Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The 'Burbs - I hadn't seen this in years and years. I don't know if it qualifies as a classic but I've always been very fond of it. From Director Joe Dante to the cast and wardrobe it's an 80's movie through and through. The most hilarious part is that (not to this degree of course) I've known people like this. Maybe we all have. Comedic Tom Hanks (back when he specialized in exasperated everyman) plays suburban schlub Ray Peterson. He's on vacation and looking forward to doing absolutely nothing. His wife Carol (Carrie Fisher) keeps trying to convince him to go spend some time up at "the lake" instead. But Ray is subliminally locked into "unofficial neighborhood watch captain" mode while being aided, abetted and egged on by his doofus neighbor Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun). The dad posse is rounded out by wildly combative Vietnam vet Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Derrn).

After a new family moves in and draws their attention it isn't long before they're convinced the newcomers are up to no good. To Ray and his friends the fact that their run down house looks so sinister and the neighbors keep to themselves is reason enough. When another of their neighbors seemingly disappears overnight they check his house and find enough things out of place to crank their paranoia up to 11.

I think this is a guaranteed good time and that you can put this on and rest easy knowing you'll be entertained. The cast is certainly eclectic enough with Henry Gibson, Brother Theodore and Courtney Gains playing their sketchy neighbors the Klopeks. Dick Miller and Robert Picardo appear briefly as sanitation workers/garbagemen and look for a young Franklin Ajaye playing a police detective. Corey Feldman is also in it but not enough to harsh the good times. One of my favorite 80's comedies.

85/100

I adore The ‘Burbs. Childhood favorite.

“You keep a horse in the basement?!”

Ferrari (2023)

Directed by Michael Mann
Starring Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz

That's a good movie.
Well filmed, good screenplay plus Driver and Cruz at their best, what more...
+
82/100

__________________
"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

Onibaba (1964)
Someone said that William Friedkin found this movie scary. I did not.
The soundtrack is great. It sounds both both Japanese and jazzy. I am not that familiar with Japanese music so I don't know how much of the dissonance is natural to their music. I know there is some use of dissonance from a koto record I used to listen to. The initial theme is really something.
It is beautifully photographed, the acting is excellent and the setting, a grassland with a number of huts, gives a feeling of both expansiveness and suffocation.
It takes place in an alien landscape. Not many, if any of us, live in a rural location during a civil war or are eking out an existence by killing passersby. The loneliness and the fear of starvation are palpable.
It is well made but a little long.

The Long Gray Line (1955)

__________________

[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

By Le Pacte - IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74397267

Anatomy of a Fall - (2023)

When her husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) is found dead outside their house, killed by blunt trauma to the head, his wife, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is tried for murder - and their young, blind son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) finds himself torn up about what to say and what not to say to the court. In the meantime the very heart of Sandra's troubled marriage is aired and debated - with a violent argument they'd had the day before evidence for the prosecution when it's found out Samuel taped it. Hits right at the heart of familial love, and the choice we often have to make whether we believe in the person we love or come to doubt them. Often it means having to make a conscious choice. There's much more to unpack here - but I've only just seen the film - and this one is truly a movie to meditate on. Lord knows, I'd hate to have any relationship of mine defined by the words uttered in the heat of argumentative battle. There's more to us than that - and Anatomy of a Fall tests the depths of complexity that exist when it comes to bonds both loving and troubled.

8/10


By The Apartment [Italian film production company] - https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81156325, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68527812

The Hand of God - (2021)

This autobiographical movie from The Great Beauty director Paolo Sorrentino takes us to 1980s Naples and a family full of pranksters and oddballs - for young Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti) it's a time of deliverance, when Napoli sign up superstar Diego Maradona, but also one of unspeakable tragedy. My review for it is here, on my watchlist thread. Great movie.

8/10

__________________

One of my all-time favourites! Love The Burbs!

__________________
Looking for a bigger boat | My latest movie lists and reviews | Find me on Letterboxd

Finally caught up with this epic. I'm still mulling over what I thought about it. It's Scorsese so there's lots to admire. Still, I felt it was too long. Things got going when Jesse Plemons arrived. Could the first hour have been trimmed a bit?

It was a two-film movie night for me (which is somewhat incredible given one was Killers of the Flower Moon clocking in at 3hrs 26mins). A rare treat to have back-to-back movies on a Thursday evening.

Fletch (1985)



4/5

A re-watch of Fletch. One of Chevy Chase's best films and my second personal favourite behind National Lampoon's Vacation. Apparently, it's Chase's favourite film of the ones he's made.

Conflagration - 7/10

__________________
https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

[quote=PHOENIX74;2436730]
By Le Pacte - IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74397267

Anatomy of a Fall - (2023)

When her husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) is found dead outside their house, killed by blunt trauma to the head, his wife, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is tried for murder - and their young, blind son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) finds himself torn up about what to say and what not to say to the court. In the meantime the very heart of Sandra's troubled marriage is aired and debated - with a violent argument they'd had the day before evidence for the prosecution when it's found out Samuel taped it. Hits right at the heart of familial love, and the choice we often have to make whether we believe in the person we love or come to doubt them. Often it means having to make a conscious choice. There's much more to unpack here - but I've only just seen the film - and this one is truly a movie to meditate on. Lord knows, I'd hate to have any relationship of mine defined by the words uttered in the heat of argumentative battle. There's more to us than that - and Anatomy of a Fall tests the depths of complexity that exist when it comes to bonds both loving and troubled.

8/10

Jusr saw this yesterday and your thoughts on the film are pretty much spot on.

3rd Rewatch...This film totally holds up almost twenty years after its release. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play a pair of DC lawyers who spend their down time crashing weddings i order to get laid. Things get sticky for the pair when they crash the wedding of the eldest daughter of the secretary of Treasury (Christopher Walken), where Wilson's John falls for the middle daughter (Rachel McAdams) and the youngest daughter (Isla Fisher) falls hard for Vince's character. As long as you don't think about it too much...like why do a couple of Washington DC lawyers have so much trouble meeting women that they have to crash weddings, or why Walken's is so dumb he can't figure out that these two guys are fakes, this movie is so funny. It's slightly longer than it needs to be, but Wilson and Vaughn are a well-oiled machine and the McAdams and Fisher are lovely leading ladies.

1st Rewatch...HBO knocked it out of the park with this elegantly mounted miniseries set in a former industrial giant of a town in Maine where generations of the same families still seem to be doing the Hatfield and McCoys thing. The central character is a restaurant owner named Miles (Ed Harris) who is dealing with, among other things, an emasculating ex-wife (Helen Hunt), a lazy sponge of a father (Paul Newman), a manipulative landlady (Joanne Woodward), a brother (Aidan Quinn) suspected of being a drug dealer, and a slightly nutsy childhood friend who is now a cop (William Fichtner). Other members of the impressive ensemble cast include Dennis Farina, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Estelle Parsons, Kate Burton, Jeffrey DeMunn, and Theresa Russell. Newman steals the show though, in a performance that earned him Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG awards.. Fans of films like Peyton Place and The Long Hot Summer will have a head start here.

1st Rewatch...This overly cute and completely predictable rom-com is the story of Nesser (Josh Duhamel) and Holly (Katherine Heigl), who had a disastrous blind date a few years ago set up by their friends Pete and Allison. Suddenly Pete and Allison are killed in a car accident and Nesser and Holly discover they have been named guardians of Pete and Allison's year old daughter, Sophia. And it is that this point of the this pretentiously titled mess where we get every single cliched scene that you can think of associated with this premise. Heigl plays another of her unlikable characters and has pretty much no chemistry with Duhamel, but I've never seen an actor who has chemistry with Heigl, but this one was much weaker on rewatch.

Terrific Japanese dystopian movie.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Perfect Days 2023
Directed by Wim Wenders



Each year brings forth a cinematic marvel that resonates deeply with my heart, and curiously, it's always just one, never two. Within the forum's discussions, there's a thread questioning about the character to whom one relates the most. For me, this film encapsulates that connection perfectly—it's as if I'm witnessing my own life unfold on the screen, a narrative steeped in utmost sensitivity to nature forms, embracing simple living, and expressing profound gratitude to just be alive. Surprisingly, for the first time, I find myself regretting watching a movie on the big screen, as its profoundly personal impact has me yearning for the solitude of a solitary viewing, a sentiment I often cherish. It is premature to articulate anything beyond this immediate connection.

The Holdovers (2023)

Directed by Alexander Payne
Starring Paul Giamatti

Payne + Giamatti always means for sure.
88/100

Don't Bother To Knock.

__________________
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Gandhi​

How can you take a decent cast, including Bryce Dallas Howard, Henry Cavill and Sam Rockwell and make them do a movie like this - Argyll - I don't know. I guess they signed the contract before the script was written. I forgive John Cena, since he's mainly muscle beefcake from the wrassling world and I don't have any expectations there.

It has no engaging characters, a meandering and non-sensical plot line, no need for acting, but it does have lots of cheesy digital FX and lots of stuff blows up. It's loud and fast, though not fast enough since the minimal plot can't support its run-time. I think it was supposed to be "action-comedy". It did have pretty much end-to-end action, but nothing was that funny.

It does however, have a cute, presumably digital, cat. If the cat had not been digital I guess the animal rights people would have been protesting its treatment, but there's so much to protest in this flick that cats would just be one issue.