Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Mid-Spring Edition. Happy Beltane!

[ProstheticConscience]

Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Spring 2021 Edition

Over 1k, last thread ended here^^^^. Much philosophizing abounds.

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Recently saw a movie I realized I'd seen before halfway through:

Chernobyl Diaries

with people

Found footage movie of young, cherubic twenty-something kids from the US who meet their bro who's living in Kiev for reasons. He suggests they take a tour of Pripyat. Where's that? Oh...that's the Soviet town right beside the Chernobyl power plant. Well hey, you want safe and secure? Go to Buckingham Palace. This is edgy and raw! And the tour's led by this big, beefy ex-Ukrainian special forces guy Yuri!

And...uh...hey wait. You made sure this little rickety-ass Soviet van of yours isn't going to break down in a contaminated radioactive shithole, right Yuri? Uh...Yuri? It's getting dark now, Yuri. Yeah, your Geiger counter sounds like it's having a seizure and I don't remember you giving us any iodide. No, your special forces pals haven't answered your cb hails in hours. I don't think they're coming. Okay Yuri, you take the only gun we have and go investigate that noise in the dark, but before you do, I'd just like to point out this clause in the contract we signed in your travel agency in Kiev that specifically prohibits you from being killed and eaten by nuclear mutants off-camera, Yuri. Because without you, we'd probably all panic and run in circles, what, with us being idiots and all. Okay, I'll come with you over there...

OHMYGAWDTHEYGOTYURIEVERYONERUNINCIRCLESAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Seriously stupid. Took me like an hour before I realized I'd seen it before. Still sucks.

Here we come...
Walkin' down the street...
We get the funniest looks from...
All the nuclear mutants who are going to kill us one by one...

Click to read more...

 

[KlausJopling]

Tenet (HBO Max)

I know alot of this has been said about this movie when it was initially released. But yes, dialog audio is an issue, especially early in the film. Its to the point where I have to believe it was a conscious decision by Nolan. It gets better through the middle of the movie, end is bit of an issue (he loves having people speak through masks). Side Note: The HBO Max app is so bad, i turn on subtitles and they took up half the screen. Had to turn them right off. I found it extremely funny that Nolan has received complaints about having a character (ie Michael Caine) just for exposition. Then in this movie probably over half the characters in it are there just for exposition.

The action set pieces are strong here, with the highway scene being my favorite. The airport scene didnt seem to live up to the hype of the trailer but it has a payoff in the end. Performance wise I think Washington is strong as the protagonist, Pattinson is a very good side kick (he probably has the best lines in the movie). Debicki is good, her character becomes much more interesting as the movie progresses. Branagh is fine, British playing Russian villains is always tough for me. As with any "Time Travel" movie, dont expect much of the plot to make sense, this one does well enough where it doesnt feel like they are cheating too much. Definitely a movie that has payoffs for earlier scenes at the end and one you that may be enjoyable to re-watch knowing what is actually happening.

Not Nolan's best but if you like his type of action movies i dont think you'll be upset you watched it.

Only complaint story wise.

Spoiler

Not sure the movie needed the main character wanting to make sure the women and her son were saved at every point of the movie, especially what was at stake. But it is what it is

 

[Pink Mist]

Nomadland (2020) directed by Chloé Zhao

When her town slowly gets abandoned after the gypsum mine which employs most of the residents shuts down, Fern (Frances McDormand), a sixtysomething widow, lives an itinerant lifestyle in a custom van moving from place to place working temporary jobs. A docufiction, as Zhao employs a cast of real-life nomads aside from McDormand and David Strathairn, the film documents the lifestyle, the pleasures and struggle and everything in between, of life on the road and what it means to be both left behind and made a product (as a low-wage temporary worker) by capitalism. A deceptively simple film but a fairly scathing rebuke of late-stage capitalism told through mesmerizing cinematography and a strong performance by McDormand. The film does a great job threading the line between exploring the lifestyle as a cautionary tale and advocacy of this lifestyle, as it is clear some live it by choice and others were forced into it, and equally showcases the freedom and dangers of the lifestyle.

The stuff depicting working in the Amazon warehouses is pretty egregious though. I’m not saying you need to document people peeing in bottles while working, but if your only comment about life working at Amazon is praising its good pay it seems pretty boneheaded and clear what the conditions made by Amazon were in order to film there. Amazon’s entire inclusion in the film is also confusing since its such a small part of the film and could have been left out and seems at odds at the political thesis the film is putting forward, yet instead we have a few minutes in the front and backend of the film doing corporate PR for Amazon.

But I digress, aside from the Amazon stuff it is a fantastic and beautiful film very deserving of its Oscar last weekend. Still puzzles me that Zhao’s next project is a Marvel movie, seems like an odd choice from both Zhao’s and Marvel’s perspective, but whatever can’t fault Zhao from the decision to collect some Marvel bucks.

 

[Osprey]

Recently saw a movie I realized I'd seen before halfway through:

Don't you hate when that happens? It makes me mad, especially because I have no one to be mad at but myself. I'd rather waste an hour on something that's not worth watching than an hour on something that's not worth re-watching. Generally, my poor memory serves me well with movies because it allows me to re-watch them without remembering how they go, but that comes with the drawback that I'll occasionally forget entirely that I've seen a movie that I don't want to re-watch.

Tenet (HBO Max)

I know alot of this has been said about this movie when it was initially released. But yes, dialog audio is an issue, especially early in the film. Its to the point where I have to believe it was a conscious decision by Nolan. It gets better through the middle of the movie, end is bit of an issue (he loves having people speak through masks). Side Note: The HBO Max app is so bad, i turn on subtitles and they took up half the screen. Had to turn them right off. I found it extremely funny that Nolan has received complaints about having a character (ie Michael Caine) just for exposition. Then in this movie probably over half the characters in it are there just for exposition.

The action set pieces are strong here, with the highway scene being my favorite. The airport scene didnt seem to live up to the hype of the trailer but it has a payoff in the end. Performance wise I think Washington is strong as the protagonist, Pattinson is a very good side kick (he probably has the best lines in the movie). Debicki is good, her character becomes much more interesting as the movie progresses. Branagh is fine, British playing Russian villains is always tough for me. As with any "Time Travel" movie, dont expect much of the plot to make sense, this one does well enough where it doesnt feel like they are cheating too much. Definitely a movie that has payoffs for earlier scenes at the end and one you that may be enjoyable to re-watch knowing what is actually happening.

Not Nolan's best but if you like his type of action movies i dont think you'll be upset you watched it.

Only complaint story wise.

Spoiler

Not sure the movie needed the main character wanting to make sure the women and her son were saved at every point of the movie, especially what was at stake. But it is what it is

Welcome. It's nice to see good movie reviews from new people. I agree with some of your thoughts on the movie. I do believe that the audio was a conscious decision by Nolan because he's defended it since the movie's release. I don't mind and even appreciate that he has characters speaking through masks (rather than, say, inappropriately taking them off to speak), but it's as if he also insisted on recording the audio through the mask to make it sound more realistic, instead of having microphones inside to capture dialog clearly (and then muffling it a little in post-production). Even George Lucas knew that recording dialogue through a mask wasn't a good idea.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

I also just watched Tenet. Intriguing premise, but at first blush I think other films that dabbled in this sandbox did it a bit better (like 12 Monkeys). I actually liked Washington as the lead. The detached way he played the "protagonist" worked for me, although there was a bit of disconnect with his motivations/actions that another poster highlighted. I also agree that "logic" needs to be thrown out the window, but that's somewhat acknowledged in movie so I just went along for the ride and tried to parse out the big picture which to me was power/authority. Who has it, who doesn't, and what do those that have it do with it? In this context it's literally end of the world stuff. I'll have to give this one a re-watch but my initial score is 8/10. It made me think, and that's always good.

 

[kihei]

Pretentious movie, type 1: any movie that over-reaches for profundity that it hasn’t achieved and doesn’t deserve.

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 2: any movie that purports to understand something that it clearly doesn’t but thinks it does

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 3: any film created by an egotist who has his thumb stuck firmly up his ass and thinks it is on the pulse of the nation. Also called "the Ken Russell category."

Categories are not mutually exclusive.

My 10 Worst Offenders List

Teorema/Pier Paolo Pasolini
El Topo/Alejandro Jodorowsky
A Winter’s Tale/Akiva Goldsman
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close/Stephen Daldry
Requiem for a Dream/Darren Aronofsky
The Music Lovers/Ken Russell
To the Wonder/Terrence Malick
I Am Love/Luca Guadagnino
Amer/ Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Cloud Atlas/Lana and Lilly Wachowski

I have limited myself to one movie per director; many of these guys are multiple repeat offenders.

 

[Osprey]

At least all of those filmmakers actually released their films in our lifetimes.

100 Years is an upcoming experimental science fiction film written by John Malkovich and directed by Robert Rodriguez. Advertised in 2015 with the tagline "The Movie You Will Never See", it is due to be released on November 18, 2115. The 100-year span matches the time it takes for a bottle of Louis XIII Cognac to be properly aged before its release to consumers.

Pending release, the film is being kept in a high-tech safe behind bulletproof glass that will open automatically on November 18, 2115, the day of the film's premiere. One thousand guests from around the world, including Malkovich and Rodriguez, have received a pair of invitation tickets made of metal for the premiere, which they can hand down to their descendants. The safe in which 100 Years is kept was showcased at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and various other cities before being returned to Cognac, France and the Louis XIII cellars.

100 Years (film) - Wikipedia

Only 94 years left to wait...

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Pretentious movie, type 1: any movie that over-reaches for profundity that it hasn’t achieved and doesn’t deserve.

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 2: any movie that purports to understand something that it clearly doesn’t but thinks it does

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 3: any film created by an egotist who has his thumb stuck firmly up his ass and thinks it is on the pulse of the nation. Also called "the Ken Russell category."

Categories are not mutually exclusive.

My 10 Worst Offenders List

Teorema/Pier Paolo Pasolini
El Topo/Alejandro Jodorowsky
A Winter’s Tale/Akiva Goldsman
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close/Stephen Daldry
Requiem for a Dream/Darren Aronofsky
The Music Lovers/Ken Russell
To the Wonder/Terrence Malick
I Am Love/Luca Guadagnino
Amer/ Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Cloud Atlas/Lana and Lilly Wachowski

I have limited myself to one movie per director; many of these guys are multiple repeat offenders.

Surprised PTA didn't find his way unto this list. He seems like a decent enough cat but he's got his moments.

 

[peate]

Nobody (2021)

Stars Bob Odenkirk (Better call Saul) as a mild mannered guy who turns into a Ninja assassin after being a victim of a break-in. Nothing special about it, just cheap entertainment. 6/10

 

[Puck]

When it comes to artistic movies or serious art-house foreign fare, I tend to listen to kihei's reviews, he has a world of experience watching these.

I don't mind Pranzo's horror movie reviews. It's not my cup of tea (actually both the horror genre and Hallmark Romance flicks are two on the bottom of my list). But everyone is different and I can appreciate that people have a specialized interest in a certain form of content, they love horror or some other genre, that's fine by me. I get it. (I seem to have a thing for mindless shooter thrillers)

I usually come to this thread though to get tips on obscure Indies, art-house films, foreign flicks, or various outliers. During the pandemic though, there has been an increase in fly-by postings of pop culture films. I tended to pass on those, including all the Marvel reviews (we can do that on the general board if it is worthy enough to have its own thread). The boys are getting cranky here though, possibly also a function of a pandemic lockdown. And we are swinging into joke posts on actor doppelgangers (myself included). Hopefully though things to dissolve into too much madness. I will try to refrain and keep it serious in the future (up to a point haha)

 

[Spring in Fialta]

My movie-watching has largely cratered this year. I've watched a couple of series and maybe 5-6 movies and that's it. I haven't read as much or seeked out much new music either. I feel like my attention span has kind of sunk as opposed to last year where I felt utterly great despite the pandemic. It's been rougher lately. I've deactivated my social media accounts today because I just can't stand that stuff anymore and find them utterly toxic at this point - both in rhetoric and the mindless scrolling. I'm hopeful to work up my attention span a little more in the coming weeks especially as I hope to recuperate some of my mental health. I'd probably get a home phone with an answering machine if I didn't need a smartphone for work.

 

[kihei]

Surprised PTA didn't find his way unto this list. He seems like a decent enough cat but he's got his moments.

Yup. He would have landed at #11 with Magnolia.

 

[Pink Mist]

Surprised PTA didn't find his way unto this list. He seems like a decent enough cat but he's got his moments.

Yeah The Master would qualify in my books

 

[kihei]

My movie-watching has largely cratered this year. I've watched a couple of series and maybe 5-6 movies and that's it. I haven't read as much or seeked out much new music either. I feel like my attention span has kind of sunk as opposed to last year where I felt utterly great despite the pandemic. It's been rougher lately. I've deactivated my social media accounts today because I just can't stand that stuff anymore and find them utterly toxic at this point - both in rhetoric and the mindless scrolling. I'm hopeful to work up my attention span a little more in the coming weeks especially as I hope to recuperate some of my mental health. I'd probably get a home phone with an answering machine if I didn't need a smartphone for work.

It's funny how subtle some of the changes are. For some reason, I don't read as much, even novels I like. I'm probably watching more "difficult" movies than normal because they are a challenge to write about clearly. I've started watching curling, for christsakes, and finding it more suspenseful than most suspense movies. I find binge watching series oddly comforting, a way to get lost for some time in another world (watched all three seasons of Mr. Mercedes with Brendan Gleeson in three days). Don't seem to be listening to music much, including classical music which was the direction that I was heading in. Tennis watching has if anything increased--that never bores me and it allows me to exercise my analytic side. Nothing about this is premeditated--it all just happened. I do keep in mind that I am lucky as hell, though.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

It's funny how subtle some of the changes are. For some reason, I don't read as much, even novels I like. I'm probably watching more "difficult" movies than normal because they are a challenge to write about clearly. I've started watching curling, for christsakes, and finding it more suspenseful than most suspense movies. I find binge watching series oddly comforting, a way to get lost for some time in another world (watched all three seasons of Mr. Mercedes with Brendan Gleeson in three days). Don't seem to be listening to music much, including classical music which was the direction that I was heading in. Tennis watching has if anything increased--that never bores me and it allows me to exercise my analytic side. Nothing about this is premeditated--it all just happened. I do keep in mind that I am lucky as hell, though.

Not to digress too much but just to blow some steam quickly: I think that stuff has completely tied in with being home a lot more especially with work. I loved it for a while but being in my home office staring at a screen has bungled it all up. Not even a colleague to just shoot the shit with. I feel like I'm finding myself overthinking crap that doesn't deserve it like inconsequential stuff from the past. Anxiety has shot through the roof. I was always a prodigious overthinker but it's one thing to sit with your thoughts. Now I feel like I'm just rotting with them. My mind wanders off when I try to watch something, read, write, you name it. Awful stuff. Even when I'm being physically active I feel my mind going off in a million (negative) directions.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

In more positive news, my wife and I are looking into buying movie prints and framing them and I'm getting dangerously close to blowing 500$ on this perfect Sonatine poster and hanging it up in my office.

This one is another contender and much cheaper:

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Pretentious movie, type 2: any movie that purports to understand something that it clearly doesn’t but thinks it does

I know you're not an idiot, but this is a pretty stupid post. Not just the quoted part, the whole thing... but a film that thinks, that's just... we're passed the confused "intent".

As for the list of films, that's pretty bad too. Of course, Teorema is my favorite film by Pasolini (who also wrote some pretty interesting things about cinéma - or was that pretentious too?) And what did Amer ever did to you? I don't portray you as much of a fan of the giallo, so what angle are you attacking this one from?

 

[sdf]

People talk that this russian commic book film is good. This is incredible taking in acount that it is rar to see just some decent modern russian movie, not to mention a commic book story

 

[Mantis]

Pretentious movie, type 1: any movie that over-reaches for profundity that it hasn’t achieved and doesn’t deserve.

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 2: any movie that purports to understand something that it clearly doesn’t but thinks it does

and/or

Pretentious movie, type 3: any film created by an egotist who has his thumb stuck firmly up his ass and thinks it is on the pulse of the nation. Also called "the Ken Russell category."

Categories are not mutually exclusive.

My 10 Worst Offenders List

Teorema/Pier Paolo Pasolini
El Topo/Alejandro Jodorowsky
A Winter’s Tale/Akiva Goldsman
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close/Stephen Daldry
Requiem for a Dream/Darren Aronofsky
The Music Lovers/Ken Russell
To the Wonder/Terrence Malick
I Am Love/Luca Guadagnino
Amer/ Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Cloud Atlas/Lana and Lilly Wachowski

I have limited myself to one movie per director; many of these guys are multiple repeat offenders.

Would Donnie Darko be anywhere near that list?

 

[kihei]

I know you're not an idiot, but this is a pretty stupid post. Not just the quoted part, the whole thing... but a film that thinks, that's just... we're passed the confused "intent".

As for the list of films, that's pretty bad too. Of course, Teorema is my favorite film by Pasolini (who also wrote some pretty interesting things about cinéma - or was that pretentious too?) And what did Amer ever did to you? I don't portray you as much of a fan of the giallo, so what angle are you attacking this one from?

Actually I thought for about two-tenths of a second of changing the wording of that to suit your sensitivities, but thought, what the hell, most people will get the point. Can't say I'm regretting that call.

 

[kihei]

Would Donnie Darko be anywhere near that list?

Not mine.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

It's funny how subtle some of the changes are. For some reason, I don't read as much, even novels I like. I'm probably watching more "difficult" movies than normal because they are a challenge to write about clearly. I've started watching curling, for christsakes, and finding it more suspenseful than most suspense movies. I find binge watching series oddly comforting, a way to get lost for some time in another world (watched all three seasons of Mr. Mercedes with Brendan Gleeson in three days). Don't seem to be listening to music much, including classical music which was the direction that I was heading in. Tennis watching has if anything increased--that never bores me and it allows me to exercise my analytic side. Nothing about this is premeditated--it all just happened. I do keep in mind that I am lucky as hell, though.

Funny enough I just got around to watching The Outsider which is also based on Stephen King's work and share an important character (though the TV world of one is entirely unrelated to the TV world of the other). I liked The Outsider quite a bit, a really nice balance between grounded cop procedural mystery and a classic King otherworldliness. Stacked cast led by a brooding sad sack Ben Mendelsohn. This pushed me to get around to the most recent TV update of The Stand. (For some reason I wasn't real eager to watch a virus destroy the world last year ...)

My media diet certainly has changed.

I'm always reading something, but haven't had the mental capacity to take on anything challenging. What I read tends to be pulpy crime, classic and modern. I did up for a Marvel Unlimited membership this year and have consumed an ungodly amount of comics, which I think speaks to what I'm up for. Not slagging comics, which I enjoy (and I've read a few steallar ones this year), but tackling 18-30 virtual pages vs., I don't know, Dostoyevsky ... I"m in the former headpsace, not the latter.

My wife and I get a lot of comfort out of history shows on NatGeo and Smithsonian. I know way more about Egypt now than I did a year ago.

A long list of movies I just get get the motivation to tackle for assorted reasons. So I rewatched Ninja 3: The Domination for the upteeth time over the weekend (definitely not a pretentious film).

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My movie-watching has largely cratered this year. I've watched a couple of series and maybe 5-6 movies and that's it. I haven't read as much or seeked out much new music either. I feel like my attention span has kind of sunk as opposed to last year where I felt utterly great despite the pandemic. It's been rougher lately. I've deactivated my social media accounts today because I just can't stand that stuff anymore and find them utterly toxic at this point - both in rhetoric and the mindless scrolling. I'm hopeful to work up my attention span a little more in the coming weeks especially as I hope to recuperate some of my mental health. I'd probably get a home phone with an answering machine if I didn't need a smartphone for work.

I feel this.

Social media is part of my job so I can't escape it to some degree. Wish I had better discipline to avoid it when I don't have to be on it, but man it is tough and, for the most part, a soul sucking endeavor. Good jokes every now and then though.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Would Donnie Darko be anywhere near that list?

I thought that was a great one when it first came out, but I saw a bit of it on tv a while ago and man, it's just so up itself it's not funny. It's the insufferable bearded vegan hipster in movie form.

 

[Mantis]

I thought that was a great one when it first came out, but I saw a bit of it on tv a while ago and man, it's just so up itself it's not funny. It's the insufferable bearded vegan hipster in movie form.

I liked it when I was in highschool but I was a little pot-head. I tried watching it again recently and ya thats kind of how I view it now too.