Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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Oh and I wanted to add that the SFX in Space Truckers are remarkably good considering the budget and the whole made in the 90s thing.
Midway I started to wonder why Gordon never got bigger budgets to work with, and what he'd do with them. But then again, maybe a big-time Gordon film wouldn't have been as charming.
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Captain's Log
My Collection



I was hoping you'd weigh in because I seemed to remember that you liked it more than I did. I preferred Edmund and Stuck. Stuck was undeniably entertaining, but I didn't feel good about myself for enjoying it. Sometimes its fun to wallow in the trash for a bit.

Still waiting for someone to go to bat for Ice Cream Suit....
I’m a big fan of all 3 of his crime films. Sometimes, I even think Edmund may be my favorite of his films (it’s hard to compare it to Re-Animator and From Beyond). I do think that it is an example of what he could have done with a bigger budget, even if it’s relatively small by Hollywood standards. He’s a much more polished craftsman than he gets credit and it’s largely due to him being tethered to schlockmeisters like Charles Band and Asylum. He single handedly proves that both of those figures COULD make far better films by trusting the right talent.

Stuck was good. I’m glad it ultimately went with a...

WARNING: spoilers below
Siegel/Tarantino styled revision of history


as that allowed it to sidestep some of the questionable exploitation (to a degree).

I think KoA could’ve been better than Stuck but ultimately, Asylum gave him so little to work with that I think the film can’t quite compete, despite being something of a rose that grew from concrete (thanks, 2Pac)

The 3 Gordons I haven’t seen are Ice Cream Suit, Space Truckers and Fortress (pretty sure I saw this as a kid but don’t remember it).

I plan to get to them all soonish.



Moneyball (2011)


Rush (2013)


Love & Other Drugs (2010)


Due Date (2010)


Couples Retreat (2009)


The Informer (2019)


Homefront (2013)


Tenet (2020)





Us (2019, Jordan Peele)

I wasn't a big fan of Get Out but at least that movie was able to grip my attention, and I actually finished it. Tried watching this one, and it was ok for a while, but as soon as that *other* family showed up and started explaining things, I lost all interest. Could have gotten better later on but I couldn't be bothered really, hence no rating.



Internes Can't Take Money (1937 on blu ray. Directed by Alfred Santell and starring Joel McCrea as a young Dr. Kildare who helps Barbara Stanwyck,search for her child. Good drama with fine performances.



Chungking Express (1994)

+


My third movie from the director and it is my favorite of the three. These movies are very stylish, and with the other two the style was the dominating force for me. I thought this would be the same but I was able to get into the characters and their relationships as well. It certainly doesn't hurt that California Dreamin' is one of my favorite songs.



I forgot the opening line.

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58788300

Destroyer - (2018)

Nicole Kidman stars as Erin Bell in this dark noir-ish thriller - a detective on a seemingly suicidal quest for vengeance. After finding a body littered with dye-pack marked $100 notes she knows that a certain criminal is back in town - one who destroyed her life 16 years previously. She descends into the sick (sometimes literally) world of thieves and scum who can give her some sort of lead on Silas, a murderous, twisted bank robber who forces compatriots to play Russian roulette, and yet seems to have intimate knowledge of Bell's inner psyche.

Kidman's performance earned the highest praise for this film. To me she's channeling Clint Eastwood - or more accurately Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. It made my throat sore just listening to her croak out line after line in a gravelly whisper, and to me it seemed a little one-note. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt - present-day Bell is dead inside. The story is non-linear, which caught me off guard a few times. Other than that it's a perfectly respectable neo-noir film that at times makes you feel a little dirty (there's a scene with James Jordan which is pretty unspeakable - you wouldn't want to watch it on a date.)

7/10





Casa de Lava, 1994

A nurse named Mariana (Ines de Medeiros) is tasked with accompanying a comatose worker named Leao (Isaach de Bankhole) back to his home in Cape Verde. Once she arrives, she becomes involved in the strange lives of the locals, including a woman named Edith (Edith Scob) and her son (Pedro Hestnes).

This is a very strange, and intentionally minimalist and abstract movie. It took me a little bit to find the rhythm of the film, but once I got there I really enjoyed it. Right from the beginning, there is talk about the difference between the living and the dead. One of the local boys, a youth named Tano, refers to Leao as "the dead man". Leao seems to have a strange connection to a dog that saves Mariana when she is attacked on the beach.

I saw a review that referenced this as being a "remake" of I Walked with a Zombie. I read this when I was about halfway through the film, and I kind of wish that I had had this thought in mind before I began. There are certainly some supernatural and horror-type images and sequences, and it was in these parts where I most clicked with the film. It's like some interesting (albeit abstract) interpersonal dramas underlaid with a supernatural element.

For me the only real downside was that I had a few times where I felt as if maybe there was a subtext that was going past me. There is something spooky in the film involving a subplot whereby Mariana has dosed several children in the village with vaccinations and many of them fall sick. In another scene, a man asks if it is "his turn" because he wants to die and not have to leave the village. At moments like these, I had the feeling that there might be a political or historical something being referenced. But because the whole film feels highly allegorical, it was sometimes hard to sort out which scenes were meant to be thematic and which were meant to refer to something specific.

I am not very familiar with Pedro Costa's work. Given that he wrote and directed this, I am certainly interested in checking out more of his work.




'Cowboys' (2020)


Decent family LGBTQ drama shot in Montana. The ending is a little slushy and the film is certainly flawed in places but Steve Zahn is good in it. There are a couple of really moving moments in the final act that are directed beautifully by Anna Kerrigan.

6.9/10



Girl in the basement (2021)

This has a rather grubby voyeuristic feel to it. The script and everything else points to "he's keeping her in the basement you muppets!" (*not* a spoiler). Think it want's to be more than a mid-afternoon melodrama by throwing some cuss words but it made no difference. Stale, stolid and hilariously overacted (not least by Judd Nelson who it took me an hour to recognize).







Snooze factor = Z

[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it
What movie is this ?



Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight- 9/10

One of my favourite courtroom/legal movies



The Story of Adele H. 1975 ‘L'Histoire d'Adèle H.’ François Truffaut

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What a beautiful shot, the camera work is amazing for 1975.





Saturday night movie with my kid. It is fun, although a little too frantic at times. I would recommend it.
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There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?



It is, it also helps that Adjani is photogenic AF, there were so many great shots to choose from.
Throwing my hat in the ring here, also great atmospheric film, One Deadly Summer:





Last and First Men (2020, Jóhann Jóhannsson)

So minimal yet so profoundly haunting - the blend of the black-and-white visuals of geometrically hypnotic, otherworldly structures of the distant future and Tilda Swinton's narration put me in a mood that stayed with me long after the credits ended.
It will possibly be looked back on as a masterpiece decades from now.