Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The African Desperate (Martine Syms, 2022)

You ever just know a movie is gonna rip within the first minute? Like its just immediately on your wavelength? Yeah that was this and it stayed comfortably on my wavelength the whole way through. The music bonks, I love the post-internet flavouring and Diamond Stingily's line delivery just kills me she's so good. Just a fun little trip of a movie, such a vibe!!

Underwhelmed - Ticket to Paradise - I don't feel like doing a plot synopsis, so, to quote Wikipedia -

"Ticket to Paradise is a 2022 romantic comedy film directed by Ol Parker and written by Parker and Daniel Pipski. The film stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts (who also serve as executive producers) as a divorced couple who decide to team up and sabotage the impending wedding of their daughter Lily."

Most of the cast is dispensable, including A-Listers Clooney and Roberts, who phone in their lines. Most of the acting looks as though they did a seated script read-through and then started the cameras. There are characters who just seem to show up but don't bear on the plot and when it's over it cuts right to credits.

Sorry to say this, but George Clooney and Julia Roberts really are not all that cute anymore and their characters in this movie won't do much to change that.

I'll never get those two hours back. At least the pre-movie pizza was good.

No, I enjoyed reading that. Happy to see someone else putting those films together. I got all the references while watching Malignant, but I just think I'm out of step with the genre at the moment.

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The Conqueror Worm AKA Witchfinder General - I had heard so much about this film (mostly here) that I felt like I was missing out on a valuable piece of horror lore. I found it on tubi but there were commercial breaks and if there's one thing I despise it's having the flow of a film continually interrupted. But a good print is also on youtube without any annoying breaks.

Seeing as how they're both set during the English Civil War, watching A Field in England (it's on kinocult) is what led me to this. Vincent Price plays Matthew Hopkins, a self appointed witchfinder who along with his "associate" John Stearne (Robert Russell) roam East Anglia in search of anyone accused of witchcraft. The problem being that many such accusations were based on hearsay and often the product of personal animosity or falsehoods. The film neither addresses nor delves deeply into anyone's motivations. It's a rather subdued Tigon Studios offering, closer to historical drama than straight up horror.

A young Parliamentarian soldier named Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) takes leave to visit his fiance Sara Lowes (Hilary Dwyer). She lives with her uncle, John Lowes, (Rupert Davies) the village priest in Brandeston, Suffolk. Reverend Lowes gives the young couple his blessing to marry but warns Richard of trouble coming to the village and tells him that the lack of order in the land has encouraged "strange ideas". He entreats Richard to take Sara away but when his two day leave is over he must return to his unit but vows to eventually return. On the road back he encounters Hopkins and Stearne and unknowingly gives them directions to Brandeston. It turns out about the way you'd expect with some additional debauchery from both Hopkins and Stearne. The third act revolves around pursuit and retribution.

Director Michael Reeves died at the young age of 25 not too long after filming wrapped. I've also watched his previous film The Sorcerers with Boris Karloff. I'm not sure how his career might have turned out but this was a tight and tidy 86 minutes long and showed great promise.

80/100

Old (2021)

Beast (2022) - The trailer was great but pretty much showed all the good parts. Nothing new really in this movie but a decent enough watch.



Bullet Train (2022) - Good action and some funny moments but way too much going on with too many characters. A good watch but didn't live up to my expectations.

I just thought Wan was intentionally being cheeky and silly from the start so I just went with that vibe and found myself really enjoying it. I mean, I knew what the ending was from the opening scene of the movie, if I had a quibble I thought he gave up the ending in the opening scene (though he did get me off track a bit with some bending of his own internal logic, which isn't really fair), but I just thought it was good, silly fun.

Did you have to watch commercials to watch it?

I agree completely.
I did not get to see it in theater since it's original release but I got as close as I could when I was on call overnight in the hospital one october and brought the DVD with me and put it in the player in one of the smaller lecture halls at the hospital. Maybe a 10-foot wide drop-down screen. I was pleased.

Yes, which I know is kind of a dealbreaker for you.

Arguably my biggest dealbreaker, unfortunately. I'll see if I can find another avenue.

By The cover art can or could be obtained from MovieGoods or Sony Pictures Classics., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32661855

A Prophet - (2009)

A Prophet really reaches it's peak moment around 20 minutes in, as new prison inmate Malik (Tahar Rahim) is ordered to kill another prisoner, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) under the threat of his own life. Innocent and inexperienced, the terrified Malik is taught how to kill him with a razor blade, hidden in his mouth, but his jitters mean the homicide turns ultra-messy. For the rest of the film, Malik will be haunted by Reyeb - a constant imaginary companion. The film as a whole almost acts as an expose of French prison life - with Malik falling under the "protection" of boss César (Niels Arestrup) a Corsican mobster, with Corsicans being the dominant group over the Muslims. The youngster - of Algerian descent himself - eventually starts his own drug-running enterprise and learns brutality, criminality and murder (along with how to read and write) - this is a prison system that corrupts instead of reforms, and that's been the issue for many nations for a long time now. A Prophet was nominated for Best Foreign Feature at the 2010 Oscars (losing to the brilliant The Secret in Their Eyes) and manages to carve it's own groove out of an oft-repeated theme and story - that of innocence completely corrupted.

8/10

The Freshman - 1927 silent starring Harold Lloyd as Harold Lamb who is fixated on attending Tate College and becoming a big man on campus. To that end he emulates the star of his favorite movie The College Hero and goes so far as to adopt his nickname Speedy. What he doesn't know is that his classmates consider him a fool and disparage him behind his back. The only person who doesn't is Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), the daughter of the owner of the rooming house where he is staying.

Most, if not all, of the gags involve Harold trying his hardest to fit in. By trying out for the football team (and ending up a tackling dummy) and blowing through his savings by hosting the lavish annual Fall Frolic Dance (where he has a prolonged wardrobe malfunction).

This has a 94% rating on RT and it was supposedly one of the highest grossing films the year it was released. But it's still in third place of the Lloyd films I've seen behind Safety Last and Speedy. It might have been fresh and maybe even innovative when it came out but I wasn't exactly held rapt. I did think the closing sequence involving the big football game worked though and elevated the movie just enough.

70/100

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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It's Alive (1974)

From the female director's list, this is a miserable slice of life from England. It focuses on a couple of troubled youths, troubled mostly in the sense that their families and surroundings lack much to look forward to other than struggle. It seems like a lot of movies set in England that I've seen paint a similar picture. It's upsetting to me because it's not the England or the people I remember from my many trips there in my youth. This is not an enjoyable film at all, but it's tight and well done in every way.

Love Exposure - 7.5/10

Just finished it. The beginning was excellent. Then it got interesting against when Koiko came to school. Then it kinda dragged on. Oddly enough, I was most interested in Koiko (third "lead"), because my favorite character isn't usually the devious one, and on top of that, I didn't really like the other two actors. The love story wasn't interesting, but the cult was. But this didn't need to be four hours. This happens with a few 5-hour movies, kinda like "Best of Youth" (Italian movie), but at least there was no recycling.

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True. It needed to be 6. Hence why I'm contemplating watching the 6-hour TV series version now.

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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.

Don’t Look Up

Don’t look up.. Dont look forward..*

Just don’t look

If this movie is a metaphor about our apathy toward coming catastrophes it probably works, I just don’t think it’s very subtle or memorable or much else. Jennifer Lawrence was good, Meryl Streep was horrible as a female US president and an odd choose I thought, like Jonah Hill as chief of staff… okay. Vibe was all over place. Post credit scenes were silly.