Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Nature of the Beast, 1995

Two major new stories are dominating the airwaves: a large sum of money has been stolen from a casino, and a serial killer known as the Hatchet Man is slicing and dicing travelers on the roadways. Jack (Lance Henriksen) is making his way across Nevada when he crosses paths with Adrian (Eric Roberts), an off-kilter young man who coerces Jack into giving him a ride. As the two continue their demented road trip, bodies start to pile up.

A lackluster thriller with the ignoble distinction of being directed by a convicted child rapist.

This short from Marshall Islands, follows the efforts of the kid to find his missing "zori", all while he completes his daily chore of cleaning up. In the process, he picks up different items that he considers valuable and spark his imagination. If he does well, the promise of eating some ice cream lies ahead.

This is evidently a very simple short film. The performances aren't great and the editing feels amateurish. However, despite its simplicity, there seems to be heart put into it and there's a charm to Tarkwon's performance. Directors Suzanne Chutaro and Jack Niedenthal also have a good sense of blocking and framing their shots.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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2048: Nowhere to Run is a prequel to Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. Set a year before the events from that film, it adds some more layers to the character of Morton. His presence on that film might've been short, but really leaves a mark. This short gives Bautista a bit more chance to broaden his acting skills, and he really delivers as far as body language and non-verbal acting goes.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Baby Boom (1987)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Cold Days (Hideg napok) - 7/10
It's a bit difficult for me to fully understand all the military nomenclature, but it's still a good movie. I would have liked more conversation in the isolation room.


I saw this on Vimeo.

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

All 3 of the shorts are bonuses on the 4K disc. I'd forgotten about them - may watch them all tonight. Thanks!

Yeah, I haven't seen the other two. Need to do that.

Solaris (1972)



Tarkosvky's attempt at science fiction is a unique film. First, it's among the most conventional of Tarkosvky's movies (second to Ivan's Childhood). It's a great movie indeed, perhaps not "Andrei Roublev" level of greatness (what movie is? Bergman said it was the greatest movie ever made), but it's not remotely a ordinary movie.

Time flies BTW as this movie is over 50 years old now...

I’m with you regarding The Holdovers and The Lesson. I loved Maestro though.

Napoleon (2023)

Although I was interested in this, the film itself is very flat for a Ridley Scott number. The acting is OK but the major battles are really skimmed over so that we can see more Josephine getting tupped Napoleon and ensuing infertility issues. The balance between action and personal life was all wrong I think. Maybe Scott has a directors cut coming out to redress that. It wasn't bad just not very good and not 1/2 as engaging as I thought it would be.

Sideways (2005) - re-watch.
It's remarkable that a film about depression - that takes its subject seriously - can be this funny and entertaining.

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JANUARY 9, 2024

THE IRON CLAW (2023)

“I used to be a brother, and now I’m not a brother anymore.”
“We’ll be your brothers, Dad.”



Mind you, I didn't. But I was just, like, this close to completely losing it after hearing these lines, which come at the very end of this movie. I actually have three brothers, so it's quite understandable that this movie would strike me so close.

Seriously, director Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw is probably my third favorite movie of 2023 after Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon. No fooling. And there has never even been so much as a day in my life when I've ever liked, cared about, or given a damn about professional wrestling. Mind you, I'm a fan of director Darren Aronofsky and actor Mickey Rourke, so of course I went to see 2008's The Wrestler and really enjoyed it because of the considerable talent involved. But in addition to being an extremely emotional and involving drama, The Iron Claw is an extremely intelligent and thought-provoking look at a real-life family's personal demons - or their "curse" - and by extension the demons of American society at large. And it accomplishes this is an extremely delicate, even-handed fashion, not by preaching or bludgeoning the audience over the head with ideas about "toxic masculinity."

Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons play the four wrestling Von Erich brothers - Kevin, Kerry, David and Mike, respectively. They are the sons of former wrestler Fritz Von Erich and his wife Doris, played by Holt McCallany and Maura Tierney. All the actors turn in brilliant performances above and beyond the call of duty. The actors playing the brothers are not only psychologically attuned to but also physically committed to their roles. training and bulking up in order to be convincing as pro wrestlers. Zac Efron in particular has the greatest task in his portrayal of Kevin. The story is largely told through his eyes and Efron has to serve as the emotional center and primary figure of identification. I've only seen Holt McCallany in a number of minor roles in the past, particularly in a couple of David Fincher films, but he really shines as the father Fritz. McCallany finds just the right balance in the character, playing him as as forceful and commanding in the way he pushes his sons to greatness in the world of pro wrestling, but never as bullying or a brute. You almost feel as bad for Fritz as you do for his offspring, because of the fears and insecurities you know he holds within and which he's stifled and stuffed down, unwittingly passing them onto his loving sons. And you feel for him as his family begins to disintegrate, each of his sons falling one by one, perhaps on some level understanding but never able to articulate just what's gone wrong and why. And Maura Tierney has at least one great moment as Doris, such as when she has a minor breakdown at the prospect of having to wear her black funeral dress yet again.

The director is Sean Durkin, and he's a filmmaker I'll certainly be keeping an eye on in the future. While the film's overall arc is one of tragedy, Durkin never telegraphs things or tips his hand as to where the story is going. The viewer watches as, one by one, terrible things happen to the brothers, and the tragedy becomes more of a slow immersion into a physical and emotional Hell than it is about one particular, devastating blow. Granted, there is one sort of afterlife fantasy sequence towards the end which perhaps overeggs the pathos just a tad, but this is a very minor complaint.

In short, I can't recommend The Iron Claw highly enough! Just remember to bring tissues...

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"It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid." - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)

Poor Things (2023)






Wrote a whole review but lost it.


The short version:
- weird, in a Lanthimos way, of course


-looks amazing (awards for the production design department please)


- funny (in a Lanthimos way, of course)


- steampunk-esque


-Emma Stone is fantastic


-Mark Ruffalo is very funny (and so is the fact that my phone corrected that to Mark Buffalo)


- too much fish eye lens


-plot lacked a little bit of momentum at times




I wasn't completely blown away but I did like it a lot and imagine it will probably grow on me. Bella Baxter has stayed with me and I'll probably watch it again some time soon.

JANUARY 9, 2024

NIGHT SWIM (2024)

My other theatrical viewing experience of that particular Tuesday. Two movies for $15 and change! You can't beat that...

A bit of a comedown from the harrowingly emotional experience that was The Iron Claw. Certainly a lesser film, but perhaps a necessary deflation.

A swimming pool is the source of mysterious disappearances over the years. An injured baseball player and his family move into the house and the father (Wyatt Russell) discovers that the water in the pool has strange healing properties. It turns out that this water comes from a mysteriously sentient spring which ultimately has possessory properties as well, demanding a sacrifice for its healing work. Hence the disappearances.

I hope I'm not giving away too much, but this is really a rather easy film to summarize. What can I say? Not a bad horror film, but not a great one either. It sort of bears a passing resemblance to Dan Curtis's 1976 film Burnt Offerings (starring Karen Black, Oliver Reed and the great Bette Davis), but in that film the horrors of the swimming pool represented only one facet of the overall supernatural threat at work and not the whole show. In this movie, the pool and its threatening secrets are front and center.

Competently directed and decently acted, but for me there was really nothing that made Night Swim stand out from the pack in any major way. (Amusingly enough, the trailer deceptively leads the audience into believing the movie to be more of a teen-horror experience than it actually is. Well, what else is new?)

My recommendation? Watch Burnt Offerings instead...

Death in Venice (1971)

Directed by Luchino Visconti
Starring Dirk Bogarde

Finally I got this movie. It is an obvious part of Visconti's trilogy (or pentalogy) about nostalgia on the passed civilization.
Colorful costumes and interiors, typical for the director. Now I see how wrongly this film is described just as LGBT by some mediocre system talkers. It is quite a deeper work alas the editing is dated a bit which makes it not very watchable for the broad audience.
74/100

My latest video purchases...



Navajo Joe (Sergio Corbucci / 1966)
The Mercenary (Sergio Corbucci / 1968)
The Hunting Party (Don Medford / 1971)

As you can see, I am delving ever further into the filmography of the great Sergio Corbucci, creator of the immortal Django (1966) and the cult classic Western tragedy The Great Silence (1968).

Navajo Joe, of course, stars the late Burt Reynolds in one of his first starring roles, and he truly delivers in the title role. Already, he is a truly worthy action hero, bringing a powerful athleticism and physical presence - as well as a healthy dose of surly, contemptuous attitude - to the character of Joe. (He is also a more than capable horseman.) The movie is perhaps not Corbucci's best, and Reynolds himself had a tendency to trash and make fun of the movie over the course of his career, but it's a primo example of the Italian Revenge Western, and if that's what you're after then it will not disappoint!

The Mercenary is yet another offering from Corbucci, this of course being the first in a trio of Mexican Revolution-themed Italian Westerns he would direct. Franco Nero plays the greedy, cool and calculating title character Sergei "The Polack" Kowalski. a well-dressed man with a penchant for striking matches to light his cigar on nearly every available object in sight. And Tony Musante plays Paco Roman, a Mexican peasant working in a silver mine who rebels against his bosses and leads an insurrection, first taking over the mine and then leading a revolutionary campaign against the government itself. And when Paco and Sergei eventually join forces, well then... Look out, Mexico! Of course, Sergei's greed and Paco's cluelessness ensure that there are a couple of snags along the way, but I would imagine no such alliance is without its share of problems. Also along for the ride is Giovanna Ralli as Paco's girlfriend and fellow revolutionary Columba, and the totally awesome Jack Palance as flamboyant villain Curly. There is also an epic score from the great Ennio Morricone, including a gorgeous cue by the name of L'Arena which accompanies the climactic duel sequence between Paco and Curly set in a bullring (and which Quentin Tarantino re-purposed in Kill Bill: Volume 2 to accompany the scene of Uma Thurman as the Bride busting out of her grave!).

The Hunting Party is one of a number of ultra-violent post-Wild Bunch Western bloodbaths that came out in the early '70s. And I understand that this one has had a really rough ride with the critics over the years. Yeah, it's a rather brutal film, but it's also fiercely intelligent and quite well-directed by one Don Medford, a man whose résumé includes a lot of TV work, including the 1967 finale of The Fugitive, as well as another 1971 theatrical feature The Organization with Sidney Poitier, the second of two sequels to Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night from 1967 (the other being of course Gordon Douglas's They Call Me Mister Tibbs! from 1970). Anyway... This one's got Oliver Reed as outlaw Frank Calder, who along with his gang kidnaps Candice Bergen as Melissa, the schoolteacher wife of cattle baron Brandt Ruger, played by the great Gene Hackman. (Those are totally awesome names, aren't they? Brandt Ruger!! Frank Calder!! You can practically feel the testosterone dripping off them! ) And although the rough Calder does have his way with Melissa, his intention isn't primarily sexual. Rather, the illiterate desperado wants her to teach him how to read! Melissa eventually falls in love with Frank, finding him scarcely any worse than her brutal and sadistic husband Brandt. Certainly he proves to be a lot more emotionally sensitive. (I imagine these sexual politics would make this film no less problematic for viewers today than back in '71, if not more so.) And once ol' Ruger gets the news of his wife's kidnapping while on a hunting trip with his rich buddies, there's gonna be Hell to pay! For on this trip Brandt has gifted himself and his friends with some (then) state-of-the-art high-powered telescopic rifles, and instead of hunting wild game, he decides he and his friends are gonna hunt down Frank Calder and his gang in cold blood - but in safety, from a distance! (To some extent, like a few other Westerns from its era, the film is kind of a Vietnam War allegory, but it also kind of serves as an indictment of the asymmetrical nature of modern warfare in general, in particular what former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters would refer to on one of his solo albums as The Bravery of Being Out of Range.) The very British Oliver Reed would seem to make a very unlikely Western gunslinger, and admittedly his American drawl is a bit iffy in places. But he truly makes a meal of the role, and when he screams and bursts into tears during the mercy killing of injured friend and fellow gang member Doc (Mitchell Ryan), you just want to bow down and declare the man God! Candice Bergen also excels powerfully in the difficult role of Melissa, and Gene Hackman yet again shows his knack for portraying powerful, patriarchal scumbag villains. (Brandt Ruger is definitely a precursor to Hackman's Sheriff "Little" Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven from 1992).

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The Night of the Hunter is really a fantasy horror film. It’s noir element is chiefly due to the studied chiaroscuro photography of Stanely Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons). Considered to be more of an art film when released, it had a poor reception but has steadily grown in stature in the years since.

Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a murderer and self-proclaimed preacher who becomes the cell mate of a man named Ben Harper (Peter Graves) who had killed two bank guards and had stolen a large sum of money which he subsequently hid in a place that only his two children knew about. Powell cannot wheedle the hiding place before Harper is executed. Upon his release Powell seeks out Harper’s widow (Shelley Winters), hoping he can find the stolen loot. He deceives the townspeople with his flase piety, and subsequently marries the widow. When he finds out that the widow does not know the location of the loot, but that the children do, he promptly kills the widow, and threatens the children who escape and hide down river under the protection of Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish), an elderly widow who looks after stray children. Powell tracks them down but is foiled by Cooper.

The film was directed by Charles Laughton in his singular instance as a director in film, although he was an experienced stage director. The novel of the same name was by Davis Grub, and Laughton and Grub worked closely together to develop the style of the story, although a lengthy screenplay by James Agee was eventually used in portion. The art direction by Hilyard Brown focused on providing abstract and sparse sets, giving the picture an almost dream-like fantasy look which fomented an other-worldly feel in many of the scenes.

Most studios as well as most actors would not have backed a film of this type in the mid 1950s, but United Artists had come to be known as a studio that would give their producers and directors free reign. And in fact the picture has attained classic status, and appears on many best picture lists.

Doc's rating: 7/10

By CineMaterial, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74765630

Society of the Snow - (2023)

Worth telling again I guess - although I do have to admit Alive has it's faults, and seeing a real Spanish-language layered telling of the famous story regarding the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster feels like another step forward. I remember being thankful when Alive arrived in 1993, because it felt like it was erasing Mexican exploitation film Survive! - rushed out in 1976 in a rudimentary manner and wanting to impress with blood and guts. So here we are. The plane crash itself isn't as impressive as the impeccably filmed '93 version, but in fact it's closer to reality, even though we can forgive Frank Marshall and co for going all-in with theirs. The story focuses less on dramatic effect (the sucker-punch of the lady who screamed all night, was shut up, and then died to everyone's eternal guilt isn't in this - though she's mentioned) and more on the survival aspect at it's core. Remember, these guys had to eat the bodies of people they knew to keep going - putting survival itself ahead of any religious or cultural ideals they had. The philosophical implications strike these guys in moments of contemplation, and that's where Society of the Snow is at it's strongest. Just deciding to survive is a leap of faith sometimes, and these guys were rewarded with renewed clarity regarding life itself. Alive strived for that kind of essence, but Society of the Snow has it in every frame, without having to resort to horror, overwrought melodrama or exploitation.

8/10


By http://www.impawards.com/intl/misc/2021/memoria.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68888716

Memoria - (2021)

This haunting, surreal, slow-paced drama focuses on Jessica Holland's (Tilda Swinton) search for meaning regarding a sound only she can hear, which comes and goes. I really didn't know whether I absolutely adored it or found it almost too challenging - a bit of both. My review of it on my watchlist thread is here.

7/10

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I cannot recommend highly enough the documentary Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains.

I think it's one of the most moving things I've ever seen. It's highly empathetic, resists sensationalizing events, and I was genuinely crying within about the first 10 minutes (as one survivor recounts giving another crash victim CPR, but then simply running out of energy to keep going).

When it comes to true stories, there's nothing quite like hearing it from the people themselves, and they did a great job with the interviews here.

Jungle, 2017

Yossi (Daniel Radcliffe) is a young man from Israel, traveling through South America in the early 80s. While in Bolivia, he befriends gentle Swiss schoolteacher Marcus (Joel Jackson) and brash American photographer Kevin (Alex Russell). When Yossi meets enigmatic Austrian explorer Karl (Thomas Kretschmann), he is promised a trip to find a lost tribe of indigenous people deep in the jungle. Yossi persuades his two new friends to accompany him, but the realities of a jungle on the verge of the rainy season proves a formidable foe for the four adventurers.

The story itself is interesting, and the performances are good, but it all adds up to something less than compelling.



FULL REVIEW