Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Sniper with Tom Beringer...I'll give it 1 star.

redline (2009)

3.5/5

Sorry I forgot how to do the popcorns

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Black Christmas (1974)


Nothing wrong with it, just feels a bit dated (though Psycho never does, to me). Also kind of boring. Maybe I was in the wrong mood for it.
This was a rewatch, but it’s been a while.

thank you

I think that the disturbing phone call in the opening scene is worth at least .

A horror friend of mine had some nice things to say about one of the remakes, but I've only ever seen the original.

The Booksellers, 2020

This was a quaint little documentary about the work of rare book collectors/traders/sellers. The film looks at several different specific sellers, while at the same time exploring the history (and future) of bookselling.

The best part of the film for me was just seeing the different approaches and the different reasons why the sellers got into it in the first place. For many of them, it was something personal and their specific passion is reflected in what they collect.

The film also goes into what e-book and the internet in general have done to the book trade. It explores the generation divide between sellers.

One of the points that the film makes is that there is an increasing diversity of interests in collectors. As one of the interview subjects puts it, the point is not to say that all book sellers from the 50s and earlier were "goons and misogynists", but that for a very long time the culture of book selling and book collecting primarily reflected the interests of older white men. The idea of what was worthy of being saved was seen through only one demographic. By book sellers/collectors becoming more diverse, the market actually becomes larger.

At the same time, the film does acknowledge the implicit bias in the field. For many years, official rare book societies simply refused to admit women. One book seller reports that, even today, he is often *the* black book seller in any given space. Several women recount that many customers would rather ask any man--even the janitor, even some random man in the store--advice than come to them, despite them owning the store.

This is interesting and important because of what another collector says--books are deeply personal things and they are "as close to a person as anything you can create". Ideas and stories and so many other things are held inside of books. What people decide is worthy--and who they trust to tell them about worthy books--has a huge impact on which stories and ideas are preserved and carried into future generations.

The booksellers interviewed are a droll and enjoyable bunch. This isn't a documentary full of high drama or twists, but just a deep and personal look at a specific sub-culture.

I myself love books, and I enjoyed spending 100 minutes in like-minded company.

Woman on the Run (1950)

Спутник (2020)
aka Sputnik

Another Russian SciFi film. It's a little better than yesterday's Coma but that's mainly because I like its style more. It's something like a mix of The Twilight Zone, Arrival and Alien. As usual with the modern Russian films, the writing is somewhat lacking. It's also almost Soviet-era film in the sense that it shows no fault in the system at all.

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At least you know how to copy and paste I'm impressed...

Four Rooms -

four f*ck's sake

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)

What If, 2013

Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party after a string of broken relationships. The two instantly hit it off, but Chantry has a boyfriend. The two agree to just be friends, but both struggle--Wallace having to hide his feelings and Chantry dealing with feelings of alienation from her boyfriend, Ben, who has decided to go abroad for work for the next six months.

This is a classic "can men and women really be just friends?" set up. Overall I liked the film. Radcliffe and Kazan have an easy chemistry, and on their own they are likable characters.

I did have some mixed feelings about how some of the surrounding comedy worked. There are a lot of slapstick sequences that I find more cringe-worthy than funny--things like people falling out of windows, falling down stairs, being punched, etc. Adam Driver and Mackenzie Davis play an outrageous couple (Driver's character is Wallace's friend and Chantry's cousin), and while their performances are good, I found their characters kind of obnoxious.

There was almost a feeling of tension in the film. I see that there are three writers credited (two who wrote the original play and one who adapted the play for film), and maybe that has a bit to do with the different levels of comedy. For example, the film seems to find Driver's character really funny. But in a mid-film sequence, they conspire to leave Wallace and Chantry alone on a beach with no clothing and just one sleeping bag. Much to the film's credit, Chantry especially is really upset by this behavior and correctly identifies it as crossing a line. The night of forced intimacy (because they have to share the sleeping bag) ends up alienating the two instead of magically bringing them together.

I think that this is a good example of a film where the actors really elevate the material. Radcliffe and Kazan nail the delivery of their lines and keep both of the main character sympathetic. The film never feels like it's on Chantry's side or on Wallace's side, and a lot of that is down to he performances.

It's a shame that the writing feels a bit off. It's like someone was in the room who was empathetic and understood how relationships work, and another person was in the room who preferred dumb/"edgy" humor. I was honestly kind of shocked by an out-of-nowhere transphobic joke about the Adam Driver character having once kissed a transgender woman. and how this is a deeply shameful thing that he has to hide from his fiance. Likewise a remark that a character makes about being disgusted by seeing a woman's labia. It's just weird and asynchronous.

Somehow this movie feels like a near-miss to me, but on the strength and charm of the performances alone I'd recommend it.

That’s pretty high! Rekindled my interest.

Blanchett's performance alone makes it worth a look

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I'm literally watching this right now!