Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Great film. Inspired me, moved me, shocked me. The entire cast is outrageously good. Especially Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura as the leads.

A stage director has intriguing relationship with his screenwriter wife, some time later he moves to Hiroshima and assembles a cast to direct a stage version of a Chekov play. What we see unfold is a version of his dealing with the marriage. To say anymore would be a spoiler. But I just hope many people see this , which is surely one of the films of 2021.

It's devastatingly beautiful, complex, has a brilliant screenplay and is just a great film.

I enjoyed the premise of the film. But there's a couple of really weak moments and it doesn't really deliver overall.

Films watched while ill with covid...

Single All the Way (2021)
The Holiday(2006)
Monster (2003) -
Pitch Perfect (2012)
The Band Wagon (1953)
Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
Zombieland: Double Tap -
Noelle (2019)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

The Wife - 7.5/10


I rented this.... finally... If you like "What Happened Was" or "My Dinner With Andre", I think you'd like this. It's definitely worth the $2.99. The movie is audacious and does whatever it wants to do. It features a couple who are both a psychiatrist team, and their patient comes with his wife, and the wife of the home is uptight, doesn't want them over (since they do come over unannounced), while the patient's wife, is not very self-conscious, wants to drink, and "have fun". The husband of the home seems interested in wanting to see "fireworks", and Wallace Shawn's character (the patient) is going through... something. It's awkward, some dark humor.. It's a movie in one location.


Maybe you can see the movie, since I still have 46 hours left.. Down below.

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Sorry you had covid.
Poseidon Adventure is a childhood favorite.

One of my old favorites and how I started to become a Peter Coyote fan.

Interesting, what moments did you not like?

It's a shame as in some respects the film is a victim of it's premise, it focuses on her life having the low budget horror elements and snuff flicks which she dissects for a living, which is the whole point of the film - and is great but then I also felt that they used it as an excuse for the low production values. Not a bad film by any stretch. Just ok with flaws.

The novice https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11131464/


A girl who is kinda obsessive really gives it everything she got for example having a major in a subject she is not good at just cause she likes the challenge and then she joins the rowing team ...



I liked the hardwork over talent thing they go for here she really has her heart set for it and goes all in to the point of hey maybe a lil bit to far..


Overall i liked it 7.5/10 could i have grated it higher ? sure but the film was lacking something story wise also they dont teach you about the sport would have been nice to go just a lil deeper in that seeing as she is also a novice but all in all i liked it but i dont think it is work everyone though.

Minari - This is a 2020 indie drama about a Korean family's attempt to adapt and assimilate to a life in rural 1983 Arkansas. The family patriarch Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) has spent a large part of their savings to purchase several acres of what he thinks is prime farmland. They have moved from Los Angeles where Jacob and his wife Monica (Yeri Han) worked for years in a poultry plant.

Jacob has a dream of growing Korean vegetables for the rapidly expanding Korean population in Arkansas and Texas. Monica is unconvinced of the soundness of her husbands plan and lives in constant fear of ending up destitute in alien surroundings. Their children, Anne (Noel Cho) and David (Alan S. Kim) do their best to blend in but David has a congenital heart defect that precludes him from normal childhood activities and looms large over the family's day-to-day life.

Monica and Jacob find work at a local poultry plant but argue constantly and it's decided to have her mother Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) move in with them to help watch over the children. Jacob hires eccentric local man and Korean war veteran Paul (a marvelous Will Patton) to help out but his small farming project suffers numerous setbacks including a well running dry.

The cast is marvelous from top to bottom with Yeun nominated for a Best Actor Oscar and Youn winning one for Best Supporting Actress. I haven't seen any of the other Best Actor nominees but Yeun is just so good in this that I could easily see him picking up an Oscar for his performance. Grandmother Soonja provides most of the humor and a lot of the pathos and it's a well deserved win for Youn.

It's a small and intimate movie in scope as most indies are. A snapshot of a loving and supportive family with the ending left open to individual interpretation. I think most people will be of the opinion that whatever else happens to the Yi family, they'll be facing it together.

90/100

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But is it a Christmas movie?

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

After the previous disaster of a Bond movie, this probably felt better than it actually was. Still, it's the premiere of megalomaniac villains trying to do good in their own twisted way for the series. Quite firmly in the middle of the pack albeit a poor theme song.

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Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Quite a watchable US slasher that has some genuinely funny lines. I think it sadly misses the opportunity to be sleazy and nasty, but it's above average among its peers.

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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

A totally pointless reboot of one of the better game movie franchises. It doesn't improve the 2002 movie in any way and feels like a poor horror version of Gotham television series. That is a generous rating too, by the way.

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Mary and the Witch's Flower - I don't watch a lot of anime. Next to none actually, but I have watched Spirited Away and Porco Rosso from Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli and loved them both. So who knows? Maybe, just like most genres, really good anime is easy to like. The guy who directed this, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, used to work for Miyazaki at Ghibli but left in 2014 to start his own animation company, Studio Ponoc, in 2015. This is their first release and it's not bad. A little derivative of Miyazaki's work but still a respectable first effort.

It's based on the 1971 book The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart. The protagonist is a little girl named Mary Smith (Ruby Barnhill), who is staying at her great aunt Charlotte's estate in Northern England. While searching the woods for a lost cat, she stumbles across an exotic flower known as a Fly-By-Night that confers upon the user the powers of a witch for one night. She also finds the little broomstick of the title and it takes her on a hair-raising ride into the clouds where she eventually lands at Endor College for Witches. There she meets head mistress Madam Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) and the college's illustrious chemistry teacher, Dr. Dee (Jim Broadbent). Things aren't as they seem of course and Mary has to face and try to overcome some major obstacles.

It's not a bad sort of kids movie and even though it wouldn't have been my first, second or third choice (watched it with someone else) I still ended up invested in the story and enjoying the movie. Like I said, it did remind me of Ghibli but since Yonebayashi played such a large role in that company it's to be expected. There were parts that also reminded me of the Harry Potter franchise up to and including snippets of the musical score. Not as good as the two Miyazaki features I've seen but still decent.

80/100

I can respect that.

Just finished watching Being the Ricardos on Prime. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, the film stars Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. Kidman is great, but the film is a joyless, unfocused mess that falls surprisingly flat. There is too much going on and most of it doesn't work. I didn't like the screenplay and the film is lacking a spark. Kidman carries the film and manages to elevate it somewhat, but even she can't save it. Kidman deserves an Oscar nod, but the film shouldn't get any other nominations,in my opinion. Disappointing, a from me.

Every day a voice in my head tells me I should watch The Road Warrior. And I have to be like, “No, I have things to do, I can’t sit around watching The Road Warrior.” Some days I lose that argument. Today was one of those days. The Road Warrior remains one of the finest films to come out of this era of man and machines.

What is this? Four good movies in a row? Haven't been on this good of a run since I banged through all the Police Academy movies on that drunk Tuesday in '92. Both the leads were great, the dog was good and I felt bad for George and Peppy, two likeable people just trying to do their thing amidst all the changes going on around them. My only gripe is the ending which I didn't really like. The dance number was great but what happened next could have been left unsaid.

The 2000s Countdown has completely derailed my schedule as I'm continually tempted into watching and rewatching films showing up there...


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The Devil's Rejects - (2005)

I found out too late that this was a sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, and although it's obvious that you don't need to have watched it prior, I feel that I would have gelled more with the vibe of this if I'd been introduced to the characters. I felt a little uncomfortable with the sexually abusive aspects of this film, but the horror elements are effective at times and Sid Haig just has this personable presence that you can't help but love. Apart from him, I loathed nearly all of the characters in this, though I tried to get myself into the crazy spirit of things. Obviously inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - which it doesn't surpass. An okay horror film.

6/10


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Punch-Drunk Love - (2002)

I had to sit down and really watch Punch-Drunk Love carefully to realise how much I do like it after all. It had slipped in my estimation due to a 2nd watch which was half-hearted and didn't have my full attention. This is the kind of movie with small nuances and expressive faces which doesn't reward non-committed viewing. The character of Barry Egan is perfect for Adam Sandler - who we can believe is a man with hidden angst and violence wrapped in a goofy and eccentric outward persona. Troubled, he nonetheless attracts Emily Watson's Lena which transforms him from a cowardly, shy hands-off kind of person into a more aggressive protector with something worthwhile to fight for at last. The humour comes from the script, but Luis Guzmán and Philip Seymour Hoffman make a significant contribution. A very different kind of film for Paul Thomas Anderson, but one of the highest quality.

9/10


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Catch Me If You Can - (2002)

A 2000s film wrapped in a 1960s veneer based on Frank Abagnale's somewhat dubious autobiography. It's slick, with Steven Spielberg at the helm and long-time collaborator Janusz Kamiński behind the camera. It has a fantastic opening credits sequence, a really attractive jazzy score from John Williams and the advantage of two of cinema's brightest stars : Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. You'd have to expect quality with that much talent involved, and it is an engaging and fun watch with a con man doing the seemingly impossible and impersonating an airline pilot, doctor and assistant district attorney while being chased by FBI man Hanratty. Good for a watch, and really transforms itself into the 1960s.

7/10

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The only other Supporting Actress nominee I've seen for that year is Olivia Colman in The Father, but I agree that Yuh-Jung Youn deserved an Oscar for what she did in Minari - her performance might have been the best thing I took from that film.