Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Agreed!

(1974)
Poliziotteschi/Giallo which is great fun but also has a serious undertone.

Miss Julie, 1951

Julie (Anita Bjork) is the daughter of a count, just coming off of a broken engagement to a well-to-do attorney. After dancing and flirting with the servant Jean (Ulf Palme), Julie catches some real feelings for him, and he seems to return at least some of the sentiment. Over the course of a wild Midsummer evening, hiding away from rowdy party-goers, the two confide in each other their childhood experiences.

There are certainly very few romances I've seen in film more obviously doomed than the one between Julie and Jean explored in this movie. It's an interesting, creatively shot film with a compelling momentum.

To start with, one of the great gifts of this film is that I had any shred of sympathy for Julie by the end of it all. The film begins with her humiliating Jean, forcing him to dance with her, drink with her, and then kiss her boot. In a flashback, we then watch her savagely beat her dog, force the dog to do tricks, and then act abusively toward her fiance. Later in the film, when she learns she can't take a pet with her on a trip, she has it killed. In short, she is the worst.

And yet through the flashbacks to her childhood, there is some sense of how Julie came to be such a warped person, and why she has such an unhealthy fixation with power and dominance. Her mother was a commoner who believed in equality, and marrying Julie's father, the count, was her doom. Her hysterical laughter as she realizes she's delivered a girl is a haunting, dark moment. The count's solution: to dress Julie as a boy and make her do the men's work, slaughtering calves and working a plow in the field. As Julie's mother slowly goes insane with confinement, Julie's care is given over to another woman who teaches Julie mistrust.

While Julie sets the bar pretty high in terms of difficulty to love, Jean is also kind of right there. With Jean, though, it is his background as a servant that has twisted his personality to the point where he will take delight in any humiliation or chance to think himself better than the people who employ him. He gloats over Julie's revelation of her mother being mentally ill. Jean has firmer ground to stand on, of course, pointing out that the "superiority" of Julie's family is basically down to some creative networking in the past.

In Julie and Jean, we see the way that any inherently prejudiced system does disservice to people on both sides. The fixation on social status and wealth poisons the lives of two people who could have otherwise been happy and healthy people.

The film looks great, and I loved moments where it plays with the staging of its sequences. In one scene, as Julie recounts a moment from her youth, the young Julie and her companion walk by in the background.

The only real downside for me was how little I liked either main character. Interesting? Yes. But I was pretty done with Julie in particular by the time the third act was in full swing.

Visually compelling and strongly acted throughout.

I've either really liked or loved everything I've seen from Kiarostami so far. Either Through the Olive Trees or Taste of Cherry are my favorite films from him.

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My favorite genre mash up of poliziotteschi and giallo that I’ve seen. I am smitten with everything I’ve seen from Dallamano and he got to direct too few films. However, he was Leone’s cinematographer for Fistful and For a Few Dollars more, so he comes by his magnificent style more honestly than the legion of Italian directors trying to be Leone.

Dallamano is pretty solid. I've seen four of his films and I'd say three of them were good (I rated Daughters only 3/5 but in retrospect that should have been 3.5/5 like the other good ones). I probably put Solange above Daughters but they're really close (in quality and storywise). Night Child is the third good one; really nice slow burn horror.

The only one I didn't particularly care for was A Black Veil for Lisa.

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Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)

Campy and sleazy interpretation of the story. Quite a bit of unintended (is it, though) comedy, blood, and guts. It's too silly for me to really enjoy it, but at least it has some awesome dialogue: "To know death, Otto, you have to f**k life... in the gallbladder!" Poor Nicoletta Elmi probably didn't know a word of English and didn't say a word in the film.

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Paperhouse (1988)

Just my kind of film, and I hadn't even heard of it before today. Kind of a coming-of-age film with fantasy elements and rather dark topics. Not as harsh and bleak as The Reflecting Skin or Tideland, but sort of like a PG-13 equivalent.

I prefer Daughters to Solange by a good amount but am a fan of both. Daughters just finds the perfect balance between the two genres that others like Suspicious Death of a Minor or Naked Violence just can’t quite find.*

Give Bandidos a shot if you get the chance. I picked it up with Arrow’s VENGEANCE TRAILS spaghetti western set. It was the only one I knew nothing about but ended up being my favorite. It was of no surprise when I learned who made it.

I also have their poliziotteschi set that has his last film, Colt 38 Special Squad. I plan to watch it soon.

I am very excited for this film. Very excited.

It’s marvelous and I suspect will connect with you very strongly, given our similar professional backgrounds and whatnot.

My new favourite. Wonderful stuff.

Indeed. One of the gems. I think it’s a bit like Pan’s Labyrinth but less PG.

I loved it, I hope you do.

Hell (2011)





a fun little movie about a super hot earth...

9th or 10th Rewatch...with the recent passing of the iconic Sidney Poitier, I had to experience my favorite performance of his once more. I am happy to report that this movie holds up pretty damn well for a movie that is 55 years old. Poitier gives a one man acting class here, creating a character whose emotions the viewer can read, but no one else in the movie can. I love everything that happens between Mark Thackeray and Pamela Dare (Judy Geeson). I had forgotten what a scene stealer Lulu is as Barbara Peg and as one of Mark's fellow teachers, Patricia Routledge, who would later earn her fifteen minutes playing Hyacinth Bucket on the PBS comedy Keeping Up Appearances. And what can you say about that amazing title song performed by Lulu?

Honestly, I've lost track of how many times I've watched this movie, but the recent passing of Peter Bogdanovich gave me an excuse to experience one of my guilty pleasures again. OK, it's not Citizen Kane, but this re-imagining of the Howard Hawks comedy Bringing up Baby still provides non-stop laughs from opening to closing credits. The chemistry between Streisand and O'Neal is off the charts, the Noel Coward door-slamming in the hotel, and second only to Bullitt, the best chase scene mounted for a motion picture. The supporting cast features seasoned veterans like Austin Pendleton, Kenneth Mars, Michael Murphy, Sorrell Booke, Mabel Albertson, and Liam Dunn puts me on the floor in that scene near the end as the judge. But towering above all of them is Madeline Kahn, who makes a spectacular film debut as the tightly wound Eunice Burns. This is, simply, one of the funniest movies ever made. Bogdanovich knocked it out of the park here.

Great Expectations (1946) I've seen a few versions and have faded in and out of them. But here, I was (forgive the cliche) riveted. But there it is.

My viewing pleasure was brought to wondrous heights by the sublime performances throughout the cast. Martita Hunt was the haunting Miss Haversham with such sublime machinations at the lead of said performances. And has her protege, the young Estelle, played with callous precision by Jean Simmons. Tony Wager as Young Pip raises the bar for their older counterpoints. Along with such amazing surprises such as Frances L Sullivan as the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, and, at such a VERY young age, as Pip's roomie, Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket.


Their performance of the Charles Dickens Classic was complimented impressively by the cinematography's masterful composition of light and shadow.


Placing it, for me, in the forefront of renditions of this Classic Tale of a simple act of kindness and the resounding repercussions throughout the life of a young British Gentleman of Great Expectations.

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The Tragedy of Macbeth - This is so GD good….a must for fans. I’ve seen Macbeth numerous times, stage and screen as well as having read the Classic Comic and the play. This new movie version is definitely among the best. It’s condensed into movie screening time, but covers all of the important points of Shakespeare’s play. You probably all know the plot, 3 witches, a Scottish king, a ruthless Thane, urged on by an ambitious wife who has no clear idea what she has started. In the end, it’s “The King is dead, long live the King” and the cycle starts over. Also, half of the cast is dead.

This version, directed and screen-written by Joel Coen goes right to the point plot wise, omitting some of the longness of the original. It’s also shot in a very stark, monochrome German Expressionist, minimalist style, not unlike silent movies such as Nosferatu or Metropolis. The visuals really emphasize the gnarly torment of the characters who wear every sin as a line in their face. It has Francis McDormand as Lady Macbeth and Denzel Washington as the Thane himself. Both are excellent.

As usual for The Bard, a lot of dialog will go right past you, but you might notice that about every minute or so, you hear a line that’s become a common English expression. There’s a LOT of those in Shakespeare, too many to list in Macbeth.

This really is worth a watch, and, if you tell your English Lit professor, you will get extra credit.

I also quite liked this movie. It was a late night weekend watch a few years ago and I was very pleasantly surprised by it.