Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It
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Manhunt (2017) Directed by John Woo 3A
John Woo is back to making action movies, but I kind of wish he wasn't. Manhunt is awful. The plot could not be more hackneyed if it tried. It involves a nasty pharmaceutical company, a totally unnecessary attempt to eliminate a former employee, and stock mayhem of no consequence whatsoever. Half way through, my mind wandering, I tried to think of a worse Roger Moore Bond movie because this script would have been tired and dated by 1975. I couldn't think of one and I don't like Roger Moore Bond movies. For some reason, Manhunt is in English almost half of the time, probably because we have a Japanese cop and Chinese lawyer as our two erstwhile heroes--so, presumably, English is the common denominator. Masahuru Fukuyama, the cop, is particularly bad because he sounds like he has memorized his lines phonetically and has no idea where the stresses should go. The odd thing is that I saw him just a few hours earlier give maybe the best performances of the year by a male actor in Hirokazu Koreeda's wonderful The Third Murder. Just goes to show, both ways come to think of it, what an impact a script and a director can have on a performance. Even action movie addicts might want to give this one a miss.
half subtitles/half English
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The Third Murder (2017) Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda 8A
Early in the year when I reviewed director Hirokazu Koreeda's After the Storm, I included these thoughts:
I implied he needed a change, and a change is what he has now given us. Rather than his usual family dramas, he has tackled the mystery genre. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the news. His directing a genre movie is a little like renting a Lamborghini to go and buy groceries. He is a lot more director than a murder mystery needs. Or so I thought. What he has come up with here is one of the best movies of his very distinguished career. Within ten seconds of the The Third Murder's beginning, we know who the murderer is. The mystery involves why he did it. Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama), a hot-shot defense lawyer, is procured to handle the case, but his client Misumi (Koji Yakusho) is a frustrating one. He gives Shigemori very little information and what does slip out seems unreliable. Further, Misumi doesn't really care--one of the lawyers calls him "an empty vessel." Shigemori keeps digging, uncovers a number of plausible possibilities, and discovers that the destiny of a young girl might or might not be involved. However, he can never pin down Misumi's motives. The closer Shigemori gets to the truth, the more it evaporates before his very eyes. The best scenes in The Third Murder occur between lawyer and accused as they spar back and forth. Oddly these scenes have a hushed quality that somehow only increases their intensity. Both Fukuyama and Yakusho are great here. Shigemori use of the word "but" and of the word "why" tries to get at all of the questions that I wanted him to ask, and yet he still can't get a handle on what actually did happen. The Third Murder becomes an exploration of the very nature of truth, a Rashomon for the 21st century, and it is absolutely riveting to watch unfold. I don't remember a mystery that I have enjoyed so much in years, maybe not since Bong Joon-ho's Mother in 2009. For this movie, you do need the Lamborghini.
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Top Ten of '17 so far
Loveless, Zyvgintsev, Russia
The Death of Louis XIV, Serra, Spain/France
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lanthimos, Irelan/US
The Third Murder, Koreeda, Japan
Valley of Shadows, Gulbrandsen, Norway
The Seen and the Unseen, Indonesia
A Fantastic Woman, Leilo, Chile
After the Storm, Koreeda, Japan
Get Out, Peel, US
Thelma, Trier, Norway
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Tkachuk4MVP
32 Years of Fail
Manhunt (2017) Directed by John Woo 3A
John Woo is back to making action movies, but I kind of wish he wasn't. Manhunt is awful. The plot could not be more hackneyed if it tried. It involves a nasty pharmaceutical company, a totally unnecessary attempt to eliminate a former employee, and stock mayhem of no consequence whatsoever. Half way through, my mind wandering, I tried to think of a worse Roger Moore Bond movie because this script would have been tired and dated by 1975. I couldn't think of one and I don't like Roger Moore Bond movies. For some reason, Manhunt is in English almost half of the time, probably because we have a Japanese cop and Chinese lawyer as our two erstwhile heroes. Masahuru Fukuyama, the cop, is particularly bad because he sounds like he has memorized his lines phonetically and has no idea where the stresses should go. The odd thing is that I saw him just a few hours earlier give maybe the best performances of the year by a male actor in Hirokazu Koreeda's wonderful The Third Murder. Just goes to show both ways, what an impact a script and a director can have on a performance. Even action movie addicts might want to give this one a miss.
half subtitles/half English
That's a bummer to hear. With each new Woo film I keep holding out hope that he will return to his mid-80s/early-90s action masterpiece heyday. Alas it doesn't look like that will ever be the case.
KrejciMVP
Registered User
Lupin 3: The Castle of Cagliostro
2.75 out of 4stars
Miyazaki's first movie. Lucky enough to see this on the big screen. Very fun and entertaining adventure movie with some nice comedy touches. Felt the ending was a bit of let down though. Lupin is a smart fun breezy character and the animation on this was solid, I felt like I was staring at museum paintings in some shots. Prety good for a movie that is almost 40years old, it's aged very well.
2.75 out of 4stars
Miyazaki's first movie. Lucky enough to see this on the big screen. Very fun and entertaining adventure movie with some nice comedy touches. Felt the ending was a bit of let down though. Lupin is a smart fun breezy character and the animation on this was solid, I felt like I was staring at museum paintings in some shots. Prety good for a movie that is almost 40years old, it's aged very well.
Nalens Oga
Registered User
L'Avventura (1960) - 5/10
A slightly similar premise to About Elly where a young woman disappears on holiday but utterly boring and without any of the drama in the second half, or the first half. Italian cinema from the 50s-60s seems supremely overrated based on everything I've seen, Bicycle Thieves was great but it was from 1948.
A slightly similar premise to About Elly where a young woman disappears on holiday but utterly boring and without any of the drama in the second half, or the first half. Italian cinema from the 50s-60s seems supremely overrated based on everything I've seen, Bicycle Thieves was great but it was from 1948.
Zama (2017) Directed by Lucrecia Martel 7D
An 18th century Spanish magistrate waiting forever to receive permission to acquire another posting eventually takes a desperate measure to relieve his boredom and loneliness. Director Lucrecia Martel is something of a critics' darling thanks to her last two feature films, A Headless Woman and The Holy Girl, both about women in strained situations. This time around she tries her hand at slow cinema and she is very good at it. Zama is basically a slow burn character study showing a series of incidents that underscore Zama's (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) growing desperation. Martel gets the feel of the place and the period right, and Cacho provides a fine performance as someone stuck in an impossible situation. Although it has not much resonance beyond itself, Zama paints a convincingly authentic picture of its central character.
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Killing Jesus (2017) Directed by Laura Mora 6A
Set in Medellin, Columbia, Paula, a university student, watches from a car as her father, a politically active teacher, is shot and killed in the street right in front of her. The act is over in an instant, but she catches a glimpse of the killer riding away on a motorcycle. She gives the information to the police, but they are swamped with other similar murders and advise her to go into hiding. Several weeks later she thinks she recognizes the killer at a club. She decides to pursue him, and a relationship of sorts begins. Although Killing Jesus won't knock anybody for a loop, it is a very solid suspense film with the just the right balance between the raw and the polished. Both the two central actors, Natasha Jaramillo and Giovanny Rodriquez, could have bright futures as well should first time director Laura Mora who is already very good at creating appropriate atmosphere for her tense drama. Hopefully, Killing Jesus will be among this year's TIFF movies that find their way to a wider audience.
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Faces Places (2017) Directed by Agnes Varda 7A
Director Agnes Varda, a charter member of the French New Wave, may be in her 90th year, but she is still making fascinating movies. In her later years, she has abandoned traditional story telling in favour of a hybrid documentary form that is part documentary, part memoir and part essay. Both the The Gleaners and The Beaches of Agnes were entertaining examples of her new approach, but Faces Places takes the form to new heights. She and JR, a French photographer/conceptual artist, join ranks for an interesting project. They travel to French villages to take massive photos of people (and, in one instance, goats) who they meet along the way and then transfer those photos to homes, walls, barns, boxcars, silos, even what remains of a huge German bunker on a French beach. They interact with the people they meet who are usually quite bemused by what literally seems like folk art. Varda and JR go on a number of excursions, frequently following the whims of the moment. The movie ends with a trick that Jean Luc Godard plays on Agnes, not a very nice one. I thought this was a wonderful movie, very human, very French, and it made me feel really good about people (except for Godard).
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Top Ten of '17 so far
Loveless, Zyvgintsev, Russia
The Death of Louis XIV, Serra, Spain/France
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lanthimos, Irelan/US
The Third Murder, Koreeda, Japan
Faces Places. Varda, France
A Fantastic Woman, Leilo, Chile
Valley of Shadows, Gulbrandsen, Norway
The Seen and the Unseen, Indonesia
After the Storm, Kore-eda, Japan
Get Out, Peel, US
BonMorrison
Registered User
The Shape of Water - 9.5/10
This movie was absolutely beautiful. My favourite of the festival. Del Toro has created a stunning piece with this - ambitious, emotional, captivating, this is up there with Pans as his absolute best.
This movie was absolutely beautiful. My favourite of the festival. Del Toro has created a stunning piece with this - ambitious, emotional, captivating, this is up there with Pans as his absolute best.
Omerta (2017) Directed by Hansal Mehta 4A
Omerta is a biopic of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (Rajkummar Rau, who is excellent), a British-born terrorist who may have helped finance Bin Laden and who was responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. I was curious why anyone would want to make a movie about this guy, and the first hour takes an interesting direction as we learn about how the cosmopolitan, charismatic Shiekh was radicalized by the slaughter of Muslims in Serbia and Kashmir, a genocide toward which the world mostly turned a blind eye. But then the movie just goes completely off track, skipping around without making proper connections between one event and another and just taking shortcuts all over the place. Whatever justification Shiekh might have thought he had gets overpowered by the violence that he is willing to bring to others in service of his cause. He becomes not an individual, but just another movie bad guy. Though I thought initially the movie have a point of view, it turns out the director never does figure out what he wants to say and it shows. Carlos, this ain't.
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snowden
Man is matter
- Jul 5, 2011
- 3,766
- 37
Breaking Away - Had honestly never heard of this film before, but damn did I really enjoy it. About a group of teens (Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, plus another guy) and they enter a cycling race at Indiana University. It's much more than just a sports movie, though. Really sweet and sincere and heartfelt at times, it manages to not turn cheesy or cliche that much and the final race at then end had me on the edge of my seat. Even though it was up for Best Picture in 1979, it feels like a hidden gem.
Shiekh Jackson (2017) Directed by Amr Salama 4A
A young Iman is thrown into emotional crisis after hearing of the death of Michael Jackson. While Shiekh Jackson is played mostly as an out-to-please comedy, there is no question that for the Iman, he is facing a very serious problem, one that forces him to question his faith. But a psychiatrist (female) helps him begin to think of the underlying reasons for his crisis. Turns out that there is a lot that he has to work out. In the end he concludes that he has to accept all of his past selves, the secular as well as the religious. That's a lovely message, but given the fact that he returns to being an Iman...how does that work again? How is accepting your inner Michael Jackson compatible with Islam? Shiekh Jackson is a goofy movie, alternately charming and perplexing, shallow and heartfelt.
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April's Daughter (2017) Directed by Michel Franco 6A
When Abril's 17-year-old daughter Valeria turns out to be seven months pregnant, mother arrives of the scene, not the least judgemental and supportive as she can be. Charming, sexy and seemingly sensible, she also takes the new and very much caring father, Mateo, under her wing, and it looks like Valeria's crisis has been averted thanks to maternal support and simple common sense. April's Daughter is kind of a nice, gently feminist, not terribly consequential tale to this point. And then the movie takes a massive turn. Slowly Abril becomes more and more attached to the baby to the point that she puts her up for adoption without her daughter's consent (Mateo goes along with anything, as we shall see later), controlling where the baby ends up and then pretty much taking over the kid all by herself. Almost equally astounding, she takes over Mateo, too, seducing him in the process. What happens when the already angry Valeria finds out the full extent of her mother's betrayal and Mateo's, too? April's Daughter is one of the stranger suspense movies that I have seen. But I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. A pretty, languid looking Mexico adds some nice atmosphere to the mix.
Later: the more I thought about this one, the more the plot holes started adding up. Still fun, though.
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I like Breaking Away a lot too. It is one thoroughly enjoyable movie, that ages beautifully. To this day, I can still re-watch it, and still be satisfied.
Fantomas
Registered User
- Aug 7, 2012
- 13,306
- 6,641
The 50s is one of the most interesting periods of Italian cinema. Even though neorealism continues to be the leading movement, as directors like Rossellini and De Sica, were still at the height of their creative prowess and continue to make make good works, its impact had started to wane, with the rise of the Italian economy and everyday income. Suddenly, people no longer wanted to look at the hardships of life, and as a result, other movements started to emerge, such as Italian comedies. Even neorealism began to splinter, as Visconti began to move into grandiose epics, and Fellini, in particular, started to develop his own style.
I'd include Antonioni, too, who I find anything but boring, although I don't think he would have ever gotten to where he landed without the foundation of neo-realism. I always thought he turned that movement on its ear--instead of making movies about the external cares of working class people, he made movies about the internal dynamics of privileged people. I also think that a lot of small, personal movies would never have existed had not neo-realism also broken the ground for that kind of movie. There are probably a lot of directors working today who don't even realize that they owe a great debt to Italian neo-realism.
Visconti is an interesting case. How on earth do you go from La Terra Trema to Ludwig?
Ralph Spoilsport
Registered User
- Jun 4, 2011
- 1,234
- 426
L'Avventura can be a tough nut to crack. If you have the Criterion edition watch it with the commentary. It's like riding a bike with training wheels, but it made all the difference for me.
Nalens Oga
Registered User
It's not that I didn't get the things he was saying and doing, I just found it completely boring. Give me a less profound film if it keeps me affixed to the screen than something that's a chore to sit through.
Anyone have any happy films from the last year or so? Not the annoying Sing Street type of happy, more like the Paterson or Maggie's Plan type.
Anyone have any happy films from the last year or so? Not the annoying Sing Street type of happy, more like the Paterson or Maggie's Plan type.
Downrange (2017) Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura 3A
My Midnight Madness pick ended up being pretty pedestrian. Six young people have a tire blowout on a deserted country road and suddenly are victimized by a hidden sniper. There is a modest portion of gore, some of which is pleasingly yucky, but the story seems too familiar, especially with The Wall being a recent release. We never learn anything about the sniper; in fact we only see his eyes. None of the characters stand out in any way either. Minus the gore, Downrange could have been a 1970s' made for TV movie. The direction is not incompetent by any means--there are a couple of nicely edited sequences and some good sound editing as well. But there is nothing fresh about Downrange.
The Summit (2017) Directed by Santiago Mitre 2A
What a strange disaster this movie is. Despite polished direction and the great Ricardo Darin in a big role, The Summit sets up an elaborate plot only to abandon it as though there were a reel missing. Hernan, the President of Argentina, is attending an economic summit in the mountains of Chile when he discovers his son-in-law is trying to embarrass him and his daughter is mentally unstable. She keeps remembering things that happened before she was born, including a mysterious fire. Then the Americans get involved and seemingly compromise Hernan by offering him a ton of money to play their game. Then we go back to the summit and the economic conference and, bam, the movie ends. The movie just literally pulls the rug out from under itself. Is the daughter crazy? How can she see what happened before she was born? What the hell is that subplot doing in a movie about politics? Is Hernan guilty of something, maybe even murder? Is he a corrupt politician or a reformer? Who knows? The movie just ends in the middle of it all. One would think that somebody would have looked at this script and said, "We have loose ends and unresolved issues by the ton." But, obviously, no one did.
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