Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Braven (2018) (Dir. Lin Oeding)


A real throwback to those easy going action flicks with some heart to them and lots of silly violence. Mamoa does just fine standing in for The Rock or Arnold Schwarzenegger or whoever would have gotten this role 10 or 20 years ago. Pretty standard fair, but there is one peculiar quirk to it.

I can't be the only one who noticed some weird race/gender coded stuff going on with Mamoa using mostly rustic melee weapons and his wife using a bow & arrow. I thought I was reaching, but then Mamoa's character very purposefully chooses an axe over a shotgun at one point. Hell, the cover of the film shows Mamoa with a recurve bow he used for like 5 seconds. It's harmless, ultimately, and makes sense considering the power dynamic of our protagonists, but also conveniently aligns with native/feminine stereotypes. I mean, there's almost no reference to Mamoa's race in this but there's still a scene where he sees a deer run and has Tonto's sixth sense to know danger is afoot. It's subtle, and you could easily chalk it up to marketing in a post-Hunger Games world or something, but it's definitely there.

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I'm not surprised since Mamoa is kind of known for axes, or at least around here he is.

Braven was filmed here in Newfoundland, as was a tv series called Frontier where he also plays an axe-wielding character. Dude loves axes.

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Oh, it makes perfect sense even if the character was white given that he's an outdoorsman. I used the word "coded" purposefully instead of something more critical. I'm glad Mamoa found his perfect role

The Thrill of It All (1963)

Golden Exits (Dir. Alex Ross Perry)


Perry outs himself as a fashionable Brooklynite in this Phillip Rothian growth spurt where the gimmick rests in tenuous social connections spurring conversations only the audience can piece together entirely. ARP heads some criticisms off at the pass with self depreciating acknowledgment of his Linklater-like indulgence in flowery dialogues that come off more like monologues contorted to take place conversationally but self-aware jabs don't mitigate their contrivance. Just write a book next time. Or don't because it's a game of telephone for people who host podcasts from a Brownstone. Burn these neighborhoods to the ground so nobody can cultivate the life experience to set films in them any longer. Imagine how utterly boring a person you have to be to find this stimulating.

Midnight Lace (1960)

Killing Gunther -

dear God someone please fund King Conan so Arnold can retire and stop having to do embarrassing nonsense like this where you can get more laughs out of one of his soundboard prank calls than the entire movie

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

A Woman of Paris (1923)
by Charles Chaplin


★★★★

The Great Lie (1941)

The Rains Came (1939)

Super Dark Times (2017) (Dir. Kevin Phillips)


Phillips captures youth so convincingly in its vulgar and insecure infamy before turning this coming-of-age flick into a thriller that I almost wish he didn't. The bookends of the picture clue us into the goal of the story which is in looking at masculine and feminine roles in relation to acts of violence. Despite the opening and closing of the film clarifying this pursuit, the actual story never really articulates anything of note relating to that thesis. Instead, the structure does a competent film a disservice by telling us what it was supposed to do and reminding us how short it fell in trying to do it. Frankly, the age of the characters doesn't make it any easier to juggle everything. It's hard to damn gender tropes while also documenting their manifestation in a time of hormonal unrest. It's also hard as a viewer to discern actual gender driven toxicity from the fact that our characters are all underdeveloped kids steeped in ignorance and prodded by haywire physiology.

Phillips is clearly a capable artist, and his chemistry with cinematographer Eli Born in establishing the intangibles of the 90s and evoking tone is striking, so hopefully whatever comes next gels a little better as a whole.

I had heard so much about the last third of Super Dark Times being out of place, and so was expecting it not to work when I ended up seeing it for myself. Strangely, I didn't bat an eye as the ending was unfolding. Instead, I was fully engrossed, and nothing that happened took me out of it. Of course, I can't articulate why it worked for me and not for most other people. But I do know I really enjoyed that flick.

Third act or not, I did not think Super Dark Times was particularly good. A 3/5 is overselling it.

Last movie watched...

Born Yesterday -

gotta admit that it's actually kind of incredible that this won Best Actress in the same year as All About Eve and Sunset Blvd.

I watched 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' yesterday at the cinema. 80% of the jokes didn't land, and it a bit all over the place - 6/10.

Planeta Bur (1962) by Pavel Klushantsev






Ballad of a Soldier (1959) by Grigoriy Chukhray

+




The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) by Jean Renoir

+




The Lady Vanishes (1938) by Alfred Hitchcock

+




Nightfall (2012) by James Benning

+

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TokeZa's Top 100 Movies through Space and Time

TokeZa's inane ramblings about film

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Watched the 'Spy who dumped me'. Terrible film with few laughs, though some of the action scenes were really well shot.

Also watched 'Mission Impossible Fallout'. A proper entertainer that. Would rank that as the third best of the franchise, after the first and Rogue nation.

I thought I was going to like this one. It's a melodramatic tear jerker that I found very upsetting to watch. I get that it's on the passions list, but it's also on the cheers list which seems like a sick joke to me. Excellent performances from Bette Davis, George Brent, and Geraldine Fitzgerald, and plus it has Humphrey Bogart and even Ronald Reagan. I thought it was terrible and I loved it.

Code 46 (2003)

What did I just watch?...In a dystopian future where births are restrained if the genetics of the parents don't line up admirably, some people go against the grain and try to have babies anyway. Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins acting was adequate, but the storyline was bland. For nearly the whole movie, it just felt like a run of the mill love story with weird camera shots and strange nuances. I'll admit I wasn't ever really bored, but I just can't get over how uneventful the movie felt.