Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Sweet French movie.

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Thought this got good reviews. Maybe it didn’t.

This was one of the only Marvel films where the character work felt actually substantial to me. I did see Infinity War, but almost all of it disappeared from my mind.

You started the conversation by saying that you feel the lyric has been unfairly maligned. I think it's pretty obvious why a lot of people would hear the phrase being used to refer to sexual activity and have a negative reaction. For many people, in fact, (and I'm going to use a word I know a lot of people hate, but it's accurate!) that kind of language is genuinely triggering.

At a basic level, it really doesn't matter what the songwriter intended when he wrote the lyric, nor does it matter what the actor meant to imply when he sang the lyric, nor does it even matter all that much what we can infer about the situation that happened in the film. The most forgiving reading of the whole thing is that a songwriter oops accidentally used a phrase that he didn't know would imply what it does imply to many people, many of whom have written in this very thread to say that they like/love Grease but do not like that lyric.

I will happily concede that the songwriter could have meant to imply nothing more malicious or coercive than the character having to buy Sandy some flowers to win her love. I will happily concede that the actor could have thought his character was just asking if Danny had to write Sandy a few love poems to win her affection. But even if I concede those things, they have zero impact on how I felt hearing that lyric. And acting as if I had to look really hard to find a way to be upset about the lyric or people are having to contort themselves to find sketchiness in it feels like fake naivete.

Ostlund's films are very in your face. I think you either really click with them or you find them obnoxious. He has a great track record for me, personally, though, so I still plan to check out Triangle of Sadness.

Uncut Gems (2019)


Second watch so that I could show my significant other who has anxiety problems She liked the movie a lot though, and I have taught her enough about sports betting over time where nothing really went over her head. Superb movie that has such a captivating pace.

Okay, and I can accept all of that now, because we've been able to talk about it like adults in order to understand where the other one stands on this; that's all I'm really asking for at this point.

I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's been rated highly by a lot of people and I absolutely loved it. Garnered an unexpected Best Picture nomination at the Oscars (not that this always guarantees quality, but I'm hoping it pulls off an upset and wins.)

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The Raid 2, 2014

Following shortly on the events from the first film, Rama (Iko Uwais) gets enmeshed in a plot to expose corrupt police officials, all the way to the top. Rama goes undercover and becomes involved with crime-lord heir apparent Uco (Arifin Putra). A gauntlet of violent crosses and double-crosses tests Rama's resolve as circumstances pit violent gangs against one another.

I am a definite appreciator of action films with choreography that shows off the performers' athleticism, and will happily watch a film that uses even the flimsiest of stories to string together such sequences. I was disappointed that I never really clicked with this film, despite a slew of gifted performers and enjoying its style very much.

I said that I can accept flimsy stories in an action movie, but the story here is pretty decent. I'll admit that I sometimes had trouble tracking the different loyalties and affiliations, but this is not a movie that feels like a video game with the protagonist simply pinballing from one villain to another. There are a range of relationships at play, which adds diversity to the characters involved in the fights. Usually we watch just one or two main characters battle everyone, but here we get a lot of different combinations of adversaries.

The movie also has some really great shots and camera movement. The camera takes great advantage of the different settings and spaces. There are fights that take place in big open spaces, and fights that take place in much more cramped quarters. There are neat choices in angles, use of reflections/staging, and pops of color here and there. The characters of Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman) and Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle) feel like they've maybe come from a slightly more heightened reality, but they are stylish as all get out.

The action itself is also, obviously, very solid.

This is a case of me not having anything I can pinpoint as a negative. I never really gelled with the movie, and maybe having a little trouble with tracking the characters was part of that. The subtitles were kind of clunky and made the flow of listening to and reading the dialogue a bit more of a chore than is typical, and maybe that was part of the disconnect. There's nothing in the film itself I can point to and say, "This was just average". My reaction to the first film was generally positive, and I hoped I'd feel similar about this one. Instead I feel about a notch lower than how I felt about the first. Kind of a bummer.

By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61638940

The Two Popes - (2019)

As we swing into Oscar season, I was reminded of a film I wanted to see that was nominated a few times. The Two Popes had Jonathan Pryce nominated for Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Anthony McCarten's screenplay was nominated. It really is one of those films you watch for the sake of it's two main actors, who really pull off a special two-man show as Cardinal Bergoglio (who becomes Pope by film's end) and Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope (Hopkins) calls Cardinal Bergoglio (Pryce) to his residence in the Vatican for purposes unknown, at the same time Bergoglio was going to ask permission to resign as Cardinal, feeling he's not doing much good in the role. The two high ranking men clash, with Benedict being very conservative while Bergoglio is progressive, but as the latter's stay draws out, the two start to get deeper into each other's way of thinking and start to become close. Then Benedict drops a bombshell - no Pope has resigned for over 700 years, but his intention to step down is firm, and contrary to where the two started out, he sees great possibility if Bergoglio is voted the next pontiff.

I always like films where two people seemingly ill-suited to get along become best friends - and here we have not only that, but more evidence that Anthony Hopkins is doing some of his finest work at the tail-end of his career. I'm glad he nabbed another Academy Award for his work in The Father, for he really deserves one to signify how good he is in this twilight period. Despite Pryce's excellent work in The Wife, and a great career, this remains to date his only nomination. I don't know if the two (one Argentinian, the other German) really watched the World Cup Final together in 2014 (it seems doubtful, but who knows), but that little touch adds a really fun end credit sequence to everything. The rest delves into matters you can well imagine - where the church is heading and the culpability of those higher up who stood by and did nothing while paedophile priests were being sent from parish to parish, molesting kids. The two talk about their own faith, especially Bergoglio, who has his own life story examined. Quite a good film.

7/10


By http://www.impawards.com/2022/blonde.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71404820

Blonde - (2022)

Okay, now for this monstrosity. Blonde really didn't work for me - it was two pieces of a puzzle that just didn't fit together. The first was the slimy, rape-driven and degrading humiliations a woman like Norma Jean had to go through to become Marilyn Monroe - which absolutely should be called out, and recorded as an era humanity should never regress back to. But the other piece of Blonde actually treats her like a heavy-breathing, one-dimensional sex-pot character instead of a human being. Did the real Marilyn Monroe really do everything in that seductive, low-toned, sex-pose way? Ana de Armas has been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, but her Norma Jean/Marilyn feels like a caricature you'd find on a comedy sketch show. Were they saying that this person was always playing the "Marilyn Monroe" role? I don't know - I found so much of the film to be disagreeable. I liked the dream-like surrealistic take on everything - and that especially pays off when we get close to her death - but as a whole I found Blonde to be a big let-down. It was just a parade of horror that did nothing to explore the complexities of the woman herself - only that she had a terrifying childhood, and was constantly abused for her entire life. You can sum that up in a sentence like I did - if you want to make a movie it should probe a little deeper.

4/10

Jurassic Park 9/10


The Lost World: Jurassic Park 6/10


Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 9/10

Knives of the Avenger is a viking action movie directed by Mario Bava. It stars Cameron Mitchell as Rurik, a once-cruel man who has changed his ways. He happens upon a woman and son hiding out in the countryside from a man named Hagen. Rurik protects them from an attack, but Hagen is not done and that family's father returns with a past grievance against Rurik as well.

I enjoyed this movie when I first saw it several years ago and I was pleased to find that I still do. It's a simple story, but told well and with good performances. What I really like about it is the physicality in the fight scenes. People crash through tables and walls, fall off towers and embankments, and roll down hills. The throwing knife being the main weapon is also pretty cool, as you don't see that too often.

Knives of the Avenger isn't Bava's best movie, but I think it's a fun watch.

My favorite British movie. A professor of mine recommended me this (and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?")

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I saw They shoot horses recently. Great film. Love that ending.

Next up for me in terms of British films is 'Saturday Night, Sunday Morning' which is also spoken about in the same breath as 'Loneliness of the long distance runner'. Gritty British new wave films about disenchanted young people.

Poster looks like a bad photoshop.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) -



That's not how mental illness works. You can't be healed by Jennifer Lawrence's butt.

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Oh great -- I'll search for the movie reviews on this thread (haven't been on much).


"Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" was pretty good. Always liked Finney.


In case anyone else is interested, it's available on YouTube for FREE (for now)

I'm willing to give it a try.

Golden Eighties, 1986

In a mall, hairdressers Lilli (Fanny Cottençon) and Mado (Lio) compete for the affections of the fickle Robert (Nicolas Tronc). Meanwhile, Robert's mother Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) finds herself torn when her former lover, Eli (John Berry) turns up looking to reignite their relationship.

It's funny how a movie can seem very far away from a director's other effort, and yet still have certain elements that create a throughline. A mall-set romance musical is in theory pretty far afield from Jeanne Dielman, but the way that Akerman builds a sense of routine and then ensuing disruptions, as well as the way she moves her characters through the various settings has echoes of what I loved so much about Dielman.

There's a neat and interesting inversion that happens as this film progresses, to do with how the characters process the ideas of love and loss. The film opens with a woman kissing a man and telling him that she loves him . . . only to turn to another man and do the same. The young men and women in the mall seem to be willing to hop from person to person, their attachments abruptly shifting when someone new walks in the door. This contrasts sharply with the drama facing Jeanne, a Poland-born Jewish woman who first met Eli during World War 2 when he was stationed abroad as a soldier. Jeanne cannot be so frivolous with her heart, because she already has a husband and child.

But something fun happens as the film swings into its final act. As the drama around the hairdressers and Robert swirls and escalates in dramatic fashion, Jeanne quietly continues to contemplate her choices. Ironically, it is because of having lived a longer life and had more experiences that Jeanne is ultimately able to be the voice of wisdom and more dismissive of the drama in the end. In a strange way, Jeanne is much lighter at the end than the younger people, despite the conflict and personal trauma that is the background of her romantic quandary.

Something I really picked up on my second time watching Jeanne Dielman was the way that Akerman moved her characters in and out of the frame. While it's not as overt in this film, it's still very much an element of how the action is portrayed and I really enjoyed the effect of it.

I also enjoyed the sets and costumes, which are almost movie-musical synced, but not quite. I really liked a shot of all of the hairdressers drying their clients' hair with a range of different colored towels. There's just this edge of grounding everything in reality that adds a bit of interest to the musical numbers.

I had two complaints, one of which is not really the film's fault. First, I did have a bit of trouble clicking with the part of the story dealing with the young people. The movie definitely knows they are kind of goobers, and that's part of the whole way that they are contrasted with the more adult story of Jeanne's dilemma. But despite the self-awareness of their frivolity, it was hard to take them at certain points.

What's not at all the fault of the film is how the subtitles were handled for the musical numbers. Listen: we all know that words that rhyme in one language will not rhyme when translated! It's reality! I don't know why people who translate songs feel the need to butcher the language just so that the subtitles show a rhyme! WHY?! WHY?! Again, not the film's fault, but bad subtitle writing and it really hampers enjoying those songs.

Good stuff!

On The Beach (1959)



After viewing this, I realize why it took me so long to get around to seeing it.
I say that because I pretty much watch any movie that has to do with WWIII, nuclear annihilation, the aftermath of nuclear war or apocalyptic disaster.

From glimpses of it during childhood, I thought most of the movie took place on the submarine (and its travels trying to gauge the leftover radiation as it ravaged the Earth) - but the sub was only a small part of the movie.

Nothing wrong with the acting, but despite the dire circumstances (which you'd anticipate would make people far more panicked or desperate) the whole thing plays like a daytime soap opera. It's just 3/4 pathos and longings by the last people on Earth who only have 5 months to live... and that's at the beginning of the movie.

Another odd item - most of the Earth (except Australia) has been devastated by nuclear war, yet we see shots of streets (such as in San Francisco) and not a single dead body - at all, at any part in the film, only mention of them by one sailor who decides he'd rather die of radiation poisoning in San Francisco. He mentions how he encountered dead bodies after he goes AWOL from the submarine.

Yet there are bunches of these city & powerplant shots (even at the end in Australia) and there are no corpses - it's as if bombs were used that left all infrastructure intact but only disintegrated bodies with a type of radiation that left no visible trace..

The big mystery of a strange radio signal from the U.S.'s west coast turns out to be a disappointment. (I'll pass on the spoiler).

There's a car race (for some reason) - I guess it conveys that when people know they're going to die they just start engaging in dangerous pastimes to give themselves a last thrill - this is after it's stated that there are petrol shortages in Australia - so you'd think survivalists might be hoarding gas to run generators for their underground bunkers... instead of having stock-car races.

I understand the story (based on the book) wasn't going for a post-apocalyptic adventure, but rather more of a philosophical, psychological & social study of people awaiting their doom... but all the longing (like with Ava Gardner) could have applied to any war movie where people have suffered loss. It was all just a bit too mushy for me.

I did like the subplot of Anthony Perkins trying to get suicide pills for his slowly-losing-it wife and infant daughter - and his wife's reaction to the idea when he explains it to her.

This movie is slow moving & somewhat boring - thus lacking in what people who like post-apocalyptic movies may be looking for.