Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The Super Mario Bros. Movie -

I miss Bob Hoskins

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

The Feather Fairy -

This is a beautiful and whimsical take on Grimm fairy tale Old Mother Frost. Played by Italian icon Giulietta Masina, and as her name implies, she's in charge of bringing snow to the world. She literally becomes a mother when she rescues a child, Jakub, from an avalanche. He embraces his consequence-free existence in which he doesn’t age at first, but he desires a normal life once he gazes into Mother's all-seeing crystal ball, discovers put-upon farmer's daughter Alzbeta and immediately falls in love. Meanwhile, Alzbeta's scheming family and the much less motherly Old Lady Death have other plans.

While the synth soundtrack places the movie firmly in the mid-'80s, it looks so good that it might as well be a recent release. The swooping, angular cinematography adds to the movie's fantastical atmosphere and makes the Slovakian countryside seem like paradise. As for the special effects, my favorites being the crystal ball and any scene featuring snowfall, they do not come across as dated. Jakub is played by multiple actors, their strong performances effectively marking the passage of time, and his romance with Alzbeta is pure, charming, believable and recalls the one in the much more famous Grimm tale Cinderella. On the flipside, our antagonists, especially Alzbeta's scheming sister Dora (a great Milada Ondrasíková), exemplify the much less pure "virtues" of greed and self-interest.

If my favorite things about this movie and my synopsis are of any indication, the tale it tells resembles Cinderella, but there are enough variations and the movie is so unique stylistically that it does not just amount to "Cinderella Jr." Cinderella wishes it had a travelling circus as cool and funny as the one in this movie, for instance. Again, the soundtrack is on the chintzy side, and some of the moments occurring while Jakub is on trial made me raise an eyebrow. The movie still adds weight to the argument that the '80s were a strong decade for fantasy, so if you think you've seen the best of it, check to see if you've missed this one.

The Quiet Earth (1985, Geoff Murphy)

I really wanted to like this Kiwi take on the post-apocalyptic "last man on earth" genre. The opening was rather intriguing and had a lot of potential but the rest of the film simply squandered it imo. The ending was just terrible—I mean, I don't mind open endings when done right (in fact, I love them) but here it felt more like a cop-out, and a poor one at that. I also thought the film took a nosedive with the introduction of the other characters.. it was probably supposed to draw a symbolic parallel to the Adam and Eve story but it didn't quite work for me.

Good movie, but too long. Two many storylines too. The Spanish Civil War, maternity, lesbianism, dna testing, war graves, etc. Seemed like two movies.

One very strange thing: two female babies are mistakenly switched at the hospital. When the “parallel mothers” discover this nobody calls the hospital to inform them of their grievous mistake. Here in America this would be cause for a major medical malpractice lawsuit.

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

Foxy Brown (1974)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

This JAY KOOL guy has many funny Beavis and Butt-Head videos.

I thought it was amazing. The ending is so poignant. It's not a true to life narrative. Not everything that happens in the film happens if you know what I mean. The symbolism is much more important than any consistency issues or reality base.

Switched babies at a hospital has been a staple of daytime television forever.

No, I don’t know what you mean.

Never ever watched daytime tv.

Some SPOILERS might follow

Timecrimes takes that premise and brings it down into more personal stakes. The film follows Héctor (Karra Elejalde), a man who unknowingly walks into a time machine that takes him an hour into the past. This puts him in a time loop where he is attacked by a masked man, forcing him to protect his wife from him or others.

It is impossible to talk about this film without spoiling it in some way, so I won't try. I appreciate how economical the film is in how it handles its premise. With a low budget, and a cast of only four people, the script is clever enough to keep the focus, not necessarily in the sci-fi/time travel aspect, but rather in the choices this man makes as he explores this new reality. Like I said above, the stakes are not "world destruction", but rather to protect his wife at all costs.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Well, you know the ending.......do you think they really did that? And that happened as a linear drama film?

The Wrong Missy (2020)


Typical Happy Madison movie anymore. Little originality, a few cheap jokes here and there that make you chuckle, and lots of over the top stupidity.

THE BLOB
directed by: Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.
screenplay by: Kay Linaker and Theodore Simonson / based on a story by Irving H. Millgate
starring: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corseaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Stephen Chase

Well, here's a really fun blast from my past! I just purchased the Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of this low-budget sci-fi/horror classic which introduced Steve McQueen to the moviegoing public at large. I remember my parents having recorded this one from TV on a VHS cassette, which I would watch frequently. And watching the Blu-ray last night, everything pretty much came flooding back to me and I started to remember all the great lines of dialogue and everything. Although made for very little money, the primitive FX work is admittedly pretty cool just because it's so primitve, with that raspberry-colored ooze just pouring through the windows and under the doors of what are actually models. Incredibly simple, but very effective, and I think it still holds up.

In 1988, this movie was remade by director Chuck Russell, in a film which stars Kevin Dillon playing a slightly more juvenile delinquent version of the Steve McQueen role. (In a way, Kevin was sort of taking up the sort of role that his older, more famous brother Matt had previously played in movies like 1979's Over the Edge and 1983's The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, but had kind of left behind at that point.) That movie was the third in a kind of informal trilogy of '80s remakes of '50s horror classics, the other two being John Carpenter's classic 1982 remake of the Howard Hawks production of The Thing from 1951 and David Cronenberg's brilliant 1986 re-working of the 1958 The Fly. Unlike those other two remakes, I don't necessarily think that Chuck Russell's The Blob quite surpasses Irvin Yeaworth's original, even though it's a decent film in its own right, with more gruesome FX which allows you to actually see the title creature's digestive process at work. (Yum, yum!)

Overall, I'd have to rate the original The Blob a 4/5. (And for the record, I think the '88 remake is also a 4/5, but only the minutest smidgen behind the '58 classic.)

Taste of Cherry - 9/10
Second or third viewing. Highly recommend this unique movie.

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THREE OTHER RECENT VIEWING EXPERIENCES (PART ONE)



CALIGULA (1979)
directed by: Tinto Brass
screenplay by: Gore Vidal (original)
starring: Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud

In the immortal words of one of its star's earlier iconic characters: "Welly welly welly welly welly welly well!" At this point in time, what is there to be said for this infamously excessive and fluid-swamped trainwreck of a Roman epic, as well as its history of dysfunction and strife among the creative talents involved? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a great deal more. In any case, this is definitely one of those movies which more mature and hardy viewers absolutely need to watch at least once in their lifetime... if only for the bragging rights! (And ownership of the Imperal Edition Blu-ray is a nice little plus as well.)

Quite honestly, I'm not particularly a fan of porn, so I'm not particularly big on the full 156-minute Uncensored Version, which has all of producer (and that title's being generous) Bob Guccione's hardcore reshoot footage. I found it all just a mite crass and clinical, to tell you the truth. I prefer the more softcore 152-minute Alternative Version, which is much closer to how Tinto Brass originally envisioned the film (although still not really qualifying as a "director's cut"). Granted, you still get quite a bit of full frontal in the orgy scenes, but not the acts of penetration.

So ultimately, the question is: Do I like or dislike Caligula? I must confess, I definitely lean more towards "like," in spite of this film's many flaws in terms of writing and directing (Gore Vidal's original screenplay having been subjected to the more anarchic temperament of Tinto Brass, who was in his turn overriden by the dictates (heh-heh-heh) of producer Bob Guccione). What's the ultimate saving grace of the film, one may wonder? Well, beyond the admittedly impressive if ostentatiously baroque production design... the British leads, of course! Malcolm McDowell is incredibly charismatic and energetic, throwing himself into the role of the mad and capricious Roman emperor with gusto, making Caligula into something of an ancestor of A Clockwork Orange's Alex DeLarge. (God help me, I find the scene of him giving his "wedding present" to the unfortunate Livia and Proculus to be utterly hysterical. Either McDowell's just that good or I just have a seriously warped sense of humor.) John Gielgud, in his brief role as Nerva, provides some much-needed gravitas as well as a genuinely moving death scene. Teresa Ann Savoy as Caligula's sister Drusilla and especially the young Helen Mirren as his wife Caesonia are also wonderful, somehow managing to maintain a dignity and humanity amongst the decadence. And Peter O'Toole (who didn't get along with Brass or Guccione, having been a friend and ally of Vidal's) is scary good as Caligula's uncle, the mad Emperor Tiberius. O'Toole's ravaged and blistered visage effectively sums up in a nutshell and personifies the film's voluptuously diseased vision of a decaying imperial Rome.

So, do I recommend it? Well... yeah, I guess so. But be forewarned, my little droogies, this is strong stuff! I'll be generous and give it a 3/5 Others might be less generous and give it either a 2, a 1, or even a 0. But I happen to have a sense of humor and a strong stomach, so it's kind of a guilty pleasure for me. (Objectively, my head says 2.5/5, but my heart - or perhaps something a little darker - is telling me 3/5.)

TWO OTHER RECENT VIEWING EXPERIENCES;



THE STUNT MAN (1980)
directed by: Richard Rush
screenplay by: Lawrence B. Marcus and Richard Rush / based on the novel by Paul Brodeur
starring: Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Allen Goorwitz, Chuck Bail

More Peter O'Toole! And this film's a real beauty, a brilliantly witty existentialist slam-bang action extravaganza. Almost two decades before the Wachowskis gave us a choice between the red pill and the blue pill, we've got a wonderfully distorted layering of reality and fantasy, with O'Toole as an eccentric movie auteur offering Vietnam war veteran and fugitive from justice Steve Railsback a sanctuary as the stunt man in his work-in-progress World War I epic. Definitely a 5/5 for me, easily!



LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021)
directed by: Edgar Wright
written by: Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp

I've seriously gotten into the work of Edgar Wright as of late, having only just recently become a die-hard fan of his "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz / The World's End). This one's a nice change of pace, but still containing a large dose of Wright's good-humored sense of the macabre. This time-warped gothic tale of Thomasin McKenzie's aspiring fashion designer and her supernatural / telepathic identification with Anya Taylor-Joy's aspiring '60s nightclub singer has a very strong Italian influence (shades of Bava and Argento, particularly on the visual side of things). It's also a rather harrowing tale of the dark underside of London's Soho district, possessing a new emotional depth which might come as a surprise to admirers of the gonzo irreverence of Wright's earlier work. Another 5/5 for me...

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri follows the efforts of Mildred to spark Willoughby and the local police into action in order to bring justice, but also for her to have some sort of closure. Her strategy is to rent three billboards on an isolated road in town asking the sheriff for results. Unfortunately, this puts her at odds not only with many supporters of the sheriff, but especially with Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a loyal but racist deputy that's determined to stop Mildred.

This was the second McDonagh film I saw in the month. It's interesting to see the parallels in terms of tone as the writer and director skillfully juggles both tragedy and comedy. It kinda reminds me of Bong Joon-ho, who does so in the middle of serious dramatic films about murder, serial killers, or classism. McDonagh's script is clever enough to weave in and out of these tragic situations with effective humor, but without losing the dramatic weight of what has happened or what will happen.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

You might be interested to know that Caligula is being re-edited, and virtually recreated by Dave McKean from mountains of footage (90 hours) with not one single shot we see in the 1979 version. I'm excited to see what this new version looks like, and how cohesive it is. I was always a little disappointed with how this movie came out. I'm a huge fan of how John Hurt played Caligula in I Claudius - he was the best mad emperor if you ask me.

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Marcel the Shell With Shoes On - (2021)

Finally, this had a streaming release in Australia and I got to see Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (I must get that VPN.) Marcel's cuteness translates well to feature length - Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate give the little shell a quest and endearing relationships with his grandmother Connie and Dean, who is ostensibly filming a documentary about the little talking thing. I liked how it never felt the film was just spinning it's wheels, with scenes including a drive around which makes Marcel appreciate how big the world really is (he's searching for his lost family) and how awful it feels when fame brings a multitude of privacy-destroying interlopers that never ends and threatens the peace these characters have. The stop-motion is really nice, and Slate's voice work especially well done. Dean's quite genuine laughter at some of the things Marcel says adds another layer of heart.

7.5/10


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Fall - (2022)

Sweaty palms time. I remember the first time I went up in a plane - I was just scared enough to be really uncomfortable, but my main phobia is spiders. Heights just make me nervous, and I think that people who climb sheer cliffs with their bare hands are quite crazy. In this film, to aid in getting past grief, climber Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) is persuaded by friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) to climb a 2000-foot tall radio mast with her. When the ladder leading to the upper reaches collapses, the two are stuck at the very top with no way to get down. Their bag with water, and a drone rests on a radio dish around 50 feet below them - and their phones have no signal, of course. They must figure out how to survive, and how to get word out of their predicament. A very well done suspense/survival thriller which had me on the edge of my seat - it's gripping, and very tense. A lot of fun.

7/10


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Tea With Mussolini - (1999)

Letterboxd : "Fine filmmaking, acting and views of Florence along with the wonderful San Gimignano can't disguise the fact that I was not Tea With Mussolini's audience. For those who like light dramas."

6/10


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My Sister's Keeper - (2009)

One positive I take from My Sister's Keeper is Abigail Breslin's performance, which is great. The rest is a mixed bag really - based on a novel by Jodi Picoult, the movie should have stuck more with the interesting case of a sister created to be a donor to the one with acute promyelocytic leukemia, and her legal battle to have control over her body. It's a messed up situation, ethically and morally - with no clear winner. You want to help your sister - but being forced to donate parts of your body feels like a gross intrusion, especially if that sister is going to die regardless. The film leaves this topic for long stretches though, and becomes a regular 'kid with cancer' drama. Not only that, but it radically changes the ending to Picoult's book, which annoyed her. There's nothing really interesting or unique about the way it's been made, but the drama, acting and overall presentation is decent enough.

6/10