Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Man, Bissell was in a million of them! It was hard to turn on the TV and not see him.

Remember him in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)? Great flick!

In Time (2011).






An interesting concept but the film is let down by a mediocre story. Nevertheless there's worse ways to spend two hours on a Sunday evening. Cillian Murphy is a welcome presence, Timberlake is decent and Amanda Seyfried is easy on the eye. A watchable but forgettable film.


3/5 Stars.

I thought it was a great idea to do this during the current political climate and pandemic. Maybe it got a little preachy at times. There were a couple of scenes that practically had my wife and I shooting piss at each other we were laughing so hard. He's just a funny guy. The only negative was the big scene with Rudy Giuliani which we both thought was a whole lot of nothing.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Black Swan (Darren Aronofksy, 2010)

Sorry to any of his fans on here but I'm not convinced that Aronofsky is for me. Lots of close-ups and emphasis on extremes rather than focussing on mise-en-scene. I get why he chooses this style for such a story, it kind of matches with the content as we see characters get pushed to physical and mental extremes but then I also found the plot to be very limited and a bit dull. The story/message of the hard-work and effort going into the dancing, people's obsession, desires and so on... it all seemed very obvious. Not much really happened.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

I had heard a lot of great stuff about this film and how it's superior to the original but was slightly disappointed. I love Don Siegel's version, I think it's a masterpiece. I don't like comparing remakes to their predecessors and I enjoyed how this film started out with the updated setting. The visual choices and emphasis on certain objects, the way the director captures the city and its movements, they all felt good for the story. I think it began to go downhill for me when we started to see more of Leonard Nimoy's character, then the second half descended into a bit of a repetitive chase film. Enjoyable, but not great for me.

Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)

Lots to love here and I think the first half is particularly brilliant. Depp is awesome as Ed Wood and Burton's directorial style fuses perfectly with the story he's telling with a lot of affection. The characters are all interesting and we find ourselves really rooting for our protagonist. Martin Landau is also great as Bela Lugosi and his character brings another human layer to the film that really works. I think in the second half the film has a few too many plotlines that it struggles to juggle. We have the Lugosi relationship, then Wood's second film, then Plan 9 which doesn't seem to get much attention. Burton seems a bit unsure about what to focus on and how to tie everything together.

Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)

Jarmusch could possibly be my favourite comedic director. He manages to make almost every scene funny with his off-beat style. The type of humour really differentiates, sometimes its more overt and laugh-out-loud and other times it's more subtle and found in the little quirks found in human being. This film has five different segments, each focussing on a different taxi ride in various cities around the world. Each one is a little different, the opening and closing segments are more human and are very moving. The three in the middle are more zany and comedic, I especially loved Giancarlo Esposito and Roberto Benigni's parts.

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Moebius (1996, Gustavo Mosquera)


Excellent Argentine sci-fi - very low-budget but such a cool vibe, and some interesting cinematography.

Viggo Mortensen's directorial debut is overdone, overacted, over-politicised and melodramatic. Very disappointed.

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

I was kinda enjoying it, until my suspension of disbelief just went crazy on the "science" of things. It was just too much stuff to swallow

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

A group of college kids go to a haunted house and start to get picked off by folks in menacing looking clown masks. Highly original. The characters are likeable enough which saves it a little. The final girl has some backstory going on which is totally pointless and I zoned out every time the movie went to B&W. It's not boring, starts better than it ends and it looks good but it's gonna be one of those flicks that in a year from now (probably sooner) if somebody were to ask me "have you seen Haunt" I'd be like "I don't know. What's it about?"

Terrifier (2016) -
Pyewacket (2017) -
The Reptile (1966) -
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (2019) -
Pet (2016) -

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Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Nocturne (2020)

Interesting tale of 2 twin sisters who share a passion for the piano and their competitiveness. One sister is acclaimed and milks that by playing fast and loose with the affections of her tutors/boyfriends etc. The more reserved sister is pretty sick of her antics and after failing to gain entry to the revered Juilliard music school begins undermining the flighty and more popular sister. A nice fable that had echoes of Black Swan for me but was waaaay less pretentious.

Solid

Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (2020):
Good movie, definitely not as good as the original, but had funny moments throughout.
6.5/10

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“I really have to feel that I could make a difference in the movie, or I shouldn't be doing it.“
Joe Dante

Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991):
My 2nd favourite Dolph Lundgren movie, great action scenes, simple plot, flows by quick. Hope one day the original cut gets released.
9.5/10

Swallow (2019)

Story of a woman with serious mental health issues that's situation (overbearing inlaws and feeling inadequate next to her highly successful but condescending husband) makes her suffer from "pica"....the desire to orally ingest things and substances that are non-nutritional.

Had never heard of this and the film is directed well and the performances are good. May be the ending let's it down as it ties things up a little too quickly too neatly.

Haley Bennett can certainly act and brings an, at times, other-wordliness to her performance.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)



"Insanity runs in my family ... it practically gallops."

When I was a kid, we used to check out movies on VHS from the library down the street from us. This was still a novelty at the time, and the selection was pretty limited (I think they supposedly had Star Wars but it was always checked out). But, you know, beggars and choosers and so forth, so there were two movies we ended up checking out over and over: Young Frankenstein and this one.

There is nothing I don't love about this movie. Certainly it is tinged with nostalgia for me--watching it is as close to going home as I can manage these days. But that aside it all works: The lowbrow jokes, the slapstick screwball capery (Cary Grant at his frenetic screwballiest), the mumbley dialogue, the running gags (I imagine that taxi driver still out there somewhere, haunting the streets of Brooklyn), Raymond Massey doing Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre doing Peter Lorre, Jean Adair and Josephine Hull absolutely nailing it as sociopathic spinsters who will murder 12 old men but would never "stoop to telling a fib!" It's hard to imagine another film out there about serial murderers that is as thoroughly charming.

And this year I got to do that thing that all dopey dads love to do: share my childhood joys with my own kid. Now, of course, this doesn't always pay off, but when it does, it's golden.

10/10

Nobody Knows I'm Here (2020)

Bitka na Neretvi (1969) - 50/100

War and Peace for gypsies. It has its moments, don't get me wrong, but overall, how did this get nominated for an oscar? What was the academy smoking?

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I'm the Yugoslav cinema guy. I dig through garbage. I look for gems.

Khartoum (1966)

IMO, this film only gets better and better with each viewing. Once you get past the surprises of the story, there's sooo much to appreciate in terms of set design, cinematography, and the subtlety of performances. It's a masterpiece.

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