Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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Lords of Dogtown - (2005)

I wasn't a skateboarder as a kid - I simply wasn't attracted to rolling around everywhere, trying to do tricks and occasionally really hurting myself. I still found Lords of Dogtown really interesting though - the birth of the culture that grew around skateboarding, and how it grew from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. Basically, these things were surfboards on land for the kids who couldn't compete with older surfer guys. Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) owns a surf shop and also designs/sells skateboards (the arrival of polyurethane wheels were a big deal for what they could do) - gathering a group of kids under his company's moniker, he trains them and has them compete in skateboard competitions. When they start gaining the media's attention, and the whole scene takes off, he finds he can't compete with the big money men - and sadly discovers himself getting left behind. Bad behaviour is the order of the day - but seeing all of this from the kid's vantage point gives a more nostalgic and kindly glow to what they were doing and rebelling against. Ledger is fantastic in this, and his Engblom is part way towards how he'd play his Joker role - slurred speech with false teeth and carefree smart alec manner. Aside from Johnny Knoxville and Rebecca De Mornay, the rest of the cast is made up of mostly unknowns - but the kids hold their end up, and the whole Boogie Nights feel to proceedings has the cast of young characters constantly changing and evolving. A lot of fun shots of skateboarding too - which I enjoyed, even though I'm not a fan. It has an edge to it, and I really like it.

8/10


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The Four Feathers - (2002)

Sometimes you go into a film with low expectations, and the movie kind of meets them. This new adaptation of The Four Feathers hobbles itself by showing English colonialism and late 19th Century culture in a bad light, and then expecting us to cheer for characters that represent the very same. In any case, Shekhar Kapur (who did okay with Blanchett's two Elizabeth films) requires a degree of overacting in his performers which makes everything look a little like a farce at times. I never got really comfortable watching The Four Feathers, in which British officer Harry Faversham (Heath Ledger) resigns his commission at the outbreak of war, and gets sent a parcel of derogatory white feathers in the mail. He heads straight into the action as a mercenary kind of figure - apparently his trembling and panic attack were a one-off, because from then on he's a daring and adventurous heroic figure. I'm sure the story works a lot better in a film without melodramatic performances and overblown set-pieces. Scenes in this crash through the screen in big Hollywood-type noise, slow-motion, dramatic music and screaming. I think a film should earn moments like this, and when it doesn't (and when there's too many of them) I become far too aware I'm watching a movie, without ever becoming immersed in the story. Ledger would survive flops like this, but the likes of American Beauty's Wes Bentley saw his star grow dimmer for not finding a better project to feature in.

5/10


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Flatliners - (2017)

Here we get the remake nobody at all was asking for which earned it's bucks on name-recognition and now litters the cinematic landscape. This version of Flatliners usually gets crushed in reviews, and it's not a good movie, but it's not deplorable. It's just plain old regular bad. The guy who used to be Ellen Page is actually pretty good in it, and this is actually the last film we'd see this person in as a woman. Have not seen much of Page since. The film does threaten to become spooky or scary at times, and seems unsure as to whether it wants to become a full-blown horror movie - the poster seems to promise some Ring-like terror, but ultimately you'll sleep pretty soundly even if scary movies bother you. I think Flatliners is a fantastic idea that has been fumbled twice - first in it's much better original 1990 form by Joel Schumacher, and now by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Niels Arden Oplev. Doctors killing each other and then reviving each other to explore near-death experiences should be much cooler than this.

5/10

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As you can see by my ratings I try and watch a majority of higher rated films. I know some people enjoy watching junk but I am not one of them. Some still get through anyways.

Also note that my ratings are nowhere near the Metascores and somewhat close to the IMDb overall average. How I rank them against each other is nothing like the norm.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Barbie (2023)


Same rating after a rewatch. Everything holds up well in my eyes...the casting is just impeccable

The Grey (2011)


What can I say about this movie, it never fails to pack a punch for me, I find it incredibly powerful, so many elements I love from the stripped back story of survival against mother nature, the dream-like jumping into the trees scene, the mostrous pack of wolves, the redemption of the character Diaz, Neeson as the alpha of the human pack is never better imo love love love it!

Butchers Crossing (2022)

We know that Nicholas Cage has done a lot of dross in recent years so I approached this with trepidation. It's about a Buffalo Shoot that goes in the old West wrong, there are few actors in it but overall it hangs together well and they act well. I found it a nice afternoon film and didn't expect too much.
Cage tears the screen up as usual ha ha ha!!!

She is in the movie, she only has about five minutes of screentime. If you blink at the wrong time you will miss her. She plays Harry's girlfriend.

7th Rewatch...It's not a great movie. The plot is a little pat with a couple of plot holes you can drive a truck through, but the movie's endless rewatch appeal lies in the dazzling Oscar-nominated performance by Meryl Sytreep as the icy Miranda Prietsley.

6th Rewatch...A lot of people think the Best Picture of 1980 should have gone to Raging Bull, but if you've never seen the film that won and deserved the award, I beseech you to check it. This story of an affluent Chicago family trying to pull it together after the death of the eldest son, is still gut-wrenching and uncompromising drama that after all these years, I still found myself talking back to the screen. Robert Redford's Oscar-winning direction is crisp and detailed-oriented, creating dozens of mini-dramas within this singular motion picture experience. Donald Sutherland's conflicted matriarch Calvin Jarrod should have earned him an Oscar nomination (the scene near the end where he is explaining to Beth why he's crying destroys me) and Timothy Hutton crushes it in his Oscar-winning performance as tortured teen Conrad, but what I still walk away from this movie remembering is the icy performance from Mary Tyler Moore as the self-centered and angry Beth Jarrod. Moore received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance here and I'm pretty much the only person on the planet who thinks she should have won. This film is still the fresh and disturbing experience it was in 1980 and I am upping my original rating.

10th Rewatch...this movie is definitive Hollywood high camp. It's rich with ridiculously funny scenes and laughable dialogue, but this movie is always worth another look thanks to the endlessly fascinating performance by Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford. Dunaway's performance is raw, unnerving, and ferociously uncompromising. It's also a one woman acting class that should be studied. Anything wrong with this movie becomes irrelevant whenever Dunaway is on the screen.

5th Rewatch....Robbed of a Best Picture nomination and one of the most underrated films of 1998, this richly textured movie about a pair of 1998 teenagers (Toby Maguire, Reese Witherspoon) who get transported into a 1950's TV sitcom starts off as a simple time-travel Back to the Future-type comedy that quietly morphs into a squirm-worthy story about bigotry and tolerance that actually recalls films like Do the Right Thing, even featuring a similar climax that is not an easy to watch. The film is a technical wonder nd the cast is sublime, topped by Joan Allen in a Golden Globe nominated performance as the sitcom Mom, a performance that I think should have earned her an Oscar nomination as well. Also William H Macy, JT Walsh, Jeff Daniels, and, of course, Don Knotts. If you've never seen this movie, please treat yourself.

I got too far behind on my October horror marathon posting and I don't want to write reviews for the last 16 movies I watched, so here are a few highlights:


The Invisible Woman (1941) - Other than Frankenstein, I feel like The Invisible Man has the best sequels of any Universal monster series. They experimented with a few different genres and I think they all work pretty well.


She-Wolf of London (1946) - This doesn't feel like the original, but it takes some surprising turns that reminded me of the Val Lewton- produced creature features of the era.


The Night Stalker (1972) - I didn't know I needed a movie about a scrappy photojournalist tracking down a vampire, but I really enjoyed this. I want to check out the series now.


Dracula's Daughter (1936) - A direct continuation of the original that stars a Dracula with a very different personality, while still maintaining the dark gothic atmosphere. Top-tier Universal monster sequel.


Halloween H20 (1998) - The blandest Halloween movie by far.


Werewolf of London (1935) - I might actually prefer this to The Wolf Man. Better paced and more werewolf action.


Cobweb (2023) - A really interesting idea that doesn't really come together in a satisfying way. One of the main antagonists should have become sympathetic and they don't.

Hellraiser starts with Frank (Sean Chapman), who acquires this mysterious puzzle box which leads to him being dismembered, torn apart by it, but without really leaving a trace. Fast forward a couple of months, and Frank's brother, Larry (Andrew Robinson) is moving into his house with his new wife, Julia (Clare Higgins).

This is a film I hadn't seen in several years, but that I always remembered being somewhat... icky. Rewatching it last month, I can confirm it is. But, being a horror film, that's actually an advantage. It is the kind of film you want to take a shower after watching just for how "unpleasant" and "nasty" everything looks and feels, and I mean that as a positive.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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A mysterious woman, a detective, a missing invention, and the above line. Sounds like the ingredients of a pulpy mystery, which they are. But what people might not realize is that those are some of the ingredients that filmmaker Todd Sullivan and his crew were given to craft this short film.

Done as part of the 48 Hour Film Project organized by Roger Corman, Birth of a Feminine Nation follows Jordan Frost (Melody Olivier), a mysterious woman and inventor that brings this case to Detective Steele (Nich Gulycz). All of a sudden, they find themselves in the middle of a pursuit and perhaps a conspiracy that no one might be prepared for.

The trick of the project is that the film has to be done in 48 hours and include certain obligatory elements (like a certain character, a specific genre, a certain prop, and the above line). I thought the short was fun on its own, but learning about those constraints afterwards made me appreciate it even more.

Grade:

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War and Peace - (1956)

Yes - it was time to grit my teeth and take this monster on. Even though it's not the 7-hour Russian masterpiece, a 208-minute movie was always going to test my patience. It was, okay. Did I feel the length? Yes. It actually felt longer than it is. My biggest gripe was that it really suffers in comparison to Sergey Bondarchuk's masterpiece. How can I ever forget the Ball sequence with it's incredible splendour in that film? It's incredible. When we get to the same sequence in this earlier Paramount film, it's a set that looks so less grand that I couldn't help judging in comparison - empty, smaller, hardly adorned. Ten times less impressive. The story has been well condensed here - which wasn't easy - and the battle sequences are also okay (but again, nothing compared to the Russian film's sequences) and I'm sure this was considered a decent release in it's day. Simply put - I'm never going to watch this again when I've got a better representation instead. It may be half the length, but it's less than half the quality and achievement. Good effort though, first up. If I'd seen this version first-up, my impression may have been much greater.

6/10


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For Love of the Game - (1999)

This is a strange one from Sam Raimi - it's a good sports movie, but a cock-eyed love story about baseballer Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) and his long-suffering girlfriend Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston). I learned what a perfect game in baseball is, and Raimi is at his most comfortable while directing Chapel's final game, which takes up the film's entire run-time and is interrupted by various flash-backs that flesh out Billy's story. When Costner and co aren't in uniform the film doesn't flow as easily, and considering the fact that Billy is the worst boyfriend in the world, it'd have been nice to feel some chemistry so we'd understand just why Jane keeps forgiving him. I enjoyed watching this, but I'm not sure how much I like it as a whole, or if I'll ever feel the need to see it again.

6/10


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Pocahontas - (1995)

Nice love story, but making an animated film for kids when the surrounding drama is so historically dark gave me an uneasy feel during a lot of this Disney film. Still - I love 'Colors of the Wind' and that sequence in the film is simply so marvelous the whole film picks up an extra point from me. Beautiful stuff that, animation-wise and musically.

7/10

When a Stranger Calls (1979)

I did like Women Talking. Need to Re-watch it.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Very good movie with an entertaining ensemble cast.



Interesting movie from Croatia.

Totally agree regarding House of Gucci...movie deserved a lot more attention than it received,