Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Not so lonely anymore! I've been touting this film as the kind of meat and potatoes R rated thriller we haven't really gotten since the 90s. It's deftly handled in virtually every way a genre film can be and was just supremely satisfying, even if it is lacking in genuine greatness.*

Seeing it get thrashed and cinemasinned to death on Twitter while getting radio silence here bummed me out.

I don't get what people would have to complain about. Do you or do you not want an inexplicably sexy firefighter racing through a wildfire to save a child from two (also inexplicably sexy) assassins?! You know the movie you're getting into!

Also: everyone in it can act! No eye-rolling shoehorned romances! Solid special effects!

It was seriously nitpicky stuff. "why have the fire start from a flare and not from the thunderstorm?" Like that level but for EVERYTHING.

I am absolutely on board for inexplicably sexy firefighters fighting assassins. I'd forgotten what a pleasure it is to see Jolie on the screen but with her return in this and Eternals (for which she's one of the few bright spots), I hope she acts more and directs less.

I also can't praise Medina Senghore enough. The character and performance elevated someone that could have been cheap stakes (vulnerable pregnant wife!) for Jon Bernthal but turned out to be perhaps the most competent, driven and engaging character in the film.

The Wiz, 1978

Timid schoolteacher Dorothy (Diana Ross) is transported to the strange fantasy urban landscape of Oz. She connects with the Scarecrow (Michael Jackson), the Tinman (Nipsey Russell), the Cowardly Lion (Ted Ross), and must find her way to the Wizard (Richard Pryor). But the wicked witch Evillene (Mabel King) has other plans for Dorothy (and her little dog, too!).

This film has greatness in fits and starts, but for the most part it feels like a missed opportunity.

What I enjoyed the most here were some of the visuals. Graffiti comes to life at night in an outsized playground. An artist in the subway controls two puppets that seem to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The sets and costumes tread a fun line between urban vintage and fantasy. Some of the choreography is really great and fun, especially the larger pieces in the last act.

I also really liked some of the music. "Ease on Down the Road" is a catchy refrain, and "Brand New Day" resonates with some excellent stage musical big number energy.

But overall I found myself struggling with this film a bit. It took me three different viewings to complete it, at one point finding myself dismayed that there were still somehow 50 minutes left. Perhaps it's something about the pacing, but I thought that the film lacked a vital momentum. Instead of feeling eager, I found myself feeling impatient.

Just a real notch below what I was hoping for.

Yes, she was great. And I will watch a without a moment of hesitation because she fits perfectly into the universe of the film.

The Young Unknowns, 2000

Charlie (Devon Gummersall) is the son of a famous director, slumming it in LA waiting for his big break. He has a contentious relationship with his girlfriend, Paloma (Arly Jover). When Charlie's friend Joe (Eion Bailey) visits the house with a model friend named Cassandra (Leslie Bibb) in tow, things slowly spiral out of hand.

So this is one of those films whose greatest strengths actually make it kind of hard to recommend.

Charlie and Joe are, to put it mildly, the worst. They are privileged, rich white twenty-somethings who relentlessly put on "Black voice" ("Yo, we smokin' crack now boy!"), put a lot of energy into explaining how it's really the incompetence of others that has kept them from being more successful, and wax rhapsodic about how all women secretly want to be hit by their lovers.

What's rough is that these characters feel incredibly real. Painfully real. I went to high school and college with these guys. And MAN, it is hard spending time with them.

But what I found ultimately successful about the film is the way that it both recognizes the dynamics that have led these characters--and specifically Charlie--to be the way they are, while not excusing the choices that they make that harm others. Bibb's Cassandra is the ultimate representation of this. When Joe impulsively hits Cassandra when she angers him, Charlie arranges for him to take her to the hospital. And yet later, when she repeatedly asks them to help her get home, they refuse to let her use the phone and effectively trap her in the house with just the two of them and a whole lot of drugs and alcohol.

The film is also a fascinating glimpse at a very specific slice of time. Characters wear pagers and cell phones are nowhere to be found. Lest you think that bros bemoaning PC culture is a new thing, we get to hear Joe explain that an article about verbal abuse is a good example of feminism ruining everything. Ranting on about how female military members accusing superior officers of rape is just an example of women trying to ruin good men, Cassandra protests that "they had power over them" which made it wrong. Charlie and Joe laugh in her face. The guys are later excited to explore a new popular drug--meth.

This movie is off-putting and uncomfortable from opening credits to closing credits. It manages to show how a fractured-yet-sheltered upbringing can shape someone into a selfish, abusive-yet-needy young adult. Gummersall's performance is strong and lived in and at times hard to watch. The final act--in which an intoxicated Cassandra is alone in the hillside home with an increasingly aggressive Joe and Charlie--was at times unbearably tense. It's not a matter of if there will be something horrible, just what horrible thing it will be.

This is a film that I think deserves to be seen, and yet it certainly isn't a good time. I'm glad I watched it and I encourage you to throw it on your watchlist. It has pretty bad ratings and some really harsh reviews ("Headed for well-deserved obscurity", LOL ouch!), but I thought it was interesting.

By Toho Company, © 1955 - scanned movie poster released by Toho Company, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3665183


I Live in Fear - (1955)

In between Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood Akira Kurosawa made this more low-key effort that examines a few things about being human and being part of a family and society - not to mention the fear those in Japan particularly felt towards the bomb and it's potential to destroy. Kiichi Nakajima (Toshirô Mifune) has become obsessed with nuclear war. He's a wealthy foundry owner, so he has the means to construct elaborate bomb shelters, but eventually this isn't enough and he decides to transplant his entire family onto a farm in Brazil - where he thinks it's safest. Most of his family don't want to go - and think (quite reasonably) that he's going too far. That's where Takashi Shimura comes in - as a court mediator who has to decide if control over Nakajima's finances will be handed over to his family, whereupon he'll be declared incompetent. But is he? Isn't it reasonable to be terrified of the world's nuclear weapons?

This is an interesting meditation on how difficult it is to conclude how rational or irrational certain fears are - most people relegate fearful things (like how dangerous it is each time we drive a car) to their subconscious, but that doesn't mean a person is crazy if they examine the danger and react to it. It just means they're doing something unhealthy. Something that could lead them into becoming unglued. Nuclear conflict for the Japanese around this time is a great example. There's a great scene towards the end of this film where...



You could swap 'nuclear war' for 'climate change' and make this film as relevant as it was for the Japanese in the 1950s.

8/10



The Final Quarter - (2019)

From around 2013 to 2015 people in Australia went through a saga that involved a popular football player (Adam Goodes) who, apart from being a celebrity, campaigned against racism and for a place in Australia's constitution for the Indigenous people who have been around for tens of thousands of years. He was playing in a match when a spectator called him an "ape" - and he proceeded to point this person out and make an example of her. She was a 13 year-old girl, and I don't think she fully comprehended the racial significance of saying that to an Indigenous person. A few days later, just when the furor was dying down, a well-known radio personality suggested Goodes be used to promote 'King Kong' - this inflamed the whole topic again.

Goodes was eventually given the honor of being "Australian of the Year" and was in the spotlight, but the controversy that followed him around due to these incidents (and a type of 'war-dance' he performed on the football field which infuriated conservative commentators) meant that during football matches Goodes started to be booed whenever he went near the ball. Match after match the booing continued - and this led to the nation as a whole arguing with itself over whether this constituted racism or not. Whatever the answer to that question, the booing continued until he retired from the game, almost hounded out of the sport by those who had grown to dislike him.

I can imagine this documentary being particularly interesting to non-Australians. I thought it was good - but I was already familiar with the whole story, and it's basically a documentary created from editing together bits and pieces from various media to tell the whole tale. Growing up in the 1980s - racism was a huge thing everywhere I went. Things are a lot different now - from my perspective, but there'd be quite a few people who would say otherwise.

7/10

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Ajin (2017)

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May those who defy their fate be granted glory.💜

Nomadland

Frances McDormand gives an incredibly human performance but aside from that, I don’t need to watch her take a crap.. twice and I didn’t need to read this statistic but 84% of hidden homeless are male, 9 out of 10 rough sleepers are male. Every ****ing movie I see like this deals with a lone female. At least I found this more believable than Wendy & Lucy

Fortunately, because I grew up watching this all the time, I always have my expectations set low and get a pleasant lift from the film rather than having them higher (as audiences certainly did at the time) and get disappointed.
I love Evillene's big number "No Bad News".

I can see what you liked about the film. And it is very watchable. But to my taste it had some notable flaws. Here's some commentary I did about it:


Those Who Wish Me Dead(2021)

Oh boy, this was pretty much a miss in most aspects. On paper it sounded like an interesting classic thriller with good production credits. A forensic accountant is compelled to flee with his son when some of his family is murdered by mob assassins, presumably because he has uncovered damning evidence against the mobsters. After he is murdered, his son goes on the run alone, where he soon meets up with a remote fire tower lookout who is tasked with saving she and the boy from the hit men as well as from a raging forest fire the pursuers have set.

Director Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Hell or High Water, Wind River) was a definite attraction due to his previous successes. There were high points, like the adolescent actor, Finn Little, who played Connor, the son of the murdered forensic accountant character, and who served pretty much as co-lead with Angelina Jolie. Little's talent was deep and well rounded, despite his young age. Also there was impressive forest fire photography, and first rate CGI that was indistinguishable from real life raging flames.

But there were two deficits. The novel of the same name by Michael Koryta was very highly regarded by the critics, but the screenplay did not produce the same cachet. We'll guess that the chief writer was Charles Leavitt, a writer of some note. Yet this script felt superficial and by-the-numbers.

Some of the problems lay in the casting. Angelina Jolie is far too attractive and gentle looking to play a rough and tough firefighter/smokejumper. It was almost impossible to take her character seriously right from the start, although she was more plausible when interacting with the boy. Her character would have been much better played by a somewhat more average looking actress, for example Samantha Mathis, Laura Dern, or even a butch looking type like Tilda Swinton. Of course Jolie's star power was likely the biggest consideration for the producers.

Since they avoided graphic sex and violence the picture could have been given a more commercial PG-13 rating, but for hundreds of F words in the dialogue. It seemed that every sentence had to have several Fs, which soon became annoying, like fingernails scraped on a blackboard, or a bad satire. The language was even used by Jolie's character while speaking to the boy.

There was some suspense, and a few isolated thrills, but overall it was a mediocre production that could have been much better. This will not have been one of Sheridan's best pictures.

Doc's rating: 4/10

Jolie is certainly attractive, but gentle looking? I disagree.

I honestly didn't notice the language. And I thought that the use of it when talking to the kid was just part of the trope of the rough-tough adult having to interact with a child. Overall I thought that the language fit the characters.

It might not be the top of the heap in terms of Sheridan's work, but I think it's one of the better thrillers I've seen in the last year or so. The way that the different characters and side-plots were layered together was really solid, the stakes were clear, and it all came to a satisfying finale.

Herge: In the Shadow of Tintin, 2016

This short documentary (there is a more feature-length version, but I apparently got the more edited down ~1 hour version?) follows the career of Georges Remi (aka Herge), the creator of the character Tintin. The film traces the development of the character as well as the way that Herge's work grew in parallel with world events and specifically World War 2.

This was a fun little documentary, if a bit light. I enjoyed hearing about the order of the creation of the comics and when different characters were introduced. I also liked learning about the real events that served as inspirations for the stories. I read all of the Tintin books when I was a kid, so a lot of this film was just a nostalgia bomb. But it was also neat to learn that real people inspired his characters, especially that meeting a Chinese man inspired a character he would use in the story The Blue Lotus, which condemns the treatment of the Chinese people by Japan.

One area in which I thought this film kind of missed the mark was in how it addressed the use of racial caricatures in Herge's work. If you've read the comics, you know that it can be very yikes. Even as a 7 year old child, I was put off by the portrayal of African and Middle Eastern characters. Even "sympathetic" portrayals of groups like American Indians or a ship full of kidnapped Africans tend to lean toward showing them as foolish naive children. But the way that the film chooses to address this is to bring it up, then immediately pull out some canned quote from Herge about how his portrayal of the Africans was just going along with what he heard and how we shouldn't be mad because he didn't mean to be racist. The film seems to think that intention is all we should care about, and it comes across a bit callous. His portrayals, in my opinion, are not actively malicious, but they are still racist. I wish the film had had the nerve to just own that instead of trying to make excuses.

If you read these comics as a child, you might enjoy the trip down memory lane.

The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (1983)



I'm prepared for flack because I've heard this movie is beloved by some - which is part of the problem... I think it's a case of decades of hype vs. a first time view.

First, I never read the book, but had heard that this movie was something of a classic since the early 80's.

TCM gave it quite the build up with Ben Mankowitz interviewing Francis Ford Coppola (but comparing it to other Coppola films such as The Godfather and American Graffiti set me up with anticipation for something epic.)

Of course I loved seeing the cast of then future stars, but the movie itself seemed to come off more like a spoof of an old James Dean film (to me anyway).

It brought to mind the John Waters' movie Cry-Baby (1990), but Crybaby was an intentional spoof of those types of movies.

The acting was almost cringe-worthy. Strictly high school play level which is surprising as many of these guys would go on to make huge hit movies. Some performances in the movie were better than others, but overall it just felt overdone & forced - much like a spoof, which it wasn't. Matt Dillon seemed to stand out initially as being believable, but in the 2nd half he was chewing scenery and delivering lines as if he was overacting on a voice job for Family Guy.

Seeing Diane Lane was really the "Cherry" on top - her acting was good in her few scenes and she was just a gorgeous girl!

A fun watch for the novelty factor of an all (future) star cast, but as an overall film: a little slow, dreary, with poor acting that could not be overcome with blatant attempts to be cinematically "artsy".

No flack coming your way even though I liked that film. Just a question about your movie title. I've never see it wrote that way. Is this a special version or extended version?

That's affirmative! I watched it on TCM (On Demand) and they talked about how this version had about 20 extra minutes added on, which Ben Mankowitz said really helped flesh out the story from the book.

I'm thinking I might have liked it more if it had been 20 minutes shorter.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964

In this all-singing musical, Genevieve (Catherine Deneauve) and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) are in love, but their romance is strained when Guy is drafted into the army and must leave Genevieve behind. Pregnant and unsure of Guy's commitment to her, Genevieve must decide what to do when she is wooed by Roland (Marc Michel).

So, wow, yeah, the whole thing is singing. I feel like I exist in this weird space as someone who loves movies where I've seen some more obscure things and I know some random deep-cut trivia, and yet there are these things that I'm pretty sure even really basic movie fans know that somehow manage to be news to me.

I will admit that the singing took me a little while to get used to. But ultimately, it was the look and feel of the film that really won me over, and the singing just became the norm.

The look of this film is absolutely eye-poppingly stunning. I probably only absorbed about 60% of the dialogue, because I was constantly having my attention drawn to the way that a woman's dress matched the paint color on the wall behind her, or the unexpected dark pink of a passing ship in the background, or the arrangement of graphic boxes on a shelf.

I also loved the editing, and one particular moment in which Genevieve and Guy embracing in the street cuts to them in the same pose embracing at a table in a cafe was fabulous.

My confession about only catching 3/5 of the dialogue aside, I also really enjoyed the approach to the story. If I could sum up the vibe I get from Demy's work so far, it would be "Yeah, sometimes that's how it is." Sometimes you love someone who doesn't love you back. Sometimes there's something negative about a person that is beyond their power or desire to change. Sometimes you miss a chance and you don't get a second one. Sometimes you have to make the best of what you have. And if it seems like this is a little bleak, I think that what Demy actually manages to capture is that it isn't bleak. It can be a little sad, yes, but life can still find a way to be full of joy. My favorite line might be when Guy asks Madeline, "Are you happy?" and she responds, "I'm not unhappy."

As with his previous films, Demy balances our sympathies excellently between the leads. We understand Genevieve's anxiety about being pregnant and single, not knowing if the father of her baby is coming back to her. We also understand Guy's shock at returning home from a trying experience to find that the entire landscape of his hometown has shifted. There are no villains in this story. In a lesser film, Roland (sliding neatly over from Lola and into this film) would be a villain. But here he's just a nice guy who really likes Genevieve. And it isn't his fault if we, the audience, want her to end up with Guy. Likewise, the character of Madeline (Ellen Farner) who pines after Guy. No one is scheming, they're all just people who want to be happy.

A very charming film whose all-singing style could have felt gimmicky, but instead creates a kind of alternate reality.

I highly recommend watching The Young Girls of Rochefort, if you haven't already seen it. It's my favorite of Demy's films.

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