Rate The Last Movie You Saw

hopefully dune 2 will be good

Turning Red (2022)


A great start to animated movies in 2022! Really funny, refreshing concepts on more adult themes...my only gripe might be the voice acting of some of the characters seemed a bit too quirky at times.

A great throwback to the slashers of the 80's. Ti West loves his influences and he's able to really capture the atmosphere of what he's going for. X manages to build enough slow burn tension until the third act hits with a bloody force.

A group of young people are shooting a porno in a rented farm house from an elderly couple in Texas. They keep their intentions a secret in the fear of losing their location. Once the elderly couple find out what's really going on in their farmhouse, blood is spilled.

This feels like a mix of Texas Chainsaw and Friday the 13th with the amped up sex portions before at the centre. I appreciate the themes of young and ambitious vs old and missed opportunities. This is a slasher film for slasher fans done with a little bit more care and craft put in, just don't expect it to really jump off the screen. It's still a slasher at the end of the day.

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Suspect's Reviews

Baby Face follows Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck), a young woman determined to "get anything she wants in the world". The film follows her journey from her father's speakeasy in Pennsylvania to the upper echelons of the Gotham Trust bank; a journey she achieves specifically by sleeping with different men. From the hiring employee at the bank to the vice-president, and others in between.

From a historical and contextual point of view, it's really interesting to see a film's attempt to push the boundaries set by the system, and Stanwyck revels in the role. She manages to build a compelling character that even if you don't condone her actions, you understand where she's coming from and the reasons for what she's doing what she does. The supporting cast is effective, but this is Stanwyck's show all the way.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot and in the HOF27.

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27th Hall of Fame

Thunder Road (2018) -

Man, this is one difficult film to rate! Watching more of Jim Cummings' films might make this an easier film to talk about, though I did enjoy a couple things about it. I've seen a few people argue that Jim is so incompetent and buffoonish that it's hard to root for him. To me though, his erratic behavior worked as scenes like his awkward funeral sermon and his breakdown outside the police station were products of Jim's mental state and his feelings of being overwhelmed. He's a try-hard who has difficulty processing his emotions and does whatever he can to get into the good graces of people he feels he wronged. I don't know much about mental health, so I'm not sure how I'd classify his character, but he did appear to have something which made him act the way he did in the film. Given this, while his character can be challenging at times, I wouldn't describe him as annoying. While Jim's mental state is made as clear as day though, I felt a significant disconnect in feeling anything for him. Torgo mentioned in his review how you're often unsure whether to laugh or cry during his breakdowns and, while I agree, I think this was why the film left me cold. Since I was unsure how I was supposed to react to Jim's breakdowns, I didn't find them funny nor emotionally powerful. I was just left kind of indifferent to Jim throughout most of the film (granted though, there are a couple mildly powerful moments near the end). Normally, I'd argue that the film should've toned down on the awkward bits so that it would be easier to feel a connection towards Jim, but again, they were part of the point of his character, so that wouldn't be a good idea. And this brings me back to the first sentence of this review. This is a difficult film to rate as, while I had difficulty feeling much towards Jim, I'm not sure I could improve the film without diluting his characterization. Therefore, I'll say that, while I was left cold by this film, I still understood and appreciated what it was going for.

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The Principles of Lust (2003)

Seen this years ago and it was on film 4 the other night so thought I'd have a look after a few years. Alec Newman plays a feckless "writer" that runs into Marc Warren's libertine Billy by accident. At the same time he falls in love with a beautiful Social Worker so his internal battle starts, pleasure or duty.

Some shocking nudey scenes but altogether a well put together film.

[rating]2.5[/2.5]

Encanto (2021) I liked Encanto even more the second time around. Beautiful animation, wonderful songs, and cute characters. Best animated film of 2021. I'm bumping up my rating to .

Yeah, although by the sounds of it through the interviews I've heard, the studio is rushing Villeneuve through the production, so we might end up with another Hobbit trilogy situation on our hands here.

Contact, 1997

Ellie (Jodie Foster) is a scientist who is passionate about the search for evidence of extra-terrestrial life. When funding for her program is cut, she is able to get funds from an eccentric billionaire (John Hurt) and sets up an independent program. When Ellie manages to locate what seems to be communication from a distant solar system, it puts her in the center of a conflict between politics, science, faith, and her own dreams and aspirations.

I didn't quite know what to expect from this film, having always felt lukewarm when I looked at the cover. But dang if I didn't end up really loving it!

Jodie Foster (who, sidenote, looks SO GORGEOUS here!) is the beating heart of the film. Her dedication to science coupled with her earnest outlook on life makes for a character who is incredibly easy to root for. While the plot mechanics of the narrative achieve a very large scale (as in, an international/intergalactic scale), I loved her subtle character arc as she moves to understanding how her scientific pursuits intersect with the need for human connection and her own version of faith. Foster really nails a character who approaches life from a strongly empirical point of view, and is befuddled or impatient when she confronts people who do not think that way.

The supporting cast is sprawling, and for the most part really strong. David Morse gives Ellie's character a cozy background as her loving father who nurtures her interest in science and technology. Tom Skerritt manages to humanize the character of Ellie's boss, who takes advantage of her work to further his own career. Matthew McConaughey does good work as Palmer, a religious man who is wary of technology and the way that it pulls people away from their faith and connection to fellow human beings. His character grated on me much of the time, but he feels fully fleshed out.

The story itself was something I found very moving. It is at once an underdog story, a sci-fi adventure, an almost-thriller, and drama rolled into one. Yet these elements come together to form an incredibly compelling narrative that operates on both a large and intimate scale.

There was very little in this film that I didn't like. Some of the reactions of the anti-science characters border on parody (like one political figure who sincerely questions whether or not the aliens will share "our values"). But at the same time, you know, people have literally been put to death for suggesting that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. I think that if alien life was proved to exist, there would be some extreme reactions. I would have loved to get a little more in depth with a religious character who was really sorting through how alien life impacts their faith, though I realize the film was already pretty full as is.

I also have to say that the part where .

Again, I found this film really moving. I loved the scope of it, the character arc, and where it ended.

It’s rare for me to not finish a movie but I got 20 minutes into Jungle Cruise and just couldn’t take it anymore...

I rewatched The Goodbye Girl (1977) for the upcoming Comedy Countdown. Richard Dreyfuss is terrific in this movie, but it seems to get lost in his filmography behind such classics as Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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OPEN FLOOR.

Really? I mean, it didn't look good to me, but it definitely didn't look painfully bad, either... just really, really bland.

oh really how many are they makimg?

Space Sweepers (2021)

This was pretty fantastic. Not much to the story, an older guy begins talking about his travels after one of the neighborhood kids see his picture on the cover of a magazine. His life involved traveling the country as part of different dance troupes and musical acts as well as having an on again/off again relationship with a pretty successful singer, Lena Horne. Stormy Weather doesn't have a dull moment. Every song was very good to great. Lena Horne, I had heard of her but haven't seen her in anything (that I'm aware of) but her voice is something else. There's a song Ada Brown sings, no clue as to what what it's called, but it had to be an influence on Crawling King Snake by the Doors. Some of the dancing was incredible. The Nicholas Bros...wow! That hurt just watching! but my fav may just have been Bill Robinson tap dancing on the riverboat or maybe it was his tapping on the congos...nah, it was the riverboat. If you want to be entertained by song and dance this is the film for you

I was expecting light Disney adventure and bland is a good way to put it. So bland I couldn’t stand it. The Rock was not only phoning in his lines but it looked like he wasn’t in the same scenes as the other actors.

Agreed. I felt like your one issue is on the nose and I wrangled with it as well. Honestly felt to me like studio-meddling. It feels out of place in the film, like some studio-douche insisted that angle be touched on.

I sleep in the nude! Uh-buffo!