Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Burns, 2020





Another film recommended by Mr Minio, and another excellent recommendation, at that.

My wife and I had watched another film he recommended several months ago, The Empty Man, and we both loved it. Shortly after we saw that film, I told her about Come True, and that the same person had recommended the film, but she casually brushed it off after reading a short synopsis as something she wasn't really interested in. So it sort of fell off of our radar for a bit, even though every once in a while I would bring it up again, only to be rebuffed again. She had no solid reasoning other than "it doesn't look like something I would like."

My wife does this from time to time, with no logical reasoning, and she usually ends up liking whatever it is once she gets around to checking it out. Anyway, last night she is complaining there hasn't been a ton of good new horror films, so I just fire up the film and start it rolling. "We are watching Come True, or I am, and I hope you hang out to join me!"

Of course, she just absolutely loved this film. We both did! So now she is insisting I bug Mr Minio for a couple more horror recommendations.

Got a couple more for us, @Mr Minio?

__________________

It is one of life's little ironies that The Critic wasn't really embraced by most of them.

Given the movie's cast, it's certainly possible to see why a lot of folks might have been expecting something with a little more horsepower under the engine.

The Critic is a slight but rather entertaining story about revenge gone wrong -- quite, quite wrong. Maybe the movie critics who've come out strongly against it simply couldn't stand a film that cast one of their colleagues in such a negative light?

The chief pleasure here is the wonderful cast of talented British actors: Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Lesley Manville and Romola Garai. It's also a movie with sparkly cinematography and some charming period detail.

Having said that, it's also the kind of movie that might have been perfectly at home going straight to streaming. I'm pretty lucky to have watched it at the cinema, but it certainly isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea for the price of admission.

If you watch it with somewhat tempered expectations, you might just dig it; and certainly McKellen fans shouldn't miss it.

The House on Sorority Row (1982)

Neat little horror, as you would expect, wrongdoing brings revenge! It moves at a swift pace though for effectively a claustrophobic film. Subjective I know but Kate McNeil is an absolute image!

The Lost Weekend - 1945

4 out of 5

__________________
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Gandhi​

I liked this a lot more than you did

By The cover art can be obtained from Movieposterdb.com., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33866884

Massacre in Rome - (1973)

Again we see the Germans murder with officiousness rather than rage in Massacre in Rome, compiling something of an inverse Schindler's List after an SS Police Regiment are attacked by partisans. Revenge killings take place while, quite strangely, the Nazis don't actually go looking for the perpetrators. In the meantime Pope Pius XII hears about the revenge killings before they take place, and does nothing to stop it (the makers of this film - producer Carlo Ponti and director George P. Cosmatos were successfully prosecuted in Italy for making those claims.) The transfer of the version I watched looked and sounded better than I thought it would, and watching Richard Burton play a Nazi was a hoot, because it felt to me a strange bit of casting. There are no end credits to this - just a list of the names and occupations of the 335 victims (many of them had the misfortune to be sitting in jail, which is where many of the needed victims were hurriedly drawn from.) Father Pietro Antonelli (Marcello Mastroianni) is the voice of moral sense, while SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler (Burton) pivots from a philosophizing lover of the Italians and Italy who wants to finish his service with a clean "I committed no crimes" record to someone determined to carry out the order he's given, driven by a need to uphold his sense of duty. Not historically accurate, but a decent movie regardless. The film's score was composed by Ennio Morricone, which got my hopes up a little too high.

6/10

__________________

Taste of Cherry (1997)

__________________

[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Wait, somebody is actually watching the films I recommend?

Wow, great assertiveness!

Tssk, tssk. Give you an inch and you'll take a yard.

Not sure what you've already seen, but here are some more horror recs:
Repulsion (1965)
Mandy (2018)
Inland Empire (2006)
鬼婆 [Onibaba] (1964)
곡성 [The Wailing] (2016)
Bliss (2019)
La casa dalle finestre che ridono [The House With Laughing Windows] (1976)
Dellamorte Dellamore [Cemetery Man] (1994)
Demon Seed (1977)
The Devils (1971)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Spalovač mrtvol [The Cremator] (1969)
Tenebre [Tenebrae] (1982)
Un tranquillo posto di campagna [A Quiet Place in the Country] (1968)
Vampyr (1932)
The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015)
バンパイアハンターD [Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust] (2000)
藪の中の黒猫 [Kuroneko] (1968)
기담 [Epitaph] (2007)
헨젤과 그레텔 [Hansel & Gretel] (2007)
Angustia [Anguish] (1987)
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
La casa lobo [The Wolf House] (2018)
Il demone di Laplace [The Laplace's Demon] (2017)
回路 [Pulse] (2001)
Tras el cristal [In a Glass Cage] (1986)
L' ultimo treno della notte [Night Train Murders] (1975)
भूत [Bhoot] (2003)
Possession (1981)
Il profumo della signora in nero [The Perfume of the Lady in Black] (1974)
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
La maschera del demonio [Black Sunday] (1960)
Ghostwatch (1992)
Hardware (1990)
House of Usher [The Fall of the House of Usher] (1960)
The Innocents (1961)
Kill List (2011)

__________________
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Thank you for taking the time to post these recs!

I've marked what I have seen so far in red...

Bliss looks cool; I will try to dig that one up next.

Anytime, friend.

You haven't seen Ghostwatch? It might be an essential Halloween viewing!

It's orgone-oozing but vulgar. You've been warned.

Meanwhile:

Just a quick note that I am totally planning on cheating big time in the upcoming 31 horror in 31 days thread in the month of October. I know it is a paltry number of films to get into a whole month, but with a 5 year-old kid at the house, it is very difficult to find the time to get these types of films in. Last year, I found myself having to watch them in piece at lunch etc., which sort of ruins the entire experience, especially when horror is my wife's favorite genre and I am basically excluding her from the viewings that way. Anyway, I am going to include all the horror films we watch starting on Sept 16th like a big ol cheaty face!

On with the show:


Mohan, 2024





I had trouble rating this one. It is fairly well made and shot, and damned if I wasn't caught off guard by the tremendous acting skill displayed by Sidney Sweeney. I had no idea, really. But I kind of hated this film, especially the third act. Beneath it all, it's just another tired, tropey, I've seen it before and done better modern horror. Watch Rosemary's Baby instead.

Is Sydney Sweeney in Rosemary's Baby?

Cheating this way is fine. Usually people start Halloweeb marathons in October or watch horrors all November and then the moment they stop, they start Christmas time watching. I don't think those days matter that much unless you only want to watch one to three films of the kind on that special day and then wait until the next year which is very limiting but I can respect the continence if somebody can do that.

Lured, 1947

Sandra (Lucille Ball) is a disillusioned dancer who is alarmed when her good friend goes missing, suspected to be the latest victim of a serial killer luring women to their deaths with newspaper personal ads. The inspector on the case, Temple (Charles Coburn), realizes that Sandra would be a great resource to them and hires her. As Sandra responds to various personal ads, she finds herself in one precarious situation after another.

This is an involving, engaging thriller with a fantastic cast and very fun characters.



FULL REVIEW

Child Star (2024) Watched on Disney+ (in Canada). Directed by Demi Lovato and Nicola Marsh, this documentary explores the ups and downs of being a child star in a powerful,honest and insightful way. Features interviews with Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Alyson Stoner, Raven-Symoné, Kenan Thompson, JoJo Siwa, and others. I really liked this. Very well directed and it was interesting to hear the perspectives of different former child stars.

1st Rewatch...I found the 2022 Oscar winner for Best Picture just as much of a letdown as I did the first time and just don't understand what all the fuss was about. The Story, at its core, about the owner of a laundromat on the verge of losing her business who is offered a portal into alternate universes if she had chosen to take a different life path is a good one, but the story is so dressed up with so much cinematic pyrotechnics that the story gets lost, at least for this reviewer. As a textbook on film technique, this film is unprecedented, but I lose the story about an hour into it. The film won six other Oscars, including becoming the third film in Oscar history to win three of the four acting awards" Michelle Yeoh won best Actress (though I still think this award should have gone to Cate Blanchett for Tar), Best Supporting Actor for Que He Quon, and a long overdue Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Jamie Lee Curtis as an IRS agent named Deidre Beaubeidre, but on this second watch, I actually found myself on the verge of nodding off.

2nd Rewatch...A luminous coming of age story that gets most of its strength from the Oscar nominated performances of Saoirse Ronan as the title character and Laurie Metcalf as her mother. This movie gets a little better with each re-watch. Ronan is an incredible talent.

2nd Rewatch...With a grand assist from Oscar winning makeup genius Rick Baker, Eddie Murphy scores a bullseye with this hilarious re-imagining of the Jerry Lewis comedy playing a grossly overweight college professor intent on getting the attention of pretty graduate student (Jada Pinkett Smith) by inventing a potion that will make him thin and desirable to her; unfortunately, the effects of the potion that turn Sherman Klump into Buddy Love are temporary, which complicates Sherman's life to no end. Murphy is nothing short of astonishing in this film as he not only plays Sherman and Buddy, but Sherman's mother, father, uncle, and grandmother. he also appears as Richard Simmons. His strongest work in the film though is the slightly pathetic Sherman, who you can't help but fall in love with.

Last Seen Alive, 2022

Will (Gerard Butler) is on the brink of a split from his wife, Lisa (Jaimie Alexander). When Lisa disappears at a stop at a gas station, Will must fight to convince the police that she’s been abducted, much less to help him in getting her back. While the officer assigned to the case, Paterson (Russell Hornsby) remains skeptical, Will goes on a one-man mission to rescue Lisa.

Silly and sluggish, this is weak action fare.



FULL REVIEW