Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Third in the Dirty Harry series & the weakest so far. Not bad though. Very old-fashioned with regard to women’s lib, etc. Too bad Tyne Daly had to die.

Harry gets to say “f***ing for the first time.

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

I'd really like to see Palmer. The trailer looked really good.

It was very good

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, 2007

Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) assists her friend, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) in obtaining an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania, where both birth control and abortion are considered crimes. As the weight falls on Otilia to deal with Gabita, the sketchy abortion doctor who meets them in their hotel room (Vlad Ivanov), and her boyfriend who is peeved that she might miss his mother's birthday party, the strain begins to become too much.

It is interesting, and downright masterful, the way that this film manages to be about abortion and yet center its emotional weight not on the act itself (and/or the morality of that act), but rather on the circumstances that lead to such an act in the first place. If you asked me whether the film was for or against abortion, I honestly could not say, but the film is very clear in condemning the behavior of several of the characters.

Making Otilia the focus of the narrative is an interesting move. She is not the person getting the abortion, and yet she suffers because of it both due to the behavior of the abortion doctor---who extorts sex from both women--and the way that it reframes her relationship with her boyfriend.

Probably my favorite sequence in the film was a conversation between Otilia and her boyfriend. When she admits to having helped someone get an abortion, he is shocked and chastises her. But when she asks what he would do if she became pregnant, he eventually just declares "I would take care of it" (an ambiguity if ever there was one!). When she brings up the fact that recently she asked him to pull out during sex and in the moment he refused, he tries to shut her down. "So you are embarrassed to talk about it but not to do it?". she asks. There is an interesting parallel in this moment between the boyfriend and the skeevy abortion doctor. The doctor refuses to say out loud what he wants from the two young women. He will not articulate that he is demanding sex from them. When Otilia is unclear what he is asking for, he grows angry and says that he doesn't want to have to repeat himself. It is interesting how these men are willing to do harmful, abusive things to the women, and yet seem repulsed by having those things named.

I really enjoyed Anamaria Marinca's performance as Otilia. She tries to do right by her friend (and by her boyfriend), but repeatedly has to put up with lies and evasions, including from Gabita. Once the momentum of the day seizes her, all she can do is try and course-correct as best she can. In a society where even birth control is regulated and unavailable, it will always be women without financial means who are hit the hardest when it comes to unplanned pregnancies. In Otilia you see a woman who is aware of this, but at the same time must deal with it being pushed in her face so that she cannot tune out this depressing reality. Part of what separates Otilia and Gabita is luck--especially with an uncooperative boyfriend who won't do basic things to prevent a pregnancy--and you get the sense that this is partly what drives Otilia to work so hard on her friend's behalf.

Whatever your stance on abortion, this is a perceptive, honest look at a dire situation.

L'Argent, 1983

When a young man's father won't give him an advance on his allowance, the boy ends up getting a forged note from a friend of his. Eventually the note is used (knowing that it is fake) by the owners of a store to pay a truck driver named Yvon (Christian Patey). When Patey is accused of trying to use forged bills at a restaurant, it sets him on a path of trouble with the law. The film also follows a young, sociopathic man named Lucien (Vincent Risterucci) who works at the aforementioned store, who lies in court to help convict Yvon and later ends up at odds with the store owners.

I appreciate the message of this film, which for the most part makes observations about the way that those with money can get away with crimes while other less financially wealthy people cannot. Many characters are able to simply bribe their way out of trouble and come to an "understanding" about their crimes. Watching several wealthy characters knowingly pass on the fake bills to innocents is hard, because we know exactly where the blame will fall.

The film is well-made, but it exists largely in an objective, "spectator" mode. We often watch events in a neutral way, with occasional close-ups calling our attention to certain props or actions. There is a quality of disembodiment throughout the whole film. Ultimately, this style kept me a bit at arm's length. While we follow the characters, we do not really get to know them deeply. At a certain point, Yvon's actions began to make less and less sense to me. I was aware that he was in pain, but his response to those emotions came across as strange.

This is a good movie, but my inability to connect emotionally with the characters kept me from loving it. This distancing is clearly intentional from the way that the movie is shot and edited, but it made it hard for me to really get a good grip on the narrative.

I really like L'Argent too in spite of it being a bit cold and alienating. That may just be a side effect of Bresson preferring to work with non-professional actors, though.

What did you think about the

To me it didn't quite feel like it flowed, to be honest, from what came before.

I thought that the sequence in the house with the woman and her drunk father-in-law was strong. And the shot of the glass of wine teetering on the edge of the piano was actually my favorite thing in the film.

In terms of the actors, I liked them, but I never felt like I got close to them.

I also quite liked the movie (I mean, it's a solid 4/5 for me), but I was never fully drawn into it.

The Rider (2017)

Ex Machina (2014)

Had a few good ideas. Ultimately, for me, just a nice looking film. Didn't 't care about any character...maybe that was the point. No heart is my main criticism.

Vittra (2012)
aka Wither

A Swedish Evil Dead ripoff with a hint of Cabin Fever. It's practically a Raimi tribute and nothing more. The effects are fine and every now and then they get some of the dutch angles right. No characters, barely passable acting, and weak soundtrack. I don't even know why I didn't hate this, but it's barely OK.

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C.H.U.D. - Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, filmed in 1984 (among the best years for cheesy horror movies. This one's about as cheesy as they get. The title says most of what you need to know. The CHUDs (a movie title that became a name for certain people) eat people, live in storm drains and New York is full of them. It has burnt-out 1980's detectives, a fashion photog, a cute model, cynical beat cops, exploitive politicians and, of course, CHUDs and the late John Hurt.

I don't know about that, as I feel 2049 was pretty sure-footed in its general storytelling, save for the soft retcon of the

i will definitely will. oh my u serious

oh thought i fixed it. i will message the admin how to fix it again

Back at it with the last of Brosnan Bonds

The World Is Not Enough (Michael Apted, 1999)
In terms of concepts at least this is has big classic Bond vibes and there's a lot to like here. The setup and premise are very strong and me thinking this was gonna be a top tier film in the franchise but unfortunately there's a just a few too many missed opportunities. The villains and how they develop over time is great but the final showdown doesn't live up to the hype it suggests it should have. The main storyline is one of the more engaging the series has ever had but it is bogged down a good bit with side characters that don't add a ton and the action is a bit lacking in the second half. In the end I'm quite torn on this one. Honestly, if this had a not terrible climax I'd be able to look past my other complaints and consider this one of the best but it just gets a bit frustrating watching it throw away a lot of its great ideas.


Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002)
Ok yes this film is atrocious to look at pretty much all the time with the abhorrent CGI and overuse of fake slow-mo and it doesn't even look all that good when its being normal either but, it still manages to at least be passably entertaining throughout the fairly long runtime. We've seen the rival spies angle a few times now but I always enjoy it and Halle Berry playing a mirror image of Bond is pretty cool (even if she does end up a damsel in distress still). I also liked the villains quite a bit too. One has diamonds embedded in his face and looks dope and the other you hate immediately because he looks like Will Ospreay. It's just a dumb but fun enough ride that somehow never felt like it was wasting my time whilst being 2h15. Also, it does the space laser gimmick better than GoldenEye.


and now onto the Daniel Craig era. I know these are generally well-regarded but I'm not looking forward to them tbh.

Current Bond rankings:
01. From Russia with Love
02. Thunderball
03. The Spy Who Loved Me
04. Diamonds are Forever
05. Moonraker
06. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
07. Licence to Kill
08. Tomorrow Never Dies
09. The World Is Not Enough
10. Dr. No
11. The Man with the Golden Gun
12. Octopussy
13. A View to a Kill
14. For Your Eyes Only
15. Die Another Day
16. Live and Let Die
17. You Only Live Twice
18. The Living Daylights
19. Goldfinger
20. GoldenEye

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

Luz, 2018

Bloodied and agitated, a young woman named Luz (Luana Velis) arrives at a police station. Somewhere else in the city, a doctor named Rossini (Jan Bluthardt) is approached at a bar by a mysterious woman named Nora (Julia Riedler). Nora describes her experiences in a Catholic girls' school where Luz, her friend at the time, tried to summon a demon. The next day, Rossini assists two police detectives in interviewing Luz--hypnotizing her so that she can recount the previous evening. But as Luz reveals the events, it becomes more and more clear that someone (or maybe all of them) is in the path of a dark supernatural force.

This film has an opening two minutes that really grab you. I will admit that I struggled a bit with the scene at the bar--a solid 10-15 minutes of exposition--and with the beginning of the scene with Luz's interrogation. The presentation of the hypnosis and how she is reenacting her night just comes across as way too cheesy. But once the film begins to pick up some momentum, and once there starts to be more direct interaction between Luz and the other people in the room, the film finally picks up steam and carries it through to the end.

The second half of the film is a lot stronger than the first half, and there is a great balance of suspense and actual action. The imagery--switching between the interrogation room and Luz's actual memories of the night before--is strong. As the memories and reality begin to bleed into each other, it offers the chance for some neat edits and staging. A particularly nice element is that one of the detectives is in a sound booth, translating (Luz speaks Spanish, the setting is Germany), and he becomes a sort of vicarious audience, mirroring our own reaction to what is happening.

There are many times that the film teeters on looking cheap. I think that overall the sense of style really saves it, as well as the fact that it is intentionally evoking a sort of 80s horror vibe. The camera angles and the editing really help to elevate the look and feel of the film, but it is rough going for about the first 25 minutes.

The performances are pretty good. I do have to say that, despite being the center of the narrative, Luz never felt like much more than a blank slate to me. And her circumstances are horrifying! She is being pursued by a demon she accidentally/on-purpose summoned as a teenager. But because her character is perpetually stunned/hypnotized, we really miss out on much emotion from her. Even her relationship with her friend--the one she accidentally possessed--is not given much development. The actors are all good in their roles and bring a strong physicality to their performances, but the characters themselves don't go much beyond the superficial. Weirdly, the detective stuck in the translating booth was the most "real" feeling character to me.

Worth watching for the imagery and the well-realized throwback quality of the soundtrack and overall vibe. But didn't quite cross the line into great for me. I also did not totally understand the very ending.

Vast Of Night, 2019 (D)

Tagline of the movie should be ¨Oops! All setup!¨

It starts well enough and with a good bit of energy, but, as the guy from Family Guy said, it insists upon itself. There's 4 super long scenes of just people telling a story about what might be happening. It's neat at first because hey, love these. Just uninterrupted talking scenes, Kubrick-style. It gets stale after the second one. The movie feels in love with what it's doing, and what it's doing is the classic writer trap of setting up a mystery so thick and intriguing, and making it so great and important that the payoff can never be satisfying. Surprise, it isn't.

Virus (1980)
aka Hell of the Living Dead, Night of the Zombies

I think I've seen three movies by Bruno Mattei, and they all suck balls. One of the worst zombie films I know. At times it's hilariously bad (like the weapon handling and tactics of the special ops guys), but it drags on and on (an effect that's massively amplified by the padding of 30 minutes of stock material of natives and nature). How the hell did this guy direct over 50 movies?