Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I was asking myself this literally just the other day, for an essay I'm almost done with, and I think I can say it's really just beige and chrome over and over for like two hours.

Re-watch of a very entertaining movie. Interesting to me that the two leads are both British, but very convincing as Americans. Excellent movie.



Not bad once I got into it. Looks kinda cheap & grungy though.

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

I loved Queenie and Slim too.

Desperately Seeking Susan - (1985)

This is a real 1980s movie, and at the time Madonna was huge - without her this film would have escaped into the ether never to be heard of again, but just by appearing in it she made sure the film did okay. You have to face the fact that she seems to obstinately refuse to be an actress in this, instead projecting a kind of stylish star quality with an extra dose of sex. The movie just manages to be okay - it's screenplay isn't exactly the kind of thing that you'd want to put in a time capsule to preserve. Just the opposite - burn it. It's a kind of lost-memory comedy/thriller when it's not being cute or funny, with Rosanna Arquette getting bonked on the head and accidentally making off with stolen Egyptian ear-rings and all of Madonna's stuff - closely followed by villains and good guys alike. It's passable fluff.

6/10[/quote]

Sorry you didn't like this movie. I think the story is very clever and I think Roseanna Arquette was brilliant.

Sorry you didn't like this movie. I think the story is very clever and I think Roseanna Arquette was brilliant.[/quote]

Favorite scene is when Madonna dried her “pits” under a hand dryer in the toilet. So funny.

Houseboat (1958)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

LOL. I will not rise to this!

What a review!

Solomon Kane, 2009

Solomon Kane (James Purefoy) is a ruthless, violent man whose world is rocked when an agent of Satan comes to claim his soul. Fearing eternal damnation, Kane gives up violence and retires to a monastery. But while escorting a family through the land he realizes that demons and witches are plaguing the land, Kane must decide whether he's willing to take up his sword again.

There's nothing wrong with an action film being a little thin when it comes to character development, or overall narrative, or world building. But when it comes to this particular movie, it's just not very good at anything.

It's not terrible, per se. There are some nice things that can be said about it. I liked the way that camera angles and costumes were used to suggest the change in Kane's lifestyle. In layered clothing and an imposing long coat, Kane makes for a threatening and dashing figure. But when shot from a high angle and in a simple tunic and pants, he seems hardly threatening at all.

The performances are not bad either, but the actors are given pitifully little to work with. Purefoy has some charisma. Rachel Hurd-Wood trembles and screams in her role as the abducted daughter of the family Kane is escorting. Pete Postlethwaite as the head of the traveling family and Max von Sydow in the role of Kane's father lend the film much more gravitas than it deserves.

But the character growth is virtually non-existent. Kane's entire plot arc can be summed up as "I love violence", "Wait! God doesn't like violence! No more violence!" "Wait! Bad people are doing bad things? What if I do violence, but violence against bad people!". That's . . . it. That's the movie. And that's the biggest plot arc. Everyone else just dies or gets taken captive and there's almost no agency for any of the supporting characters.

It could maybe be forgiven if the action and sorcery element of the film were stronger, but it all feels incredibly haphazard. All of a sudden there are demons and witches roaming around. And zombies. And people being possessed by other possessed people. And mirror monsters? There is no rhyme or reason to any of it, and it sort of clunks along until Kane gets a chance to fight a monster that can only be called "the final boss". The action leans way too often on semi-decent CGI and there are precious few thrills to be had. Everything is dark and bordering on murky.

Again, this isn't a bad film. But it's just barely competent at the kind of film it's trying to be.

Hawk the Slayer, 1980

The valiant Hawk (John Terry) ventures through the land assembling a team to help him fight his evil brother, Voltan (Jack Palance). As part of his evil machinations, Voltan has kidnapped an abbess (Annette Crosbie), and is demanding a large ransom. With his crew of warriors, Hawk works to save the abbess and defeat his brother.

I don't know why it was 2/3 of the way into this film before I realized it was Lord of the Rings smashed together with Robin Hood, but none of the good things about either of those stories.

This movie looked so much like the film Wizards of the Lost Kingdom that there were several times that I sincerely found myself listening for a sarcastic take-down of the on-screen action. It's very 80s fantasy action, but in that sort of underwhelming way.

And everything about this film is just that: sort of underwhelming. Hawk, the hero of the story, simply isn't a very interesting character. And Voltan, his nemesis, is a flatline as well. There's no great chemistry in their animosity, and their confrontations feel very tepid. (It really doesn't help that Palance is 31 years older than Terry, something that's not necessarily impossible in medieval times, but makes the fact of them being brothers feel like a real stretch.) Almost every other character in the film is nondescript to the point that I struggle to remember their names. There was . . . the giant, and the dwarf, and the elf, and the . . . guy with the sideburns? Ray Charleson's turn as Crow the elf is so unaffected as to seem almost on a different level from the rest of the film. Only Patricia Quinn, as a sorceress who assists Hawk's crew (and is wise enough to cover her face, LOL) makes much of an impression, and that's mainly visual.

I think that this piece of trivia tells you everything you need to know about the movie: "The grand finale fight between Voltan and Hawk lasts about 45 seconds and was filmed completely in slow motion."

I couldn't quite hate this film, despite its many (many, many, many) faults. I think that if I were 8, I might have a soft spot for it. But my main feeling after watching it is that it feels more like a gesture than an actual film.

We wore the record for this out when I was a kid.

Yeah, as a fan of the source material I had high hopes, though admittedly low expectations for this. For a while I felt like the film hung in there pretty well... until it totally didn't.

This Walkabout starts when the "girl" and the "white boy" are forced to flee from their father who tries to kill them in the middle of the Outback, and then ends up shooting himself. As the kids aimlessly wander the wilderness, they come upon the "black boy" who starts teaching them how to survive. The three start an interesting relationship that begins as a simple means to survive but evolves into something more as the film progresses and they all adapt to their new situation in different ways.

Communication plays a key role in their relationship, which you can see in the above quote. The "black boy" only speaks in his native language, while the "girl" unsuccessfully tries to communicate through English. The "white boy" on the other hand is quickly taken by the "black boy", and they learn to communicate through gestures and signals. The contrasting ways that both the "girl" and the "white boy" react, adapt, and interact with the "black boy" is a common thread through the film as one seems to embrace the customs of the Aborigine more easily, while the other seems more reluctant to abandon her "city ways".

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Oh yeah, I've probably listened to the album a couple/few hundred times without exaggeration. Everyone in my crew pretty much knows it by heart.
But the movie is one of those I put off forever because the moment wasn't right or I thought it would be disappointing or whatever and then, poof, I was 50 years old and still hadn't seen it (life be like that). So I fixed the problem and I'm glad I did.

Cloven is a Bahraini horror short film that follows an old man (Mubarak Khamis) that picks up a mysterious lady (Reem Erhama) at a secluded bus stop in the middle of the night. It is based in a local folktale about a creature called "Um Homar" that hunts unsuspecting children and people.

Stumbled upon this by mere chance and it was quite a pleasant surprise. With a 6 minute runtime and a fairly simple premise and setting, there's not much to say about it. But director and co-writer Mohammed Fakhro makes the most out of that to present a weirdly effective and chilling short that had me smiling with glee in the end.

Grade:

I was just never sure what the point was.

And the stuff about Kane deciding whether or not to use violence was portrayed in a way that didn't make him seem conflicted so much as kind of dumb and waffling until AFTER

He has no such conflict in the stories. He's there because he's the guy who can kill the werewolf or conjure-man or whatever it may be.
It's another case of wondering why script-writers (if they still exist), I assume at the whim of producers, insist on over-telling stories and amping up source material to feel like a bigger version of every other story. A number of kane stories probably could make entire movies as they are.

Like Water for Chocolate, 1992

Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is the third daughter of the imposing matriarch Elena (Regina Torné), and as such is given no choice of a life outside of caring for her mother. When Tita falls in love with the handsome Pedro (Marco Leonardi), her mother denies Pedro's request for Tita's hand. Pedro decides that he will marry Tita's sister, Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi), so that he can be close to Tita. In the ensuing emotional turmoil that follows, Tita discovers that her feelings are conveyed through her cooking, often having an effect on those around her.

I had vague memories of being shown part of this movie in high school, and have sort of wanted to revisit it ever since. For the most part it did not disappoint as a mix of fantasy and romance.

The central conceit of the film is the power of the food that Tita prepares, and how it impacts those around her in large and small ways. When Pedro brings Tita a bouquet of flowers, Tita uses them in a dish that ignites sexual passion in everyone who eats it. Her sister Gertrudis (Claudette Maillé) becomes so overheated that her body heat sets the showerhouse alight and summons a nearby revolutionary fighter. When Pedro and Rosaura wed, the wedding cake Tita prepares creates a deep longing in everyone so powerful that it proves fatal to one of the guests.

Arizmendi is an engaging lead, a woman who suffers various indignities in the name of being close to the man she loves. She chafes under the oppression of her mother's household rules, but cannot fully find it in herself to break free. In trying to play by the rules, she ends up in a situation more painful than if she'd simply tried to find happiness elsewhere, or run away with Pedro from the get-go.

Mario Iván Martínez turns in a very engaging performance as Dr. John Brown, a kind and progressive doctor who tends to the various members of Tita's family and slowly builds a romance with Tita that's constantly under threat from her lingering attraction to Pedro. Brown is, on paper, a perfect gentleman, and he's a great foil for Pedro. Torne's Elena is a fascinating villain: from the beginning we know that she has probably had at least one of her children as the result of an extramarital affair. Normally you would have sympathy for someone who had endured what Elena's been through, but she's taken the circumstances of her own life and used them to justify the extreme cruelty and control that she inflicts on her children, especially Tita.

Pedro is the most challenging character in the film. He is incredibly self-centered, and not all that well developed, honestly. There were quite a few times, and especially as the film went on, that I found myself thinking "This guy? Still? Really?". But in some ways, I think that's kind of the point. What exists between Tita and Pedro is the immediate, instinctive, undefinable part of love. Even toward the end of the film when Tita can see Pedro's flaws--his selfishness, his jealousy, his neediness--she can't help but be drawn to him. While this is incredibly frustrating at times, it does heighten the tragedy that so much suffering could have been avoided if Tita and Pedro had been allowed to be together in the first place.

The film does have a few not-great points. While Rosaura is definitely not a nice person, the way that the film treats her is incredibly demeaning. It makes a joke of the fact that Pedro doesn't want to have sex with her. Later the film makes the point that her children don't thrive under her care. It feels overly hateful at times, pulling out all the things that are used against women (not a good mom, can't breastfeed, gets fat, etc). And for a film that lingers in an epic way on Tita's pain, it is surprisingly easy to minimize the experience of a native woman, Chencha (Pilar Aranda) who is sexually assaulted. Given the time that the film takes to resolve the emotions of other characters, it's weird that this traumatic event is essentially dropped immediately after it happens.

I liked this one and its magical realism. I didn't love the central romance, but the overall structure of the film was very engaging.

I guess it sort of makes sense that they were trying to do an origin story thing. It would have probably fared a lot better if it was just him doing his killing-evil thing.

Hey, I'm just saying!

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The Banshees of Inisherin - (2022)

I loved this - perhaps Martin McDonagh's best film, with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson playing very similar characters to what they did in the film In Bruges. Set on a quaint Irish Island where the Irish Civil War rages just out of sight, with the occasional cloud of dust and echo of gunfire reminding the residents that it's still on, Colm Doherty (Gleeson) comes to the sudden realisation that as time flies by his existence will amount to nothing unless he invests more in composing music. This makes idle chit-chat with his simple-minded friend Pádraic (Farrell) unbearable - but renouncing this friendship will not be easy, and will in fact get particularly nasty. My description doesn't do the film justice, with Ireland picturesque as always, the score quite memorable and the story and screenplay very intelligent and thought-provoking. There's something unusual about one man completely severing ties with a friend (and his fingers) due to an existential and philosophical crisis - but that is what we have here, and it reflects on civil strife of all kinds - unfair as it is on the idea of friendship itself, no matter the cost. Colin Farrell gives an Oscar-nomination-worthy performance amongst many fine actors here.

9/10


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Avengers : Infinity War - (2018)

This quiet, low-key affair from Marvel snuck by unnoticed by most. Just kidding. Avengers : Infinity War is one of the most explosive star-laden blockbusters I've ever seen, with the various characters that now populate Marvel's universe bringing in a-listers by the dozen to help bring the 'Infinity Saga' to a near-close. I have to say, I was pretty awed by what we're given here, and I found that Josh Brolin's Thanos lived up to all the hype which had been building with his occasional appearance here and there in previous films. There's a lot packed in, but I have to admit getting a thrill whenever unexpected guests (like those from the Guardians of the Galaxy series) dropped in. It's not the fate of Earth anymore, it's the fate of the universe with this building to a climax and cliffhanger that draws together most of the previous 20 or so MCU blockbusters, and leaves you tearing your hair out for having to wait for Avengers : Endgame. This was one of the good ones.

7.5/10


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Ant Man and the Wasp - (2018)

I have to confess to the fact that Ant Man is not my favourite Marvel hero, and that if this wasn't the next film in phase three of the MCU I wouldn't have bothered with Ant Man and the Wasp, but I flew through it because I want to get to Avengers : Endgame as quickly as I can. It's fine - maybe even a little better than the first Ant Man movie, with action and comedy that works most of the time. I can't really fault the film, but it suffers a little in comparison to the other huge films I've seen in the preceding 24 hours.

6/10

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