Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Tools    





You can't win an argument just by being right!
Nothing funny about Hard Candy ?

And yeah, I'd be willing to watch it. Do you recommend ?
Yes I do recommend. Pretty gruelling. Great acting.



Yes I do recommend. Pretty gruelling. Great acting.
Neato ! Will check it out and report back .



Welcome to the human race...
Escape from the Planet of the Apes -


Not enough Snake Plissken.
__________________
I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0




The Game (1997)



Solid thriller from David Fincher. Definitely one of his more underrated works
__________________
Letterboxd

Originally Posted by Iroquois
To be fair, you have to have a fairly high IQ to understand MovieForums.com.



You mean me? Kei's cousin?

__________________
Look, Dr. Lesh, we don't care about the disturbances, the pounding and the flashing, the screaming, the music. We just want you to find our little girl.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Death Note

(Adam Wingard)





I'll preface this by saying I've never seen the source material this film is based on. What I know about it is simple; a kid is given a book, he writes a person's name in it and they die. So no, I'm not going to tear this film apart crying about how it does a disservice to the source material or complain about whitewashing. I don't remember people complaining about The Departed, which is kind of the same deal here. This is an American version of this story, so to me it makes sense.

Light Turner encounters a notebook with the words 'Death Note' written on the cover. Inside are rules dictating how to use it. Rule 1: The human whose name is written in this note shall die. Rule 2: This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected. A God of Death, shows up, his name is RYUK. He informs Light about how to use the book and they test it out on a high school bully. With this new power, Light decides to impress a girl at school that he likes and together they try to rid the world of bad people. This catches the attention of a character only known as 'L', a Sherlock like detective who makes it his mission to find out who is killing all these "bad guys".

I always love a good film that sets up its own mythology then sticks to it. I didn't get a good sense of that with Death Note though. There are dozens of rules, we maybe hear 6 of them? If you write someone's name, you can burn the page later and the person survives...but you can only do this once? Weird rules pop up here and there, to advance the plot of course, but never to expand upon this book and the world.

The character of 'L' is only lightly touched upon. No one knows his name and he likes to hide his face. Was he a previous owner of this book? No, they simply state he's a brilliant detective. A small sequence where a character tries to learn his name by going into L's past is interesting, but short-lived. We don't get a good sense of this world and leaving it to our imagination hurts the overall feel.

Death Note has a very Final Destination feel to it. Each death plays out like a death in one of those movies. Someone walks down a street, their grocery bag rips open, causing a guy to loose his basketball, he chases it into the street, two cars swerve to avoid him, one has a ladder perched on the roof, which goes flying off and decapitates someone. Blood everywhere, head rolling, pretty gruesome. Those over the top death sequences were fun in those films and they are somewhat fun here, but again, feel short-lived. The first two deaths have this aspect, where the rest just sort of happen.

Wingard is a guy to look out for, his previous films You're Next & The Guest, are genre embracing films that work to elevate those genres. He was rising within the horror community getting segments in V/H/S and The ABC's of Death. I haven't seen Blair Witch, but I haven't heard good things and now Death Note, which seems to be getting ripped to shreds, has his career taken a dive already? The film is not directly poorly, it has some style and feels energetic. The source material sounds great too, absurd enough to work within his genre loving hands. So it's weird to see the final product be so mediocre.

One aspect of the film that worked for me was the girlfriend, Mia, played by Margaret Qualley whom you might remember as the girl on the run in The Nice Guys. She seems more obsessed with the book than Light does and even proposes the idea of killing Light's father to help cover up their identities. Does she love being with Light or does she love using the book? An over the top grand spectacle at the end answers this question and raises the possibility of a sequel, which I don't think will happen.

Death Note is an odd film that will have trouble converting new people to the source material and turns old fans away from anything new. It's in limbo. It's not terrible, but not great either. Maybe more time should have been spent on building this unique world and less on the blood and guts? I'm not too sure, the one thing I know is that it definitely needed more Willem Dafoe.
__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



the samoan lawyer's Avatar
Unregistered User

Triple 9 (2016)


Actually pretty decent. It was good being able to understand Casey Affleck for a change although I couldn't buy Kate Winslet's character.


+
__________________
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.



the samoan lawyer's Avatar
Unregistered User
Now I really have to rewatch it. Coming back to me...idiotic of a man to let two young women into his house at night when he's alone. What kind of moron in this day and age would do that.

I cant remember if it ends like hard candy but seem to recall someone saying that on imdb. Now THAT was a dreadful (but excellent) ending.

Good call on Hard Candy Dani. That comparison came to my mind too when watching Knock Knock.



Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)


I didn't hate the humor but I'll never warm up to the CGI overload. It's like being slung shot through a skittle colored bowl of jello pudding. Michael Rooker helps balance a lot of drawn out run time. Solid soundtrack. I'll probably watch vol 1 now.



Welcome to the human race...
I don't remember people complaining about The Departed
*cough*

Song to Song -


Can't decide if this is La La Land's evil twin or if La La Land is this movie's evil twin.



"Honor is not in the Weapon. It is in the Man"


Pippi Longstocking (Olle Hellbom, 1969): A re-edit of the Swedish/German TV series into a feature-length films stars Inger Nilsson as Astrid Lindgren's most beloved character, who is hailed as an icon in children's literature all over the world. Nilsson really is fun to watch as Pippi, who has some fun adventures with new friends Tommy and Annika, outwits both two policemen and two criminals who escape prison and attempt to get their hands on a bag of gold coins that Pippi is in possession of in her home, the Villa-Villekula.

It's a cute family film and I have to admit, I sort of want to see the actual Pippi series that this film was edited from. It's also great that Nilsson, now 58 years old, still relishes on her childhood fame as a successful actress and continues to act, recently in the Swedish series The Inspector and the Sea and appears in the upcoming Black Circle with former adult star Christina Lindberg.

Final Rating: B+
__________________
It's All About the Movies
http://www.worldfilmgeek.com



Registered User
Ghostbusters (2016) - 4/10

The original Ghostbuster's best themes imho were mystique and downright frights. The new film was simply blande, and also the retarded-secretary-gag was plain annoying.



You can't win an argument just by being right!




Both very entertaining, especially Unstoppable.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Can't decide if this is La La Land's evil twin or if La La Land is this movie's evil twin.
I don't know who coined this, probably the people who advertised Song to Song, but it has literally nothing in common with La La Land apart from widely understood "music" (but Song to Song is not a musical!). Comparing these two films is a senseless task as Song to Song a typical late Malick stream-of-consciousness film, whereas La La Land is a typical Hollywood musical (with a Demy-esque ending) spiced up with contemporary stars and disgusting "new touch" to it. La La Land is a typical crowd-pleasing cash grab (at least it's well made), whereas Song to Song is a wrongly advertised auteur film. Sure, you can hate or love both or either of them, but saying they have in common anything more than a vague theme of music is already a stretch in and of itself.
__________________
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.