Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Deadpool 2, 2018

This sequel to the first film finds Deadpool/Wade (Ryan Reynolds) floundering after the loss of someone very close to him. When he stumbles across a young mutant in trouble, Firefist (Julian Dennison), Wade ends up on an extended rescue mission that overlaps with a time traveler from the future (Josh Brolin) and a possible new partner, Domino (Zazie Beetz).

There was a lot to like about this film. Inappropriate irreverence is Reynolds' bread and butter, and his lead performance is fun and assured. I actually went EEEEEeeee! when I saw Dennison show up--I absolutely loved his performance in Hunt for the Wilder People and his comic timing was again on-point. Zazie Beetz was great as Domino (I'm only a casual comics fan, so my frame of reference is just what happened within the film, not how well this film translated things from the comics). The visual choreography showing Domino's powers at play were really neat.

There are lots of funny asides, especially a sequence where Deadpool interviews mutants to recruit them for his own X-Men knockoff squad. The film is a steady churn of wordplay and visual gags, and yet it manages to mostly not overstay its welcome.

As for downsides, well, other people have already covered the . It's not the worst example of the trope, but still a little annoying.

I was also not that psyched to see TJ Miller on screen for so much run time. I've always found something about him really off-putting, and finding out that he's one off these people who seems to have repeatedly basically gotten away with physically assaulting people, will take the time to send a venomous transphobic e-mail to a woman, and, you know, get drunk and waste police time and resources calling a fake bomb threat on a woman he didn't like--it all just adds up to not wanting to look at him. There's also the souring knowledge that poor decision making on the set of the film resulted in the death of a stuntwoman, and that made one of the action sequences a lot less enjoyable.

Overall a fun film for a late night.

Resident Evil 1-6, all in two days.
All are enjoyable movies especially if you like the games too.
There are plenty of ideas stolen from other movies in them with The Matrix robbed for ideas on more than one occasion.
The audio on the Blu Ray versions is top notch, when all hell breaks loose you can hear it as well as see it.
The action keeps on coming and so do the undead.

8/10

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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

Re-watch. This is still a directorial and artistic tour-de-force by Schrader. Fascinating telling of the later life of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese poet, author and play-write whom was extremely pro-Emperor and wanted him returned to his rightful (in Mishima's eyes') position. The man of conflicts comes over well....extremely anti-Western following the 2nd World War but also (as we would see it today) indulgent into a very overbearing fascist ideology.

Blinding film-making by Schrader.
[rating]4.5[/rating

Freaks (1932) 7.3/10

Exploitive? Sure, in places but no way near as bad as I was expecting. The narrative is largely forgettable, let’s face it we’re here to see the deformities for the most part. There were some I found disturbing mainly the family with the sort of misshapen heads. They reminded me of the characters in ‘Abs Odyssey’ game, I’m not taking the mickey In fact I’m not sure if they were really disabled because I know a few of the cast were not it’s just what they reminded me of

Daisy Earles as one of the dwarfs gave a genuinely emotional performance, her unrequited love for her fellow circus star who also happens to be real life brother makes it even more weirder. I did not enjoy the black guy playing the slug type character, I Learned that he has no arms or legs in real life, in his case this was exploitive as it was literally look at this guy laying under the under carriages and here and there offering nothing to the narrative. This is a must see movie regardless and in truth not as disturbing as I thought it might be.

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Da uomo a uomo (1967)
aka Death Rides a Horse

A mediocre spaghetti western that's elevated by Lee van Cleef's charisma, Morricone's music, and an excellent setting for the final shootout. Still, my rating may be a tad inflated by my usual standards.

--
Day of the Outlaw (1959)

I love the snow and harsh winter as a western setting. Unfortunately, there aren't too many of them. The film itself is a little dull, and just can't make the best out of its idea. The great setting probably inflates my rating here as well.

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Thank God! Up from a sea of multifarious opinions has arisen a true arbiter --a Messiah, if you will-- of approved points of view. With great comfort and relief we now have a new authority from which we can find out if our impressions are the correct ones.

Don't worry. It's a transparently bad take that anyone could see was rife with misogyny! My being the Arbirer of Truth is beside the fact.

Wait! I like "Arbirer of Truth" even better! I think you're pulling my leg, MKS. If not, I'll move along.

Enjoyed your comments. I've always loved TAQ, and believe it or not, I saw it in the theater with my mother when if first came out!

A couple of years ago my wife and I were down at Key Largo, where I was thrilled to see the original boat "African Queen" was docked there. It had been repainted and the steam engine repaired. We took a 2 hour ride on the boat-- just the two of us with the captain, and I loved it!

If wishing for Elizabeth Debicki to flaunt her galant height as if she were Susan Murphy in Monsters Vs. Aliens is wrong, I don't want to be right. Hell, why not make a Brienne of Tarth origin story with her in the lead? Oh, mercy.

The Mustang, 2019

Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is serving time in a prison somewhere in the West. In the introductory sequence, a prison psychologist (Connie Britton) tells Roman that he must find something to pursue, a way to take some aspect of control over his life. While he resists her outreach, Roman does end up working outside, mucking for a horse training program. Drawn to a particularly wild mustang, the head of the horse training program (Bruce Dern) pulls him in. With the help of some fellow inmates, especially one named Henry (Jason Mitchell), Roman begins to develop his horse sense and a relationship with the mustang.

This is the kind of film that I knew I'd really like before I even watched it. I'm a fan of the cast, and I enjoy films about the restorative power of working with animals. Specifically this film made me very nostalgic for the horses I used to have.

There are two main stories happening in this film. The first is the process of building trust between Roman and the mustang. The other is about Roman accepting responsibility for his actions and taking ownership over both his part and his present, specifically finding a way to connect with his pregnant daughter who visits him from time to time.

Sometimes I try to write about a movie and I realize that I just want to describe almost every other scene from it. I especially liked a sequence of group therapy using the restorative justice model in which Britton's character asks the men in the room to say how long they have been in prison, followed immediately by how long they think it was between the thought of their crime and committing it. One older man says he has been in jail since he was 14. How long between thinking of his crime and doing it? "Two seconds".

The film's attitude toward the inmates was something that I appreciated. Some of the men are violent, but above all they are human. Especially when they work with the horses, you see the humanity of these people. One of the actors in the film, playing an inmate who helps in the horse program, is an actual former inmate who participated in the real thing. A sequence where he bids farewell to his horse (the horses are trained to be sold to the police or other agencies) is heartbreaking.

Perhaps my only small complaint is that the film takes some real liberties with the process of training a wild horse, especially one as wild as the mustang. If you have never seen the documentary Buck, I highly, highly recommend it. (Watching that film, honest to goodness, made me a better teacher.) There are also some prison/thriller elements that are used to build suspense that seem to resolve rather quickly and in kind of an inexplicable way.

This was moving and heartbreaking and the horses were gorgeous.

Movies like this tend to hold up no matter how old they are.

As an example, Mad Max is still a great film after all these years.

A little leg pulling here, a little truthful disagreement there. The "Arbirer" of Truth is a fickle beast.

An enjoyable B- movie pastiche murdered by atrocious editing that feels like the editor was paid by the cut.

The Latest Movie i saw was chichore bollwood one and it was amazing i rate it A

A Bluebird in My Heart, 2018

Ummmm . . .

So this film follows Danny (Roland Moller), a man who has just been released from prison (though he is under strict parole and wears an ankle monitor) and who is looking to restart his life. Danny ends up living in a motel run by Laurence (Veerle Baetens). Danny forms a reluctant friendship with Laurence, and an even more reluctant friend/father relationship with Laurence's teenage daughter, Clara (Lola Le Lann). Clara's father is in prison, and she quickly gloms on to Danny as a father-surrogate. One night, Clara is raped by a drug dealer she sometimes flirts with for gifts of weed, and against his own better judgement Danny finds himself drawn into seeking revenge.

So why does one watch a film like this? Well, in my case it was the allure of watching a Danish Liam Neeson type be all stoic and shoot bad guys in the face. And to a certain extent the film was satisfying on this level.

So where do things go slightly awry?

I enjoyed the first third of the film, and appreciated the fact that the movie took a solid chunk of time to establish the relationships between Danny, Laurence, and Clara. As a viewer we know that Clara's flirtations with the drug dealer are a bad idea, but we get to see her pain in the absence of her father and her boredom and isolation at the motel, so that she doesn't just come across as a stupid girl making bad choices just because.

But once the sexual assault happens, things get weird. For starters, the scene immediately following her attack, in which Danny finds her, is utterly baffling. Danny's instinct on finding Clara running from her rapist is to scoop her up, take her back to his room, take off her clothes and just wash all of the evidence off of her. Not only does this behavior not make sense, but as Danny averts his eyes the camera most certainly does not and the camera feels leering and intrusive during a long sequence of full nudity of Clara. You know, the rape victim. Danny's decision to immediately cover up Clara's rape is never explained (Clara does say at one point that she doesn't want her mother to find out, but she literally says this after Danny has half-undressed her in the bathtub.) It's a sequence that feels inexplicably exploitative and nonsensical, and feels like a betrayal after the character building of the first third.

From there, Danny gets an opportunity for revenge and he cannot pass it up, which leads to even further complications. The action sequences are overall well done, but they are pretty brief. The final act felt downright messy to me, and the character actions just seemed to get more and more outlandish.

The title of this film is taken from the excellent Bukowski poem, "Bluebird". And yet the film ultimately eschews the inner life of its lead character in favor of actions that are simply scripted to move the plot forward. The actors are all fine in their roles, but they feel less and less human as the film grinds toward the end. Danny's desire to begin a new life; Laurence's conflicted feelings about her husband; Clara's complicated feelings about her father---these are all thrown by the wayside.

Maybe the best thing about this film was that it got me to reread the poem from which it takes its title.

God, I love this movie so much.

It really is just a bad film.
The more people I talk to the more agreement I get that it is a bad film. I haven't talked to a single person who saw it who wasn't at least disappointed and at most downright pissed.
I've heard that it's getting some good reviews from some people but I haven't read them and that would be absurd.
I guess there's some way in which a person could like the film but there is no way a person could think it was a good film.

I prefer Ultraviolet.