Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Despite a pretty good cast, this one comes across as a bad Woody Allen imitation about a somewhat dysfunctional NYC family dealing with silly misunderstandings and frustrations.

Whatever you think about Allen in hindsight, at least most of his movies were genuinely funny (when they were trying to be, at least) and he hired some pretty good cinematographers.

This one isn't particularly funny - or insightful. Most of the scenes amount to little more than movie clichés - and it quickly grows tiresome.

Most unfortunately, the movie doesn't even know how to make the most of its Brooklyn and Queens locations.

Barbie (2023)


No change in rating since the last time I saw it. Local park was playing this as an outdoor movie, so my daughter and I went to watch it. Some jokes definitely don't land in my eyes, but it's an overall great movie.

COME ON THE KINBAKU AND RAPE IN THE CAVE SCENES ARE LEGENDARY

I was less impressed with the scene itself so much as the fact that

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Poker Face - (Russell Crowe, 2022)

Oh Mr. Crowe, you made me believe the poker game was actually relevant to the story. Silly me. 4/10

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There has been an awekening.... have you felt it?

A Fairy Tale After All (2022) Watched on Tubi. This has some flaws, but also some charm. I liked the puppets and the singing was nice. The costumes were pretty good. The biggest issue for me was that the lead actress felt miscast. She was clearly too old for the role and they should have cast someone younger. The story is alright, even though it is fairly formulaic and derivative. I did like the use of black and white and animation in some scenes. This is a bit of a mess, but I have seen worse. There are enough enjoyable elements here (especially the puppets) to overlook the flaws. Worth a look.

Pumpkin Spiced Musical (2022) Watched on Tubi. A fun musical comedy about a struggling ad agency that comes up with the idea to market a pumpkin spice scented bra. This was laugh out loud funny. I enjoyed the performances and the songs. Recommended if you like musical comedies, pumpkin spice, and bras.

Oh I had to watch this. Not just because of Hugh Jackman but I don't miss a chance when he and Hiroyuki Sanada are in a film together.

Haven't seen this but now I must because I am a recent convert to the works of Hiroyuki Sanada. Been watching some of his old films, some are kind of wild. 😅 I'm enjoying the journey so far.

I'm trying to log in here on my firestick because someone was nice enough to find me one of his first films. I have seen a lot of his work over the years.

Kinky and crazy which makes it better

Which one? Was it perhaps Shogun's Ninja or Shogun's Assassin?

No I believe this is older and a hard to find film. It's from 2002.

Oh I have that one if it's Twilight Samurai. I liked that one a lot.

Yamada after all

Haven't seen much of his.

This was on the television today so I kicked back and watched it. Always had high opinions of this film and thought it was a good pick to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 1979, as well as Hoffman and Streep winning acting awards.

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“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Gandhi​

Every so often, new technology comes along that completely revolutionizes the motion picture industry: sound, 3-strip Technicolor, 3D, anamorphic lenses, Cinerama, 70mm, IMAX film, etc.
The documentary Eno. is touted as being the first generative feature film ever to receive any kind of wide distribution, and it is entirely possible it may be a sign of things to come.
Could generative films someday replace conventional features? That will depend on whether or not there are adventurous filmmakers, distributors, and audiences that make it happen.

How does generative technology work in a feature film? The film uses proprietary generative software to select footage and edit the film so that a different version is shown each time it is screened. According to a NYT article, there are 52 quintillion possible versions.
The running time for each version of the documentary varies. The version that I watched ran a sleek 76 minutes, credits included; other versions reportedly can be as long as 100 minutes.
What stood out, aside from the content of the documentary itself, was the generative technology on display. Every so often, the screen would flash a quick series of text screens with info that was clearly not meant to be read with background electronic music. I believe I caught the name of the theater and the city where I watched it.

As for the documentary itself, well, it's an incredibly insightful look at the life of a musician whose life I admittedly didn't know a lot about - he's been a producer for artists like David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, and many others.
His interest in generative technology started while trying it out to create music; from there, it probably wasn't a big stretch to imagine a generative narrative feature.

I'm not sure how many more versions of the documentary I may get a chance to watch, I would definitely not mind watching at least a couple more different versions (reviewers who have seen more than one say there's a lot of overlap, but also quite a few interesting surprises in each one).

I have no way of knowing if someday we might see generative movies from the studios, but certainly it would add a lot of appeal to franchises that are already popular - like Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Avatar, Jurassic Park, etc. People could try to "catch them all" and spot all of the differences.

If that day ever comes, you'll have to blame Brian Eno for it.

This was a very good film. It's just my type. If the novel it was based on, was on English, it would be the genre I read.

500 Days of Summer, 2009

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is blindsided when his girlfriend Summer (Zoey Deschanel) breaks up with him. Reeling from the sudden split, Tom looks back on their relationship while his friends try to support him in moving forward with his life.

Despite some really interesting ideas, this film can’t quite get its hands around following through with them.



FULL REVIEW