Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Colors (1988)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

The Brutalist was sublime at the start but collapsed in its final hour. Acting is top drawer.

Sing Sing didn't have that epic high, and normally I'm allergic to sentimentalism, but I bought into it, and its overall the steadier, more consistent film - fantastic performances, heck, If I was an Oscar voter, I'd have gone Colman over Brody

I agree with you about The Brutalist...though I don't think it needed to be 3 hours and 20 minutes long, it had me until the climax, which I found very unpleasant.

3rd Rewatch...Richard Benjamin directed this funny and touching salute to 1950's television. Mark Linn-Baker, years before he became Larry on Perfect Strangers, had his first starring role playing a young writer on a 1950's variety show, a la Sid Ceasar's Show of Shows, who is excited because his favorite movie star. a hard drinking and womanizing cad named Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) is going to be the guest star on this week's show and Benjy, Linn-Baker's character has been assigned. The show is a loving homage to Your Show of Shows and apparently is based on the actual events when Erroll Flynn was set to guest star. O'Toole is absolutely sublime here, earning the film its only Oscar nomination, but the rest of the cast including Lainie Kazan, Bill Macy Adolph Green, Cameron Mitchell, and especially Joseph Bologna is terrific as well.

The Phantom Planet - 1961 scifi which opens like so many of these seemed to, with a voice-over narration. There's the prerequisite rocket ship flying through the vacuum of space with flames shooting out the back. It looks kinda like an opaque number 2 pencil. Anyway the two astronauts inside have launched from a USAF Space Exploration Wing lunar base. They cross paths with a planetary sized asteroid that destroys their ship. The commanding officers on the moonbase send out another ship to search for them and they're quickly put of commission by a meteor shower. The bland crewmember is set up for failure so he is quickly dispatched leaving the uptight and grim Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks) to be tractor beamed onto the giant asteroids surface. It veers into a Gulliver's Travels with the Lilliputians when tiny humans surround him but once his visor is opened and he breathes in their atmosphere he shrinks down to their size.

The rest follows the same "Stranger in a Strange Land" beats with Chapman being introduced to two comely aliens and making an enemy of the jealous Herron (Anthony Dexter). The asteroid is called Rheton and is ruled by the elder Sesom (Francis X Bushman). He tells Chapman that he can never leave Rheton. They are currently at war with the Solarites an alien race of fire people which of course figures heavily in the third act. I was able to sit through the whole thing which is probably the gold standard for these types of low budget offerings. Everyone seems to be taking it seriously and the action never gets egregious enough to make you roll your eyes and regret starting the movie.

The star Dean Fredericks doesn't display much breadth and depth of acting ability and the only other thing I remember him being in, outside of numerous appearances on the old Cheyenne TV show, is the scifi classic Them! He had a small role as a police detective and the only thing that made it memorable was the scene where the two missing boys mother is being interviewed by James Arness and James Whitmore. She's of course crying and Fredericks is in the background looking grim and hostile. He more or less repeated that throughout this movie so I guess he had one setting when it came acting. When the pluses and minuses are tallied up this wasn't all that terrible.

50/100

You've seen this on MST3K before, right?

Clarence Maclin was so snubbed of a nom.... I'd have nominated him over Chalamet.

deeply unpleasant film

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slurps up! 🤙🤙

very cute and charming

This is actually one of my favorite movies of all time, I've seen it at least twenty times, and it is how I will always remember Peter O'Toole, more so than Lawrence Of Arabia.

Once again, Nick Park & Co. deliver with a feature that's a lot of fun, while using impressive animation. The return of Feathers McGraw is definitely welcome [taps avatar] while Gromit continues to be a favorite of mine. He's easily the best character and the one to root for. Wallace's aloofness and obliviousness can get on my nerves at times, but that's part of the charm and fun.

I do get the feeling that the film could've been a bit shorter. I felt like some of the plot points were a bit stretched to pad the runtime, like Gromit's rivalry with Norbot, McGraw's subsequent escape from jail, or some of the interactions between the police officers. It never becomes tiresome, but I do feel it could've been maybe 20 minutes shorter without losing anything. Still, I had a lot of fun watching this fowl vengeance unfold.

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Full review on my Movie Loot

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Walker (1987) - On a bit of an Ed Harris kick recently and decided to finally check out this career-ender (?) for Alex Cox... which was a waste of time. The longest 90-mins feature I've tolerated in a long time. I don't mind what it's saying btw but how it says it, which is one-note, repetetive, not-smart and unpleasant to experience. 3/10

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HEI guys.

This Oscar-nominated short follows the titular girl (Sajda Pathan), a gifted 9-year-old that lives with her older sister Palak (Ananya Shanbhag) while working in a clothes factory. However, Anja is being sought out by a local schoolteacher that's offering her a chance to earn a scholarship to a boarding school, which will undoubtedly change her life, one way or the other.

Yet another heartbreaking short, even if it is more pensive, as the director tries to put is inside the mind of this little girl that has no idea what to do. Do I leave my sister behind and take this opportunity that might seeem uncertain but could change my life, or do I stay with what I know, with my sister, in this comfort zone but be enslaved to this way of life, probably forever?

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Full review on my Movie Loot

The Only Girl in the Orchestra follows the life and career of Orin O'Brien, an iconic bassist that became the first female musician to be accepted in the New York Philarmonic back in the 1960s. Handpicked by Leonard Bernstein, O'Brien shares some of the struggles she has faced in her career, her own insecurities, and what lies in front of her as she retires.

This is the documentary short that ended up winning the Oscar. However, having seen three of the nominees, I have to say it's the weakest one. It's not bad at all, but it was more of a conventional, by-the-numbers documentary; Here is this important woman, this is what she did, here's where she is now. The End. I wish they would've dug more into the hardships and limitations that she, and other women, faced to belong in her field. Sadly, an unremarkable short to a remarkable woman.

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Full review on my Movie Loot

>Clarence Maclin was so snubbed of a nom.... I'd have nominated him over Chalamet.

Yeah but Maclin would have probably gone for Best Supporting. I know he's a second lead in the film but that's how this stuff works.

>This is the documentary short that ended up winning the Oscar. However, having seen three of the nominees, I have to say it's the weakest one.

I have a feeling it won because it's on Netflix so it's probably one of the few that had actual visibilty. Seems like being on one of the streaming apps is a big boost for short films and docs when it comes to awards.

This is the only movie with which I associate Peter O’Toole

Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, Flow is set in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world inhabited by animals. We start following this grey cat as he's chased by a pack of dogs while trying to catch fish. Later, when a sudden flood causes the water levels to rise, the cat finds himself stuck in a sailboat with one of the dogs, as well as several other animals, as they all try to survive.

But like I said above, this goes to the very core of the film. Creatures and animals that are not meant to care for the other eventually end up caring and helping each other survive. It's only made more impressive by how effectively that message of unity despite whatever circumstances is transmitted through relatively simple animation and no dialogue.

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Full review on my Movie Loot

Sweet Dreams (1985) - This makes a fine combo with Coal Miner's Daughter... I'm not sure why exactly but such music biopics from the 80s fare better than James Mangod type stuff from the 90s till today... maybe because they are about people and not only music.

This one in particular avoids usual trappings ("...and THIS is where they were artistically inspired! and THIS is where they were discovered and THIS is where they met their [insert a bigger name] idols! aren't you amazed yet?!") and lets itself be about it's two central characters experiencing ups and downs of a marriage, played with unbearable charm by Jessica Lange and Ed Harris, the latter being more of a double-edged sword. I feel I had heard Patsy Cline's music but knew nothing about her life; so imagine how much the ending shook me.....
7/10.



A nice read-up on Harris' performance highlighting qualities which I dug too: https://cinematiccorner.blogspot.com...harris-in.html

No. I really need to do that.

Mr. Church (2016)


I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like this more...it's a heartwarming story about a man (Eddie Murphy) who helps take care of a family with a cancer-stricken mother and growing daughter. It felt longer than it should be even though its only 1h40m, and it has a Hallmark generic feel to it as well.