Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Tools    





Legend in my own mind

A troubled young woman from Glasgow pursues her dream to become a country star in Nashville.
.
This is one of those films that I knew little about and I was pleasantly surprised. I love it when that happens.

It is raw, gritty and real.

The writing is strong, the direction is really good but the real strength lies in the characters, particularly the central character Rose-Lynn. I had little sympathy with her in the beginning and actually felt dislike for her, but that changed all of a sudden at a particular point in the story. I then went on to wonder of my feelings were misplaced as the story unfolds.

A story about how tough life can be, especially when your dreams seem to be a million miles away. It’s a story of life, that is made with quality throughout.

An emotive journey that had me hooked.
I really enjoyed it!

A quality sound track too.

__________________
"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me" (Frank Costello)



Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)



Final Score: 8.25
I didn't like it as much as you but I didn't hate it unequivocally like so many others. It was more of a puzzled disappointment. So I didn't make any grand, fist shaking pronouncement vowing to never see the next one.(Still haven't BTW) When RoS finally opened it was more of a meh and a shoulder shrug. But if anyone had ever told me that would be my reaction to the final chapter of Star Wars I'd have told them they were nuts. What a sad, not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper ending for what was the one true and just iconic franchise.



Victim of The Night
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)




Final Score: 8.25
I assume that's out of 100.



I didn't make any grand, fist shaking pronouncement vowing to never see the next one.(Still haven't BTW) When RoS finally opened it was more of a meh and a shoulder shrug. But if anyone had ever told me that would be my reaction to the final chapter of Star Wars I'd have told them they were nuts.
Ditto
__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection



Sabotage (1936)



Review

__________________
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



Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)





WARNING: spoilers below
To say that expectations for The Last Jedi were space-high would be putting it mildly; as the 2nd episode of the new Star Wars trilogy, everyone seemed to wonder if Rion Johnson would continue with the fun, but still fundamentally play-it-safe nature of Force Awakens that was oh-so JJ, tracing over the general outline of its corresponding middle chapter in the original trilogy (that being The Empire Strikes Back) in the process, and doom this entry to never truly step out of its predecessor's iconic shadow... or would Johnson try for something more challenging, more daring, like Empire itself did back in its day? Well, while Last Jedi will inevitably draw comparisons to that classic at times (granted, sometimes to its detriment), I'm still happy to say that, like its new generation of heroes and villains, it finds a way to honor and respect what its legendary predecessors created, while also forging more of its own path forward, something that apparently The Rise Of Skywalker failed to capitalize on (although I still actually haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment on it personally).

Anyway, The Last Jedi follows parallel story threads, with the forces of The First Order launching an devastating assault on the vulnerable New Republic, before pursuing the surviving forces through space for the rest of the film, a plot that's intercut with a young Jedi apprentice training with a wizened, reluctant teacher in the mysterious, sometimes-frightening ways of The Force, just like in, well, Empire. However, I feel Jedi distinguishes itself both from the often derivative elements of Force Awakens by telling a more subversive, surprising story, one that's less reliant on pure nostalgia, and distinguishes itself from the overall Star Wars saga through its greater sense of moral ambiguity, especially through its demythologization of the titular "last Jedi" himself, Luke Skywalker.

When Rey (and we) first see him, Luke is a weary, grey-bearded, grizzled old man, living as a hermit in the ruins of an ancient Jedi temple (which just so happens to be in the middle of space-nowhere), his only company being the local wildlife, and the giant toad-nuns aliens that maintain what's left of the structures there. He is a far cry from the beaming, triumphant hero of the original trilogy, and when Rey approaches him in the hopes of being trained as the first of a new generation of Jedi, Luke just tells her to leave the planet immediately. And, while such reluctance is somewhat to be expected, as it would be narratively dull if Luke just immediately acquiesced to every one of Rey's wishes, I still didn't expect him to be as defeated and downtrodden as he turned out here, since, even after he agrees to teach Rey, he only does it to try to show her why the Jedi must die as a way of life, which, combined with a rather unexpected revelation that arises from his past here, really surprised (and pleased) me, with just how dark Rion was willing to go with his arc.

It's a daring spin on a classic, iconic hero, one that somewhat split the Star Wars fanbase, but one that I appreciate for its unwillingness to coddle us as viewers, and besides that, Rion Johnson continues the trend of Force Awakens in making The Force itself a more mysterious and ethereal, well, force, than the disappointingly literal treatment Lucas gave it in the Prequels, through a series of intriguing psychic conversations that occur between two certain characters here, as well as actually making The Force seem more accessible to the random "nobodies" of the galaxy, as you'll see, and that's all the detail I'll go into on those points, lest I spoil the film even further for you.

Outside of the Force-related shenanigans here, the film's other main plot thread of the scant remnants of The New Republic in constant pursuit by The New Order, their numbers steadily dwindling as the film goes on, is, for the most part, tense, desperate, and above all exciting, with some of the better scenes of combat seen in any Star Wars to date, with a certain subplot involving a new, seemingly cowardly Rebel Admiral taking an unexpected turn, further reenforcing the film's overall ambiguity when it comes to its various characterizations. I mean, don't get me wrong or anything, as The Last Jedi is hardly a perfect film; it's overlong by at least 15 minutes, with one too many climactic battles, some of its comedic relief moments feel a bit forced and unnecessary, and its story doesn't always unfold as smoothly, as it should've, with a particular side-story during the middle act that could've easily been altered, or better yet, erased from the film entirely. However, all that being said, this still a very rousing, borderline mythic piece of pop-storytelling, a vital new continuation of what is surely the defining film series of all time, and a work that left me more hopeful than I had been in a long time for the future of the franchise, if Disney can ever get it back on track again as much as it did with this one; may The Force be with it, indeed.



Final Score: 8.25
It is definitely the strongest of the new trilogy in my opinion



Rocky Horror- 10/10

Test Pilot- 10/10



Pink Flamingoes- 10/10

This movie was hilarious



I forgot the opening line.

By Studio and or Graphic Artist - [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53427150

Their Finest - (2016)

I think I really needed the snooze factor ratings @Nausicaä uses with his mini-reviews. I'd have needed to use a Zzz or the dreaded Zzzz as Their Finest had me nodding off at various stages last night until I gave in and slept. Watched it this morning, and was fairly bored with the film as a whole. It's 1940, and former secretary Catrin Cole,(Gemma Arterton) has been taken on board a British Film Industry desperate to drag itself out of the doldrums, with films trying to buck up the spirit in England floundering. After researching a pair of adult, female twins who attempted to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation she tries to tell their story, but over and over again other factors and personalities will change the story until nothing of the twin's version will remain. Should the true story be told, or should characters in the story represent all of us and give the people of England hope?

Not even the Germans can provide any sense of conflict - and Cole is treated kindly by nearly everyone. Differences of opinion are usually decided by hashing out both side's opinions and coming to a general agreement where everyone is happy. Nice to see, but I don't think it prevides enough conflict or tension. I liked the scenes where Cole imagines scenes in her dreams (like grade-school plays) which were novel. Otherwise there's too much low-grade melodrama and going through the motions creating the film inside of this film. Good moments here and there - but my memory will never retain them. This is a war movie that a good-natured guy could invite his girlfriend to and she'd get more out of it than he would. But in all probability they wouldn't be holding hands for long because they'd fall asleep.

4/10



It is definitely the strongest of the new trilogy in my opinion
While I still haven't seen Rise Of Skywalker, I'd say that The Last Jedi is in the better half of the "Disney Wars" movies, along with Rogue One. At any rate, one criticism of TLJ that I keep hearing that doesn't make sense is that Johnson's creative decisions for it felt like some sort of "middle finger" to what Abrams did with The Force Awakens, or even to the franchise as a whole, which makes little sense to me; for starters, when it comes to what TLJ did with
WARNING: spoilers below
Luke's characterization, while I've gone into greater detail about this elsewhere, it bears repeating that everything Johnson did with his arc was a natural extension of what TFA already hinted at about him, since he was obviously living in exile nowhere near the frontlines for a reason. And, the same basic thing goes for the complaints about what the film did with Snoke, or with the revelation of Rey's parents, because with the former, people are baselessly assuming that there was supposed to be some sort of greater "mystery" to Snoke's identity to have another excuse to complain, when TFA established nothing of the sort about him (so why assume otherwise?), and with the latter, the only thing that TLJ did was merely resolve the mystery of who her parents were; how is that supposed to some sort of snubbing of Abrams "plan" for that sub-plot?

I mean, no one knows what JJ had planned for that detail (if he indeed had a plan at all), and it's easy to assume that the true identity of Rey's parents was supposed to be some sort of presumably big payoff, when JJ choose to establish so little of substance about that question in his film, since his writing style assumes that just randomly introducing mysteries is an intriguing storytelling device in and of itself:




I mean, I think his films are generally entertaining, but he's definitely a better director than he is a writer.



'Apples' (2021)


Very accomplished arthouse film that has something to say about our memories of our time with loved ones, and what we choose to forget as well as remember. Director Christos Nikou worked with Yorgos Lanthimos on the film Dogtooth and it really shows. The serene air of mystery is everywhere and the classic Lanthimos atmosphere is recreated very well here. Very promising debut.