Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Phantom Thread is indeed masterful. Easily Top 5 of the last decade for me as well.

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It has a name! Now when I leave a room, unable to bear the company of other people, I will explain it is a medical condition.



Having a fancy term to cover for your anti-social behavior is such a relief.



As for Phantom Thread, while I also found it a hard movie to get inside (as Takoma states), to me this was a lot of what I liked about it. I don't think it wants you to get entirely inside of it. I think it is a movie that forces us to observe the behavior of strangers very much from the outside. To slowly come to revelations about the nature of this relationship. At no point though did I ever feel like I was entirely invited to be watching them. Taking notes. Figuring them out. My witnessing of them was, I'm sure, unwanted. And I sort of liked this vaguely voyeuristic element to it.


I also don't know if I ever spoke about Thunder Road anywhere here, but I think it is a pretty fantastic thing. It took me a while to get my bearings on it, as the whole film seems to adopt the shape and the look of a comedy. And yet, the movie is mostly about the tragedy of a man's life. And while it does have some very funny parts in it, it is the weird dominance of the sad character study elements in it which allow it to resonate. It also feels like a movie that has many layers to peel away on subsequent viewings.

I've been known to say I'm being "crumbsy"

Perhaps tied to that "unwanted voyeurism", the film is so constantly plagued by an awkwardness in how the characters interact; there is a purposeful push-and-pull between feeling romantic to feeling just... awkward. Like you, I enjoyed that.

Totally agree.

My wife and I even wrote a short film about the condition. We're planning to shoot it this summer. It'll be slick and cute! You'll love it!

Thunder Road, The Wolf of Snow Hollow and the Beta Test are all wonderful. Thunder Road is Cummings' least polished technically but his most engaging dramatically and performance wise. Plus, it has a surprise Macon Blair!

Yeah, I like it more every time I watch it. Even as the staging invites you to laugh, it keeps the hooks of the tragedy in you so that it's painful at the same time.

Just for personal reasons, that is maybe my favorite scene in the film.

"It's when a man, well, I suppose it doesn't have to be a man. It's when one partner reaches . . . you know, I don't need to describe it. It's a reach around. She called my work a reach around."

I've always wanted to be an adjective.

But who was (miso)phon(ia)?

The best part of that element is when .

"You're gonna have to tell me what 'strident' means. I went to LSU. Actually, they said they had to stop making ice over there cause the student with the recipe graduated."

Such a stupid joke, but I LOL'd It also goes with Jim's attempts to please people, humor them to try to defuse uncomfortable situations.

His need to please others is so palpable. I'm like "Movie: Please stop holding up a mirror to my own qualities!"

Someone prescribe this man a dose of Doris Wishman cut with 10ccs of Barry J. Gillis until the film school fever breaks. Once stabilized, nothing any cleaner than some early black and white Cassavetes. And, let me repeat, absolutely no tracking shots until we can be sure he won't relapse.



Obviously, best of luck on that. Everyone's got to follow their heart, even when clearly being influenced by the palpitations caused by too much Vitamin Wan in the diet.

It's these little moments of interplay that make the film so invigorating.*I FEEL every single one of these moments, often from both perspectives.

Its absolute defiance to adhere to expectation and norms with such specificity...

Masterful.

There's gonna be so many smooth dolly shots that you'll think the camera is coated in butter.

Then, just wait till the musical sequence that is perfectly cut and timed to the pop music.

The whole time I direct it, I'm gonna be like "oh man, this is SO cool."

Even describing this is a crime against humanity.

*Frantically adding a scene where the lead characters argue whether James Wan or Edgar Wright could've done the better job making Blair Witch*

The camera will balletically spin around the entire chat as Sum 41 plays on a jukebox.

Pitfall - 1948 noir directed by André De Toth and starring Dick Powell as insurance adjuster John Forbes. He spends the first few minutes of the movie bellyaching about his life and the rut he's in. This is all despite being in a loving marriage to smokeshow wife Sue (Jane Wyatt) and father to little Tommy. All the noir signs point to a hard lesson being learned and, as is usually the case, it's in the form of a femme fatale.

One of John's cases involves embezzler Bill Smiley (Byron Barr). John's sleazy freelance investigator is ex-cop J.B. (Mac) MacDonald (Raymond Burr) and he fills John in on where most of the missing money ended up. Smiley spent it on his girlfriend Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott) and when John goes to see her to convince her to return the swag he ends up falling for her. The movie is very circumspect about their dalliance though. One afternoon he goes to her apartment and after the requisite back and forth and finally locking lips it shows him leaving in darkness.

The only problem (besides the family he's just betrayed) being that Mac has warned John that he's interested in Mona himself. He's also been obsessively surveilling her. When he realizes what's happened he takes increasingly drastic steps. John Forbes isn't a sympathetic figure at all. Usually in these types of stories the protagonist is someone who has gotten in way over his head and Forbes has, to a point. But Scott's Mona isn't the usual heartless predator. She's basically the decent person in this and the one caught up in events not of her making. Forbes, on the other hand, comes off like a dunce and a bit of a dirtbag IMO.

It's a pretty good movie all in all. Not exactly a classic and even though Elizabeth Scott isn't a particularly strong actress she does have a way about her. Watch her in Too Late for Tears if you haven't and you'll better see what I mean.

80/100

By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55482751

Mom and Dad - (2017)

Too early to go to bed, but too late to invest myself in something worthwhile, I needed something dumb to watch with an 83 minute running time - and that's where Mom and Dad comes in. A horror/comedy where parents suddenly and inexplicably start attacking and murdering their children, with Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair as said parents. This did have a cinematic first in store for me : first film ever where the opening credits completely ruined a huge reveal, which I was henceforth always aware was going to happen. Why on earth did they give something so big away in the opening credits? Apart from that, and some Nicolas Cage crazy antics™ I never felt like there was anything incredible happening, and found the Q&A after a special screening in the extra features the most interesting thing about it. It's exactly what you think it might be from the description, except more average.

5.5/10

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Girl (2018)

Against the ice (2022)

This was a good film, well put together and interesting based on the Danish arctic explorers attempts to explore Greenland. The performances were spot on and the story is engaging. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau carries it, pretty much and co-screenwrote it and I like him from the few films I've seen of him. Joe Cole admirable as the mechanic/soundboard/saviour.