Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Inherent Vice, 2014

Stoner private eye Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) is contacted by his former flame Shasta (Katherine Waterson), who asks him to help prevent her lover, Mickey (Eric Roberts) from being forced into an insane asylum. Along the way Doc crosses paths with cults, neo-Nazis, an unwilling informant (Owen Wilson), and clashes with frenemy police detective "Bigfoot" (Josh Brolin).

I haven't read Pynchon's novel of the same name on which this film is based. I know that the intention was to stay faithful to the text, which partly takes the form of a voice over (by Joanna Newsom) that is narration from the book. I can't speak to the faithfulness of this adaptation, but there does seem to be a tension in realizing a unique voice and vision.

The plot of this film is complex, with multiple overlapping storylines and characters. Most of the sequences are darkly comic and at times borderline surreal. It seems like a film more suited to be experienced in a non-literal fashion than one in which you're rewarded by keeping track of how the drug cartel is connected to the cult and how they both relate to the eccentric dentist.

Even with trying to just "experience" this film, I felt as if I was left adrift a bit. While individual sequences and moments worked really well for me, as a whole I just never quite got into the flow of it. The movie looks really good. In terms of the performances, the actors really seem to be on the right wavelength with each other. But there was some "it factor" that just never materialized for me.

It's hard to say much more. Anderson's films have always worked well as mood pieces for me, but this one left me cold. Little pops of joy here and there, and the admiration for the craft on display were all positives, but my ultimate experience was one of disconnection. I wouldn't say that I didn't understand this movie, but I definitely didn't get it.

Leave No Trace, 2018

Will (Ben Foster) lives illegally in a state park with his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie). When they are discovered by the authorities, they must cope with trying to adapt to a more conventional life. At the same time, both Will and Tom must question what they really want in how to live.

Ugh, this was so good.

I usually try not to read too much about films I intend to watch, but I was aware that both Foster and McKenzie has received much praise for their performances, and that praise is more than earned. The two of them cultivate an excellent dynamic of a family unit with some "us against the world" instincts, but at the same time a dynamic in which Tom is beginning to have a more autonomous view of how she wants to live her life.

What the film does so gracefully is let implications and ambiguities remain as we try to understand what drives these different characters. There are implications that Will is a military veteran, and that his need to move and keep moving, his need for distance is somehow related to some sort of PTSD from his service. In one particularly grueling sequence, Will and Tom are offered a place to stay and work . . . but the work Will must do is cutting down hundreds of trees to ship off to California for Christmas. As the loud buzz of the chainsaws rattles and the trees fall, you can feel some deep part of Will's soul tearing.

Likewise, when Tom is spotted by a jogger and fails to tell Will, it's unclear what she thought or hoped would happen. She claims that she didn't think he really saw her, but this might be a lie. As she begins to experience things that she and her father have always rejected---a house, possessions like a bike, pets--she must reexamine her concept of a good life. Tom has never had friends her own age, must less a crush or romantic partner, and it's through this lens that we really start to feel the way that her time in the woods has been harmful. She has never had the chance to make a choice because she has not been given the opportunity to experience her options.

This is a film full of great sequences, and they add up to an amazing whole with a powerful, powerful conclusion. The photography of the woods is also sumptuous.

Highly recommended.

Dersu Uzala (1975)

By IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17817741

Lola - (1981)

The year is 1957, and Lola is broken into two worlds, the outer respectable one and the inner one symbolized by the brothel which every member of the elite of Coburg frequents. When a new building commissioner arrives (Von Bohm, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) his idealism blinds him to the very existence of the brothel, but after falling in love with Lola - one of the prostitutes who works there - he eventually has to either confront or repress the knowledge that the people he works with and the love of his life has such a dark side. Director Fassbinder dealt a lot with Germany's mid-twentieth century susceptibility towards denial and strong female characters who very much take their life into their own hands. Visually, this film has a dark red glow to it, and is surprisingly less sexual than his other films - delving much deeper into psychological and political territory. Barbara Sukowa's Lola is one of the least passive female characters I've ever seen, blazing a trail through the inner and outer worlds of Fassbinder's Coburg that makes her seem very alive and real - as if she's there continuing her life after you switch off. Mueller-Stahl is likewise great.

8/10

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Chemical Hearts (2020)

Agreed! (I was somehow under the impression that you'd seen this)
This was my introduction to McKenzie and I was knocked out. Glad to see her becoming a star.
But yeah, this film gave me feelings.

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Cruella (2021)

Colorful, artistic, stylish, entertaining, nice cast, superb Emma Stone...

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"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.

Just finished watching and reviewing this...gave it the same rating you did.

The Wrong Missy 6/10


Although it's all over the place, it made me laugh. Lapkus should be in more movies.

Ailey, 2021

This documentary tells the story of Alvin Ailey, the pioneering dancer and choreographer who put an unabashedly Black point of view into his work and achieved tremendous success.

Of course anyone can watch a documentary on any topic they like, but I think that it helps if you have an interest in the topic on display. I do enjoy dance, and especially modern dance. I have a huge amount of respect for the highly intense intersection of physicality and emotion that goes into creating and performing dance.

The story of Ailey's life is inseparable from the story of class and race struggles in America. Born during the Great Depression and working with his mother either in cotton fields or as domestic servants, Ailey experienced the traumas of poverty, racism, witnessing the sexual assault of his mother at a young age, and a migrant life moving from place to place. Ailey was very outspoken about the importance of seeing Blackness represented in dance, and much of his choreography drew explicitly on his experiences.

The affection and respect for Ailey is palpable in the interviews with his former dancers and collaborators. Ailey had high expectations, but there's no indication that he had a runaway ego. In fact, one of the dancers even says that he preferred not to get to know Ailey that well---he liked to leave Ailey up on a pedestal.

That idea--of Ailey as being above and separate--is something that the film manages to convey, and yet it is also a source of weakness at times in the film. Ailey died of complications from AIDS in 1989, and so we meet him in the film through archived footage of interviews with him. While there are moments of openness in what he discusses, there are certain topics that he may not have been comfortable broaching in the 70s and 80s that he might have felt more free to speak about now. One of his dancers even talks about the way that Ailey deliberately kept his sexuality away from his art.

In the faces of everyone who is interviewed, you can see how much Ailey meant to them. He ran a truly diverse dance troupe, and there is a sense from all of his dancers that they were valued.

Even if you are not a fan of dance, I would still recommend this documentary. Ailey's life was truly remarkable and his artistry undeniable.

Quai des Orfevres - I really, really enjoyed this. I knew it was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot who was responsible for one of my Top 10 favorites, The Wages of Fear and also Diabolique but it still turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise.

This was a comeback of sorts for Clouzot. He was supposedly barred from making films in his native France after his controversial 1943 release Le Corbeau. The movie was made under the auspices of Continental Films, a German company, and after France was liberated numerous cast and crew members were also kept from working in the film industry. Some accounts claim Clouzot was merely suspended along with them while others say he was banned and only allowed to return to directing after widespread protests.

The film stars Suzy Delair as Jenny Lamour, an ambitious music hall performer. She's married to the jealous and perpetually gloomy Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier). His childhood friend, Dora Monnier (Simone Renant), runs a photography studio downstairs from their apartment and one of her regular clients is successful businessman George Brignon (Charles Dullin). He's a bit of a pervert (by today's standards) and brings numerous young women to the studio to pose for nude photos.
Sometimes a movie will surprise and impress with it's sheer brilliance. I remember having the same reaction to Witness for the Prosecution that I had after watching this. There's no telling what will catch your fancy when it comes to movies but quality always seems to trump any and all personal preferences.

90/100

This is only tangentially related, but on one trip to New York for a job interview, a friend of mine who was out of town gave me his apartment for the week.
His apartment was across the street from the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater on 55th. The walls of which are glass. I got to watch them rehearse every night. It was awesome.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)


Others have mentioned it is one of their favorite Soderbergh movies, so I thought I would give it a watch despite it being a little before my time. It doesn't come close to my love for Ocean's 11, but it is an odd, intriguing movie. I can see how some would love it, however it's not something I can strongly recommend. You have to be in a certain mood to really enjoy the pace and dialogue that carries throughout the movie.

Part of the film shows the current troupe preparing for a retrospective. It's kind of like the Christina Applegate SNL skit, only with amazingly talented people somehow taking direction to "Uhn, do POW POW da!"

First Wave (2021)

Oscar documentary short list film. Tone deaf at parts (Hi Andrew Cuomo!) but still tragic and traumatizing. Personally I feel like much like Vietnam people should have to watch what Covid does to you. Watching a 35 year old diabetic go gray while his little children try and talk to him over ZOOM it hits you and it hits you hard.

Sadly we only go into the psychology of one of the health care workers and naturally it's about race. A little bit would have gone a long way and going into the mental issues of all the people who have to take care of all of these dying people would have been a lot stronger.

Ka-CONK!

27th Hall of Fame

Magical Girl (2014) -

While the direction of this film was too cold and distant to resonate with me as much as it could've, I still enjoyed enough about it to give it a recommendation. For one, I enjoyed Barbara as the emotional core. Most films would have her start off in good health and have her mental health decline more and more throughout the film. In this film though, she was already unstable and Luis's behavior made her go from bad to worse. For instance, after she intentionally cuts her head on a mirror, Javier comments on it being another scar and later in the film when she's asked to disrobe, we see that her body is full of scars. Given those scenes, it's clear she had been suffering long before she encountered Luis. While Luis's control over Barbara is quite apparent though, Javier, her husband, is guilty of this as well. His monitoring of whether she takes her pills starts out as seemingly innocuous. The more he escalates though, the more paranoid he seems (a scene where he feels inside her mouth to make sure she swallowed a pill is super uncomfortable to watch). Another interesting thing about the film is the struggle which several characters face at finding closure or satisfaction. To list examples of this theme would involve spoiling major parts of the film, but that extensions of it pop up in smaller moments, like Luis missing an important radio broadcast from his daughter, or some unexplainable moments, like the final scene, is quite impressive. As mentioned at the start, the coldness of this film kept me from loving it, but while I'm not sure I'll revisit it again, I did enjoy my time with it.

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Sundown (2021)

6.5/10

Billy Budd - 1962 seafaring drama based on Herman Melville's unfinished novella. Co-written, directed and produced by and starring Peter Ustinov as Edwin Fairfax Vere - Post Captain Royal Navy. Terrence Stamp also stars as the title character Billy Budd, a seaman on the merchant ship The Rights of Man who is "impressed into service"with the Royal Navy onboard the HMS Avenger during the Napoleonic Wars.


This a talented cast with solid directing by Ustinov, good production values and well balanced performances from Stamp, Ryan Ustinov, Melvyn Douglas, John Neville and David McCallum. Wasn't sure if it was for me but I gave it a shot and it drew me in.

80/100