Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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SHINE A LIGHT

I’ve yet to have the opportunity to see the Stones live so I figured a Scorsese rock documentary would be the next best thing.

It begins with an amusing opening that may or may not be a fabrication of Scorsese struggling to get the necessary information to film this concert effectively. “We don’t want to catch Mick Jagger on fire… but we do want the effect,” he says sardonically. It’s a fun and dynamic start but in hindsight, also feels like something of an apologia for what is to follow and an explanation as to why it isn’t on the level of The Last Waltz.

It is good, mind you. But the coverage doesn’t seem as precise nor inventive as I’d expect from Scorsese. Similarly, the performance is good. Both the Stones and Scorsese can deliver something quality on autopilot.

It just kind of feels like that’s what happened here. A series of seasoned pros not quite winging it but also not quite hammering out the final details to deliver a transcendent concert experience.

Maybe it’s just because my expectations were too high, as I’m a much bigger fan of the Stones than I was of The Band, so the combination of them and Scorsese seemed most tantalizing.

That said, it’s quality and I miss live shows so this helped a good deal. My score will probably seem disproportionately positive to the write up but sometimes a high quality movie can still be disappointing for not having been at the level it could’ve been.

Yeah, that was my feeling about this. Technically good but lacking the rawness of a really great show.

The first concert I ever went to was The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour. It’s a shame they didn’t get the Scorsese treatment back then because I think it would have been a lot closer to what you’re looking for.



Yeah, that was my feeling about this. Technically good but lacking the rawness of a really great show.

The first concert I ever went to was The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour. It’s a shame they didn’t get the Scorsese treatment back then because I think it would have been a lot closer to what you’re looking for.
Definitely a shame that he didn’t get the Stones at the top of their game. Would’ve been one to look out for. I knew something was amiss when they never played Gimme Shelter. How do you do that when Scorsese is directing?

It reminds me of when I saw Bob Dylan live. It was a good show and well worth seeing, but it wasn’t the Bob Dylan of No Direction Home.



Victim of The Night
I've watched both the series and the film exactly once, so I don't really remember how I felt about one vs the other. (Vague recollection of enjoying the series more). I do consider myself a fan, just to be clear.

Interesting that you watched the movie first though. It would never occur to me to suggest that to a newcomer. You're outta control!
I didn't know there was a Firefly. I just went to the movie theater and there was this movie called Serenity and I saw it.



Victim of The Night
It's interesting how two people can watch the same movie, and come away with opposite observations. Probably another reason why John Carpenter is a multi-millionaire with a mansion and a yacht, and I am not.

I think you're wrong about Barbeau figuring things out first. I believe it was the priest after almost being hit over the head with that diary. Then again, Barbeau's character did figure out that something wasn't quite right about that particular fog bank.
I dunno, I've seen it a dozen times probably but is it possible Hal Holbrook puts the killings together with the fog before Barbeau? Sure, possibly by a few minutes or something. Holbrook finds out about the history of the town fairly early on but he has no idea there even is a Fog at that point. Regardless, I find the point irrelevant. Stevie Wayne is the one who realizes it's the fog that's the danger and warns the whole town via the radio. And even that is irrelevant because the point is that she is a very strong female character in this context. Aside from Mustache (without a mustache) almost every male character in the film is ineffective or an idiot while the female characters are all strong. It's practically a feminist film.



The fourth Kind.
I love having my senses scared ****less.
Not gonna go too indepth as its an oldie now.


But its one of my fav high suspence, fake/real story horror films.



Obsession -


I liked but didn't love this early De Palma thriller. It is one of the director's most beautiful movies, if anything. Having the great Vilmos Zsigmond as the cinematographer, Bernard Herrmann as the composer and using New Orleans and Florence as the locations certainly doesn't hurt. I also really liked the performances by John Lithgow, who plays Michael's (Cliff Robertson) partner - his New Orleans accent is a tad cheesy, but I wouldn't have it any other way - and Genevieve Bujold as Michael's wife, Elizabeth. Most importantly, I was invested in the mystery the entire time. With all that said, this is De Palma's least interesting take on Vertigo. As for the mystery, despite the movie maintaining my interest, the conclusion was not only unsatisfying, but also raised more questions than it answered and not in a good way. As for Cliff Robertson, his performance could be best described as low effort. Again, I enjoyed it overall, but my appreciation of the aesthetics and technique far exceed my appreciation of pretty much everything else. If you haven't seen any of De Palma's other Vertigo riffs, start with this one because they all go up from here.





I enjoyed looking for the easter eggs and references more than I enjoyed the movie itself.
__________________
There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?



I like how they include that small tagline, From the makers of "American Graffiti" ...

Which of course undercuts what they were going for with, "Terror you won't want to remember - In a film you won't be able to forget."


I do have to watch that though.



Found it on Prime. Added to my queue.



Loved this documentary. Charlie Watts was hilariously grumpy. “Never gonna watch this”, he said.

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



Here’s looking at you, kid.
The Lobster



A film that conveys the true bull**** of human relations in a sadistic, yet humorous way, while using our need for a partner, as a society, to create an alternate semi-modern dystopian universe.






A film that conveys the true bull**** of human relations in a sadistic, yet humorous way, while using our need for a partner, as a society, to create an alternate semi-modern dystopian universe.


What' the title of this movie?



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

The Turn Out (Pearl Gluck, 2018)
+ 5/10
Our Relations (Harry Lachman, 1936)
6/10
Wolf Call (George Waggner, 1939)
5/10
A Classic Horror Story (Roberto De Feo & Paolo Strippoli, 2021)
6-/10

Unlikable characters caught up in a "fairy tale" which turns horrific. Hint - not a spoiler.
Fire in My Belly (Ayo Akingbade, 2021)
5/10
City That Never Sleeps (John H. Auer, 1956)
6/10
Mamma + Mamma (Karole Di Tommaso, 2018)
+ 5/10
White Vertigo (Giorgio Ferron, 1956)
6.5/10

Colorful, poetically-photographed-and-edited saga of the 1956 Olympic Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak (Carole Roussopoulos, 1975)
6/10
Lethal Love (Avi Federgreen, 2021)
5/10
XIVth Olympiad: The Glory of Sport (Castleton Knight, 1948)
+ 6/10
Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)
7+/10

NYC high school nerd Tobey Maguire is bitten by a spider and becomes a super hero.
Lorelei (Sabrina Doyle, 2020)
5.5/10
Air Conditioner (Fradique, 2020)
6/10
The Forever Purge (Everardo Gout, 2021)
5.5/10
Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021)
- 6.5/10

When she's stolen, Nic Cage searches for his truffle-hunting pig all over Oregon in a low-key, surprising mystery-thriller/character study.
Midnight in the Switchgrass (Randall Emmett, 2021)
6/10
Deep (5 Directors, 2021)
+ 5/10
The Guide to the Perfect Family (Ricardo Trogi, 2021)
+ 6/10
How It Ends (Daryl Wein & Zoe Lister-Jones, 2021)
5.5/10

On the last day of the Earth, Zoe Lister-Jones and her younger self (Cailee Spaeny) plan out their last day.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
The Pig hype is real
__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



Total Recall (Verhoeven, '90)



Get ready for the ride of your life.

WARNING: spoilers below
Whether fairly or not, Action movies are often stereotypically thought of as one of the least-thought provoking film genres out there, which is a stark contrast to the way Science-Fiction is typically perceived, with its speculative tales about what science, technology, and the future in general may hold in store for the human species and experience, serving as a sort of "escapism" that is nonetheless still rooted solidly in our day-to-day reality. However, in 1990, Paul Verhoeven built on his previous moviemaking experience to make the two seemingly polar opposites meet in fairly spectacular fashion with Total Recall, having his cake and eating it too by getting to indulge in tons of gratuitous, non-stop bloody action, while still also finding time to intellectually stimulate us with its intriguing "real or false?" reality narrative, with the film, to paraphrase Tom Breihan, getting to blow up characters' heads AND viewers' minds at the same time.

Set in the year 2084, it tells the story of Douglas Quaid, an Earthbound construction worker who has recurring dreams/nightmares of visiting Mars, which inspires him to make that dream a reality (sort of) by visiting Rekall, a company that specializes in implanting memories in people's minds, in order to get the escape from his mundane daily life he so desperately pines for. However, the procedure goes unexpectedly haywire, causing Quaid to seemingly uncover an interplanetary espionage conspiracy in the process, and forcing him to get his "ass to Mars" for real, all the while dodging bullets, traitorous wives, and the tantalizing possiblity that none of it is even happening for real, as if everything else wasn't enough to deal with as it is.

Of course, even without that final detail, Recall would still be memorable for a number of other aspects, such as its unique, endlessly imaginative vision of the future, with a new detail coming pretty much every moment to help further build its futuristic world, whether it be the robotic taxicab drivers, holographic decoy emitters, or massive X-Ray walls, with the latter rendered with then-groundbreaking CGI effects, which is balanced out by the film's non-stop showcasing of practical models, prosthetics, and animatronics otherwise, which give Rob Bottin's various creations a much-needed tactility, and help to render a surprisingly vivid sense of body horror here in the process as well (which is also partly due to David Cronenberg(!) and Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's contributions to the screenplay), to the point that people apparently approached Marshall Bell for years afterward, and non-jokingly asked him to lift his shirt so they could see "Kuato" for themselves.

But of course, the most fascinating aspect of Recall is due to the involvement of the ultimate mind-*ucking Sci-Fi scribe himself, Phillip K. Dick, whose 1966 story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" provides the basic skeleton onto which the meaty, Arnie-signature thrills are laid on top of here, nicely balancing all the mindless action out with a relentless, conspiracy-laden plot and a rich abundance of ideas, with the many narrative rug pulls never feeling unnecessarily convoluted, even as the bursts of exposition come at us as rapid-fire as the automatic weapons do at Quaid. It's the kind of movie where it's possible to read pretty much every detail one way or the other, making for endless possibilities, which results in a nice meta-commentary on the very nature of film itself, since, why does it matter if everything is really happening here or not, since we don't care if every other movie ever made is technically a false reality of its own?

Add onto that a profane, nastily fun sense of humor (can you say, midget prostitutes with knives?), and a strong influence on similar films since, with its reality-warping narrative and surprisingly progressive, egalitarian gender dynamics between Schwarzenegger and the female lead setting the stage for multiple genre-redefining actioners, whether they be the "what is real?" Sci-Fi plot of The Matrix, or the now iconic post-apocalyptic partnership between Max & Furiosa in Fury Road, and Total Recall will definitely give you the "ride of your life", and then some.


Final Score: 8



Victim of The Night
I like how they include that small tagline, From the makers of "American Graffiti" ...

Which of course undercuts what they were going for with, "Terror you won't want to remember - In a film you won't be able to forget."


I do have to watch that though.
Honestly, it's just one of those movies that's better than it should be.