Rate The Last Movie You Saw

5th Rewatch...Rob Reiner was robbed of an Oscar nomination for his meticulous direction of this lavish fairytale centered around the star-crossed romance between young lovers Westley and Buttercup. Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman provide a clever hook for the film by setting it up as a book being read by an old Grandpa (Peter Falk) to his sick grandson (Fred Savage) who offer commentary throughout. No expense was spared bringing this extraordinary fairy tale to the screen, including a superb cast that includes Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn (hysterically funny), Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest (bone chilling), Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, and Andre the Giant. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are enchanting as the lovers at the center of the story. Elwes, one of our most underratd actors, got the role of hiis career here and nailed it. First rate family entertainment with mad rewatch appeal. I heard rumors once about a sequel in the works, but I hope they wewre just that...this film doesn't need a sequel.

Umpteenth Rewatch...My personal favorite MGM musical., Fred Astaire plays a movie star who hasn't made a movie in three y ears and agrees to do a Broadway musical with a snooty ballerina named Gabrielle Girard (Cyd Charrise) directed by an eccentric Orson Welles-type director named Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan). It's the musical numbers that keep this film eternally watchable staged by director Vicnente Minnelli and choreographed by Michael Kidd...that duet with Astaire and Charisse to "Dancing in the Dark", the trio with Astaire, Buchanan, and Nanette Fabray, "Triplets', Fabray's "Louisiana Hayride", The Girl Hunt Ballet , and what would later become MGM's anthem, "That's Entertainment. This is Minnelli, Kidd, Astaire, and Cyd Charisse at their peak.

Thunderbolts* - Why the asterisk? That's only the first question I had. After that, most of them reduced to something like "why am I here?" We saw this last night, and I found it to be an unappealing, muddle. Someone, a critic quoted in the ad, says, "One of the best movies of all time". Maybe someone can do some 'splanin'. I didn't like the characters, the acting, the muddle of a plot line or much else. At least it was loud and I didn't go to sleep.

Umpteenth Rewatch Rewatch...it's not quite as good as Cabaret, but Bob Fosse's imaginative choreography and Roy Scheider's dazzling Oscar-nominated performance in the lead role anchor this semi-autobiographical look at Fosse's life that won four Oscars. Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a hard working, pill-popping, womanizing director choreographer who drives himself to a heart attack while trying to edit a movie and stage a new musical at the same time. The film is loosely based on the period in Fosse's life when he was trying to finish editing Lenny while directing Chicago for wife Gwen Verdon. Of course, Fosse''s choreography brings the movie to life. The "Take off With Us/Air-Rotica" number is extraordinary.

La Visita (1963)

For some inexplicable reason I'm looking forward to catching Thunderbolts* on the big screen - it's especially puzzling since the trailer is making it look like the same old %$#*&# Marvel has been dishing out for years. I'm hoping it simply has that indefinable quality that makes the best Marvel movies fun.

That's one of my dad's favourite movies - he never quits extolling it's virtues. Saw it and liked it back in the day, but haven't watched it some 50 times like he has.


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Little Children - (2006)

Well, this was kind of amazing. I mean, very rarely does a film end and I realise that my heartrate has been elevated. That's how swept away I became by Todd Field's Little Children - even if I found the narration it uses at times a little off-putting. It starts by introducing us to Jackie Earle Haley's character - Ronnie McGorvey, who is a paedophile and sex offender who lives with his mother. I started to question myself - is this Todd Field or Todd Solondz? (Later Jane Adams appears in a cameo role strongly reminiscent of the part she played in Happiness, further giving this film a strong Solondz slant.) The film's two main characters though are Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) - married to successful partners (Jennifer Connelly appears as Brad's wife Kathy), but living unhappy, sexless lives and yearning for freedom. They're both raising a young child, end up in a meet cute situation, and complicate their own lives. In the meantime Brad's friend Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich), an ex-cop who once shot and killed and innocent kid, starts a campaign devoted to torturing and harassing Ronnie. Little Children swims around in the complexity of these people's lives and the way their interconnectedness influences their dreams and unrealistic hopes. The performances are out of this world and Field's fine screenplay builds up an incredible intensity that simply sends you over a cliff by the time the final credits start. It hits a sweet spot as far as being intelligent and interesting but still mainstream and easy to digest.

8/10

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Two Moon Junction (1988)



A thumbnail distraction interfered with what was in the pipeline for tonight (I know, it's a poor excuse).
The intrigue - where everything always begins - wasn't really this film in particular, but the forgotten sub-genre of the erotic thriller that was in vogue from the mid-eighties to the early nineties.
Two Moon Junction is actually a drama rather than a thriller, and it's a shame because there were many opportunities to turn this into something delightfully sordid.
The picture looks surprisingly handsome so we're not in straight-to-VHS territory yet, and this is probably the only reason why I watched all of it.

The stakes are pretty low: a privileged bride-to-be succumbs to the temptation of a rugged carnival worker, which could jeopardise the future of the family fortune and Southern family bloodline. Gasp.
Of course this could work as a set-up for several characters to get involved and then show how it spirals out of control (à la The Long Hot Summer) but no, this is it. This is the only thing this story has to say, and the only thing that "matters" is the bickering and love-making between the two protagonists.
The future husband gets nothing to say, which eliminates the tiniest amount of tension this film could have had.
This wouldn't be good enough for a soap opera filler storyline, and the only excuse to make a film of it is the nudity that is on the same level as a Madonna video clip.

The story is meandering, the dialogue sounds slow. To add insult to injury, it doesn't even have that enjoyably exaggerated Southern twang.
There's nothing about the characters that earns my sympathy or fascination, they're utterly utterly boring.

It's a Pia Zadora film without Pia Zadora, which is - undoubtedly - the worst thing I can say about a film.
Half a star for the carnival accident scene (no casualties, unfortunately, but it's nicely staged).

Iron Monkey - (Yuen Woo-Ping,1993)


Great fun and superb fighting scenes. 8/10

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You don't remember me? We spoke on the phone two days ago. I told you I would find you.

(MILLS, 2008)

LOVED Little Children

A lot of the praise seems to be reviewers pleasantly surprised that the movie is competent...like how the story isn't a mess and it explains things to the audience well and that the characters are likeable and such. More a case where the standards for comic movies had dropped so low that folks are happy with just a little competence.

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M (1931)


First Time Watching. I went to film school and watched this German classic starring Peter Lorre as a serial killer murdering children and the paranoia it causes for the city. May be the oldest film I've ever watched all the way through. Was the first time the director had used audio and there's no music which isn't quite as bad as it sounds since silence would often do well to create atmosphere. Was very surprised at the cinematography and editing with how the scenes are woven together...there's even a tracking shot through a crowded bar before it settles in the room upstairs. Lorre himself was great and plays a mostly pathetic fellow rather than someone is that menacing and those eyes of his are legendary. An impressive movie given when it came out.

Havoc (2025)

Tom Hardy in a typical Netflix movie, no substance all action (confusing and bad like an arcade game). If he picked this out as a "vehicle" for himself someone needs to have a word (Whittaker too, though he has previous). A confusing chase movie with loadsa guns and not one single character you're bothered about (me anyway). Childish and noisy to no end.
Jeez, I'm in a right slump after enforced absence from MOFO, my luck must pick up!

Set at the dawn of the new millennium in an alternate near-future, Strange Days presents us a world where people can record their memories using a special device dubbed SQUID. These memories are often sold in the black market to allow people to leave their mundane existence and live someone else's experiences; whether it's the thrill and adrenaline of a robbery or the pleasures of a sexual tryst. Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a former cop that now lives off of selling these recordings, which puts him in the middle of a conspiracy surrounding a murdered rapper as well as his ex-girlfriend (Juliette Lewis).

All of the above things are probably the film's main strengths. Kathryn Bigelow's direction is solid, and the way she handles the noir-ish elements is effective. However, as intriguing as the premise might be, the overall story seems to be pretty thin and it meanders a bit as the characters go from one place to the other. Also, the connection between some of these subplots (the murdered rapper, the SQUID memories, Nero and his ex-girlfriend) is a bit clumsy.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Wow.
I am not the only person on this forum that considers this film at least a borderline masterpiece.

PS - The book is great too, by the way.

I really enjoy this movie.