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My No.1 Scorsese is After Hours and my No.2 is a tie between The Color Of Money and Taxi Driver. I'm fairly high on Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. If it's allowed, I would put The Last Waltz up in here.
After that group, there's a significant drop-off for me in enjoyment, as I respect Raging Bull and Goodfellas but I don't actually enjoy them.
Even though After Hours wasn’t quite my speed, it really goes to show just how much more range he has than people are willing to give him credit for.



The Batman (2022)

I saw the new Batman. I wasn't expecting much, so I was pleasantly surprised. I definitely recommend watching it.
9 / 10
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My No.1 Scorsese is After Hours
Don’t think I’ve ever heard of this movie & definitely never seen it. Need to rectify this.

I’ve seen The Last Waltz a million times.
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DOLORES CLAIBORNE
(1995, Hackford)
A drama film • A film based on a book



"Hell ain't something you get thrown into overnight. The real hell comes on you as slow... and steady as a line of wet winter sheets."

Set in a small island in Maine, Dolores Claiborne follows the titular woman (Kathy Bates) after she is accused of murdering her wealthy yet elderly employer, Vera. The inquiry by obsessive Detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer) brings Dolores' estranged daughter, Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) reluctantly back into the island, which in turn stirs up memories about the death of Dolores' husband and Selena's father 18 years ago.

Bates is an excellent actress and she puts so much into this character that you can, at the most, feel for her or at the very least, understand where she's coming from as a woman trapped by the circumstances. By contrasting who she was with who she is, we can understand the "real hell" that has come over her slowly. Jason Leigh does her best with an underwritten character, but despite that, her moments with Bates are pretty good, thanks to both actresses. I just wish we could've gotten more inside Selena's mind and her feelings since she's the most vulnerable character after all.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the HOF27.
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There's nothing from his catalog since AH that I think of as being particularly great.

For me it would be Goodfellas, Shutter Island, Wolf of Wall Street and maybe The Irishman. Also a few of his documentaries are superb (what he did for Dylan and George Harrison is monumental in their appreciation of those two men's respective genius', and his Fran Liebowitz doc Public Speaking is also pretty great if you're a fan of her.)



US
(2019, Peele)



Gabe: "Who are you people?"
Red: "We're Americans."

Us follows the Wilsons as they head to Santa Cruz to enjoy a nice summer weekend. The trip seems to bring up a traumatizing experience that Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) had at the same beach when she was a child, where she encountered her doppelgänger. Despite this, they decide to have fun, until they find themselves face to face with their "evil" counterparts.

This is director Jordan Peele's second film, after the wildly successful and critically acclaimed Get Out. If there's one thing evident from both films is that Peele, for better or worse, certainly has a lot to say about a lot of issues in the country. Whereas Get Out seemed to focus mostly on racial issues, Us seems to tackle so much more: from race and class to consumerism and free will, among other things.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot



Victim of The Night
Don’t think I’ve ever heard of this movie & definitely never seen it. Need to rectify this.


It's so great.
The less you know going in the more effect it will have and it is also kinda even more fun on subsequent viewing.



Victim of The Night
For me it would be Goodfellas, Shutter Island, Wolf of Wall Street and maybe The Irishman. Also a few of his documentaries are superb (what he did for Dylan and George Harrison is monumental in their appreciation of those two men's respective genius', and his Fran Liebowitz doc Public Speaking is also pretty great if you're a fan of her.)
I liked Shutter Island ok, but it had two issues for me, the first being that I actually correctly guessed the ending of the movie the very first time I saw the trailer (I don't even know if it counts as "guessing" when it's that obvious) and the other is that it just suffers from what I think of us Famous Director Bloat, when a director gets big enough that no one ever says no to them and they're too far up their own ass (see Lucas, Spielberg). This was not nearly his worst offense, that would be Hugo, but it was still just too glossy and CGI'd and sort of "perfect" for me to more than just kinda like it.
I didn't see WoWS or The Irishman because of the previous paragraph. I mean, The Departed seemed like a much slicker director was strongly influenced by Scorsese. And then after Hugo, I kinda just gave up on the guy.
Those docs sound good though. If he wants to overspend on a production about Harrison or Dylan, I can get on board with that.



I liked Shutter Island ok, but it had two issues for me, the first being that I actually correctly guessed the ending of the movie the very first time I saw the trailer (I don't even know if it counts as "guessing" when it's that obvious) and the other is that it just suffers from what I think of us Famous Director Bloat, when a director gets big enough that no one ever says no to them and they're too far up their own ass (see Lucas, Spielberg). This was not nearly his worst offense, that would be Hugo, but it was still just too glossy and CGI'd and sort of "perfect" for me to more than just kinda like it.
I didn't see WoWS or The Irishman because of the previous paragraph. I mean, The Departed seemed like a much slicker director was strongly influenced by Scorsese. And then after Hugo, I kinda just gave up on the guy.
Those docs sound good though. If he wants to overspend on a production about Harrison or Dylan, I can get on board with that.

The twist in Shutter Island is so deliberately telegraphed, I only view it as a twist being deployed tongue in cheek. Same with the overt exposition dump at the end explaining obvious things we already know (I assume a homage to the dreadful tacked on end of Psycho) I definitely don't think it is perfect. It does have bloat. And is a little too stylistically showy for my tastes. But as Scorsese doing dumb paranoid B movie, but with lots of money and stars, it's my kind of heaven.


Wolf of Wall Street is essential. One of the greatest comedy satires of this millenium. A baroque nightmare of douche bros destroying the country. And making you laugh at it.


The first Dylan doc he did is a miracle of footage and recent interviews with him. It stands along side Don't Look Now as the most important filmic document of the greatest artist of the 20th century. And the Harrison one is great a giving perspective on the 'forgotten Beatle' and how he was just a few hairs beneath the greatness of the others. And was nearly as complicated a person as Lennon



Raven73's Avatar
Boldly going.
Death at a Funeral
7/10.
This reminds me of some classic comedy movies like Clue, Police Academy and The Hangover. The humour is just crude enough and the cast is excellent.
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I liked this film better on second viewing but I still significantly if not strongly prefer the original Swedish adaptation. I prefer the directing, editing (screw the Academy), and acting.
The Swedish film seems intentionally less flashy and more like a 1970s spy drama which worked better for me than Fincher's style (which probably would have been fine if I hadn't seen the other already). I liked Craig ok but I liked Nykvist better and I liked Mara but I liked Noomi Rapace a lot more (I think Rapace is one of the most underutilized actors out there and that if Prometheus hadn't been such a turd she would have been a star).
Whether or not the movie gets caught up in exploiting the exploited... I honestly just can't say. It's a fine line and I don't know if I felt it was appropriately straddled in Fincher's version or not.
Yeah, I think that the actors in the original feel more lived-in.






1st Rewatch..Director/Screenwriter Greta Gerwig received major acclaim for her re-thinking of Little Women, but I think this film, which received Oscar nominations, is her masterpiece. The film is anchored by a luminous performance by Soirse Ronan as a 41 year old soul living inside an 18-year old high school senior who has no filters while dealing with relationships with two very different guys (Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet), her high strung mother (Laurie Metcalf), her depressed unemployed father (Tracy Letts) and her wiser than she thinks BFF (Beanie Fieldstein). And I still think Laurie Metclaf should have won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar over Allison Janney.



MAGICAL GIRL
(2014, Vermut)



"And what are bullfights? The representation of the struggle between instinct and technique, between emotion and reason. We must accept our instincts and to learn to struggle with them as if they were a bull, so that they do not destroy us."

Magical Girl follows three separate characters, each with different instincts, emotions, and struggles. There is Luis (Luis Bermejo), the unemployed teacher that is determined to buy an expensive anime dress for her terminally ill daughter. Then there is Bárbara (Bárbara Lennie), the mysterious and enigmatic woman that seems to be recovering from something while trapped in a problematic marriage. Finally, we have Damián (José Sacristán), a former teacher that seems to be suffering the consequences of letting his instincts take over.

The film presents the three storylines separately, but eventually converges them in a tragic collision course where reason fails and instincts succeed. Directed and written by Carlos Vermut, he uses a cold and distant approach to the camera, but does so with undeniable skill. There is a careful selection of what to show, when to show it, and how to show it, which heightens the tension and builds the atmosphere of dread that surrounds every character, where you're sure no one will probably succeed.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the HOF27.




Damn, this is a dose - The Northman. Anybody familiar with European history knows that a big part of what made the Dark Ages be dark was the Northmen, AKA Vikings. Pillaging villages, murder, fire, abduction were all part of what happened when you saw the sails on the horizon. In his latest feature, Robert Eggers takes us right into the belly of that beast.

The story is liberally adapted from one of the many, ultraviolent, Icelandic Sagas, in particular, the one that Shakespeare broadly adapted when he wrote Hamlet. All of the "cides" are present here, is in fratricide, matricide, patricide and any other form of butchery, torture, burning or mayhem. There's also vengeance, soothsayers, mystic oracles and people being eaten by crows. The quick and dirty summary is - "Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who raids Slavic villages. He soon meets a seeress who reminds him of his vow -- save his mother, kill his uncle, avenge his father."

You do have to wonder just how they kept the population from crashing for several centuries, before Scandinavians settled down, invented Volvos and Ikea, spawned me and salted down lots of fish, but somehow it worked.

The movie version of all this is pretty stark, well done and full of sweat, blood, gritting teeth, fire and ice and droning music. And, did I mention the crows. I didn't mention the lutefisk. The trailer here is just a sample.




I forgot the opening line.

By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67388581

Coma - (2019)

This film is like a mid-to-low budget Russian version of Inception where, instead of people visiting each other's subconscious they meet each other in a world that exists for everyone who is in a coma. When you stop and really think about it, then it makes little sense. I have to admit, the visuals are quite nice at times, and imaginative, but the story won't hold up even if your mind scrutinizes it for a moment - massive plot holes exist. The performances in it are average (the version I watched was dubbed into English, which doesn't help either) and it has the look and feel of a Dr. Who episode rather than a feature film.

5/10
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)







SF = Zzzz

and to top it off, an awful Rage cover at the end...


[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



DEMONS
(1971, Matsumoto)



"This world is a sea of blood"

The above text appears as the lead in the very final scene, but it is an accurate description of not only what will happen in the last 15 minutes, but what has preceded it too. Set in the Edo period, Demons follows Gengobe (Katsuo Nakamura), a disgraced samurai that's determined to take revenge against the geisha that betrayed him (Yasuko Sanjo) and her husband (Juro Kara).

I very much appreciated the direction and cinematography on this. Not only was the camera movement very neat and effective, but the blocking of the scenes, the use of light and shadows, and "dead spaces" in the framing of certain shots was impressive. Even though Matsumoto keeps his camera at a distance many times, he's not afraid to zoom into the violence to show us that "sea of blood".

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the HOF27.