Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It

[nameless1]

My favourite at VIFF so far are Loveless and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

The biggest surprise is The Great Buddha+, which is one of the funniest but also thought provoking film that I have seen during the whole festival.

Other good ones are God's Own Country, Los Perros, Summer 1993, A Fantastic Woman, and Newton.

The worst ones are Claire's Camera, and Good Manners.

I will have a more detailed review later on.

 

[Nalens Oga]

Certain Women (2016) - 7/10

I didn't end up hating it like I thought I would. Good usage of silence in the parts where the characters were interacting but the other parts in between were a real bore. Kristen Stewart's appearance in it was my favourite but it was fairly short.

 

[OzzyFan]

American Made
2.5 out of 4stars

A very lighthearted fast paced fun movie that has some "dark alley" source material and Cruise has fun with the role and plays it just right. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing terribly impacting, but not a bad way to kill 2hrs, and I learned a bit on another one of USA's many dark secrets(even if over dramatized).

 

[SeidoN]

Rogue One (2nd watch tbf)

first 90 mins - 4/10
last 30 mins - 10/10

 

[Nalens Oga]

The Andromeda Strain (1971) - 7/10

Smart, cerebral, 70s looking, but a bit too boring in how it over-does the science. We complain about Hollywood movies now being too dramatic or contrived.....the opposite can be bad as well. It also doesn't have the more humanistic touch of The Day The Earth Stood Still which the dierctor made 20 years earlier but it's a good sci-fi film for a Sunday. Based on a Michael Creighton novel apparently.

 

[snowden]

Certain Women (2016) - 7/10

I didn't end up hating it like I thought I would. Good usage of silence in the parts where the characters were interacting but the other parts in between were a real bore. Kristen Stewart's appearance in it was my favourite but it was fairly short.

The Stewart story was my favorite too because of Lily Gladstone. She was perfect in that role.

 

[Mikeaveli]

I'm not really into movies but I've been trying to watch more recently, here's what I've started out with based on recommendations from friends and the internet. Of course my ratings are tentative because I don't have much to compare to .

10/10:
Blade Runner (1982) [Final Cut]
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Akira (1988)

9/10:
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Ghost in the Shell (1995)

8/10:
Fargo (1996)

7/10:
The Truman Show (1998)
Groundhog Day (1993)

 

[Brownbeard]

I don't see the draw for Blade Runner. Watched it for the first time last year and, though it was visually impressive and surely better in the 80s, it lacked depth. (I'm a big fan of classic Hitchcock stuff, classic movies in general and lots of stuff from the 70s, 80s, etc. so it's not like I don't appreciate older films). To each their own, though.

The Outsiders: 8.5/10
Half Nelson: 7/10

*Both second viewings

 

[Nalens Oga]

Waking Life (2001) - 6.5/10

This is more of an intellectual wankfest that some guy in his 20s who's heavily into philosophy would think is deep but as a film, it's meh. More of a series of short sketches of people rambling than a film. Some of the sketches are good, some are awful, worth a casual watch but not much more.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Waking Life (2001) - 6.5/10

This is more of an intellectual wankfest that some guy in his 20s who's heavily into philosophy would think is deep but as a film, it's meh. More of a series of short sketches of people rambling than a film. Some of the sketches are good, some are awful, worth a casual watch but not much more.

I've always loved the one with the old man who climbed the post. The one referencing The Room by Hubert Selby Jr. is great as well. Actually, I've always thought the movie was pretty cool and never found it to be an intellectual wankfest or pretentious. Linklater's always come across as too aware and self-effacing a person for his movies to come out that way.

 

[Oscar Acosta]

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

All I really have to say is it's a good thing they rebooted the series for the 3rd time with Homecoming, and Marvel fanboys have a real short memory for terrible movies. A good almost 3 hour session of a Spiderman movie with little to no Spiderman in it. A lot of him in his teen angst. The new Green Goblin they were like "oh this guy could be a new DiCaprio" lets make him angry for no good reason, except some stupid story that his entire family is infected with a disease that somehow only Spiderman's blood could cure.

If any of that makes sense. Well now they have a huge battle after some horseshit with Electro, and an easy win for Spiderman but only after his girlfriend helps him out from a big pump up session that Green Goblin sits and waits for them to come up with a plan. Nice of Green Goblin to wait it out while they chat. She dies. Spiderman cries for another 20 minutes.

Well here we go with Rhino! But not actual Rhino. Just a piece of shit robot. Game on. They attack, movie ends.

2/10, just awful.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

The Young Ones

With Michael Shannon, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Elle Fanning, and Nux from Mad Max.

Near future. Trump's command of the EPA has yielded its desired results, and the western US is a dustbowl. No rain in forever, no crops to grow, very few people have stuck around, and nice father Michael Shannon is trying to raise his two teenage kids on land he thinks is arable...if only he had some water. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and one in which Nux has a thing for this guy's daughter and designs on his land.

Suitably timely and suspenseful in places. Kodi Smit-McPhee seemingly has a full career ahead of him as being emotional in dytopic futures where he might get eaten. People get their character arcs, and just remember not to act out in from of the robot mule. Or at least make it turn around before you do.

Not bad.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

It Follows - Creepy! Good Horror movie! 8/10

 

[Voight]

American Made
8.5/10

Man they aced this one. Its about time they made a Barry Seal movie and they did one helluva job, they pretty much nailed down all the major points and even included the political corruption part of it. Cruise was actually the perfect actor for this role, I honestly don't know who else I would have chosen to play Mr Seal.
The cameo of George W was pretty cool too.

Gotti (HBO 1996)
7.5/10

I had seen the trailer for the new Gotti movie the day before so I decided to re-watch this one. I am pumped for the Travolta one but Assante was great in this one, he really captured the role. It was funny seeing Paulie, Big P*ssy, Uncle Junior and many others from the Sopranos in this before they became famous.

Too Big To Fail
8/10

HBO did a good job with this. The cast was well put together, Paulson's extreme stress and pressure was shown well and Woods was a solid choice as Dick Fuld.

 

[kihei]

Loving Vincent (2017) Directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman 6A

This animated film is a serious investigation of the death of Vincent van Gogh, the point being to determine did he commit suicide as the authorities claim or was he murdered? This is undoubtedly not a burning question for most viewers. However the way the story is presented is worthy of attention. Directors Kobiela and Welchman combine a rotoscope approach to animating the actors, similar to that used by Richard Linklater in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, while the images themselves mimic van Gogh's style of painting. In all, 100 artists created 6400 separate oil-painted canvases for use in this film. It is an arresting effect most of the time, though when brush strokes start to move around like wiggly worms in a fisherman's bucket we reach the point where the technique becomes annoying. The mystery, such as it is, unfolds in a series of neat conversational discussions between a young man who is trying to deliver van Gogh's last letter and several of the villagers who have some knowledge of van Gogh's last days. While all this is a bit too much of an academic exercise for my taste, Loving Vincent is very nicely done.

 

[Nalens Oga]

10/10:
Blade Runner (1982) [Final Cut]
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Akira (1988)

9/10:
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Ghost in the Shell (1995)

8/10:
Fargo (1996)

7/10:
The Truman Show (1998)
Groundhog Day (1993)

My rankings are almost the exact opposite lol (minus Blade Runner 2049 which I haven't seen).

1. Groundhog Day
2: Fargo
3. The Truman Show
4. Blade Runner (82)
5. Ghost In The Shell (95)
6. The Big Lebowski
7. Akira

 

[Puck]

With Kazuo Ishiguro winning the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature for The Remains of the Day, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at the 1993 film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins. Wow. Slow-paced but it's a wonderful 'sad' story. If you haven't seen it yet it's definitely worth a look. I will pick up the book now. 4/5

The Remains of the Day (1993) Directed by James Ivory
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/

 

[Puck]

I don't see the draw for Blade Runner. Watched it for the first time last year and, though it was visually impressive and surely better in the 80s, it lacked depth. (I'm a big fan of classic Hitchcock stuff, classic movies in general and lots of stuff from the 70s, 80s, etc. so it's not like I don't appreciate older films). To each their own, though.

 

[kihei]

Wolf Warrior II (2017) Directed by Jing Wu 4A

Leng Feng, a retired Commando in the Chinese Special Forces (Wolf Warrior Squadron), goes to Africa in search of his girlfriend's killer. Once there, he is forced to confront a well-armed bunch of American mercenaries intent on insurrection who seem to be going out of their way to target Chinese immigrants. Leng decides he has to do something about it. Wolf Warrior II is a generic action movie that plays like a script that a non-talent like Chuck Norris would have rejected for being too lame and predictable. Inexplicably, the movie is currently the highest grossing homegrown film in Chinese film history, and by some margin. Even more inexplicably, Wolf Warrior II has been submitted as China's entry in this year's "foreign language" Academy Award sweepstakes. The one thing that I can say for sure about this flick is that it has a lot of action, tonnes of the stuff, though not especially well shot or thought out. But if any action is better than no action, then this baby is the poster child for that sentiment. The spent-bullet total alone might just set a world record. While it is a bit of fun seeing the role reversal here--the Chinese are the good guys and the Americans are the bad guys--the movie does nothing creative with it. I've now seen 13 of the 92 films submitted in the "foreign language" category this year, and I would rate this one right at the very bottom of the barrel. Action aficionados might see it differently, though.

subtitles (but with a surprising amount of English)

 

[Led Zappa]

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) 8.5/10

Don't think I laughed quite as much for this one, but I'd probably give the first one a 9.5/10 for it's genre. Guardians seems more like a Fantasy Super Hero Comic genre vs a flat out Super Hero genre and for that I give it props. I was never into Comics that much. I knew the basic stories of Superman, Batman, Spiderman etc..., but I never read the comic books, so I don't know all the backgrounds and intricacies of the characters and therefore don't get caught up in this is wrong or that is wrong crap I knew nothing of Guardians before the first movie, but I gotta say, with all the saturation of this genre in general this movie shines through as Vol. I did as well.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) - Based on the 1964 novel by Hubert Selby Jr. - which I haven't read but am interested in - this is a movie about the daily life of various characters living in a Brooklyn slum with a large factory strike serving as it's backdrop. Rather graphic as a movie, a few of the acting performances were rather solid - Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang and Burt Young in particular - and the movie was well-written enough - there aren't any cringe-worthy moments, but nothing stands out in particular either - and while a few scenes were well-done in terms of thrills - the strike riot in particular, seeing men thrown off fences as if they were ants by the extinguishers was jarring and added to the grittiness of the movie's theme - which mostly revolves around small-crime and sexuality - the editing was often clunky and amateurish to the utmost extent (as in, even someone's who never done any movie editing could do better, solely by seeing how badly the flow between scene to scene often is) that takes away from the experience. The movie often feels like a strong first draft that could have used revision before release. Still a worthwhile watch. The murky writing and atmosphere was certainly up my alley.

 

[Nalens Oga]

The Hidden Fortress (1958) - 7.5/10

Interesting usage of suspense, better camerawork than in most of his more prestigious films. There's a scene where they're constantly shooting at the fairly exposed protagonists and continually miss every show....if Lucas says that this film inspired him then I guess we know why stormtroopers have such shitty aim.

 

[kihei]

(BPM) Beats Per Minute (2017) Directed by Robin Campillo 6A

(BPM) Beats Per Minute is a tribute to Act Up (Paris), a militant advocacy group for AIDs awareness that grew in force in the early '90s as the disease kept spreading while the government and pharmaceutical companies dragged their collective feet on recognizing how dire the situation was. The movie focuses on a large group of male and female activists before eventually concentrating particularly on a gay couple and their relationship. The group members are all likeable, attractive young people (with one exception, an older woman supporting her son), and director Robin Campillo captures their spirit, commitment and verve. Scenes of their civil disobedience are fully engaging; scenes of them discussing and arguing about their strategies are much less so, becoming repetitive after awhile. The late emerging romance, perhaps intended to give the audience a change of pace, does make the reality of AIDS seem more personal and less abstract. BPM (Beats Per Minute) has a ring of honesty that some similarly themed movies have lacked, Pride, for instance. It would be interesting to see what kind of reviews the film is getting in the gay community. I would presume they are good ones. As an examination about the politics of AIDS, the movie doesn't really go into much detail, but as a film about the camaraderie and courage of good people in a desperate situation, (BPM) Beats Per Minute more than delivers the goods.

subtitles

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

4/5

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Now watching The Usual Suspects.

It still holds up, even after twenty years and upty-upth viewings. Gabriel Byrne still manages to be effortlessly cool in everything. Don't know how, maybe it's an Irish thing.

And damn, this is still a really, really good movie. Too bad Hollywood doesn't make 'em like they used to even in my living adult memory.