Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

The Stolen (Niall Johnson, 2017)
5.5/10
365 Days (Barbara Bialowas & Tomasz Mandes, 2020)
+ 4.5/10
The Wrong Missy (Tyler Spindel, 2020)
5.5/10
3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold, 2007)
- 7/10

Outlaw Russell Crowe is kinda worried that farmer Christian Bale may cause trouble for him.
The Desperado (Thomas Carr, 1954)
6/10
Dudes Are Pretty People (Hal Roach Jr., 1942)
+ 5/10
Guns of Diablo (Boris Sagal, 1964)
6/10
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (Dave Fleischer, 1936)
7/10

Popeye and Sindbad meet up on a strange island.
Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie (Jeff Garlin, 2017)
5/10
Desert Passage Lesley Selander, 1952)
6/10
Bag Boy Lover Boy (Andres Torres, 2014)
5/10
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
+ 7.5/10

Is mecha Haley Joel Osment capable of being a real boy and is Frances O'Connor capable of being a real mother?
Kinshasa Makambo (Dieudo Hamadi, 2018)
6/10
The Night Clerk (Michael Cristofer, 2020)
5/10
The Family (Luc Besson, 2013)
6/10
The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012)
6.5/10

Aborigine singing group rehearses for their tout in 1960s Vietnam.
The Noonday Witch (Jiri Sádek, 2016)
+ 5/10
Come and Find Me (Zack Whedon, 2016)
6/10
Love Meetings (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
6.5/10
Big Stone Gap (Adriana Trigiani, 2014)
6/10

Happy endings only happen in the movies.
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
That meant to be
yeah?
Or an arthouse rating.
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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.



The Black Swan (1942)

Captain Morgan favoured a spicy life, and a glass of his favorite rum. Captain Morgan left the comfortable life for one which proved far more satisfying... that of a buccaneer on the Spanish Main. His feats were many, his exploits endless, and his thirst legendary. Now those of you who enjoy a good rum can savour a glorious rum. Captain Morgan Spiced Rum. The original Spiced rum. A magnificent golden Jamaican Rum laced with spice and other natural flavours. Discover how Captain Morgan Spiced Rum makes your favourite Rum drinks taste even better. Oh, the movie. It has Tyrone Power, Maureen O'Hara, Captain Henry Morgan, and Anthony Quinn. Quite offensive and rough actually. Cheers bogusfaces

+

Raise a Glass




Sinbad, the Sailor (1947)

Douglas Fairbanks Jr in a dashing performance as the treasure seeking adventurer, Sinbad. Finds out he's a prince, and searches for his birthright - the lost treasure of Alexander the Great. Maureen O'Hara and Anthony Quinn fly in again to lure and entrap the risktaking lead dude. Reminds of an Indiana Jones flick, but like, forty years before those. Enjoy these two tho can't rate them higher, really. Not as entertaining as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad from the 1970s, does have a better cast.




Enter The Dragon - 1973

Watched the 30 for 30 the other day. It was ok but I knew next to nothing about Bruce Lee. Of course I knew who he was but I was not intimately knowledgeable about the details of his life and rise to fame. He was a fascinating dude for sure, a shame he died so young, but probably adds to his mystic. Seems like he was about to blow in the United States when this movie came out. Died 10 days prior to the release and was set to appear on Carson that week. I wonder how much different Hollywood would look if he lived on. Great respect for him after researching him, probably watch a few more of his movies eventually.

Anyways the movie itself is pretty fun and Bruce just oozes charisma on camera. He was born to fight on screen. It's pretty basic stuff in terms of plot but couldn't imagine how cool it was to see all the fight scenes in the early 70s like that. They still hold up really well and the end scene with Lee in the house of mirrors is iconic. It's just mindless kicking ass fun with a charismatic lead. A lot of the movie is dubbed over after the fact which at the beginning is really annoying but gets better. I don't know if it was just some of it or all of it, but the beginning is quite jarring. Would have loved to see him make some of his movies in the Hollywood system with probably bigger budgets. Think this was one of the most profitable movies in history, so he definitely would have gotten the chance to....money talks.



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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)



Which parts did you think weren't interesting? See, I think that the film makes a wise choice in largely hinting at things but not exploring them too much. I think that it gets a lot out of implication. Things like the exact nature of the Tall Man, what exactly is being done with the corpses, etc, don't really matter. And for me it works because the film is so highly subjective to Mike's experience.

When I said that I can see its flaws but don't care, that's kind of what I mean. I can see how someone might see the film as slow or underwhelming, but I find it to be a perfect balance for my particular horror taste. It takes time to get to know the characters. In most other films, Reggie the ice cream truck driving best friend would be a throw-away character. But here his relationship to the brothers is much deeper than that.

As long as we can all agree that
WARNING: spoilers below
the close up of the young woman's face recurring and recurring and then turning into the Tall Man
is awesomely horrifying.
I can't remember enough of it to really comment. It was years ago, and I found the movie mostly forgetable. The one thing that sticks to me is the sensation of those haunting deadly spheres. If they focused more on that, and the otherworldly nature of things, I would have liked it a lot more. I just found a lot of the movie boring. Sorry, I can't really remember details.


Perfect Blue (1997) - First Time on YouTube
I'm still figuring out what to say about this movie. I kid you not, it vehemently bucks easy description and easy discussion. I'm still wondering if Kon was dropping acid while making it.
It's honestly kind of surprising that I watched it at all, given that I'd previously said there was no way I'd watch anything Satoshi Kon directed. Hearing someone say his films were "20x more awesome than" Spirited Away had put me in a pretty foul disposition towards the director since it's no well-kept secret how I feel about the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. But I decided to watch it with an open mind and found out I was wrong about Kon and it was a lot better than I thought it was gonna be. Sadayuki Murai's screenplay apparently changes a lot from Yoshikazu Takeuchi's novel but it still works. The animation is also pretty amazing, though I gotta admit I thought some of the characters—okay, a lot, most if not all of the male characters, and even one of the female characters in fact—were really frickin' ugly.
Perfect Blue is my favorite animated movie, and my second favorite movie of all time. Nothing else that Kon did affected me so deeply. I've watched it 7 or 8 times now, and every time I learn something new. It's an incredibly deep movie with many layers to every subtle thing, a meticulous attention to detail. Unlike Miyazaki's movies, that have an incredible level of detail, there is nothing frivolous or superficial. The ugliness of the characters is something you rarely see in animation, and honestly it's a lot easier to draw beautiful people than ugly ones. Beautiful people have smooth features with less detail. Having lots of ugly characters accentuates the beauty of the beautiful characters, and increases their value. Because value is determined by scarcity. It really enhances Nima's youthfulness and charm. It's also more realistic. The movie also has a lot of self-awareness and is insightful into the cinema and music industry as well as the normal lives of celebrities and their interactions with the public. It has so much in such a condensed package. Scandal, media, murder, sex, rape, the pressures of fame. Some of my favorite elements are the character criticisms subtle in circumstances, like when the other two girls in the music group make fun of Nima. And Nima's sort of casual way of playing it off with naivite and remaining kind, but you can really feel it. You can feel the hurt of those comments. It speaks to me a lot about missunderstanding, and the things that a person experiences that no one else knows even though they still judge and criticise.

The first time I watched it, I didn't notice the part where the killer sits down in front of the three friends who were joking about one of them being the killer. The second time I watched it, I noticed that, and it shocked me a little. There are lot of things that people miss that are very important to the story and the psychology of what's going on. No other Kon movie did this to such an extent.

I've never been a fan of Miyazaki myself, and I think I sometimes resent his acclaim over other artists that I believe are more talented and artistic. The only thing I have to admit with Miyazaki is how prolific he was. The sheer volume of work that he produced, and the high quality of the drawing and animation detail are impressive. But what I feel his movies lack is more important than the visuals. It's substance in the writing. Most of his movies feel meaningless to me, and even some of his best work has glaring flaws. Spirited Away bored me. I kept waiting for something to happen, some villain or dangerous ghost, or some terrible mistake with dire consequences. But in the end nothing happened, and I was more than dissapointed. I was annoyed. It taught me absolutely nothing. A girl wanders through a land of ghosts, where's her vulnerability? She faces no challenge. Where's her courage? What does the movie say, what does it accomplish? Nothing. The parents turn to pigs because they ate from the buffet, but then they're turned back to normal with no real consequences, learning nothing from their mistake. Everyone goes away like nothing ever happened. A trip to the zoo, or a theme park, is more meaningful.









Hellraiser (1987) - 6.2/10. Getting a little tired of the over-sexed horror movies of the 80s. Feels like the only thing that to attract audience during that time was sex. The porn industry was alive and kicking then! So what's the need.of these in movies.


As far as the movie goes, its a unique experience. The practical effects were done brilliantly. Story is decent. Certainly will give part two a try.
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My Favorite Films





The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Director William Wyler made this movie based on his experience during WWII. He had made propaganda movies, documentaries, for the U.S. government and military during the war. What he saw during the war changed him dramatically as a person. During his filming of The Memphis Belle, he decided to go on a bombing mission with his crew and capture real raw footage. One of his camera men died when his bomber was shot down. When he got back to Hollywood he decided to make a movie that focused on the invisible scars that many vets had, the emotional scars from the horrors they experienced. The movie won 9 academy awards, and it made me cry four times. The music was terrific. It wasn't cliche at all, but quite original and powerful. The violins absolutely wrecked me. This wasn't my favorite style of cinema. It was very, "Hollywood." But this to me is when Hollywood shines the brightest, because a director like Wylder, though a Hollywood giant, was actually an outsider when he made this movie. He went against the tide and made his own movie his own way as an independent director. One note of particular importance to me was the wardrobe. Instead of having someone paid to do the wardrobe for the cast, he simply gave the actors money to go and buy their own clothes for the movie. That was a wonderful touch, and subtle things like that bring authenticity in a way that Hollywood usually lacks.







I thought I had not seen this movie, but early parts were very familiar. Excellent movie & amazed neither lead actor won an Oscar.
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"We've never seen no democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare."

That was how the 1992 Spike Lee biographical film "Malcolm X" had opened with, a series of disturbing imagery featuring police brutality against black Americans and the American flag being burned away to form the letter X. Looking back now that I've finished the film, it's almost hilariously obvious why such an ostentatious opening was needed, not merely to highlight the kind of police violence that still exists today, but more likely, to highlight the kind of polluted image we have of the activist known as X.

In my research (while watching the film) regarding Malcolm's Muslim background, I came across a couple of interesting articles; some of them criticized the "extremist" (and filmmaker Spike Lee in regards to feminism) while others defended his tarnished image many of us still bear today. Many would remember Malcolm as the militant counterpart to Martin Luther King Jr, the Magneto to Professor X, the Batman to Superman.

One such article by Omar Suleiman on "Al Jazeera" (a news website in the Middle East), made an interesting observation. In his article, he noted that he gave his students two sets of quotes. The first one, "Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore, we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about," sounds like something our beloved Dr. King would say. Meanwhile, the latter, "The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the N****. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity," is a more extremist view befitting Malcolm. Right? Unfortunately, the reverse is the truth. Much like the author's students (and I'm sure a number of you), I mistook the true source of each quote. History and historians tend to favor simplifying the truth for convenience, but as we know, reality is hardly simple or convenient.

I was further surprised to learn that Malcolm had intentionally allowed himself to be demonised to further the narrative that MLK was on the side of justice, whereas he... was the villain everyone could loathe. A silence martyr. I was surprised, but not confused by this decision. Watching the film, it made a lot of sense that Malcolm would be a man of such integrity. In hindsight, Malcolm's existence, his actions and, ultimately, his martyrdom were integral to Martin's Civil Rights Movement. A comment on YouTube (of all places) said it well, that "MLK was the voice of "Give us our rights," whereas Malcolm X was the voice of "Or else." Both men made great sacrifices to bring us to where we are today in 2020, but truth be told, I prefer Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" to "Selma", the latter of which feels like a higher quality Hallmark special.

Spike Lee's Malcolm X (Denzel Washington), on the other hand, is a more thorough examination of Malcolm's life contemplating just what kind of man Malcolm is and what kind of man he seeks to be, chronicling his years as a troubled kid growing up in Boston, his time in prison after a series of robberies, his meeting with "Nation of Islam" leader, Elijah Muhammad (Al Freeman, Jr), his rise as an activist, and ultimately, his assassination. The last of which is a significant portrayal that separates this film from the more hopeful "Selma" (in fact, it's a lot more brutal and graphic than I expected).

I've said in my Selma review that the film's optimistic tone was an approach that befits MLK, and I still don't regret my words. It was fitting for the man, and I was glad that the film remembered him for the glory of how he lived, not how he died (although there was a brief footnote describing his murder). But Malcolm X was a different case. Malcolm was unjustifiably vilified by history, and many had voiced out that Lee might misportray him in the time leading up to the film's release. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. In the last few scenes leading up to the finale, Malcolm seemed almost prophetic of his death, like he knew he was going to be killed the moment he stepped up to that podium, uncoincidentally in the same manner Jesus knew of his betrayal. Spike portrayed him in such a way that it's left to the audience to interpret what Malcolm's final thoughts must be as he contemplated the kind of man he must become for his people, even if it would cost his life. This was made all the more tragic when I learned of his (possible) willingness to be demonized for the success of MLK.

So yes, I do think that the film needed such a violent footnote to create the appropriate gut-punch and whiplash. After following his journey and his struggle from a small-time crook to an angry extremist to his discovery of equality and brotherhood among men of all colors, I feel that it was important that his violent end was witnessed on-screen as a reminder of the injustice done not only to black people, but also his name and legacy. It was fitting then the true ending of the film was a montage of footages where African children were cheering his name while holding up a Malcolm X poster, and right as Nelson Mandela speaks of his legend in school, the kids consecutively shouts in individual shots, "I am Malcolm X!"

But if I could be frank... the Bill Cosby shot was unfortunately dated. Big oof.



Hellraiser (1987) - 6.2/10.

As far as the movie goes, its a unique experience. The practical effects were done brilliantly. Story is decent. Certainly will give part two a try.
Hellraiser 2: Hellbound is easily my favorite of the series and a film that I've watched countless times. I already said this in the "favorite horror sequels" thread, but it's like an enjoyable bad movie AND an actually good horror movie rolled into one. There's some good character development and memorable sequences.



Mystic River. (2003)






A thoughtful, tense and tragic drama about how the weight of the past shapes the lives of three childhood friends. A great cast with excellent performances, particularly from Penn and Robbins. My only complaint is that it should have ended two scenes earlier with Sean and Jimmy talking on the street. An impressive and absorbing film.


4/5 Stars.



Quadrophenia (1979)

Great little eye view of the time and a brilliant performance by Phil Daniels. Seen this before but still it is authentic of the time. Not a huge fan of the Who but in the story, setting and genre it was perfect.






Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

Is this one of the wackiest films ever produced? Did I watch this movie for a cheap laugh? We may never know the answers to these questions... You be the judge, here on this station!

7/10
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - 2000

Never sat down and watched this after all these years. Bruce Lee kick I am in got me intrigued to finally do it. I really enjoyed the flick. The fights scenes choreography and cinematography were awesome. Some of the best and most enthralling I've seen honestly. Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh were amazing in their roles. Guess they are both pretty big stars internationally, with big careers. I recognized Zhang Ziyi from Rush Hour 2...was off the heels of this movie...I remember them making a big deal about her when the movie came out, but I was real young. Seems like she has had a really good career in China and dabbling in Hollywood.

I thought the story was solid. Could have maybe used a touch more of Li Mu Bai character I thought. More focus on that character and Yeoh's relationship I think would have served it better. And reworking Ziyi's arch a bit would have improved it. The 20-30 minutes they spend on her side story slows the momentum of the plot to me. In fact her whole love story was probably the least interesting aspect of the film. Listen by no means was the flick bad, the action is great, and I was emotionally involved at the end. Just maybe go in a different direction with Ziyi's character...don't want to dive to deep for spoilers...and more time on Li Mu Bai and Yeoh's character would have put it over the top for me. Still a great, entertaining film I thought. Worthy of the praise it got.