Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I'm always surprised how surprised people are about this kind of thing. I'm still not sure whether I live(d) in a very different world or whether I just walked around with my eyes and ears open?

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Experiment in Terror (1962)

Grandmas Boy (2006)


Another favorite of mine in the same realm as Knocked Up. Growing up playing lots of video games (as well as other activities in the movie) really made me relate to the characters here. All of the stereotypes and jokes work in this one, and it's before I started getting sick of Nick Swardson

Never a truer word was spoken.

Screenshot of Jeff Daniels in Gettysburg.

A tragically unfortunate likeness. Cannot be unseen.

Blithe Spirit, 1945

Charles and Ruth are hosting a fun evening with another couple. They hire a local medium to come and perform a seance at entertainment, but it all gets a little too real when the spirit of Charles' first wife, Elvira, is summoned and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Visible only to Charles, her presence causes a rift between Charles and Ruth.

This movie could--and should!--have been great, but somehow I felt like it landed at "good."

On the positive side, the dialogue absolutely crackles with dry humor (courtesy mostly of Noel Coward's source material) and the actors deliver their lines very well. All of the relationships bristle with love-hate energy, and that's a fun dynamic when it comes to their conversations.

It would be wrong to not call out Margeret Rutherford's totally stellar performance as the medium. Equal parts kooky old lady and poltergeist fan-girl, Rutherford is utterly charming as a woman who is in over her head and ecstatic that she gets to be a part of a genuine paranormal experience.

The problem that I had with the film had a lot to do with character development and motivation. There seems to be very little genuine affection between Charles and Ruth or between Charles and Elvira. That could have been fine, because a marriage doesn't have to be loving to be funny. But none of them really make sense as a couple. More than that, the lack of affection means that the motivations of the characters seem muddled. Elvira doesn't really like Charles, and frequently says that she wants to go back to where she was. But then we're told that she's plotting his death so that he'll join her in the afterlife. I never felt like I got much of a grip on what any of the main characters actually wanted--out of life or from each other.

There's an aimlessness to the movie that work out okay in the middle because the dialogue is so good and the performances are so fun. But going into the final act the one-liners can't float the film any longer. I was actually somewhat confused by the last 15 minutes, and the lack of world-building and character building left me feeling like I didn't totally understand why certain things had happened and how the characters were meant to feel about them.

I did enjoy the way that the movie was filmed. It comes across (in a good way) as a mix between a film and a stage-play. I liked that Lean alternated between showing and not showing Elvira--making some clever uses of empty space to help us understand different perspectives.

I'd call this one a near-miss.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

I'm sad that I can only give this one thumbs up.

It's a solid flick. I feel like it loses a little steam in the final act, but it's a very satisfying narrative with some very enjoyable performances and stunning visuals.

Personal Anecdote!! I was an extra (like, one of thousands) in The Dark Knight Rises, and at one point when Nolan walked past my group a guy started (mostly as a joke) heckling him: "Noooooolan! Nooooolan! Hey, Nolan! Explain Inception! NOLAN!" Whenever I think of Inception I remember that distinctive Pittsburgh accent yelling at an Oscar-nominated filmmaker.

The Dark Knight Rises is one of those rare sequels that stands proudly next to its predecessor.

The Party (1968)

Murder by Decree (1979):
I love Benedict Cumberbatch; but its always nice to see a traditional Sherlock Holmes. Christopher Plummer plays Holmes with a vigor that reveals how deeply he cares about the victims. Holmes gets emotional more than once and its very interesting to see. He has good chemistry with James Mason's Watson. Its nice to see a Holmes and Watson that aren't at each other's throats.

This movie is the darkest Sherlock Holmes story I've ever seen/read. This isn't surprising, since its based on the same Jack the Ripper theory as the graphic novel From Hell. Despite the film's deconstructive nature, it all feels true to the source material resulting in an authentic but original experience.

Unfortunately, the films sound mixing is horrendous. The actors' voices aren't captured clearly and they're obscured by noisy sound effects, especially in crowd scenes. The dvd I watched had no subtitles, so I missed a third of the dialogue. The pacing gets sluggish at times and the production design sometimes feels fake. But by the end, it was all cool.

Overall, Plummer and the script win over the crappy sound design and pacing errors. I recommend this movie, but make sure you get a version with subtitles.


Drinking Game Idea: Take a drink whenever Holmes tells Watson they're being followed.

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My ratings are generally skewed towards the positive side.

Ministry of Fear, 1944

This was a really fabulous noir/thriller from Fritz Lang.

We meet Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) as he watches a wall clock count down the last minute of his captivity in an asylum. On his release, he is given friendly advice from the warden to steer clear of the police. But making his way back home he by chance spends some time at a small charity fete, where the simple act of playing a guessing game about the weight of a cake sets off a series of strange and increasingly dangerous events. In trying to unravel the mystery, Neale teams up with a charming pair of siblings who run the charity, a mysterious woman conducting a seance, and various characters who might be allies or enemies.

There are a lot of specific details in the film that really add to its charm. To start with, the setting of wartime England is evoked, not only in the plot itself, but in elements like the sound of an air raid or a sequence where during a raid a little girl takes a basket of kittens down into the subway to stay safe. The siblings running the charity have escaped from Austria, and there's a general sense of surrounding tension. The general level of detail and specific sense of place clashes nicely with the strange and nightmarish events that happen to Neale.

I also loved the style in which the film was shot. Undoubtedly my favorite moment was a character coming into consciousness to the sideways view of a man in a rocking chair. The film is full of fun, odd angles and moments like this. Many of the sets involve neat use of space, like staircases that allow for layering and motion of characters that is both dynamic and disorienting. Another great sequence is the one in which Neale attends the seance and things just go . . . wrong. Lang isn't afraid to use long stretches of darkness and/or silence, and it adds to the tension and disorientation.

The set-up that Neale has had a past with the law (something that is slowly revealed through the course of the film) adds a wonderful sense of paranoia to the whole thing. Neale's reluctance to go to the authorities is totally understandable, and yet at the same time the viewer can see how it makes his behavior more suspicious. Giving the main character a really good reason not to immediately go to the police makes Neale's actions much more relatable and adds to the dread.

I first heard about this film while taking a TCM online class in film noir. I'm sorry I didn't get to it sooner--it's a real gem!

The New World (2005)

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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Downhill 2020


Only watched this because I unashamedly love Will Ferrell, he is my favourite comedic actor, I even like him in films I do not like, I don't know how anybody could not like this idiot.


Anyhow I was surprised by the emotional depth and realism of this movie and even more by how much hate there is for it, I'm pleased I read the reviews after the movie as I probably wouldn't have watched it otherwise


so yeah its a remake and the original is a hundred million billion times better by most accounts but for me it was something different and I really quite enjoyed it but I seem to be the only person

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Do you know what a roller pigeon is, Barney? They climb high and fast, then roll over and fall just as fast toward the earth. There are shallow rollers and deep rollers. You can’t breed two deep rollers, or their young will roll all the way down, hit, and die. Officer Starling is a deep roller, Barney. We should hope one of her parents was not.