Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Ya know, it's funny, after Part 3, I just accepted the silliness and had no problem with 4. And I thought the little time-loop bit was interesting. 5 is basically a continuation of 4 and is about the same level of quality.

I'm a pretty big fan of this one. I actually like the detached feel, I feel like it fits the story and theme.

I may need to see this.

I won't promise you a "they didn't get it" experience but I was pleased by how much it didn't suck

As someone who thinks the theatrical cut of Part 6 is the worst Halloween film on the franchise*, I'm gonna need to check it out as well.


* i haven't seen Resurrection, 2018, or Kills.

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Set in the early 20th Century, Crimson Peak follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), the daughter of an important businessman and an aspiring writer herself. When an aristocrat called Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and her sister (Jessica Chastain) come looking for funding for a digging machine, Edith finds herself drawn to their mysterious lives and eventually, their apparently haunted home (the titular Crimson Peak).

From the get go, I found myself engaged in the plot, thanks mostly to the performances from Wasikowska and Hiddleston. I thought there was a very good balance of intrigue and romance, with a surprising sprinkle of violence at one point. I was also surprised to see Charlie Hunnam, who I usually find cringey, deliver a fairly competent performance.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Well, I'm glad you liked it. I wanted to really badly but I found it a big ol' buncha meh.
Much ado about nothing, as it were.
Really, really didn't like the special effects. Horror directors really need to get away from leaning into CGI, it just isn't good for this genre.
Interestingly, for me, it was Chastain who carried the film, as much as it was carried.

Yeah, I bring up Chastain in the full review.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 picks up shortly after Part 3, with the three survivors from that part still struggling with nightmares. When Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is resurrected, a new group of teenagers led by Alice (Lisa Wilcox) are inadvertently drawn into his dream world, and forced to fight for their survival.

Aside from Freddy's jokes and the overall style, my main complaints are with the performances and the script. Seriously, the acting is atrocious from pretty much everyone except Englund. Unfortunately, the actors aren't helped by the cringey dialogue.

As far as slashers go, there are a few creative gory moments, particularly a character that turns into a roach, and an inventive scene where characters end stuck in a time loop. But other than that, there isn't much to dig up here. They should've let him dead and buried.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

There's a discussion to be had with this one, oh boy.

Haddonfield Lives Matter.


Jesus, just like people in Wrong Turn can't read a map, people in Haddonfield can't shoot or fight or run!
The only good thing in this film is seen
Go Myers, Go. Kill them all.

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"Some people just doesn't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance."

Surge (2020)

Ben Whishaw plays a drone in an airport security job whos detached life is breaking him down. He starts to crack and go a bit rogue, throwing off all the constraints of his meek existence. I really liked this and especially Whishaw. Some scenes were a bit far fetched but then the randomness of the setting of London could forgive that and the acting ironed them out. Some scary camerawork when he is in full-on mode!

Aye, I felt this went from interesting gothic to outright fantasy with no real need to and ruined the film.

Seen it and it's garbage in my view, young uns are not really interested so it's akin to folk buying the last Oasis singles when they were rubbish just to be completists (a word?)

Back I go again, these three films all vied for the Best Picture Oscar at the 2001 Academy Awards (Gladiator beat 'em.) I saw them way back then, and I revisited them after 20 odd years...


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Traffic - (2000)

One of two Steven Soderbergh films nominated for Best Picture that year (the other being Erin Brockovich, the only nominated film I haven't seen) - he won Best Director for this, and it was probably Gladiator's biggest threat. Looks at the "war on drugs" from three different angles, in stories that'll intersect. Michael Douglas is a judge who is appointed to a high-level presidential task force to combat drug smuggling, and he has a daughter who is really getting into hard drugs in a different manner. Benicio del Toro is a Mexican law enforcement officer - one of the rare ones that isn't on the take. Catherine Zeta-Jones is the wife of a high-ranking drug lord in the United States - one who is about to be taken down when one of his lieutenants (played by one of my favourites - Miguel Ferrer) gets caught by a pair of cops. It's a pretty serious film that demands all of your attention, with a real ensemble cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Josh Brolin, Albert Finney, Amy Irving, Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán. Was a bit dry, depressing and complex for me way back then, but this time around I thought it was quite good.

7.5/10


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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - (2000)

Back in the early 2000s, everybody loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It really threatened to become the first foreign language film to win a Best Picture Oscar. Traffic has a lot of interesting visual aspects that you wouldn't expect because of it's subject matter (bright coloured filters really impose themselves, forcing you to acknowledge their relevance) - but in this film the cinematography itself tells us a lot, and overall you get the impression from this that this is a visual story. Stylized fighting, that I'd never seen the likes of before (these masters of swordplay can actually fly) is mixed with two love stories in 19th Century China. I'm not the biggest fan of the genre out there, but I'm glad I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again with new eyes, seeing and appreciating a lot more than I did in the past.

7/10


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Chocolat - (2000)

Considering the other films it was up against, Chocolat never had much of a hope in winning Best Picture. I know someone who would probably love this - it reminded me a whole lot of Antonia's Line. A miserable French town is visited by a Mary Poppins-like character who opens a chocolate shop and starts to transform the lives of people living there. But the religious zealot Comte de Reynaud (played fantastically by Alfred Molina) has other ideas, and plots her downfall. In the meantime, Johnny Depp shows up for 15 minutes or so as a gypsy and transforms our Mary Poppins (Vianne, played by Juliette Binoche) a bit too. Considering how crucial Alfred Molina's character is, and how much more difficult the role was, I wonder how Binoche and Judi Dench were nominated for Oscars and he wasn't. This had a good ending, and wasn't bad - I could appreciate a lot of different aspects - but it's not really my type of movie, so I reckon this is the last time I'll ever watch Chocolat. And yeah - I craved chocolate the whole time I watched.

6/10

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Contenders for the 2000s Countdown?

Not a bad year for the Oscars.
Chocolat is actually a favorite of mine, I consider it a near-flawless film for the film it tried to be. (Oh, and I agree, Molina should have gotten some kind of nod for this, he's just excellent. It's actually my favorite role of his.)
And Crouching Tiger was easily my favorite film of that year, one of my favorites of its decade.
Traffic was pretty good.

I Watched Dune (Starring Jason Momoa, Oscar Winning Director - Timothée).
The movie is good and normally a 7/10 rating. With all due respect to the makers it's too long for not much story.

Dune (2021)

Dune is a reminder of just how good Game of Thrones was...because this felt like a season of Game of Thrones...just not done that well. While the film is long it likely needed another hour or so for all the supporting characters and to cover the deaths. I think most of the plot was given away in the trailer so that was a bummer but also so much of the story is obvious.

Like most Hollywood films the wokeness is evident as the bad guys are white people taking from the good guys brown sand people. It drives me crazy especially when I think if they had cast an AA in the Baron role it might have had a bit more of an impact. Sometimes you can over do it with the symbolism and they really hammer it home.

Visually the film is stunning, and the plot is great for a first part of the series. It's somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Modern Star Wars when it comes to quality.