Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Amber Alert (2024)

Wolfs (2024)

September 24, 2024

THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat / 2024)

Okay, just adding one or two more observations about The Substance to the voluminous laundry list of things I've already said, and then I'll shut up about it. I swear! (And I'm actually going to edit and re-incorporate these into my full-length review of this back on page 4192. It's the next-to-last post on that page.)

8) What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich / 1962)
I don't know if anybody else has picked up on this (and I certainly can't be the only one), but in the scene where Elizabeth - whose appearance is now really starting to degenerate - starts to make use of her brand new French cookbook (a rather tactless parting gift from ex-boss Harvey), and in which she's mocking her younger self's speaking voice during her TV interview as she quite messily goes to town cooking up a storm, I've got to say Demi Moore is seriously getting her Baby Jane on something fierce! Bette Davis would be proud, I think, and Moore is every bit as fearless and unafraid of being as completely and hideously OTT as Davis was in that '62 Robert Aldrich classic. And I think it's the absolute funniest scene in Fargeat's film, in a good way.

9) The Game (David Fincher / 1997)
Okay, I'm not really so much pointing out something that's a direct influence on The Substance here, but pointing out an interesting line of dialogue from the '97 Fincher film that, for me, has a good deal of resonance with regard to the actual title of The Substance. You may (or you may not) remember the interview sequence early on in The Game, where Michael Douglas' character Nicholas Van Orton is being interviewed by Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn) and asks him about just what CRS (Consumer Recreation Services) is all about, and Feingold replies simply: "We provide... whatever is lacking." In a sense, the very title The Substance is bitterly ironic, because the serum is a poor surrogate for something which is lacking in Elizabeth's world, a world which values good looks and youth and puts an over-emphasis on style and aesthetics, but from which anything truly substantial is absent.

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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)

Megalopolis: 5/5

https://boxd.it/7pSTq3

Many of you will hate it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Central Station (1998)

A tale of a jaded and rather unpleasant woman that writes letters for people who are illiterate to their families within Brazil. She hates her job and has no patience for the people that come for help (ex school teacher). The rough and tough of it and impatience and loneliness has worn her down. And she meets a young lad that she can't shake off. This sounds like a candy redemption film but anything but. Brilliant from Walter Salles and a film full of longing but with a hard heart. A cracking film if you are in the mood.

Wow.

Just wow.

The experience of watching Megalopolis in a large IMAX screen is truly transcendental, and in some ways, the 2nd viewing was perhaps even more rewarding than the first (and that already blew me away).

Coppola's latest masterpiece serves as a stark reminder of just how risk-averse big-budget moviemaking has become in the last few decades.

I can't think of a single scene in this entire movie that doesn't completely challenge the narrative conventions of commercial moviemaking - not a single one. The movie reaches for the sky in terms of artistic ambitions - and frequently ends up going well beyond.

I'm pretty sure the way this challenges and breaks with conventional narrative traditions may push a lot of viewers outside of their comfort zone. They are the ones who will not find anything rewarding in this movie; maybe it's part of being a maverick filmmaker that your movies will inevitably alienate many mainstream viewers.

Another thing that I started thinking about during my 2nd viewing is the fact that both Coppola and George Lucas have used self-financed movies to express their sincere concerns about what leads to the downfall of democracy.

In very different ways, both Cesar Catilina and Padme Skywalker become obsessed with what they see as the looming thread to democracy as they know it.

This is what makes directors like Coppola and Lucas truly unique among their peers - their willingness to spend some of the millions they made into movies that studios would never have financed, because at the end of the day, nothing mattered more to them than being able to express their concerns through their art.

That's the gift of a true artist.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice





That was fun. Nowhere as original, weird, or hilarious as the original, but like Ghostbusters Afterlife they made a completely new story and didn't just try to rehash things. It's more than funny enough to entertain, and Winona Rider actually gave a really good performance.


The titular character doesn't show up much until the third act, and some of the twists were obvious, but it ends very strong. There's a music number near the end that's the highlight of the whole film.

Just finished Rebel Ridge (2024) on Netflix. Breaks a lot of the expected action/thriller tropes. A corrupt small town police force has a thoroughly contemptible sheriff (Don Johnson), but they aren't all bad apples. The hero (Aaron Pierre) is an Iraq vet ... who didn't serve in combat and is very capable but not an ex black ops guy or sniper. The finale is tense, sometimes violent, but not the over-the-top bloodbath. All in all, pretty fresh take from Jeremy Saulnier.

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

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Single White Female - (1992)

Oh what a difference a couple of exemplary performances can do for what otherwise might have been a trite thriller! Single White Female hasn't gone stale like many other 90s thrillers have in the intervening years, and it's themes of loneliness, neediness, mental illness and trauma are really ingrained thanks to the incomparable Jennifer Jason Leigh. This movie delights in making you feel uncomfortable, and getting you to see shades instead of bustling through it's narrative thoughtlessly. I wasn't prepared for how much I liked this, considering the iffy reputation it had back when it came out. Perhaps changing attitudes have even added a little more complexity.

8/10


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Panic Room - (2002)

Like dying in a car crash, the danger posed by botched home invasions is a real threat that we probably don't think too much about because of how possible it is. Most of us don't have panic rooms - and as this film shows, having one doesn't necessarily mean you're home free if the perpetrators are determined and resourceful. Big cast in this one - Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, Jared Leto and Kristen Stewart all past or present A-listers and are fun to watch. Fincher could make a movie like this in his sleep - it was an interesting change of pace after helming Fight Club, and he'd go on to direct an eclectic bunch of stuff which shows you'll never be quite sure which direction he'll go in. Tense and expertly made.

7/10


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Identity - (2003)

Nuts. It's as if the cast and director all dropped acid and the producers told them "just try and shake it off and improvise me a thriller!" Some will get where this is going straight away, and others will have an idea. It's as if Agatha Christie's publisher had of sent "And Then There Were None" back to her, with the note "Not silly enough Aggie. I want you to rewrite this, and for it to be MUCH more silly. Silly silly silly!" John Cusack and Ray Liotta head a cast of crazy characters who are trapped at a Motel during a fierce storm, where one by one everybody starts getting killed - who is the killer? This could very well have become a guilty pleasure if Nicolas Cage had of been in it. He should have been.

5/10


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The Independent - (2000)

There are a lot of people who think this is an overlooked gem, but despite some funny moments I think the writing is overall sub-par and not all that funny really. If you look up the inventive titles thought up for Morty Fineman's (Jerry Stiller) 427 films, you'll have a good laugh though. Really inventive, and some funny stuff there. Part-mockumetary, this had Janeane Garofalo in it, increasing the chance I'd like it. I didn't really, and after the first half hour it dragged and it seriously lacks real inspiration when it comes to putting those funny film names into action.

4/10


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The Vast of Night - (2019)

This was a movie good at getting under your skin - an imaginative sci-fi mystery out in 50s rural America where something may very well be out there. Full review here, in my watchlist thread.

8/10

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Blue Crush (2002)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Time has not been kind to Alain Resnais's Stavisky..., a movie that couldn't possibly have the impact on viewers today that it did back in 1974.

At the time, the Stavisky scandal was fresh on people's minds and seemed, at that time, to be one of the biggest financial-political scandals that anyone had seen.

Of course, I think we've seen a lot more bigger scandals in the world since the movie first premiered, to the extent that it's hard to think of Alexandre Stavisky as anything more than a tiny footnote of 20th-century history, hardly worth being the subject of a whole movie.

And I say this as a huge Jean-Paul Belmondo fan; the guy was undoubtedly a great actor, but yet for whatever reason doesn't quite seem to have found a way to make the title character particularly interesting or appealing in any way.

By this point in time, we have seen so many big-time conmen creating all kinds of mind-blowing scandals that Stavisky seems like a rank amateur by comparison.

Worse still, the fact that the Stavisky scandal seems to have had an effect on France's decision to expel Leon Trotsky seems barely interesting today; since the two characters never even meet, the connection between the two seems all the more irrelevant.

The filmmakers also have admitted in a disclaimer that the film, while undoubtedly based on real facts, has totally taken dramatic license and more or less made up some stuff.

Still, the movie is not without its pleasures, including the locations, the period detail, and Sacha Vierny's magnificent cinematography; there is also a very charming French-language performance by Charles Boyer.