Rate The Last Movie You Saw

TBH I was pretty harsh in that rating, it's not a bad film but just a bit jaunty and "cake-cutter" British drama. The story of Bert Trautmann is incredible as you say.

Set in a local private school, Casi Casi follows Emilio (Mario Pabón), a troublesome but shy kid that decides to run for Student Council in order to impress Jacklynne (Maité Canto), the most popular girl in school. However, he realizes late that Jacklynne herself is running as well. As he unwittingly starts to gain popularity, Emilio recruits his group of friends to sabotage the results to make sure he loses so he can win Jacklynne's heart, all while evading the strict Principal Richardson (Marian Pabón).

I'll start by saying that I had a lot of fun with this. Most of the performances were decent, but what sold it for me was the chemistry between the six main friends. This is made more impressive considering that most of them weren't professional actors, but regular teenagers. Maybe this is why their banter and interactions felt organic and natural.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 2018

In this collection of six short stories set in the wild west, various characters try to survive and thrive in the hostile frontier. The stories follow a gunslinging singer, an outmatched bank robber, a struggling two-person theater troupe, an old man hunting for gold, a young woman on an Oregon-bound wagon train, and strange mix of travelers in a stagecoach.

This film is a darkly comic mix of largely bleak stories that for the most part does a good job of balancing the grim reality of frontier life with a sense of humor. The sharp writing is well matched by a deep and talented cast.

Tim Blake Nelson starts things off on a high note as the titular Buster Scruggs, a man whose cheery mannerisms belie his deadliness with a six shooter. The segment is over-the-top in its staging, bordering on cartoonish as it goes along.

I thought that the best developed segment was probably "The Gal Who Got Rattled" in which Zoe Kazan plays a young woman who is left to fend for herself on a wagon train heading toward Oregon. She befriends a man (Bill Heck) on the train, but circumstances conspire against their happiness.

Other standouts in the film are Brendan Gleeson and Jonjo O'Neill as a pair of strange bounty hunters and Tom Waits as a man hunting for gold in a beautiful valley.

The film does definitely suffer from a lack of a range of points of view. All of the protagonists are white, and there are only two named women characters. There are indigenous characters, but they play the same role each time they appear, namely to show up and brutally massacre people.

A very entertaining film with an excellent cast.

I added that, but really, there's nothing in my comment that's not in one of the trailers I saw. Given that it was billed as a comedy, I expected at least a few chuckles, but got none of those in the actual movie. I was hoping for something cute and quirky with snappy dialog. I will acknowledge decent cinematography and acting (the only reason I gave it two stars) but nothing in the movie left me with anything other than restless legs and a lot of looks at my watch, even though I had neither caffeine nor alcohol with dinner. IMO, both the town and the characters reminded me of why I don't live in a place like that.

I saw it because I didn't want an action fantasy and nothing else seemed to be interesting, but I will never have those two hours nor the 10 bucks again. The nearly empty theater (an indie-foreign film venue, not a mainstream cineplex) seemed to bear out my opinion since the theater owner put it in the largest auditorium in the 5 screen venue, apparently expecting more ticket sales for this one. Fortunately, it was a busy night downtown, so not all was lost. What little audience there was all seemed to stagger out of the theater, counting their fingers. I wish there HAD been a banshee.

I had no idea who Zoe Kazan was until I saw this film and she had me rushing to the googles immediately.

You spoiled every major plot point of the film.

Every criticism you said is an issue of your own expectations. It’s a drama with dark comedy. Tonally somewhere between a Bergman film and A Serious Man. More similar to McDonagh’s brother’s film Calvary than In Bruges. That said, like A Serious Man and Calvary, it IS funny. Just in a dry, subtle way.

Maybe you should’ve had that drink and chilled out, accepting what the film was actually offering.

As most Coen films, I dug this. I really liked how varied the stories were; starting with the pure slapstick of the opening bit to something as deep and existential as "The Mortal Remains". They all run the gamut.

I also loved how the theme of characters *not* being the "top dog" despite thinking they are runs through almost every segment.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

Story adapted from a book that apparently made a splash. Decent performances all around but a streakiness about the storyline which makes the outcome rather predictable for being a mystery. Not a fan of last minute scooby doo demasking but it doesn't build up enough tension to make the last act that dramatic.

It's a totally personal comment, people can accept or reject it, just my opinion. I guess I'm being at least consistent since my other McDonagh movies were In Bruges and Three Billboards and those were completely lost on me as well. Seeing this one was my "second chance" for this director. I didn't know it was going to be a McDonagh movie, accepted someone else's suggestion, so I went in without much expectation only to find out later that night that it was the Bruges director. Too much talk, no appealing characters and nothing going on that I cared about was my problem. I don't mean to strike any nerves, but it was the movie I saw last night and that was my rating.

It did remind me a bit of a Bergman movie, but having part of my family being Swedish and Irish (I grew up around accents), I know why THEY left. The movie has a distinct parallel to Bergman, except that it seems to me like an Irish sort of angst, something seemed not to be anything like a comedy. Being set during one the troubled periods in Ireland, really struck me with the feeling like how lucky I was that some my ancestors left the places they lived in when they did, or I probably would not be here, since I'm a catalog of Euro places and times that nobody wants to see.

Compliance, 2012

Sandra (Ann Dowd) is the manager of a fast food restaurant, overseeing a busy Friday night. She gets a call from a police officer (Pat Healy) claiming that one of the restaurant's employees, Becky (Dreama Walker) has stolen money from a customer. As the day wears on, the officer demands that that Sandra go to more and more extreme lengths to find the missing money.

Woof.

This is a hard one to watch---sort of a social horror movie where you keep thinking that things won't get worse and then, somehow, they do. I had remembered this incident when it happened, but I had not realized the extend of what happened to the actual young woman on whom Becky is based.

There are plenty of movies that deal with the question of "just following orders". What makes this movie so nightmarish is the way that it shows how someone flexing authority causes people to abandon their own moral compass and fail to stop bad things from happening or render aid to someone who badly needs it.

What is particularly nefarious is the way that the officer creates a sense of urgency and an us vs them mentality where he and Sandra are the responsible adults and Becky is the naughty child who won't do what she's told. When Becky resists being stripped or being left alone naked in a room with a man she barely knows, Sandra berates her for not "cooperating".

Dowd is both sympathetic and infuriating as Sandra, a women who is swamped with work and trying to do "the right thing." About halfway through the film, Bill Camp enters the picture as Van, Sandra's fiance. It's when Van appears that the demands from the officer on the phone take a much more cruel and perverse tone. It's sickening to watch the way that Van tries to please the officer, offering to put the phone on Becky's back so that the officer can hear him hitting Becky to punish her for not cooperating.

Walker is incredibly sympathetic as Becky, who goes from being incredulous to in genuine fear. She is later asked by a police officer why she didn't just say no when asked to do the things she did. But threats of being taken to jail, along with the circumstance of being naked and alone in a back room with a much older man creates a horribly skewed power dynamic. When Becky does protest--and even explicitly ask Sandra for help after Van has sexually assaulted her--she is brushed off.

Ashlie Atkinson and Philip Ettinger are also good as Becky's co-workers who know that what's happening isn't right, but can't quite bring themselves to intervene. When the officer demands that Ettinger's character, Kevin, inspect Becky's naked body, the young man demurs until the officer dismisses him as a "guard" because he is not responsible enough. They are a big part of one of the most surreal aspects of the film, which is that as Becky is enduring the worst day of her life in the back room, her coworkers are frying potatoes and slinging chicken sandwiches.

It's only when the store's handyman (Stephen Payne) arrives and articulates that he will not strip a young woman nude that everyone seems to snap out of the spell. By then, of course, Becky has endured hours of humiliation and abuse.

It's utterly maddening to know that the real life man, a corrections officer named David R. Stewart, who committed this crime (and numerous others like it) was acquitted. Great job, Kentucky.

This is a really hard movie to watch. With about 30 minutes left to go I had sweaty hands and a small headache. At the same time, it's one of those stories you think must be fictional until you realize it isn't at all. It's the kind of movie that makes you wonder at what point you would have hung up the phone or firmly said "no." It's depressing to think that many of us might go further than we'd like to believe.

Yeah, this was a hard watch indeed. The fact that the real guy did it *multiple* times and that, like you said, got away with it only made it worse.

I saw it with my wife without knowing the real life background and I remember telling her halfway through "This is laughable. There's no way this will happen in real life." *scoffs* And then once it finished, we read all about the case and damn.

I had remembered only that a manager had strip-searched an employee.

I assumed, until going to Wikipedia, that the parts where

Yeah, the fact that a lot of what happened in Compliance was based on actual events adds an extra layer to the film.

I should add that, although the whole cast was pretty good, Ann Dowd was just an extra layer of great.

Yeah, she is always amazing. I recently watched the first season of The Leftovers and she's a total standout.

I also appreciate that something shown in Compliance is that even though what happens to Becky originates with an abusive, sexualized desire to victimize a woman, people of all ages and genders are made complicit in what happens.

I think that cruelties or injustices that are aimed at a certain group can start from one place, but people of all demographics can get pulled into enforcing or enabling them.

This movie made me think of something that happened when I was in college. I got a phone call (on my dorm room phone, not my personal phone) asking me to participate in a research study about perspectives on female bodies or something like that. I agreed and answered a few basic demographic questions about myself.

But then the person on the other end--who sounded like a middle-aged woman--told me that the real focus of the study was on how women perceive male perspectives on female bodies.

And then it got weird.

I was told that for the next part of the study I would be listening to another student on campus, and she put me on mute and conferenced some young man into the call. She then proceeded to ask him some really personal questions about his sexual preferences, what he thought about different female bodies, etc. And listening to this young guy answer the questions felt deeply invasive. But, hey, I'd agreed and so had he. (I heard her tell him on the phone that a female classmate would be listening. I could hear that he was surprised by this, but she then quickly swept into asking the questions.).

Anyway, it was very uncomfortable! I definitely started to wonder if this might not be some sort of elaborate prank call. But even though I sort of felt like I was invading someone's privacy, I didn't hang up, and neither did he. Obviously nowhere near what happens in the film, but a good example of how we can suppress our instincts when we are trying to be cooperative.

I don't know about your call, but as far as the film goes, it's the Stanford Experiment angle. I think it has little to do with specific groups (i.e. women) and more with control, and knowing you can do it. I mean...



It's how you can manipulate others just by pretending a certain level of authority. It's even the basic of social engineering, phishing, etc.

You realize McDonagh isn’t trying to make the island, time period and people attractive, right?

Your criticism is like walking into a sushi restaurant and talking about all the ways it isn’t a burger joint.

I don't know.

We might not see

Yeah, you're right.

I recommend The Big Sick and The Exploding Girl. Two of my favorite romantic films.