Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

Hôtel du Nord (1938) ++ Marcel Carné has an intrinsic flair for illustrating the essence of humanity in the most desolate of scenarios.

The more common endeavor would be to surround the main characters with filler; Director Carné places us within a busy metropolis where lives and stories interact, collide and collude. It is not easy and can be pretty obvious when attempted by those who know little of life or its more abrasive venues. But not Carné. There is beauty in his dismal premises. A blend of life, death, sadness, and joy permeates all and reflects the nuances of his tenants with sublime detail without needing to spotlight them. Allowing us to glimpse or study at our pleasure as life moves on in the Hotel du Nord.
To my silly amusement, it is not only an actual hotel but is still standing and operating in Paris, having changed very little in some eighty years since.

This is my third film of his, the first two, Le Jour Se Leve (Daybreak) and Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows), each featured MyMan! Jean Gabin. Each film introduced me to the artistry of Carné's depiction of the harshness of life and the loving devotion of each brushstroke for those experiencing it. There is no judgment or social commentary. There is only life. Full. Impartial and in constant movement of poetic majesty.

My next visit to his cinematic world? Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise) and I can't wait!

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I've been getting into Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films - just watched the first two of his BRD trilogy. They're different - and I find it hard to compare this filmmaker to any other.


By http://www.filmportal.de/df/91/Artik...,,,,,,,,,.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27140641

The Marriage of Maria Braun - (1978)

To love one man/woman for life - it's the stuff of fairytales, but also perhaps happens more often than not, creating emotional problems for all that live in this modern world of change. This film, however, doesn't dwell on this question as much as it serves as a model for the convulsions West Germany went through from the end of the Second World War to the economic propulsion that saw it's remarkable recovery - one in which the Germans themselves felt all too prepared to forget what preceded it. Fassbinder reminds us of the role Germany's women had, questions of race which lingered, and a general malaise that hung over the country despite it's recovery. Meanwhile, the story of Maria Braun plays out like a tragedy in reverse - she lives her life constantly in preparation for an ideal she never questions. I found it fascinating, for I know so little about what life was like in Germany from 1945 to 1954. Fassbinder's style is typically minimalist and very sexual.

8/10


Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17817729

Veronika Voss - (1982)

Spoilers

No less interesting is this, the tale of faded film star Veronika Voss (somewhat taken from the real-life story of German star Sybille Schmitz) who finds herself an addict and psychologically scarred in post-war West Germany. Schmitz was out of favour during the war years, but Veronika Voss seems to have been at her highest point during the Nazi-controlled era of Ufa - a middle aged sports reporter falls in love with her after a chance meeting, and this leads to him finding out about a dastardly scheme where doctors get patients hooked on morphine and then take them for everything they have. It's very straightforward compared to Maria Braun, but the unspoken pain of the schism created after the wild and crazy days of the war seeps through. A dark and moving portrait of pain - physical and psychological.

8/10

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Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

I found Children of Paradise to be a wonderful and remarkable film - exceptional in every aspect. I don't think I've seen any Marcel Carné film aside from that very famous one - I ought to check them out.

I highly recommend any if not all three of them.

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Ghostbusters:Afterlife (2021)

Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters (2016) are really two films that are on diametrically opposed spots of my pallet. I can not express my hatred for the reboot that striped away the horror and clever comedy of the original and left us with a misandrist, slapstick bore of a cash in. Ghostbusters(2016) embodied everything I hate about modern films it was a lazy stupid fraud of a film. Ghostbusters II looks brilliant compared to 2016 so could a modern Ghostbusters movie work.

Well Egon dies and his family shows up as his farm house in Oklahoma to take care of his belongings settle his accounts in the hopes of trying to move on. The family features a 12 year old daughter who is a genius, a 15 year old mechanic brother and a single tire mother. In this new town we are introduced to three characters, a summer school science teacher (Paul Rudd) and Lucky and Podcast. I did not know the 19 year old girls name was Lucky I think that's an advantage because she's pretty much the worst part of the film. Podcast feels like a Goonies throwback character however the actor is a strong part of the film. He's one note but it's a good one note.

Ghostbusters:Afterlife attempts to make an 80's movie and it manages to hit more than it misses. Reitman manages to give the film a Spielberg esque quality to it, and while he doesn't get everything right, the pacing effects and character development work really well. The final act is polarizing but I'm on the positive side..it worked I was spoiled going in but I still got hit with the emotions and that's important.

Passing (2021)

When it comes to racial films I tend to walk into them with a cynical eye. I ask myself is this a story that was told because it needed to be told or is it Oscar bait. Passing is a 4 star film that could have been a 5 star film...it's very close to being a masterpiece. This is Rebecca Hall's first film and it tells the story of two women who live during the Harlem Renaissance. Claire passes for being a white woman while Irene is a doctors wife and is well off.

Most of the characters feel authentic and the themes are complicated. Tonally you don't know what the story is going for until the second part which is Hall's success and failure as a filmmaker where she could have hit the right genre it would have been a classic but she made it feel theatrical. The story has a claustrophobic feel to it where it really shouldn't Alexander Skargard's character is poorly cast and underwritten.

But the film is really 90% about Claire and Irene and it's a pair of powerful performances from Thompson and Negga. If it had about 5 million more dollars and a half hour longer run time I think this could have been the best picture of the year.

I concur this is a wonderful film, but I found the love subplot much more touching than the teacher thing. Maybe because I'm not a teacher.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Fantastic movie. I love it on all levels. Bligh was an early Governor of New South Wales - the state in which I was born! (not during his reign though).

Being the Ricardos (2021)

Shallow and tedious. The story is set improbably within one week, then jumps all over the place with flashbacks and flashes of some of the characters in the future looking back in a faux-documentary style. This might work as the sort of film that's a love letter to its subject, but a lot of the time it seems to treat it with contempt. The actors do a good job, but the film doesn't have anything to say.

SF = Zz



[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

Spawn (1997)





Nothing like movie that feels like a N64 game.

Ghostbusters Afterlife 10/10


It does justice to the franchise, I was deeply moved by it. Pop culture at its finest, in this day and age.


I'll make sure to come back with a proper review, later on this week.

You make some good points. I liked it a little better than you did. Here's some commentary:

Being the Ricardos


Unfortunately the movie was overly ambitious and a bit scattered. The time period was announced to be recounting one week in the production of the I Love Lucy show and the activity around it. But during that span they inserted too much Lucy-Desi lore and series incidents. They also invented some PC exchanges, evidently as a nod to current fashion. For example they had one of the lady writers complain to Lucy that she was being subservient to Ricky, that it made her too submissive. But Lucy had to explain to her that the show’s premise was based on her ditziness, comic deceitfulness, and her always unsuccessful attempts to be an entertainer like Ricky. Lucy was THE focus on the series, and everything was written to feature her and her antics, although Ethel Mertz was often involved as well.

In the main, the casting could have been a tad better. Javier Bardem as Ricky Ricardo was the standout impression. He looked and acted the part from start to finish. It must have been a real challenge to cast for Lucy. Reportedly Cate Blanchett was originally cast, but eventually dropped out. It’s hard to say if she could have been made up to look more like Lucy than did Nicole Kidman. Kidman did look the part when they had her made up like Lucy in the TV broadcasts portions, and her voice impression was oftentimes reminiscent of Lucy’s voice. But at other times she simply looked and sounded like Nicole Kidman. Nina Arianda was passable as Ethel Mertz, although Vivian Vance was never slender-- always rather dumpy. And J.K. Simmons didn’t look a thing like Fred Mertz, but he managed to be somewhat suggestive of him in the Lucy show portions. His voice and manner were not close.

The opening put me in mind a little of the some of the beginning scenes in Citizen Kane, with aged participants commenting on “how it was”. Actually that worked pretty well. But ironically, despite the fly by mention of some important characteristics of the show, they wasted way too much time on one routine that Lucy wasn’t happy with, insisted on being changed, and the drama surrounding it. There was also too much emphasis on HUAC’s charge that Lucy had been suspected of being a communist. She was not only never a communist, but that entire flap raced by at the time with barely a notice by the public.

Still, it was enjoyable to revisit some of the style and history of the I Love Lucy show. Perhaps if they had not insisted on getting big name actors for some of the important characters, and relaxed out the number of scenes and pacing, they might have had a hit. The true story of not only I Love Lucy, but also Ball’s and Arnaz’s real lives and projects both during and after the series is a major and unique tale of Hollywood success. Although this film was intended as only a snapshot of their story, it had the potential to be much better.

Doc’s rating: 6/10

A Touch of Zen

A massive blind spot cleared up. While I prefer the abbreviated runtime of Hu’s Come Drink With Me and Dragon Inn, one can’t deny the epic scale and artistry that make this his masterpiece.

5/5

Valentine, 2001

At a middle school dance, Jeremy (Joel Palmer) asks a series of girls to dance, all of whom reject him, some a lot more nicely than others. One girl does agree to dance with him, and even kisses him under the bleachers, but when spotted by a gang of popular boys, she goes along with their story that he "attacked" her. Years later, the girls are all adults and one of the group, Shelley (Katherine Heigl) is brutally murdered at her workplace. The remaining friends Lily (Jessica Cauffiel), Kate (Marley Shelton), Paige (Denise Richards), and Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw) soon realize they are being hunted down. But how is the killer related to the events of that middle school dance?

I hadn't thought of this movie much since it first came out, but I feel like in the last few years I've heard people say some not-so-terrible things about it, so I decided to give it a late night whirl.

It was, sure enough, not terrible. But it also makes a lot of basic mistakes in its structure and character dynamics that make it a very frustrating watch.

There's a very common mistake that horror movies and thrillers make, and that is to prioritize a final twist or reveal to the extent that keeping that secret and maintaining ambiguity becomes the key objective. The problem with this approach, of course, is that it means holding most of the characters at arm's length to maintain a sense of mystery about them.

The main male star of the film is the character of Adam (David Boreanaz), a man that Kate has been dating for a few months. The natural conclusion, of course, is that Adam is somehow Jeremy. But seemingly aware of the problem this presents, the film instead throws half a dozen named male characters at the audience. There's Max, the pretentious artist who makes untoward advances on Lily. There's the man who lives in Kate's apartment and hangs around her in a creepy way. There's Cameron, Dorothy's new boyfriend who is trying to start his own internet business. There's Brian, the guy Paige meets during speed dating. Then there's the sleazy detective who is investigating Shelley's murder.

If that sounds like a lot of characters . . . it is. The film is overstuffed with characters, most of whom get screen time in fits and starts. While many of the guys are total creeps, they are vague creeps. We never learn much about Jeremy---aside from the fact that he was an outcast and called "Pervert" by his bullies--and so there's no way for us to connect him with any of the men on screen.

In addition, the film wants to say something about the relationship between the women. Dorothy still holds onto resentment about the way that she was perceived in middle school because she was overweight. (NOTE: The film repeatedly refers to her as having been "fat" and sorry but no. I know it's mainly meant to be the characters' perceptions of her weight, but this really bothered me.) But much as with the men, this is only given the most superficial of treatments.

There were some fun moments. I did laugh at the opening sequence set in the modern time as Shelley is on a horrible date and the camera pans down to show that she's written "HELP ME" in the sauce on her plate as her date rambles on in the third person. A few of the kills are also effective, with some memorable set pieces.

Ultimately, though, the weak characterizations kind of sink the film. We're meant to wonder about the identity of the killer, but it's pretty obvious that it has to be one of two people.

I also have to admit that I didn't get the ending. It just didn't make sense to me. The final shot indicates that .

Anyway, not an awful way to spend 90 minutes, but not all that much worth revisiting either.

Wreck It Ralph (2012)


Maintains its classic status after showing it to my daughter for the first time. I will never watch the sequel again, as it lacks the style, humor, and charm of this one.