Rate The Last Movie You Saw

La Collectionneuse is my favorite. Seen it a million times.

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Start by saying that Adrien Brody shouldn't play a tough guy, but he's such a class actor we don't mind. A film about a garbage man hunted by a past tragedy. He seeks redemption and finds it in a little girl who reminds him of the child he lost. When that girl well-being is in question, he sees it as a second chance to make things right. The movie is a cliché, a typical story but really not well thought, it's like, let's see what profession the viewers haven't seen yet that we can play a man with murderer skills in hiding, yeah let's make it a garbage collector. This story has holes, they are naive and made to impact the viewers who don't like to think. A plus, it's located in New York City and has cats like RZA in good roles.

Thérèse Raquin aka The Adultress (1953) ++ Caught in a loveless marriage, Thérèse played by the mesmerizing and undaunting Simone Signoret discovers passion in the arms of a truck driver (Raf Vallone.)

Yes, yes, yes, yet ANOTHER Marcel Carné. . . but, C'MON, how can I NOT? lol.

Adapted from a novel by Émile Zola, we ride the spiraling roller coaster of illicit passion and the plunging depths as it all goes off the rails to the rocky crags beneath.

Once more, Carné illustrates every nuance, traversing the unraveling tightrope when death storms into Passion's Garden. The tension building and building with such sublime measure to an outstanding climax.

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Three Songs for Benazir (2021)


Another documentary short up for an Oscar, and I liked this one about as much as the last. Bare, rough story about a young man maturing in Iraq.

"Breaking Away"


Still the best damn sports movie to this day. I'm allowed to type "damn", because its sports!

No one had the smoldering sensuousness as did Simon Signoret. I think she would have been tough to fade...

I didn't realize that she was German. Come to think of it she looks rather Germanic.

3rd Re-watch...Perhaps the greatest teen angst movie that works primarily thanks to Tina Fey's brilliant, Oscar-worthy screenplay that captures the bitchy teen female psyche better than any movie I have ever seen. Lindsay Lohan had the best role of her off-again on-again career playing Cady Herron, a teen who has been homeschooled for most her life and as she enters the high school. Cady's pursuit of social acceptance becomes endlessly messy when she betrays her real friends Damian and Janice in order to infiltrate a group of bitchy girls who rule the school called the Plastics, led by the Queen Bitch, Regina George. The film features imaginative camerawork, sharp editing, and a terrific supporting class led by Rachel McAdams, creating the ultimate villain in Regina George, Lizzy Caplan as Janice, Daniel Franzese as Damian, Lacey Chabert as the desperate Gretchen, Tim Meadows as the principal, Amy Poehler as Regina's mother, and a totally scene stealing turn from Rajiv Surendra as Kevin Gnapoor, head of the Mathletes. This movie never got the attention it deserved because it might be a little too smart for its intended demographic.

It seemed like a good night for an escapist movie, a remake, Death on the Nile, adapted from Agatha Christie. Like any good old school murder mystery, a relatively small Cast of Characters is more or less trapped until the murder is solved. In this case, it's a cruise ship on the Nile, with pyramids in the background. Well off British passengers and the members of the jazz band that provides entertainment are all suspects. Hercule Poirot is a passenger and finds himself working to solve the crime.

Like any good old school British murder mystery, everybody is suspicious and nobody's alibis are completely believable. More murders happen, apparently to cover up the first. Suspects are questioned.

The cast is quite good, with Kenneth Branagh as the inspector, Gail Gadot and Armie Hammer as two of the suspects. I enjoyed that retro-format of the movie, although I did think that the early part of the movie, setting the stage went on too long and didn't really contribute to the outcome. Once it did get moving, all the finger pointing, suspicions, questioning and the ultimate revelation were quite enjoyable.

Most of the scenery seemed to be digital so liberties with sphinxes and pyramids were OK since they were not touching ancient artifacts, when big stones had to fall off the pyramids. It was great escape from the real world...into the comfort of a silly British murder mystery.

F@CK YES!! I can't say f@ck no matter what, but I'm f@ckin saying it -- F to the U to the C and it's K with me. F@ck indeedly doodly doo.

I firmly, wholeheartedly endorse the statement previously posted.

Did NOT know she was born in Germany - had to look it up. VERY COOL.

On the few, I've seen of hers, Jacques Becker's Casque d'or is the current favorite.

I have Diaboliques primed to go on my present delight traversing Marcel Carné, which I have EVERY confidence I will adore both her and the film itself. With an additional bonus glee for seeing Paul Meurisse as the husband -- YAY

But, yes, the lady is an intoxication to behold and witness.

I quite enjoyed Branagh as Inspector Poirot in Orient Express so I have been quite curious regarding this next venture and I truly need to place it on my watchlist.

Salesman, 1969

This documentary follows four door-to-door bible salesmen as they attempt to sell pricey holy books to working-class households.

Outside of content involving victimization of someone, is there anything worse than watching someone sell something?

Seriously, anything?

The interactions in this film are the kind of thing that make my skin crawl. A series of soft-spoken housewives trying to politely say no, as the salesmen use any means necessary to sway them toward an expensive purchase: questioning their faith, questioning how they are raising their children. When they try to sell to couples or to men, the alpha male behaviors kick up a notch, at times becoming overtly hostile. The nicknames that the salesmen give themselves--the bull, the rabbit, the badget, the gipper--also kind of made me cringe.

There are some obvious tensions when money and religious faith are intertwined. The film presents us with some predictable moments, such as the salesmen engaging in gambling, using profanity, or speaking with contempt of some of their potential customers. But for me the most insidious part was the way they'd get people to open the door by announcing that they are "from the church."

The most memorable thing for me was simply the exhaustion on the faces of many of the women who clearly operate as the household's bookkeeper. The barely masked disgust and distress on the face of one woman as she's told that their family is being assessed a penalty for not paying on time (I think?) speaks volumes.

On a lighter note, the sequence where a husband passive-aggressively begins to BLAST music as his wife drops a ton of money on one of the expensive bibles was a hoot. "This isn't interfering in what you're doing is it?" he asks, barely trying to make the question sound sincere.

Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it.

Parallel Mothers (2021)

You always know what you are getting with a Pedro Almodovar film. He has a simple formula where he takes a concept and puts a soap opera plot around said concept and we the viewers are supposed to get sucked in. It's been a while since I saw an Almodovar film that really sucked me in...it's been like 10 years since The Skin I lived In(which was my favorite film of that year)...well Parallel Mothers is on that level.

The plot centers around a pregnant photographer in her late thirties sharing a hospital room with a teenager. They both have their babies and go off on their lives. The story then takes dozens of twists and turns, has multiple time jumps (that are handled very well) and concludes at someplace that's very different from where it starts. Cruz and Smit are incredible in this, both giving performances of restraint and vulnerability. Milena Smit really should have gotten an Oscar nomination because she's a revelation in this. She manages to go through a massive character journey that is believable and sincere.

The film is book-ended with the Spanish Civil War and recovering the bodies of a bunch of dead men. It should be just a throwaway part of a story but it ends up being one of the more profound aspects. The last shots in this film are haunting and moving. Highly recommend it.

Julius Caesar (1953) ++ I do not come to bury this film but to praise it.

Leading the bill of said praise is Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony. At the pinnacle of stardom amongst some of his most iconic roles of the early fifties, Brando, to me, rises above the serious theatrical giants sharing the screen of this Shakespearian play. Following Caesar's assassination, his pivotal speech before the masses is an astounding and gripping performance, as is his performance throughout.

Surprisingly, Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz shot this in only 35 days. With an ensemble cast that included James Mason as a still-watered Brutus, John Gielgud as a thoroughly malicious Cassius, an arrogant Caesar, Louis Calhern. The only two relatively small female roles are made memorable by Deborah Kerr as Brutus' wife, Portia, and the rightfully worried Calpurnia by Greer Garson.
The remainder of the cast grips the drama of conspiracy, murder, and pursuit of those guilty of killing Caesar in the Senate beautifully.

Hail, Caesar! mostly follows Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a "fixer" for Capitol Pictures whose job is to make sure everything runs smoothly at the studio. From covering up scandals to streamlining production, his job is mostly to sell an image, a lie: that Western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) can be a dramatic thespian, or that actress DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) isn't having a child out of wedlock, or that veteran actor Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), star of that film-within-a-film, isn't "out on a bender".

The truth is that Whitlock has been kidnapped by a group of blacklisted Communist screenwriters. Again, winds of change from the east, threatening a long-standing institution. Meanwhile, Mannix is struggling with his own crisis of faith, both in religion and in his job, i.e. the studio system. How much does he believe in both? Can these long-standing institutions sustain the winds of change?

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Just finished watching The Sky is Everywhere. Directed by Josephine Decker, the film is about a teen musician (Grace Kaufman) grieving the death of her sister and torn between her feelings towards her sister's boyfriend and the cute new boy at school. Grace Kaufman is wonderful in this beautiful and powerful meditation on grief and love. Jason Segel and Cherry Jones are also very good in supporting roles. For me, this is Josephine Decker's best film. Highly recommended. My rating is .

Brazen, 2022

Grace (Alyssa Milano) is a successful crime writer who goes to stay with her sister, Kathleen (Emilie Ullerup), a high school teacher who is in the process of trying to win custody back from her very powerful, connected husband. Unbeknownst to Grace, Kathleen is moonlighting as a virtual dominatrix to raise funds for her legal battles. One night, as Grace is out on a date with Kathleen's neighbor, Ed (Sam Page), Kathleen is killed in her home. Grace is determined to find her sister's killer.

There's good junk, and there's bad junk. This, my friends, was good junk. The kind of movie you can put on, get half-invested in, roll your eyes at, and eat half a pint of ice cream. (And then the other half of the pint. It's been a long week, okay?).

Here are the things going against this film:
1) The plot is very silly: A person who is not at all law enforcement AND is the sister of the murder victim is hired as a consultant for the murder investigation.
2) The story is riddled with absurd coincidences: The murder victim lives next to a hot-shot police detective. This is the kind of film where a killer gets a cut on his arm and then all of a sudden everyone seems to have a cut on their arm!
3) The writing is, um, yeah. See above.
4) The plot centers partly on kinky sex work, and so the film has to try to show that without being actually sexy or showing any nudity.

Any or all of these things are hallmarks of crappy, made-for-TV movies. But this one also has several things going for it that make it not only tolerable, but honestly quite enjoyable.

For starters, I do like Alyssa Milano. I had no strong feelings toward her for a long time, but she did a stint as the host of Project Runway, including one season while she was heavily pregnant, and I just really loved the way that she talked to people, talked about fashion, and talked about the importance of everyone feeling good in their clothing.

The rest of the cast acquits themselves well enough, including Page as the love interest, Malachi Weir as his partner, and Daniel Diemer as one of Kathleen's students with a secret. There are a few shaky performances from secondary characters, but, seriously, who cares?

I also appreciated that for all the salacious potential of the dominatrix subplot, the film is surprisingly judgement-free when it comes to the women performing the sex work. They are just . . . women. While they obviously don't want to broadcast their work, the film never implies that they "brought it on themselves". (Because let's be real: you don't have to be anywhere close to sex work for someone to become dangerously obsessed with you). Of course the film's version of sex work is very silly and sanitized, but, again, whatever.

I only had one real complaint about the film, and that's the fact that an entire subplot is just left hanging when the film ends. It's almost as if everyone just forgot about this important, emotional aspect of the film. It makes me think: Did I like tune out for some important conversation, LOL? I don't think so, and I'm not rewatching the last 15 minutes to find out.

Good (trashy) stuff.

Wait, I thought this movie was pretty big and almost universally known?

It is. Even my students know it (and wear shirts for it) and they have the cultural memory of Goldfish.