Rate The Last Movie You Saw

By http://www.impawards.com/2022/armageddon_time_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71681689

Armageddon Time - (2022)

We go way back to 1980 and James Gray's own childhood for Armageddon Time, which seems to mirror our own times - and pointedly, Fred Trump finances the New York private school young 12-year-old Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is sent to when he fouls up by smoking weed with his friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb) at his much more lax one. Johnny is black - something his new upper class school chums find hilarious - so much so it forces the kid to lie about how close they are. Because of his race Johnny is usually immediately presumed guilty when things happen, while Paul usually gets off light - and it's Paul's grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins) who tries to open his eyes about speaking out - not being racist isn't enough. This all could have been played very heavy-handedly, but instead Gray inserts a lot of his own experience, confusion and lost innocence. Cinematographer Darius Khondji, with whom Gray made The Lost City of Z keeps everything at a low lighting, and our attention on Paul's face - the dark atmosphere reminds me of the end to A Serious Man - an approaching storm, and the beginning to a decade of eroding financial and moral enlightenment. Very uneasy.

You'll see a lot of nods to cinematic scenes you may know well - there's a lot of The 400 Blows in this, right down to when Paul and Johnny steal a computer which looks like the typewriter stolen in that film, and head down to the local pawn shop. There's another I've been trying to recall for ages - but it's one of those moment-by-moment recreations of a famous scene from another film - and I've lost it. I really found Paul a believable little kid - neither full of wisdom nor goodness, but simply in need of respect from his peers. He has a hard time accepting that school will lead anywhere, and a terminal need to goof off and not do his work. All the little nuances are there within him, and I was impressed. Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong are great as his parents.

7.5/10


By https://yuq.me/users/20/654/L5eGE8hWtz.png, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48756450

Chattahoochee - (1989)

Emmett Foley (Gary Oldman) - a mentally damaged Korean War vet loses it one day, and attempts suicide by cop before turning a gun on himself and attempting to kill himself with a bullet to the heart (he misses). After his arrest and recovery, he finds himself in the brutal nightmare world of Florida State Hospital which houses so many insane inmates that those locked up there sleep head to toe. All kinds of brutality are regularly dished out - and when Emmett writes a letter to an inmate's wife one day, those in charge of the hospital come down hard on him. Over time he notes every brutal act and with the help of his sister mounts a political campaign for reform. I thought this was a very well acted little movie, with Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Frances McDormand and Pamela Reed real standouts - but the only thing I had a problem with was the overly optimistic ending - one that seemed to sum thing up as "and everything is perfectly okay now." In my practice, it seldom all gets fixed in any first wave of reforms.

7/10


By impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9965715

Fast Food Nation - (2006)

I've always liked animals, but the older I get the more I love them - so the end of Fast Food Nation was a brutal shock to me, and upsetting. Those cows meet a terrible, nightmarish end - and the assembly line works continually, meaning non-stop horror. Fast Food Nation uses a simple narrative to be able to touch on all areas of the fast food business, with it's dodgy practices in the employment realm and the disgusting "food" side. It has many really light moments, but can get dark awfully fast - and I'm sure will push anyone who watches it a little closer to changing their diets.

7/10

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Midsommar 8/10 - weird,creepy and beautiful
All Quiet On The Western Front (2022) 9/10 - probably the best movie i have seen so far this year
East Is East 7.5/10
Heart and Souls 7/10

Nice look back or tribute to silent film, or whatever one would like to call it. It's charming and very well done. I certainly enjoyed it but not to a huge degree. A very good film that won't stay with me.

My reaction to it was pretty much the same.

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That's the advice given by Macho (Norman Santiago) to his young nephew, Ismaelito (Fernando Tarrazo) as they share a cold beer in the curb. It can also be seen as part of the thesis of this Puerto Rican film from 2007. Maldeamores follows three separate storylines about different people in different stages of love, or what they think is love, and how they can move forward beyond the struggles of figuring it out.

I really enjoyed the film as a whole. I think all of the segments had many strengths, starting with the performances which were all pretty good across the board. Also, the script and dialogue was strong and felt very natural, very much "of here", which made for a pleasant watching experience. Although the stories don't really connect in any way, the way the themes are handled made it feel as a whole.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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That was tasteless? OK, let me give it a like then.

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I LOVED this movie

I rolled one eye for each of them.

I'll probably not see that unless I get talked into it. I've seen enough "leotard movies" to last for the next couple lifetimes. They remind me too much of westerns, which thankfully have mainly disappeared from theaters.

I guess we're heading toward the Christmas season, so hopefully the studios are holding back something worth seeing, but for me, it's been a bland late summer/early autumn, now heading into mid autumn.

Love me some westerns. Hope we get a resurgence.

It would be interesting to see what they'd need to do to revive the genre. Old westerns featured so much clear good guy-bad guy stuff that seems dated in our world of ambiguous morality, that it's hard to see that coming back as it once was. Way back, when the sheriff shot someone the town thought "he had it coming"....no protests, no hearings, no police brutality charges. Vegans and giant chicken factories have made cattle ranches not seem like the future of the world and I don't think anybody would want to go down into the awful perception of Native Americans that also populated the run time of a lot of westerns.

I'd be curious to see how someone would revive the genre, but I don't think I'd put my investment millions into a western revival.

There are leagues of morally ambiguous westerns.


It's the seemingly frequent misunderstanding that they were a white hat/black hat genre that led to misunderstand the moral ambiguities of something like The Searchers and thinking it was just a racist relic.

Yeah, things like The Ox Bow Incident or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance pivot entirely on questions of morality and don't always have easy answers about the "right" course of action.

What are you guys rolling eyes at?
I want to join in but I don't want to use such a dangerous tactic against the wrong target.

I have never seen this. I keep trying to but there is something about the sangfroid of Kubrick's direction that often puts me off. That is probably why I like Spartacus so much. It is not only Kubrick's baby. Kirk Douglas takes the chill off of it somehow.

I have to agree...there has been a gem here and there, but for the most part, 2022 has been a less than memorable year in film.

The supposed terror of diversity and how it is ruining everyone's good time. Or so I keep hearing.


But since there is no reason to talk about it, a chorus of rolled eyes will have to suffice.

Also, I'll add an Agro for the heck of it:

Ah. Haven’t seen many westerns then?