Rate The Last Movie You Saw

That one is on deck for Wednesday. Looking forward to it.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

Yojimbo is one of the few Kurosawa's films that I didn't really care for. I'm not at all discouraging anyone from seeing it, I just didn't personally care fof it.

The one Kurosawa film that isn't talked about enough is High and Low. A great, great, great movie. IMO his third best film behind Seven Samurai and Rashomon.

So, I watched A Woman Under the Influence yesterday. A 70s classic I had yet to see.

Wow! Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk both gave tour de force performances. Really, really spectacular acting from both. And of course, Cassavetes' direction was flawless.

10/10

Yeah, I thought it tapped into the suspicion of the era well. CAn't remember rating but wouldn't have been far different.

Dogtooth follows a Greek couple (Christos Stergioglou and Michelle Valley) that keep their three "teenage" children isolated from the outside world. They live in an enclosed estate in the outskirts of the city, where the children are subjected to routines of exercise and bizarre language lessons (i.e. "shotgun" is a bird, "keyboard" is the vagina). Good behavior is rewarded with stickers or other meager benefits, and bad behavior with harsh violence.

Although the film is not graphically explicit or gory, Lanthimos succeeds in creating an exceedingly disturbing atmosphere in everything we see; from something as banal as the family dancing to something unsettling as the father paying a security guard at his job to have sex with his son (the fact that he invests in satisfying his son's sexual urges, but not the daughters, should tell you a bit of his frame of mind). The children are only allowed to watch home videos of themselves on the TV, while the parents secretly watch porn in their room. This is all natural to them, and yet there is nothing natural about what we see.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

__________________

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

Watching the Ann Arbour Film Fest rn so here's a list of shorts I just saw.

The Long Fall (Cade Mirabitur, 2021)


Teatro Principle (Bryan Konefsky, 2020)


Usambara Violet (Aman Wadhan, 2020)


In the Hands of Puppets (Sarah & Charles, 2020)


Kim Gordon: Earthquake (Loretta Fahrenholz & TRLLM, 2020)


Lumen (Sarah Seene, 2019)


Encounters in Light (Devin Jie Allen, 2020)


Queen of Dots (Michael Lyons, 2020)


Valpi (Richard Tuohy & Dianna Barrie, 2019)


Stunting C*nts (Gina Kamentsky, 2020)

Yup.

High and Low is my favorite Kurosawa, tied with Seven Samurai.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, 2021

Mark (Kyle Allen) is a high school student trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over. Devoting a lot of time to engineer a meet-cute with an attractive young woman, Mark is one day thrown off of his game by the appearance of Margaret (Kathryn Newton), another young person stuck in the time loop. Together they set out to discover all the delights their small town has to offer, all of the little "perfect moments".

Okay, who doesn't love a good Groundhog's Day retread? After all, the last few years have even seen some really fun twists on the trope, such as the winning rom-com Palm Springs or the horror take of Happy Death Day.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things isn't a bad movie. But it also isn't a very good one either.

On the plus side, Allen and Newton are both perfectly amiable at the lead characters. These kinds of films offer ample opportunities for slickly choreographed routines in which the time-looping characters move with dancer-like ease, anticipating every moment and easily catching falling mugs, spinning out of the way of passing skateboarders, or knowing to the second when to reach for the toast. These sequences are fun because, well, of course they are.

But there is an unfocused element to the film. There is a great mystery about where Margaret goes every night after she hangs out with Mark. The film saves this reveal as a twist for the end of the film, but in my opinion it should have been front and center about halfway through the movie. The film wants to put the emotional weight of the story on Margaret, so why does it force us to sit around with Mark while he mopes about her for almost 80 minutes?

Nothing against Kyle Allen, who does a good job. But Allen is in his mid-20s and he REALLY looks it. This is not a teenager, this is an adult man. And, sorry, but he is also incredibly conventionally attractive and decently charismatic. So every time the film tries to tell us that Mark is a total nerd and has no luck with girls, like, no. Just no. He's a nice male model, and we are supposed to believe he can't get a date? This is maybe meant to offer an opportunity for character development, but Mark doesn't really grow as a character. He maybe gets a bit less selfish at the end, but the character lacks a compelling arc.

The film also spends way too much time on the (nonsense) "science" behind the time loop. I wouldn't mind a few throwaway sentences to explain things, but way too much dialogue is spent on character talking about the 4th dimension or singularities. The mechanics aren't what is important, so why give over so much run time?

Again, not a bad movie. But it's hard to recommend it when there is a far superior time-loop romance that just came out over a year ago.

The second block of films:

Happy in the Gap (Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos, 2020)

Psychic Meat (Stephen Wardell, 2020)

Mercury's Retrograde (Zohar Dvir, 2020)

Another Horizon (Stephanie M. Barber, 2020)

-force- (Jenny MaryTai Liu & Simon Liu, 2020)

I'm Free Now, You Are Free (Ash Goh Hua, 2020)

Eidolon (Mike Rollo, 2020)

BUTTERFLY BIRTH BED (Virginia Lee Montgomery, 2020)

Everything was a , great block of programming.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)
aka Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Quite intense jungle adventure. It's sort of odd that it wasn't really that odd at all. The production itself must have been an adventure in itself. Maybe I should watch more Herzog.

__________________

Same here. It's a terrific movie. One of the best detective films ever made, and I'm with you, it's my second favorite behind SS.

Snooze factor = Zzz



[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it

Sentinelle, 2021

Klara (Olga Kurylenko) is a French soldier who returns home from a traumatizing experience in the middle east, where she is instead drafted into a domestic counter-terrorism military group. Klara is suffering from PTSD and drug addictions that she uses to cope with her trauma. Shortly after her return, she goes out clubbing with her sister, who is later found raped and beaten. Klara sets out to find the man/men who victimized her, which puts her in conflict with a powerful Russian millionaire.

This movie is just a very paint-by-the-numbers revenge action thriller. A family member is victimized and our protagonist uses their very special set of skills (sorry) to seek revenge.

On the positive side, the action is decent. In terms of believing that one person, and especially a more petite woman, could take out several hulking male antagonists, the film is wise to choose settings (like a compact bathroom) and styles (a lot of dudes get kicked in the crotch) that make her success believable enough.

On the other hand, the film's action lands in a strange middle ground between realism and total unbelievability. This is the kind of film where someone can take several damaging blows to their head and be in good fighting shape the next day not, you know, throwing up and passing out from multiple concussions. At times it makes it hard to know how concerned to be when, say, someone is stabbed in the gut. Like, is this a movie where that is fatal? Or is this a movie where that's just something that happens and they'll be alright in like an hour?

My main complaint had to do with the whole set up. What kind of person goes to a club with another woman and just leaves her there alone?! The film has Klara leave her sister in order to go hook up (and conveniently provide the film with a racy lesbian sex scene) and I found this really hard to believe. It made me feel alienated from the character of Klara. She is obviously not to blame for her sister's attack, but such selfish behavior is off-putting in a protagonist. And while we do see Klara struggle with her mental health--mostly in the form of nightmares and her drug use--I never felt as if we got much insight into her as a person.

This film is barely 80 minutes long, and yet it feels like there is a fair chunk of padding. You come into this film to watch a few scenes of a person kicking rapists and evil henchmen in the face. And while the movie delivers on this front, it seems lost as to how to fill the gaps between butt-kickings.

There are worse films to give 80 minutes to. But there are also much better ones.

Crossroads (2002) 8/10 loved britney spears old school music

A couple of rewatches.

自殺サークル (2001)
aka Suicide Club, Suicide Circle

It has one of the greatest opening scenes ever. The mood reminds me a lot of Kairo. A crazy horror about Japanese suicide culture (quite easy to relate to this as a Finn), the rigid roles offered by the society, technology replacing real social interaction, pop idols, and many other things. The ending is a little disappointing, though, but I guess it still deserves its rating.

--
ゆけゆけ二度目の処女 (1969)
aka Go, Go Second Time Virgin

Another Japanese oddity. It drags a bit at times, but it has enough silly philosophic dialogues and over-the-top twists to keep it entertaining. With better acting, it might even deserve a half-star more. At least it has a great ending.

is that the battle royal movie suicide club? cause people say the hunger games is like that movie

No it's a Sion Sono fillum. Fukasaku's Battle Royale is from the year before and completely different.