Rate The Last Movie You Saw

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Real Steel - (2011)

I have a few movies to watch so I can tick them off a list, and so I wasn't overly enthusiastic about Real Steel but I wasn't in a mood last night to watch anything I'm really looking forward to - it was the perfect night to get this over with. I'd say Real Steal is a mix of Rocky and Over the Top - except with giant robots. It's the future - and everything is exactly how it is now except for the fact that there are giant robots which are operated by humans in fights with each other. It's a big deal, and Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is involved with it - someone who likes the business but is a terrible decision maker. He's suddenly saddled with the son he never wanted to be involved with for a period of a few weeks. Will their relationship only go down the proverbial hill further, or will father and son bond over robots and be impossible to tear apart once the few weeks are up? It's a movie! You know what's going to happen. The robot stuff is fantastic in Real Steel, but the human stuff is abysmal. So corny and cliched it's a pain to watch. If you love to watch robots fighting each other though, it might be worth battling through the braindead screenplay that goes through the motions like it's been written by a robot.

5/10

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Satyricon (1969)


This was basically what I was expecting from a Fellini movie after watching La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. It's basically pure European arthouse. It is not a movie in the conventional sense of being a well-structured narrative story. Instead, it feels more or less an audiovisual experience, like visual music. Fellini claims this is an adaptation of a Roman novel written 2000 years ago, but it is quite a loose one if the original had, like, a plot and stuff.

If I compare it to the only other arthouse movie I (re)watched this year, Andrei Rublev, I would say that this one is quite like Andrei Rublev without the seriousness, gravitas, and beauty. Not to say that it is a bad movie, but it is not something I would regard as a particularly exceptional piece of art. If I were 10 years younger, I might have been more impressed, but today I am not in the mindset, "Oh my god, this is experimental, so it must be great art."

I think at this point, almost anyone who's into the Terrifier movies has come to know what to expect in terms of blood and gore, and that kind of stuff, in which case I think it's sufficient to say that on that department alone, the movie probably will not disappoint anyone who is into the movies mostly because of that.

Memory's a bit hazy but I seem to remember the earlier films in the series to have a more abstract quality, which somehow added to their appeal. There were parts that felt like you didn't know if you were watching something that happened IRL or in some weird alternate universe, or something along those lines.

In any case, the latest film in the series has, needless to say, come with a bigger budget and it looks more polished and feels more like a professional production than its predecessors. That, depending on your point of view, may be a pro or a con.

To me, it just felt like Leone has started adopting many of the story contrivances that became popular in other horror series, which makes this entry feel a little less original and more like a generic horror film with the trademark Art the Clown stuff added almost as an afterthought.

Sure enough, audiences seem to be reacting positively, at least on opening weekend, as the movie has become a top box-office hit and will likely end up outgrossing all its predecessors put together.

Leone has already said that he's working on a 4th film in the series, so it probably won't surprise anyone that this one may not have the most definitive of conclusions. With any luck, the next installment will be an improvement on this one.

Greg Jardin's It's What's Inside may be one of the most delightful of all the recent movies that didn't get a theatrical release mostly on account of Netflix buying them.

After the movie premiered at this year's Sundance, Netflix paid a cool $17m for it. It's difficult to ascertain exactly how well the movie would have done if given a traditional theatrical release, so it's easy to see why the Netflix offer seemed like a much more appealing option.

In any case, if there's any recent movie that deserves to eventually gain cult status, it is definitely this one - and it's kind of hard to describe what makes it so unique without going further into the plot details.

But this is also the kind of movie that's best enjoyed not knowing too much about what happens in it. Suffice it to say that the movie revolves around a group of youngsters gathered at a celebration and a very unique device brought to the event by one of them, which has some extraordinary powers.

The movie does have some sci-fi and horror elements in it, but to reduce it to simply being that strikes me as doing it an injustice. It has that, but it is also a tad more complex than perhaps a lot of viewers might be anticipating after the first 10 or 15 minutes.

Let's just say, it's one of those movies where not everything is at it seems. And after a certain point, the surprises keep coming at an ever-increasing rate, which is one of the most unique pleasures the film offers. There is definite cult potential here, even if it never becomes any kind of mainstream hit.

The ensemble cast is absolutely terrific, but the standout might be Brittany O'Grady, who most recently appeared in Sometimes I Think About Dying, and gives a wonderful, multi-layered performance here.

This is Greg Jardin's first feature - and I absolutely cannot wait to see what he will do next.

Try to imagine Back to the Future without any appealing characters, with a confusing and muddled plot line, which may not always make much sense, and without any sense of wonder and adventure, and you may have a good idea of what to expect from Caddo Lake.

The movie does have some very committed performances from good actors, and pretty solid production values across the board, at least for something that went straight to streaming.

Caddo Lake was produced by M. Night Shyamalan, but not directed by him. However, for people who are big fans of his work, this might actually play a little bit better (at least I would imagine it might).

When a movie has very unappealing and underdeveloped characters, it just really makes it a lot less appealing from the get-go, and it doesn't help that so much of what happens in the movie relies on some twists and reveals that come until fairly late, probably almost all of it in the third act of the film.

These twists and reveals are not dramatically satisfying in light of what's come before, nor do they always make a lot of sense. It's easy to get the sense that much more emphasis was put on pulling the rug from under the viewers, narratively speaking, than in developing a story that was more involving in the first place.

I think part of what made The Sixth Sense such a satisfying experience when it first came out, is the fact that we really grew to be involved with the characters even before the 'twist' was revealed. It seems sad to me that so many Shyamalan film have come to increasingly focus just on having a twist, rather than a more appealing story or characters that we could relate to.

You Were Never Really Here (2017)
8.75 because it kept me interested (not least because it's only about 10 minutes long - that's an exaggeration but it could easily have had another 20,30 minutes, but I guess it worked like this).
It also kept me quite confused, to the extent that I had to check the plot on wikipedia a couple of times.
Also some bits of it were really quite silly.
At the end it suddenly reminded me a bit of Leon The Professional.
It might also be a film that helps someone a bit getting over loss when they're about to give up, but I don't know, just a passing thought.
It's a strange film, and obviously quite disturbing, but effective in its own way.
Interesting to see Phoenix playing this type of character.

It's such a shame that Lynne Ramsay has only directed 4 full-length features in her life.

Top Hat (1935) - Mark Sandrich: 7/10

Lee Miller - The true story of Lee Miller a Vogue photographer who also went into WW II Germany as a photojournalist and was there to document some of the worst of it, including the death camps. She was there as an embedded photographer with a uniform, at the end when the reich fell apart, bathed in Hitler's personal bathtub as an act of defiance and followed the army into the camps.

You should be aware that this movie does NOT flinch. Parts of it are horrifying, explicit and hard to bear. Kate Winslet portrays Miller in scenes that are almost as horrifying as anything you've ever seen in documentary footage. It's not light entertainment at all, but it's a good representation of a piece of history that most of us don't want to even think about, much less see. Having grown up around some folks who were in places like that in the war, a lot of this movie illustrates things I heard stories about and have seen in documentary footage. This movie shows you about as much as you can probably take and should make you appreciate the luxury of sitting in front of your computer holding forth opinions on movies.

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The Circus - (1928)

I got a whole lot of laughs out of this one. Something about the Little Tramp interacting with circus acts without clownish intent (just trying to help) and getting speedily knocked down over and over again or else having other inappropriate things happen is hilarious. There are incredible moments in The Circus, like his tightrope walk (he loses his safety harness, his pants fall down, and he's beset with a dozen or so panicky monkeys crawling over him) which are so marvelous I'm wondering why they aren't more iconic. I know this was a difficult production for him, but it doesn't show onscreen - except perhaps for the fact that there's more heartbreak in this one on a romantic level. This is the Chaplin feature I knew the least about, so it surprised me how great it was. Not a lesser feature of his, but an equal in my mind.

8/10


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The Book of Life - (2014)

Playing Guacamelee! is probably the closest I've ever come to an animated taste of Mexican culture and folklore before watching this movie - but good memories all the same. It took a while to warm up, but in the end I thought this a great "for all ages" fantasy/adventure/comedy, with plenty of flair and great voice performances. Didn't think I'd like it at all after the first half hour.

7/10


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Resident Evil : The Final Chapter - (2016)

I skipped a couple of entries - did it matter? Of course not. Resident Evil : The Final Chapter has a few moments that are promising, but overall the action takes place in scenes that are too dark, and comprise too many quick cuts, including what I'm calling "nano-cuts" which don't add a whole lot to action scenes. It's a shame, because there are a few (when Milla Jovovich's Alice fights Iain Glen's Dr. Alexander Isaacs) where a more measured approach make for easier to follow and thus more exciting action scenes. Nice production values here, CGI hoards of creatures show you what CGI is best at (background stuff) and a coherent plot help, but in the end this can't help drag such a moribund series out of the mud.

5/10


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Sucker Punch - (2011)

What a mess. This felt like I had Zack Snyder screaming "Doesn't that look cool??" at me for just under two hours as the fantasy world a young asylum patient invents takes her and her friends to places where they fight steampunk zombie Nazis, dragons, mythological Asian giants and the like - while a second fantasy has her and her fellow inmates appear as hookers in a brothel. Basically, much of the action takes the form of video game cutscenes - stultifying in it's pure excess, and uninteresting. In the meantime, cover songs related to the mind and madness blare with all the subtle magic of chewing on gum laced with rohypnol. A headache inducing movie that thinks it is far, far, far more clever than it actually is. All the while, Snyder keeps screaming "Doesn't that look cool???"

3/10


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Brawl in Cell Block 99 - (2017)

There's something definitely amiss with Brawl in Cell Block 99's view of the world as a whole, but it gets so crazy and horribly violent in such a surprisingly fun and gory way that it makes me want to overlook all of it's faults. That's where I stand on this one at the moment. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

7/10


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The American Friend - (1977)

This reminded me of a Hitchcock film, but with a much more muted palate and a grounding in everyday ordinariness that's offset by Ripley's fantastical world. A really mature film for a 32-year-old to be making, and one that I admire one hell of a lot. Simply a marvellous creation that I'm glad I got to finally see after it being recommended for so long. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

9/10

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

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Malignant (2021)


I expected slightly better from James Wan, but who knows anymore. The dialogue is a little campy, the actions of the characters are a little stupid, but the story was actually pretty interesting to me. Some good scares...and I'll note the soundtrack was distracting to me (instead of eerie music there is a lot of heightened action-oriented music).

A Place In The Sun (George Stevens, 1951)



Much darker than I anticipated. Alluring and powerful. Montgomery Clift is an incredible actor.

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I'd also give The Shape of Water (2017) an 8.75.

It's a beautiful film visually, and to an extent emotionally although I didn't completely buy in.

I like that the whole concept is so absurd that you just accept most of the more trivial absurdities for what they are.

There were a couple though that I struggled to accept (sorry, I don't know how to do spoilers so will just leave it at that).

The A.I. wasn't flawless but I could let that go. It was pretty impressive for the most part.

A lovely movie. Good cinema.

Leave Her To Heaven (1946) 9.25

A lot of it is nonsense, but even then it passes the time pleasantly and with some level of entertainment.
Throughout however it's visually stunning. It's to the 40s as Gone With the Wind was to the 30s and North by Northwest to the 50s.
The plot actually goes somewhere in the final 20 minutes or so, and includes the best courtroom scenes prior to Anatomy of a Murder.
I see that some critics compare it to Fatal Attraction. I see more of a mirror image of Varda's Le Bonheur.
Highly recommended. This is one everyone ought to see.

But that's how filmmaker Damien Leone likes it. After creating the character of Art the Clown back in 2008, he has made a career out of him, featuring him in two short films (The 9th Circle and Terrifier) and three feature films, each more successful than the previous one because, again, a lot of people like the frickin' clown! All Hallows' Eve is an anthology film that combines those first two short films in an effort to put Art in the spotlight as part of an actual feature film.

The three short films are definitely not without their flaws, but there is a lot to appreciate and champion in all of them, especially Leone's affinity for practical effects. Granted, you can see the seams of some of his effects here and there, but considering the circumstances, being his first shorts and counting with limited budgets, it puts it on a different perspective. Leone more than delivers with effective jumpscares, dread buildup, and well staged gore. There are elements within the fate of a certain character in the last short that are puzzling, but I see it more as an expression of "shock horror" rather than anything else.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Annie Get Your Gun - (1950)

This gets flak these days by being judged by 2020s standards - but removed from that it's such an entertaining spectacle and Annie Get Your Gun provided me with a lot of joy yesterday afternoon. I was laughing and really in the spirit - although the comedy is at it's peak during the first act more so than later. Betty Hutton is the perfect Annie Oakley at the start, with her freckles, filth, and extraordinary scenery chewing - really funny stuff. The songs are mostly classics, but they shine all the more when you hear them in their proper places. 'Doin' What Comes Natur'lly', 'There's No Business Like Show Business' and 'Anything You Can Do' have transcended the stage show/film - and the opening 'Colonel Buffalo Bill' is pure spectacle. Love the art direction and production values all 'round. I'm not sure if this would have been better with Judy Garland in the lead - I watched what they shot (the numbers 'Doin' What Comes Natur'lly' and 'I'm an Indian Too') and I'm undecided. Looks and sounds great.

7.5/10


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The Best Years of Our Lives - (1946)

The Best Years of Our Lives takes the time to examine the subject of those who served returning from the Second World War in an intelligent, intimate, and meaningful way - not afraid to be frank when it needs to, and up-front about what capitalism lacks when it comes to not really rewarding the worthy, or even looking after them. Those occasional digs at the system was what sealed the deal for me, and made The Best Years of Our Lives a very gratifying watch. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

8/10

The Rental (2020)


Same opinion as Malignant I think. Characters are probably dumber here, but the story is interesting, however predictable.

Weekend catch-up time!


Danny & Michael Philippou, 2022





This was my second time seeing this, Still held up pretty well, has some very creepy scenes as well as a couple really disturbing scenes of violence. One of the better horror flicks of 2022.



Bruckner, 2022





I had seen some of this film when it was first released. I don't recall why but I had stopped watching about half way through. I think it was one of those nights where this was the second film in a double feature at my house and I was just tired.

Anyway, there was much hullabaloo about pinhead being female this time around. As far as the mannerisms and sound design of the character, this version struck me as being more true to the book as I recall it. Jamie Clayton's performance is more subdued, and even though Doug Bradley's performance can be accurately tagged as over the top, I think he really had fun with the role, chewed the scenery really well and created a totally memorable and unique spin on the character. His portrayal is still the definitive pinhead as far as I am concerned.

Is this better than the original? No. But I think it's well made enough that you can at least ask the question. Maybe the cenobites are better realized here, with better makeup and practical effects. The locations are cool. The characters? Negative.

My issue is with the lead, who comes across as super off-putting and annoying; I really couldn't stand her. Come to think of it, none of the other characters are developed in an interesting way, and are sort of just cardboard cutouts with no dimension at all. The more I consider it, the more I think I should knock another half-star off. I will leave it at a for now, though.

I probably won't return to this one, if even just because of that annoying main character.



Sommers, 1999





Needed this to check the box for a 1999 horror for the Halloween Challenge. Is this a horror movie? Probably not...probably more of an adventure/thriller with horror elements but hey, I see it on multiple horror lists from 1999, so it gets a pass here. Mostly due to the fact that I just don't feel like watching The Sixth Sense or Sleepy Hollow again.

Anyway, this is kind of dumb, but also tons of fun in the spirit of the old school adventure flicks/serials of the past. It moves along at a brisk clip, has some scenes of horror and suspense, some goofy stuff sprinkled in to keep it light, and all the actors ham it up. A nice change of pace after all the ultra-grim stuff we have been ingesting over the past few weeks.

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Looking forward to this. For those who don’t know (including me) Lee was American.

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