Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Mommy (2014)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Cruella


Wow, really liked it, I strongly recommend it.


PS: Is it me or Emma Stone reminds of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn?

Hellbender (2021) on Shudder. This was great, really well done and very cool. It's written and directed by 18 year old Zelda Adams and her parents, John Adams and Toby Poser. All three also star in the movie along with Zelda's older sister Lulu Adams. It's a horror film about a teenage girl whose mother keeps her isolated to hide the dark secrets of the family's linage. Zelda and her mom Toby are both very good in the lead roles. If you like smart independent horror, then check out Hellbender.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62194031

Pather Panchali - (1955)

This was great, and a reminder (if on a bit of a tangent) that I should really check out more Italian Neorealism stuff (which served as an inspiration.) Simply the struggles of a poor family in India, which doesn't necessarily just focus on Apu, for whom a trilogy of which this is the first follows. It was the aged "Aunty" that tugged at my heartstrings the most - the overworked matriarch of the family badmouths and nags her to the point where she leaves - and when she tries to return she's rejected. I thought she deserved love and respect, nice and kind as she was. All together we have a mother, father, their daughter and son Apu - along with the aforementioned Aunt. Apu's father is a writer, which gets him nowhere, and he has to take on menial jobs just so they can survive, which they barely do. Life is harsh and full of sadness, but there are also rare moments of joy. By the end tragedies have taken their toll, but to recount them would be to spoil the film for anyone reading. Once you get to know them the poignant moments really hit hard - and those moments are very real and down to earth. I'll catch the other films in the Apu series in the coming days.

8.5/10

Foreign Language Countdown films seen : 77/100

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How so?

Breathe (2017)

Underrating total masterpieces. Typical mark.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Don't Look Up follows two astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) that discover a comet headed towards Earth, a "planet killer". As they try to alert everyone, they are surprisingly met with apathy and indifference, from President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) down to the media and the general public.

Much like the issues it tries to tackle, there seems to be no middle ground with it. You're either on board with it, or you're not. I happen to fall in the former category. McKay does throw everything AND the kitchen sink at us, but I think the lack of subtlety works for what he wanted to transmit. I can say I spent most of the film laughing or chuckling at all the things, institutions, trends, and whatnot that they make fun of.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Delightful movie from Iceland based on a true story. Really enjoyed it.

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

Side Street - 1950 noir directed Anthony Mann. There's also a first rate helping of police procedural to it. Farley Granger stars as young father to be Joe Norson. His gas station business has recently folded and he and his pregnant wife Ellen (Cathy O'Donnell) are forced to live with her parents. He wants things for his wife that he can't afford as a part time mail carrier and this, in turn, leads him to a fateful decision.


This was an effective thriller with NYC locations playing an essential role in the story and included one of the earliest car chases captured on film that I can ever recall. It was also Mann's farewell to noirs before turning his attention to directing a string of impressive and classic Westerns. Granger and O'Donnell worked well together and this was the second (and final) movie starring the two released within a year. The other being the just as impressive They Live By Night. The rest of the supporting cast is just as good with Paul Kelly as lead detective Captain Walter Anderson, veteran character actor Charles McGraw as the other investigator, Detective Stanley Simon and, that's right, the inimitable Whit Bissell as skittish bank teller Harold Simpsen.

This has a bit of a hard edge to it with Mann not the least bit squeamish about showing the offhand viciousness of the blackmailers. These don't come off as just random victims. There's an immediacy to the bodies piling up and that's a testament to the director's storytelling. Pretty decent noir and a noteworthy farewell to the genre for Mann.

83/100

theres a australian version aswell

Anna (2019)

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Studio 666 (2022)


I expected this to be campy and odd, and it's certainly both. There just aren't really any elements that were done extremely well. It's fun to see the Foo Fighters do a movie, but it's a full-fledged B-movie.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

This was a good watch and great to see Cushing and Lee together. I do love my Sherlock films on rainy afternoons Guy Ritchie can FO!

The Eyes of Orson Welles - 7/10

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I gave this movie a 10/10, and Stacy Keach's acting a 10/10. Surprised more haven't seen it, considering John Huston directed it.

Find Me Guilty, 2006

In this courtroom drama/comedy, Jackie DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) is rounded up as part of a sprawling prosecution of mob activity in New York. Fed up with his lawyer, Jackie decides to represent himself in a case that includes dozens of defendants. Getting the occasional piece of advice from actual lawyer Ben (Peter Dinklage) and increasingly drawing the ire of prosecutor Kierney (Linus Roache), Jackie puts on a show in the courtroom under the eye of Judge Finestein (Ron Silver).

When discussing the jury, who seem to be charmed by Jackie's affable schmuck routine, Linus Roache's prosecutor finally blurts out "What is wrong with these people?!". This is, it must be said, how I felt for a lot of this film. There are some parts that work out really well, but I also spent a lot of time frustrated or disgusted with what I was seeing.

There is a lot going for this film. The performances are strong across the board, with Vin Diesel putting in a really solid lead turn as Jackie, a man who (the film would have us believe) has a lot of emotion hidden under his tough guy exterior. Dinklage gives a lot of charm to his own character, someone who could easily have just been a legal-exposition delivery system.

I also thought that the film made some interesting points about hypocrisy. Kierney repeatedly refers to the defendants (in private) as "the Guineas." When Jackie is shot by his cousin in the very beginning of the film, he is shamed for not turning in his assailant. But when Jackie is later brutally beaten by three prison guards, no one really asks any questions.

Finally, the broader comedy of having a trial that include so many defendants gets some good laughs. In one scene, one of the men has a heart attack. Days later he is wheeled into the courtroom in a hospital bed, lifted over a barrier by his co-defendants. As we watch, the trial stretches to the two-year mark, that time counter alone functioning as a kind of brutal joke on the jurors and the men whose fates hang in limbo.

But I do have to say that at a certain point, it felt like the film was overexerting itself a bit too much on Jackie's behalf. Conveniently, we are not shown his crimes, which at the very least involve coordinating a large number of drug deals, and at worst include violence. In fact, we conveniently do not see ANY violence on screen except that from characters we are meant to dislike: the abusive guards, and Jackie's junkie turncoat cousin. It is obvious---or at least very strongly implied---that the men are very much guilty of drug running, fraud, and even murder. But this is all kept off screen because it would detract from getting laughs out of Jackie's amateur lawyer routine. It's not as cute when you remember that it's in service of exonerating killers and drug dealers.

I also had a very mixed reaction to the scenes of Jackie charming the jury. I mean, I guess. I found him incredibly off-putting, telling crude jokes, making homophobic jokes, and so on. Watching the jury yuk it up like they were at the best stand-up comedy show ever was just confusing.

Finally, I don't really care for "fake IQ" moments in film. Think about when someone shows they are "smart" by reciting something from memory. That's not intelligence, it's memorization. Similarly, there were parts in the film where lawyers were supposedly scoring points on the prosecution witnesses that were just dumb. In one part, an FBI agent mis-attributes a quote. Dinklage's lawyer calls him out on this, then goes on to say that if he made a mistake about a quote, couldn't he have made a mistake about everything? Um, WUT?! We see that the agent has meticulous notes, photographs, audio tapes, and multiple other pieces of evidence that clearly do NOT rely on distant memory. Yet everyone nods along as if misremembering a quote and failing to identify a license in a PHOTOGRAPH are similar types of mistakes one could make.

There are some fine qualities to parts of this film, but I found that in bending over backwards to generate goodwill towards its central lug, it overstepped and ended up trying to make inexcusable criminal activity likable. This film would never ask us to cheer for the leering prison guard who creepily propositions Jackie's ex-wife, so why is it asking us to root for a group of violent drug dealers?