Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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Hachi: A Dog's Tale - (2009)

Hachi left me an absolute mess last night - I wasn't ready for what it had in store for me. It's based on a true story, which doesn't make things any easier, for I might have had at least "it was just a movie" to cling to. The film depended on a likeable performance from Richard Gere, who is his endearing best, and a great collection of Akita dogs, who appeared to perform quite naturally. I wasn't expecting much from it, and I wouldn't have made much of it if it hadn't of ripped my soul out and left me with emotional scars that will last a lifetime.

6.5/10


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Bugsy Malone - (1976)

I'm not quite sure what to make of Bugsy Malone - but I really enjoyed the musical numbers in it, so it wasn't a complete waste of time or anything. I don't think there was much need for a gangster movie with kids playing all the parts, and where a character's exit is brought about by cream pies instead of violence. Still, there was something a little charming about it - and I've always loved Paul Williams' music, so I found myself surprised by how tolerable it was.

7/10


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Harvie Krumpet - (2003)

I found myself with a Harvie Krumpet DVD, so it was the perfect thing to fit in when I didn't have time for a full-length feature. I also watched the other Adam Elliot short films Uncle, Cousin, Brother and Human Behavioural Case Studies. They all champion outsiders who have certain peculiarities to them, and exist far, far away from the mainstream. These clay stop-motion animated films of his take 5 years to make from conception to completion, so that Oscar was well earned - and the story itself is very poignant.

8/10

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I probably underscored Predators considering how much I enjoyed it, but I never got really comfortable with Adrien Brody being the epitome of bad. He's too nice, and Batman voice isn't going to convince me otherwise. Big softie. I haven't seen Prey yet, so Predators is the best of any of the sequels/spin offs I've seen of the franchise. That's an awfully low bar that's been set by the others though.

I have the novel version of this story in my classroom, and last week I was organizing my classroom library and then for absolutely no reason whatsoever!!!!!!! I decided to pick up the book and read the last fifth and then, you know, just have a good cry while hoping none of my co-workers would walk by or into my room. As I stood there I was like "Why did I do that to myself?!?!?!"

Naturally I really like the original. I did not think highly of Predator 2. I have avoided any of the other sequel/spinoff things.

One thing I like about Predators is how it hammers home that the cunning and/or cautious characters tend to survive better than the big tough guys.

I also fundamentally like the concept of the

It's a movie whose faults I can see (including its hit-or-miss attempts at humor), but I like the action scenes, I mostly like the characters/performances, and I find it endlessly rewatchable.

I felt the same way about Hachi. I loved the movie so much that I bought it on DVD, but it hit me so hard the first time I saw it that I've never been able to rewatch it.

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Bronson, 2008

In this eccentric biographical film, Michael Peterson--later to be known as Charles Bronson (Tom Hardy)--is sentenced to several years in jail for a post office robbery. But while inside Bronson's strange and often violent antics results in more and more severe punishments and sentences.

This is a film that's sort of danced on the edge of my radar for years. About 20 minutes into the movie I was like "Okay, who made this thing?". Nicholas Winding Refn, LOL. Of course. Never has an answer to a question made more sense.

There are three equally compelling elements to this film that made it compulsively watchable, and what really works is the way that those elements bounce off of each other.

The first element is the all-in performance by Tom Hardy. It perpetually threatens to be the kind of showboating that can feel both superficial and exhausting, but in the context of the bizarre world that Refn has put around him, it matches the film perfectly. It's also the kind of extremely physical role that some actors seem particularly drawn to, and it manages to exist as both an embodiment of a character and the kind of performance that makes you aware of it as performance.

The second element is the style of the film. The framing device is a highly stylized one-man show, with Bronson narrating the events of his own life to an anonymous theater crowd. Like Hardy's performance, it somehow manages to exist in that dual space of being a story and being artificial enough that you're aware of the structure of it. I could see this being off-putting to some viewers, but I felt that it worked. The physical spaces of the film are both mundane and surreal, whether Bronson is at a strip club, in a prison, or in a mental institution.

The final element is what I saw as the central theme of the film, which is the complex question of what you do with a person like Bronson. Endlessly creative, and yet also sporadically violent, what is the right answer to where he belongs? As the film shows us, the best solution anyone can come up with is shuttling him from prison to mental hospital and then back to prison. He's beaten, confined, drugged, restrained, and yet these are all just punitive or palliative measures. You can feel the wrongness of it, and yet you have to wonder what the alternative is. The film seems overall sympathetic to Bronson, almost suggesting that if the right creative outlet were found, it would reduce his violent outbursts. I mean, maybe. Bronson's violence doesn't seem to stem from a desire to cause pain, but more from the explosive need to express his frustrations. At the same time, his victims are just as likely to be people who have not directly or intentionally antagonized him.

Nothing to fault here, even if the film does seem to dodge the question of what to do with a man like Bronson.

A classic!

Also, you have all made it an absolute certainty that I will never watch Hachi: A Dog's Tale.

That's a shame because it's a wonderful movie. If you ever feel like having a good cry, I highly recommend watching it, (at least once).

I own it too & I just love it. Cried many times.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

I cry all the time, unfortunately.

Phew, hard work getting through this &, no, I did not cry once about this dog. Ending is very predictable.

Horrid scenes where Tatum pretends he’s blind & the dog is his support animal. I thought these scenes were in the worst possible taste.

The above quote, often misattributed to Shakespeare, comes from an Italian opera called Falstaff, written by Arrigo Boito and partly inspired by a Shakespeare play. It alludes to the spontaneity of "love at first sight", and how its strength and impact is acknowledge by both persons. It is something magnetic!

Set in 1940s New York City, Paperman follows two characters experiencing just that as George (John Kahrs) and Meg (Kari Wahlgren) share that first-time connection at a chance meeting at a train station. The catalyst for this encounter is a loose piece of paper that keeps flying out of their hands, and ends up with Meg's lipstick mark on it, leaving George entranced and smitten by it.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Re: Hachi,

I'll be the grumpy sourpuss to say that I don't get it. I mean, the film is not bad, but for something that's on the IMDb Top 250, I was expecting a bit more. Not that the IMDb list is a paragon of quality, but still... this is short film material. There wasn't enough there for a feature film. If it would've been the same core story, in 10-20 minutes, it could've been a banger of a short. As it is, it feels overblown and far too stretched.

One time I read Love That Dog to my class (it's a poem novel for elementary kids, so you can read it aloud in like 15 minutes) and then we all had a good long cry, LOL.

Yeah, I just don't have it in me anymore. With everything I've had in life, I cry in just about every damn movie at some point or another nowadays. (I did make it through Pulp Fiction the other day without crying though. But then practically sobbed my way through the last 15 minutes of Crouching Tiger.) So I really kinda just can't get into movies with a lot of heartbreak anymore without getting a bucket. And why do I wanna do that to myself?

I'll still watch sad things, but I'm increasingly resentful of films that I feel use cheap manipulation to get that impact.

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What did you find heartbreaking in Pulp Fiction? I don't recall anything being heartbreaking in that film.

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Swiss Army Man, 2016

Hank (Paul Dano) is alone and shipwrecked when he comes across the seemingly lifeless body of a man he names Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). But as Hank interacts with Manny, the corpse suddenly not only seems to gain some sentience, but also displays an astonishing range of abilities that help Hank to survive in the wilderness. The two of them journey on toward home, driven in part by Manny's fixation on a woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whose photograph is on the homescreen of a cellphone Hank carries.

I've been meaning to check this film out for a while now, and enjoying Everything Everywhere All At Once certainly bumped it up my watchlist.

Overall I really liked this movie and found it incredibly relatable.

I think that sometimes in a film I enjoy, it's hard to separate the performances from the writing. You wonder, if someone else was delivering the line "Oh, really?" would I be laughing this much? In this case, I think that both are strong. Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan (who also directed) have put together a script that confidently marches to its own drum, matching "crass" humor overtly with musings about depression and self-worth and regrets and what people think they deserve out of life. But what's kind of brilliant is how the movie pushes physical "grossness" (farts and vomit and spit) to the forefront as a way to get to a discussion about the "gross" things that people feel on the inside. It's a device more often seen with characters who are aliens or clones or whatever, but the basic premise of someone teaching another how to live and be human and then learning about themselves in the process feels really fresh here.

The quirky script and world that is built works so well because Dano and Radcliffe jump wholeheartedly into it. It's a heck of a physical performances by Radcliffe, whose evolving state is portrayed in wonderful increments. I find Daniel Radcliffe to be an incredibly endearing personality, maybe a result of having watched him grow up into a seemingly really nice and interesting person? In any event, Manny is a very enjoyable character, and Radcliffe's delivery of his lines--often a mix of curiosity, bafflement, and surprise--gets laughs out of lines like "It is?" or "Oh, sorry!".

Dano is a great counterbalance. Radcliffe's naive candor brings out an honesty in Dano's Hank. Hank is full of self-loathing, something that is revealed as he tries to bring Manny back to the world of the living. As Hank goes to increasingly extreme lengths to remind Manny of life as a living person---including building elaborate sets and costumes to stage reenactments and rehearsals of normal everyday life--he is surfacing and working through his own mental and emotional health issues. Dano's performance of a man slowly allowing himself vulnerability and hope is really lovely. Radcliffe gets the showier part, for sure, but Dano gives the film a deep spirit.

My only complaint has to do with the final 15 minutes or so. I'll be vague and then put more specifics in spoiler tags. I thought that the film shifted its focus in a way that was unfortunate.



I thought that it was funny and moving, and I feel silly for having waited so long to check it out.