Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning follows IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team as they try to stop the threat from a powerful AI system that has gone rogue called "The Entity". This puts him in the path of various characters from his past, like former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) as well as Gabriel (Esai Morales), an assassin apparently working with "The Entity" that is also responsible for killing someone from Ethan's past.

The film starts with the old gang back (i.e. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) and shortly after, they rope Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) back in again, and then quickly add Hayley Atwell to the mix, a skilled thief that finds herself somewhat unknowingly in the midst of it all. Her addition is one of the best assets of the film because a) she's great, and b) she has insane chemistry with Cruise; and I don't even mean "romantic chemistry". They just play extremely well off each other.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

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Set during the "War on Terror", The Outpost follows the soldiers stationed at Kamdesh as they try to survive attacks by Taliban forces. Led by Captain Keating (Orlando Bloom), the group is used to fend off random attacks every day. However, things go awry when the enemy stages an attack with hundreds of soldiers threatening the safety of everyone.

This is a film I had seen mentioned in a couple of "Best Recent Action Films" list, but I just hadn't pulled the trigger on it yet. However, I was looking for something action-y that night, and this one delivered the goods. Not only does it have intense action sequences, but it manages to put forward a couple of really solid characters that are easy to root for.

Grade:


Full review on my Movie Loot

Spoiled Children - 7.5/10
Saw it on Criterion. Engaging movie about people.

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I was surprised by how good this film is. It may fall into certain clichés of this "based on true events" genre, but there's a certain sensitive idea that elevates the film for me. A certain concern for how to tell the story and let the characters move forward. I think now of that scene where Mark Ruffalo (who is very well here) decides to watch some VHS tapes at home, then we are shown, at a certain distance (marked by the edge of the television), the contents of the tapes. As we watch, that distance transports us to another setting. We are no longer in Ruffalo's house, we are in his boss's office, to whom he has decided to show the tapes. But this entire transfer isn't shown with Ruffalo bringing the tapes; it's only done by recording the screen and the edge of the television, nothing more. This happens several more times in the film, using different elements (photographs, locations, videos, documents) to tell us about the progress Ruffalo is making in this case.
I find this remarkable in today's film landscape, where characters cease to be characters and become mere gears in a plot. Here, Haynes gives himself the freedom to simply let his characters rest within this complicated world and let them act in their own time and way.
Not to mention the fantastic work not only done in historical terms, bringing this important story to the screen, but also in temporal terms, filming locations from the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s. This work evokes an undeniable nostalgia (the film is astounded by the Windows 2000 startup sequence, Nokia phones, and architecture).
Indeed, 2019 was the last great year for American cinema.

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slurps up! 🤙🤙

I'm sorry, but this is such a cliched double feature.

i know but i've been fighting off the flu so i didn't want to get too adventurous.

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I Saw the TV Glow - (2024)

It's so hard to find movies these days that stick the landing and have good endings - so I was pretty jazzed about I Saw the TV Glow, a psychological horror film that just gets better and better as it moves along. It's starts off almost like an ordinary high school drama - Owen (Ian Foreman) meets Maddy (Jack Haven) in the school gymnasium during the 1996 presidential election, and although she's two years older than him she opens up because he's interested in her favourite TV show - The Pink Opaque. It's what they bond over, and their love of the show solidifies a connection that at times is tenuous, at others very close. When Maddy starts exhibiting strange behaviour, Owen (now older and played by Justice Smith) has to decide if the bizarre things she's saying have merit, or if he wants to hang on to his safe and secure version of reality. I've kept it all vague, because you really have to see the film to let this movie slowly pull you into it's philosophical orbit by itself. It's the kind of stuff I love thinking about - the nature of reality - and Jane Schoenbrun explores it with abandonment and the same enthusiasm I brought as a viewer. Another movie which also features a major transgender component as an underlying theme to what everything in it really means. This will probably feature in my Top 10 of 2024 list once all is said and done.

8/10


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Black Box Diaries - (2024)

Shiori Itō tells her own story in Black Box Diaries - a documentary in which we share her fight for justice after being raped by the high profile Noriyuki Yamaguchi - a man with friends in high places. When the police, in the process of arresting Yamaguchi, suddenly get the call to stand down, it's pretty obvious they've been ordered to because of his influence. He's even a close friend of Shinzo Abe - Japanese Prime Minister from 2012 to 2020. Itō is crazy brave - coming out with what happened in a culture where a vast majority of women stay silent when they're sexually assaulted out of shame, and the knowledge that they will receive harsher treatment than the perpetrator. She has to endure all the usual comments - but there is also unexpected support, and it's this that helps galvanize this lady (along with the explosive birth of the Me Too movement.) Hopefully her story will inspire change - there's a sense it might when you watch this film.

7/10


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Untamed Heart - (1993)

This was a little weirder than I was expecting - not your average movie about love and romance. Marisa Tomei is Caroline - a chirpy waitress who is unlucky in love. Christian Slater is Adam - a shy busboy who never speaks, or at least doesn't say a word for the first half hour of this movie. Perhaps shy is the wrong word, because Adam is a little different - he's intelligent, but damaged in some fundamental way. When Adam proves to be a knight in shining armour a spark lights a flame, and Caroline falls in love with him - accepting of his strange (some would say a little worrying) behaviour. Roger Ebert said that this film's "heart is in the right place", but it often feels like a small nudge at this or that part in the story and this might have been a horror movie with Adam as the antagonist - you look at him from a certain angle and he's quite creepy.

5/10

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Windtalkers (2002)

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[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

Btw, if you have a library card (in the US), you can get Kanopy for Free.
(Hoping someone has some recommendations!)

Back to the Future Part III

Back to the Future Part III is a solid movie, and I love the way it wraps up the trilogy. Unfortunately, it was one of the many third installments (i.e. Dark Knight Rises, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Return of the Jedi, etc.) that couldn’t break the trilogy curse. Still, I’m glad Zemeckis didn’t ruin everything by making a fourth entry.

1st Rewatch...The late Patrick Swayze seems to be having a ball in this testosterone-charged actioner playing a bouncer who is hired to clean up a bar in Mississippi that finds him eventually squaring off against a dangerous mobster (the late Ben Gazzara). Nothing special here, if you like bar fights and car chases, belly up and get your fill of Family Guy's Peter Griffin's favorite movie.

4th Rewatch...Elizabeth Taylor offered one of her most enchanting performances in this emotionally-charged melodrama about a self-absorbed party girl who finds herself in a star-crossed romance with a former soldier turned writer (Van Johnson), who she kissed on the streets of Paris on VE day. Donna Reed plays Taylor's plain jane sister and Walter Piedgon plays their father, but it is the white hot chemistry between Taylor ad Johnson that makes this one light up the screen. Love this movie, never tire of re-watching it.

Naked Acts (1996) Watched on Criterion Channel. This was well written with strong performances from the cast, especially Jake-Ann Jones. An intelligent, interesting and enjoyable independent character study.

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The Promised Land - (2023)

Historical fiction here - very rough stuff, because in mid-18th Century Denmark there seems to be two modes of existence : nobility, and filth. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) has managed to elevate himself to the rank of Captain, despite his lowly birth. It's taken him 25 years, and now he intends to do something nobody before him has managed to do - cultivate the barren Jutland moorland, it's poor soil, rocks, bandits and more severe hindrances to him doing so. He also comes up against the powerful Frederik Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) who believes he owns the land Kahlen is on - a more dastardly, horrible, murderous villain you're unlikely to see very often. He rapes the servant girls, pours boiling water on workers as a form of punishment and takes acting haughty to levels that push the envelope as far as vain arrogance is concerned. Nikolaj Arcel, with a lot of screenwriting help from the great Anders Thomas Jensen, manages to weave together an almost endless series of emotional connections between the characters in this film - Kahlen bonding with all those who aid his cause, including runaway maid Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) and a young Romani girl who defects from a group of bandits. They all become a de facto family, but there's a great deal of complexity owing to the rapid, violent changes that occur during the story. Events keep tumbling forward - making The Promised Land an exceedingly entertaining period film with plenty of conflict, pain and huge emotional highs and lows. It both tugs at your heartstrings and brings forth bouts of bloodlust - you have to remind yourself that it's just a movie. Watch this one - it's great.

8/10


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Daughters - (2024)

I have an admission to make - I kept getting sidetracked by what Daughters is not about. A fatherhood program at a Washington D.C. prison called a "Daddy Daughter Dance" gives dads a chance to spend some time with their daughters - time which they don't usually get, with visits now restricted to being on screens and not in person. What it reveals is a system so broken that it seems determined to make problems worse. It's a cruel system, and one good program (along with the palpable success it has had) only serves to underline how wrongheaded it all is. Unfortunately, I was so overwhelmed by the frustration I feel about all of this that I didn't connect emotionally with Daughters' incredibly heart-rending moments as much as I probably should have. Are human rights not even a thing anymore? This was winner of the Audience Award at Sundance in early '24 - and it probably would have broken me completely if I were a dad.

7/10


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Stripes - (1981)

I don't know if I really rate this movie highly as a whole, but when you break it down scene by scene it's a really brilliant showcase of the emerging comedic talent from the U.S. and Canada at the time - a sardonic generation of comedians (I'm thinking especially of Murray when I say that) who were happy to ad-lib and take scenes in directions that were unplanned. Along the way many special moments were captured, and the fun to be had watching Stripes is in noticing those special moments, movements, deliveries and inspired timing where high notes of comedy are hit. There isn't much of a story, and it isn't really about anything or has anything to say (unless you generously suggest it exposes the military as a nonsensical organisation) - but you could argue that this is where the raw comedic purity comes from. You point a camera at these performers, and they show us what they've got.

7/10

Wow, this is my favorite Buscemi performance

Running Scared (1986)

To reiterate, this review is for the 12-minute short that led to Reservoir Dogs, not the actual feature film.