Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Strange/supernatural are definitely the key words for me not liking it.

The Voices (2014) Ryan Reynolds is fantastic here and I loved the talking cat. Darkly funny, thrilling, and more fun than it should be, this is a killer good movie. My rating is .

High School Confidential (1958)



Watched this last night on TCM and got quite a kick out of this movie.

It's campy, it's cringe-worthy at the start, it's got all the qualities of a "cult classic", it's "so bad it's good", yet it had an unexpected level of sophistication that I didn't see coming.

It mixes late 50's beatnik babel, rock & roll, and teenage rivalries with some very serious themes about drug addiction, drug dealing and crime as the plot progresses. The early parts seem on par with older films like Reefer Madness - where the alleged addiction to a non-addictive drug like Marijuana are exaggerated almost to the point of ridiculousness as a supposed public service.

This movie has a twist, though. With most movies, surprises can be seen coming 10 minutes away, but I'll hand it to this one in that the surprise took me off guard - I wasn't expecting it.

Russ Tamblyn's acting seems almost unbearable at the start (due mostly to his arrogant, hip-talking, juvenile delinquent character). He has ambitions to become the big drug pusher on campus (going beyond just pot, but to harder drugs like Heroin). Tamblyn must have some serious acting chops because he had totally fooled me when the big reveal came.



Jackie Coogan (aka Uncle Fester) plays a drug kingpin crime lord (if you can imagine that)!
He actually does a great job as a scummy crime boss, (there's a tense scene where he and Tamblyn are about to shoot up Heroin that I just loved).

I thought the climactic fight scene was just brilliant - a combination of the fistfights on the Batman TV show and the hand-to-hand combat of Braveheart!

And if anything is left to be desired, the movie has Mamie Van Doren!!!



I give this a high rating on pure entertainment value for the film's strange combination of campiness & sophistication: for its "B-movie" schlockyness, cult-movie-style so-bad-it's-goodness, a genuine plot twist that no one saw coming, and what turned out to be a fairly decent crime-thriller plot by the end. Oh, and least I forget, music by "The Killer" himself: Jerry Lee Lewis who also appears in the movie!

@Captain Steel thanks for posting that. I hadn't heard of High School Confidential but I'm sold as I'm a big fan of Jan Sterling and Mamie Van Doren too! Sounds like a culturally important B film from a historical standpoint...and lots of fun too! I'm hoping to watch that very soon

Yes, totally agree!

I found it to be both genuinely funny and genuinely moving. I think that it walks the line really well of having a movie where a loner dude murders women but it doesn't feel like the female character are being mocked or just used as canon fodder.

And I thought that the end was a really powerful way to bring things to a close. Nailing the ending is often elusive in films like this (because they have a strong concept but not necessarily a strong narrative). I was very pleasantly surprised by this film. I don't think it is underrated, per se, but I do think it is a bit underseen.

I highly recommend it. (Probably best viewed after a few beers!)

Thing is, I also was totally unaware that this movie existed prior to just happening to catch it on TCM (they had a marathon of high school movies last night - this one was followed by Blackboard Jungle and To Sir With Love).

I love when you just find a movie you knew nothing about and it turns out to be really weird and fun!

Ben Mankiewicz gave an entertaining introduction to the film and followed with a prologue where he explained what many of the beatnik sayings meant! He said he was going to add one to his own vernacular: "Strictly out of the fridge." Which meant someone was "cool" - but in this movie's case, cool meant you were with it... you were hip to the drug scene... you liked to blaze or shoot up... you weren't a rat.

He said the movie got a sequel called College Confidential (1960), but apparently the only person from the original's cast to return was Mamie Van Doren - playing a different part.

I'm guessing this film helped Russ Tamblyn get his role as Riff in West Side Story due to his character in this film (which was like a more arrogant and sarcastic version of Riff).

Lucas (1986) - 7 / 10

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The Devil's Brigade (1968)

That review makes me want to kick myself for missing High School Confidential. I should have DVR'd Blackboard Jungle last night as well. It would have been a rewatch but Vic Morrow is such a great bad guy.

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Days of the Bagnold Summer - (2019)

There were moments in Days of the Bagnold Summer that made me laugh out loud - which doesn't sound too shocking, but I so rarely laugh out loud while watching a film alone these days. Those surprisingly funny and touching moments that are so hard to manufacture. This is just a pure slice of reality (except for Rob Brydon's Casanova-type character which seems straight from vaudeville) where strange characters exist on the outside but our characters in Monica Dolan's divorced mother Sue and Earl Cave's Daniel seem to have been seeded, grown and presented to us as people we can instantly identify with and relate to. As such the comedy comes from a real place. Mother and son. Mother loves her son. Son hates his mother. Basically because he's 15 and is genetically predisposed to hating his square, boring mum. They wind them up and let them loose over the course of a summer that both sucks and is glorious. It's simplicity - like an apple - but if you feel like a proper meal you might still feel hungry after the credits roll.

First full-length feature from director Simon Bird and based on a graphic novel by Joff Winterhart.

6/10


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THX 1138 - (1971) - DVD

It's been so long since I've seen this that it was basically seeing it again for the first time, if you get my drift. This film is by no means perfect, but it's the best of a bunch of low budget science fiction films I've watched lately. There's a lot of experimentation, and as such some things work and some things don't - even though this version is the George Lucas cut of the film (thankfully no CGI cartoon characters were added - aside from a monkey or two near the end at least) I find it the most positive dystopian science fiction film I've really seen. At least there's no malice, even if there is much harm. This is a society that had the best of intentions but got lost - and THX's salvation arrives more from confusion than rebellion against a world that has returned to Eden. There is no more love or hate or anything really. Lucas and co-writer Walter Murch did well in sowing enough confusion but giving us just enough to understand the narrative.

Bonus Features : A 1971 trailer which obfuscates the experimental nature of the film and tries to make it look like a common sci-fi film, which I found interesting. A commentary track by Lucas and Murch where Lucas seems to be so unhappy (he was in the middle of directing the disastrous Star Wars prequels) and talks wistfully about the low budget experimental films he wanted to make. He says he wanted to have one shot at a normal, commercial film (which became Star Wars) and that he seemed trapped ever since. He swears he's going to fulfill that potential yet, but I seriously doubt that now. The film looks and sounds like it comes from the present era - but no more features and no Criterion edition. There's a pamphlet inside with a letter from George : sweet nothings.

6/10


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Silent Running - (1972)

I was looking forward to this, and maybe some day someone will explain to me their affection for Silent Running. Bruce Dern plays astronaut and conservationist (and murderer) Freeman Lowell. He's our noble hero, rightly trying to protect billions of years of biological diversity in the face of government apathy - but he's also a little too quick to dispatch his three equally apathetic crewmen. There may or may not be some subtle humour on display, but it can't detect it. Directed by effects man Douglas Trumbull, this includes a cowriting credit for Michael Cimino which heightens it's bizarre existence. I found most of the film drudgery after we're left with Lowell and his cardboard box robots - even if ...



4/10


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Invaders From Mars - (1953)

I never really enjoyed Tobe Hooper's faithful remake of Invaders From Mars, even though it was kind enough to give poor Bud Cort a small role. This put me instantly at odds with the nightmare fuel of a kid's imagination and stock footage in the 1953 original. To be fair the version I watched seemed to have been captured straight off a VCR and looked and sounded horrible. Most of the strange dream aura the film has comes from the propitious set with that broken picket fence and menacing sands backed by unnatural pink/blue lighting. There's no mistake that the poster for the 1986 version used that image prominently :



No matter the innovation, paranoia of the time or the fact that...



...this was distinctly unpleasant to watch.

2/10

I really enjoyed it. It has an almost prophetic nature regarding climate change.

yes im big fan of fast and furious movie trilogy! and glad they showed brians blue skyline at the end aswell and hope F10 will be the last one.

Man in the Wilderness (1971)

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3rd view. Probably the best action movie from Brazil. The sequel is also very good

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Mike Tyson: The Knockout
New series on ABC.. II've never been a boxing fan, but I always found Mike Tyson's story fascinating, especially the relationship with Cus.

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Nobody Lives Forever (1946)

This often overlooked "soft" noir is an enjoyable film, notably because of its actors, writer, and director. Following 5 months after the steamy The Postman Always Rings Twice, this outing for John Garfield features a sweeter but duplicitous romance with Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Garfield plays a con man just released from the army. He soon sets his sights on an affable widow worth $2MM, but unexpectedly falls in love with her. Along the way to a slam bang ending we are treated to an assortment of bad guys: Walter Brennan (who never quite seems nasty), veteran villain George Coulouris, and the gorgeous Faye Emerson as the chanteuse femme fatale lite.

The director, Jean Negulesco (Humoresque; Titanic) guides a screenplay from the novel, both by W.R. Burnett, whose prolific writing was ubiquitous in Hollywood's Golden Age.

The studios were cranking out pictures at a feverish pace after WWII, and this film is nothing special story wise, but it's worth a watch to see the product of all the talent involved in this production.

Doc's rating: 6/10

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Not from Brazil, the whole world, better than Sicario because this one is actually much more real and accurate. Milhem Cortaz and Wagner Moura owned the film entirely. I know Wagner for a long time, I was little, long before Hollywood fond him I already knew him as one of the best Brazilian actors, which is not an easy title to give, most people don't know but Brazil has so many good actors, if only Hollywood had half the talent most of them have movies would be so much more emotionally powerful. The second one hasn't so good, but we have to understand the point in which he was made, they wanted to show the reality of how things work. There's one quote that has so much meaning if one wants to dig into it. When he kills the "bad man" and says: Put it in the Pope's bill. We have a holy man wanting to sleep in the Favelas not understanding it's reality, just so he can give a image of compassion, so, they had to clean the favelas so that holy man could be there. This has many social and moral implications, it's something one can think of, the "do gooders" of this world.

I caught a bit of this and I was wondering if The Revenant (2015) starring Leonardo DiCaprio was a remake or retelling of the story?

Snooze factor = Zzz



[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it