Rate The Last Movie You Saw

For the same reasons you just stated there, I was very confident at the time that what happens at the end of Fat Girl was going to turn out to be a dream, or fantasy - and was pretty surprised when it turned out not to be.

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Thor: Love and Thunder -

Horseshoe theory but on one end it's The Dark World and on the other end it's this

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Girl in the Picture, 2022

This documentary explores the complex story behind the life and death of a woman called Sharon Marshall who is killed in a hit-and-run. A man who is assumed to be her husband later violently kidnaps the woman's son--a boy named Michael--and the ensuing investigation into the missing child uncovers a heartbreaking series of truths about Sharon's real identity and the identity of the man believed to be her husband.

I was going to watch just a few minutes of this last night and got totally sucked in.

Sometimes a true crime documentary has just one "big moment" that they are building up to and you can kind of sense the filmmakers killing time to stretch out the story until that big reveal. This movie is the opposite. There were so many bombshells that at one point after a certain revelation I paused the movie and saw to my disbelief that there were still 50 minutes left. "What else could possibly be revealed?" I wondered. Boy, the movie sure answered that question!

I can't even talk about reveals from the first 15 minutes without giving away major spoilers, but the story behind Sharon Marshall's life and death is incredibly upsetting. It's a story that involves child abuse, sexual abuse, forced sex work, and a degree of cruelty that was at times hard to take as a viewer. Despite what Sharon went through in her short life---she was only 20 at the time of her death--it speaks volumes the affection that her friends had for her. In one of the most intense sequences in the film, one of Sharon's high school friends describes a sleepover at Sharon's house where she was forced, at gunpoint, to lie on the floor while she listened to Sharon being raped. Speaking plainly, the friend describes not only the trauma of the moment, but the way that it forever changed who she was as a person. She also, equally heartbreaking, explains why she never told anyone what happened.

At the center of the film is a character who is the kind of villain that would seem a bit much if written in a fictional piece. He is truly monstrous. But much of what hurts about this film is the way that different people made choices--often choices that are somewhat sympathetic!--that allowed him to continue to prey on others who were vulnerable. There are also some moments that make you so angry, such as a person seeking mental health treatment who is advised "Go to church, you'll feel better." Later, a character wonders out loud why Sharon didn't speak up and tell someone about the abuse, and you kind of want to put your fist through the screen. Thankfully, there's very little victim blaming to be found here.

I actually really appreciated that in the final act, the documentary really de-centers the villain. A friend of mine recently watched the documentary Stay Sweet, and complained that she felt that the documentary was too enamored of its bad guy, to the point that it was pushing the victims out of the center of the story. Girl in the Picture does the opposite. In the final act, it becomes a celebration of Sharon's life and an examination of how her death impacted the people who knew and loved her. The person who tormented and abused her gets hardly a mention in the last 20 minutes, and good. There wasn't even an after title updating us about him. Is he alive? Dead? Who cares. The film chooses a moment of closure that, rightly, doesn't give him any attention.

I also appreciated the way that the film handled the topic of sex work. A few of the women who were interviewed are Sharon's co-workers from a nude dancing club. A point that's made implicitly is that sex work itself isn't the problem--the problem is when someone decides they have a right to dominate another person. The fact that Sharon (and another woman who was a victim) worked as a nude dancer can be seen in archived news reports as a way to add lurid detail to the story. But the fact is that Sharon was a victim long before she ever walked in the door of the strip club. I liked that the movie didn't implicitly look down on the women who worked as strippers/dancers. One of the saddest thing said in an interview is one of her co-workers (who has her own history of someone treating her unkindly) saying that she believed that Sharon could have been "an amazing survivor" if she'd been able to get away from her abuser.

The content and story are very upsetting, but not without some glimmers of hope. I would highly recommend this documentary.

Well I know it's over decade old at this point, but didn't want to give away too much. Also it's a bit of a Modest Mouse reference

You know I love Catherine's work. We have discussed this.

Still in the dark here, but I guess that's what you want so I'm not going to push it.

They're just saying it's a good movie if you want to see a guy get physically and emotionally brutalized the whole time while referencing the Modest Mouse album title "Good News For People Who Love Bad News."

The Ballad of Cable Hogue - I don't think this 1970 western would have garnered the accolades it has if it hadn't been directed by Sam Peckinpah or followed right on the heels of his grim, uber-violent classic, The Wild Bunch. Without that juxtaposition I think it might have been completely forgotten. I found it to be average at best. But then it does have a winning star performance by Jason Robards. Watching him in this drives home how unrecognized a talent he was. You may not light on his name right off the bat when discussing great performers but once you start thinking about his body of work you quickly come to realize just how strong and consummate an actor he was.

His supporting cast does alright but they're nowhere in his league. I suppose the comedic elements worked as a changeup and, with a big assist from Robards, lent some charm to the proceedings. And I suppose the production team were trying to ape the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with the soundtrack but the theme song was overused. Up to and including an unwelcome duet by Robards and costar Stella Stevens.

Peckinpah considered this his favorite film and his finest achievement. He may have seen parallels with his own life. But, outside of Robards, I was left somewhat underwhelmed.

75/100

I love the Ballad of Cable Hogue and consider it among Peckinpah's best. I think following The Wild Bunch actually had a negative impact on its reputation (as it is usually forgotten among his works) due to it being a relatively bloodless and violence free ordeal.

Dr. Strangelove -

Not my favorite Kubrick film but still quite good. Will need to re-watch at some point.

Punch Drunk Love -

My 4th film I've seen from PTA, and while it's not on the level of Magnolia for me, it's still fantastic!

Tampopo -

Good movie. Not perfect in my eyes (some scenes made me mildly uncomfortable) but it was good fun, and it made me want ramen noodles.



Spirited Away -

Not my favorite Studio Ghibli movie, but I have to say that I appreciate it a little bit more each time I've re-watched it over the years.

Hot Fuzz -

My favorite from the cornetto trilogy.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show -

Still good. I get a lot of David Bowie vibes from this movie and it's soundtrack. (Which is a huge plus!)

Goodfellas, 1990

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is a mobster working several rackets along with partners Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci). As Henry slowly climbs the ladder, he gaces challenges within the crime world and within his marriage to Karen (Lorraine Bracco).

While I really enjoyed this film, I find that I don't have too much to say about it.

The performances are solid from the leads right down to the supporting actors like Debi Mazar as one of Henry's girlfriend's friends. Pesci makes one heck of an impression as Tommy, a guy who trades in joking around but whose own skin is so thin that the merest slight as often as not ends up with someone dead.

Movies about the mafia sometimes make be a bit itchy because they seem to almost worship the idea of mob culture. I thought that this film showed just how nasty and absurd criminality can be. Most of these men are like petulant children, only with a network around them that cushions them against any consequences for their murder and hurt.

The visual storytelling in the film is really masterful, and it's one of those 2 1/2 hour films that goes by in just a flash. The world is wonderfully realized, and one of the strongest things it does (which is a theme explicitly stated by multiple characters) is show how quickly this strange and violent lifestyle becomes normal.

The House That Jack Built (2018)




Good movie

By http://eu.movieposter.com/poster/MPW...ters_Inc_.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=982187

Monsters, Inc - (2001)

Just filling in the last 5 or 6 titles from the recent 2000s countdown I haven't seen. After this I still reckoned on my favourite Pixar film being WALL-E, and I'm really surprised how many of them I've seen now. Some great voice talent in this one though - from Steve Buscemi to James Coburn, John Goodman and Billy Crystal. Quite a lot of genuinely funny visual humour that would go down a treat with the young-uns, and I'd expect this would be one of their all-time favourite movies growing up. Loved that intro.

7.5/10

Mr Right 7/10

The Match Factory Girl, 1990

A young woman named Iris (Kati Outinen) lives in a city in Finland with her mother and stepfather, working days in a match factory and spending her nights unsuccessfully looking for love in nightclubs. The course of Iris's life changes for the worse when she hooks up with a man named Aarne (Vesa Vierikko) she meets in a club.

There are plenty of films that take a stark look at the bleak lives of people who live lives of quiet desperation. The Match Factory Girl takes this premise and then delivers a third act that feels at once like a natural progression of events and a shocking left turn.

This is a film where not using the word "bleak" in every sentence is going to be a real challenge, because good gracious! Everything about the film seems to compound the banal misery of the main character. The news that her parents watch in the background is full of death and tragedy. When she is at the nightclub, the camera looks down on her and her desire to be wanted is painful and palpable. Even when Iris dares to think that things might be looking up, her hopes are clearly so fragile that it's not a matter of if they get smashed, just exactly how.

That third act, though. Wow. I suppose it hits so hard because a woman like Iris is the kind of person who we expect to only turn anger inward at herself. To see it directed outward, and in such a cool yet brutal manner, is astonishing. At the same time, however, what most marks Iris's experiences is a total lack of regard for her health, happiness, and spirit by anyone she crosses paths with, whether they are family or strangers. Maybe turnabout is fair play. (Okay, maybe not quite, but you certainly understand how Iris gets to that point).

The movie starts with a large piece of wood being rendered down to splinters to serve as matchsticks. This brutal whittling and grinding down serves as a perfect analogy for the main character. Ground down, splintered. But you know what a match eventually is made to do.

I came to feel the same way after watching a couple of seasons of The Sopranos. Masterful storytelling and great acting all around but in the end those guys were amoral, corrosive thugs. Some of the stuff they did would enrage me. That might have been one of Chase's objectives but even while showing the grubbiness of their lifestyle there was always an element of adulation to it.

Howls Moving Castle - 8/10

I think it's a fine line. Henry, who is strongly our point of view character in the film, thinks it's all really cool, including threatening innocent people like the mailman. And the only other narrator we get is Karen, who is like "All this violence is actually very sexy!".

I just had to laugh at the end (which I . . . think was the intention?) when they were howling and sobbing in each others' arms because of her having gotten rid of the cocaine.

Men (2022)

Alex Garland wrote this and it is very strange indeed. A lady, after suffering a bereavement which may or may not have been down to suicide, takes a 2 week break at a plush country manor to grieve. There she meets/sees many locals and after an idyllic start the worries start to creep in. Is it a safe place to be? Is she being paranoid?

This is OK, quirky and I read an interpretation of the premise that looks like it holds water, the same face thing gave it away for me though. The ending is frankly OTT and hilarious.