Rate The Last Movie You Saw

The Driller Killer (1979) - The first movie that Ferrara made (that isn't a full-blown porno)... I remember him saying in that Conan interview that Texas Chainsaw was the one that made him want to become a filmmaker and for some reason was expecting to see something half that cool, but of course this is too inconsistent in it's "fun" factor and too thoughtless in it's killings and and too random in it's happenings to be an essential viewing; even though it features the mad man himself as the lead... you can feel it's made with guts, but it just isn't interesting to follow - and it's no longer than 90 minutes....
4.5/10

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HEI guys.

Somewhere in Queens (2022)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

I'm always fascinated by your choice of films. Where do you find 'em and how did you get into this type of "alternative" cinema in the first place?

i watched this particular film because i'm slowly making my way through all this guy's movies but generally i find stuff through letterboxd lists and following other weirdos there. i think i got into watching trash in high school when someone gave me burnt copies of Ichi the Killer, The Toxic Avenger and Riki-Oh and my brain has only deteriorated since.

Rebel Ridge (2024)


Most of the reviews I've seen for this movie on here have been positive if I recall correctly, and my opinion is no different. The action gets a bit over the top towards the end, but the plot and acting are outstanding. Some states are making progress on civil asset forfeiture laws, but damn if this isn't such an obviously corrupt part of our society.

Teacher's Pet (2025) This is above average for a Tubi movie. It's a little trashy, in a fun way that worked well for me. The cast is likeable, good looking, and do a decent job in their roles. I enjoyed the story.

Random Hearts (1999)

This 1999 film by Sydney Pollack is dull and mediocre. However, I love Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas and enjoyed seeing them onscreen, even though the movie around them sucked. Pollack was a talented filmmaker, and I liked most of the movies that I’ve seen of his, but none of them were what you’d call exciting. Even The Firm, which was supposedly a thriller, was slow.
For twenty years (1973-1993), Harrison Ford had an incredible run. He starred in some of the greatest blockbuster movies to ever come out of Hollywood, from American Graffiti to Star Wars and Indiana Jones to The Fugitive. He also played in more intellectual artistic films like The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and Blade Runner. But after the Fugitive, the films he chose to star in represented a steep downward slide in terms in of quality, with the notable exception of Blade Runner 2049. Random Hearts is indicative of this trend. Definitely don’t recommend unless you’re having trouble getting to sleep.

Mark

Fear City (1984) - My Ferrara exploration continues with this cake of entertainment which he baked after Ms. 45 if I'm not mistaken. They must've seen how he can pull off a revenge crime story and had given this to him... Instead of his usual obsessions (such as Catholic guilt, redemption and otherwordly imagery) he's working with detective-noir genre tropes here; you could argue - outside of the apetite for strippers perhaps - it could've been directed by anybody... some nice touches here (as in how it communicates the protagonist's background information through images - magazine pics, poster on the wall) but it's not one of his more "auteur" outputs.

Dependable partner, "Carmine" behind the table, authority figure who gives our hero a tough time, bombshell with a heart of gold, senseless killer (who knows martial arts!) and a man with a bad past at the center; they're all here... not plotted in a good pace (a 90-mins movie like this should've felt shorter) but overall it's entertaining... if you mute your sensitivities for awhile (like the lesbian lover should go for the baby to come to her senses right?).

My favourite sequence should be the red herring guy who Jack Scalia's character beats up in the kitchen with the help of a smart blonde hottie and the owner (who's pissed when he finds out he just wasted a costumer, lol)...

The cinematography is moody and Tom Berenger fares well as the badass lead, to the point that I found myself caring for that last fight (which didn't need to take place really if he had brought a damn gun but where's the fun in that right?)....

7/10

I'm Still Here (2024) I went and saw this today at a small arthouse theatre in my city that I just found about this year. This is a beautiful film, well written and with great performances from a wonderful cast. I'm predicting this to win best international feature at the Oscars. It would be a shame if this film lost to the inferior Emilia Perez. If you get an opportunity to watch this at the cinema, definitely go see it.

Umpteenth Rewatch...This 1984 musical drama about a Chicago high school student who moves to a tiny Texas hamlet where dancing is forbidden by law and his efforts to change that law, complicated by the fire and brimstone preacher and his semi-wild daughter.This film was a smash upon its release, thanks primarily to a kick ass song score and a sex on legs performance by Kevin Bacon that made him an official movie star. John Lithgow is excellent as the preacher, but Bacon and the music are the stars here. Since its release, the film has spawned a Broadway musical and a remake.

Umpteenth Rrewatch...I don't know what it is that still draws me to this movie. Ben Stiller directed this almost macabre black comedy about a recently dumped executive (Matthew Broderick) who finds his life turned upside down by a cable imstaller (Jim Carrey) who completely installs himself into Broderick's life, complicating his relationship with the girlfriend (Leslie Mann) he's trying to reconcile with. Jim Carrey was paid an unprecedented at the time $20 million for his role here and his performance is as dark as the story, but his performance does make the film worth checking out. Broderick was a perfect straight man and actually keeps a straight face during all of Carrey's antics. Stiller's direction is excellent and there are things that remain funny, like the phone messages, Carrey's karoake tribute to Jefferson Airplane, and the basketball game, but the mideveil times scene goes on way too long as does the nightmare where Carrey is trying to break into Broderick's apartment and the over the top finale.

The Ballad Of Tam Lin (1970)



This was in my films-to-watch list but I have no idea why. Maybe I had discovered it in a list of forgotten cult classics or whatever.
Apparently this was was marketed as a folk-horror film based on a traditional Scottish poem but apart from some mild violence and drug-induced hallucinations there isn't any horror or supernatural stuff in it.
I really enjoyed the first half, it's got that feel of seductiveness and hedonism that often looks so natural in early seventies European films.
However, once it becomes a story with a "physical" plot - and continues that plot into the underwhelming finale - it only shows that this plot isn't substantial enough to warrant a feature length film.

Overall, it's nicely shot and Ava Gardner proves once again what an incredible screen presence she has.
Ian McShane and Stephanie Beacham make the best of their roles but such was the attitude of British actors: a bad film is no excuse for a bad performance.
Cyril Cusack is very good in his supporting role of the vicar and Joanna Lumley gets to speak a few lines as one of Ava Gardner's groupies.
Speaking of which, none of these young(ish) characters need a lot of persuasion - let alone witchcraft - to live the good and lazy life in the older woman's castle. It never feels as if there's anything at stake here.

It's a weird film but not weird enough to call it a cult classic.

China Girl (1987) - Ferrara's West Side Story. Of course it's not *that* good, but it's worth a watch, if only because how universal the themes that this story speaks of are.

It makes me smile to read this is his favourite of the things he's made (IMDB trivia). Maybe because it's so humane and emotional in it's central romance and subsequent tragedy, maybe because he loathes his own dirty American self so much he likes it when he looks elsewhere, into another culture, and comes out of it depicting it this balanced. Um....

What surprised me was how I was rooting for these two lovebirds; what I didn't like was how. so. much. time was devoted to characters other than them; who brought the typical mob beefs to the movie...they added to the complexities of this universe I guess (not only it's Asians v Italians but both gangs have fights among their own members which result in more bloodshed and miseries; a reflection of our world really, no matter in what point in time you're witnessing a tale such as this). Nice visuals from start to finish too...

Why only 6/10 then? eh, maybe because it was my second flick of the day. I tend to like the movie less (no matter how good it actually is) when I'm watching it after another one in the span of an hour, so I'm not like some of yous... I make sense

watched this with my wife at the theatre for valentine's day and i loved it (she didn't but it was still a wonderful date)

The Monkey (2025)

For about 10 years Stephen King adaptations were amazing. They were well-done classics adapting his work changing quite a bit but still managing to fit in his style. And then things started slowing down, and good work from King came out a bit far and few between. Every three years or so something really good would come out but it was mixed with a bunch of really bad stuff. The last work of King's that merited attention and affection from me is The Green Mile which came out 25 years ago. King's had some good work since then...It, The Mist, Mercedes Man. The Monkey is the best Stephen King work in 25 years.

Theo James an actor I never gave a second thought to plays twin roles of Billy and Hal. Billy's life is terrible, it's out of a Tim Burton/Coen Brothers script where this movie star looking guy is just surrounded by stupidity and cruelty. When he was a boy he found a toy monkey that was his fathers, any time you turn the key and the monkey plays it's drum somebody dies. Billy and his brother get rid of the monkey and 25 years later the Monkey returns and the deaths start piling up.

Oz Perkins shoots this film like it's a horror film but plays it like a comedy. It is so graphically violent but it's also mixed with deadpan hilarity. Often times horror/comedies are either good comedies or good horror films but this one is both. This will make my top ten list at the end of the year.

By United Artists - IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71329161

Goodbye Again - (1961)

This was an interesting second-hand DVD purchase from MGM's World Films subsidiary distribution - right to the crux of why I like blind-buying DVDs in the first place. A combined French/American production, it's set in Paris and features Ingrid Bergman as Paula Tessier, slavishly devoted to her partner Roger (Yves Montand), who shamelessly beds much younger women and often leaves Paula in the lurch - experiencing one lonely night after another. Through her work as an interior decorator she meets the son of a client, Philip Van der Besh (Anthony Perkins) - 25-years-old, eccentric, energetic and child-like, Philip almost immediately falls in love with Paula and persists in wooing her no matter how hard she tries to keep him in his place. In Philip she has an attractive young man who truly loves her and would be devoted to her - but there's something a little unstable and mentally fragile about him. The longer he hangs around, the worse Paula's relationship with Roger gets though, as it makes her realise just how far short Roger falls when it comes to fulfilling her and being there for her. It's a love triangle that makes room for a surprisingly extensive tour of Paris via automobile, and one that really features three flawed characters of a type you rarely see in movies. Director Anatole Litvak, who was getting towards the end of his career, would go on to work with Perkins again in Five Miles to Midnight. It's far more than a May-December romance movie, and a really pleasant surprise to come across in my collection.

8/10


By The poster art can or could be obtained from IMP Awards., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28928315

Unstoppable - (2010)

Denzel Washington is the real unstoppable force in contemporary film, and all you have to do is plant him in a train engineer's seat, pilot's seat, or counsel's seat to provide an aura of invincibility, wisdom and strength - he anchors a really well-crafted action/disaster film here, with the more-than-able Tony Scott driving in his final feature and delivering what has become something of an enduring, measured, fast-paced classic flick. It's such an easy watch, and with Chris Pine holding his own (and my childhood love of trains) I'm onboard. We get a potential disaster out on the tracks and in the workplace with friction between the older Frank Barnes (Washington) and younger Will Colson (Chris Pine), with the former seeing his colleague as too young and inexperienced to get the job done. Very solid and surprisingly technically sophisticated for this day and age - not dumbed down like so many yawn-inducing peer films.

7/10


By Funarte - http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fLB0aNVi1t...imite_1931.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40727976

Limite - (1931)

This was bizarre and visually arresting - but unfortunately I went in too blind and ended up being bamboozled by an experimental art film that has a cohesive story to it - but might seem inscrutable if you watch it without being informed as to what's going on. I spent an entire two hours having no idea of what was happening as seemingly random shots played out before me. This movie from Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project is another I really have to rewatch because after reading about it so much clicked into place - and as weird as it is, it's probably not as crazy and arbitrarily constructed as I thought last night. At the time of it's release, it must have been one of the most visually inventive movies ever made.

No Rating

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Inheritance (2024)




A loopy, comedic Polish whodunnit. Family members, each with their own dysfunctional backstory, assemble for the reading of the will of a rich family member. Only to discover their dreams of getting a new apartment, buying a fancy car, or getting a yacht, depends on their being able to solve a series of puzzles before they can collect. See it not because it's good, but because it has no pretensions other than to entertain, and especially U.S. viewers will find the Polish wit appealingly askew.

Viewed on Netflix.

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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.

Body Snatchers (1993) - Not that the two Invasion of... classics needed another take, but here is Ferrara's; in which he takes this supernatural curse to a military base and tears the nuclear family apart.

So clean-around-the-edges and so avoidant of overstepping into sex or gore or ridiculousness that it doesn't even feel like an Abel flick at first, lol... but the bleak point of view and atmosphere (I enjoyed the lighting especially; was it all filmed during the golden hours?) were definitely his trademarks... 6.5/10.

It's been a while since I saw Random Hearts, but I remember liking it.
It's on my watchlist to rewatch it for the 1990s countdown.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

Shane- A+

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