Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Half Baked (1998)


Another dumb comedy from the 90's that I probably would have never watched if it weren't for the friends I had. Actually a pretty clever film given the subject matter, though some jokes/gags are a bit cringeworthy. Revisiting this does give you a little glimpse into what Dave Chappelle would ultimately become.

Onward (2020)


I feel like I will just remember this as being the last big movie before the pandemic wave, but it is really good. Though I wouldn't put it in the top tier of Pixar, it is funny, charming, and heartwarming as you would expect. Tom Holland and Chris Pratt have very commendable voices to lend to animation.

A MAN FOR HANGING (1972)
A TV film



Saw this a couple of nights ago, completely devoid of any knowledge and thought it was a pleasant surprise (one of many I've had this month). It's a low budget, made-for-TV film that follows Avery Porter (Peter Breck), a disfigured killer and rapist that roams through the Old West causing all sorts of mayhem. When he terrorizes two women from a family, the men form a posse and set out to find him at all costs before he reaches the border.

Two of the main things this film has in its favor are a simple premise and a short runtime (roughly 75 minutes).It's pretty much a cat-and-mouse game between Porter and the men, and Breck plays it with an effective vicious glee. The men's performance (Paul Carr and David Macklin) are pretty solid, although Macklin did get on my nerves quite a few times. There's also a slight attempt to build a romantic relationship between him and another victim of Porter that's never fully delivered and ultimately unnecessary.

Still, I enjoyed it very much. I think that anybody that likes westerns might enjoy the low budget edge this brings to the genre. Grade:

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Mudbound (2017)

This was quite interesting (on a Boxing Day). Story about 2 families tied together by their position in Mississippi, one black, one white. But also of 2 sons who went to WWII. It's rather staid but composed and still has a strong spine of a tale. The episodic part of the 1st of the 3 acts (each character telling their piece) is very effective.

I really enjoyed it and can brush over slight criticisms.

[rating]4/rating]

Wonder Woman 1984....yikes kid.

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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)

Went in without any kind of expectation, it's not a bad movie, but I guess it isn't for everybody.

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There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?

Rome, Open City, 1945

Wowza.

This film follows a group of revolutionaries in Italy during WW2. What begins as a Nazi hunt for a single man quickly involves his lover/fiance, the local priest, and the children of the town.

There's something wonderfully sneaky about the way that Rossellini (who directed) and the writers slowly shift the tone of the film. The first half plays like a thriller with touches of straight up comedy (literally someone is hit in the head with a pan in a comic moment; there's a shot where a soldier is too busy looking up a woman's skirt to notice a group of revolutionaries sneaking away, etc). Then, at the halfway point, the "enjoyable" tension and the lighter comedy is abruptly slashed apart in a horrific act of violence. This moment is like cold water being thrown over the film. Nazis aren't fun. Revolution is not a game.

Once this moment of violence happens, the trajectory of the entire film changes. A sort of despair and grit creeps into it. The harsh realities of war and powerlessness push their way to the forefront. A movie in which a funny shot of a little boy watching an argument from a chamber-pot suddenly involves a torture sequence so graphic that I couldn't look at it.

It was also jarring to hear something that resonated with things now. After a certain character dies , the Nazi commander orders that his cause of death be listed as "heart attack." It's chilling to think about the fact that "heart attack" was officially listed as George Floyd's cause of death, and also Elijah McCain (who was put in a choke hold and then injected with Ketamine by paramedics). In the film--and in contemporary times--it's a way of using official documentation to obscure the violence at play and distance the perpetrators from culpability.

My only complaint about the film was the tired use of the "gay villain" trope. There are two main Nazi antagonists--a male commander and a woman. The woman is unabashedly portrayed as a predatory lesbian, literally preying on women by plying them with drugs and gifts. The male character is shown in that stereotypical "fussy" manner in both his speech and physical mannerisms. It's lazy and cliched in a film that otherwise does some interesting things with its characters (including other antagonists). The film also, as I guess was policy at the time, makes only the Germans the evil ones. There is frequent talk of "the Germans and the Fascists", but the evil actions themselves are only ever perpetrated by the Nazis.

Oh no, don't tell me that.

I agree.

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Fun fact: This is one of Pope Francis's favorite films.

I saw this earlier this year and liked it quite a lot. Though some scenes in the final act are hard to watch, I liked how the ending showed that,

Agreed. Though I found some of the dialogue to be a bit too much on the nose. Like when a Nazi officer says, "We must get him to talk! If he doesn't talk it means that Italians are the equals of Germans!". I think that the film didn't need such explicit statement of the themes, because it's pretty clear that witnessing such violence only makes some people more insistent on resisting Nazi occupation/fascism.

I vaguely remember that line, but yeah, agreed. It was a clunky and unnecessary bit of hand holding for the audience. Overall though, I did enjoy that aspect of the film, in spite of the occasional weak lines of dialogue.

Scanners (1981)

Properly eerie and scary and inventive film about folk, for one reason or another, have advanced ESP. They feel both isolated and empowered by a gift they did not ask for. I think this is up with Cronenberg's best. Shocking at times visually but more-so thematically. Wonderful directing (if frightening) and the actors are well up to the part...Michael Ironside is particularly good in this.

WW84



Much like the first, its a muddled mess of contradictory and insulting themes that reveal the privilege and out-of-touch ideals of the filmmakers (much like Gadot’s Imagine video, only that was mercifully much much shorter). This time, it lacks the dramatic gravitas of a war backdrop so even those rare peaks are absent from this one.

Gadot is still getting by on her looks alone but seems to have lost even the hints of charisma that the first one hinted at. Pascal and Wiig give decent performances, with the former doing his best with a one note character and Wiig feeling woefully miscast.

The film is aiming for that heartfelt optimism of Donner’s Superman but winds up being tone-deaf with an impassioned plea for the status quo as already being good enough.

It’s bad with only brief moments of charm and interest. But so was the first film and I’ll die on that hill too.

I haven't seen WW84 yet, but I was a bit mixed on the first one; on one hand, I liked a few of its standout sequences a lot (like the "living painting" scene of Themyscira's mythology, or the scene where she took back no man's land), and I liked Gadot's naive-yet-still-authoritative characterization of Diana, along with her strong onscreen chemistry with Pine, but on the other hand, it went through a lot of the same old Superhero movie motions without adding much of anything original to them. In that way, it ultimately felt like the Hillary Clinton campaign of Superhero movies, coasting too much on the novelty of starring a woman, without having much of anything new to add on its own terms, something I would've noticed even if it hadn't been released the same year as Logan, the biggest game-changer for the genre in nearly a decade. It was still a decent movie on the whole for what left an impression, but it ultimately should've been more ambitious than it was, IMO.

Thematically, that aspect is fine. But it's so apparent from everything that is happening in the film (and how the resistance men are consistently portrayed as brave and stoic almost to a fault) that having it said out loud felt like too much.

Yeah, agreed. I wasn't really disagreeing with you up above.

Evil dead (2013) **7.8**

This is what I want from a horror movie that isn’t a slasher, and in all honesty slashers are what I’m all about. It wasn’t predictable even though it was a reebot of sorts. With Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi producing I was surprised there wasn’t more of a comedic tone. I’m glad there wasn’t really, extremely disturbing visuals and scenes that will stay with me.


Shadow (2018) 9.2 **9.2**

Wow just wow, I’m almost lost for words in how great this was. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen with the narrative being so tight and action scenes so mesmerising. I couldn’t help thinking about ‘hero’ as I watching this in all its beauty. So it will come as no surprise that Zhang Yimou directed this, hero, and house of flying daggers.

I was just agreeing with you that I actually liked that aspect of the film. But the dialogue pushes it a step to far and I think that slightly diminishes the message. But just slightly.

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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

Tenet is Nolan's most nakedly nonsensical, executed with the dopey confidence of a notoriously hammy actor doing a ****ty Russian accent. John David Washington is great at reacting to the crazy bull**** happening around him. Elizabeth Debicki is great at putting in a bizarrely weighty performance considering the film around her. Robert Pattinson is great at looking like a slept in his suit and bringing that alcoholic James Bond energy. Kenneth Branagh is...see my first sentence. This is basically Nolan play-acting James Bond using his enormous budget to smash together his extremely expensive toys onscreen, directed with the enthusiasm of your buddy you're watching a movie with who thinks the scene you saw is so awesome that you have to rewind and watch it again. And he's right, it's pretty ****ing awesome.

Can't believe this was supposed to save the movies, but God bless Nolan for trying. The plot hole police will hate it. Would have been terrible to see in a drive-in.