Rate The Last Movie You Saw

A very good Melville crime film, and for the first 40 minutes or so I liked it more than any of his other movies. Definitely worth watching.

A Walk To Remember 10/10 rewatched my favorite early 2000s movies from my collection

Collateral, Insider, Heat and Thief all struggle for the top spot.

It's going to seem like an odd complaint but the only thing keeping Thief definitively out of the top spot is its lack of a car chase. Perhaps it's just that films made in a similar vein, the Driver, To Live and Die in LA and Drive, all heavily feature car chases, but the mood of Thief always gets me hankering for an out of nowhere burst of speed that never comes. Other than that, it's a close to perfect crime thriller.

I can live with that.
I think the absent car-chase is mitigated by James Caan in the most absolutely perfect role for him probably ever.

Indeed. His fluctuations between Melvillian silence and focus with his volatile outbursts seem tailor made to fit his strengths as a performer. It's my favorite Caan performance and that dude was Sonny Corleone.

1st Rewatch...the crackerjack performances by Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck kept this film just as intriguing the second time around.

Admittedly Steve McQueen did not have the widest of ranges, however he showed his flair for comedy in The Reivers, and The Thomas Crown Affair.

For my money he really made The Getaway. Can't imagine who else could have made that picture as good as it was. He even made Ali McGarlic look good... The '94 version with A. Baldwin was poor.

Had this on my watchlist for a while and finally got to it after someone here watched it recently. The horse sex in the beginning was pretty nauseating and then it was mostly a bore until the weird and absurd came. Beastality is always fun but it's better when it's less fantastical.

Now, Voyager, 1942

Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a miserable, neurotic woman living with her overbearing mother (Gladys Cooper) and generally mocked or ignored by the rest of the family. Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains) insists that she come to his mental health facility for her own good, and free from her oppressive home life she blossoms. Still a bit frail but much improved, she goes on a cruise where she strikes up a romance with a married man named Jerry (Paul Henreid). But when their time on the cruise ends, how will they ever be happy?

This was an interesting drama, if also one a bit constrained by some outdated social norms in terms of its characters.

The first two-thirds are solid, if a little predictable. Davis is good as both the at-her-wits-end Charlotte and her more self-assured evolution. As her mother, Cooper is both horrible and slightly sympathetic. While her methods of controlling Charlotte are demeaning and cruel, we can understand that she is afraid of being left alone and that she would rather scheme and throw insults than admit she is lonely. Henreid is a quiet, solid partner as Jerry. The film is a bit heavy-handed in justifying his adultery (basically really hammering home the fact that his wife---a person we never actually meet--is horrible), but it helps that he is shown to be a generally kind person.

But the third act of this movie is so weird, and in some ways kind of disappointing. This is sort of spoilers, I guess, but none of this is really a plot twist or anything. Basically, Charlotte finds out that Jerry's young daughter, Tina (Janis Wilson), has been sent to the same mental health facility where she recovered. She goes to the clinic and befriends Tina under the pretense that she just happens to be visiting the clinic. It's just . . . what!?!?!?!

Now, there were about 5 minutes where I was really excited about where I thought the film was going. I thought that Charlotte's return to the clinic and a little speech she gave meant that she was dedicating her life to helping other young women with similar problems and I was like Whoa! This is super progressive and cool!

NOPE.

Actually, Charlotte's idea is that she

So kind of bonkers and dated, but the lead performance from Davis is worth checking out.

La endemoniada (1975)
aka Demon Witch Child, The Possessed

A bit clumsy Spanish The Exorcist ripoff. Like many of these European copycats, it doesn't restrict itself to copying just one thing but adds witches and satanism to the mix. The writing is somewhat infantile, and the attempts to shock with foul language (which, in fact, is way timider than in The Exorcist) are almost endearing. Nothing special, but decent enough euro trash horror.

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4/10 Wrong Turn (2021)
horrible movie, i prefer classic wrong turn from 2003 better

I'd probably say Thief is my favorite Mann (though I do still need to watch at least Manhunter & The Insider before I've seen his most "essential" films), but I agree with you otherwise, and looking backward at his defining Crime films by decade, they really do compliment each other surprisingly well in terms of their individual scopes, forming a sort of unofficial trilogy; with Collateral, you have a relatively small-scale, single-night Thriller that's all the more tense for its compactness, while Heat falls on the opposite end of the specturm, with a near 3-hour runtime and a much more sprawling, almost epic scope (slightly too epic at times, although I already mentioned that in my review), with Thief in restrospect serving as an accidental midpoint, with a more ambitious scope than the former, but without getting as bloated as the latter got at times, which is why I feel it's the Goldilocks "just right porridge" of the Manns I've watched (although the other two are still right behind it for me anyway).

About the same rating as you, daft movie.

i agree

Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Engrossing film about the nature of loss , Vanessa Kirby is enthralling as the grieving mother. The birth scene is somewhat traumatic but all the performances are excellent...the falling apart of the central couple is so well portrayed.

One Piece: The Movie (Atsuji Shimizu, 2000)

Since I'm (very slowly) reading through the manga I figured I should probably watch the films as I go as well. Clocking in at about 50 minutes this definitely feels more like a TV special than a theatrical film and from what I recall it even looks cheaper than the TV series does. Still, it is a fun time (as expected) with some great visual gags and a pretty heartwarming conclusion.

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Good movie, but somewhat over-hyped.

What was with the huge suitcase they dragged around & never even opened? Who would take such a thing to the city when they weren’t even planning to spend the night? (Ever heard of backpacks?) I suppose the suitcase was a metaphor for the unwanted troublesome child.

All the guys were portrayed as douchy, which was rather a simplification.

Did her stepfather impregnate her? Or was it her creepy boyfriend?

18 weeks is very late to have an abortion. She was lucky to find a place to do this. The financial aspect made no sense. These places want the money upfront & it runs into the hundreds.

The random guy lending them over $100 to get back to PA was ludicrous. No guy in the city would do that.

We have to disagree if you don’t think Bullitt & The Thomas Crown Affair were great movies.

Never thought of Crown as comedic, but agree re The Getaway.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Death and the Maiden (1994)