Rate The Last Movie You Saw

While We're Young (2014)

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May those who defy their fate be granted glory.💜

Not bad. I did finish it. Influenced by Yorgos Lanthimos, I would say, but nowhere as good. Flagged out in the middle for sure. One-third through before I realized the mother is Debra Winger. Evan Rachel Wood & Jenkins very good as per usual.

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The Exorcist 1973

Amazing how a film from nearly 50 years ago is still probably the best in its field.. caught this on BBC4 last night and was genuinely quite frightened and shocked even though I knew what was coming. I think most of that is not the supernatural element but that you are basically witnessing a young girl being abused in the worst possible ways in a nice looking house in the middle of the day, I can safely say I do not want to see this film again for some time but still brilliant..

The Narrow Margin follows Detective Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) as he is assigned the duty to protect Mrs. Neall (Marie Windsor), the widow of a notorious mob boss who's got a price on her head as she heads to testify before a grand jury. But things don't go as planned as Brown and Neall find themselves trapped in the same train with the hitmen sent to take her out.

This film was released in 1952, at a time when film noir was perhaps becoming more ambitious in its themes and scope. However, director Richard Fleischer chooses to keep both things small and simple. The premise is rather simple: a cop assigned to protect a women from some hoodlums; and so are the scope and setting: a train ride from Chicago to Los Angeles. Both of these, paired with a 70 minutes runtime, help give this film a slick flow.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Twilight, 1998

Harry Ross (Paul Newman) is a retired police detective and private investigator, living in the home of his old friend Jack (Gene Hackman), the woman he has loved for a long time Catherine (Susan Sarandon), and their surly teenage daughter, Mel (Reese Witherspoon). But when Jack, who is dying of cancer, asks Harry to make a delivery for him, Harry realizes he's stumbled into something dangerous.

This movie, to me, felt like a film out of time. With its aging movie stars living in their remote fancy home, layers upon layers of private eyes and sassy broads, and Newman's world-weary investigator, I kept think that it seemed more like something that would have been made in the 70s or the early 80s.

What the film certainly doesn't lack is a cast. In addition to the key players, you've also got M Emmett Walsh in a borderline cameo role, Margo Martindale as woman who describes herself as "mucho hair and mucho ****", Liev Schreiber as Mel's sleazy boyfriend, Giancarlo Esposito as an aspiring PI who tags along with Harry, James Garner as another ageing player, and Stockard Channing as a police detective who used to work with Harry. Everyone sinks into their roles just about perfectly, and that sense of pervading corruption and double-crossing is felt in almost every scene.

At the same time, I just didn't find myself all that gripped. There's a central mystery in the film, obviously connected with an incident from Catherine's past. Films don't always need a shocking twist, but the way that the plot progresses feels overly predictable. And not just as a viewer, but in that way where the characters themselves shouldn't be surprised either.

It all just falls a bit short. It's like a good soup only someone just forgot to add the salt. There's a running joke that maybe Harry was shot in the penis and . . . . feh. I kept waiting for something a little bit electric, but from the foundation of solid performances nothing else ever really materializes.

A decent thriller, but it feelsl ike it could have been so much more.

Brighton Rock - 1947 British noir starring a very young Richard Attenborough recreating the role he first performed on the London stage as sociopathic, small time criminal Pinkie Brown. This was adapted from a Graham Greene novel and directed and produced by the Boulting brothers, Roy and John and is better known here in the US as Young Scarface.

Attenborough was 24 when this was made and plays the freshly minted 17 year old leader of an upstart gang trying to muscle their way into the Brighton protection and racetrack rackets. After murdering a journalist that he and his cohorts blame for the death of a fellow gang member, Brown desperately moves to cover his tracks and set up an alibi. In doing so one of his gang slips up and is remembered by a guileless young woman working as a waitress. Brown approaches young Rose (Carol Marsh) and warns her about saying anything to the authorities about who she may or may not have seen. He then asks her out on a date to reassure her and she is almost immediately smitten with the young thug. In the meantime a brash street entertainer named Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley), who was with the dead journalist before he was killed, is unconvinced of the officially listed cause of death of a heart attack and decides to do her own amateur sleuthing. All these events drive Pinkie to increasingly frantic lengths, with each cold-blooded move leading to yet more complications. Adding to his frustration is powerful gang boss Colleoni, who has had enough of Pinkie and his gang threatening his customers. He offers him and his rapidly shrinking crew a choice, take a buyout or face eradication.

The cast is full of homegrown British talent and some might recognize Nigel Stock as Cubbit or the first ever Dr. Who, William Hartnell, as Pinkie's second-in-command Dallow. Baddeley does an excellent job as the loud and brassy Ida and provides a lot of comic relief. This was Carol Marsh's first role and she went on to play Fan in my favorite version of A Christmas Carol and also appeared in The Horror of Dracula. But it's Richard Attenborough that carries the day as the remorseless, nonchalantly violent and baby faced Pinkie Brown. This is a decent helping of "spiv" gangster noir and even though the ending was debated somewhat I thought it the correct one for the times.

88/100

Set in Wichita, Kansas it takes place on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and thereabouts, but the traditional holiday has little significance to the picture except as fodder for a few gags. A mob attorney named Charlie and a friend Vic who is a pornographer and strip club owner decide to steal $2M dollars from the mob boss. The club's operator Renata talks her way into the getaway. Along the way a drunken attorney friend of Charlie's joins in the plot. Meanwhile the mob boss figures out who stole the loot, so he and a henchman go hot on Charlie and Vic's trail.

The henchman ends up shooting Vic's wife at their home while trying to discover where Vic & Charlie are. Vic arrives, gets the drop on the enforcer, and locks him into a large trunk. Charlie and Vic stuff the trunk into a borrowed car and head for a frozen lake to dispose of the trunk and gangster, along with Vic's wife's corpse. What follows are a bunch of wild 'n crazy developments, which nicely set up a gratifying ending.

The film's casting was right on the money, including a juicy part near the ending for a heavy set Randy Quaid as the mob boss, whose looks and acting are reminiscent of Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. I've always been a fan of Billy Bob Thornton's. Here it's notable that he was more filled out in 2005, whereas currently he's quite thin. John Cusack is believable as the quirky attorney who gets the ball rolling.

There are plenty of awkward events which add to the picture's dark comedy. I particularly smiled at the names of the two strip clubs: Sweet Cage, and Tease-O-Rama. Surprisingly the movie hasn't become a Christmas staple ala Die Hard, perhaps because there was no emblematic Christmas song. Still, Christmas season is a good time to watch, especially if one is a fan of very dark comedy.

Doc's rating: 7/10

I've been touting this for a couple years, saw it completely by chance on TCM one day and really enjoyed it. Glad you liked it.

Say Anything, 1989

On the eve of his high school graduation, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) decides to ask out his class's valedictorian, Diane Court (Ione Skye). Though she's lived a very sheltered life with her doting father James (John Mahoney), Diane agrees to go out with Lloyd, and the two quickly fall into a sweet romance. But with Diane's departure to England looming and some drama in her family life, she begins to get cold feet.

I have had a very mixed set of experiences with 80s romantic comedies. A lot of it has had to do with how often I've been asked to root for people who are either borderline-rapists or just, you know, not that upset when the people around them are rapists. You can say, "That's just how it was then!". Okay, it doesn't make them any more likable.

So this film was a real breath of fresh air and a really charming departure from what I've come to expect from the 80s teen rom-com.

To begin with, I enjoyed both Lloyd and Diane as leads. I thought that the balance between their romance and their own personal lives was really well done. Diane is under stress because she's preparing to leave the country right at she learns that the IRS is investigating her father. Lloyd lives with his sister (played by real-life sibling Joan Cusack) and her son, and is unsure about what to do post-school. He knows that he doesn't want to follow his family into the military, but the only thing he's really got going on is a passion for kickboxing. Unlike so many romantic comedy leads, they really feel like they have lives outside of their relationship with each other, and a sense of a past.

I also liked the way that the film captured the insecurity of two people embarking on their first serious romance. There's a lot of stumbling and bumbling, but these are two good, sensitive people. Neither of them wants to hurt the other, and they just don't know if they're doing the right thing. Their conversations with each other are frank, and you really root for them to find their way through their issues. I keep coming back to the word "charming" and that's really how I felt through the whole thing. The film seems to understand the way that deep relationships develop from small moments: Lloyd teaching Diane to drive stick shift, or helping her avoid stepping on some glass. Further, Diane's easy attitude when Lloyd seems nervous during their first sexual encounter. There's an ease to someone you fall in love with, and this movie captures that in a really fun way.

I enjoyed the supporting cast. Joan Cusack is solid as Lloyd's older sister, still feeling cynical because she's been abandoned by her child's father. Lili Taylor is a lot of fun as one of Lloyd's best friends, Corey, whose manipulative relationship with a dude named Joe (baby Loren Dean!) has led her to both a suicide attempt and to writing 65 songs about the pain of their relationship. In fact, the friendship between Lloyd was one of my favorite things in the film. I loved Lloyd telling Joe to back off and leave Corey alone---though I also appreciated that the film gave Corey her own chance to realize that Joe is a manipulative jerk. Later, Corey gives Lloyd advice that is well-meaning--ultimately rooting for her friend to be happy. Mahony is also great as a man whose relationship with his daughter is a bit too close. While it borders on creepy at times, the main impression is of someone who has become way too emotionally dependent on their relationship with one person.

Overall I just loved this movie. There wasn't a singe moment in which it made a misstep. Just a sweet, endearing look at young love with much more attention than usual to the idea that people are human beings outside of their romantic relationships.

In my view it's the greatest of the "B" noirs. Marie Windsor was one of the top queens of noir, and McGraw is noir personified. Very enjoyable film, with a surprise ending no one sees coming.

I don't know if noirish novels are to your liking but I highly recommend Phillips' book. They completely altered it into a buddy movie for Cusack and Thornton though. I can only imagine what someone like the Coens could have done with it.

The Narrow Margin has always been one of my favorite noirs. The first time I seen it, Marie Windsor stood out as all kinds of great so much so that I started watching other films with her in it. Of course everyone knows her from Kubrick's The Killing too.

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White Christmas - (1954)

One day I'll get around to seeing more of these old musicals - their song and dance numbers aren't too bad. I watched White Christmas out of pure curiosity, and I didn't end up cringing as much as I thought I would. There's a sense of fun amongst the cast, and I did end up getting reeled in by a meddling biddy (played by Mary Wickes) who eavesdrops on half a conversation, gets the wrong idea, and ends up spreading false information which splits a couple up. An old movie to tick off my 'seen it' list.

7/10


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Vicky Cristina Barcelona - (2008)

Penélope Cruz is a wild highlight of Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a film I'd rank around about in the middle in his collection of features. Javier Bardem is also pretty solid as an artist who starts out as a seductive Spanish lothario, but whose character gets somewhat eroded as the film wears on. Our protagonists are two ladies (played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) who travel to Spain and are swept up in a passionate love affair with the same person. Two ideas of love compete in the movie, and the results are as complex as always.

8/10


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The Bourne Legacy - (2012)

Having seen the first three, I decided to go at least one step further and watch the Matt Damon-less fourth film. We've pretty much established a formula by now, and this Bourne flick ticks off all the perfunctory boxes. Albert Finney, Joan Allen and David Strathairn are in this for a combined 25 seconds despite much being made of their return. Continues from where the third film left off, this time focusing on another super-spy and the government's attempts to rub him out when the program he's in gets compromised. Jeremy Renner had big shoes to fill, and an average script with which to do it - but all in all the film is entertaining enough to pass muster. Nowhere near as good as the first three though.

6/10


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Brooklyn's Finest - (2009)

The fine line between good and bad gets awfully fuzzy here, with three police officers in full on crisis mode for differing reasons. Ethan Hawke's Sal is a Catholic who lives in a small mould-ridden house with innumerable kids and twins on the way. His wife is suffering a mould-induced disease and he's desperate to move, so he's stealing as much drug money as he can to make that happen and taking massive practical and moral risks doing so. Don Cheadle's Clarence is undercover, and is facing the fact that he's being ordered to set up a criminal who he's become very close with over the years. Richard Gere is Eddie, who is only days away from retirement and avoids his duties - fearful of what will happen to him and the fact that he's worn down, cynical and has seen to much pain during his 22 year career. All of his fellow officers look down on him as a coward. The paths of these individuals cross, as they do in these films, and we reach a pretty decent climax. It's not a work of art, but for what it is it works.

7/10

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House of Hummingbird (2018)

Flash forward an unspecified amount of time and the somewhat withdrawn young woman is on her way to a new life as a church organist in Utah. On her way there though she keeps spotting the same mute and ghoulish figure of a man (played by director Herk Harvey), dressed in a suit and pallid as a specter. She eventually arrives at her new job location and settles in at a boarding house. But even in these routine and mundane details Mary's sense of unease continues to grow. She asks the elderly minister at her church about a deserted amusement park that she passed on her way into town. She feels an unexplainable attraction to the place and finds herself dreaming about it and wanting to return to it. Her interactions with her landlady, the minister and her next door neighbor grow increasingly disjointed and she starts experiencing fugue states where people can neither see nor hear her. A sympathetic psychiatrist tries to help her but her path has apparently been set and there's a tinge of the inexorable to her struggles.

It's all accomplished on a shoestring budget of around 30,000 dollars and Harvey does an exemplary job of getting a lot of bang for his limited bucks. This is one thriller where the majority of the terror is implied and the audience is invited to fill in the rest.

85/100

While I haven't seen Black Dahlia yet, all of that does sound like stuff De Palma would put in one of his movies; just wait 'til you see how offensive Dressed To Kill is! Still though, I hope the disappointment you found in it won't put you off of checking out its fellow James Ellroy/"L.A. Quartet" adaptation L.A. Confidential, because that one's a legit great movie, if you ask me.

I love that film. Thought it was terrific.

Another film from Jim Cummings that is well worth a watch. Can't put my finger on why his films are so alluring, but he has such a heady mix of tone and genre, and his performances are intoxicating.

This one is a stinging attack on L.A, social media and Hollywood. Paranoia and narcissism everywhere.

7.2/10

The Harder they Fall (2021)

Just one of those films I couldn't get into at all. Supposedly a wise-cracking cowboy drama but I didn't see it really. Was waiting for something to happen but maybe I just watch too many films. Stylish but uninspired.

I've seen Dressed to Kill--it's been a while though, so all I remember is feeling disappointed and thinking that it had been very overhyped by whoever had written about it that made me want to see it.

I do love LA Confidential.