Guilty As Sin (Sidney Lumet, 1993)
Imdb

Date Watched: 04/26/2024
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: @mrblond mentioned it in the Neo Noir Countdown
Rewatch: No.

I saw this mentioned in the Neo Noir Countdown and thought I'd give it a try. Ever since I was a teenager when I saw him in In Pursuit of Honor (a made for TV movie that I love) and the TV series Nash Bridges, I've had a little bit of a soft spot for Don Johnson. So when I saw that he was in this, it caught my interest.

Having said that, I'm used to seeing him play roles where he's charming - and maybe has a bit of a way with the ladies - but is noble overall. Or at least charmingly funny even if his character is evil, like he was as "Big Daddy" in Django Unchained, but this performance is something different. As David Greenhill he is charming, but its a slimy kind of charm that left me feeling uneasy throughout and Johnson is absolutely perfect in the role. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. Rebecca De Mornay and the remainder of the cast were all good or at least serviceable in their roles (though Stephen Lang's perm and enormous mustache are hard to forgive), but for me this was Johnson's movie.

However, beyond his role this movie is riddled with flaws and implausibilities. So much so that it's a little hard to believe that this is from the same director that brought us 12 Angry Men, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon. It really demands the viewer to strain their ability to suspend disbelief: A man is assaulted to the point of hospitalization and there seems to be no investigation or police involvement, a surprise witness appears that magically gives Greenhill a very flimsy alibi, and the film culminates in a climax that is so over the top and bloody that I struggled not to laugh at it. Even so, I enjoyed it quite a bit and unashamedly so - though Guilty As Sin probably ought to be filed under "guilty pleasures."

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

loved it, loved emily blunt shes amazing actress, loved ryan gosling his a good actor and ofcourse loved aaron taylor-johnson he always my favorite on marvel <3. amazing movie i really loved it
https://cdn.eventcinemas.com.au/cdn/...argeposter.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...0NjI@._V1_.jpg


Well that sucked. Had a couple chuckles here and there, but completely failed to live up to the potential of its premise. Reminds me of the film Paul in that regard.


"D"

Challengers (2024) I enjoyed this. Zendaya is very good here and Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor are effective in their roles, although they can't quite match Zendaya. The screenplay is sharp and smart and the way the story is told is interesting. It worked really well for me. A really good use of sound and music too. I would rank this as the 3rd best film of the year so far. Tennis is sexy now!

Soylent Green (1973)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...lent_green.jpg
I had this name in the back of my head but never got round to seeing it. In a dystopian future (past now :)) population rise and global warming coupled with pollution have brought society to it's knees. Only the very rich can afford to live comfortably. But anyway, an intrepid detective (the suitably bewigged Charlton Heston) is sent to investigate the mysterious death of a Soylent Corporation executive. They make the "food" that most of the populous consume. This is not bad for it's time, a good premise and flows along nicely, I think Heston was really miscast though.

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Late Night With The Devil: 5 out of 5

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

The Nun (2018)
Annabelle: Creation (2017)
The Nun 2 (2024)
Annabelle (2014)
The Conjuring (2013)

Overall, I'd say for what I watched on horror so far, I find doll-related horror the most creepiest. Plus, The Conjuring is even based on a true story.
I couldn't really watch them without distracting myself on the side, tho. So, I'd give them a pretty high rating. It doesn't look like fake and not everything is immediately scaring me. 10 out of 10/ 5 out of 5. They're fun to watch so far and I plan on continuing the conjuring-verse.

I thought it OK, not scary but also not really biting enough to be a good satire. Fell between 2 stools for me. Decent watch though.

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Portrait of Jennie (1948)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...kgWb7nP8Ck.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...r_2_Poster.jpg
By http://www.impawards.com/2022/poster...r_two_xxlg.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65727992

Terrifier 2 - (2022)

Okay - as horror fans keep an eye on Art the Clown we see the gradual development of filmmaker Damien Leone, who made a very different film than his original Terrifier when he went to make Terrifier 2. The first was a particularly mindless slasher, and it seemed a shame to have wasted the effective horror by not having anything substantial to back it up. This second film isn't too bad, and incorporates characters this time and doesn't make the mistake (as far as I'm concerned) of trying to think up some half-baked mythology for his monster. He just introduces us to a one-parent family, and sets his massacre-machine going by incorporating the events of the first film into a larger framework. It's not groundbreaking, but everything works really well - I didn't even mind the fact that this was 138 minutes long, which is very strange for a horror film like Terrifier 2. In the end I'm kind of motivated to go back and watch the first film again, which I didn't really like - I'll wait until I see Terrifier 3 before I act on that impulse.

7/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...net_poster.jpg
By Unknown - IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71531910

The Most Hated Man on the Internet - (2022)

A documentary about how Charlotte Laws, an anti-bully campaigner, some investigative journalists and the FBI took on Hunter Moore and his revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com. Interesting enough to be worth watching. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

6/10

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ons_poster.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8839127

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies - (2006)

Very funny spoof of the Connery Bond films along with Jean Bruce's Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a.k.a. OSS 117 character. Gets every detail right, taking us back to 1950s/1960s-type spy films. Jean Dujardin is great, and both director Michel Hazanavicius and Dujardin would reunite to bring us The Artist 5 years later. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

7/10

https://i.postimg.cc/7P25xLGH/lover-stalker-killer.jpg
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8839127

Lover, Stalker, Killer - (2024)

This Netflix documentary about a stalker who sends her target over 100,000 messages - some of them particularly frightening - along with burning down homes and keying cars, has some twists that would befit the most unlikely of Hollywood movies. For the twist alone, it was a rewarding watch.

6/10

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...%28film%29.jpg



SF = Zzzz





[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

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...pg_UX1000_.jpg


3rd Rewatch...Steve Martin hits the bullseye as the star and screenwriter of this near brilliant black comedy. Martin plays the title character, a schlock movie director whose career is circling the drain when he gets hold of a script that will be a box office smash called "Chubby Rain" and he goes to movie superstar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) to star. When he refuses, Bowfinger decides to shoot the movie around Ramsey without his knowledge and utilizing a nerdy look-alike named Jiff (also Murphy) for close-ups and dialogue. Martin's razor sharp screenplay is a dead on look at the armpit of Hollywood. providing plenty of laughs and his hand-picked cast is perfection, especially Murphy, who was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his hysterically funny dual role. That scene of Jiff trying to cross a California highway cracks me up every time I watch. Also loved Christine Baranski as a flighty method actress unaware they are shooting the film without Kit's knowledge and Terrance Stamp as a New Age Guru who has Kit's ear and is taking as much money from him as he can while he can. Love this movie.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...1000_QL80_.jpg


1st Rewatch....Hardcore action fans will find this roller coaster ride from the creator of From Dusk Til Dawn. inspired by a fake movie trailer, right up their alley. When Rodriguez and Tarantino teamed up for Grindhouse, Rodrigues created a fake trailer for a movie called Machete starring Danny Trejo that many fans mistook it for a real movie and when they found out it wasn't one, demanded it be made, and Rodriguez obliged with this unapologetically bloody epic about a former mercenary who is on the trail of a pair of crooked drug dealers (Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal) who are working with a crooked US Senator (Robert De Niro). Rodriguez creates non-stop action with a body count that even outdid the Rambo franchise. Danny Trejo redefines badass as the title character.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...pg_UX1000_.jpg

1st Rewatch...Check your brain at the door and there is entertainment value to be gleaned from director Michael Bay. Will Sharp is a financially strapped Gulf War veteran who goes to his brother, a career criminal sociopath named Daniel, for a loan but instead reluctantly agrees to assist his brother in a bank robbery that goes horribly wrong. It's not long before Jake and Will are on the run in an ambulance, with Will driving, a female EMT worker and a wounded LAPD cop as hostages. and $16,000,000. This is such an entertaining movie on the surface and as long as the viewer stays on the surface, that's great, but if you think about anything that happens in this movie for more than 10 seconds, you're going to be like WTF? Bay's skills at mounting a proper action film are all over this and the performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Daniel and Will, respectively, are explosive.

Have you seen the documentary Netflix show “Break Point”? Two seasons in & it’s very good.

No, I haven't. I might check it out.

Sweet & very sad. Very prescient too - just look at Gaza & Ukraine, for example.



Good movie. Jeffrey Wright made this movie for me.



Nicely done. Maybe more enjoyable if one is Hispanic & understands more what is going on.



Re-watch of a good movie. Blake Lively very good.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...2ODkz._V1_.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_UY218_.jpg

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks / 1959)
The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges / 1960)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford / 1962)
How the West Was Won (Henry Hathaway - John Ford - George Marshall / 1962)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill / 1969)
Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner / 1990)

Quite a haul this last payday!

To sum up, but briefly:

Rio Bravo - A rather unusual but very classy late '50s Western from Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne as a town sheriff, Dean Martin as his alcoholic deputy, Walter Brennan as the older, crusty but lovable other deputy, and Ricky Nelson as the gun-slinging, guitar-playing new recruit. Rounding off the cast is Angie Dickinson as a feisty, independent gambler who becomes the Wayne character's love interest. What makes this movie so unusual is its unhurried pacing and rather laid-back emphasis on character-building. It's like we're as much hanging out with the characters as much as following their adventure. It's certainly not lacking in slam-bang action, however. The final shootout is an absolute doozy.

The Magnificent Seven - Really, what's there left to be said about this one? In many ways, a defining watershed film in the Western genre, the gateway to the '60s and almost a prototype for the Italian "spaghetti" Western (especially with regard to its status as a remake of an Akira Kurosawa samurai film). Yul Brynner leads a cast of up-and-comers including Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson as a group of specialist gunfighters hired out to defend a Mexican village from the bandit Calvera - played by Eli Wallach - and his army.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - Late masterpiece from John Ford, tragic and elegiac but still a lot of fun. James Stewart plays the tenderfoot lawyer from the East who heads out West and finds himself in over his head, John Wayne plays the tough rancher who reluctantly takes him under his wing, and a positively volcanic Lee Marvin as the whip-wielding, intemperate title character, one of the scariest of all Western villains! Vera Miles portrays the woman both Wayne and Stewart are in love with, and be on the lookout for Woody Strode, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef, Edmond O'Brien and John Carradine in supporting roles.

How the West Was Won - A rather impressive epic spectacular, one of only two narrative feature films made in the three-strip Cinerama format (the other being The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, also from 1962). It's the tale of three generations of a family of settlers who travel Westward to make a life for themselves. Carroll Baker and Debbie Reynolds portray two sisters whose destinies take them in different directions, James Stewart and Gregory Peck portray the mountain man and professional gambler who become their husbands, George Peppard plays the son of Baker and Stewart who follows in his father's footsteps to fight with the Union Cavalry in the Civil War, work for the railroad and eventually become a U.S. marshal. Along the way we also meet Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead as the girls' parents, Walter Brennan as the leader of a group of nasty river pirates, John Wayne as General Sherman, Richard Widmark as an ornery, double-dealing railroad boss and Eli Wallach as the leader of a gang of train-robbing outlaws. (Notice how Wallach always seems to excel in that kind of role?) The film is subdivided into five chapters (The Rivers, The Plains, The Civil War, The Railroad and The Outlaws), the 1st, 2nd and 5th of which were directed by Henry Hathaway, the 4th by George Marshall, and the middle section dealing with the Civil War is directed by the great John Ford himself. The movie is very impressive, but feels rather stagey, basically the consequence of the rather ungainly Cinerama cameras, which could not really be moved effectively enough to follow the actors around in dialogue scenes. However, the process really comes rather spectacularly into its own with the action sequences, which include a ride down wild river rapids, an Indian attack and chase sequence, a buffalo stampede, and a gunfight aboard a moving train. I got the special 2-disc edition that contains not only the basic widescreen version of the film, but also a version in the Smilebox format which replicates the curvature of the Cinerama theatrical presentation!

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - What's truly fascinating about this particular film is how unique it remains to this day, despite its obvious influence upon many later movies - Westerns and buddy comedies. Part of that is the uniquely wry and witty sensibility that director George Roy Hill brings to the film, but also Paul Newman and Robert Redford's chemistry in their roles as the titular outlaws. Conrad Hall's cinematography is also distinctive. (On the other hand, I consider the Burt Bacharach score kind of... iffy, to put it kindly.) I don't think there's any other movie - Western or otherwise - that's quite like this one. (BTW, if you want to hear a really cool cover version of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, check out the Manic Street Preachers' version. That band seems to have a minor fixation on this film, which actually gets namechecked in their 1996 B-side Sepia.)

Dances With Wolves - I actually saw this one during its first theatrical run, what feels like ages ago, back when I was still in high school! I remember liking it well enough at the time, and felt like it pretty much deserved all the awards and accolades it and its star/director Kevin Costner received. The steelbook Blu-ray edition from Shout! Factory features both the 3-hour+ theatrical version, as well as the almost 4-hour Extended Cut. Upon unwrapping it, I immediately popped in the Extended Cut, which I hadn't seen. I found it engaging enough, and I still enjoyed the story of Lt. John Dunbar and his adventures with the Sioux tribe. Still, the extended version perhaps feels a bit slow. Perhaps later on, I'll reacquaint myself with the original theatrical cut. This movie perhaps falls on the side of Hollywood respectability - some might say too much so - but its success certainly helped keep the Western alive and current during an otherwise dry spell for the genre, and paved the way for much that would follow, in particular Unforgiven in 1992 and Tombstone in 1993.

Child of God (2013)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...God_poster.jpg
Another laugh-a-minute adaptation of a book by Cormac McCarthy. Scott Haze plays Lester, a man so trodden by his circumstances in Tennessee he becomes debased and ends up living in the hills making his own fun shall we say. The direction is good by James Franco (who also appears). I didn't really know if it was just a nihilistic statement or if the film-maker/writer was trying to draw a parallel between civilised and uncivilised when it comes to the hunt for Lester. Either way, beware, you see a bloke shove a twig up his @rse to clean out his dinner. Not heard much of Franco recently. Legal issues?

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

The short film follows two couples – Bridge & Kara (Bridge Stuart & Taylor Misiak) and Jamison & Ashley (Dustin Hahn & Julia Bales) – as they meet for brunch at a Peruvian fusion restaurant with Moroccan pots. The meeting results in a series of awkward exchanges, especially between Bridge and Jamison, that might end up revealing what they're really thirsty for.

The Last Brunch is yet another example of that as this awkward get-together keeps escalating each time with crazier, wackier, and more awkward reveals, each of them more hilarious than the previous one. Special props also to the cast for some excellent delivery. Hahn has the showier role and he excels in it, but I really love the subtle touches in Stuart's performance, right down to his final look.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Horror in the High Desert (2021)


https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...1HPf3VyusQ.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

The Woman Next Door (1981)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...ZMsnQjyh6U.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...nge_poster.jpg
By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74658478

The Teacher's Lounge - (2023)

This was an absolutely gripping drama involving an out of control psychological conflict between one teacher who just wants to do what's right, a staff member at the school caught stealing, the staff member's child (who is a student in the teacher's class) and the rest of the children. Teaching must be such a hard profession, requiring many different facets of communication, skills and much patience - but losing control of your students, and dealing with highly charged situations make upsets so volatile. Leonie Benesch is brilliant as the teacher, Carla Nowak. This film was nominated for a Best International Feature Film Oscar (I've seen 4/5 of the 2024 nominations now), and really deserved that nomination. I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through - as tense a film as I've seen this year, and it never eases up. Makes for riveting viewing, and much discussion afterwards.

8/10

https://i.postimg.cc/DwNRbd7x/trouble.jpg
By Copyrighted by Paramount Pictures. Artists(s) not known. - http://images.art.com/images/product...0/10134534.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...curid=25318652

The Trouble With Harry - (1955)

Very amusing change of pace for Alfred Hitchcock involving the various attempts by a group of characters to deal with a dead body they think they may have done away with - mistakenly for the most part, constantly burying it and digging it up. It's really sweet and charming actually, and while not up to Hitchcock's usual great standard it's a whole lot of fun regardless. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

7/10

Madame Web (2024) This wasn't that bad. The story and the writing are the weakest parts. I felt Dakota Johnson was miscast. Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor were fine in their roles, although their characters could have been better developed. Most of the supporting actors were decent. The villain didn't make much of an impact though. This got a lot of hate and really bad reviews, but this isn't even one of the ten worst films of this year. it is totally watchable and has some good moments.

LOVED The Trouble with Harry...a link to my review:


https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/...ith_harry.html

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



5th Rewatch...This is the antithesis of those semi-raunchy movies featuring the man/child character that Sandler brought to the screen during the 80's and 90's and made him a very wealthy man. Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, the 31 year old waterboy for a fictional college football team who is being ferociously protected by his smothering mother (Oscar winner Kathy Bates) until it is revealed that Bobby contains an inner rage that makes him unstoppable on the football field. Yeah, it's just Happy Gilmore taken off the golf course and placed in a college football stadium, but nobody really noticed and audiences ate it up. Bates is terrific as Mama Boucher, as are Jerry Reed as a rival coach and especially Henry Winkler, in a scene stealing performance as Bobby's coach.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...1000_QL80_.jpg


3rd Rewatch...This movie was actually my first exposure to the charismatic Idris Elba. This slightly syrupy melodrama, written and directed by Tyler Perry, finds Elba playing Monty, an ex-con and divorced single dad who is doing everything right in trying to start his life over so that he can get custody of his three young daughters from his bitchy wife (Tasha Smith) who is living with a drug dealer.. Monty turns to a snooty, romantically-challenged attorney named Julia Rossmore (Gabrielle Union) to get custody of his girls. The story is a little soapy than it needs to be and it suffers from a really unlikable leading lady. Union brings zero likability to Julia and she has no chemistry with Elba, but then again, I have never seen Gabrielle Union create chemistry with anyone, JMO. Elba is SO good though that it's pretty easy to tolerate everything that's wrong with this movie.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...5MA@@._V1_.jpg

OK, there has been a lot of revisionism lately around this title, and I decided to seek out the most recent copy of the movie (which is currently available on the Criterion Channel and other streamers) and see if it's worth it.

To be perfectly blunt, I think this movie still sucks, but does it suck a little bit less now than it did in 1980? The answer is, "possibly", but only because Cimino tinkered with it a little bit around 2012 and brightened up the image considerably, so that what you see when you watch the movie today isn't at all the same as what critics (and a handful of moviegoers) watched back in 1980.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the historic incidents depicted in it actually sound like they could make for a fascinating movie or even a mini-series - but this movie ain't it.

Cimino went out of his way to dedicate long stretches of the movie to things that don't really seem all that important, such as the extended opening sequence set at Harvard, which really hardly has anything to do with the rest of the story at all.

Or the story about the proverbial "prostitute with the heart of gold," about as worn-out a cliche as you will find in any movie, and which in Heaven's Gate has the prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) being torn between the characters played by Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken.

I swear, it really feels like Cimino just stuck that in the movie because, I don't know, maybe he just wanted to hire a French actress who would be happy to take her clothes off at the slightest excuse? The whole subplot about the love triangle with the prostitute feels like it takes almost a whole hour of the already insanely long running time.

A better movie might have spent more time telling us the stories of the actual immigrants and the government officials who were involved in the land conflict, which according to the best information I've gathered, actually did happen, but involved only 2 people dying - not hundreds, like Cimino depicts in this movie.

Honestly, if you have nothing better to do with almost 4 hours of your time than watching a pretentious load of manure posturing as a serious movie, then Heaven's Gate might just hit the spot. Otherwise, it still remains as good an example of wretched excess now as it did when if first (and very briefly) showed up in theaters.

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Stella Maris 4/5 -- heart warming Mary Pickford film
https://resizing.flixster.com/CXOiId...51_v_h9_aa.jpg
The Indian Tomb 4/5 -- very nice exotic German 2 parter with the magnetic Conrad Veidt
https://blogger.googleusercontent.co...nqoto1_500.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

The Year of Living Dangerously - 7/10
This movie plays on TCM endlessly, because I've deleted it so many times, since my DVR storage is always hovering at around 90%, but I gave it a chance today, and I didn't turn it off. Good story (Indonesian revolution), but the wrong characters, except the Indonesians. Linda Hunt playing a male dwarf? "I asked her to marry me" - sure you did... But some great lines. "I created you" the usual CIA prototype (ala "Burn"). A few other scenes that were too corny. The end was stretched out for "suspense" but I didn't believe any of their motivations, although I would have been interested in their prime/original motivations, which the movie did not go into.



But to my reading of history, Sukarno was the patriot, and Suharto was a CIA puppet.



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...angerously.jpg

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ped_poster.jpg
A remake I believe, but this is immaculately played. Romain Duris plays a hard nosed Realtor trying to look after his and his fathers interests. Even through there is no love lost between them. Thomas and his dad are fairly grubby exploiters that are on the edge of, and beyond law. Learning of the piano seems to calm the brutal/confused soul of the manipulative central character. But this has consequences: he is losing the "edge" to be as effective in the day-to-day business that he is effective at but unappreciated for. It's a great performance and deep as I'd expect from the director Audiard.

It's a real shame this movie has been virtually ignored by mainstream audiences during its theatrical run, but one can only hope it will eventually find a larger audience, perhaps in streaming, as this is one of those movies that seems likely to gain "classic" status over time.

The story, simply told, involves two young kids growing up in the Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago in the early 90s.

There's two terrific performances by the young leads, but one should also acknowledge the role that Jurnee Smollett has served here, both as executive producer and in a supporting role as the mom of one of the kids.

We need more movies like this!!

Triangle Of Sadness


Finally watched this on Netflix last night after seeing the trailer like a year ago!


So it all plays like a metaphor, a study of rich and poor divide which is what one expected.


I haven't laughed so hard in a movie in a long time but ultimately it failed to meet my high expectations from the trailer. It was alright and worth a watch though.

I loved it.

Excellent movie. Loved it. You go girlfriend!



Excellent movie based on true facts. Definitely some parts were lost in translation, but I got most of it.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...1000_QL80_.jpg

How have I never seen The Long Goodbye before? This movie was kinda ****ing awesome. Robert Altman, John Williams, Henry Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger?! The Big Lebowski directly parodies so many little moments from this.

https://media.tenor.com/3H8Jtr2Oi5IA...t-head-nod.gif

Death Wish 3 (1985)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...wish_three.jpg
Where do you start here. This is Winners last directorial installment in the franchise. It's trying to be hard-edged but just comes across as camp in the extreme. It centres upon an ex military mate of Kersey's that he visits in New York that is living in an area controlled by a gang and there seems to be an ageist thing going on here too. Some good set-pieces but the acting (bar Bronson's) is awful. The scene where the lad is in full grief mode after his wife is abused to death then decides he's Chuck Norris mid tears is unforgettable. Good for a laugh. If this has a bit more scope location-wise and a tighter script it could have worked but Winner is phoning it in here.

'Love Lies Bleeding' (2024)

I really liked Rose Glass' debut 'Saint Maud'. But this feels like she was elevated into a project that was way too big for her, too early. I thought this was a genuinely terrible film. Not even Kristen Stewart who is pretty tremendous as always, saved it. Or Clint Mansell, who's scores are normally great.....but here is tepid. There are tropes and cliches everywhere

This was a terribly written farce. If this film wasn't A24 with this cast, it would be ridiculed. It's awful.

Turtles All the Way Down (2024) This just came out today on Max or Crave (depending on your region). It's a romantic drama about a cute teen girl with OCD, her best friend, and the boy she likes, whose wealthy father is missing. Isabela Merced is very good here and I also liked Cree's performance. Felix Mallard fell a little flat and didn't make much of an impact. The subplot about the missing billionaire felt unnecessary and underdeveloped. Overall, there are some effective emotional moments here, thanks to a mostly well written screenplay and the strength of Merced's performance. This is my pick for the 4th best film of the year so far.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...1000_QL80_.jpg


1st Rewatch...One of Clint Eastwood's most underrated efforts as a director. This film version of the Tony Award winning Broadway musical about the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons is a near perfect examination of the connection between the mob and show business, making it clear from the beginning that the group was originally fronted with mob money. I never saw the show onstage, but my instinct tells me that the show was severely altered for the screen, beefing up the mob elements of the story to give the film greater mass appeal. Despite that, the musical sequences in this film are what really make it roar. Orchestrations, sound, and sound editing bring great care to the musical numbers, giving them their own energy as opposed to just dubbing in original recordings. Especially loved "Sherry", "Walk Like a Man", and "Can't Tale My Eyes off You". John Lloyd Young is allowed to reprise his Tony Award winning role as Frankie Valli and his singing voice is like butter. The real acting honors though go to Vincent Piazza, who you might remember as Lucky Luciano on Boardwalk Empire, as Tommy DeVito, the smarmy and manipulative organizer of the group who allegedly put the group in so much debt that a wiseguy shows up five minutes before the group is to do The Ed Sullivan Show to collect a debt. Loved Erich Bergen as group composer Bob Gaudio, the only member of the group who really stood up to DeVito. Eastwood beautifully recreates 1960's New Jersey in this nostalgic and entertaining movie that got by a lot of people.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...0OA@@._V1_.jpg



2nd Rewatch...David O Russell's masterpiece is a blistering and funny look at the relationship that develops between two very broken people. Bradley Cooper plays Pat, who has just spent eight months in a mental institution, after a meltdown he suffered after catching his wife, Nikki, in the shower with another man. With the aid of his mom (Jackie Weaver), Pat gets released against medical advice and has decided on a singular mission to get his ex-wife, Nikki back. Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a friend of Nikki's sister and asks for her help in getting a letter to Nikki. Tiffany agrees to help Pat if he will be her partner in a dance competition. Russell's sizzling screenplay is the real star here and it is served by a spectacular cast. Jennifer Lawrence won the Oscar for Best Actress for her explosive Tiffany, but in my opinion, it is Cooper's tortured angry Pat that dominates the proceedings. This is the first movie where Cooper displayed serious acting chops in a heartbreaking performance that should have won him the Oscar as well. Shout out to Robert De Niro, whose sensitive turn as Pat's dad earned him a supporting actor nomination. That scene in the diner and Pat and Tiffany's dance at the end of the film linger with you long after the credits roll. This movie gets better with each viewing.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/UE4AA...J/s-l1200.webp



1st Rewatch...After this watch, this film feels like a serious missed opportunity. A pumped up Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who also wrote and directed the film) plays a serial womanizer who thinks he's God's gift to women and thinks he can treat women anyway he wants to because he goes to church every Sunday and goes to confession being honest about it. This guy also has a serious addiction to porn that he has no control over. He is observed having sex with a woman and when they're done, getting out of bed and going straight to his computer. This film could have been something really special, a bold character study about an addiction that has never really been addressed onscreen with any depth. We get a hint at what this film could have been during the scenes where the guy goes to confession, the strongest scenes in the film, but Levitt's screenplay always backs off just as it seems to approach the subject matter in a way that would benefit him and elicit sympathy from the viewer, which it does not. The central character is a sexual arrogant jerk who it's hard to like. The most likable element of the film is the performance by Oscar winner Julianne Moore as a flighty widow who he gets involved with.

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-yzgo...669356.jpg?c=2

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

This is a film that somehow slipped under my radar back in the day. It is a fairly dark and somber crime thriller. It opens with a chilling scene as we see these three criminals: Ray (Billy Bob Thornton), Pluto (Michael Beach), and Fantasia (Cynda Williams) murder six innocent people. But then it just lets things simmer as they head out to Star City to the inevitable clash with Dixon and the police.

There are numerous positives here. From the way the film draws you in with this story about this charismatic cop that craves to be a hero to Carl Franklin's confident direction and pace as he builds up the tension around this inevitable confrontation. This is helped by solid performances from pretty much everyone involved. Thornton, Beach, Williams. But as is usual in any film he's in, Paxton is the scene stealer as he adds layers to this character, beyond all the enthusiastic "happy pup" hollers he gives now that he feels like a "real cop".

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Teenagers from Outer Space - 14,000 dollars. I don't think that even qualifies as a shoestring budget. But writer/director/editor/producer Tom Graeff persevered. And brought us this z grade scifi offering from 1959. Z as in the overall costs because even though the results are readily apparent onscreen and the acting is about what you'd think it's surprisingly entertaining. Not shockingly entertaining mind you but it doesn't bore you. I didn't check my watch once during it's 86 minute runtime. I did wonder how much time was left but I never checked and that has to count for something. I thought the credits started out on a bit of an odd note with "Tom Graeff presents David Love in" and then the actual title but according to IMDb Graeff made this as a vehicle for his boyfriend Love.

The movie starts out at an observatory where a guy spots a "screw shaped craft." After landing by literally screwing itself into the earth (and maybe smoking a cigarette) the tiny clown car of a ship starts disgorging several of its occupants, none of whom look remotely like teenagers. They're here to scout Earth as a potential home in which to raise their food supply, a Gargon, which looks a lot like a superimposed lobster. They plan on leaving the vicious, man-eating creatures somewhere they can procreate and grow to an enormous size and then return to harvest them safely. One of the spacemen, Derek, is understandably squeamish about this. When his shipmate Thor opens fire with his disintegrator raygun and turns a dog into a pile of bones Derek finds the tags and realizes that Earth is not only populated but that the species is advanced. Being the iconoclast he runs off to find the dead dogs owner while the overachieving Thor blasts away with his raygun. Derek finds the address and makes the acquaintance of Betty Morgan and her grandfather. The rest of the movie involves Thor hunting down Derek while making liberal use of an itchy trigger finger.

Whoever this guy Graeff was he did as commendable a job of cranking out a lowest of budgets scifi movie as anyone could ask. His sweetly naive message of empathy and of belonging may be hard to discern given it's mode of presentation but it still somehow comes through. It's like the little engine that could of 50's schlock scifi.

70/100


Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory - The title says it all. It's an obviously foreign made affair but attempts to pass itself of as taking place somewhere in the United States. The dialogue is obviously dubbed in with differing characters exhibiting noticeably different rhythms and cadence. It's an Italian production with one participant describing it as a chaotic set with four different languages being spoken. It has sort of a giallo vibe to it and opens with one of the girls at a reformatory school sneaking away to meet her older lover. She's followed and attacked by a snarling creature. The wounds on her body suggest that she was killed by wolves but there's plenty of suspects to choose from. The new science teacher who left his old job under a cloud of scandal, the headmaster and his wife and then there's the caretaker who's sort of a bargain basement Peter Lorre. There's plenty of secrets alluded to as well blackmail and illicit affairs. If you can look past the luridly silly title there is a mystery of sorts to be solved. All taking place within that distinctly European vibe which somehow makes it a bit more palatable. It's still not enough to recommend it although it might serve as a conversation starter if you should name drop the title.

40/100

The Gorgon - Hammer time. Again. I thought I had seen this one and I kinda sorta had. But it had been so long that I conflated it with another Hammer offering, The Reptile. This particular Hammer however costarred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and those three names are as close to a gold standard in the suspense/horror genre as there is. People are dying in the village of Vandorf in 1910 Germany. The authorities and local doctor are engaged in a coverup of sorts. the victims have all been turned to stone which you would think merits a second look. A young artist is found hanged and his death ruled a suicide. He's also blamed for the latest bizarre murder. His grieving father comes into town and starts digging around. When he meets the same fate his other son also travels to Vandorf looking for answers.

Cushing plays Dr. Namaroff, the resident alienist at the local mental asylum. Barbara Shelley plays his assistant Carla and Lee is Professor Karl Meister of Leipzig University. They gift Lee with the role of heroic curmudgeon and he turns in his usual peerless performance. Cushing does the grunt work and Shelley is there as the object of desire/wild card. It's Hammer so it's definitely worth watching.

75/100

From the Earth to the Moon - Got all confused from the get-go with this one. I thought I had seen it before but turns out I had only watched the first 20 or so minutes. Then I had also mistaken it for First Men in the Moon, an all around superior film. In this one Joseph Cotten and George Sanders play Victor Barbicane and Stuyvesant Nicholl, competing inventors and manufacturers. The Civil War has just ended with Sanders side on the losing end and Cotten has just invented Power X, the most powerful explosive know to man. Sanders is the more religious one and considers the rapacious Barbicane a danger to humanity. They make a bet and when Barbicane's explosive projectile not only disintegrates Nicholl's armor but the entire hill behind it it also inadvertently fuses the armor into a ceramic.

Barbicane, knowing he could never test it on earth, had been toying with the idea of launching an explosive projectile at the moon to show people the true enormity of it's power. But with the danger of re-entering Earth's atmosphere now solved he decides to make it a manned flight and, appealing to the other man's scientific curiosity, talks Nicholl into helping him. Nicholl however, consumed by equal parts jealousy and religious fervor, has his own agenda. The two men, along with Barbicane's assistant and Nicholl's stowaway daughter, succeed in launching themselves at the moon.

This is when the movie veers away from what I thought it would be. The rest of the plot more closely resembled something like Apollo 13 with the four passengers having to deal with Nicholl's attempt at sabotage. RKO studios, which was producing the film, was in the process of going belly up with the once healthy budget for the project having dried up. The script had originally included them landing on the moon but it was scrapped, resulting in a largely static and talky third act. Viewers are left scratching their heads and trying to find some kind of reason to keep caring.

50/100

The Monster of Piedras Blancas - Serviceable creature feature from 1959 with a lot of recognizable faces. Mostly character actors that fans of shows like Andy Griffith will spot right away. The young heroine didn't look familiar at all but her doe eyed costar also starred in The Giant Gila Monster. There's a lighthouse and a surly sort of a lighthouse keeper with a comely daughter. Then all these decrapitated bodies start turning up. Like most of these types of movies the actual monster of the title doesn't fully materialize until the third reel. His shadow and lower extremities are seen skulking around and he's basically a Creature from the Black Lagoon knockoff. When he finally has his coming out party he kind of resembled one of those half boar/half lizard guards from Jabba the Hutts palace. The budget was low but the acting respectable. Everyone came off as sincere in their efforts and that earns points no matter what the genre.

It was surprisingly explicit for a late 50's movie in showing it's body count. Severed heads not usually being featured for a few years. 71 minutes long and there were some lulls but all in all not bad.

65/100

Flanders (2006)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ers_poster.jpg
Back in the day I rented this from our local library - them were the days! A story about gritty existential ennui which seems to haunt Dumont's films. Here, loose friends have fraternity and sexual relationships to a backdrop of dull agricultural work and little ambition. 2 get called away to an un-named middle eastern country to fight, and ultimately see and partake in atrocities. That and their joint "conquest" back home changes their lives forever. This film is not for everyone and can be taciturn. I like Dumont's style (Humanite and La vie de Jesus) and this was a return to form after the frankly laughable Twentynine Palms. I havent watched any of his films since Hors Satan simply as they sound dull. Flanders is good though.

Crikey.

The talent being portrayed in this rags-to-riches biopic is unknown to me; however talented they are, however, they probably deserved a better movie than this, which just about follows every beat you know by heart and dutifully checks every cliche in the book.

Having said that, the cast really seems to give it their all and I particularly enjoyed watching Terry O'Quinn back on the big screen again, doing a fairly good Australian accent (not sure if actual Aussie viewers would agree, of course!)




David Leitch has probably failed to live up to the expectations he might once have raised as a director, but he's probably not likely to end up in director's jail - at least for now!

While not the best action director around, found a niche with action movies that are thoroughly mediocre but not totally awful and which somehow still have enough power to attract a decent amount of moviegoers.

His latest film coasts along largely on the charisma of its stars, and the impressive team of stunt performers who, well, finally get to make a movie that's all about their craft... while at the same time suggesting they don't get to hang out with the best people around.

The movie is enough to satisfy very modest expectations, albeit barely... as for fans of the original show....

I don't get to hear many that can entirely convince me (I only managed a small sample of O'Quinn's in that film, so I won't judge his too harshly yet.) The one I thought was really exceptional was from Caleb Landry Jones in Nitram - and he had to pull that off in a lead role. I was really impressed with it, and I've been moving around awkwardly in my seat for my entire life watching non-Aussie actors give it a go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xde3WA__lQ

Piercing (2018)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ing_poster.png
Quirky adaptation of a book where a man meticulously plans the perfect murder. Things do not go as planned though. 2 good performances and a fair amount of jumps. Lashed with black humour this fair zinged past which I didn't expect after reading the blurb. Wasikowska and Christopher Abbott both do great jobs with the latter seeming to specialise in this type of role. A few of the drug-induced scenes are a bit hard to fathom but this is good.

Unfrosted (2024) Featuring a sweet cast, Unfrosted is deliciously silly and goofy goodness. The dialogue is ridiculous and the story is zany fun, frosted with tasty performances, including two of the most surprising and unlikely cameos you could imagine. I laughed and had a good time. Unfrosted may not be cinematically nutritious, but it is a light and enjoyable treat.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...pg_UX1000_.jpg



1st Rewatch...Fans of Terms of Endearment will have a head start on this dark and loopy comedy drama about a woman named Terry (Joan Allen) who is consumed with anger over the fact that her husband left the country with another woman and is taking it out on everyone in her orbit, including her husband's best friend (Kevin Costner), an ex-baseball player who now has his own radio show and her four daughters (Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt, Evan Rachel Wood). The screenplay by Mike Binder (who also directed) is unapologetic in its political incorrectness and unpredictability and just when you think it's about to wrap itself up in a neat little bow, there's a 11:00 reveal that we never see coming. Joan Allen was totally robbed of an Oscar nomination for her ferocious performance as the angry and unforgiving Terry who just can't get past her husband's betrayal and Costner effectively channels Jack Nicholson in his breezy ex-athlete. Director and writer Binder also wrote a juicy part for himself as Costner's boss who falls for Christensen, a role that reminded me a lot of Flap in Terms of Endearment. Trivia note: Wood's wanna be boyfriend is played by Erika Christensen's real life younger brother. This is explosive, sad, and funny entertainment from beginning to end, thanks primarily to Binder's work behind the camera and the divine Joan Allen in front.

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

1st Rewatch...I love Tina and Amy but this movie is just a hot mess. They play Kate and Maura Ellis, sisters who are informed by their parents that they are planning to sell the Florida home they grew up in, so they travel to Florida so that they can throw a wild party to say goodbye to their childhood home and so that Maura can have sex in her childhood bedroom. First of all, Tina and Amy are playing the wrong roles and too much of this film appears improvised, but nothing like the quality of Curb Your Enthusiasm improvisation. The scenes before the party are deadly dull and the actual party starts off OK, but just gets more stupid as it progresses. Most of Tina and Amy's SNL and showbiz pals agreed to appear, mostly in thankless roles, though Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, and Jon Cena do manage to garner some laughs and I LOVED James Brolin and Dianne Wiest as the girls' parents, but his movie is silly and pointless, made even worse by an almost two-hour running time. James Brolin looks amazing.

Love this movie.

Landry Jones made this movie.

Interesting story line. Good movie once one gets used to Scanlan as a Muslim.



Quirky little British movie about teens on vacation in Europe. A lot of drinking. :eek:

I agree, it was really poor.

https://louisck.com/cdn/shop/files/D...g?v=1706126837

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Although not a "popular" film per se, Safe in Hell is one of the most notable Pre-Code films. These were films released between the establishment of the Hays censorship code in 1930 and its enforcement in 1934. These films were notable for pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in Hollywood in terms of nudity, drugs, murder, as well as other themes and topics that were deemed forbidden in films.

Mackaill does a pretty good job in transmitting that confidence and empowerment of her character mixed with the ever-growing despair and defeat that befalls on her. The rest of the island cast also does a good job in showing the immorality and decay of their characters. The portrayals are one-dimensional and might even seem cartoonish, but they do the job that the film asks from them.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man - I had never seen this 1943 Universal monster classic which chronologically takes place 4 years after 1941's The Wolf Man. As it opens two grave robbers break into the Talbot family mausoleum where


There were changes made to the film following negative test screenings which sort of muddies the water but it still plays out as one would expect with the two iconic monsters going toe to toe. The setup takes awhile but when it finally goes down it happens fast. The villagers don't even get the chance to assemble the usual flaming-torches-and-pitchforks wielding mob. This might not be near the top as far as classic Universal creature features go but it's a fun watch just the same.

70/100

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

The Boys in the Boat (2023)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...A6T95HELIF.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

i loved the gore and blood and shooting scenes and loved michelle dockery shes one of my favorite people, loved bill skarsgard he did really good and loved famke janssen shes one of my favorite people aswell and on marvel aswell.
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...7b5Frgqzth.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...our_poster.jpg



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

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...EEo1UxvjaS.jpg

Encanto - 2021

Friday night movie with the family. Kids loved it, me and the wife, not so much.

Kiss of the Vampire (Kiss of Evil) - 1963 Hammer offering that I had never seen nor heard of. It was just dissimilar enough from other Hammer productions to make it memorable while still not being as good.

There's a promising opening with a funeral procession interrupted by the arrival of a lone figure who blesses the grave and then pierces the coffin with a shovel. An unearthly shriek and blood flowing from the staked coffin causes everyone to bolt and run away in terror which I found unintentionally funny. Cue the opening credits followed by a young honeymooning couple, Gerald and Marianne Harcourt, who run out of petrol somewhere in turn of the century Bavaria. They're forced to take shelter in a mostly unoccupied Inn where the troubled owners are quite obviously harboring a dark secret. Obvious to everyone but the unwitting honeymooners. They fall firmly under the clueless travelers trope of most horror movies. A letter comes for them from wealthy area resident Dr. Ravna. He invites them to his chateau for dinner and, with some dubious encouragement from innkeeper Bruno, accept. The couples obliviousness continues unabated as Dr. Ravna pays the young wife an unhealthy amount of attention. He introduces them to his daughter and piano playing son who spellbinds Marianne with his own composition.

You can see how it's going to play out and this was actually meant to be the third of the Hammer Dracula films. But after the usual delays the script had jettisoned the character but retained some of the plot details from the second installment 1960's The Brides of Dracula. There were also parts of the plot from the 1950 thriller Too Long at the Fair. The Harcourts are invited to an opulent party at Ravna's chateau which is the pretense for some cultlike skullduggery. The husband is gaslighted while the wife seemingly disappears. It takes the intervention of the lone figure at the cemetery who turns out to be a Professor Zimmer. He's turned to alcohol to mitigate the pain of having lost his own daughter in much the same fashion.

Director Don Sharp was quoted as saying he'd never seen a horrror movie so he tried going the suspense route which IMO only served to undercut the overall atmosphere that was Hammer's stock in trade. He shouldn't have tampered with a winning formula. It's a well turned out thriller but there's a certain something missing which gave Hammer films an undefined cachet.

70/100

Eraser (1996)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...vwjK8juXaI.jpg

You're a lover, not a fighter

Strawberry Mansion -

With all due respect to writers/directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney and their imaginations, this isn't far off from what would happen if David Lynch and Wes Anderson collaborated, with perhaps David Cronenberg along for the ride as a consultant. It posits a sadly believable future in which the powers at be have access to one of our last refuges: our dream lives. In our dream taxman hero, Preble (Audley), we have a fitting Winston Smith for our times: a person who values his dream life more than the next guy, but who has resigned himself to working for those who treat them as just another source of revenue. That brings us to his "dream auditee," Bella (Fuller), who seems just as out of place in our current lonely world as she does in the movie's speculative 2030s: someone who wants to share her dreams with someone else. Their resulting adventure is equal parts whimsical, funny and frightening.

If you're also a fan of movies like Pi and Brazil that rely on obscure and/or obsolete technology, this will be right up your alley. From VHS tapes to the hilariously unwieldy wearable tech Audley and Bella use to interact with the dream world, you can cut the ingenuity with a knife. The same could be said of the dream world itself, which has colors, odds, and ends recalling those in Wes Anderson movies, but that have their own personality and are thankfully not too precious. Audley, Fuller and Glowicki as the younger, dream world Bella are endearing, but it's Phillip's Buddy, a frequently occurring, uh...buddy in Preble's dreams who steals the show. Speaking of, as insidious as dream taxes seem, Audley and Birney manage to devise an evil that's much worse.

In a world where the powers that be gain more and more control of the images we feed our eyes, whether it's what we want to see or what we have to sit through, it begs the question if our imaginations can remain pure or produce anything original anymore. At this point, we can at least be thankful that a movie that's not only like this, but also stands up to those powers slipped through the cracks. If my mentions of other filmmakers who likely inspired it are of any indication, as clever as it is, it’s hardly the most original movie ever made. Even so, its timeliness, personality, boldness as well as its delightfully odd sense of humor make up for it. If you need a reminder that there is value in our dreams and in trying to remember them, this movie will provide it. Just don't be surprised if a saxophone-playing frog waiter makes his way into them afterwards.

The Fall Guy (2024)


Pretty much what you expect. Could it have been wittier? Yes. Was it still a moderately amusing popcorn movie? Yes.

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...chmentid=98852

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

This is a good old fashioned entertaining monster movie. It holds one’s attention from beginning to end. And what’s surprising is that virtually everyone who sees the picture knows what to expect, and eagerly anticipates it, despite there being 36 previous Godzilla films. We know we are going to see a gargantuan monster who causes catastrophic urban damage, and will likely not be completely eradicated in the end.

Much has been made of the picture’s minuscule budget, with reports in the neighborhood of $10-15 Million (easily one-tenth of a similar U.S. picture’s cost). And that is eyebrow raising. But it’s even more impressive that one man, Takashi Yamazaki, wrote, directed, and did the visual effects for the film. And all three were facets were first rate.

What differs from the movies of this type that we’ve become accustomed to is that there is a basic human story, both along with, and undergirding the abundant monster scenes. At the end of 1945 a kamikaze pilot returns his troubled airplane to base on a Japanese island. That night Godzilla surfaces and attacks the island. The pilot is tasked with trying to destroy the monster by use of his airplane’s powerful machine guns, but the pilot freezes up, cannot pull the trigger, and is subsequently knocked unconscious. Only one other soldier survives the attack.

When the pilot returns home, he discovers that his parents and most people he knew were killed in the bombing of Tokyo. There is devastation everywhere. He comes across a new widow with a baby, who he commences to protect and provide for. The carnage he sees, along with his previous experience on the island gives him the incentive to be determined to help destroy the monster. The story develops along those lines which provide the settings for some impressive and frightening monster attacks.

Most of the dialogue, along with the actions of the main characters, seemed emotionally overly exaggerated, which often seems typical in movies featuring Japanese culture. In fact for a moment I thought that the picture might be a spoof, satirizing that aspect of the style. But it’s not. The picture simply seems patterned after 1950’s monster movies, and to good effect.

I kept thinking that the story’s premise was adding insult to injury, given that Japan was beaten to a pulp during WWII. Then I realized that was probably what the title was referring to: nothing, and then some. Japan couldn’t have been lower, then Godzilla showed up and made it even worse!

It was the first Godzilla picture in history to be nominated for, and win, an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, as well as the first non-English language film to win it. So the great special effects will wow you, but you might find yourself fascinated by the side story as well.

Doc’s rating: 7/10

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Burn! (1969)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...zav4wyxqme.jpg

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Pretty Woman (1990)



https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/...sI1W9ByOXx.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...0NjEy._V1_.jpg



1st Rewatch...What if upon completing your education to become a surgeon, you learned that one prerequisite is that for every patient you lose on the operating table, you will lose a member of your own family? That is the disturbing premise of this creepy psychological thriller from director and co-screenwriter Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things). The film stars Colin Farrell as Dr. Stephen Murphy, an arrogant and brilliant surgeon who has been secretly maintaining a relationship with a young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan), whose father was in a car accident but Murphy was unable to save his life through surgery. One day, Martin quietly announces to Dr. Murphy that, because of his father's death, the doctor's two children and wife will all die. Before the halfway point of the film and without Maritn laying a hand on them, Murphy's son and daughter are in the hospital and unable to walk. Lanthimos' direction here is a master class in the craft. The look of the film is breathtaking, featuring an antiseptic canvas upon which the story unfolds. I also love the way a large portion of the film is shot from long distances, purposely distancing the viewer from what's happening while piquing curiosity. We're never provided an explanation for what's happening and the ending doesn't draw any conclusions, but we are still riveted up to this point. I don't think Colin Farrell has ever been better as the good doctor and Nicole Kidman offers another of her icy performances as his wife. Barry Keoghan was robbed of a supporting actor nomination for his enigmatic Martin. Not for all tastes and I don't understand a lot of what happens here, but I find it oddly riveting.

Stahl, 1945



https://www.alternateending.com/wp-c...kDoL09H7jX.jpg

Yikes. Very chilling stuff in this classic color noir. One of the most evil femme fatales ever put to screen. This film at first presents itself as a cheery sort of oil painting come to life, with rich landscapes and likable main characters, only to completely subvert its opening acts with some really nasty stuff. As I watched, I wondered if the film had been nominated for an Academy award for its sumptuous cinematography; turns it it was nominated, and ended up winning the award that year, along with a few others. I watched this in a continuing effort to rectify my noir lists. Superb film.


Maxwell, 1980



https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...5MzY@._V1_.jpg

Early 80s coming of age flick starring several of the big name teen stars of the time. I recall this film being the subject of many whispered, wide-eyed conversations back when I was in 5th or 6th grade, as all the girls had heard about a film that featured a clandestine contest at a summer camp that had two girls competing with each other to see who could lose their virginity first. I presume this was aimed at a high school audience as a sort of reaction to the years of free love that had kicked off in the late sixties - a sort of cautionary tale for teens.

At the time, I am sure it may have saved a few girls from the heartbreak and embarrassment of giving it up too early to some dumb guy on a dirt bike, but today this thing plays out as a misguided and at times pervy and exploitative exercise with a bizarre blend of tones that don't mix well. In the end, it all ends up as expected with the obligatory moral messaging. The actors are fine, especially McNicol, but this would rank in the bottom tier of coming of age flicks for me.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._DpWeblab_.jpg


1st Rewatch...This inventive, imaginative, and often moving comedy drama tackles some familiar cinematic territory with some new storytelling techniques we don't see coming. The "Me" in the title is Greg, a smart and likable high school teenager who has managed to get through the first three years of high school relatively unscathed by becoming mildly acquainted with all of the different high school cliques. His senior year is turned upside down when his mother forces him to spend time with a classmate named Rachel, with whom Greg is barely acquainted, but has now been diagnosed with leukemia. Greg and his BFF Earl also make spoofs of classic movies with titles like "A Box of Lips Now", "Death In Tennis", and "Gross Encounters of the Turd Kind", which motivate a girlfriend of Rachel's to ask Greg to make a movie for her. This movie is stupid with imagination, especially in the creation of Greg and Earl's movies, which are an ingenious combination of live action and clay-mation. Usually movies where a lead character is dying, there are expected scenes that we just expect and none of them happen here. I also like the fact that it's not a love story...Greg and Rachel don't fall in love with each other, they fight for each other. The film also features the best narration for a movie since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. A richly entertaining movie experience that offers hope and constant surprises.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...1000_QL80_.jpg


2nd Rewatch...Will Ferrell really scores here, playing one of his most likable characters who he really puts through the wringer. Farrell plays Brad Whitaker, a radio executive who works harder than any man on the planet at being the best stepfather he can to his new wife's son and daughter. Just when it looks like Brad might be finally be making some inroads with his stepchildren, their real dad, Dusty (Mark Wahlberg), shows up out of nowhere on a mission to get his family back. with clueless wife, Sarah (Linda Cardellini) not really putting up a fight to stop him. And that's the part of this movie that really pisses me off. They expect the viewer to except that Sarah as no idea what Dusty is doing and by the halfway point, just completely stops supporting Brad and all the work he has put into being a real father figure to her kids. It is fun watching Wahlberg as the genuine villain of the piece, but he gets away with WAY too much before he finally gets what's coming to him. Ferrell shines in the Christmas in April scene and his drunken speech at the basketball game. I also love the scenes of Ferrell and Wahlberg badmouthing each other to the kids via bedtime stories. Though it takes too long to get to the happy ending, there are laughs here and Ferrell and Wahlberg work really well together.

Not sure why Sydney chose this movie. She can do anything.



Re-watch. Good movie though some lost in translation.

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Lenny (1974)



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

Everyone already knows TPM is back in theaters, for a limited time, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its release. But few people have commented, apparently, on the disappointing lack of PLF support for this VFX extravaganza.
It's a bit of a disappointment because there's probably a lot of fans who might have enjoyed the opportunity to watch it in IMAX or Dolby Cinema, but for the most part those screens were saved for the box-office disappointment that is The Fall Guy.
The happy exception to this was that TPM is now the first of the original 6 SW movies to have secured a release in the exhilarating 4DX format, the one with the shaking seats, splashes of water, and gusts of air all competing for your attention.
As such, I'm happy to report that the 4DX version of the movie does not disappoint at all. On the contrary, it's one of the most sublime merging of technologies that the new format (all but unheard of in 1999) has allowed... and gives some of us the hope that the rest of the "classic" SW movies will eventually receive the 4DX treatment.
Particularly exciting in the 4DX version is, of course, the podrace sequence - which all but shakes you out of your seat... but, really, nearly every action sequence benefits considerably, and even the opening scroll suddenly feels more exciting.



Dragons are, of course, a source of never-ending fascination for animators, and for good reason.
This Spanish-Chinese collaboration, currently receiving a very small release in some U.S. cities, is the kind of movie that should really delight audiences of all ages - but is especially exciting for animation buffs.
As you can imagine, the version that's being shown in American theaters is English-dubbed, and that's just a very small quibble because the animation here is really enchanting, without going so far overboard trying to provide visual "dazzle" in the way that U.S. animation typically does.
What's left is a very solid and touching story, told eloquently, using an exquisite palette, with a marvelous protagonist and a great supporting cast.


While it would be unlikely for a generic-sounding title like this to become a critics' darling, it might nonetheless be the best (or the least terrible) of all the studio-released horror movies so far this year.
Don't get me wrong - it's just as predictable and by-the-numbers as the overwhelming majority of horror movies these days. But, given all the genre conventions and limitations, this one at least feels like it's trying to have some fun with it, which sadly couldn't be said of most of its studio-released cinematic brethren.

I saw Phoenix mention this Netflix true crime documentary in this thread. My wife and I always watch shows like 20/20 and 48 Hours so this was right up our alley. We watch so many of these that we can quickly see where they're going but that doesn't hurt our enjoyment at all. This particular story features an especially crazy person and unfortunately some not so uncommon shoddy police work in the beginning. If this is your thing then it's a good watch.

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

Just finished Sleuth and absolutely adored it. A movie about two people only is NOT by cup of tea, but the complexity and sarcasm-turned-demented psycho-game is an incredible thematic exploration of what hiding a murder can do to a person's emotional state. I've only seen two Mankiewicz, but this is my favorite of them.

Boy Kills World


Better than I expected. A funny, ultraviolent take on dystopian revenge thrillers, with an amazing physical performance from Skarsgard, and hilarious inner monologue provided by H. Jon Benjamin.


👍

Re: Rate The Last Movie You Saw
 

amazing horror movie i loved it
https://www.monsterfest.com.au/monst...2-700x1038.jpg

Ellen Dorrit Petersen plays the character Ingrid, who has lost her sight, is bored, lonely and stays in her apartment listening to music and writing a playful book. Her thoughts on the other people that live in her apartment block play out on screen and they range from paranoid to sexually charged.

I think this film might be brilliant. It blurs the line between reality and fiction in a well used trope about a writer, but does so in such a clever way that the viewer doesn't really understand how it's all connected until about 50 minutes into the film. Well I didn't anyway.

Director Eskil Vogt (The Innocents) wrote Joachim Trier's Oslo trilogy and 'Blind' was his debut film in 2014. It deserves to be far more widely seen.

Nice to see some love for this movie...I think I liked it a little more than you did...a link to my review:

https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/1365820-lenny.html

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...3OTE@._V1_.jpg


3rd Rewatch...The 2016 Best Picture Winner seems to improve with each rewatch. And the final 20 minutes of this movie are the best final 20 minutes of any movie ever.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...4MDA@._V1_.jpg


1st Rewatch...This gritty look at a Florida welfare motel attempts to shed a light on part of our society that we would like to think doesn't really exist; unfortunately, it sugarcoats a lot of issues and overlooks some completely. This second watch revealed this movie to be a real missed opportunity to say some important things.

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



Umpteenth Rewatch...My favorite Adam Sandler movie. This remake of the Gary Cooper classic Mr Deeds Goes to Town has Sandler playing the only living relative of a media billionaire, from whom Deeds has inherited 40 billion dollars. This big budget comedy suffers a bit from an overstuffed screenplay that tries to cover a little too much territory. Sandler's character is sometimes a little too good to be true, but Winona Ryder is one of Sandler's best leading ladies and Peter Gallagher is a perfect mustache-twirling comic villain. John Turturro, Jared Harris, and Conchata Ferrell also make the most of their screentime, but this is Sandler's show and he appears to be having a ball.

The Undying Monster - This 1942 suspense/horror thriller sounded interesting and I thought I had heard of it before but it wasn't the film I was thinking of. It borrows heavily (which might be too polite a term to use) from The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Wolfman. The once aristocratic Hammond family has fallen on hard times. That means they still have their ginormous and spooky old seaside mansion complete with a creaky old family retainer and two housemaids. But there's supposedly a family curse that has claimed the lives of past male heirs (I'm surprised the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never took legal action).

One night there's an unearthly howling from the secluded cliffside path near the mansion. Helga Hammond goes out in search of her brother Oliver but not without Walton the butler first warning her about the curse and reciting the actual curse that seems lifted directly from The Wolfman. Her brother and a local nurse have been attacked and his dog torn apart by an unknown wild beast.

Enter Scotland Yard who sends their two best forensic detectives. There are some interesting moments in a "dark old house" sort of vein but there are also distractions like a male lead who recites his dialogue as if he's standing at a radio microphone instead of in front of a movie camera. I also thought the ending came off a bit perfunctory mostly because it lacked a commensurate setup. This was knocked together using elements from two better films and it shows.

40/100

https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-conte...RE-750x400.jpg

A one-eyed warrior escapes from his pagan captors and sets out on a journey to the Holy Land with a group of Christian Norsemen. They get lost and somehow end up in what I always assumed was North America. There's an uber-violent first act followed by five other chapters which compose a sort of Heart-of-Darkness journey. Star Mads Mikkelsen doesn't utter a single line of dialogue as the mute warrior One-Eye and there's only 120 or so lines in the entire movie. There are plenty of shots of brooding, eventually penitent individuals. Maybe too many for some people. But if you take it as a whole and sync up with what Refn is saying you'll find it an edifying enough experience.

75/100

I agree. The '72 film is a semi masterpiece with phenomenal acting by Olivier and Caine. Some of it still sticks with me after all those years.

Sleuth (1972) > Sleuth (2007)

I quite liked it too, I think there is a lot of symbolic shite in it but if you overlook that and some cruddy (stiff) acting it's a good story. The boat journey is just rubbish though, they set off from Sutherland in a relatively small and poorly equipped vessel and land in the States within a week? The combination of realism and mysticism worked for me but that was just one step too far.

The Fall Guy -

If you miss seeing Shane Black's name in the credits as much as I do, this movie provides the next best thing. Like his best work, this one has a quality whodunit plot and just the right blend of action and laughs. Ryan Gosling proves he is adept at bringing the latter two as much as he does in Black's The Nice Guys. Emily Blunt's film director and former flame isn't exactly a "trademark unwitting partner" you find in his movies, but what's important is that she and Gosling play off of each other so well that she might as well be one, not to mention maintain lots of sweet "will they or won't they" tension. You're probably tired of the Shane Black comparisons at this point, but I'll praise one more thing about this movie that reminds me why I like his work so much and that's grit. If the slick, friction-free and CGI-laden action in the typical blockbuster lately has dulled your interest in this genre, this one will restore it. From all the vehicular destruction to the opening stunt in the title to the clips of the desert sci-fi epic movie within the movie you'll wish was real, it made me realize how much large-scale action I've reacted to with passive indifference in this young century. On top of that, it's at the kind of huge, Christopher Nolan-like scale that makes seeing it in a theater ideal. There's all this and Hannah Waddingham's delightfully smug and over-confident producer and the movie star Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays, an actor I'm normally not a fan of, but I like him here for how he pokes fun at his persona.

Are there producers, directors and movie stars who work as hard as stuntpeople? Sure, but they don't have to put their lives on the line nearly as much, or take...well, I'll just say that if you suspect that there's a double meaning in the title, you may be on to something. If there's anything I didn't love about the movie, it's that it suffers a bit from what other blockbusters suffer from lately and that's bloat. The grand finale in particular, while fun, overstays its welcome. Other than that, I still encourage Shane Black fans or anyone else hungry for quality popcorn entertainment to see it in a theater while they can. Oh, and you may also have been unaware that this was based on a TV series until very recently, but I encourage you to keep watching after the end credits anyway.

Even if they had landed in Newfoundland they were still becalmed for most of their trip. You also have to explain away them not eating for so long. It's easier to just fall back on the old purgatory trope. There is a lot of talk of sin and expiation.