Rate The Last Movie You Saw

He had a cameo in Funny People. Might have been the funniest person in that film.

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The Game - (1997)

Suspending disbelief while watching The Game is sometimes an arduous task - but I do it, because buying into it's far-fetched premise delivers a pretty good thriller. Michael Douglas is once again playing a soulless Wall Street tycoon, Nicholas van Orton (worth around $600 million) who has a screwup brother, Conrad (Sean Penn) - on his birthday Conrad gives Nicholas a kind of voucher for a "game" which is super mysterious. We have no idea exactly what it is, but after Nicholas has filled out dozens of questionnaires and had psychiatric and medical check-ups it begins, and we find out there might be more to this than meets the eye - and it may not be a game after all. This deals a lot with the childhood the two brothers had - dealing with the scars left over when their father committed suicide. I like this a lot more than I did when it first came out - but I still don't rate it as one of Finchers' great films. It was very well received by the critics though.

7/10


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D.O.A. - (1950)

D.O.A. was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed watching it. It's one of those film noirs that has a labyrinthine plot which makes you wish you had a pin-up board, twine, photographs and note cards just to follow who's done what and said what about and to who - if you get my drift. However, like the best of these films, you don't need to know every detail - what's most important is the information of the minute, and what's happening 'now'. Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) has been poisoned, and has only days to live - so he decides to spend that time solving his own murder. I would have left that to the police, and gone on some kind of pleasure spree, but that's just me. This was filmed by the great cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, and it shows - the direction (Rudolph Maté) and editing makes everything concise.

7.5/10


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A Man Called Horse - (1970)

A cultured Englishman hunting in the American frontier of old gets captured by Sioux and kept as a slave. As time goes on he ingratiates himself with the tribe, and with the help of translation from a captured French/English/Sioux speaker and fellow captive, Batise, learns about them. When he kills two marauding rivals, he's accepted as more than an animal - but is not allowed to marry until he proves himself spiritually and physically and truly become Sioux - this involving the famous part where he's hung by the skin of his chest. I'd heard that people claimed Dances With Wolves rips this film off - but those two films don't share any similarity beyond both involving an English-speaking man becoming Sioux. I thought this was okay - but the story isn't evenly paced.

6/10

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Well, Andy Warhol's Empire is a film, and I just watched it...all in one day. I now feel like Mr. Beast when he did those 10 hour challenges several years ago.

I gotta say this really surprises me.
I thought Nope was better than Us and maybe as good as Get Out.
But I also didn't think this one spent that much time focusing on race. You understand it in the beginning because their race matters to these characters but then it's basically never mentioned again. And I thought the effects were seamless. Easily better than the last 4-5 Marvel movies.
You're just really catching me off guard with this take, pretty much everybody I've talked to liked or loved it.

Aww. I'm pretty sure this is my favorite Fincher. Edging out Fight Club. Which I liked a decent bit more than the very good Se7en. Which I definitely liked more than Zodiac, Gone Girl, Panic Room, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which were not necessarily equal but in the same tier), all of which I liked a little bit more than The Social Network, which I definitely liked more than Alien3.
Yeah, the more I think about it, I think I liked The Game the most.

Man, this is an old favorite from my youth. Though I haven't seen it in about 35 years. Just been really hesitant to go back because movies like this felt so different in the 70s and early 80s when I saw them than they do now.

Seriously; I mean, I can remember the movie mentioning race literally once when they talked about the early film of the Black jockey riding a horse, and that was literally it. How else was the movie focused on race, besides just featuring people of color in it?

Solely as an action piece I give it high marks, and I think I liked it more than the John Wick movies. Sometimes the effects are a bit much and the hand fighting a bit quick, but unless the movie is trying to be realistic I'd say that goes with the territory. No focus on storytelling and that was just fine with me. The cast does their job and I like how it was set or filmed in many locales. I got what I came for.

1. Zodiac
2. Se7en
3. Alien3
4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
5. Fight Club
6. The Game
7. Panic Room
8. Gone Girl

Hey, we like what we like.
Like, I will never understand Zodiac love. It is a much-better-than-it-needs-to-be procedural, sure, but whatever it was that was supposed to make it so special was lost on me.
And I've liked most of Fincher's films, if I don't necessarily love them all, but The Game is my favorite. Most interesting of them to me. I mean, Se7en is excellent in its excessively dreary and nihilistic way and the same can be said for Fight Club, which I really did think was pretty inspired, but it's The Game for me. Suck it.

Yeah, here it is with the Zodiac love. I'm not ever going to get it.
I can really see any of the others (except Alien 3) being in that mix of favorites as well.
It's worth mentioning that I saw the original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo first and I just thought it was a slightly to somewhat superior film in every way that they differ. The pacing, editing (especially the editing, Jesus, David!), and acting were all better (though I did like the actors in this one a good bit, just not as much as Rapace). But overall, it still felt like someone who has the same vision for every movie remaking someone else's already perfect movie.

Somewhere in Time (1980)



On my quest to look for melodrama / romantic drama films. Nobody recommended it to me. I found it myself. And I liked it. I think the story drags this film down a bit. It's a nice story, but that's it. However, the way the story was portrayed was really good. I don't think the exact same screenplay could've been adapted better. I liked all three lead performances, the cinematography, and the music. All of that makes Somewhere in Time such a nice yarn. I was sucked in right away. The film goes by so fast that it ends before you know it. If anything, I wasn't that big on the last 20-or-so minutes (and especially the ending) but whatever came before that had me hypnotized. Also, I really would love to keep watching for another hour or two. There are some question marks here but it's normal with high-concept romance films. I don't really mind it and think that since the emotions connected to love are so often illogical, one shouldn't expect a film on love's romantic and perennial side to be perfectly down-to-earth and logical. I thought the portrait picture part was almost Vertigo-esque and if it weren't for the music, it would be almost eerie how obsessed that guy was with the photo. But yeah, he and she both had subconscious precognition that this is all gonna happen, so they kind of made it happen. The girl had a perfect guy in her mind and projected that guy onto Richard. Oh well, it's love. And it's eternal. I wish I was moved by the film, but I wasn't at all. But it was cute, even if some parts of it were such an obvious attempt at melting the viewer's heart, like the child Arthur. I really don't know how to rate this film. It's good in general. And very good in terms of how much of an easy, enjoyable watch it is.

As a side note, this was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, and judging from that name I imagined a female director. But he's a dude. Oh well. I guess Jeannot is not the same name as Jeanette.

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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.

Jackass Forever - If you like the franchise you'll like this. That simple. It's 22 years removed from the premiere of the show on MTV and 20 since the first movie. The crew is back except for Ryan Dunn who died in a car crash 11 years ago. Bam Margera is MIA since he had a falling out with Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine. The guy's either strung out on drugs and booze or a misunderstood victim of circumstance according to whose version you're hearing.

They've added some younger jackasses since most of the original crew are middle aged now. But they're all still willing to do just about anything for the sake of a righteous stunt including being stung/bitten/assaulted/run over by all number of creatures great and small.

There's an actual lady jackass taking part apparently to give lie to the myth that women are inherently more mature than guys. There's celebrity appearances with Eric Andre, Machine Gun Kelly, Tyler the Creator, Rob Dyrdek, P.K. Subban, Tory Belleci and Tony Hawk. You'll laugh (and maybe give your gag reflex a workout). And you might end up feeling a little bit dirty for having done so.

80/100

The Chapman Report (1962)



Women take part in an anonymous sexual survey based on the real-life Kinsey Report.

I don't usually engage in summations, but some teasers might be in order here - the story features four women:

• Frigid widow Jane Fonda (looking absolutely spectacular in 1962!) falls for one of the interviewers (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.)
• Housewife Shelly Winters, bored with her husband (Harold J. Stone) engages in an affair with a handsome local theater director.
• Upper crust & cultured housewife Glynis Johns, although in an entirely happy marriage, is led astray by her purely physical attraction to a muscular beach boy (Ty Hardin).
• And divorced Claire Bloom is a self-destructive nymphomaniac.

As a movie, overall, I wouldn't rate this too highly as it's a bit sappy & slow moving at points (despite the supposedly titillating subject matter).

But I'm a sucker for movies of this era with such a recognizable cast (even brief glimpses of a young Chad Everett & Chloris Leachman). So I kind of enjoyed it as a time-capsule of sorts, especially when it references things like how sex was viewed at the time (i.e. the start of the "sexual revolution")... and comparing it to today.

It's a drama mostly (some of it pretty tragic & depressing) but Glynis Johns' portions serve as the comic relief - the perfect bits of frivolity to break up an otherwise serious film. She's like a little star that twinkles!

Aside from a few cringe-worthy moments & lines (such as an off-screen gang rape where, the next day the victim inquires about her attackers, "How are the boys?"), my biggest complaint is with the cinematography - for some reason, most of the indoor scenes look too dark around the edges - which just made me wonder why it was like that.

I pretty much agree with your impression. Here's my commentary on the flick:

We watched The Gray Man awhile back, and I pretty much agree with your rating as an average. It's perplexing to me that this film had such eye popping action scenes, but was dragged down by such a trite story.

I thought that one was decent. The guy in it was creepy and obsessive, which isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but I felt the film never capitalized on that and it ultimately felt like the film was romanticizing his behavior. And yeah, the ending was bad.

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The Wise Kids, 2011

Tim (Tyler Ross), Laura (Allison Torem), and Brea (Molly Kunz) are teenagers in Charleston, and are all part of the same Baptist church community. Each of them is struggling with a small crisis as they prepare to head to college. Brea is beginning to doubt his faith; Tim has decided to come out as gay; and Laura feels like she is losing her two closest friends. We likewise see the struggles of other members of the community, like the obviously closeted music director Austin (Stephen Cone) and Austin's increasingly alienated wife, Elizabeth (Sadieh Rifai).

This one was a @crumbsroom recommendation, and I really enjoyed it. Probably one of the better coming-of-age films I've seen in a while.

It's interesting to have watched this movie so soon after watching the documentary The Education of Shelby Knox, which likewise followed a young woman in a conservative religious community starting to question her own beliefs and the values of those around her.

In many ways, this film is incredibly gentle. There are very few big-big moments, but a ton of big-little moments. It's not interested in either victimizing or villainizing anyone, and it approaches all of its subjects with a degree of empathy.

Brea's story is maybe the simplest. From the beginning, we see that she is slowly starting to fall away from her faith. When Tim comes out as gay and Laura immediately tells him that it's a sin, you can see Brea's connection with Christianity further eroding. As a preacher's daughter, this puts her in an awkward position, and we watch as she begins to gently extract herself from the religious fabric of her life.

Tim's story is the one that you'd expect to produce the most fireworks, but it manages to capture the rocky road of a contemporary coming out. We learn from the beginning that Tim has decided to go to school in New York, and as the film goes on, we see why that is the best decision for him. No, he's never beaten up. His family doesn't disown him. He's not dramatically exiled from the church. But he does have to put up with being told that he's not getting into heaven. His own brother tells him that he's "sick". He becomes a mild fixation of Austin's. This is not a place where he can truly be himself and live openly. The film shows us Tim's father trying to support his son, but he can only bring himself to ask if Tim has met any new "buddies." When Tim talks about a boy named Carter, his dad says he's glad Tim has a new "friend." You hope it's the beginning of his father being more open and accepting, but it could also be that Tim will always have to live and speak in half-code at home.

Laura's journey is also very engaging. She holds firm to her faith. So firm that at times she even threatens to alienate other members of her church. She plans to attend a local Christian college with Brea, and Brea's loss of faith threatens to scuttle those plans. Laura is, like Tim and Brea, trying to live a life that feels good. But her adherence to her faith puts a gulf between her and her friends. Laura is a lot, but she is also sincere in a way that makes her sympathetic. Even though I found her a bit shrill at times, you can feel for someone whose friend support system is dissolving in front of her eyes.

The hardest to watch subplot is that of Austin and Elizabeth. Austin is gay, and they are both trapped in a marriage with someone they love, but also without any sexual satisfaction. Elizabeth is reduced to enjoying abortive make-out sessions and quick thrills from an anonymous, shirtless jogger. Austin would lose his job if he were to come out, and he must watch from the sidelines as anyone with the courage to be out gets to live the life he actually seems to want. This subplot was challenging for me mostly because of Austin's obvious attraction to Tim. Austin's desperation and loneliness has turned him into a predator, as he increasingly indulges in spending alone time with Tim.

This is the one place where I had mixed feelings about the film's attitude toward its characters. Austin engages in overt grooming behaviors with Tim, including buying him gifts, finding reasons to be alone with him, and touching him in a sexual manner. While Tim takes this all in stride, I couldn't go there as a viewer. The end of the film is meant to imply that Austin might find a more appropriate (ie ADULT) outlet for his sexual feelings, people who are inappropriate with children don't tend to have that be a single isolated incident. I did have to laugh when, at the end, Austin tells Tim "I think I might be gay" and all Tim can do is laugh. But I think it's more likely than not that Austin would continue seeing the children in his care as potential partners, and it seemed like the movie didn't even want to acknowledge this possibility. Or, frankly, acknowledge the completely inappropriate power imbalance between Austin and Tim. I get that the film was maybe wanting to not indulge in the "predatory gay man" stereotype, but I think that it goes too far in the other direction in portraying Austin's actions as quirky instead of damaging and a huge, huge red flag. Austin is played by the film's writer/director, Steven Cone, so maybe he was just too close to this particular character to see how he comes off.

Overall I thought that this was a sweet, nuanced coming-of-age film that boldly mostly gave its characters time and space to breathe and be.

You have to read it as "Jean.....not!"