Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Yeah, I don't see how something like Sledgehammer would be improved by cleaning up the transfer. That would be like wanting hi-fidelity on a black metal recording. Ends up removing the charm of how aggressively off putting it is aesthetically.


It would be like fixing the sound on Things...but then I wouldn't get a splitting headache every time I watch it...hardly the same movie experience at all.

Exactly! But if someone went through the effort to shoot on film, I want it to look as faithful to that film stock as possible. Seems downright disrespectful to want a garbage resolution despite their intention. Like pan &scanning, which most VHS were.

Oh, I don't know. A crystal clear, hi fi Amber Lynn might have her charms.

Actually if only her scenes were cleaned up and the rest of the movie still looked like garbage, it would be pretty fitting.

By The best 80s sci-fi film posters, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9890943

Brazil - (1985)

Come the mid 1990s Brazil would have easily slotted into my favourite 10 films list - and I guess it was simply time which made it slip from that position. Watching it again yesterday, I was reminded of what electrified me about it to begin with. It's endlessly inventive, throwing 5 different wonderful things at you at a time, with curious objects, wonderfully bizarre performances, dreamy music and a simple dystopian plot. A breath of fresh air at the time, with a daring ending that choked me up. Jonathan Pryce would again play a much darker character that dreams in the same way his does in this, in the true-story Selling Hitler - which I'm always reminded of. His Sam Lowry though, is sweet, if ineffectual. The broken down world Terry Gilliam created still has a lot to say about our world, a bureaucratic nightmare full of pollution, paper and misery. Watching it felt like falling in love with it for a second time.

10/10


Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17817235

Diabolique - (1955)

This was a murder mystery where the mystery isn't who committed the murder. That's all I'm willing to say really, after being warned in a post-credits sequence to keep my mouth shut (I think Witness for the Prosecution did the same.) I can say though that I became more and more tense as this film went on, and as we reached the conclusion it was reaching boiling point. Georges Clouzot films seem to do that to me. When there appears to be no other explanation apart from the supernatural in such a down-to-earth film, things felt especially freaky - and thankfully Clouzot's wife Véra could give us a convincing performance. This is probably as close you could possibly get to Hitchcock without it actually being a Hitchcock film - and one it's said he enjoyed personally.

8/10

Foreign Language Countdown films seen : 61/100

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What If (2013)

Free Guy -

blue pill cinema

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

My first movie experiences with Buñuel were Viridiana and Simon of the Desert which I thought were both great. Then I watched The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie which was okay and now this. This bored the hell out of me. A bunch of rich people are trapped at a dinner party they can't leave and begin sniping at each other. Never felt like I got to know any of the characters so who gives a f*** if they're having a couple bad days trapped in a mansion eating paper and drinking coffee? Needed more cannibalism.

Incendies (2010, Denis Villeneuve)


Great film, probably the best Villeneuve I've seen so far. Loved the tone, the pacing, the cinematography, and. of course. the storytelling is just top notch. I liked how understated and restrained it was — even though the film depicts horrific events, it never goes into gratuitous, shocking graphic visualization of violence, but rather implies it (i.e. the rape). The bus massacre scene is definitely a highlight and one of my favorites in the film.
But again, it's the power of the story as a whole that's at the forefront here, and Villeneuve keeps it simple and elegant, putting the gimmicks aside and just letting it work its magic.

What Sex Am I? (1985) Watched on the Criterion channel. A short documentary about transgender people in the 80s. I thought this was excellent. It was honest, powerful, heartbreaking, inspiring, and interesting. I liked hearing from different types of people and learning about their stories and experiences. Highly recommended.

Don't Look Up (2021)

Pretty funny, not really much more than that. As a satire it was flimsy I thought.

Interestingly, when Stephen King first wrote Under the Dome (which had a similar theme about people suddenly being unable to leave an area) he titled it "the cannibals". The original title gave us insight to the author's intent if the isolation of the community in the story had continued any longer than it did.

(And then, of course there was The Simpson's Movie which borrowed the theme not long after King's book was released.)

Exterminating Angel was definitely an interesting concept, but I agree that it didn't make for a very gripping movie. It might have made a very good episode of the Twilight Zone!

Well, of course there's the possibility that both men simply have poor taste...

Happy New Year, everybody. Here's my first of hopefully many hastily-assembled writeups of 2022:

The Beta Test -

The life of Jordan, a Hollywood agent who is recently engaged, becomes more complicated when he accepts an offer to have an anonymous tryst. A man who schmoozes so much that he might as well have forgotten how to be honest, watching him try to cover his tracks as well as discover who's behind the offer had me clenching my armrests on some occasions and guffawing on others. It helps that Jim Cummings - who stars, directs, and co-wrote the script - manages to make Jordan loathsome, easy to laugh at yet oddly sympathetic at the same time. Jordan's investigation is a joy to watch for how it resembles those in the best film noir. It's also fascinating and a little scary for how it comments on the corruption of social media and the constant degradation of our privacy, which it thankfully does with a minimum of Sorkin-esque soapboxing. It ends up being a lean and mean little dark comedy that makes me want to check out the rest of Cumming's movies, salute its defiance of runtime bloat found in the typical modern movie and, well...makes me want to use incognito mode as often as possible. Oh, and I highly advise you to pay close attention to Jordan's, uh...preferences in his affair application.

Both of his other ones are great, but for me Thunder Road is next level and only gets better on a second or third viewing.

At Christmas my sister and I were talking about doing a movie day and she goes, "What's the name of that new movie by that guy who makes you really uncomfortable?"

Wow, that’s high - I’ll have to give that another go. Didn’t work for me tone-wise, was billed as a thriller but felt like a bad satire.

Happy New Year right back at you

I'll check out Road next. The family drama in the description seemed a bit heavy for New Year's Eve viewing, so I went with the bitingly satirical one instead. Oh, and "really uncomfortable." Talk about a ringing endorsement.

Thanks!
I can see how you may have been disappointed if you were expecting a thriller. I'm not sure if this will improve your opinion, but I viewed it as a dark comedy in the same vein of American Psycho, which it reminds me of greatly.

I had to fast-forward a chunk of the first 10 minutes because I could not handle it. But I hands-down endorse this film. The way that it builds the characters and the narrative is awesome.