did at Cannes. Despite her very good work and the high quality of the production, the movie doesn't do much to distinguish itself from other recovery dramas, music-related or otherwise. I don't think it's bold to say that there are some scenes that wouldn't be out of place in similar Lifetime or Hallmark movies. With that said, if you're a fan of Assayas, Cheung, some of the artists who show up in it or interested in the early '00s music industry, it’s worth seeking out.

[Captain Terror]

Ah, I only saw this once, like 30+ years ago.
I only watched The Fly II because it was included in a box set I bought, and going in with zero expectations I thought it was a lot of fun. It was directed by an effects guy and it shows.

[SpelingError]

It's a more than solid horror sequel that gets ignored because it's

1) not made by its auteur originator
2) isn't as good as the original
3) is more exploitative

So basically, it's Psycho 2 all over again.

Maybe I'll keep an eye out for it. Not a huge 'watching entire horror franchises' guy, but since it's just one film, it might be easier to make time for it.

[Little Ash]

It was on my list of movies that fed Veronica Lake.*

By providing her with a paycheque.*

Okay, this list is just every movie she’s ever acted in.


The Glass Tributary.


Sullivan's Tributary fed into two Lakes.

[crumbsroom]

It's a more than solid horror sequel that gets ignored because it's

1) not made by its auteur originator
2) isn't as good as the original
3) is more exploitative

So basically, it's Psycho 2 all over again.


I can't remember the Fly sequel since I watched it when it came out and my kid brain didn't retain it (I think I liked it as a...12 year old?). But as for Psycho 2


-is it really ignored, at least anymore? I find it is generally considered as a 'overlooked classic' at this point. Sure, not canon, and people not cool enough for the horror club might not be aware of its greatness, but certainly not ignored. At least not Fly 2 levels of invisibility.

-whoever directed it was no Hitchcock, but that thing oozes style and personality. It of course in many ways needs the original to prop up a lot of its ideas and transgressions, but for the most part, it holds up as a piece of film pretty well.

-is it really that much more exploitative than the original? I'd argue it might have even been less so. Hitchcock's version was kind of one of the first (or maybe even the first) mainstream film to go right into the (at least at the time) gutter. On screen violence the likes which had never been seen before, absurd manifestations of mental illness, cross dressing, it oozed sex and women in black bras, and let's not forget toilets. Never forget the toilets.


When it comes to Fly 2, it's actually a movie I frequently forget even exists. And I have no memory of that gif happening in that movie. But if it is any indication, it must be the shit. That guys face just slides off like a yet to settle lasagne. I watched it, partially nauseated, partially in wonder, over and over again for like ten minutes last night. You can become lost in it.

[matt72582]

https://64.media.tumblr.com/924c674fcec64a15f7f8de2c350f894b/13e49f4e9073c736-f0/s500x750/43591582d26f65ec00bc99c1f94832ce9cf52020.gifv
https://i.gifer.com/Gp5F.gif

La Bête Humaine - This 1938 crime drama is a fairly loose adaptation of an Emile Zola novel and directed by Jean Renoir. it stars Jean Gabin as Jacques Lantier, a train engineer who finds himself entangled with a married woman. Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) is the stationmaster at Le Havre where Lantier's Paris route culminates. He's married to the beautiful and much younger Severine (Simone Simon). When he discovers that Severine had an affair with the well off Grandmorin (Jacques Berlioz) while in his employ his long simmering jealousy erupts.

Having always thought Grandmorin was just his wife's harmless godfather he decides to kill him and have his wife come along to forever bind them together. The only problem being that Lantier is onboard the train and sees both of them exit the dead man's compartment. He lies to the police and tells them he saw no one in the corridor and this in turn ends up binding the three of them together. But Lantier has his own dirty little secret and the three unintended co-conspirators find that there is no way off of this particular track.

The movie finds several ways of using trains as an analogy and it turns out to be a novel metaphor. Both Renoir and Gabin insisted on as much realism as possible and Gabin learned to operate and run a locomotive with the help of an actual crew. The scenes with Lantier at the controls of his train give the film a welcome jolt of authenticity. And the grubby trainyard setting is a fitting embodiment of the squalid circumstances the three protagonists find themselves in. There are no unblemished heroes here and no one comes out looking good in the end.

To be honest I had confused Jean Renoir with Jean Cocteau (maybe because of La belle et la bête) so this is the first of his films I've seen. But La règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) and La grande illusion (The Grand Illusion) look intriguing so I'll keep an eye out for those.

80/100


I recorded this, and might check it out sooner than later. "La Grande Illusion" is a favorite of mine, although my first viewing on this grainy VHS from the library kinda ruined the first viewing (and watching it at 4am after I couldn't fall back asleep) and also felt the same about "The Rules of the Game", which I attribute to a documentary that went deeper, and got me to view again.



If you like Jean Gabin, I highly recommend, "Le Jour Se Le Vie" (Marcel Carné) which I loved every viewing. "The Cat" and "The Horse" are just as excellent, in his later life in the early 70s. "Le Chat" is basically a more natural, domestic, and better kind of movie compared with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimage.tmdb.org%2Ft%2Fp%2Foriginal%2Fjmh2HUoQGqxuirE43uwg0PoGadX.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=130fb36df01cdfeecb27776a5cb6ba5d47cdf1b4ad6af423887c14f7d8569f52&ipo=images

Uncut Gems, 2019

Howard (Adam Sandler) is a precious gems dealer in New York who owes a lot of money due to gambling, including a huge sum to a family member named Arno (Eric Bogosian). As the debt collectors become increasingly aggressive, Howard holds out hopes that he will make a huge profit off of a rare opal he has imported from Ethiopia and hopes to sell at auction. But a series of short-term decisions Howard makes in the days leading up to the auction have the potential to make or break him.

This movie got pretty glowing reviews when it first came out and I consider Good Time to be a pretty masterful mix of comedy, drama, and thriller. I thought that Uncut Gems had a lot of great stuff going for it, but it didn't quite hit me in the same way as the previous film.

To start with the good, the Safdie brothers once again show a really deft hand at creating sequences with a lot of hustle and bustle where little nuances in the interactions between characters can have momentous effect on the plot. There's also lots of handheld camera work and neon colors. Sequences go from gritty reality to cosmic abstraction several times.

The performances are also quite strong. Sandler's Howard is a desperate, sweaty man with just enough charisma and banter that you can believe he had enough going for him to build a business that would attract upscale clientele. Something that the film portrays really well is the fact that Howard will never really "win". You could hand this man a million dollars on a golden platter and a week or a month later he'd be broke and/or in debt again. He is the kind of personality that thrives on risk taking, and sooner or later you just don't survive a certain series of losses.

LaKeith Stanfield makes an impression as an associate of Kevin Garnett who is playing his own games of power and money. (Garnett, it should be said, acquits himself just fine). A real standout for me was Julia Fox as Howard's girlfriend, Julia. While at times I found Julia's attraction to Howard, um, very confusing, Fox brings good energy to her role and ends up being one of the more enjoyable characters. She looks like a young Debi Mazar, and whether she's having a screaming fight with Howard in the street or dodging debt collecting goons, she's welcome every time she's on screen.

I did struggle with the middle act of this film. Howard is on a steady, downward spiral. Every time he might catch a lucky break, something seems to thwart him. But at well over two hours, boy did that middle 40 minutes drag for me. At points I was seriously tempted to fast forward (I resisted, but barely). Frustratingly, I can't pinpoint why it was that I disconnected so much, but I felt my patience with the story plummet and just started to feel frustrated. I can understand on a theory level why we spend so much time on this carousel of little failures with Howard, but I lost my engagement with it. Things pick up again very strongly in the last 35 minutes or so, thank goodness.

Very solid, but I think Good Time is my preferred Safdie brothers film.

4

[Stirchley]

⬆️ I bailed out. Didn’t find it interesting or a sustainable watch.

[Takoma11]

⬆️ I bailed out. Didn’t find it interesting or a sustainable watch.

I like the way that the film was made, but it didn't grab me emotionally. I definitely think that it was overlong.

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-WB76rdAAQN8%2FV8soFsCTqtI%2FAAAAAAAAE9g%2FQP_FN-eB6384FPd0huIVTq7PDpXOIjbbQCLcB%2Fs1600%2FBlue_Dahlia_The_Scan_2.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=be61571fc76e2e0f29ebe8ead2a1bab6bc93763d3773a9d5d90b1ff3438148b4&ipo=images

The Blue Dahlia, 1946

Johnny (Alan Ladd) returns home from war service to the horrible double-whammy that his wife Helen (Doris Dowling) is two-timing him with club owner Eddie (Howard Da Silva) AND his young son was killed in an accident when Helen drove home drunk from a party. Reeling, Johnny leaves, striking up a mutual attraction with a woman named Joyce (Veronica Lake) who gives him a ride in the rain. But when Helen is found dead, Johnny falls under suspicion. Johnny, his friends Buzz (William Bendix) and George (Hugh Beaumont), and a determined police detective (Tom Powers) all try to get to the bottom of the crime.

This was an incredibly enjoyable, twisty-turny thriller with lots of pulpy sideplots and an everyone's-a-suspect cast of characters that keep you guessing until the end.

While I wrote about The Glass Key that Ladd didn't quite seem like a right fit for his role, here he seems much more suited to the role of the slightly reserved Johnny, who gets pushed just about to his limit by his wife's cruelties. In fact, the cast of The Glass Key all seem to have shown up for this one, with Lake as the woman who turns Johnny's head and Bendix this time playing Johnny's friend and not a man determined to beat him to a pulp.

The plot itself, as mentioned, is a lot of fun. Are there some coincidences that really strain belief? Oh yes. What are the odds that a man would happen to catch a ride from the wife of the man who is sleeping with his wife? But much like stories like The Big Sleep where subplots are not completed or what have you, this isn't something that causes a problem with enjoying the film.

While the film mainly keeps you occupied with the central mystery, there is a strong recurring theme about the toll taken on the men who went off to serve in the war. Johnny's situation is terrible, of course. He comes home to an alcoholic, unfaithful wife who killed their child through her negligence. But Buzz has also come home with a plate in his head and serious memory and mood issues courtesy of a shell injury. The men get a little respect here and there for their service, but there are some grim prospects for them.

The only element I think could have been a little better was the portrayal of Helen. She is so evil that it begins to veer into over-the-top territory. She crows about having killed their son and how she's glad about it because now she can be free to party. It certainly does the job of making her more killable, but it also has the effect of totally minimizing and vilifying the only character who represents someone who was left behind. It would be hard for someone to be left alone with a young child, not knowing if their partner was coming back. I'm not saying that it's okay that Helen went wild and cheated and all that, but it would have been nice to have a bit more nuance to the character OR have another character in a similar situation.

This one kept me right up to the end and was a very enjoyable thriller.

4

[SpelingError]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimage.tmdb.org%2Ft%2Fp%2Foriginal%2Fjmh2HUoQGqxuirE43uwg0PoGadX.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=130fb36df01cdfeecb27776a5cb6ba5d47cdf1b4ad6af423887c14f7d8569f52&ipo=images

Uncut Gems, 2019

Howard (Adam Sandler) is a precious gems dealer in New York who owes a lot of money due to gambling, including a huge sum to a family member named Arno (Eric Bogosian). As the debt collectors become increasingly aggressive, Howard holds out hopes that he will make a huge profit off of a rare opal he has imported from Ethiopia and hopes to sell at auction. But a series of short-term decisions Howard makes in the days leading up to the auction have the potential to make or break him.

This movie got pretty glowing reviews when it first came out and I consider Good Time to be a pretty masterful mix of comedy, drama, and thriller. I thought that Uncut Gems had a lot of great stuff going for it, but it didn't quite hit me in the same way as the previous film.

To start with the good, the Safdie brothers once again show a really deft hand at creating sequences with a lot of hustle and bustle where little nuances in the interactions between characters can have momentous effect on the plot. There's also lots of handheld camera work and neon colors. Sequences go from gritty reality to cosmic abstraction several times.

The performances are also quite strong. Sandler's Howard is a desperate, sweaty man with just enough charisma and banter that you can believe he had enough going for him to build a business that would attract upscale clientele. Something that the film portrays really well is the fact that Howard will never really "win". You could hand this man a million dollars on a golden platter and a week or a month later he'd be broke and/or in debt again. He is the kind of personality that thrives on risk taking, and sooner or later you just don't survive a certain series of losses.

LaKeith Stanfield makes an impression as an associate of Kevin Garnett who is playing his own games of power and money. (Garnett, it should be said, acquits himself just fine). A real standout for me was Julia Fox as Howard's girlfriend, Julia. While at times I found Julia's attraction to Howard, um, very confusing, Fox brings good energy to her role and ends up being one of the more enjoyable characters. She looks like a young Debi Mazar, and whether she's having a screaming fight with Howard in the street or dodging debt collecting goons, she's welcome every time she's on screen.

I did struggle with the middle act of this film. Howard is on a steady, downward spiral. Every time he might catch a lucky break, something seems to thwart him. But at well over two hours, boy did that middle 40 minutes drag for me. At points I was seriously tempted to fast forward (I resisted, but barely). Frustratingly, I can't pinpoint why it was that I disconnected so much, but I felt my patience with the story plummet and just started to feel frustrated. I can understand on a theory level why we spend so much time on this carousel of little failures with Howard, but I lost my engagement with it. Things pick up again very strongly in the last 35 minutes or so, thank goodness.

Very solid, but I think Good Time is my preferred Safdie brothers film.

4

I like Uncut Gems quite a bit as well, but like you, I also prefer Good Time, even if its ending is more abrupt.

[Kid Dynamite]

Loved that movie! Wasn't difficult to tell who Kevin Garnett was. lol

[Cyberia]

Thor: Love and Thunder. I thought it pretty awful.

[ThatDarnMKS]

Maybe I'll keep an eye out for it. Not a huge 'watching entire horror franchises' guy, but since it's just one film, it might be easier to make time for it.
It's better than most horror sequels. I'll die on that hill. I mean, both Mick Garris and Frank Darabont wrote the script. That counts for something.

[ThatDarnMKS]

I can't remember the Fly sequel since I watched it when it came out and my kid brain didn't retain it (I think I liked it as a...12 year old?). But as for Psycho 2


-is it really ignored, at least anymore? I find it is generally considered as a 'overlooked classic' at this point. Sure, not canon, and people not cool enough for the horror club might not be aware of its greatness, but certainly not ignored. At least not Fly 2 levels of invisibility.

-whoever directed it was no Hitchcock, but that thing oozes style and personality. It of course in many ways needs the original to prop up a lot of its ideas and transgressions, but for the most part, it holds up as a piece of film pretty well.

-is it really that much more exploitative than the original? I'd argue it might have even been less so. Hitchcock's version was kind of one of the first (or maybe even the first) mainstream film to go right into the (at least at the time) gutter. On screen violence the likes which had never been seen before, absurd manifestations of mental illness, cross dressing, it oozed sex and women in black bras, and let's not forget toilets. Never forget the toilets.


When it comes to Fly 2, it's actually a movie I frequently forget even exists. And I have no memory of that gif happening in that movie. But if it is any indication, it must be the shit. That guys face just slides off like a yet to settle lasagne. I watched it, partially nauseated, partially in wonder, over and over again for like ten minutes last night. You can become lost in it.
- Yes, it's still ignored but it IS on an upswing. I suspect it'll be viewed on par with Halloween 3: Season of the Witch in a few years. For reference, here's the approximate amount of IMDb ratings, which I think gives a decent assessment of popularity:

The Fly 2: 23k
Psycho 2: 25k
Halloween 3: 55k

- Yes, it does ooze with style. And The Fly 2 is remarkably well made with among the greatest gore set pieces of the 80s.

- Psycho certainly pushed boundaries but Hitchcock's brand was always pushing the envelope mixed with a great deal of artistry and elegance. At the point Psycho 2 was made, it's reputation as a respectable masterpiece was secured, so blending that film with slasher levels of gore and violence certainly placed it as "more exploitative." The 3rd one is easily more stylish and smuttier.

That Fly 2 was a childhood favorite. I preferred it as a kid and it may be partially why I am fascinated by gore effects. I rewatched it a few years ago after Cronenberg's was solidly a favorite, expecting sacrilege, but was very happy to see that it fits in nicely with the other Darabont scribbed horror joints, The Blob and NOES 3.

[crumbsroom]

it fits in nicely with the other Darabont scribbed horror joints, The Blob and NOES 3.


Well, I do mildly love both of those, so I should give a chance again sometime.

[Inmyseat]

Wakanda Forever- 10

[Fabulous]

That Touch of Mink (1962)

2

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/aJaWmyx0sIfVLaLneDdCWqwUiFU.jpg

[ThatDarnMKS]

THE FABELMANS

A tactical missile aimed straight at my heart.

5/5

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Murder_on_the_Orient_Express_teaser_poster.jpg
By 20th Century Fox - https://www.atomtickets.com/movies/murder-on-the-orient-express/223139, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54191771

Murder on the Orient Express - (2017)

A perfectly average version of Agatha Christie's famous tale, full to the brim with a-listers who get to act like caricatures - some with good reason. We seem to be getting it because it's what Kenneth Branagh wants to do more than something we'd all like to see. It's all nice and done right - but in a cinematic era stuffed full of remakes and reboots, I don't understand what the point is - except for Branagh and the actors having a good time.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Brewsters_millions.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8194019

Brewster's Millions - (1985)

Another remake here - the oft-repeated Brewster's Millions which was kind of converted into a vehicle for Richard Pryor in a lazy way - he was a talent who was frequently misused and never quite found the right screenplays or projects. It's fun to watch him go through $30 million (a lot more in 1985 than it is now) without being able to tell anyone the reason. To others he seems to be the most reckless and silly spender on earth. Pryor just doesn't seem to be able to do anything with the rigid guidelines of this story, and as such his improvisation is hampered.

Just imagine winning one of those big lottery prizes you hear about these days. I think there was one in the U.S. recently which topped $1 billion. Room enough to live out your most far-fetched fantasy and still have enough to fall back on.

5/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/NrnsPoster.jpg
By Moviepostershop.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4676922

No Retreat, No Surrender - (1985)

No Retreat, No Surrender is a crazy, crazy low budget movie that a friend introduced to me a few years ago - and every so often I revisit it. It's about a karate-loving kid who moves to a new town, and when faced with adversity finds the ghost of Bruce Lee to train him in the way of martial arts. He then faces off against a Russian (played by a young Jean-Claude Van Damme) who has taken all before him, and is backed by a group of mafia figures. The film has a kind of "Mac and Me" bad but entertaining vibe, and plenty of moments that take you unawares. It's so fun that it's hard to rate - the film's quality is around 2/10, but the entertainment factor is more 8/10 - that averages out to...

5/10

[Takoma11]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.moviehousememories.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F02%2FThe-Postman-Always-Rings-Twice-1946-featured-2.jpg%3Ffit%3D1200%252C675%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=28213a1bb478b64319f0ab731d480091e466cfc3ea00ee536b132fc43106694f&ipo=images

The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946

Frank (John Garfield) is a drifter who impulsively takes a job at a roadside cafe after getting an eyeful of the beautiful Cora (Lana Turner). But it turns out that Cora is the wife of the owner of the cafe, the older, cheerful Nick (Cecil Kellaway). As the sexual tension between Nick and Cora mounts, they start to think about how much easier things would be if Nick was out of the way . . .

I've started this film probably three or four times before and it never quite stuck. This time I caught the momentum of it and it was really enjoyable.

There are a lot of twists and turns to the typical plot that really make this story stand out. Probably the best innovation is an initial failed attempt to kill Nick that is foiled by an unexpected power outage. Usually in a story like the the couple would fall in love in the first act, kill the husband in the second act, then deal with the fallout in the third. The failed attempt adds an interesting wrinkle to everything. Obviously you can't try again after one unfortunate "accident" . . . or can you?

The other dynamic that I really enjoyed was the push pull between Frank and Cora. Instead of one of them being the cold-blooded leader (and we know that usually that would be Cora), we see them go back and forth. One of them will be certain that they should commit the murder, then the other will have doubts, then vice verse. While Cora is ultimately seen as the more ruthless of the two, I liked the balance between their characters. Cora is colder, but she's not some caricature.

This is further solidified by what Cora explicitly (and demonstrably) shows us about what she actually wants. She doesn't just want to roll around in fancy clothes and cash. She wants to run a successful business. She wants respect. Yes, she wants a sexy lover her own age, but it's not her priority. What ultimately breaks Cora is when Nick decides---without asking her opinion at all---that they will sell the diner and move to Canada so that Cora can care for his invalid sister.

Now, pause for a moment. I'm not endorsing murder as as solution to marital problems. It's certainly true that Cora could get a divorce, work her way back up. She is clearly disgusted by the idea of having to do this. But at the same time, she has put in work to keep the diner functioning. The fact that Nick feels comfortable totally changing their lifestyle and committing Cora to the role of caretaker/nurse is enraging. As the sole owner of the diner, he has the only say in whether or not it is sold. While she does have recourse in the form of cutting her losses, we see the way that Cora's gender and social position make her vulnerable to the loss of autonomy.

This gives just enough friction to the character of Nick that the decision to try and kill him, while not good or right, is at least understandable. I'm not sure that I could say I was rooting for Cora and Frank, but I felt for them and understood how they got to the place that they did.

The portion of the film that is taken up with legal proceedings is also incredibly engaging. Hume Cronyn absolutely owns the screen in every scene where he appears as Cora's sly, dryly humorous lawyer who manages to stay one step ahead of the district attorney and his own client. But what the story does very wisely is not end on a verdict, but rather take the story back to the characters and their relationship with one another.

Setting aside even the murder plot in its details, what builds and builds from the beginning to the end of the film is the parallel paths of love and mistrust between the two. After all: once you know that someone would lie and kill, can you ever fully trust them? Garfield and Turner do a fantastic job with this element.

No notes!

4.5

[SpelingError]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.moviehousememories.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F02%2FThe-Postman-Always-Rings-Twice-1946-featured-2.jpg%3Ffit%3D1200%252C675%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=28213a1bb478b64319f0ab731d480091e466cfc3ea00ee536b132fc43106694f&ipo=images

The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946

Frank (John Garfield) is a drifter who impulsively takes a job at a roadside cafe after getting an eyeful of the beautiful Cora (Lana Turner). But it turns out that Cora is the wife of the owner of the cafe, the older, cheerful Nick (Cecil Kellaway). As the sexual tension between Nick and Cora mounts, they start to think about how much easier things would be if Nick was out of the way . . .

I've started this film probably three or four times before and it never quite stuck. This time I caught the momentum of it and it was really enjoyable.

There are a lot of twists and turns to the typical plot that really make this story stand out. Probably the best innovation is an initial failed attempt to kill Nick that is foiled by an unexpected power outage. Usually in a story like the the couple would fall in love in the first act, kill the husband in the second act, then deal with the fallout in the third. The failed attempt adds an interesting wrinkle to everything. Obviously you can't try again after one unfortunate "accident" . . . or can you?

The other dynamic that I really enjoyed was the push pull between Frank and Cora. Instead of one of them being the cold-blooded leader (and we know that usually that would be Cora), we see them go back and forth. One of them will be certain that they should commit the murder, then the other will have doubts, then vice verse. While Cora is ultimately seen as the more ruthless of the two, I liked the balance between their characters. Cora is colder, but she's not some caricature.

This is further solidified by what Cora explicitly (and demonstrably) shows us about what she actually wants. She doesn't just want to roll around in fancy clothes and cash. She wants to run a successful business. She wants respect. Yes, she wants a sexy lover her own age, but it's not her priority. What ultimately breaks Cora is when Nick decides---without asking her opinion at all---that they will sell the diner and move to Canada so that Cora can care for his invalid sister.

Now, pause for a moment. I'm not endorsing murder as as solution to marital problems. It's certainly true that Cora could get a divorce, work her way back up. She is clearly disgusted by the idea of having to do this. But at the same time, she has put in work to keep the diner functioning. The fact that Nick feels comfortable totally changing their lifestyle and committing Cora to the role of caretaker/nurse is enraging. As the sole owner of the diner, he has the only say in whether or not it is sold. While she does have recourse in the form of cutting her losses, we see the way that Cora's gender and social position make her vulnerable to the loss of autonomy.

This gives just enough friction to the character of Nick that the decision to try and kill him, while not good or right, is at least understandable. I'm not sure that I could say I was rooting for Cora and Frank, but I felt for them and understood how they got to the place that they did.

The portion of the film that is taken up with legal proceedings is also incredibly engaging. Hume Cronyn absolutely owns the screen in every scene where he appears as Cora's sly, dryly humorous lawyer who manages to stay one step ahead of the district attorney and his own client. But what the story does very wisely is not end on a verdict, but rather take the story back to the characters and their relationship with one another.

Setting aside even the murder plot in its details, what builds and builds from the beginning to the end of the film is the parallel paths of love and mistrust between the two. After all: once you know that someone would lie and kill, can you ever fully trust them? Garfield and Turner do a fantastic job with this element.

No notes!

4.5

Yeah, that one's very good.

[matt72582]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.moviehousememories.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F02%2FThe-Postman-Always-Rings-Twice-1946-featured-2.jpg%3Ffit%3D1200%252C675%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=28213a1bb478b64319f0ab731d480091e466cfc3ea00ee536b132fc43106694f&ipo=images

The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946

Frank (John Garfield) is a drifter who impulsively takes a job at a roadside cafe after getting an eyeful of the beautiful Cora (Lana Turner). But it turns out that Cora is the wife of the owner of the cafe, the older, cheerful Nick (Cecil Kellaway). As the sexual tension between Nick and Cora mounts, they start to think about how much easier things would be if Nick was out of the way . . .

I've started this film probably three or four times before and it never quite stuck. This time I caught the momentum of it and it was really enjoyable.

There are a lot of twists and turns to the typical plot that really make this story stand out. Probably the best innovation is an initial failed attempt to kill Nick that is foiled by an unexpected power outage. Usually in a story like the the couple would fall in love in the first act, kill the husband in the second act, then deal with the fallout in the third. The failed attempt adds an interesting wrinkle to everything. Obviously you can't try again after one unfortunate "accident" . . . or can you?

The other dynamic that I really enjoyed was the push pull between Frank and Cora. Instead of one of them being the cold-blooded leader (and we know that usually that would be Cora), we see them go back and forth. One of them will be certain that they should commit the murder, then the other will have doubts, then vice verse. While Cora is ultimately seen as the more ruthless of the two, I liked the balance between their characters. Cora is colder, but she's not some caricature.

This is further solidified by what Cora explicitly (and demonstrably) shows us about what she actually wants. She doesn't just want to roll around in fancy clothes and cash. She wants to run a successful business. She wants respect. Yes, she wants a sexy lover her own age, but it's not her priority. What ultimately breaks Cora is when Nick decides---without asking her opinion at all---that they will sell the diner and move to Canada so that Cora can care for his invalid sister.

Now, pause for a moment. I'm not endorsing murder as as solution to marital problems. It's certainly true that Cora could get a divorce, work her way back up. She is clearly disgusted by the idea of having to do this. But at the same time, she has put in work to keep the diner functioning. The fact that Nick feels comfortable totally changing their lifestyle and committing Cora to the role of caretaker/nurse is enraging. As the sole owner of the diner, he has the only say in whether or not it is sold. While she does have recourse in the form of cutting her losses, we see the way that Cora's gender and social position make her vulnerable to the loss of autonomy.

This gives just enough friction to the character of Nick that the decision to try and kill him, while not good or right, is at least understandable. I'm not sure that I could say I was rooting for Cora and Frank, but I felt for them and understood how they got to the place that they did.

The portion of the film that is taken up with legal proceedings is also incredibly engaging. Hume Cronyn absolutely owns the screen in every scene where he appears as Cora's sly, dryly humorous lawyer who manages to stay one step ahead of the district attorney and his own client. But what the story does very wisely is not end on a verdict, but rather take the story back to the characters and their relationship with one another.

Setting aside even the murder plot in its details, what builds and builds from the beginning to the end of the film is the parallel paths of love and mistrust between the two. After all: once you know that someone would lie and kill, can you ever fully trust them? Garfield and Turner do a fantastic job with this element.

No notes!

rating_4_5




Have you seen Visconti's "Ossession"?

[Takoma11]

Have you seen Visconti's "Ossession"?

Not yet. I know it's one of the 4 adaptations of the novel and is pretty well regarded.

It's not steaming on any of my services currently.

[matt72582]

Not yet. I know it's one of the 4 adaptations of the novel and is pretty well regarded.

It's not steaming on any of my services currently.


Ah ok. It's not one of my favorite Visconti, but it's one of the first neo-realist movies. I highly recommend his other movies, though, like "Beautiful" (very relevant today - child actors being pushed by parents) or in Italian "Bellissima".. "Rocco and His Brothers" is good, despite Alain Delon not speaking Italian. But I think my favorite of his is the very neo-realistic "La Tera Trema" (The Earth Trembles) about a family of fishermen/women who finally try to escape a shady businessman and go independent. Big fish eat small fish.

[Wooley]

Thor: Love and Thunder. I thought it pretty awful.

I used to be a big MCU fan.
But you are absolutely right.
In fact, it's part of the reason I'm no longer a big MCU fan.

[Wooley]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Brewsters_millions.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8194019

Brewster's Millions - (1985)

Another remake here - the oft-repeated Brewster's Millions which was kind of converted into a vehicle for Richard Pryor in a lazy way - he was a talent who was frequently misused and never quite found the right screenplays or projects. It's fun to watch him go through $30 million (a lot more in 1985 than it is now) without being able to tell anyone the reason. To others he seems to be the most reckless and silly spender on earth. Pryor just doesn't seem to be able to do anything with the rigid guidelines of this story, and as such his improvisation is hampered.

Just imagine winning one of those big lottery prizes you hear about these days. I think there was one in the U.S. recently which topped $1 billion. Room enough to live out your most far-fetched fantasy and still have enough to fall back on.

5/10



I liked this a bit more than you but I agree with your review completely. For whatever reason I just got slightly more pleasure out of it.
I definitely think you are spot-on with the bolded.

[Siddon]

https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/KO2_20210810_32520rCC_f-1024x578.jpg

Glass Onion:A Knives Out Mystery(2022)

Ed Norton is an eccentric who invites five of his friends(and three guests) along to a murder mystery in his remote island in the latest Knives Out film. The group features a men's rights you tuber (Dave Batista), a cancelled fashionista (Kate Hudson), the fired business partner (Janelle Monae), a scientist (Leslie Odom Jr) and the governor of Connecticut (Kathryn Hahn). Five out of six of those characters work one really doesn't and just becomes furniture 15 minutes in and stays that way for the entire film.

This is a much better film for the character of Benoit Blanc. The pandemic is winding down and it was rough for Blanc. This film the character really shines as he has several of the best scenes in the story. This is the film where you can see Johnson really going in great places with the character.

This was also a film where the runtime just flew by, thanks in large part to Edward Norton's character and performance. Norton's bit parts were really good and compelling. Between this and Motherless Brooklyn I feel like he's prone to fall into a modern Bogart style actor. The movie just has one issue and it's a big spoiler so don't click on it untill after to see it.

Rian Johnson has the exact same person as the killer. The straight white male big actor is the killer yet again. It's one of those things where if you are going to have a mystery plot with a surprise killer and a diverse cast you need to look outside the basic norms for your killer. It was a bit of a predictable copout that modern films lean into.

The movie is not going to crack my top ten but it's close

rating_4

[WHITBISSELL!]

Don't feel like you have to answer this but which character were you referring to that didn't work? Use spoiler tags if you want. Still haven't watched the first one so it'll probably be a while before I get around to this.

[cricket]

Wonderland (2003)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Wonderland_%282003_film%29.jpg
The story of p0rn superstar (and scumbag) John Holmes' involvement in the murders of worse scumbags (the Wonderland Gang) after robbing off an even bigger scumbag (Eddie Nash). The dated thing is done well but the film is too reliant on flashbacks/forwards to really keep the interest. It's an interesting story for sure but I think it would have profited from a more linear approach. Val Kilmer is very good in this.
3

This is a bit of a secret favorite for me. Seen it many times.

[matt72582]

American Blackout - 10/10


https://youtu.be/bdPhXuTzQeI

[Wooley]

Don't feel like you have to answer this but which character were you referring to that didn't work? Use spoiler tags if you want. Still haven't watched the first one so it'll probably be a while before I get around to this.

I watched a video of Rian Johnson explaining everything that went into filming just one scene of Knives Out and not only did I leave liking that movie more than I already did, which I did, but also wondering where all of this was during The Last Jedi.

[PHOENIX74]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Non-Stop2014Poster.jpg
By May be found at the following website: IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40812808

Non-Stop - (2014)

I was tired last night, and this looked like a film I wouldn't have to invest much mental energy in - so with low expectations I went in. I didn't really look at it with a critical eye, and just enjoyed the wildly over-the-top action. This is the kind of movie where the villains have God-like powers, Napoleon-level planning and chess-match-winning plays in their pockets, and manage to hijack a plane while making it look like air marshal Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) has gone crazy and is doing the deeds he's being set up for. They want $150 million, and have planned a murder every 20 minutes down to the last gasp - setting Marks up to do the killing in devilishly clever ways. Meanwhile, Marks is romancing a lady that could be one of the hijackers, looking out for a cute little girl who is alone, dealing with his alcoholism and battling all of the passengers who think he's gone barking mad. I love films that feature peril in the air, and ones where the plane in question hits the tarmac with smoking holes in it and absolute chaos erupting in the passenger cabin - I was entertained, because as dumb as this movie is, it's well shot, and never boring. They could have called it Airport '14.

7/10

[Siddon]

Don't feel like you have to answer this but which character were you referring to that didn't work? Use spoiler tags if you want. Still haven't watched the first one so it'll probably be a while before I get around to this.


Leslie Odom Jr's character is glorified furniture after the first fifteen minutes. He has one scene in the beginning where he dumps exposition about Miles....and then for 2 hours he's in the background. Everyone else has a descernable personality and could actually be a killer but Odom's character is just...a guy.

[Fabulous]

Easy Living (1937)

2.5

https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/original/nh6IvmqGkQE5Vxz4Sqb2Zbnconl.jpg

[StuSmallz]

I watched a video of Rian Johnson explaining everything that went into filming just one scene of Knives Out and not only did I leave liking that movie more than I already did, which I did, but also wondering where all of this was during The Last Jedi.It was right here, Wool:


https://youtu.be/s2hM1tyEL0U

[Wooley]

It was right here, Wool:


https://youtu.be/s2hM1tyEL0U

Ugh.

[Thunderbolt]

89975
The Terminator (1984)
For me this is the best of the series.
4.5

[Wooley]

89975
The Terminator (1984)
For me this is the best of the series.
4.5

Agreed.

[Gideon58]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGMzYmZmNjYtMTFmZS00ZGY4LWIwNWUtMzYwNjcyYTI4YTRmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDM2NDM2MQ@@._V1_.jpg


3