Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I see what you did there.

You're Cordially Invited

Annoying and terribly unfunny.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - John Huston: 3/10

LOVED both of these movies.

Amazing film...a link to my review:

https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/...our_lives.html

By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60058466

Manhattan Murder Mystery - (1993)

I think I saw this when it came out - it might even have been at the movies - and while I didn't hate it then, I do enjoy it much more now with the perspective of being an older guy who has seen movies such as Double Indemnity and The Lady from Shanghai. The older person perspective relates to way I really get the relationship shared between Carol (Diane Keaton) and Larry Lipton (Woody Allen), a married couple who are growing distant because they have their own personal likes and dislikes. When Carol latches on to what she thinks is a murder in their New York apartment complex, she at first finds Larry cold to the idea - and as such becomes closer to Ted (Alan Alda), who is enthusiastic about investigating the potential murder with her and is in love with her. Larry has to open his mind and find where his wife is coming from to save their marriage. There are moments of absolute hilarity in this (going back for another dinner date at murder suspect Paul House's (Jerry Adler) place to retrieve a pair of glasses Carol dropped while breaking in and searching the place), and many references to famous cinematic gems concerning the perfect murder. Allen, Keaton, Alan Alda and Angelica Huston (as novelist Marcia Fox, the woman with the sharpest mind among them) are terrific and the movie has this warm, free-flowing fun feeling that relaxes you and opens you up to the many moments of domestic humour that keep cropping up at a steady rate. I had a good laugh, and was reminded that Allen's ability as a filmmaker has been surprisingly constant throughout the years. It's Keaton though, who manages to steal the whole show, with her energy and perfect delivery, with Alda also impressing.

8/10


By Kazakhfilm - https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/46616/covers/page/1/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77216891

Revenge - (1989)

Is this the first Kazakh film I've ever seen? Well, technically, Revenge is a Soviet film, and if you're looking for a poetic, arthouse meditation on revenge then this might be for you. Poetry and poets are a crucial part of Revenge's narrative, and the film itself is divided into stanzas, with various characters becoming central to a story about vengeance that's passed down through generations. Tsai (Kasym Zhakibaye) has a daughter who is brutally slain by her teacher, and as he becomes too old and frail to take revenge for this himself, Tsai has a son, Tsai Sungu (Aleksandr Pan), specifically with the intent of making Tsai's revenge the very reason for his son's existence. Part of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, it's very interpretative at times, but beautiful to look at. Starts with a prologue that has no narrative connection to the rest of the film but really outlines the theme of violence passed down from generation to generation. Like I said, fairly abstract at times while at others straightforward, which adds a small touch of unevenness to the movie as a whole.

7/10


By Warner Bros. - impawards.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7620852

Risky Business - (1983)

Okay, so Risky Business isn't the wacky comedy I've thought it was all these years (that "Old Time Rock and Roll" scene completely threw me) - it has much more of a dramatic coming of age in ultra-capitalistic America vibe. But if it's really an updated version of The Graduate, then what of today's young generation? I wonder what recent film can be compared to that Mike Nichols classic. High school student Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) is left home alone by his parents for a while, and he rings up call girl Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) who ends up becoming involved in Joel's life in all kinds of ways - leaving this kid on the brink of either transformation or catastrophe as he learns what he can't from school. Of course, the "business" side of the film really reflects American attitudes prevalent in the Eighties which make the way audiences react to Joel and this movie change as time goes by, and I think the tone feels a lot more dark and ominous today than it would have in 1983. A Risky Business sequel with us seeing what became of Joel Goodsen would be a really interesting prospect.

7/10

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Geez, that low?

Tonight I watched Batman Killing Joke for the first time. What an awesome movie. Of the ten I've seen in the 18-Movie 80th Collection DVD I have on loan, it's my second or third favorite. I know it's kind of panned. I still loved it. Joker was definitely scarily creepy. I just wish Paris Franz did more than be on screen for 10 minutes. He could have been a good villain. Ah well. It worked regardless.

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I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!

I hate insomnia. Oh yeah. Last year I had four cases of it, and each time it lasted three months.

Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

3 out of 10 for one of the greatest noirs of all time? Come on.

Juror #2 - (Eastwood, 2024)

Excellent - 9/10. I'm a sucker for courtroom movies.

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You don't remember me? We spoke on the phone two days ago. I told you I would find you.

(MILLS, 2008)

Love Manhattan Murder Mystery and I never considered the correlation between Risky Business and The Graduate but it’s true

I think I rated this the same as you did

Weir, 1993





I mentioned in another thread in which The Fisher King came up that I really enjoy this era of Jeff Bridges' career. That said, I had somehow missed this film entirely. As in, I didn't even know it existed until recently.

I am glad Holden mentioned it, as it was excellent. An exploration of the phenomenon that some people experience when they have a close brush with death, as well as a study on grief and all that comes with it. Excellent performances all around.

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Yeah. When I was a kid, I recall being told about this by some old folks that lived through that era. I didn't get around to seeing it until much later, but I recall just how pithy it was. It's one of those "moment in time" movies that really resonates as these three guys try to re-integrate into "normal life", and deal with their various traumas. I recall being told about Harold Russell, one of the three, the guy on the left, a service member who actually did lose both hands in the war. Those articulated hooks were real, as was his dexterity with them that you see in the movie. It's quite a memorable movie, in a way that few are now, real and recent.

3/10, 3 out of 10, three out of ten, yes.

For you.

Your review got me teared up again Gideon58, thank you so much for sharing it. What a remarkable film! :'-)

January 28, 2025

PRESENCE (Steven Soderbergh / 2024)
WOLF MAN (Leigh Whannell / 2025)

I saw a couple of really good horror films last week. Both of them are based on two of the oldest and familiar tropes within the genre: The haunted house story and the werewolf story. However, directors Steven Soderbergh and Leigh Whannell manage to take such familiar genre material and do something fairly unique - albeit with mixed degrees of success. One thing both of them have in common is a refreshingly "slow-burn" approach, neither of them in any real hurry to get to the scary stuff right off the bat.

Presence has an almost experimental quality to it. Filmed with a bare minimum in terms of cast and crew (the end credits must be two minutes tops! ), it's almost playful in the way it seems to deliberately equate the prowling presence of the movie camera itself with that of a haunting spirit - and not in any kind of cheesy "first-person slasher" sense. The fact is, in most films, the camera is "invisible" in the sense that we're experiencing what the characters are going through and don't feel as if we're adopting some outside-looking-in perspective. This time around, however, we cannot help but be aware of the presence signified by the furtively prowling camera perspective, and we cannot help but wonder what a movie camera's perspective is meant to signify in general and not just within the context of this particular film. I was quite amused at first by the fact that when the "presence" is following the characters around, it never passes in front of a mirror, as if not wanting to signal its presence despite its invisibility. (And, without giving spoilers, this will actually pay off in a shockingly cathartic way in the movie's last scene.) The story itself deals with a somewhat dysfunctional family (parents played by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) that moves into a new house. The daughter (Callina Liang) is recovering from the experience of losing two former school friends to (apparent) drug overdoses and is highly sensitized to the mysterious supernatural presence that appears to be haunting their new home. The unsympathetic brother (Eddy Maday) doesn't believe in the supernatural and only wants to hang out with his best friend (West Mulholland) who is becoming involved with his sister. More I will not reveal, except that it seems as if the supernatural presence does not have harmful intent, perhaps just the opposite... BTW, Presence is the first of two films made practically back-to-back by Soderbergh with screenplays by David Koepp. The other one is a spy thriller called Black Bag starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender which should come out in mid-March.

A bit more of a conventional horror film than Presence, Wolf Man takes a very familiar scenario - also involving a family - and manages to imbue it with a great deal of humanity. (In point of fact, the anticipated monster transformation - while competently executed - is rather less than exceptional, and as a consequence the movie is that much more dependent upon an audience's emotional investment in the characters.) In this story, a father (Christopher Abbott) takes his family on a vacation into the mountains of Oregon (beautifully rendered in very scenic photography) in order to discover the fate of his estranged father (Sam Jaeger) who has disappeared and is presumed dead. His wife and daughter are played by Julia Garner and Matilda Firth, respectively, and the family's story becomes one of survival once their truck veers off the road and falls on top of a tree. (If you've seen the trailers, you've seen this moment.) Something slices out of the darkness, breaks the passenger windshield glass and wounds the father's arm, after which he starts to become deathly ill. Nothing that happens from this point on will come as much of a surprise to fans of the werewolf sub-genre, but the story has a thoughtful and humane quality to it, dealing with issues of parents and children, fathers and sons, and the unwanted emotional baggage that can get passed down from one generation to another. As I've said before, Wolf Man is the less exceptional of the two films I saw last week - and the transformation effects are nothing to write home about - but I still think it's a decent werewolf thriller.

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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)