Rate The Last Movie You Saw

By The poster art can or could be obtained from De Laurentiis Entertainment Group., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56859916

Blue Velvet - (1986)

This David Lynch classic strikes an interesting balance, with his more bizarre and surreal tendencies running along under the surface of this more grounded and real-world story. After an interesting shot of lawn beetles, and vehicles gliding by with people waving at us, we'd think we're in for another weird journey, but Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) turns up - a regular young guy in a world where darkness and insanity rage behind locked doors - but a saner, more ordered world prevails in daylight. He enters the dark world when he finds a severed ear one day, and is drawn in by Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) - and erotic seductress who has found herself the victim of the seething Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), one crazy, crazy mix of pathological criminality and depravity. Once noticed, Jeffrey has to fight hard not to get sucked into their world, especially since he's becoming attached to a picture of normal, steady and wholesome beauty - Sandy Williams (Laura Dern). Here the Lynchian world and the average everyday world coexist, and it makes for a fascinating film which I never get tired of checking out.

9/10


By http://www.reelzchannel.com/gallery/...ters?pid=54632, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27646581

Predators - (2010)

This is a nice attempt to try and get a franchise that never really flourished beyond it's origin, back off the ground. When Predator 2 came out in 1990, this is what we should have got. I remember seeing Predator 2 and Total Recall on the same day in 1990, and raving on and on about Total Recall while dismissing Predator 2, much to the disappointment of my friend, who'd liked the latter. It was a good idea (bring the action from the jungle to a city) that wasn't thought through well enough - and it managed to discard pretty much everything that was good in the original. Looks like it took the people that own the intellectual property another 20 years to figure it out, and we've got something approximating a real Predator film, but in this Adrien Brody is woefully miscast, and none of the other characters bring much to the party. There's some decent action, and the Predators still make great villains.

6/10


By Filmaffinity, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2329553

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory - (1971)

This kids film is gorgeous, and one I don't mind watching - even with no kids around. The production designers and props people were just let loose with their imagination running wild, and we got a great deal from it. Just add Gene Wilder to that and there's nothing that could spoil it - but nothing would have anyway, because the kids themselves in this movie are so well cast. The awful ones have a ball with the roles they're given, and so do we. I grew up with Willy Wonka, and still love it. An added half-point for the wonderful Tim Brooke-Taylor scene.

9.5/10


By The poster art can or could be obtained from National Lampoon Inc and Artisan Entertainment., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18007448

Van Wilder - (2002)

I liked Van Wilder, and think it was a great vehicle for a young Ryan Reynolds to establish himself. It has that sense of 'goodness' while still espousing the party animal lifestyle. It also has some very funny moments, which a lot of comedies suffer from a lack of. Not everything hits, but enough does to make it worthwhile entertainment.

6.5/10

__________________

Not the worst super-hero movie I've seen, but it's up there. Boring action scenes, boring and cliche story, plot twist you can see a mile away and doesn't really change anything.... a complete and total disaster. Avoid at all costs.

__________________
There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?

Darkman 1990



I recently rewatched Darkman and there is just so much to like about this movie. In comparison to today's superhero overdose, Darkman just sticks to the basics and tells an incredible emotional and captivating story which is real. No over the top CGI, no storylines forced in by studio producers, not really any characters used just as a device, no cut scenes of blatant Easter Eggs and no political agenda in sight. Comedy is used appropriately and not to undercut the tone of particular scenes and characters.

I really really miss these kind of movies in today's superhero landscape. I do like the MCU and how they bought these comic book characters to screen, but after watching Darkman (after about 15 years or so) the MCU are doing so much wrong. I loved you could just watch this movie and not have to worry about what is means to the overarching story or where this story and character fit into the larger universe. It also did such a great job of focusing purely on one character and the journey through the pain he has to go through.

I love this movie, it's one of those movies which will always stick in my memory. It's a real testament to great film making and knowing what works.

__________________
Movie Reviews!!
--
Being John Malkovich

Jacques Tati was one of my major blind spots so I started watching his films this weekend. They're all varying degrees of great, but HOLY COW WHAT THE HELL IS PLAYTIME??? How does a person even make this movie? Staggering stuff. It's less a comedy and more like a Godfrey Reggio film, but I also laughed often. It's a film in which very little actually happens, and yet I feel like I only caught about 10% of what was on the screen at any given time. I'm flabbergasted.

Not something I could recommend to just anybody but boy did it press all of my buttons.



I still have two more films to watch but I can't imagine either of them topping this.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

The Ruins (2008)



An OK movie. The actors really tried too hard to be convincing. However, the presumably "horrific" aspect of the film was rather comedic for me; it has many disturbing as well as ridiculous scenes.

6/10

El buque maldito (1974)



I really loved this film. The pace was easy to go along with, as a viewer. The ambient sounds and the music added a lot to the atmosphere. The skeletal monsters were impressive. But come on, those wooden sarcophagi should have floated; it was ludicrous that they sank like iron chests.

7/10

Day For Night - 5/10
This movie has been up my sleeve for years. I've tried to see it before, wasn't into it -- movie within a movie. I had it automatically recorded from TCM, but this time I finished the movie, but there wasn't anything I liked about it. I wasn't attracted to either girlfriend/leading lady (as actresses, too), and think the better and more attractive (by far) were Nathalie Baye and Nike Arrighi, who had minor roles.



I think I'm "done" with Truffaut. Seems like his best movies were his first two. JPL hit it with "400 Blows", and liked him in the Kaurismaki hit-man movie, but I think I've seen enough.

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

1st Rewatch...I found this prickly and often stomach churning cinematic experience even more riveting the second time. Ben Affleck made an impressive feature length film debut as a director with this story based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River). This is the story of a pair of romantically involved private detectives (Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan) who get involved in the case of a missing a little girl named Amanda. The primary thing that makes this movie so troublesome is that Amanda's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan) is a hopeless junkie who doesn't seem to give a damn about what happened to her daughter. I was surprised how much I had forgotten about this movie the first time around, including the surprising amount of loss of life in the story and the extremely troubling ending that had my jaw dropped and unsure of whether or not I approved. Casey is as solid here as he was in his Oscar winning performance in Manchester By the Sea and Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris make every moment they have onscreen count too.

That's what I was thinking a handful of years ago. I think I bailed after 15 minutes. This will be another one of those "up my sleeve" movies when there's nothing else left to desire and if my options are very limited.

umm...I loved it though. Was that not clear?
It's like my new favorite movie.

I love Predators, and I watch it more than the original at this point.

I really enjoy the whole cast, even Brody doing his Batman voice. I like the flip of taking the action to a different place. I quite enjoy Alice Braga.

And I really dig the weird interlude with

It's such a great Friday midnight movie.

Yes to all this. It should have gotten a lot more respect for at least doing right by the franchise.

" As an unmuddied lake, friend. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, friend. "

That is the only appropriate reaction to Playtime.


Playtime is one of those handful of films, along with 2001 and Passion of Joan of Arc, where to not at least appreciate their singular cinematic vision is to be in a complete different universe from me.


You should never pay any heed to a person if they complain that it 'wasnt funny' or 'nothing happens'. Those people don't deserve it.

I recall in one of the extras or something as it's introduced as, "a movie that was designed and should be seen in 70mm."


It's a little weird, and oddly nice, to see the obnoxious American businessman in a French film portrayed with affection (or at least as I remember it).

I enjoyed this as well. But I just like The Blind Dead.

My writeup from a last year:

Ahh, the Blind Dead. Gotta love 'em.
This is only my second full film (I've seen parts of Night Of The Seagulls as well) in the Blind Dead series and I know I've gone and skipped over Return Of The Blind Dead but, honestly, having seen Tombs, I didn't think it would make much difference. And I was right.
If you've seen any Blind Dead movies you know what they are. 30-40 minutes of people talking and traveling to put themselves in the exact place where the Blind Dead are. Then the Blind Dead wake up and stalk the people really, really slowly - and totally ****ing blind - and ultimately pretty much just overwhelm their victims with sheer numbers. While it may not seem to viewers like it would be that hard to escape these extremely slow-moving, totally ****ing blind, shrouded skeletons, apparently, there is no escape from the Blind Dead.
In this case it all starts when two models, who have been "set adrift" in a boat as a publicity stunt by a "sports magnate", encounter the titular Ghost Galleon, which is literally a hundreds year-old galleon with rotting wood and tattered sails lumbering out of the fog. Instead of getting the **** out of there or staying on their little boat, they decide, one at a time mind you, that they need to board this floating nightmare and explore.
I just want y'all to think about this for a minute. Would any of you, if suddenly overtaken by rotting ancient ship looming out of a mysterious fog, board it? Not even crumbsroom would.
But they do.
This led to both this model and this Wooley making this face:


However, the movie rides, somehow, on the same thing other Blind Dead movies ride on. The Blind Dead are pretty awesome. There's just something so wonderfully macabre about these blind shrouded skeletons busting out of their coffins and then just relentlessly pursuing people who are too stupid to just stay quiet (since the Blind Dead are, ya know, blind) or run full-out in another direction. I just enjoy watching The Blind Dead. I do.
I think what I should do is just get some kind of editing software and take all four Blind Dead movies and just edit together the parts where the Blind Dead shamble around and just watch that once a year or have it on in the background all through October.

Anyway, that's another one down, I gotta say, yes, I am probably going to watch the rest of them, including 2020's Curse Of The Blind Dead, because why not?

I need to see this again because I don't even remember it.

There was a lot I forgot from the first time I watched it.

I loved his Shoot the Piano Player (1960). In fact it's my favorite of his films. The offbeat humor was innovative and unique at the time, and the story was very alluring and touching.

Yeah, I have to concede that this film is just totally in line with my vibe and sense of humor, so I can imagine that this isn't going to hit everyone the same. I personally know many friends/relatives who should never go near this movie. I loved Mon Oncle too but this is next level.

What I most appreciate about it is that it manages to feel like a GIANT movie despite the fact that nothing "big" ever happens. We've talked before about how action scenes are the death of comedies, and this is a film that could have easily ended with someone climbing the Eiffel Tower Harold Lloyd-style or something. So I loved that it never went there. There are times when the most interesting thing happening on screen is a fluttering luggage tag. The fact that a movie this BIG is made up of so many tiny pieces is just mind-boggling to me. The only way I can sleep at night is to convince myself that a lot of what he caught was just lucky accidents. Because if every corner of the screen was choreographed, I just can't wrap my head around that. (Especially the restaurant scene. Is there a more densely-packed hour of film?) One of the best examples I've ever encountered of a filmmaker creating an entire world all their own.

Fitting that we were just having a conversation about films not needing beginnings middles and endings, because this is Exhibit A for sure.

And as for not being funny? Please. The utter impotence of an angry person slamming a
"silent" door is the height of comedy as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, this occurred to me as I watched it. A few years ago I saw Rear Window at a local theater. It wasn't in 70mm, but it's also a film that's largely made up of small tableaux, so watching it on a large screen meant that so many small details became clear that I'd never noticed when watching it on TV. I imagine Playtime would be even more rewarding in this context.