Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Tools    






Curtiz (2018)

Anybody ever see this? I watched it last night on Netflix. It was OK. The cool part was that most all of the film was set in the Warner Brothers movie studio and was about director Michael Curtiz making Casablanca. The choice of B&W was good and it was fun seeing Casablanca being made, along with seeing it's famous stars....But I'm not sure why an extra sitting at the table at Rick's Cafe had drawings of Mr Spock and the Enterprise from the original Star Trek...what was that all about???




Remind me, he had broken English since it wasn't his first language and he used to say something like "Bring out the empty horses!" or something to that nature.
__________________
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage



Ready or Not (2019)




I was thinking for a while that I wished the movie would be more serious, but I guess there's really no point with such a silly concept. Accepting it for what it is, it's a reasonably entertaining 90 minutes.
I may have seen this twice in the theater, and I may have loved it both times. It's a great big screen, crowd laughing/screaming/gasping movie. And the fabulously over the top finale really seals the deal.



I may have seen this twice in the theater, and I may have loved it both times. It's a great big screen, crowd laughing/screaming/gasping movie. And the fabulously over the top finale really seals the deal.
I can understand that and I did like the ending.



I can understand that and I did like the ending.
Literally my only complaint on a second viewing was the long exposition sequence (where the dad was telling the family history and the legend of the box thing).

It was a minor annoyance the first time, but the second time I was like "Hurry up old man! Let's get to the killing!! "



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.

Curtiz (2018)

Anybody ever see this? I watched it last night on Netflix. It was OK. The cool part was that most all of the film was set in the Warner Brothers movie studio and was about director Michael Curtiz making Casablanca. The choice of B&W was good and it was fun seeing Casablanca being made, along with seeing it's famous stars....But I'm not sure why an extra sitting at the table at Rick's Cafe had drawings of Mr Spock and the Enterprise from the original Star Trek...what was that all about???





I've never heard of this, but it sounds interesting. (Let me know if you find out the answer to the Star Trek reference.)
__________________
.
If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.



Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy?
Rugrats In Paris: 10/10


This was one of my favorite movies when I was a child and I decided to rewatch it for the nostalgia factor.


And wow. What a bizarre, joyous, and entertaining affair. Despite having not seen the film in over 15 years, every scene was still ingrained in my mind. What I did not expect was the multitude of cultural references and adult gags scattered throughout. One gets the sense that the creators had a blast writing and animating it.


Weird and wonderful.



Tonight's gore fest is Gladiator. Having spent 5 years of my youthful life learning to speak Latin, much of this movie is familiar to me, almost as though I had been there. Yeah, it's a fictionalized story and yeah, they completely got the degraded emperor Commodus wrong as a character. He was not the inadequate, insecure person portrayed by Phoenix, but a raging macho man who fought hobbled opponents in the arena. Marcus was not murdered by Commodus, but died naturally. When he did die, he was completely dispirited (as portrayed in the movie) by all the war he had seen and the Empire began to decline after him. Nevertheless so much of the look and attitude of the movie really works.

Unlike the usual perception, many people who fought in gladiatorial combat were not killed, but submitted. It was too expensive to kill them all. In spite of the dubious history, the look is great, costumes excel, combat scenes are engaging and even the strange types of armor the gladiators use are pretty close to the real thing. The Coliseum in Rome is great recreation, including the sunscreens that were in the movie's digital recreation. The opening battle against the Germani in the Marcommanic War is epic, the best ancient world battle ever staged. Te Morituri Salutamus.




Remind me, he had broken English since it wasn't his first language and he used to say something like "Bring out the empty horses!" or something to that nature.
Bring on the empty horses
On the set of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', when, wanting to see stray horses wandering through the battle, Curtiz directed the wranglers to "Bring on the empty horses". When Niven and Flynn cracked up laughing, he responded with:'You people, you think I know **** nothing; I tell you: I know **** all"
That one wasn't in the movie but they did show the famous 'poodle' misunderstanding.

Poodles or puddles Michael Curtiz, director, arranging a scene during Casablanca: "Wery nice, but I vant a poodle.
Prop master: But you never asked for one. We don't have one!
Curtiz: Vell, get one.
Prop master: What color?
Curtiz: Dark, you idiot, we're not shooting in color!
[A few minutes later, Curtiz is called out to see a standard poodle.]
Curtiz: Vat do I vant with this ****** dog!
Prop master: You said you wanted a poodle, Mr. Curtiz.
Curtiz: I vanted a poodle in the street! A poodle. A poodle of water!



I've never heard of this, but it sounds interesting. (Let me know if you find out the answer to the Star Trek reference.)
I looked on the internet but couldn't find anything about it. I want to know too! I thought maybe the extra was suppose to be Gene Rodenberry but the guy who drew the Star Trek sketches was named Lucas. And Rodenberry at the time would've been in the Navy.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
5.5/10
The Other Lamb (Malgorzata Szumowska, 2019)
5/10
Night Editor (Henry Levin, 1946)
5.5/10
Hamilton (Thomas Kail, 2020)
7/10

King George III (Jonathan Groff) and Thomas Jefferson (Daveed Diggs) are among those who express dissatisfaction at Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda).
3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948)
.6.5/10(
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette, 1961)
5/10
Jasper Mall (Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb, 2020)
6/10
The Outpost (Rod Lurie, 2020)
6.5/10

The Battle of Kamdesh at Outpost Keating in Afghanistan in 2009 against the Taliban was one of the bloodiest of the war. (Scott Eastwood and Caleb Landry Jones on the right.)
The Sign of the Ram (John Sturges, 1948)
+ 5/10
Adú (Salvador Calvo, 2020)
6/10
The Enemy General (George Sherman, 1960)
+ 5/10
The Truth (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2019)
- 6.5/10

Scriptwriter Juliette Binoche and her husband Ethan Hawke visit her old Paris home when her mother, aging French film star Catherine Deneuve, publishes her memoir.
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
6/10
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (William Beaudine, 1966)
4/10
Cut Off AKA Abgeschnitten (Christian Alvart, 2018)
6/10
No Time for Sergeants (Mervyn LeRoy, 1958)
6.5/10

1st - The toilet seats stand at attention for inspection by the brass. Far left- Andy Griffith; Far right - Nick Adams. 2nd - Myron McCormick and Don Knotts try to interpret one of Griffith's aptitude tests.
Cousins (Mauro Carvalho & Thiago Cazado, 2019)
6/10
Desperados (LP, 2020)
+ 5/10
Ginger's Tale (Konstantin Scherkin, 2020)
6/10
Family Romance, LLC (Werner Herzog, 2019)
5.5/10

Yuichi Ishii (right), the founder of Family Romance, visits a robot hotel to see if he can find any more actors to use in his business. The best bet is the robot fish.
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page





Brothers Five (1970)

4.5/5

I had a lot of fun with this film. I really dig the whole "finding party members to defeat a boss"-type aesthetic. The film played out quite a bit like a video game in that regard, but that is okay in my book. Definitely a keeper and will return to this again soon.



Recently, I watched "Greyhound", it is about a: U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ernest Krause is assigned to lead an Allied convoy across the Atlantic during World War II. His convoy, however, is pursued by German U-boats.

Review:

I wish they had used a correct destroyer. As far as I know, no Fletcher destroyers were deployed to the Atlantic, and almost certainly not to the USCG. If they were trying to remake “The Enemy Below, (a kind of true story) they should have used an Edsall class destroyer escort.
3Star out of 5.




Ninotchka (1939, Ernst Lubitsch)

A typically charming Lubitsch, with a lovely Greta Garbo and some great moments (Garbo bursting out laughing in that restaurant scene, for example, was magical), though I thought Ninotchka's "liberation" and transformation from a grotesquely robotic, emotionless Soviet "cog" into a fun-loving, West-enamored charmer was way too abrupt. Plus, I found Melvyn Douglas' character slightly annoying (35 years old, really?).






Very watchable horror story about two world class cellists, one the "old" prodigy the other, her replacement at the School for Hot, Gifted Musicians. Co stars Steven Weber as the girls "teacher" which probably tells you more about what you getting into than I ever could. Eventually it does go down a road that may be uncomfortable for some (one of the many twists) and has some pretty good fx especially in the second (body horror) and final movement.



Capone (2020)


A very weak film that has an awful script and tries to get by with set-pieces. The story itself may have been more engaging with a zippier pace but it just meanders through the last syphilitic years of AC which are uninteresting if they are as portrayed here. Tom Hardy's over-acting is pretty hammy too.

A big disappointment.

.



Weekend re-watches:




2nd re-watch...There's a lot of love out there for this movie because people think it's much closer in spirit to Roald Dahl's book than the 1971 film with Gene Wilder. It is a blazing technical achievement featuring extraordinary cinematography, editing, art direction/set direction and visual effects, but this version of the story is so dark and mean spirited and its attempts at exploring Wonka's childhood just bring the film to a dead halt (despite a superb performance from Christopher Lee as Wonka's father). Johnny Depp's performance is definitely a matter of taste, but Burton has to take some of the blame for that.





1st Re-watch...A flashy performance by Michael Douglas that should have earned him an Oscar nomination makes this bizarre black comedy worth sitting through all by itself.






Very watchable horror story about two world class cellists, one the "old" prodigy the other, her replacement at the School for Hot, Gifted Musicians. Co stars Steven Weber as the girls "teacher" which probably tells you more about what you getting into than I ever could. Eventually it does go down a road that may be uncomfortable for some (one of the many twists) and has some pretty good fx especially in the second (body horror) and final movement.
First of all,
at the School for Hot, Gifted Musicians.
LOL.

I had REALLY mixed feelings about The Perfection. I thought that the first half was interesting and different and genuinely really horrifying.

When it hit the second half was where I had my reservations. I had literally thought
WARNING: spoilers below
Wow, it's so nice to have a horror/thriller movie that doesn't just do the old "rape/revenge" thing and then . . . yeah.

The emotional rollercoaster of thinking that she's sabotaging this other girl because she's jealous, then finding out that it was a twisted way of "saving" her was really good and unexpected. The whole journey between the two characters was really compelling and I loved that their relationship shifted several times.

But once it got into the basement of the school it felt like everything was dragged out way too long. Like, we get it. They were being sexually abused. But it feels like the movie dances around this really obvious element. In fact, it went on so long that I started to think, "Wait, is it going to be something other than sexual abuse?" . . . but of course it wasn't. I also felt that the final attack on the one girl (with "is she going to get raped" as the method of suspense) dragged on. I don't know. Did anyone actually think she was going to be betrayed by her new friend?

I think that the idea of a school having this abusive subculture is an interesting context (and it made me think of the Olympic gymnast abuse scandal).

But the first half of the film was so strong and visceral (the bus sequence!!!) and unexpected! I really felt let down when the last third went into very predictable territory and leaned so hard on the whole rape threat as the main tension.


I did think that the performances were really solid. I liked the chemistry between the two leads. I just wish it had held on to the intensity and unexpectedness of the bonkers first act.