Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

If the main criteria for art was how disturbing it is, this would be the most artistic film ever. It's disturbing, gross, and revolting. [...] But even more disappointing is the said makers’ conviction that modern viewers need to be hit in the face with the sledgehammer.

Oh boy, I'm coming at you with a few films in the very near future. Still have 2 to watch.

 

[The Macho King]

The happy end is a little disappointing: there is an obvious twist that the moviemakers decided not to go for. But even more disappointing is the said makers’ conviction that modern viewers need to be hit in the face with the sledgehammer. There are no subtleties or nuances, no facial expressions of Hitchcock or Forman that tell you everything you need to know.

I'm of two minds on issues like this. For the most part, I think subtlety is super overrated. I'm thinking of something like Sorry to Bother You, where the complete lack of subtlety is one of its biggest positives.

On the other hand... I hate to make this comparison but Poor Things feels like it's very much trying to swim in the waters of David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Terry Gilliam. It's trying to be "interesting" and complex and all of these things, so being so... blatant with your themes seems at odds with the image you're trying to go for? Like if you're making a challenging film, and you're asking the audience to buy in to a lot, I don't think it's too much to ask for them to be able to parse some complexity in theme on top of the complexity in setting and all that.

That's probably what I mean by the movie losing steam. When Bella is "young", you really have to grapple with a lot of the complexities and dynamics of her relationship with the men in the movie and how that reflects the treatment and attitudes towards women as a whole. But by the end, she is (basically) a fully formed and functional adult, so there's no real interesting dynamic to explore anymore. It's just a woman grappling with the realities of a man's world. And... k? Trying to explore that when she is a child in a full grown woman's body? Interesting. Exploring it when she's an adult? That's a different movie, and one that isn't nearly as challenging and interesting as the premise I was playing with in the beginning.

 

[Babe Ruth]

Scotland, PA (2001)

A modern retelling of MacBeth..
Set in mid '7os Pennsylvania.. an ambitious waitress pushes her slacker co-worker husband to kill their boss. Then they convert the restaurant in to their own successful business..
The storyline & spirit is pretty true to Shakespeare's play. Vicious ambition comes with a cost.
Christopher Walken, Maura Tierney..
(I've been watching a lot of early 2000 movies lately, seems like Amy Smart was in every movie of that era, this one included).

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Zero Tolerance (2004) - Documentary about racism in Montreal's police department, whether internally or externally. Caught in the fire are legion. A Frenchman of Jewish descent who works with disenfranchised communities for Montreal police is told by his boss that his accent displeases cops and that they don't like him for, uh, actually doing his job. A Haitian police officer wins a judgement for discrimination but it stalls his career because other cops now don't trust him. An African woman has her competence constantly questioned because she check-marks everything a bigot could possibly hate. Latinos get buried in fines because they're having a beer in the park on a summer day. A gay cop gets ridiculed and undermined for dancing with his boyfriend at a party. People get pissed enough uptown that you sense a minor riot might happen. The list goes on.

The movie's conclusions are not earth-shattering but the film does an excellent job at pinpointing and presenting how so many aspects of Montreal society are intertwined and affect police work. Police are representative of society at large and when it becomes its own subculture, massive problems arise. Pressure mounts and cops, being human after all, start to feel victimized, usually arriving at this conclusion with a bunch of wrong justification, seemingly constantly failing to realize that they're public employees. Cops who seem to do the best work are the ones who take the time to treat minorities as people. A cop who immigrated Lebanon is able to form a working relationship with a Lebanese gang because he took five minutes to play soccer with them. The film gives ample time to both police and citizens to speak on camera, which is useful to making the viewer realize that we're all in this together no matter what. Another prescient aspect is when the film shows how cops interact with the crowd during Saint-Jean (public holiday that celebrates the province), where cops feel like a part of the community as opposed to a Caribbean holiday, where cops clearly conduct themselves as watch force on the sidelines and thus causing tensions. There is no real difference between both events. Both include people getting drunk in public. Yet the cops are smiling and hugging in one and carrying out a non-combative man by his legs and arms in the other. Another underrated problem is how out-of-towners move to Montreal to become cops and become overwhelmed by the city's multiculturalism.

It's pretty clear that the possibility of police brutality is heavily influenced by someone's skin color, seemingly forgetting that a Quebecois isn't just some white dude, the point being driving by a young man of Haitian descent who calmly explains the time he got hit with a club while working on his own damn car. He goes to Haiti, they hear his accent and know he's not from there. Where does that leave him? Montreal, where he was born and raised and works and contributes. Where a lot of us do and make Montreal a very very special place in a North American sea.

For any local, it's also fun to see the city as it was twenty years ago. Obviously 2004 wasn't that long ago so the difference isn't radical but still.

 

[The Macho King]

So I ended up watching Blackberry last night.

First - company biopics are mostly a genre I have bounced off of. The Social Network is a masterpiece. Everything that came after kind of apes it to varying degrees of success, but always kind of feel like they're firmly in the shadow. As a recent version, Dumb Money was just... not interesting.

Blackberry plays in the same universe, but does it well. Glen Howerton should have been nominated for an Oscar. Tracking both the rise and fall is pretty fun, but his hockey obsession and tying that into the collapse of the company? Scratches quite an itch I didn't know I had. Some of the technical aspects - a lot of handheld camera stuff doesn't work super well from me, and I find it a little jarring. Not all of the performances are particularly strong (the dude wearing the bandana feels like a non-character).

It was nice seeing Michael Ironside again. Can't remember the last time I saw him in something. Waterloo Sunset is an all-time needle drop at the end.

Really fun watch. Some generally funny moments throughout. Doesn't reinvent the wheel but it makes a good wheel in a genre that I find generally is garbage. 7/10

 

[Rodgerwilco]

So I ended up watching Blackberry last night.

First - company biopics are mostly a genre I have bounced off of. The Social Network is a masterpiece. Everything that came after kind of apes it to varying degrees of success, but always kind of feel like they're firmly in the shadow. As a recent version, Dumb Money was just... not interesting.

Blackberry plays in the same universe, but does it well. Glen Howerton should have been nominated for an Oscar. Tracking both the rise and fall is pretty fun, but his hockey obsession and tying that into the collapse of the company? Scratches quite an itch I didn't know I had. Some of the technical aspects - a lot of handheld camera stuff doesn't work super well from me, and I find it a little jarring. Not all of the performances are particularly strong (the dude wearing the bandana feels like a non-character).

It was nice seeing Michael Ironside again. Can't remember the last time I saw him in something. Waterloo Sunset is an all-time needle drop at the end.

Really fun watch. Some generally funny moments throughout. Doesn't reinvent the wheel but it makes a good wheel in a genre that I find generally is garbage. 7/10

I haven't seen Blackberry, but seeing Glenn Howerton say "I'm going back to Waterloo where the Vampires hang out" gives me life. I love the original video and seeing him quote it in a legitimate movie blew me away lol, I was cracking up so hard when I saw that clip.

 

[The Macho King]

I haven't seen Blackberry, but seeing Glenn Howerton say "I'm going back to Waterloo where the Vampires hang out" gives me life. I love the original video and seeing him quote it in a legitimate movie blew me away lol, I was cracking up so hard when I saw that clip.

I haven't watched a ton of It's Always Sunny but it feels like he's playing his character. He's just kind of a psychopath.

It's the type of performance that is blatantly a negative portrayal but because it's so good it almost becomes complimentary to the source (see Eisenberg and Zuck).

 

[PK Cronin]

I haven't watched a ton of It's Always Sunny but it feels like he's playing his character. He's just kind of a psychopath.

It's the type of performance that is blatantly a negative portrayal but because it's so good it almost becomes complimentary to the source (see Eisenberg and Zuck).

Not to get too off topic but Howerton's performance in Sunny has a ton of exaggerated traits he actually has, they're just pulled to the very extremes. I'm a huge Sunny fan but haven't watched this one yet but have only heard good things about it.

 

[Chairman Maouth]

Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)​

• Paul Newman as Hank Stamper
• Henry Fonda as Henry Stamper
• Lee Remick as Viv Stamper
• Michael Sarrazin as Leeland Stamper
• Richard Jaeckel as Joe Ben Stamper

I first saw this film when it was broadcast uncensored from a Washington State independent TV station that catered to British Columbians — KVOS-TV 12 out of Bellingham. I was just a kid, watching late at night on the weekends when they ran the uncensored content, waiting for the cursing, nudity, violence, and as a 12 or 13-year-old, that was one helluva thing.

Based on a Ken Kesey book and set in 1971, this is a tale of logging in the Pacific Northwest. Directed by Paul Newman and starring Newman, Henry Fonda, and Richard Jaekel, it oozes blue-collar conservative working life. In fact, you will probably notice similarities to the Deer Hunter in that regard. The Deer Hunter had its steel mill. This film has logging. Then, the long-haired liberal son returns home from college and at first upsets the apple cart, but then joins in the war against a conglomerate and unions which are threatening the Stamper family's independent logging business.

This film is extremely well cast. It's about men who work hard, play hard and drink hard, and who put up with no shit when their livelihood is threatened due to labour disputes. Richard Jaeckel was nominated for an Academy Award for best suporting actor, and he deserved the nomination, but in my opinion it's Henry Fonda who steals the show. He is outstanding as the never-compromising family patriarch.

The logging scenes are not unnecessary or boring. They serve as background on the fascinating characters that we've already been introduced to. Those scenes enrich our understanding of the Stamper family.

There is an absolutely harrowing scene where one of the Stamper family members is trapped under a log in the tidal river and of his brother's efforts to free him as the tide rises.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen this before, but this movie has a 100% critics' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it remains one of my favourite movies of the 1970s. Is it up there with Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, the Godfather or the French Connection? Not quite, but it's pretty close.

This film represents an excellent snapshot of working-class life in the early 1970s in the Pacific Northwest. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest myself, there is not one moment in this film where I think to myself, "Yeah, that's bullshit. That never happened."

The ending of this film may be the greatest "f*** you" moment in cinema history.

Because this movie may be difficult to find, send me a PM and I'll see if I can help you out with that.

 

[Chili]

Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)​

• Paul Newman as Hank Stamper
• Henry Fonda as Henry Stamper
• Lee Remick as Viv Stamper
• Michael Sarrazin as Leeland Stamper
• Richard Jaeckel as Joe Ben Stamper

I first saw this film when it was broadcast uncensored from a Washington State independent TV station that catered to British Columbians — KVOS TV 12 out of Bellingham. I was just a kid, watching late at night on the weekends when they ran the uncensored content, waiting for the cursing, nudity, violence, and as a 12 or 13-year-old, that was one helluva thing.

Based on a Ken Kesey book and set in 1971, this is a tale of logging in the Pacific Northwest. Directed by Paul Newman and starring Newman, Henry Fonda, and Richard Jaekel, it oozes blue-collar conservative working life. In fact, you will probably notice similarities to the Deer Hunter in that regard. The Deer Hunter had its steel mill. This film has logging. Then, the long-haired liberal son returns home from college and at first upsets the apple cart, but then joins in the war against a conglomerate and unions which are threatening the Stamper family's independent logging business.

This film is extremely well cast. It's about men who work hard, play hard and drink hard, and who put up with no shit when their livelihood is threatened due to labour disputes. Richard Jaeckel was nominated for an Academy Award for best suporting actor, and he deserved the nomination, but in my opinion it's Henry Fonda who steals the show. He is outstanding as the never-compromising family patriarch.

The logging scenes are not unnecessary or boring. They serve as background on the fascinating characters that we've already been introduced to. Those scenes enrich our understanding of the Stamper family.

There is an absolutely harrowing scene where one of the Stamper family members is trapped under a log in the tidal river and of his brother's efforts to free him as the tide rises.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen this before, but this movie has a 100% critics' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it remains one of my favourite movies of the 1970s. Is it up there with Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, the Godfather or the French Connection? Not quite, but it's pretty close.

This film represents an excellent snapshot of working-class life in the early 1970s in the Pacific Northwest. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest myself, there is not one moment in this film where I think to myself, "Yeah, that's bullshit. That never happened."

The ending of this film may be the greatest "f*** you" moment in cinema history.

Because this movie may be difficult to find, send me a PM and I'll see if I can help you out with that.

Plan to check it out. I rewatched The Grapes of Wrath recently and Henry Fonda was about as good as it gets in a film. My favorite film of his from the 1970's is My Name is Nobody which I believe was his last western. Sergio Leone was the producer and the story was based on his idea. And it has Ennio Morricone music.

 

[The Macho King]

First time in maybe 20 years, but decided to rewatch Dune (1984).

What a mess of a movie. Just jamming a 600 page novel into 2 hours leaves this as one of the most insanely paced movie I remember watching. And due to that, the dialogue feels especially stilted because so much of it is just exposition. There are some good performances here, and some not so good ones. The Barons characterization is sadly book accurate, which really ends up just being incredibly homophobic.

The Weirding modules really put me off of this back in the day, and I still don't like them even setting faithfulness to the book aside.

But - and this is what I will always love about this version - I love that Lynch clearly loves the weirdness of the source material. You can see it with the Spacing Guild, Benedict Gesserit, and Alia. And it makes you want a version of this where Lynchs hands aren't tied by the studio. The movie doesn't give you much time to breathe, but it feels like the parts where it takes its time are those.

The effects aged terribly, the score is... just insane, and overall this movie is a real mess. But I still find it watchable and it has the seeds of a good, weird movie in there somewhere.

5/10

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

While few things are as enjoyable as Brian DePalma at his skeeziest (Body Double, Dressed to Kill) or his most bombastic (Carrie, Scarface), I sometimes forget the guy could crank out a real down-the-middle crowd pleaser when he applied himself. I've watched both the first Mission: Impossible and The Untouchables recently. What a pair of fun movies. I don't have anything deep to say about either. The man lets his movie stars be movie stars, but he doesn't take a backseat. Always happy to riff on his favorite movies you get a Rififi inspired silent heist in Mission (still one of the best sequences in the entire series) and his take on the Battleship Potemkin steps in The Untouchables. Effective blends of his personal style and the needs of the story.

The Untouchables is yet another movie that I watched repeatedly when I was a kid. Revisiting it now it feels pretty basic in a lot of ways ... not a criticism, just an observation. Big, broad. Black and white. Unambiguously good guys and bad guys. Classic stuff. Punchy David Mamet script. Never realized how much Sean Connery's role is basically Mr. Miyagi or The Sphinx from Mystery Men (i.e. just a walking wisdom/advice dispenser). The real star of the show to me though is Ennio Morricone's big big score. I can see someone saying it's too much. Not me. I love it. Again, big and bold.

 

[The Macho King]

Had a bottle of wine and watched The Thomas Crown Affair. The McTiernan one, not the 60s one.

I expected to love it. It was boring. McTiernan only has one pitch and whenever he tries something else it just falls flat for me. I mean the movie is well shot and the performances are fine - good even - but the pacing just wasn't engaging and I didn't feel invested in Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo getting together at all.

I could definitely see the draw for some people, but for me - not enough heists and too much... nothing. Sometimes a movie just isn't for you. This is one of those times.

5/10

 

[Osprey]

The Wages of Fear (2024) - 3/10

Two brothers and their support team have 24 hours to transport trucks full of highly unstable nitroglycerine 500 miles across the desert to put out an oil well fire before it obliterates a village. For once, it isn't Hollywood that's guilty of remaking one of its classic films. This time, it's the French remaking one of theirs. As shadow1 would say, how does it fare? Take a guess. Whereas the 1953 original and even the 1977 American remake, Sorcerer, were highly suspenseful, this remake fails to elicit more than brief moments of tension and, instead, is much more focused on action. There are generous numbers of fist fights, shootouts and car chases (and shootouts during car chases) throughout the movie, presumably because the filmmakers didn't think that nitroglycerine that could detonate if you breathe on it was exciting enough for modern audiences. The setting was changed to the Middle East, which suits this new emphasis on action, as there's no shortage of hostile locals to stop, chase and open fire on the convoy because that's what hostile locals do, but the predominant flatness of the desert further drains the story of suspense. Other humans with AK-47s are the persistent danger here, not the terrain. At least when William Friedkin changed the setting to South America in Sorcerer, he had the sense to keep the suspense focused on the more natural obstacles. The characters in this are also different, but by having most of them know each other and working as a team for each other and the village, it feels very different from the previous adaptations, in which the men are desperate, in it for the paycheck and practically competing against each other. They don't have a lot of depth, either, especially the main character, who's every bit the French Vin Diesel in looks and acting ability. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the filmmakers wanted to turn The Wages of Fear into Fast & Furious. If so, they succeeded. I would've preferred slow and serious, though. Finally, the movie suffers from plot holes and logical mistakes, perhaps the most egregious being that the trucks and support vehicles drive and park so closely to one another that one truck detonating would easily wipe out all of them. That's representative of the lack of attention to detail that went into this movie. The one positive that I can give is that it had enough action to keep my attention. It's just that being a mediocre and forgettable action movie isn't nearly good enough in this case. It's on Netflix in French with subtitles or dubbed English.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

View attachment 846975

The Wages of Fear (2024) - 3/10

Two brothers and their support team have 24 hours to transport trucks full of highly unstable nitroglycerine 500 miles across the desert to put out an oil well fire before it obliterates a village. For once, it isn't Hollywood that's guilty of remaking one of its classic films. This time, it's the French remaking one of theirs. As shadow1 would say, how does it fare? Take a guess. Whereas the 1953 original and even the 1977 American remake, Sorcerer, were highly suspenseful, this remake fails to elicit more than brief moments of tension and, instead, is much more focused on action. There are generous numbers of fist fights, shootouts and car chases (and shootouts during car chases) throughout the movie, presumably because the filmmakers didn't think that nitroglycerine that could detonate if you breathe on it was exciting enough for modern audiences. The setting was changed to the Middle East, which suits this new emphasis on action, as there's no shortage of hostile locals to stop, chase and open fire on the convoy because that's what hostile locals do, but the predominant flatness of the desert further drains the story of suspense. Humans with AK-47s are the real danger here, not nature or deteriorating roads. At least when William Friedkin changed the setting to South America in Sorcerer, he kept the primary obstacles the dangerous terrain, weather and rickety bridges and used them all to accentuate the suspense. The characters in this are different again, but by having most of them know each other and working as a team for each other and the village, it feels very different from the previous adaptations, in which the men were desperate, in it for the paycheck and practically competing against each other. They don't have a lot of depth, either, especially the main character, who's every bit the French Vin Diesel in looks and acting ability. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the filmmakers wanted to turn The Wages of Fear into Fast & Furious. If so, they succeeded. I would've preferred slow and serious, though. Finally, the movie suffers from plot holes and logical mistakes, perhaps the most egregious being that the trucks and support vehicles drive and park so closely to one another that one truck detonating would've easily wiped out all of them. That's representative of the lack of attention to detail that went into this movie. The one positive that I can give is that it had enough action to keep my attention. It's just that being a mediocre and forgettable action movie isn't what I wanted or nearly good enough in this case. It's on Netflix in French with subtitles or dubbed English.

I am both intrigued and repulsed.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Sisters Brothers (2018) - Re-watched that one after reading the book and loving it.

I think the tone of the book and its plot (which are kept almost intact) save what are ultimately underwhelming performances and deliveries. Not as good as I remembered it and I'm someone who thinks Joaquin Phoenix is at his top-dollar best when he's not playing a total mope. I'm all for novel adaptations suppressing certain aspects of a book for cinematic purposes but sometimes the film feels like it did so with the wrong aspects/wrong intervals.

Way too many scenes feel like the actors are delivering lines as opposed to playing a character but every other aspect of the movie seems set-up for them to succeed. I have never made a film in my life or been on a set but this just felt like a movie where most of the actors let down the rest of the crew. Still solid though because the story is just so good.

 

[The Macho King]

Wanted a movie I could watch with my kids in the room so I turned on Airplane!

This movie does not waste a single opportunity to make a joke. For the most part (outside of the teaching Africans to play basketball) the jokes land and age really well. Just so f***ing funny. Greatest comedy of all-time.

My buddy in college had a band named Ted Strykers Drinking Problem.

10/10

 

[kihei]

La Chimera (2023) Directed by Alice Rohrwacher 8 B/C

For once a movie really lives up to its title. "Chimera" refers to something that is desperately hoped for but impossible to achieve. Set in Tuscany in the 1980s, La Chimera is about Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a deeply melancholy, rudderless Englishman, with a diviner's gift for finding ancient Etruscan burial sites and the ragtag collection of colourful tomb raiders who accompany him on his discoveries. He still pines away for his lost love Beniamina who has passed away but still haunts every fibre of his being. What makes this movie special is not what the story is but how the story is told--more like a fable or even a fairy tale than a straightforward narrative. I confess I was bored for the first half hour trying to figure out where this modest tale was leading, but then somehow the movie became almost magical. Director Alice Rohrwacher, whose works have previously struck me as lukewarm to the point of tepid at best (The Wonders; Happy as Lazzaro), nails the ambience in this one.

We are in a mix of fantasy, memory, reality, the present and the past. Arthur, thanks to O'Connor, acquires a scruffy kind of charm and his sense of loss becomes something palpable. The minor characters are all clearly differentiated, likeable and somehow also possess a degree of charm in their rustic way. La Chimera is a movie that could have been sad and heartbreaking but instead is it filled with a kind of elation in just the wonder of it all, even despite the presence of a longing that crushes dreams. Rohrwacher quotes a host of famous Italian directors along the way, including Fellini, De Sica and Rossellini, and her focus on grave robbers who sell history for profit resonates with themes about Italy's poor relationship to its abundance of ancient art. Her work as an auteur quality, a kind of originality and vision that seems like a throwback to the '60s and '70s. All in all, La Chimera is a rich with surprise and meaning.

subtitles


Best of '23, revised rankings

1) Riceboy Sleeps, Shim, Canada
2) Anatomy of a Fall, Triet, France
3) The Taste of Things, Tran, France
4) Perfect Days, Wenders, Japan
5) Oppenheimer, Nolan, US
6) The Zone of Interest, Glazer, UK
7) Poor Things, Lanthimos, US
8) La Chimera, Rohrwacher, Italy
9) El Conde, Larrain, Chile
10) Close Your Eyes, Erice, Spain

11) Barbie, Gerwig, US
12) American Fiction, Jefferson, US
13) The Promised Land, Arcel, Denmark
14) Io Capitano, Garrone, Italy
15) The Settlers, Galvez, Chile
16) Mami Wata, Obasi, Nigeria
17) Society of the Snow, Bayona, Spain
18) Afire, Petzold, Germany
19) Godzilla, Minus One, Yamazaki, Japan
20) I Have Electric Dreams, Maurel, Costa Rica

 

[Nakatomi]

To Die For (1995) - 8/10

It is dark, it is funny, and it is probably Nicole Kidman's finest acting role. She plays a woman who will stop at nothing to make it big on TV. She is equal parts mesmerizing and deranged in this. Also her Australian accent popped out a few times.

The film also features early Casey Affleck as well as Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon.

The funeral scene is amazing.

 

[NyQuil]

Wanted a movie I could watch with my kids in the room so I turned on Airplane!

This movie does not waste a single opportunity to make a joke. For the most part (outside of the teaching Africans to play basketball) the jokes land and age really well. Just so f***ing funny. Greatest comedy of all-time.

My buddy in college had a band named Ted Strykers Drinking Problem.

10/10

I find that Airplane! is the machine gun of Zucker films while Naked Gun is more of a sniper rifle.

The former is a vehicle for jokes per minute while the latter sacrifices frequency for quality and consistency with the plot along with a little more care and build up IMO.

Both amazing films with Leslie Nielsen perfectly cast.

But - and this is what I will always love about this version - I love that Lynch clearly loves the weirdness of the source material. You can see it with the Spacing Guild, Benedict Gesserit, and Alia. And it makes you want a version of this where Lynchs hands aren't tied by the studio. The movie doesn't give you much time to breathe, but it feels like the parts where it takes its time are those.

There are elements in the 1984 film (some performances, some visuals) that are still the best of all the iterations.

Other parts are just batshit crazy.

 

[kihei]

Scoop (2024) Directed by Philip Martin 6A

Scoop is a journalism procedural in the manner of All the President's Men, Good Night and Good Luck and Spotlight. The subject at hand is the disastrous interview that Prince Andrew gave to the BBC in 2019 in which he had to repeatedly and unconvincingly deny that he had been a close friend of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and that he had not slept with an underage girl on at least three occasions. Sam McAlister (Billie Piper), the rookie producer who managed to nab the interview in the first place, is the lens through which we see most of the action. Initially she is seen as something of an uncouth interloper at the stodgy BBC, someone whose instincts are closer to tabloid news than the sober reporting that is favoured by the Beeb. Her colleagues give her a rough ride but she persists and lands the big, exclusive interview that will explode like a nuclear bomb throughout Great Britain and beyond. The actual interview is handled with surgical precision by Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) who keeps giving Prince Andrew (Rufus Sewell) enough rope to hang himself several times over. One of the big pluses of the movie, in addition to the fine acting by all the principles, is that suspense is created even though we all know what is coming.

We see several selected excerpts from the interview, with Sewell doing an excellent Prince Andrew impersonation. While all this is certainly revealing in a Cliff Notes sort of way, Scoop doesn't hold a candle to the actual interview which can be seen in full on YouTube, an interview that is even more repellent and incriminating than what we see in the movie. (It made me wonder why the royals give interviews at all--they always seem to end so badly). The actual interview really does deserve to be seen to be believed, especially in terms of Prince Andrew's absolute obliviousness to how he comes across as guilty. On a more personal note, I was also put off by Anderson, not her performance which is first rate, but her, herself. Her posture and walk seem brittle, almost clenched, and she physically looks closer to an AI creation than a human being. I don't know what happened to her, bad cosmetic surgery or whatever, or if she is ill, but I find her painful to look at whenever she is not sitting down. Obviously, this is a very subjective take that others might not share or even notice, but she genuinely creeps me out these days.

On Netflix

 

[Osprey]

To Die For (1995) - 8/10

It is dark, it is funny, and it is probably Nicole Kidman's finest acting role. She plays a woman who will stop at nothing to make it big on TV. She is equal parts mesmerizing and deranged in this. Also her Australian accent popped out a few times.

The film also features early Casey Affleck as well as Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon.

The funeral scene is amazing.

Coincidentally, I've been planning to watch this very soon. I'm pretty sure that I saw it in the 90s, but forgot that it existed for 25 years until about a week ago. I was reminded of it by IMDb while looking up A Shock to the System, another film that I hadn't seen since the 90s and enjoyed. Now it's been twice in one week that I've been reminded of it. I almost put it on last night. I'm looking forward to re-watching it, especially after your review.

 

[kihei]

Monkey Man (2024) Directed by Dev Patel 7B

Set in an unspecified city in India, Monkey Man recounts the story of Kid (Dev Patel) who has a lowly job as the designated loser of martial arts matches. He has a past, a violent one through no fault of his own, and he has a lust for revenge that has been festering a long time against the men who set fire to his childhood home and slaughtered his mother. He knows exactly who he is targeting, and he cleverly insinuates himself into their social circle as a waiter. His first attempt at revenge fails, but eventually there is a reckoning, a very brutal one. Monkey Man is not a perfect movie by any means. First time director Patel gives himself maybe too much screen time looking pissed off, and his camera is often hand-held, up-close and busy, busy, busy. Yet there is no denying this movie's energy, passion and intensity which at its most potent is almost hallucinogenic. Kid is an angry character and Monkey Man often seems an angry movie. Along the way, Patel takes aim at India's social injustices, including police brutality, class prejudice and violence against women, but in a way that falls well short of preachy. While the movie takes its time getting to where it wants to go, the brutality when it arrives is close to too much. It appears it was indeed too excessive for Netflix who cancelled the movie. That's okay, as Monkey Man is best seen on a big screen anyway. Revenge movies are a dime a dozen, but this is an interestingly fresh take on the old formula.

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

Never realized how much Sean Connery's role is basically Mr. Miyagi or The Sphinx from Mystery Men (i.e. just a walking wisdom/advice dispenser).

Now there's a film that's aged like a fine wine.

 

[The Macho King]

Watched two movies over the past few days. Both absolute bangers but both rewatches.

First was Memories of Murder.
What's there to say about a perfect film? One of the most interesting things is watching a "process" movie (people doing their jobs), aannd... being kind of bad at it. Normally if you're following a case, it's cat and mouse, cops doing their best against a criminal who is staying barely one step ahead. This? The cops suck. They coerce confessions. They don't secure crime scenes. They don't know what they're doing. And that's amazing! It has a level of... realness that is so interesting. The rest of it - I mean superbly acted, well paced, and the final shot is just haunting. You also can't really watch a film like Zodiac (absolute banger for the record) and not feel Bong's influence.

As an aside - Mother is so interesting as a response to this film. It hits a lot of similar beats, but it comes from the perspective of someone defending their son instead of the police. I think it's elevated because it is just soooo heart-wrenching, but they're really interesting to consider together. I may watch it again this weekend because prior there was a pretty big separation in my previous viewings (like a year plus apart).

I consider this movie a strong 10/10. Crazy thing? Probably my fourth favorite Bong film after The Host, Mother, and Parasite.

Then I went to another absolute stone cold banger, Social Network (I dropped the "the"; it's cleaner).

I feel like Sorkin needs a Fincher to save him from himself, because when it works it's perfect. In a weird way I think that the script views Zuckerberg as a hero, but the film rejects that premise and sides on him being a jealous little shit. So good - so many good lines, such great pacing, and every performance is absolutely great. The biggest sin this movie commits is inspiring dozens of mediocre copycats.

Eisenberg not getting Best Actor for this feels like a real misstep. Whether this reflects the real Zuckerberg or not (I always viewed it as Eisenberg is the "cool" version of Zucks, and that's with him coming off as completely pathetic), but the performance is way more deep and nuanced than I think it gets credit for. It gets written off as Eisenberg being the same character he always is, but I think there's a lot of emotion in his eyes in almost every scene. Garfield is great in this. Excellent use of Timberlake.

The trick this movie pulls is it really undercuts the image all of these guys want to put up. As a lawyer, so much of the deposition stuff makes me want to "well actually" a lot of what's going on (you would never have opposing parties sitting in a room together during a deposition), but despite all of that, this may be one of the most watchable movies of the 21st century. Also a shout out to an incredible score.

10/10