Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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THELMA & LOUISE
(1991)

Re-watch. Classic road trip flick with a feminist touch. Performances were all solid.
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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




EIGHT MEN OUT
(1988)

First viewing. This is the second baseball movie I've seen this week- the first being A League of Their Own. I am not a fan of baseball, by the way. This film features an all-star cast, all of whom delivered excellent performances under the direction of John Sayles.



8mm. (1999)






It starts off interesting enough. Nicholas Cage is a PI paid to investigate who the girl is in a snuff film found in the safe of a recently deceased wealthy man. The investigation eventually leads him to LA where he meets up with Joaquin Phoenix's struggling musician who's stuck working in a xxx store to make ends meet. Cage recruits him to be his guide into the seedy world of the extreme porn industry. They find the men responsible for the snuff film, but this is where the movie seems to slip off course and degenerates into a hyper violent poor quality revenge b-movie. It's like the writer couldn't be bothered any more and just gave up.


There are a lot of problems with this film. Nicholas Cage was just phoning in his performance, playing a character that really has no depth or development. The chemistry with his wife is non-existant and the whole storyline with her and his daughter is a waste of time. The film wastes about 20 minutes on him phoning her to tell her he loves her and he misses her. Pointless, shallow writing. Phoenix is an entertaining presence but is then pointlessly killed off. The last third of the movie is just torture and revenge porn basically. It's like they ran out of ideas, talent and money.


A bit of a rant I know but films that start off with promise and then crumble into disappointment always annoy me. I guess I feel betrayed. If you're going to be a bad film, just be bad from the start so I can turn you off and not waste my time; don't tease me with the possibility of quality only to turn out rubbish. OK, end of rant.


2/5 Stars.





Gwen (2018)

A bleak and dreary glimpse into life on a remote farm in Wales some time during the Industrial Revolution (late 1700's - early 1800's), Gwen managed to hide a sparce amount of content amidst thick melodic atmosphere and the strong performances of it's leading ladies, Eleanor Worthington Cox and Maxine Peake. Cox played Gwen, the central figure which the camera focused on primarily, and Peake played the mother who owned the second largest amount of screentime. What was going on in the story was often ambiguously hinted at rather than explained. I was glad the movie did not use exposition to explain what was going on. I always prefer it that way, and see exposition as almost always a crutch used by writers who don't know how to visually or indirectly convey the story and plot. Of course there are exceptions, but generally I see exposition as a thing to be avoided. So that was one of the things I really liked about this movie. On the downside, and I have nothing against quiet movies or quiet people, there was a lack of conversation in this movie. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I felt that a little more needed to be conveyed somehow to fully immerse the audience and make the story and characters gripping. The atmosphere created tension, but it seemed little was done with it. I would have preferred if there had been more meaningful dialogue. There wasn't a single real conversation between any two characters in the movie, and almost nothing besides Gwen's perspective was shown. This left me wondering what exactly was going on, and by the end I still had unanswered questions about what was happening. That wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing if the characters were in the same predicament, but they seemed to understand what was going on. It did feel like to some extent the writing lacked the ability to convey the same level of understanding that the central character had. If that was a desired effect, then I have the feeling that something else was missing. At the very least there was a lack of substance.


Cox's performance was one factor that carried the movie. I didn't notice much in the way of cinematography, but the framing never felt off, and the angles didn't give me the impression of being too conventional. The only shot I really noticed was one of the first shots in the movie, a side silhouette of Cox's pretty face with her hair trailing in the wind. It was an image of perfect youthful feminine beauty. The meekness of their poverty, and humble religious modesty, only added to that beauty. It reminded me of something I've often longed for, but have only attained for brief moments in my own life. I think it's surrendering to life, and finding simple joy in responsibility, hard work, and gracefully enduring hardships and sorrows. There was a scene where Gwen was trying to sell vegetables to get enough money to pay for medicine. Despite the desparation of her situation, and nobody being willing to buy from her, she never waivered in her composure. This scene was also an example of the lack of substance though, because I could only speculate at the reason why no one would buy from her, though she seemed to have a deeper understanding than I. Perhaps it could be argued that I missed the clues, but I don't think the needed clues were really there.






The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

5/5

Oh sweet Jesus... this is bloody gorgeous. From the 10+ minutes of Wookie dialogue, to grandfather Wookie's "porn machine," to Carrie Fisher's A Cappella song... I was ****ing dying of laughter. Not for everyone sure, but I had a good time.
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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage



Da 5 Bloods (2020)


This was fine, but I honestly thought it would be better. Some of the storyline felt too conventional, though it definitely has it's Spike Lee touches. It's over 2 hours long, but it didn't seem to drag at all. It has it's powerful moments, yet it didn't draw much emotion out of me (like 1917 did, for example).



I watched this one recently, and I didn't like it as much as I hoped I would. I liked the first half and then it felt like the second half got kind of scattered. I also felt like there was some chemistry lacking between March and Lake, something that feel exacerbated by the 25 year age gap between them.

Honestly, I wanted more witch stuff! Even the effects of them traveling around as smoke or sneaking in and out of the bottles was enjoyable and I just wanted more.



The Leather Boys (1964)

Down to earth 60s film about bikers and relationships. A premature distant marriage leads to problems. All do well in this and, I suppose, it was shocking at the time with allusions to homosexuality (in the UK). Even more interestingly, seems put down to Reggies "confusion".
The dialogue is frank and it's really shot well. Dreamers on bikes getting away from all day to day responsibilities. It is painted well though and has real depth. Liked the performances.






The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

5/5

Oh sweet Jesus... this is bloody gorgeous. From the 10+ minutes of Wookie dialogue, to grandfather Wookie's "porn machine," to Carrie Fisher's A Cappella song... I was ****ing dying of laughter. Not for everyone sure, but I had a good time.
I've heard stories that Princess Leia would have been better cast in "Trainspotting" in this one



I'm still having nightmares from mere glimpses of The Star Wars Holiday Special. I went in thinking, "Oh cool, I've heard about this!" Within 30 seconds I was traumatized for life.



I'm still having nightmares from mere glimpses of The Star Wars Holiday Special. I went in thinking, "Oh cool, I've heard about this!" Within 30 seconds I was traumatized for life.
Lol!





Knife + Heart (2018, first watch)

Anne is a director producing gay porn films who struggles to figure out who is killing off her actors and why. When Anne decides to go meta and make a new film about the murders, things get weird and fiction and reality start to blend.

To start with the good, the first half of the film is really strong. The whole movie is a giallo throwback, and there is some truly excellent imagery (such as an eye watching a character through a peephole positioned inside a painting of a mouth) and deliciously garish color schemes in both setting and costume. And unlike almost every other horror movie that portrays sequences of gay or kinky characters, there's nothing scary about the different fetish clubs or scenes. The characters making the porn films know that the scenes are over the top and ridiculous, and many takes end with them laughing at the absurdity. There are some really memorable set pieces, like a burlesque show that ends with a person dressed as a bear "mauling" a dancer, complete with gushing fake blood.

But around the second half, the film switches gears. Anne goes on a jaunt to the countryside to investigate and the movie becomes a lot more concerned with delving into the backstory of the killer. But here's the problem: we only need a few seconds of a flashback to understand the killer and their motives. Yet a lot of screen time goes in to developing that simple backstory. At a certain point it almost feels like padding and it slows down the momentum of the film.

There's style to spare here, and Anne is an interesting and messy protagonist, but I wish that the middle act had been streamlined a bit and that the film had found a way to end with a bit more punch.






Endorphine (2015)

Another bleak movie, this one was about a disorienting sense of time, questioning the nature of reality, and dealing with trauma. Sophie Nelisse, a French-Canadian rising star, shared the lead role with Mylene Mackay. They played the same character, Nelisse playing the younger teenage version, and Mackay playing the 20-something adult version. Their character, Simone, moved through time out of order as she pieced together her life and came to terms with witnessing her mother's murder when she was 13. The cinematography was nice, with a lot of smooth and pretty dolly pans. The movie communicated a lot with feelings and images rather than explicit words. It was a little hard to understand what was going on, but I got the sense that she dulled her senses to cope with the pain of seeing her mother die, and that made her loose touch with reality.





Seduced and Abandoned - 6/10
Not a bad movie, but too silly. Not funny, but then again, I never found "comedies" to be funny, or even good.
let's try this one:

Bread and Chocolate (1974)
The Tiger and the Pussycat (1967)
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A normal man? For me, a normal man is one who turns his head to see a beautiful woman's bottom. The point is not just to turn your head. There are five or six reasons. And he is glad to find people who are like him, his equals. That's why he likes crowded beaches, football, the bar downtown...