Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Oppenheimer


8.5/10


I left the theater thinking 9.5/10 but the more I thought about the movie the now I realized it would have benefited from slowing down just a tad to give the audience a breather.


I also think the "boom" could have been a little dramaticised.


Finally, it was a huge missed opportunity to not show Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their aftermath. I realize Nolan trusts the audience to realize that was his point but still.


Overall still a very enjoyable movie.

Germany, Year Zero (1948, Rossellini) - A

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Razorback (1984)

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Striker (1989)


8 / 10

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Across the Spider-verse
8/10.
I was reluctant to see this one, as I wasn't impressed by the trailer, but the movie turned out to be quite good. The animation is top-notch; there were times that Morales looked like a real person, especially when he was standing still and there were shadows on him. The writing and character development are also very good. I enjoyed Gwen Stacey even more in this one, and I also liked new characters Spider Punk and Spider-Man 2099.

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Boldly going.

Agreed. It's one of the "big five" films that I believe every single American should watch by the time they're 18 years old - films that transcend the medium and are simply a part of Americana as a shared cultural cannon, regardless of whether a person has an interest in film or not:

The Wizard of Oz
Gone With the Wind
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
The Godfather

Very good movie. Brave on Anne Reid’s part.

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

First-time director (impressive) with a strange weird movie. Willem Dafoe is really good, which is satisfying as he’s the only person on screen.

When the alarm system was breached why didn’t the cops come? This I didn’t understand.

The Big Heat, 1953

One night, a police officer uses his service weapon to take his own life. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in to investigate the death, and soon discovers that it’s somehow connected to gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and one of his lieutenants, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). But the more Bannion investigates, the more danger he finds himself in. With the unlikely help of Stone’s girlfriend, Debby (Gloria Grahame), Bannion relentlessly chases down the truth.

Gritty and brutal, this crime thriller keeps you on the edge of your seat courtesy of memorable characters and shocking plot turns.



Full review

The Life of Emile Zola (1937)


I don't really know much about Emile Zola, but this was an interesting film. About 30 minutes of it is really 'the life of' in a biopic sort of way, then it dives into the intricacies of a case in which a man is falsely accused of spying and Zola, in later life, is persuaded to intervene and then turns into a courtroom drama. Paul Muni is good as Zola, with a couple of grandstanding speeches.





Allegro Non Troppo (1976)



I see that it was the 'Bolero' segment that made the animated movies list, and that segment is by far the best part, really well done as a standalone animation. Some bits I liked less. The film as a whole is charmingly bonkers, though, with some really funny moments.

I whole heartily agree with your rating. It's not only a wonderful picture, but "Over the Rainbow" is probably the greatest song ever written for a movie musical. Someone once asked me what song I'd like to have written. It was that one.

Skinamarink, 2022

One night, siblings Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) awaken to find that their mother and father have disappeared. Unable to make sense of this development, the two hunker down in the den/basement. But as time wears on, the windows and doors begin to disappear, along with other objects in the house. Strange voices call to the children, and it’s unclear what the strange being or beings want with them.

Meticulous in its pacing and building of suspense, this is perhaps the best portrayal of child-like nightmare logic that I’ve ever seen.



Full review

BARBIE

In light of all this "Barbenheimer" hype, my curiosity finally got the better of me. Having already seen Oppenheimer last week (Tuesdays being $7 at my local theater), I decided to view the other side of this newfangled phenomenological coin.

Like Oppenheimer, Greta Gerwig's Barbie knocked the top of my head off, but in a decidedly different way. I really must say, I haven't felt such a conflicted response to a movie since Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police back in 2004! Don't get me wrong, I was fully entertained up to the hilt. I've admired Margot Robbie for quite some time now, and both she and Ryan Gosling play Barbie and Ken pretty much perfectly. There were so many ways this movie could have gone horribly wrong, and one way would have been if the actors hadn't found the right balance between plastic and superficial unreality on one hand, and very human pathos and humor on the other. But everybody just seems to be wired to exactly the proper frequency, and in a movie like Barbie finding the correct tone is at least 90% of the battle. I haven't necessarily followed Will Ferrell's movie career post-SNL, but I thought he earned a few hearty laughs as the Mattel CEO. And speaking of SNL alumni, it's always a pleasure to watch Kate McKinnon, and she was great as "Weird" Barbie. And I should also say, after watching the opening parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey's introductory "Dawn of Man" sequence ("dawn of girl"??), I felt like I was pretty much in good hands!

But it's not like there isn't a major "cringe" factor going on at times (most egregiously in Gosling's later faux-power ballad musical numbers). I mean, I've always been pretty much a fence-sitter when it comes to culture wars. Granted, my personal biases have always skewed very liberal since my later teens (Kurt Cobain being sort of an influence on me there), but as an adult I tend to have a balanced perspective and I'm better able to see both sides of contentious issues. So the movie's sexual politics and its attempt to satirize gender warfare I find rather cute and clever, and it's quite often very intelligent in that arena. It's just that it's all rather... on the nose at times! Barbie is certainly funny and intelligent enough to redeem its occasional preachiness, but it does tend to wear its significance on its sleeve much of the time, once or twice even grinding to a halt for the sake of the odd sermon.

Ultimately, however, Barbie was mostly a satisfying viewing experience for me. In a way, it does rather more successfully what Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections tried to do, which is to give a kind of self-referential "meta" view of a pop-culture phenomenon, even to the point of actually visiting a corporate boardroom the way the recent Matrix sequel did! But while Wachowski's film ultimately got tripped up and mired in its own nostalgia, once again Barbie manages to find the correct balance - albeit a sometimes wobbly one!

So will I pre-order the big 4K/Blu-ray set when it's announced? Er... I don't know if I'd go that far! But I think this one's definitely going to stick in the memory for quite a while...

1. Part of the plan was that he and his crew had the alarm defeated on the outside. When things went south inside, however, his crew just bailed.



2. The owner was an eccentric and intended Dafoe (or whomever might break in) to be part of a piece of performance art Perhaps the owner wanted any intruder to die listening to Macarena.



3. An old fashioned glitch.

I think that sort of proves that as an artist, the more time and money you spend on developing a project the more timeless and classic it will be. That goes for any medium you put your hands to.

By impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9828051

Frida - (2002)

Here's another biopic to broaden the scope of 20th Century artists I know something about - Frida, about the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. It mostly sticks to a tried and true formula - but sometimes incorporates Frida's real paintings into the real life scenes which inspired them. Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina dominate the film as Frida and her sometimes husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera. The other big names appear very, very briefly - for example, Antonio Banderas (as David Alfaro Siqueiros) only has a few short scenes before he disappears. Geoffrey Rush lopes in to play Leon Trotsky, who had a love affair with Frida while in Mexico hiding from Stalin's goons. Edward Norton rushes in and out as Nelson Rockefeller and we also see Mía Maestro and Ashley Judd. Lovely music in this one - very lively and it has a kind of Mexican celebratory tone to it. There's a passion and wildness to Frida that Salma Hayek brings to life, and she's far ahead of the rest in giving an extraordinary performance. Frida lived life to the full and her candle burned so brightly that she died at age 47 - I love her paintings, and her spirit. While very good, this is another mainstream biopic that feels like it could have gone a little more in the surrealist direction, but I have to admit that it's bright, lively and filled with fiery, lustful lifeforce.

(I know that Harvey Weinstein's shadow looms large over this film, but I don't want to taint the celebration of this artist despite the fact that the victims of his crimes deserve to be acknowledged. Director Julie Taymor, Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd deserved much, much better.)

7/10

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The Deepest Breath, 2023

In this documentary, we learn about the lives of Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan, two people whose lives intertwine around the sport of free diving. Alessia is determined to set records and make her mark on the world of free-diving, an extreme sport in which swimmers use a single breath to descend as deep as possible and then return to the surface. Stephen, after a close call of his own doing a free dive, becomes a safety officer and expert. Together the two of them experience the thrills and dangers of the sport they love.

This is a thrilling and emotional look at two people forming a powerful bond while living on the edge.



Full review

I just did a lovely double feature at the theater: the new Ninja Turtles movie and Talk to Me.

Really enjoyed both! For very different reasons!

Red Beard (1965)