Rate The Last Movie You Saw

More people should see this film. Very underappreciated in the romantic comedy canon.

i agree love ryan reynolds and sandra bullock they are amazing and love their movies

Yeah, that's true; I mean, I would absolutely put Breaking Bad, Cowboy Bebop and a number of other GOAT shows up against something like Schindler's List, or any other 10-out-of-10 films I've seen, you know? Certain stories just benefit from the greater runtime, and it's not like cinema has a monopoly on great storytelling, after all.

I think that movies and TV are very different experiences and I expect different things out of them.

For example, a show like Hannibal is able to build tension and plot points over literal hours and hours. I would put the second season of the show up against many feature films.

There are parts of me that respond to the contained aspect of a movie, and parts of me that really resonate with the long-form storytelling of a good TV show. It doesn't surprise me that someone would vibe more strongly with TV than with film.

Really? What else could it be?

I don't disagree but television/sreaming also has a weakness compared to film that I cannot tolerate, which is the need to continue to sustain the narrative long after it should have ended, which leads to meandering seasons with pointless side-plots, a constant moving of the goal-posts, and ultimately, jumping the shark.
I mean, when I think about some of the best "television", like Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, and Game Of Thrones, all three of those were doing great until they fell prey to the medium itself. I'm like 50-something hours into BSG and I'm like, "Why are we getting into this secondary character's slip back into a previously unmentioned history of alcoholism and some tacked-on bull**** with his ex-wife coming on board and messing things up the social dynamic? Is this what we call "character development"? Just filling episodes with hastily sketched-up backstories/conflicts for all the individual characters that do nothing but distract from the fact that you're no longer following the arc so you can keep making episodes? What happened to the ******* story? Wasn't this going somewhere at some point? Weren't we on an arc 40 ****ing hours ago?"
Then I watch The Sopranos and the first season is barreling toward this great resolution and you almost can't wait for it and the show gets renewed and suddenly you have an entire episode of Tony talking to his therapist about fantasizing about his neighbor? Seriously? And then the final episode comes and they're like, "Sorry, we can't resolve any of this story or arc satisfactorily because we've been renewed and if we resolve it we don't really have a show for the second season." Thanks, assholoes.
And Game of Thrones, Jesus, do I even need to comment on what a meandering mess that thing became over its last like FOUR SEASONS? Like, holy ****, there was actually a story going on here guys, did you forget? "No, no, we just keep getting renewed for another season and we gotta fill all that time out so now the show is about the individual years-long journeys of all the characters, some of which are going to be really stupid and kinda go nowhere interesting at all, and then we're gonna wrap the whole thing up with the most notorious final season in television history that will satisfy no one and become iconic for how to fail your audience."
"Oh, and we'll put Ed Sheeran in it too."
Film forces the storyteller, sink or swim, to tell the story. When it sinks, it sinks and you have a bad or not very good movie, just like most of television. But when it swims you have something. It's a bit like painting a painting versus painting an endless series of canvases placed before you never knowing how many more you have to/can paint before they stop coming. One you can hang in the Louvre.
This is why the "limited series", something I liken to Kieslwoski's Dekalog, is really the way for television to go. This produced the only "great" television I've seen in a long time, Watchmen.
And with Netflix's "we're only interested in new shows cause that's how we get new subscribers" economic model, the limited series may be what we get from now on. I look forward to it.

There's always been a general belief that TV is a "lesser" medium than film, and that actors that start in TV and then make it up to films are being somewhat "promoted", which is what usually brings this kind of question; especially with the surge of great shows over the last 10-20 years. But like you said, they are different mediums with different approaches to storytelling.

I like this saying that kinda fits this premise of different approaches in each medium that says... Film is a director's medium, TV is a writer's medium, and theater is an actor's medium.

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I know you didn't ask me but Ima agree with you 100% here.
I thought S1 was awesome and it gave me some real pleasure to have that to go to.
I couldn't even finish S2.

These are great points, but it takes us into the clash between creativity vs. business. I mean, a lot of these cases where stories get dragged on forever are a result of the network just wanting to make money out of the property, thus milking it till there's nothing left (i.e. The Walking Dead?) which I think clashes with the creative aspect of the storyteller to tell an arc, a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Also, I wanna thank everyone that contributed films for me to talk about/see with this friend of mine. Lotta good stuff there and a lot of things I have yet to see that I should.

Oh man, I finished it but it was a chooore and ultimately not very rewarding. When I get into a show, I try to watch one or two episodes every other day, as I juggle it with whatever films I want to watch, but this one? I started it months ago, then lost interest, then tried to get back into it, and really didn't care... ultimately I pushed through the last 4 or 5 episodes just so I could say I finished it.

Tropic Thunder -

Grandmother's House, 1989

David (Eric Foster) and Lynn (Kim Valentine) have just lost their father, and go to live with their mother's parents (Len Lesser and Ida Lee) on an orange farm out in the country. But from the very first night, David sees and hears strange things, coming to believe that his grandparents have killed a woman (and possibly others). And how does this all connect to a mysterious figure who seems to be stalking the children?

Overall this film did not wow me, but at the same time there were some aspects of it that I really liked.

To begin with, I really enjoy horror that manages to retain a degree of ambiguity about whether what we are seeing is "real" or whether there is something supernatural involved. For a solid 2/3 of the film, this ambiguity falls over everything we see, including whether the grandparents are evil or if something else is going on.

I also enjoyed the very off-kilter vibe, courtesy of strange angles and intense but quirky performances from the grandparents. There is just a heightened oddness to the whole thing which only feels semi-intentional, but for me it worked.

I would also like to shout out the ugliest outfit I have ever seen in a film, glimpsed in part below. Whoever dressed that child in those shorts is a madman and I am here for it.



On the down side, the film struggles strongly with its characterization. David has a bit of an arc, but Lynn really falls by the wayside. She is, inexplicably, romantically drawn to Kenny (Michael Robinson), a guy who looks about 10 years her senior, sexually accosts her and ogles her at the public pool, and walks around with a cigarette pack rolled up in his shirt sleeve like a tool. This could have been framed as a reaction to the loss of her father, but it . . . isn't. The film indulges in jiggle shots of her at the pool and the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with her aside from objectifying her.

There's a similar problem with the grandparents. Because the film wants to keep its cards close to it chest in regards to whether or not they are killers, neither David nor we the audience get to spend much quality time with them. There are plenty of fun scenes of them being adorable and/or ominous, but they are never really developed as characters.

There was enough weirdness and enough twists and turns to keep me engaged with this one, but ultimately some weak characterization brings it down. Still it does end on a bonkers, memorable note.

That might be true of some TV, but certainly not all TV.

Also, much like the way that you can choose or not choose to watch a sequel, you can often choose or not choose to watch a new season of a TV show.

I have only seen one season of Daredevil, it ended on a reasonably resolved note, and I was happy with the experience.

I thought that, for example, The Good Place ran for exactly as long as it needed to.

There are also a lot of brilliant series intended to stand on their own. I haven't seen it yet, but I am very excited to watch I May Destroy You.

A thought I sometimes have when watching a film is that the story would have been better served as a miniseries. With the freedom afforded by streaming platforms (no set time frames, no required number of episodes), limited series are more of a thing and they are not restricted to services like HBO.

Yeah, that's pretty much my point.

Tina, 2021

This electric, moving documentary charts the ups and downs of Tina Turner's career, with particular focus on the singer's reinvention of herself after her split from Ike Turner.

I did not know much about Tina Turner going into this film, beyond a passing familiarity with her music and the very basics of her volatile relationship with Ike Turner. I left this documentary with a strong sense of admiration, at times verging on awe, for Turner and her perseverance through a horribly traumatizing series of experiences.

The part of the film that hits the hardest, emotionally speaking, is not just the abuse that she endured at the hands of her husband. (And, lest anyone accuse her of exaggeration, the film features heartbreaking audio from one of her sons, recounting his experience of seeing and hearing his mother be scalded--to the point of 3rd degree burns--by her husband). The stories of abuse are, of course, horrifying.

But what the film really hammers home is the fact that, due to her fame, Turner is never able to escape constant reminders of her past. Despite bluntly, repeatedly saying that she wants to move on, her abuse is the well that interviewers go back to over and over. We see outtakes on interviews in which the emotion of it suddenly overwhelms her, and we watch her flinch and break when references to her past come out of nowhere. There is a two-way element to it, though, as many women find strength in her story of escape and survival.

Oprah speaks insightfully about her and Turner's generation being the first to really speak out about sexual, physical, and domestic abuse. But so often, Tina Turner is not given warning or asked for consent to go to those dark place in interviews. It speaks to the general dehumanizing effect that fame has on the way we treat others. In one stunning moment an interviewer asks Turner why she hasn't watched What's Love Got to Do With It, and Turner responds that she doesn't want to see "the violence". But it isn't just movie violence, it is her personal trauma that has been dramatized and staged.

I was also just in awe of the way that Tina Turner reinvented herself, at an age when many rock stars would be considered too old to begin a career. I loved her story about declaring that she wanted to fill a stadium the way that Mick Jagger could. It is inspiring to see the strength in Turner, and also wonderful to hear the way that people around her, and particularly Roger Davies, believed in her talents and helped her to achieve her goals. Tina Turner followed her passions and interests as an artist, and it is wonderful to see the way that she succeeded.

This was an engaging, sincere, and informative documentary. I loved the range of interview subjects (including Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the film What's Love Got to Do With It), and the use of archival footage is outstanding.

Bliss, 2021

Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson) is a man who seems to be suffering from some sort of neurosis and/or mental health issues. Fired from his job at a tech support company, Greg meets a strange woman named Isabel (Salma Hayek). Isabel claims that the world around them is merely a simulation and that only they (and a handful of others) are "real". As Greg is drawn more into Isabel's reality, his daughter searches for him on the streets. So is it just a simulation, or is Greg suffering from a serious, shared delusion?

I will be perfectly honest and say that I struggle with films in which the "quirks" of people who are mentally ill (and also sometimes homeless or otherwise disenfranchised) are used as plot points. There is a sort of "homeless chic" that the film uses--especially in the styling and look of Isabel--that just rubs me the wrong way. It ends up landing somewhere between sympathy and "isn't this fun?" with the characters who live on the street (including sassy prostitutes!), and that whole aspect of the movie made it hard for me to fully engage.

The best part of the film, for me, was the subplot involving Greg's daughter, Emily (Nesta Cooper). Urged by her brother to just "follow mom's lead" and forget about him, Emily cannot just ignore her father's plight. From her point of view, he is mentally ill, and she wants to support him and have him in her life. I thought that this aspect of the plot was genuinely moving. How do you have a meaningful emotional relationship with someone who doesn't reciprocate those feelings? Who doesn't believe that you are "real"? Who behaves in erratic and sometimes dangerous ways? Cooper does a great job of portraying a character who is dealing with not only the stress of helping a mentally ill loved one, but a character who is realizing that she must become "the adult" in their relationship. Her father is no longer her protector (and clearly hasn't been for a while), and she must find a way to redefine their dynamic.

I like Owen Wilson and I REALLY like Salma Hayek. I think that they each have their own distinct and really engaging energy. I enjoyed them as an odd couple, but I felt that the romantic/sexual chemistry just was not there at all. Part of the film is meant to hinge on Greg choosing between Isabel and Emily and what each woman represents, but the story really lacks a compelling connection between Isabel and Greg.

There are also certain elements of the film that I didn't totally understand. Greg and Isabel take "crystals" that give them powers inside of the simulation. (Or are they just high? This is left ambiguous for much of the film). They can do things like crush cars or knock people down with their minds. But, like, why though? It's an aspect of the film that provides the opportunity for a few neat visual moments and some out-there physical comedy--such as Greg knocking down an elderly woman--but it didn't advance the plot at all.

Points for the dynamic between Greg and Emily, but I wish that the heart of the film had been more devoted to that storyline and not the "worldbuilding" of the whole simulation idea.

I loved every minute of The Sopranos. Seen it 3 times & it’s still my fave tv show.

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

Ken Loach movie. Apart from the lead actor, all non-professionals. A bleak, grim & depressing look at England.

Yeah, I quit after the first season. It pissed me off that much. I am glad that some other people enjoyed it though.