Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I was disappointed a bit by Mudbound in ways that, frustratingly, are hard to articulate. But the performances are just so good and the direction is so assured. I agree with a rating of 4/5.

Perempuan Tanah Jahanam (2019)
aka Impetigore

An Indonesian horror by Joko Anwar (probably the only Indonesian director I can name). It's stylistically similar to his Satan's Slaves (which I may have rated just a tad too low earlier) so expect a slow and moody beginning and some serious escalation towards the end. There are ghosts, curses, betrayals, and all sorts of spooky things in Far Eastern style. Really beautiful settings too.




EDIT: I lowered my rating by .5. The script has so big flaws that I just had to do it. I couldn't justify giving this better rating than Satan's Slaves.

__________________

The Devil's Disciple (1959)

Enjoyable flick. Cruise’s performance was okay, but the amazing actors in supporting roles like Gene Hackman, Wilford Brimley, Holly Hunter, and Ed Harris who in my opinion steals the scenes he’s in make the movie more powerful than it deserves to be. John Grisham must have been proud of the film.

__________________
“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

Our Mother's House (1967)

"I saw a Barbarian Queen eating a chipmunk skewer down by the River Styx...her hair was perfect"

Was looking for something to simply pass the time when I stumbled across this with the description "A buxom barbarian queen...." I hit play so fast I didn't have time to read the rest. Yes, it is bad. I will not be nominating it for any future HoF's, but it's not boring. A village is pillaged by some bad dudes, they burn it down capture a few of the villages dudes for gladiator fighting but make the mistake of leaving one badass woman alive along with a couple of her friends. One of the men taken is her husband to be and she's out to get him back. Some of the acting is so bad it's funny, especially the raiders goons/ guards. The sword fighting/action is pretty good for this kind of film thanks to stars Lana Clarkson, who looks good in the fight scenes, meaning she appears to be very athletic and can really swing a sword. She does well as the scantily clad, when clad, barbarian queen. The men were obviously cast for their looks, they can't fight at all and look ridiculous when they try. Loved all the hairdo's the barbarian women sported. Reminded me of high school in the 80's.

A rewatch although I haven’t seen this in a few year. Don’t know too much about the sequels but the original is a classic. I was totally absorbed in the plot. The old school effects are top class.

I like Hellraiser a lot. I actually slightly prefer the sequel, Hellraiser 2: Hellbound because I think that it hits the right mixture of gore, horror, and camp for me. It also does a better job of developing the Cenobites as characters, and Kirsty remains a great protagonist. The rest of the sequels are pretty bad, with the occasional one that is okay. The third film is where you distinctly feel the "rules" go totally downhill and the characters begin to flatten out.

The Blackout (2019)

A Russian sci-fi movie that feels like a mash-up of multiple Hollywood films. The script is a bit silly, production values are (good) B level, and there's nothing really original here. Still, the film manages to be somewhat entertaining and soundly beats the film it rips off the most (The Fifth Wave).


--

Discarnate (2018)

A B-horror trying to combine Flatliners and The Thing. Despite the monster being quite good, the film itself is quite a boring mess. The cast is also surprisingly good for a film like this, but the script doesn't give them much to work on. Not complete crap but closer to that than being good.

The "At Home" movie of the night was The Death of Stalin. It could have been a dreary historical drama, but it was played as a dark, dark comedy, which, from what I know about the actual history, is about right. Murderous toadies of Uncle Joe, all plotting against each other, fulfilling their roles in the state sponsored drama of a huge funeral, trying to get around the ambitions of Stalin's adult children make a deserving mockery of the death of the soviet dictator.

It could be dreary and political, but it's really fairly funny, especially Steve Buscemi as the blustering Nikita Khrushchev, Simon Beale as the murderous pedophile, Lavrenti Beria and Jeffrey Tambor as as the perpetually befuddled Georgy Malenkov. Jason Issacs is scary as Field Marshall Zhukov, the smartest killer in the room.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Insanely well written, great acting, smooth direction! Such a great film!

The Nice Guys (2016)

Meh... A couple of funny scenes in a otherwise really boring film. Was expecting a lot more to be honest. Ryan Gosling does a great job though.

Ooooh, love this film Gideon, probably not seen in 20 odd years...aint it great when a film you love pops up on the radar again?....good old MoFo!

So, did it bother you that...

The Devils (1971)

I watched this without any background reading but remember my dad telling me how controversial it was at the time. It's still pretty profane but the years have maybe taken the edge and shock out of it. Oliver Reed is superb as Urbain Grandier, the priest who wittingly, or unwittingly incites sexual tension in an abbey. I found the "possesion" scenes very sensual and Ken Russell really went all guns on this, modern and archaic. The background story of attempting to appease the Hugenot uprising by the destruction of Loudon is very interesting. A very meaty and intriguing film.

There may be a couple (and I mean couple - 2) people on this site that may be interested in this one. A really crappy, delinquent, drug addicted, brother is forced to babysit his younger sister and he tells her a couple of really age inappropriate bedtime stories. One, an escaped, mental patient, serial killer on a blind date goes nuts and kills the family of his blind date simply because she called the date off early as soon as she figured out he was an escaped, mental patient, serial killer. The second story involves a nasty priest who is raping and killing folks but the townspeople blame some poor, farmhand sap. One of the town folks is tasked with removing the farm hand from the pic, which he does but the innocent guy comes back from the dead to get some revenge. This is a early 90's, German gore flick. The gore fx look really bad early in the movie but get better as it progresses especially in the finale of the second story which is supposed to be the priests version of hell and gets a little (a lot) torture porny. The Burning Moon is so disgusting that it had me laughing a couple times. It was shot on video, which is usually a no go for me, but for some reason it doesn't look as bad as newer shot on video movies. This is a five star gore flick but only a movie.

__________________
Entertainment Log
Letterboxd profile

It would have bothered me but I'm used to those kind of things from films from that geographical area and horror films in general. But as you say, this one is presented much better than most such flicks, so that goes a long way towards any of my "forgiveness".