Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Is it stylistically like The Florida Project?

There's less colour (for the most part - we gravitate towards a colourful donut shop like Baker can't help but have some in the film), and the child-like perspective is obviously a lot different - but it's unflinching in the same kind of way. Take the kids out of The Florida Project and what you're left with is pretty much Red Rocket - although you could well call main character Mikey a man-child. It feels more structured, but apparently it wasn't - so that "run-and-gun" style he has is still present.

__________________

For some reason I thought this was an early exploitation movie, but once I saw the names Laurence Olivier and Otto Preminger during the opening credits I knew that wasn't the case. Anna Lake just arrived in London from America and her little girl Bunny has mysteriously vanished. The police superintendent (Olivier) is on the case, but he cannot find any proof that Bunny Lake even exists. I thought this was a terrific mystery film, until the last half hour let me down a little bit. I didn't mind the direction the film went in, but I wasn't a big fan of the execution. I would still recommend it to anybody.

The Hall of Infamy

American Flatulators (1996) -

This movie is basically a one trick pony stretched out to an hour, except the one joke is neither funny nor clever and overstays its welcome after the first five minutes. Granted, I will give the film a bit of credit since a few of the fart jokes, while not clever, still made...sense, but I mean, that's to be expected with a film like this. If you throw enough shit at the wall, something will eventually stick. And almost all of it didn't stick. I will admit though that the marine yelling at and insulting a group of girl scouts was about the only time I laughed at the film. Maybe if the film had more non-fart jokes, I'd be more into it. The only other credit I can give to this film is that I appreciated some of the craft put into making it resemble how game shows look. Though yeah, I found so much of the film to be a chore to get through. By the halfway point, I was basically zoned out of the film and wanted it to end. And given that it doesn't even last an hour, that's saying something. The buildup to the challenges were overlong, the backstories to the contestants and the commercials sank the pacing like a dead weight, and the challenges themselves, while they were the more watchable parts of the film, still weren't that engaging and didn't build much of any tension like some other game show challenges I've seen have. Overall, the movie's not quite a 1/10 for me, but it's not far from it either.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

I agree. It was a good script, and felt more "adult", rather than the typical treatment including all the razzmatazz of the other Batman flicks, and most of the other DC Comics treatments.

I thought the cinematography and production design were both exceptional and impressive.

There was something about the Riddler character that left me a little nonplussed. I don't know if it was the character's writing, or whether Dano could have been miscast.

But I stayed absorbed throughout the whole film. I'd rate it the same as you did.

Goldfinger, 1964

James Bond (Sean Connery) must stop the evil Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) from completing a daring and deadly plot to infiltrate Fort Knox.

This is one of Ebert's Great Movies, and in his enthusiastic review of it he writes, "If it is not a great film, it is a great entertainment, and contains all the elements of the Bond formula that would work again and again.".

For me, though, this is not a great film, and honestly not that entertaining. To be incredibly clear, I love many brands of stupid. This particular brand of dumb just isn't for me. There are elements or independent sequences I really liked, but for me the movie was never more than the sum of its parts.

I'm not a fan of the old kill-and-quip, especially in action movies. Most of the action actually involving Bond left me pretty cold. But I did think that there was a surprising jolt in some of the sequences of violence surrounding him. I don't consider the infamous first death to be a spoiler, so be warned if you've never seen this film and also know nothing about it. There's something engagingly nasty about meeting the very unimposing Goldfinger, and then immediately having him arrange for not only a very cruel death for a woman who betrayed him, but also staging that death so that Bond would find her. Similarly, a sequence in which a man bearing a message from Bond delivers a jolt. Both sequences manage to capture the casual cruelty and lack of fear of consequences that make rich/powerful people so dangerous.

The movie looks really good. The sets are whimsical and fun. I also liked the costuming, with bonus points for whoever convinced the powers that be to put Connery in a towel-cloth romper. And, heck, points for having a love interest who is actually the same age (older even!) as the male lead.

But at a basic level, I just really don't care for Connery. What I think most people see in this role is cool confidence, while I see arrogance from a person who is also really bad at his job. It's fine in small doses, but as a character he really wore out his welcome after the first half hour.

I get why people like or even love this movie, but it's not my cup of irradiated gold.

Goldfinger is probably my favorite Bond movie. I love how ineffectual James is. He spends most of the movie being captured and failing to foil the villain’s plan. I love Goldfinger’s idea to not steal the gold in Fort Knox but to blow it up to make his own gold more valuable. The movie’s got the right amount of action and tension and just a little bit of Bond campiness without going too far. Whereas other Connery Bond movies are a little too dry and Roger Moore’s are way too goofy, Goldfinger strikes the right balance.

What’s you’re experience with the rest of the franchise @Takoma11 ?

I liked almost everything in the film that wasn't Bond. If the movie was like 20 minutes shorter I probably would have liked it more. Or if it had been mostly Honor Blackman. She was great.

It just utterly failed to work its magic on me, and I am very much aware that I am in the minority there.

EDIT: Bond movies never appealed to me at all growing up, and they were not a part of the "classic film education" I got as a kid. I quite liked Casino Royale when I saw it in the theater. I've enjoyed the new Bond films to varying degrees, but not enough to want to rewatch any of them.

I'm very hit and miss with the Bond series but Goldfinger is one of the one's I adore.



Usually though, my tastes unsurprisingly move towards the stupidest ones. Diamonds are Forever and Thunderball are eternal favorites.


As for actual best movie in the franchise, the George Lazenby one is the gold standard. It also has the bonus feature of starring the worst Bond in the best Bond movie.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18001975

The Earrings of Madame de… - (1953)

I have a lot of film books that are well worn and that I've spent a lot of time with, and one is particularly interesting. It's basically a Countdown of the sort that goes on here - except the publishers of this book sent a ballot to every film critic and director around at the time (this was first published in 1988) and tallied the results for a top 100. I've sometimes thought about going from 100 to the top doing reviews here. Anyway - long story short (too late) The Earrings of Madame de… comes in at the lofty spot of number 15. It's one of the few of the top 25 I hadn't seen. So :

The Earrings of Madame de... is a fantastic film both technically and story-wise. It's about a character we never learn the name of (it's always chopped off by other conversation, or hidden by objects when we see it - thus, we always just catch Madame de...) who sells her fabulous (and very expensive) earrings because she's desperate for cash. They were a wedding present from her husband (a French general), so she has to invent an excuse for them disappearing (she pretends she lost them) - but these earrings have a life of their own, and change hands many times, coming back to haunt Madame de... is a tragic manner. The great Max Ophüls adapts the novel and directs, and the cinematography from Christian Matras is artful (mostly due again to Max Ophüls) - a real cinephile's movie from France that I couldn't find on any list apart from the 'Eberts Great Movies' one. I recommend it heartily, and it probably deserves a higher rating than I'm giving it right now - but I did really enjoy it a lot.

8/10


By http://www.impawards.com/intl/sweden/2020/tigers.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66149223

Tigers - (2020)

16-year-old Martin Bengtsson has been obsessed with being a professional football (soccer) player since infancy, and has such a talent for it that Italian powerhouse club Inter offers him a contract worth a lottery-winning fortune - but the boy is a little shy and reserved (he demands his own room at training HQ in his contract, and gets it, but the owners don't end up giving him one.) Unfortunately, competition for spots on the team is fierce, and his own teammates will do anything to try and ruin him. The young players hate Martin because he's already earning more money than them, and pretty soon he's being mercilessly bullied (when they play games, they won't even ever pass him the ball) - he makes one friend - a U.S. player, but after a while Martin begins to crack under the pressure. This was a true story about sports and mental illness, and okay. There's an Italian pop song that plays throughout - and I should probably apologise for nominating it in a song thread I partake in - it just got in my head so bad - I started to like it.

6/10

Don't Breathe 2
4/10.
The writers clearly didn't understand the premise of the first movie, which was a blind psychopathic child abductor whose house is invaded, and the invaders can't "breathe" because the blind man will find them and kill them... In this one, they try to turn the blind, psychopathic child abductor (and admitted rapist) into the hero by making the abducted girl's parents junkie drug cooks and dealers - as if to say "hey, the blind man may be a child abductor, but at least he's saving her from the worst parents in the world." They try to incorporate the "don't breathe" idea in other ways, for instance the blind man uses sign language to tell the girl to be quiet while the bad guys - who can see and have flashlights - search for them, and later, the blind man tries to creatively kill a baddie by supergluing his nostrils and mouth shut, instead of just - you know, breaking his neck or something; and later, he apparently fogs up an entire indoor swimming pool with bug spray, which I think is complete hogwash and makes me wonder how everybody wouldn't be gasping for breath at that point and clawing their eyes out. The stupidity of the final fight scene is just phenomenal. Oh, and apparently all you need to do to change the loyalty of a pitbull is to save it from a fire. Ugh, what a mess.

__________________
Boldly going.

Moore is the worst Bond. Lazenby is just… Mediocre.

Moore is in the worst Bond movies. He's arguably the best Bond.

Funnily enough, I think OHMSS benefits from Lazenby being a less forceful presence than Connery. And the guy is in The Man From Hong Kong, so I can't hate him.

It came in 93rd on the BFI Sight & Sound's Critic's (once a decade) poll in 2012 with 17 votes. It didn't do so well with the directors (those wacky directors)


https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6af779a6


https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-peo...dsoundpoll2012


I think I came across Max Ophuls when filmspotting did their Max Ophuls marathon. I remember liking this one the most. I think I read somewhere Kubrick said he was a favorite/influence on him. I couldn't help but notice that de Sica looked a lot like the Hungarian in Eyes Wide Shut. But that might just be a look.


Great line from the movie, "the most extraordinary thing about coincidence is that it isn't." (Probably originally from somewhere else, but we all have to encounter things for the first time somewhere).

I'm watching The Last Dragon for the first time in like 15 years.
Admittedly, I'm stoned.
But I think I love this movie.

Coincidentally, I watched Connery tonight in METEOR (1979).
There's a meteor 5 miles wide heading for Earth within the next 5 days, and Connery is the NASA scientist in charge of formulating our plan to destroy it. So why is he spending so much time flirting with Russian translator Natalie Wood? FOCUS, big guy!
Does this film deserve four stars? Probably not but that's what I gave it. It was reasonably suspenseful and the blue-screen effects were surprisingly non-terrible.

This is from the same director as 1972's THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, which I watched the night before. This was kind of a big thing back in the day. All-star cast, hit Oscar-winning song, sequels, etc. So what a letdown to find that it's not very good. The moment the ship capsizes is pretty cool but the rest of it is just so shrill that it was not a fun time.

Sean Connery and Karl Malden working together =
Ernest Borgnine and Gene Hackman having a 2-hour pissing contest =

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

What the f*ck?!

I met George Lazenby when he was doing a tour promoting Becoming Bond - he still seemed pretty obsessed with his own virility, and he was pushing 80 at the time.