Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Or maybe they didn’t.

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

50's B-movie by way of a crusty, low-budget 90's movie that i wish i liked more because there is some really cool stuff here and a lot of it is done surprisingly well.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) - Stanley Kubrick: 8.5/10
So very relevant these days (especially this scene)!

A Different Man follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), a C-level struggling actor who suffers from a severe case of facial neurofibromatosis. This not only limits his acting opportunities, but also makes him struggle with his social interactions with co-workers, neighbors, and potential love interests. When the opportunity of an experimental procedure that might heal him comes up, he takes it thinking it will change his life. However, Edward will soon realize that his perception of himself goes beyond what his face looks like; something that is made more evident when he meets Oswald (Adam Pearson), a fellow actor that suffers from the same condition.

One of the main reasons I caught up with this film was that it was nominated for an Oscar. However, I had been curious about it since its release. Maybe because of the involvement of Stan, his subsequent nomination for The Apprentice, and my curiosity to see him in something other than the MCU, but also because of Pearson, who I've been following on social media since Under the Skin. Turns out that my instincts were right, cause both Stan and Pearson deliver some really strong performances that I would even call "great".

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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The Night Porter - 7.5/10


6.6/10 on IMDB was political.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

I'm a really big fan of this movie, and I've seen quite a few other films from its director, Liliana Cavani. Have you seen her Beyond Good and Evil from 1977, starring Dominique Sanda as Lou von Salome, Erland Josephson as Friedrich Nietzsche, and Robert Powell as Paul Rée? To my knowledge, it has never been properly released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray or 4K UHD at all in the United States! When I first found out about this movie (reading the booklet that came with the Criterion Collection edition of The Night Porter), I was intrigued. I later found out that the movie was about a short-lived ménage à trois between three philosophers, and I thought to myself: "This could be either the greatest biopic that Ken Russell never directed or the greatest sketch that Monty Python's Flying Circus never made!" Perhaps it has aspects of both, but thankfully it's very much its own thing, and is quite worthwhile viewing. I got my DVD copy on bootleg...

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"Well, it's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid" - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)

"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues (1963)

I couldn't make that movie unfortunately.

The Taste of Things (2023)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Thelma - There comes a moment during Thelma where it goes in an unexpected direction and you think, "Oh sh*t, I thought this was a comedy." But it isn't accurate or fair to pigeonhole this as farce. It covers a fair bit of territory in regards to aging and family dynamics and this country's treatment of the elderly. Unsung 95 year old actress June Squibb stars as Thelma Post. She's a widow living on her own after her husband's passing. Her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) regularly visits but Thelma chafes at his worrying and fussing over her. She also feels her daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg) lean towards being overly controlling.

One day Thelma gets a phone call from someone claiming to be Danny. He's been arrested and needs bail money. A lot of us are familiar with these kinds of scams which exclusively target the elderly. Thelma dutifully sends 10,000 dollars in cash to a PO Box in Van Nuys. After finding out Danny is fine and getting nowhere with the cops she quickly tires of her family's advice to let it go and decides to do something about getting her money back. She eventually manipulates one of her friends, Ben (Richard Roundtree) into letting her test drive his motorized scooter, whereupon she quickly steals it. He catches up to her and decides to accompany her to Van Nuys.

This turns out to be a winning endeavor with the cast responsible for a large part of that. Squibb has been great in all the things I've see her in. About Schmidt, Nebraska, The Humans. Richard Roundtree was such a consummate and well rounded actor that seeing John Shaft riding around in a motorized scooter isn't the curio one would think. Parker Posey is one of those actresses I always take note of and Clark Gregg won me over playing Agent Colson. Malcolm McDowell is always a welcome addition to any movie and he contributes a small but valuable performance. This is worth a watch.

80/100

Gladiator II (2024)



I really liked the original Gladiator when I saw it in the early 2000s (it may have been a VHS rental, before everything changed to DVD) but on a recent rewatch I was put off by the emotionally-manipulative schmaltz and the simplistic black-and-white situation.
But I know there are a lot of people who (still) love it, and it's not unusual to feel protective of our favourite films or music especially when it comes to sequels and remakes.

Because I don't belong to that Gladiator fanclub, watching this sequel should give me the advantage to enjoy it for what it is rather than hating it for what it isn't i.e. the original.
And yet the reason I watched it is because I wanted to see for myself just how bad it really is - a morbid curiosity, as it were.

Gladiator didn't need a sequel in 2002 or 2005, but this one actually follows the story's timeline in real time, 25 years later, which, at least, makes it a little bit more deserving of getting a sequel. Furthermore, it's a continuation that actually makes sense because it's about Lucilla's song Lucius, a character that exists in the original rather than a new one haphazardly retconned into the story.
Gladiator certainly didn't need the remake that Russell Crowe himself wanted: the return of Maximus. So much for "respecting" the original.

So anyway, while I was watching this sequel I wondered when the bad stuff (that what makes so many people hate this film) would start to happen, because all I saw was a gloriously over-the-top and eye-popping Ancient Rome spectacle for the modern ages.

Monster-monkeys, rhinos....sharks!! I seriously wish Ridley Scott had had the audacity to combine it with the Mount Vesuvius disaster...and why stop there? Bring on the UFO!

I also don't understand how this film can be seen as a rehash of the original because it's much more a Rome story than a one man's journey.
Characters including Lucius himself are far more political driven which gives the film an epic feel that's different from the first one, although I admit that it lacks the emotional punch of the original (albeit too emotional for my taste).
At the same time I appreciate that it pays some homage to the original without milking it for all it's worth. It was exactly enough to make the connection work.

It's funny that another renowned filmmaker brought Rome to New York in 2024 while Gladiator II brings New York to Rome especially in the character played by Denzel Washington, a fabulous, cape-flapping Disney villain.
His vision that ancestry is irrelevant and that everyone can make it to the top seems very much like the archetypal Nouveau Rich American attitude (or at least the way it used to be).
In essence, I support that vision, but it all depends on what we're willing to sacrifice and also how much of that success we like to share with other people.

Oh, and there's even funny "graffiti" on the walls!
I've enjoyed the heck out of this film.



But why the nudity warning? For bare arms? Geez, we may as well go back to the Hays Code.

Sean Connery, Marty Ritt, and coal miner struggle - I'll try to check this out soon. Thanks!

By http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/.../healing_0.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43639274

Healing - (2014)

Pretty straightforward movie that makes a very straightforward metaphorical connection between a group of low-security prisoners serving out their time on an Australian farm and the birds that they're put in charge of rehabilitating and trying to release back into the wild. Some birds can make the transition, and some can't - much like the people who are nursing them back to health. The main character is Iranian Viktor Khadem - played by Topol? No, it's Don Hany, but it looks like Topol. The only really recognizable face amongst the cast is Hugo Weaving, who plays Senior Case Worker Matt Perry, tying his hardest to put broken lives back together, since many of the prisoners have tragic backstories - such as one who ran over his own child by accident after getting high. Viktor is having trouble reconnecting with his family, but the healing process is aided by the relationship he develops with a wedge-tail eagle, which is having it's own struggles. Light on melodrama, this film doesn't give any of the actors a real chance to shine but instead works in subtle ways and is a low key endeavour that I could only really recommend to bird enthusiasts and Hugo Weaving superfans.

6/10

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Saturday Night (2024)

Uprising (2001)

Jon Avnet’s TV docudrama about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising does a stellar job of portraying the events that took place before, during, and after the greatest display of Jewish resistance to Nazi evil during the Second World War. The movie opens with Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland and shows how, step by step, the Nazis enacted a program of genocide that began with the herding of Warsaw’s Jews into a small, confined ghetto, where they were brutalized and starved, and ended with their deportation to the death camps. We meet the key figures in the Jewish resistance movement and witness their planning and coordination of the uprising that took place in April 1943. When the uprising finally happens, seeing the Jewish David fight the Nazi Goliath is exhilarating, and although the outcome is never in doubt, the movie’s message about the importance of fighting for honor and dignity even when the odds are hopelessly stacked against you is a universal one that can apply to any oppressed people. Unfortunately, as great as Avnet’s film is, it also perpetuates an egregious historical crime, so I can’t give it the perfect popcorn rating that I’d like to.

New Rose Hotel (1998) - Abel Ferrara is one of those filmmakers that are better with ideas than they are with the executions of those ideas, and since he never "sold out" to be anything but an independent auteur, he apparently is greenlit to do whatever the hell he wants on the screen; which is why I think he alienates like half of the audience most of the times (the imdb ratings for the majority of his films are abysmal - and not always fair, imo).

Here for example he wants to tell a story of modern men being puppets in the random and wild corporate world; destined to be robbed of love and salvation... but it's not a deep film by the end (and by design, you could say) cause it doesn't operate in our world at all. It requires you to sit with it... and I did, how can I not when it basically features Willem Dafoe and Christoper Walken hanging out for 90 minutes; two actors who are born star in post-modern stories such as this and render nonesensical dialogues of this type into something interesting to hear...

I vibed with it. Didn't check but he was probably inspired by Lost Highway to make this... 6/10.

I'm Not a Robot follows Lara (Ellen Parren), who finds herself questioning her true nature after repeatedly failing CAPTCHA tests at work. This is one of the live shorts nominated for an Oscar this year, and I thought it was pretty well done. I thought the way that they build up this uncertainty about Lara's identity was really well done, while also never losing perspective of her "humanity" and emotions.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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By "Copyright 1946 RKO Radio Pictures Inc." - Scan via Heritage Auctions., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...curid=85715937

It's a Wonderful Life - (1946)

Put this on with no expectations, and really in a mood to just take this as it is - seeing George Bailey (James Stewart) as I might myself depending what mood I'm in. Is he an abject failure, or an extraordinary success story? Such a measurement depends on what you value, and of course the humanistic viewpoint is always going to score points with me. I didn't care if it was 1940s hokey, or if Stewart's "by golly, gee whiz" demeanour is something from an age long past - it was as heartwarming to me as it was always meant to be, and I really must start watching these films with a less critical eye from that perspective. Anyway, against expectations I enjoyed myself a lot thanks to this spur of the moment decision to put It's a Wonderful Life on - and of course anything questioning the merits of all-out rabid capitalism against the merits of community and basic tenets of what civilisation is meant to be is going to be a winner in my book. Thank goodness for all the George Baileys out there - the real success stories of our day and age. Anyone who enriches themselves at the expense of their fellow man without any sense of the greater good need take note of what really makes a wonderful life. Oh and yes - a very well made movie to boot.

8/10


By https://www.moviepostershop.com/west...ie-poster-1945, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75334964

West of the Pecos - (1945)

Everything that makes a B-grade western is in West of the Pecos, which really plays up the comedy (and is occasionally really funny.) Robert Mitchum really shows off the qualities which would make him a huge star (apparently this was the first ever movie in which he was leading man.) All-up though, aside from those good qualities it goes through the motions when it's not aiming for laughs or giving Mitchum his chance to shine.

5/10


By Derived from a digital capture (photo/scan) of the Film Poster (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party). Copyright held by the film company or the artist. Claimed as fair use regardless., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26592776

A Brighter Summer Day - (1991)

I really need to watch Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day again, and that's not an easy ask for this 4-hour epic Taiwanese film - or any 4-hour film for that matter. I find the prospect tantalizing, and I also find my ability to not enjoy actually watching a film because of a kind of restless first-viewing lack of focus something that often makes it hard to judge a movie like this fairly. That's absolutely exponentially amplified when the film has a running time of 237 minutes. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

6/10

Anyone But You (2023)