Rate The Last Movie You Saw

With that being said...

La La Land (2016) (rewatch)


I love this movie. The songs are great, with A Lovely Night probably being my favorite if I had to choose. The performance of Another Day of Sun just might be the most fun I've had with any musical in film. Gosling, and Stone are very likable, with Stone surprising me yet again how good she really can be, she owns the screen during Fools Who Dream, as if she didn't have already when she immediately appears in the film. Deep characters? Hardly. But, they're relatable, charming, and when they hurt, you hurt.

The best parts of the film are the beginning, all the way to the observatory scene, and the climax. It didn't lose me during the middle, not at all, but those bits are so good it's hard to ignore that the middle, while excellent, and still just as good as everything I've watched in 2016, can't quite like up to the beginning, and end. Again though, just slighty less engaging. Maybe it's because those bits slow down, and rely more heavily on the drama, when the film is at it's best when it's full of energy, I don't know. It's still great stuff all around.

Visually, this is a drop dead gorgeous film, and demands to be seen on the big screen. Bright blues, reds, and yellows galore, and with a more than capable cinematographer there to make it all the more stunning. I love how it's not completely a movie purely built on nostalgia like I was expecting it to be. Sure, you can clearly tell Chazelle took inspiration from those big overblown musicals from back in the day, but it never feels like it could've been a hidden gem discovered 60 years late; it has modern sensibilities, and it's a better film for taking the harder route of making this kind of movie work in 2016 without being tacky, and "been there, done that."

The only complaint I have really is the dancing. Completely passable, but this definitely isn't Gene Kelly. Still, you have to respect Gosling, and Stone for giving it their all, and it's still well choreographed. All in all though, this is without a doubt the most fun I've had with a film all year, the best screen musical since Sweeney Todd, and confirms that Damien Chazelle just might do the best film endings in modern cinema (seriously, this guy knows how to close a movie!)

The Verdict (1982)

Paul Newman, Sidney Lumet, and David Mamet come together for a court drama. Can I just stop right there, and call it day? This is great stuff, one of those court dramas that's going to make you sweat with anticipation, all while Newman's character hangs on a thin moral thread, which makes for a good character study. It can be watered down a bit by a few instances of an over the performance every now and then, some questionable direction in some scenes, mostly with Newman, and Rampling together, who I don't really have a believable romance together; even after the reveal with the character, I found it to be a little pointless. Still, as I said, with so many masters on board giving their all, it's hard not to fall for this one.

Time After Time (1979)
HG Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has just built a time machine for real but before he can use it one of his dinner guests (David Warner), who is rather unexpectedly revealed as Jack the Ripper when the police come calling, steals it and escapes into time. Wells manages to follow him and finds that the future - in this case 1979 San Francisco - isn't exactly the utopian society he was expecting... Mary Steenburgen (who clearly has a thing for time travelers) plays the modern woman who falls for Wells as he struggles to stop the Ripper before more people die in this entertaining and fun late 70s fantasy adventure.

yeah Depp is amazing in Secret Window! I love the plot tho it's a Top 100 movie for me

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Dheepan

Jacques Audiard's tale of an illegal immigrant painfully trying to settle into a new live in Europe is painful but worthwhile. I found it not quite as good as his crime drama 'A Prophet' but then that's a tough task. His actors were again sublime, the 2 leads just so lifelike. It has flaws and the end sequence is not perfect



It's an unhappy journey for most of the 2 hours running time and some of it is a difficult watch. That said I think Audiard is now one of those Directors along with the likes of Villeneuve, Winding Refn, Malick, Cianfrance, Chan Wook Park - that I will watch whatever he puts out next - because I'm convinced it will be at the very least worth watching.

Not perfect but very enjoyable - 7.5/10

Moonlight

Predictable, pretentious and bland black Boyhood.

Are people awarding this some kind of "pity praise"? Because it's about blacks, made by blacks, and we had #OscarsSoWhite last year that we had to make up for it somehow? I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but what makes it a 10/10 movie across the critic board? It's pretty straight forward, lots of classic clichés and then with an added modern edge too it, trying hard to follow such things as the modern LGBT movement as well as past and modern black society. Where is the weight? Where is the point? Subtle? Sure, but doesn't match the great subtle approach of Manchester by the Sea... And they said Boyhood tried too hard? It's also clear to see Barry Jenkins is "new to the scene". A really good debut, but c'mon? This the 99/100 on metacritic and 99/100 on rottentomatoes movie of the year? Not in my mind. I don't wanna write it off as just a movie wanting to be relevant, edgy, and a bit artsy. But mostly feels like it... mostly.

#FrustratingThoughtsOfTheMind

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OK so it's overrated, but now try comparing it to other black films - in form, content, character and honesty. How does it compare in the history of those?

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Not quite sure what you are searching for here.

But if you want me to say something along the lines of "yeah, I haven't really seen a movie about blacks be so honest, genuine and open" then you only prove my point.

As Spotlight did last year for politics, Moonlight does this year for the black society. I did not care for Spotlight as a movie just because the subject was important. As a movie ,it was straight forward and lived a lot on its subject and importance. That's a classic confrontation as a movie critic or general movie fan. How do you weigh the importance of a subject? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure I don't take an above average film all the way up to a masterpiece because of it...

I think 10 out of 10 as a rating is a over the top yes. But didn't you think it was an important movie? Didn't you think that the subject content is one which hasn't been covered that extensively in film? Didn't you think that the performance of M Ali was extraordinarily good?

I also didn't see the comparison of Boyhood, which is a completely different sort of project making a completely different point. Just because it spanned over a large amount of time on a set of characters? Many movies do the same.

This was always going to be a difficult year for film and the Oscars given what went on last year and therefore there is always going to be some skewing of ratings by some critics to align with that. Having said that, it doesn't mean that every movie they rate is garbage and every movie they slate is brilliant or anything in between.

Forget about the academy, forget about the current movie climate - and give us an honest rating of the piece of work as a standalone 2 hour feature. I think I gave it an 8/10 or near to that. Because it IS poignant. It IS well crafted. It IS brilliantly acted. And those things will still be so in 10 years time too, when the latest societal gripe is that redheads are underrepresented in awards ceremonies. Or whatever.

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

See my last post.
Same as above.
Very much so. He was brilliant. But he was only in 1/3 of the movie. But yes, great peformance.
True. But due to the fact that both movies were a coming of age story and about finding yourself, your purpose, your call and how it focused on life at its most barebones and over a long period of time etc, and both were Oscar nominated, I thought it fitted the bill well enough. Not as a direct comparison, but the similarities are there.
Yep.
My almost-not-quite write up of the movie was simply quick thoughts after the movie and just a quick piece on how my expectations were, how it lived up to it, and what I mostly saw. Had I wanted to actually review it then it would have been proper, with paragraphs and focus on the different elements; acting, story, cinematography etc. But that was not what I was aiming for. Or else I wouldn't have ended on such a low-ground twitter-oriented hashtag, which fits no formality, but did sum up why it wasn't exactly that.

But if you want me to rate it, I'm not sure yet. I gotta gather my thoughts and re-evaluate what I just saw. But I think it's a movie that can get a maximum of 3.5 from me, but more realistically around 3/5 and at the lowest 2.5. So again, not a bad movie.

Match Point (2005)


Easily the worst Woody Allen I've watched. I was tearing my hair out halfway through this. I thought the acting was terrible, plot holes even I picked up (which is saying something) and zero character development.


I'm a fan of Woody Allen too!

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Sounds like every Allen movie I've ever seen.

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Forgot this...

Is that the guy from The Tudors? If so I seen him in a movie recently and it was so bad I had to turn it off.

How many of Woody Allen's films have you seen? I made a smug comment like that once and people challenged me to delve further into Allen's filmography. I did. I found that not only did Woody grow on me (that sounds weird) but I was wrong....not all of his movies are weak. He's made many fine films along with the occasional clunker.

Whoa there buddy. I'm the last person to care about any of that sh*t, and I thought Moonlight was a wonderfully made film.

Yes that's him. Never seen The Tudor's but safe to say I never will.

First of all i was watching this and digging it then really painful toothache came out of nowhere. I ended up taking a couple of Ibuprofen as i was starting to get a headache, then things escalated . Long story short i ended up super sick; falling in and out of sleep for around four hours then i woke up feeling fine. The good thing about having to stop Solaris and come back to it later was that it was at the perfect time; pretty much 2 minutes into Kelvin first arriving at the station. Thanks to that madness and going right back to sleep after i watched it last night then being out all day i've forgot half of the stuff i was going to say about it.

Just watched my first Tarkovsky the other day: Stalker and i enjoyed but also struggled with it, mostly due to the pacing. Well this was much slower since the characters weren't always on the move like the Stalker ones, it was alot quiter/calmer than Stalker too for the most part. Particularly the first 45 minutes of Stalker with all of the loud machinery, gunfire, etc. The majority of this was calm talking; instead of getting bored by it i was completely transfixed on what they were saying. I thought this film was powerful which was a surprise; i often see Tarkovsky's films called cold and i can definitely see that from Stalker; this worked for me on a very subdued level though. Scenes like just before Kelvins departure at the bonfire with his mum crying and him needing to confront the idea that he'll most likely never see his parents again was very well done. I was surprised how long it took them to get into space; it must've took the film around the same amount of time as Stalker took to get into The Zone. No doubt it was needed particularly for Berton's story but i do think it got better once he went into space. I love that it became much more of a psychological film rather than sci-fi oriented; i didn't know much about Solaris so that came as a welcome surprise since i personally prefer psychological films. Could see similarities to Stalker here; ignoring the ending of Stalker we really don't know whether any of the traps or what the room is claimed to be are real, here it's much the same until later in the film with it not being clear if this is hallucinations or madness or what. I thought it was well done how one of the scientists had killed himself and the other two had clearly lost their minds; the damage was done to them, but we get to see everything actively happen to Kelvin. It's kind of like looking at a before and after picture then watching the effects take a hold of him. Was surprised how fast they got into it, for such a slow-moving film they jamp right into Kelvins hallucinations, i mean 10-15 minutes after he arrived he started seeing Hari and about 30 minutes after he arrived he was completely disheveled sending Hari off in a rocket.

Anyway, great film that'll be high on my sci-fi list. Great performances, visuals, interesting themes and psychological aspects and i loved the ending.

Glad to hear you liked Solaris. I found the first idyllic scenes of the Russian countryside and flowing water in the streams, really set the mood for the film. Very beautiful.

Captain Steel once said the most disturbing scene he had watched was the dwarf trying to escape the scientist room. If you think about what might have went on in that room, you wouldn't want to know.

For me the seminal moment was when Hari in a childlike desperation fights her way through a steel door. That was one of the most powerful scenes I've ever viewed.

Oh my god that dwarf scene . Definitely what the hell was that? That was disturbing, it was how quickly the scientist picked him up and he was wriggling all about then he threw him back in and Kelvin didn't even say anything about it.

Agreed on that Hari scene too.