Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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The thing isolated becomes incomprehensible
Warrior (2011)

Filled with cliches, overdone, and pretty predictable... On the other hand, it's really entertaining and well done. Tom Hardy is a force of nature!





The Girl from Nowhere, 2017

A couple heading off for a romantic weekend away picks up a beautiful hitchhiker, Liza (Christia Visser). Katherine (Tamryn Spiers) is more suspicious, while Hugh (Scot Cooper) takes a decided interest in their guest. As the weekend wears on, tensions rise.

So the whole time I was watching this film, I kept thinking, "What the heck? How on Earth did this win the Golden Leopard? It has a lot of issues!".

It didn't.

I watched the wrong film called The Girl from Nowhere.

Yes, I'm mad about it.

Yes, this review is going to be more than a little sassy.
LOL, happened to me a couple of years ago when someone recommended me 1948's Daughter of Darkness and I ended up seeing 1990's Daughter of Darkness just by sheer stupidity
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BICYCLE THIEVES
(1948, De Sica)
A film from the 1940s



"Anything serious, Captain?"
"Just a bicycle."

Set in post-World War II Italy, Bicycle Thieves follows Antonio, a poor man looking for the bicycle that was stolen from him which he desperately needs to keep his job. Antonio, like many other Italians during this time, is desperate for work to support his young family and this job represents a steady income and ultimately food on the table for him, his wife, and their two young children.

One of the many things this film does magnificently is to show how chaotic the economic situation was after the war. From the crowd of people looking for work or the towering stack of belongings that we see have been pawned at the shop to the push and shove of people trying to get on a bus to get to work. In a country so affected by war, any work is a lifeline, and that lifeline is represented by this bicycle, which is not "just a bicycle".

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the PR HOF3





Seriously, though, good for you for finishing the exercise.
I've actually often wondered if I sometimes feel more positive about some films because I go in with the idea that they're going to be really good or great so I'm quicker to see the positive and more likely to dismiss anything that rubs me the wrong way so I'm glad you went through this and I kinda wish I could.
I felt like I was experiencing gaslighting. I made it an hour and 10 minutes into the film before being like THIS CAN'T BE A THING THAT WON AN AWARD!!!!! IT JUST CANNNNNNN'TTTT.



I felt like I was experiencing gaslighting. I made it an hour and 10 minutes into the film before being like THIS CAN'T BE A THING THAT WON AN AWARD!!!!! IT JUST CANNNNNNN'TTTT.
Which movie are you talking about? Curious now.
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Taxi Driver- 1/10

This movie did not live up to the hype for me at all. I do not guess what the fuss is all about. Martin Scorcese is one of my favourite directors but this movie really reduced my opinion of him.

There is very little I liked about the movie, I guess Jodie Foster's very brief role was excellent and it was an important break for my favourite actress but honestly even her role was a massive disappointment (like the rest of the movie) in its own way, since she only appears in a handful of scenes. Considering how famous a role of hers this was, I was expecting to see a lot more of her.

There were a few occasional funny dialogues and a few likable side characters but most of the movie was listening to De Niro's character's mad, meaningless ravings. The whole premise of the movie seemed very weird to me, and not in a good way. There is nothing interesting about seeing the day to day life of a socially maladjusted taxi driver. At times I wondered whether the intention was that Travis was a person with a disability, but I think it's more likely he was just very poorly, weirdly written.

The last act quickly goes into the utterly absurd, with Travis arming himself like Arnie in Commando (how does he have the money for all this ?) and attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate while sporting a mohawk. This would seem far-fetched in a crappy tv show, let alone a supposedly 'great' movie.

With the exception of Ms. Foster and maybe the bald cab driver I found the acting also to be very meh. De Niro didn't impress me much, but the real shocker was Harvey Keitel. I didn't even recognize him in this movie and his whole character was very dull and unexceptional. Betsy and Tom were also odd and not very good performances, or even well-written characters.

The cinematography too I found very jarring, the action sequence and the scenes that followed it were very poorly shot indeed. I fail to see why anyone would want or need a 2 minute close-up of the road.

The ending also felt completely out of tone for the movie and was downright soap-operatic. Travis becomes a hero and gets the girl ? Really ? I wonder if the last 10 minutes of the movie were tacked on by a studio executive because compared to the rest of the movie they seem like an effect of split-personality disorder.

Above all else I found the character of Travis deeply unlikeable and very unrelatable, I do not understand why anyone would want to make a movie around this dollar-store Mark David Chapman (or I guess Proto-Mark David Chapman since this movie was from 1976) let alone turn him into some sort of hero.

The movie doesn't really have a plot. I think Scorcese thought himself a little too clever in his youth while making this movie and was trying to create something really edgy and artistic to shock his audience's sensibilities, but ended up with a movie that doesn't actually say anything, that doesn't have much deep meaning hidden in its metaphors. It's a film that only has the pretense of greatness, like cheap imitation. It's like something a first-year film student would make. I cannot believe that this is the same Martin Scorcese who has directed so many masterpieces.

Why some people see this as some sort of great movie I will never understand. It is easily one of the worst films I have ever watched. In fact I liked almost nothing about it.



Which movie are you talking about? Curious now.
The Girl from Nowhere.

I meant to watch the 2013 film but got the 2017 film instead, and it was no bueno. And since I believed it had won an award (I'm watching Locarno winners for the 2021 Film Challenge) I was very, very confused!



Now we agree on this one
His second wife (the opera singer) really made my day. She reminded me of Meryl Streep playing in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)
Sadly Dorothy Comingore didn't realize what she was in for. Her portrayal of Kane's ditzy shrill second wife (completely the opposite of Hearst's real mistress, Marion Davies) was Oscar worthy. But of course the wrath of Hearst, his media syndicate, and any other entity that he could enlist, for all intents and purposes ended this talented actress's career. It didn't help that she had communist sympathies. She crawled into the bottle, spent a couple years in an insane asylum, and died at aged 58.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942)
- 6.5/10
Ride or Die (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2021)
5.5/10
Flesh and the Spur (Edward L. Cahn, 1956)
5/10
Mortal Kombat (Simon McQuoid, 2021)
6/10

Special Forces Major Jax (Mecard Brooks) loses his arms to the icy grip of Subzero (Joe Taslim).
Stolen Hours (Daniel Petrie, 1963)
6/10
The Last Right (Aoife Crehan, 2019)
- 6.5/10
Vanquish (George Gallo, 2021)
+ 4.5/10
Stowaway (Joe Penna, 2021)
6/10

Medical researcher Anna Kendrick trains aboard her spaceship to Mars when an emergency causes a life-or-death situation.
John Van Hamersveld Crazy World Ain't It (Dave Tourjé & Chris Sibley, 2020)
6.5/10
The Fisherman's Diary (Enah Johnscott, 2020)
6/10
The Inheritance (Chad Barager & Kevin Speckmaier, 2020)
- 5/10
The Comeback Trail (George Gallo, 2021)
6/10

In this broad dark comedy, low-budget film producer Robert De Niro gets suicidal Hollywood legend Tommy Lee Jones out of a Hollywood actors' old age home to star in a movie which he hopes will make him millions.
The Girl from Monterrey (Wallace Fox, 1943)
5/10
The French Key (Walter Colmes, 1946)
5.5/10
The Chinese Bungalow (George King, 1940)
5/10
Reefa (Jessica Kavana Dornbusch, 2021)
6/10

Miami's Columbian-born Israel 'Reefa' Hernandez Jr. (Tyler Dean Flores, left), a promising street artist, isn't respected by his family and the Miami PD.
The Girl from Nowhere (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2012)
5.5/10
Jibrill (Henrika Kull, 2018)
5/10
The Secret Place (Clive Donner, 1957)
6/10
Jakob's Wife (Travis Stevens, 2021)
5.5+/10

Smalltown minister's wife Barbara Crampton and her husband Larry Fessenden have to dispose of a dead body while a vampire is about and attacking.
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Taxi Driver- 1/10

This movie did not live up to the hype for me at all. I do not guess what the fuss is all about. Martin Scorcese is one of my favourite directors but this movie really reduced my opinion of him.

There is very little I liked about the movie, I guess Jodie Foster's very brief role was excellent and it was an important break for my favourite actress but honestly even her role was a massive disappointment (like the rest of the movie) in its own way, since she only appears in a handful of scenes. Considering how famous a role of hers this was, I was expecting to see a lot more of her.

There were a few occasional funny dialogues and a few likable side characters but most of the movie was listening to De Niro's character's mad, meaningless ravings. The whole premise of the movie seemed very weird to me, and not in a good way. There is nothing interesting about seeing the day to day life of a socially maladjusted taxi driver. At times I wondered whether the intention was that Travis was a person with a disability, but I think it's more likely he was just very poorly, weirdly written.

The last act quickly goes into the utterly absurd, with Travis arming himself like Arnie in Commando (how does he have the money for all this ?) and attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate while sporting a mohawk. This would seem far-fetched in a crappy tv show, let alone a supposedly 'great' movie.

With the exception of Ms. Foster and maybe the bald cab driver I found the acting also to be very meh. De Niro didn't impress me much, but the real shocker was Harvey Keitel. I didn't even recognize him in this movie and his whole character was very dull and unexceptional. Betsy and Tom were also odd and not very good performances, or even well-written characters.

The cinematography too I found very jarring, the action sequence and the scenes that followed it were very poorly shot indeed. I fail to see why anyone would want or need a 2 minute close-up of the road.

The ending also felt completely out of tone for the movie and was downright soap-operatic. Travis becomes a hero and gets the girl ? Really ? I wonder if the last 10 minutes of the movie were tacked on by a studio executive because compared to the rest of the movie they seem like an effect of split-personality disorder.

Above all else I found the character of Travis deeply unlikeable and very unrelatable, I do not understand why anyone would want to make a movie around this dollar-store Mark David Chapman (or I guess Proto-Mark David Chapman since this movie was from 1976) let alone turn him into some sort of hero.

The movie doesn't really have a plot. I think Scorcese thought himself a little too clever in his youth while making this movie and was trying to create something really edgy and artistic to shock his audience's sensibilities, but ended up with a movie that doesn't actually say anything, that doesn't have much deep meaning hidden in its metaphors. It's a film that only has the pretense of greatness, like cheap imitation. It's like something a first-year film student would make. I cannot believe that this is the same Martin Scorcese who has directed so many masterpieces.

Why some people see this as some sort of great movie I will never understand. It is easily one of the worst films I have ever watched. In fact I liked almost nothing about it.
I'm not a huge fan of Scorsese, but some things to point out. First, Travis is indeed supposed to be unlikeable and unrelatable. There is no doubt in the film that he is deeply troubled and, well, insane. I don't think a film requires a likable "protagonist", but I do understand that the filmmaker puts a lot of trust in the audience in understanding what he's trying to transmit, which in this case it's more of an exploration of the psyche of an alienated and isolated man. Same can be said about many other films from Scorsese, or PTA (There Will Be Blood, The Master).

Second, Travis doesn't "get the girl". He just drives her home and they have an awkward exchange. After all, they knew each other and had gone on a "date" so I don't see that as too farfetched or out there.

Those are my 2 cents. I will let bigger fans of the film argue on its favor.



I'm not a huge fan of Scorsese, but some things to point out. First, Travis is indeed supposed to be unlikeable and unrelatable. There is no doubt in the film that he is deeply troubled and, well, insane. I don't think a film requires a likable "protagonist", but I do understand that the filmmaker puts a lot of trust in the audience in understanding what he's trying to transmit, which in this case it's more of an exploration of the psyche of an alienated and isolated man. Same can be said about many other films from Scorsese, or PTA (There Will Be Blood, The Master).

Second, Travis doesn't "get the girl". He just drives her home and they have an awkward exchange. After all, they knew each other and had gone on a "date" so I don't see that as too farfetched or out there.

Those are my 2 cents. I will let bigger fans of the film argue on its favor.
The difference between Travis and say Daniel Plainview, is that while Plainview is undoubtably a bad person, he has redeeming characteristics (unlike Travis) and you can actually relate to him. Which you can’t really with Travis.

For example, look at the scene with Daniel’s ‘brother’. The viewer really feels for him in that moment. You can really understand how lonely Plainview fails and his extreme disappointment and heartbreak. Travis just feels alien.

Also the life of an unscrupulous robber baron is simply more interesting than that of Taxi Driver. Also TWBB is an epic biography of Plainview’s life not just a snapshot in his day to day life. And you see Plainview’s descent into madness on screen while Travis is already quite mad when we first meet him.

Plainview is an infinitely more fascinating protagonist than Travis. At best Travis’ whole personality revolves around the big joke that everybody thinks he’s a hero when he’s actually not that great a guy, compare that to the complexity of Plainview.



I forgot the opening line.


The Giants - 2011 - (Belgium)

I can't recommend this enough. Awesome, awesome movie. Stand by Me on crack.

Won two awards at Cannes, and heaps of others elsewhere. I wasn't expecting too much, but by the end I was pretty excited about this film.

9/10



The difference between Travis and say Daniel Plainview, is that while Plainview is undoubtably a bad person, he has redeeming characteristics (unlike Travis) and you can actually relate to him. Which you can’t really with Travis.

For example, look at the scene with Daniel’s ‘brother’. The viewer really feels for him in that moment. You can really understand how lonely Plainview fails and his extreme disappointment and heartbreak. Travis just feels alien.

Also the life of an unscrupulous robber baron is simply more interesting than that of Taxi Driver. Also TWBB is an epic biography of Plainview’s life not just a snapshot in his day to day life. And you see Plainview’s descent into madness on screen while Travis is already quite mad when we first meet him.

Plainview is an infinitely more fascinating protagonist than Travis. At best Travis’ whole personality revolves around the big joke that everybody thinks he’s a hero when he’s actually not that great a guy, compare that to the complexity of Plainview.
While Bickle has less redeeming qualities than Plainview, I still found him relatable. Yes, Taxi Driver is more alien than TWBB, but what I got out of this was that Bickle was stuck in a boring, uneventful, and aimless environment where every day yielded the same result for him. Since he was unable to form any meaningful social connections with anyone, he was unable to break out of this state. Resorting to vigilantism anchored him and gave him a purpose.
WARNING: spoilers below
By the end of the film, everyone supported him for his vigilantism and he finally discovered that as a purpose in his life. One which would get people to love him and one which would get him out of his prior aimless state. Therefore, he rejected Betsy's potential advances at the end and chose to continue being a vigilante.


Also, I don't think that everyone supporting Travis's violence is meant to be a joke. Rather, it's a disturbing reminder that vigilantes can be wrongly idolized by the public if they commit the violence towards the right people. A recent example is how Kyle Rittenhouse was called a hero by many people for shooting and killing two people at a BLM riot in Wisconsin.







Speedy - 1928 Harold Lloyd silent film (his final one before going to sound). He plays Harold "Speedy" Swift, a hapless but still happy-go-lucky New Yorker who can't seem to keep a job. He's dating Jane Dillon, whose grandfather Pop Dillon owns and runs the last horse drawn trolley in the city. Unscrupulous railroad man W.S. Wilton wants to buy him out or, failing that, run him out of business. There are a number of bits focusing on the different jobs Speedy tries and almost immediately loses like soda jerk and taxi driver. There's also an extended segment where he and Jane go to Coney Island and a colossal street brawl involving a bunch of Civil War vets and Lloyd facing off against a gang of Wilton's hired goons. The film makes great use of NYC locations and the taxi segment has a guest appearance by Babe Ruth as Speedy's nervous passenger. The climax features a race against time across the city by Lloyd at the helm of Pop's trolley and includes a hairy crash which turned out to be genuine and was worked into the script. This isn't Lloyd at his height like Safety Last but it's still entertaining and worthy of a watch.




This The Comeback Trail (George Gallo, 2021) looks good. Even though I see it doesn't have a huge rating, I'm always eager to see any film with the cinema's "heavy weights"
Don't know how, but never heard of it so far ....




Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942)
- 6.5/10
Ride or Die (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2021)
5.5/10
Flesh and the Spur (Edward L. Cahn, 1956)
5/10
Mortal Kombat (Simon McQuoid, 2021)
6/10

Special Forces Major Jax (Mecard Brooks) loses his arms to the icy grip of Subzero (Joe Taslim).
Stolen Hours (Daniel Petrie, 1963)
6/10
The Last Right (Aoife Crehan, 2019)
- 6.5/10
Vanquish (George Gallo, 2021)
+ 4.5/10
Stowaway (Joe Penna, 2021)
6/10

Medical researcher Anna Kendrick trains aboard her spaceship to Mars when an emergency causes a life-or-death situation.
John Van Hamersveld Crazy World Ain't It (Dave Tourjé & Chris Sibley, 2020)
6.5/10
The Fisherman's Diary (Enah Johnscott, 2020)
6/10
The Inheritance (Chad Barager & Kevin Speckmaier, 2020)
- 5/10
The Comeback Trail (George Gallo, 2021)
6/10

In this broad dark comedy, low-budget film producer Robert De Niro gets suicidal Hollywood legend Tommy Lee Jones out of a Hollywood actors' old age home to star in a movie which he hopes will make him millions.
The Girl from Monterrey (Wallace Fox, 1943)
5/10
The French Key (Walter Colmes, 1946)
5.5/10
The Chinese Bungalow (George King, 1940)
5/10
Reefa (Jessica Kavana Dornbusch, 2021)
6/10

Miami's Columbian-born Israel 'Reefa' Hernandez Jr. (Tyler Dean Flores, left), a promising street artist, isn't respected by his family and the Miami PD.
The Girl from Nowhere (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2012)
5.5/10
Jibrill (Henrika Kull, 2018)
5/10
The Secret Place (Clive Donner, 1957)
6/10
Jakob's Wife (Travis Stevens, 2021)
5.5+/10

Smalltown minister's wife Barbara Crampton and her husband Larry Fessenden have to dispose of a dead body while a vampire is about and attacking.



Taxi Driver- 1/10

This movie did not live up to the hype for me at all. I do not guess what the fuss is all about. Martin Scorcese is one of my favourite directors but this movie really reduced my opinion of him.

There is very little I liked about the movie, I guess Jodie Foster's very brief role was excellent and it was an important break for my favourite actress but honestly even her role was a massive disappointment (like the rest of the movie) in its own way, since she only appears in a handful of scenes. Considering how famous a role of hers this was, I was expecting to see a lot more of her.

There were a few occasional funny dialogues and a few likable side characters but most of the movie was listening to De Niro's character's mad, meaningless ravings. The whole premise of the movie seemed very weird to me, and not in a good way. There is nothing interesting about seeing the day to day life of a socially maladjusted taxi driver. At times I wondered whether the intention was that Travis was a person with a disability, but I think it's more likely he was just very poorly, weirdly written.

The last act quickly goes into the utterly absurd, with Travis arming himself like Arnie in Commando (how does he have the money for all this ?) and attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate while sporting a mohawk. This would seem far-fetched in a crappy tv show, let alone a supposedly 'great' movie.

With the exception of Ms. Foster and maybe the bald cab driver I found the acting also to be very meh. De Niro didn't impress me much, but the real shocker was Harvey Keitel. I didn't even recognize him in this movie and his whole character was very dull and unexceptional. Betsy and Tom were also odd and not very good performances, or even well-written characters.

The cinematography too I found very jarring, the action sequence and the scenes that followed it were very poorly shot indeed. I fail to see why anyone would want or need a 2 minute close-up of the road.

The ending also felt completely out of tone for the movie and was downright soap-operatic. Travis becomes a hero and gets the girl ? Really ?
I'm sorry, but even speaking as someone who's always found Driver to be slightly overrated, I really don't think you got it; Travis only
WARNING: spoilers below
"becomes a hero" by accident, because the police/media mistakenly believe that he shot everyone up in order to save Iris, instead of it being the bloody rampage he'd been planning for some time. That's the whole point of the irony that everyone would've known him as the psycho he really was if his original plan to assasinate Senator Palantine had been successful. At any rate, no, he didn't "get the girl" in the end just because she rode in his taxi and talked to him for a bit, and the point of him glancing sharply at something in his mirror at the end is to suggest that Travis didn't really get anything out his system for good, as the cycle is starting again, and he's likely not going to be viewed as a hero after he snaps again, whenever that is.