Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I subscribe to the Criterion Channel streaming service, so I didn't have to pay for it. The Criterion Channel is the best streaming service and has a lot of great cinema from around the world, old and new.

I don’t doubt it, but I’ve never really caught on to this streaming channel.

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

The incident marks the first appearance of Dracula in England. I guess I always took that unfortunate Harker incident as a prologue.

Dalíland (2022)

Starring Ben Kingsley and Barbara Sukowa

Beautifully filmed, magnificent costumes, Ben Kingsley and Barbara Sukowa are superb as always. Interesting and informative perspective on the artist's latest decades. A must see film for all that know who is Salvador Dalí.


80/100

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"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

She is German, actually.
Don't know about Decathlon.

Serendipity (2001)

Got movies & actors mixed up. Deleted my post.

I read the book, which is wild and hilarious! The movie wasn't what I expected. I do love Awfafina in it. She hasn't become as big a star as I expected but time will tell. If you are a reader, definitely try Kevin Kwan's novels. Interesting tidbit, Kevin Kwan is related to the movie star Nancy Kwan among other crazy, rich asians.

Last movie I saw was a rewatch of Winters Bone with Jennifer Lawrence. A solid 4 out of 5 stars.

The Gunfighter (Henry King / 1950)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann / 1952)
Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller / 1957)
Lonely Are the Brave (David Miller / 1962)
Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier / 1972)

I borrowed all of these movies through the inter-library loan system a number of months back and loved all of them. I eventually bought them and they're all part of my collection now.

The Gunfighter - A thoughtful, moody tragedy that belies its title, which suggests something perhaps a tad more rowdy and rambunctious than it is. Poor Jimmy Ringo (an atypically mustachioed Gregory Peck) just can't seem to catch a break. He's desperately trying to stay out of trouble and leave his days of infamy and being an outlaw behind him, but everywhere he goes he can't avoid running into some little snot-nose punk who tries to challenge him and prove that Jimmy Ringo's not all he's cracked up to be. Alas, they live just long enough to regret that move. This 1950 movie is, in a way, sort of a precursor to Fred Zinnemann's High Noon in that a good chunk of it sort of takes place in real time and employs a literal ticking clock to create tension within the audience. For most of the movie, Jimmy Ringo takes refuge inside a saloon in the town where his estranged wife lives as a schoolteacher raising their son. He wants to get in touch with her and meet the boy he left behind, but he's also aware the three brothers of a young man he's recently slain in self-defense are on his trail and will catch up with him any time.

High Noon - The classic '52 Western starring Gary Cooper as the put-upon Marshal Will Kane, who is marrying Grace Kelly and wishes to retire his badge, but must first deal with the dangerous Frank Miller, an outlaw he had helped to put away and who has now just been sprung from prison and is due to arrive in Hadleyville on the noon train where he will be met by three associates. Kane is outnumbered and outgunned, for he cannot rely on the good people of Hadleyville, who for varying reasons of their own opt to stay out of the fight. This newly released 4K UHD edition from Kino Lorber is an absolutely gorgeous black-and-white transfer, and I would recommend it even to those already possessing the Olive Blu-ray. A major hit during its day but also a flashpoint of the American culture wars of the '50s, its screenwriter Carl Foreman having been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and being blacklisted shortly afterward. Many people of a more conservative disposition found its downbeat and pessimistic vision of America to be extremely distasteful. Among them was John Wayne, who together with director Howard Hawks created an answer film of sorts with 1959's Rio Bravo, which isn't so much the antithesis of High Noon as it is a temperamentally different take on a similar premise, but one which wisely leaves politics at the theater door and serves as an equally brilliant companion piece to Zinnemann's classic. Definitely a win-win situation for fans of Western cinema. So once again, art leaves politics in the dust!

Forty Guns - Just as Rio Bravo is a sort of alternative take and companion to High Noon, Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns has sort of a similar relationship to Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. Both movies have powerful female leads, in the case of Ray's film Joan Crawford as the gunslinging saloon owner Vienna, in Fuller's film Barbara Stanwyck as high riding woman with a whip Jessica Drummond, a wealthy landowner who runs Cochise County with an iron fist and a posse of forty riders (giving the film its title). Both films are very stylized in different ways, and both have something of a melodramatic - I daresay even slightly operatic - streak. In this film Stanwyck meets her match in Barry Sullivan's Griff Bonnell, a former gunfighter working for the Attorney General who, along with his two brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix), are out to arrest a man who works as one of Stanwyck's guns for mail robbery. (Kind of a banal sort of crime, no?) But the real trouble comes from her no-good, out-of-control juvenile delinquent brother Brockie (John Ericson), who Sullivan's character must face down twice: Once at the beginning, and once at the climax. There's quite a bit of the real-life Earps in the characters of the Bonnell brothers, certainly quite a bit of Wyatt in Griff. There are also a few story elements here that seem influenced by the incidents which took place in the real-life Tombstone, Arizona.

Lonely Are the Brave - Stars Kirk Douglas in one of his personal favorite film roles, that of modern-day cowboy John W. Burns, who lives in the year 1962 but is a man out of time, rejecting modern society and technology and not even carrying an ID card. This movie is in fact a very direct, present-tense articulation of a theme which underlies most Westerns, that of the cowboy or gunfighter being a man out of time, gradually being displaced and phased out by the events of history. Finding out that a long-time friend of his named Paul Bondi (Michael Kane) has been jailed for aiding illegal immigrants, Douglas's character rashly concocts a plan to get himself arrested so he can get in touch with Bondi and then break the two of them out again, a plan which doesn't quite come off the way he expected. The bulk of the latter half of the film consists of an extended chase sequence where the now wanted fugitive Burns and his horse Whiskey are being pursued through treacherous mountains by the forces of law and order, represented by the sympathetic Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau), who is actually secretly rooting for him to escape into Mexico. Douglas is very affecting in the lead role, and his scenes with Gena Rowlands as Bondi's wife Jerry are just wonderful.

Buck and the Preacher - The directorial debut of actor Sidney Poitier, who also stars as the first title character, this movie is one of the first films to deal seriously with the subject of African-Americans in the Old West. Poitier plays a wagon master named Buck who is attempting to deliver emancipated slaves from Louisiana to the unsettled territories of Kansas. His job is made much more difficult by a marauding gang of Southern nightriders and bounty hunters - led by a sinister man named Deshay (Cameron Mitchell) - who attempt to sabotage their progress by destroying their supplies and stealing their money, all in an attempt to turn the people back around so they can work again as field hands for the financially ailing South. Buck is aided in his efforts by the shady, scruffy, Bible-wielding Preacher (Harry Belafonte) and is eventually accompanied by his wife Ruth (the great Ruby Dee). Along the way, Buck must negotiate safe passage for the wagon train with the Native American tribes of the area, and eventually Buck and the Preacher attempt to pull off a bank heist in order to replace the people's stolen money. A very valuable history lesson, revisionist in the best possible way, and a highly entertaining one to boot! And I can't say enough about Harry Belafonte's rascally, charismatic performance as the roguish Preacher. I mean, the man is barely recognizable as the calypso superstar who gave the world Day-O (The Banana Boat Song). He manages to completely disappear into the role, partially by growing his hair out and primarily by darkening his teeth. (Everyone of course remembers Belafonte's pearly-whites.)

All of these are highly recommended!

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"Well, it's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid" - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)

"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues (1963)

I've been a big Dali fan for 60 years. Am also a Kingsley fan. Thanks for the tip!

~Doc

April 30, 2024

CHALLENGERS (Luca Guadagnino / 2024)

May 7, 2024

THE FALL GUY (David Leitch / 2024)

So it's April 30, 2024, you're at the local multiplex, and you're faced with a bit of a dilemma: The two most interesting-looking films to catch your attention that day are Abigail and Challengers. Not wanting to see two movies this particular day, you have a choice to make: Do you watch the horror movie about a vampire ballerina? Or do you watch the latest film from the director of the remake of Suspiria? Having heard and read good things about Challengers, I made my choice and I have to say I've no cause whatsoever to regret it in the least!

I really don't have that much to say about either of the theatrical features I've seen in the past two weeks. So I'll be brief:

Luca Guadagnino's Challengers is a really cool, fun and sexy film about a very complex and emotionally fraught love triangle between young tennis players (Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist). I loved almost everything about the movie, in particular the non-linear storytelling style which cuts back and forth in time. The movie becomes very gripping and emotionally involving at points when you least expect it, and it possesses a rather bracing maturity and complexity about it which is unusual in most relationship movies involving or catering to younger viewers (or at least mainstream movies). The only thing I actually disliked about it was the annoying tendency of Trent Reznor's electronic soundtrack to crescendo during the more intense, emotionally climactic scenes. (Number one, I would prefer to hear the dialogue unimpeded, and number two... Nine Inch Nails was never my favorite band of the '90s.)

I really have to say this: Between Matthew Vaughn's Argylle with Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell from a few months back and now the new The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt... I think I'm pretty much "meta'd out" at this point! By which I mean this hybrid sub-genre of romantic comedy/action thriller which mixes up reality and fiction. (I've seriously got a hunch that the close proximity of these two films means it's one of those The Abyss / Leviathan / Deepstar Six type of situations which crops up all too frequently.) Don't get me wrong, The Fall Guy was certainly entertaining at points and had a number of amusing lines. And it's certainly a pleasant, undemanding little diversion for Gosling and Blunt after making cinematic history with the so-called "Barbenheimer" phenomenon. But this whole "meta" trip is getting way too clever by half for my taste. (This is the main reason why I don't consider The Matrix Resurrections to be quite the equal of the earlier trilogy.) Seriously, people, let's try to get a little more creative instead of just being clever. (Remember the meeting scene on the plane from Fight Club? "How's that working out for you?" "What's that?" "Being clever." "Great." "Keep it up, then.")

The Proposal (2009)

The Man Who Laughs (1928) 5/5

This begins my official watching of my collection, not having had a clear idea of how to do it before, the key is not to plan on how but just do it, i am mentioning films midstream, as i watch them, as i can more easily formulate any thoughts about them. The lush visuals in this silent masterpiece is what makes it a cut above some other silents, the set designs, clothes, actors all have a visual distinctiveness that other silent films don't, i think specifically about a film like Fritz Lang's Spies, as having a sparse minimal look to it. In that film the subtitles are hard to read when there's German intertitles.

I am writing little reviews for each film now both here and on Letterboxd, i changed my name to CinemaLoon, a blase name choice i agree, but better than a dumb wonky one like i changed it from. There is no other sites i do anything on, so forgive me for any extracurricular thoughts i may have, for example i'm getting a spiritual do over at the hands of the great Puritan writers, Owen, Flavel etc. Silent films represent another world, and time, i relish each second of it, and i don't want to do drugs anymore, cinema must be the drug.

The style also, seeing a person through a wheel sort of thing, through the spokes, things like that are wonderful, direction. A good alternative music accompaniment is Grouper, a super dreamy nostalgic music artist, wistful and melancholy.

A Page of Madness (1925) 3/5

I wish i could like this more, the opening has a wonderful Salome vibe, but when the editing goes rapid and all that, it's like i'm too old for it, a younger me would have eaten it up gladly. On LB it says 1926, but Flicker Alley says a year earlier, when there's a difference i'll always take the physical release date over LB, for example look up the date they give The Golem, hahaha (mad laughter) Well anyway, it's a film i'm glad to own, and a very intriguing play of light and shadow, just too quick and deliberately different for my tastes, it would be 5/5 if it was more contemplative.

edit -- my mistake there's another Golem, but still LB gets it wrong many times, as i go through my collection i'll make known their many unforgiveable date sins.

The crux of the reason why i can't love it is that it's not serious enough, at least it doesn't seem serious, the way i think the subject matter should be, the camera tricks and editing flair is imo overdone and trivializes the torment of mental disease, making it lean towards the exploitation realm, which i feel this film should have been more firmly situated above that realm artistically. If the strangeness would be done less would've made it more effective, like in monster films to show it just a little bit.

Suggested musical accompaniment

None of this is true.

Please watch silents with the original musical accompaniment. Ideally, silents shouldn't be watched with contemporary music, especially music that was made using instruments/techniques that weren't available when the film was released.

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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.

I like doing things the wrong way, it reflects how wrong i am inside.

Gonna do Pandora's Box with Elvis now, Alban Berg would be too orthodox!!

I can practically hear the pearl-clutching from here...