Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Alice in the Cities (1974)

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Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Yes, The White Ribbon is outright brilliant.

sdsss

Watched it last night. It still holds up after almost 30 years. I agree that Downey was good, and you can see how he'd develop into a big star. I've never been a Sally Fields fan, but she sure earned her money in this one! She was very good.

Parseltongue?

I love this movie.. Even better than the French original.

For those in Peril (2013)

Small Scots fishing town story of a brother who is treated with suspicion in his village after he is on the boat where his brother and 4 other trawlermen perish but he survives (and claims not to recall the circumstances of the tragedy). Well shot in Aberdeenshire with a beguiling performance from George MacKay and good support from some other Scottish drama stalwarts. Thought it was heading for a different outcome and the ending was a bit "arty" compared to the rest of the film (lots of cinecamera footage and flashback sequences) but I enjoyed this.

Old Joy (2006, Kelly Reichardt)


A fleeting glimpse into a fading friendship coming back to life for just a day, with the serene presence of nature as a bystander. Reichardt's probing eye observes life as it flows gently along, in a semi-detached, unobtrusive manner; words are spoken but it's what's not being said that is at the center of attention. I felt that the film captures perfectly the feeling of loss and sadness but in a cosmically bittersweet, epiphanal way.
"Sorrow is nothing but worn out joy."

In hindsight, I think the ending was good as it is. It just frustrated me when I first watched it. I think both Mac and Childs are "the thing".

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

잠 못 드는 밤 [Sleepless Night] (2012) - A Paterson for foreign film enthusiasts (if you're Korean, that's your problem). Outclasses Hong Sang-soo as it wins your heart with little, touching slice-of-life gestures of love instead of people arguing after they had too much soju.
また逢う日まで [Until We Meet Again] (1950) - - A very beautiful, tragic love story that offers much more than just the often-quoted glass kiss (which Antonioni stole for L'eclisse). I'm a sucker for this kind of romance, so naturally I loved it.
Peter Ibbetson (1935) - - This is so sentimental and dreamy, I should be head over heels for it, but I'm not. The omnipresent Light is one of Borzagian kitsch.
尼羅河女兒 [Daughter of the Nile] (1987) - - 3H's least favorite of his own films, and I can't really tell why. It's a pretty good film.
人嚇鬼 [Hocus Pocus] (1984) - - Only for maniacs of the Mr. Vampire series. Slightly enjoyable, but that's it.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011) - - Looks like a sheet slasher. A few interesting ideas do not make it a masterpiece. Stop pretending it's a Tarkovsky of horror.
Suspiria (2018) - - Surface level hipster art. Did Tilda get only 3 roles? Poor. I would prefer it if she played absolutely every single character. The film's 1 hour too long. Add some 30 minutes and you can watch the original Suspiria twice in a row during that time.
Jojo Rabbit (2019) - - Starts quite awful, but gets better as it goes. Nothing too great, but I ended up enjoying it.
When the Clouds Roll By (1919) - - Quite an enjoyable silent. Fairbanks is quite kinetic in this if you know what I mean.
エコエコアザラク [Eko Eko Azarak] (1995) - - A very solid flick! A little bit of lesbianism, witches, schoolgirls, Satanic rituals, good atmosphere, and gore. Not enough of any of that, but I had a good time watching this!
エコエコアザラクII: Birth of the Wizard [Eko Eko Azarak II: Birth of the Wizard] (1996) - - Sadly the second installment in the trilogy, actually a prequel to the first film, does not deliver. You can watch it if you liked the first film, though. Maybe you'll enjoy it more than me.
Čovek nije tica [Man Is Not a Bird] (1965) - - My least favorite Dušan Makavejev film from what I've seen.

天国にいちばん近い島 [The Island Closest to Heaven] (1984) - - More like The Island Closest to Your Heart. Lovely! The more Obayashi films I watch, the more I realize he's the only director I need! It's about a teenage girl making a trip to New Caledonia. She tries to find an island her late father told her about when she was a little girl. The sandal scene at the beginning and I'm already sold! What. A. Treat.
それから [And Then...] (1985) - - A very reserved film with some great aesthetic. The tension is so tangible in scenes between the (so beautiful) girl and the (so slacking) man. This was recommended by Bi Gan. If you don't know who he is, where have you been for the past 5 years?!
Ana və Oğul [Mother and Son] (2019) - - Didn't really like this one too much.

畫中仙 [Picture of a Nymph] (1988) - - A spin-off of Chinese Ghost Story again starring Joey Wong. It was released between the first two films in the trilogy, and directed by the guy playing the Taoist from all the films! Perhaps this doesn't reach the level of the original films, but it sure isn't far off! The way-too-sparse romantic moments are to die for! Music is spellbinding, and Joey Wong is dreamlike! Quick! Give me a Chinese ghost to fall in love with!!! :_;
誘惑者 [The Enchantment] (1989) - - A weird and quite an original film! The twists are quite surprising, but the movie plays out as if it didn't even care about them. The VHS quality in the version I watched only made the film more atmospheric. *.*
本陣殺人事件 [Death at an Old Mansion] (1976) - - I thought it's going to be a horror, but it's a murder mystery! Another surprise would be that Obayashi composed the music for the film. Naturally, since he played the piano, you'd expect some piano music, but no. The soundtrack is very sparse AND features just koto music. Quite a surprise. The actual solution to the case is surprising, and the visuals are very nice.
烈火青春 [Nomad] (1982) - - - A fine albeit way overrated film. Just like Patrick Tam's previous effort, the gialloesque Love Massacre, Nomad looks good but lacks something to become a great film. It's hard to pinpoint what that something is, though.
Édes Emma, drága Böbe - Vázlatok, aktok [Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe] (1992) - - And the Hungarians deliver yet another depressive film heavily set within a very specific era of Eastern Block countries freeing from USSR!
八兩金 [Eight Taels of Gold] (1989) - - Let's take a moment to say how adorable Sylvia Chang is in this film. Now that we have this settled, let me just tell you this has Sammo Hung! And this is a somewhat heart-breaking non-romance romance film. Yeah, it broke my heart, and the final 15 minutes are especially excruciating. And then the final minute is a reference to Kurosawa's Ran. What?! Oh, and this film is mainly about immigration, returning home etc., but who cares when I'm heartbroken.
Bait (2019) - - Kitchen Sink Realism is back! Mad props for shooting on tape - I didn't think anyone would make a movie that looked like this again!
The Alligator People (1959) - - Very enjoyable and not half as kitschy as it sounds!

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Murder by Contract (1958)

The Reflecting Skin (1990)





When his friends start disappearing, Seth becomes convinced Dolphin, his English neighbour, is a vampire, stealing the souls of the neighborhood children one by one. After his brother, Cameron (Viggo Mortensen), returns home and takes a liking to Dolphin, Seth feels it's up to him to save Cameron from his friends' fate.

I’m having family over, hence the many rewatches. Can’t risk anything I haven’t seen as they might be upset (never can judge anyone’s taste a 100%). Was told the above is very scary, though I’d always interpreted it as a straightforward drama. But we both liked it. Great performances, ambience, wheat fields and sunset sequences and soundtrack. Viggo Mortensen is fantastic here. But this being my third or fourth time, I interpreted the film slightly differently than before. After the first watch there is a certain instinct to sympathise with Seth for wanting to spend more time with his brother and protect him from a perceived threat, but this time around, he just seemed incredibly mean and almost psychopathic/‘evil’ for no particular reason. Got me to appreciate for the first time why some people see younger siblings as inherently meaner than the older ones. Didn’t feel sorry for Seth at all by the end of the film.

Zheng tu. 8.5 out of 10. This is a Chinese film.

I mean, I have a hard time liking anyone who tortures an animal for fun. So Seth was kind of on my crap list from the beginning.

I will say, however, that a lot of Seth's cruelty comes from the fact that he is shut out of the life of the adults around him. People do not speak plainly--they all talk in an adult code, and Seth is left to filter that through his child's brain. His frustration is what often leads to him acting out.

Doplhin says that she's 200 years old, he takes it literally. No one will ever say that his father is gay. His brother cannot bring himself to speak honestly to Seth about the horrors of war, and specifically his guilt over his own actions. He has no context to understand what it means to find a dead baby.

I agree that it's hard to feel sorry for Seth when so much of his unnecessary cruelty is directed at Dolphin, someone who is just quietly in pain. While I didn't particularly like him as a character, I can at least feel sorry for someone who can't understand what's happening around him and does not grasp the depth of the consequences of some of his actions.

I actually think that an interesting dynamic of the film is the way that Seth pinpoints his anger on Dolphin. The men in the car are much more of an obvious menace, so why does Seth hone in on Dolphin? This is not a fully-developed thought, but Dolphin is weird and very "other", while the guys in the car are very all-American looking. I wonder if part of what we're meant to see is the way that when things are going wrong, it's easy to put a target on someone who looks or acts different.

[Rated}2.5[/rating]

The Irishman, 2019

Just being honest, were it not for the 2020 Film Challenge thread I would probably not have watched this movie. Mob movies just aren't my thing, for reasons I'll go into a bit. That said, this is a really solid film from almost every technical angle.

The story tracks the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro), a man who becomes a hit man for the Italian mob and his complicated relationship with Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). As Jimmy becomes more and more integrated with the mob, personal relationships--including with his own family--take a backseat.

There's very little to criticize from a technical point of view. The acting from DeNiro and Pacino is excellent, as are the performances from the supporting cast (including a prominently featured Joe Pesci). The direction is good. The whole film looks great. My only technical criticism were the strange titles that kept popping up to tell about the fates of certain characters. I didn't mind the idea too much--but the titles look like something I would have create in iMovie. They look, for lack of a better word, cheap. And the point that they make--the violent deaths of so many of the men in this circle--seems already pretty apparent in the film.

My problem with mob movies is that way too often it feels like there's an admiration for the mobsters and the way that they are able to perpetrate violence without consequences. There were definitely several sequences in The Irishman that felt this way. It's one thing when a criminal is "fighting the man" or whatever, especially when their crimes aren't violent. But the mob is powerful. They have a ton of sway. And watching certain sequences it felt borderline celebratory of their way of life. It's a fine line between "this is fascinating" (which it is) and "this is cool". It's true that the film does inject melancholy to counter this element, but it feels disproportionate.

My favorite aspect of the film was, ironically, the element that got the least amount of screen time. (And, speaking of screen time, this movie is 3 1/2 hours long! At one point I had watched 90 minutes . . . you know, the length of a whole normal movie. And I still had two hours to go . . .you know, the length of a slightly long normal movie.) Anyway, my favorite element was the way that the film showed the impact of Frank's work on his family. Starting with a scene in which Frank's daughter watches in mute horror as Frank beats a man and brutally smashes his fingers, I loved the portrayal of the people who end up on the fringe of Frank's work. Specifically his wife and especially his children, who have no power or control over their lives being intertwined with the mob and its accompanying violence. There's a great, brief sequence where Frank's wife shakes as she goes to turn on the family car--visions of recent car bombings dancing in her head. Frank frequently shrugs off the mob's mistakes ("Oops. Bad hit!"), but his family has to live with the knowledge that such violence might suddenly descend on them. It's this dynamic that is the best condemnation of Frank's character. He not only lacks empathy for the people he hurts/kills, he lacks empathy for his own family.

Not exactly my cup of tea, but a solid film that deserves the praise it gets.

I wanted to like The Irishman moren than I really did. Mid tier Scorsese, if you ask me. The gnawing feeling I had throughout was that Marty and his team had done much more with less in the past.