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

[kihei]

Oxygen (2021) Directed by Alexander Aja 6A

Dr. Liz Hansen (Melanie Laurent) wakes up in an elaborate cryogenic pod with no memory of how she got there. She isn't even sure who she is. All she knows is what her computer (Mathieu Almaric) tells her, and that's that her oxygen is running out. After a horrifying introduction that lasts several minutes, the film moves onto a series of increasingly desperate attempts by Liz to find out what is going on and to escape from her capsule-like pod before she suffocates. Turns out she's not where she thinks she is and there are a lot of suspenseful twists along the way as she figures things out. Oxygen is stylish and satisfying, among the best science fiction movies that I have seen in ages. Ryan Reynolds trapped in a casket in Buried might come to mind as a comparable, but Oxygen is way, way better than that movie. True, we spend most of our time with Liz, and Laurent does a wonderful job of capturing both her panic and her smarts. But we get several brief excursions away from her confinement that allow the audience to understand what is actually happening. High production values, a well thought out script, slick direction and some imaginative threats contribute to Oxygen's effectiveness considerably. Any science fiction buff is in for a real treat.

subtitles

Netflix

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

What's the next film that you're going to review? Wait! Don't tell me. I want it to be a surprise.

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (Fiennes, 2006) - Zizek has a strange following. Through my times in the academic circus, I've known a few fangirls that would have thrown themselves at his rock star persona. I've never read him exhaustively and I mostly know him through his pop-stuff. Here, he uses psychoanalysis in order to comment on a wide range of films - but really, he mostly uses a wide range of films to comment on psychoanalysis (including some dated ideas - if there's one thing you can blame this film for, it's its quasi farcical androcentrism). Still, I can't help but appreciate the whole thing. His readings of popular films often dangerously flirt with overinterpretation, but they still produce interesting meaning - and his overall understanding of cinema is in itself very interesting ("All modern films are ultimately films about the possibility or impossibility to make a film" - you know I'm in). A little too much Hitchcock, and a little too much Lynch, but still a very pleasant tour. I had it at 8 and I'm good with it. 8/10

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Exorcist III (Blatty, 1990) - A weird case of studio interference made of this third film a collage on the brink of incoherence but that somehow kind of works anyway. The studio imposed an exorcism and the return of Jason Miller and Blatty spliced both into his film while trying to retain as much of his original ideas as he could. Considering the ordeal, I think he did great. If the exorcism sequence still feels out of left field, the split acting of the Karras character works very well. The result is pretty thin, and a little too heavy on character humor in the first half, but Blatty has a good sense for suspense and horror and there's here and there a few moments of brilliance. 5/10

 

[Osprey]

Oxygen (2021) - 6/10 (Liked it)

A young woman (Melanie Laurent) awakens in a cryogenic pod without any memory of where she is, how she got there or even who she is. This French sci-fi/medical thriller from director Alexandre Aja (Crawl) is much like Buried, except that the "coffin" is very high tech and Laurent is a lot prettier than Ryan Reynolds. Just about the whole film takes place in the pod, with her character communicating with the pod's Siri-like "digital assistant" and trying to get help from the outside world before she runs out of oxygen, though there are flashbacks as her memory sporadically returns to her. It's probably not for the claustrophobic. There's a fair bit of tension, as you might imagine. Laurent is very good as she alternates between panic and composure. I enjoyed the slowly unraveling mystery of who and where her character is and the fact that the answers end up being pretty surprising and satisfying when all is said and done. After just about everything is learned, though, it does go on for 15 minutes longer for not much reason, I felt. It's kind of odd for a film to drag at the very end instead of somewhere in the middle. Also, there are a few unanswered questions, like why a pod would have such a helpful, obedient AI for an occupant that would be asleep and inside for a reason, but they're mostly forgivable. Less forgivable is a huge scientific inaccuracy regarding communication that the film relies on and that I found rather distracting. In spite of those issues, I enjoyed the film (and would even give it a 6.5 if I could). I'm a sucker for films set in single locations, and you can't get much smaller than this. An interesting fact is that this was shot last July, making it one of the earliest films to start or resume production, but it makes sense, considering that it's a mostly one-actor, one-set film. It also feels like a pandemic movie in its themes of isolation and uncertainty, among others. It's worth watching if you like somewhat thoughtful sci-fi and is available on Netflix in the original French and, I believe, a dubbed English version, if you don't like subtitles. I can say, though, that the subtitles are pretty easy to follow because there's not a whole lot going on visually and the few lines that are important are repeated.

Edit: Confound it, @kihei! You beat me to it.

 

[Pink Mist]

Captain Khorshid [Nakhoda Khorshid] (1987) directed by Nasser Taghvai

After his shipment of contraband cigarettes is confiscated by customs, a one-armed shipping boat captain, Captain Khorshid (Dariush Arjmand) turns to smuggling people and criminals across the border. A 4th (!) adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, although this one transports Hemingway’s story from Cuba to Iran. This film is considered a classic in early post-revolutionary Iranian cinema (according to whom? According to Wikipedia in an unsourced sentence), although basically nothing has been written about it in English so who knows if that’s true or not. The only existing transfer of it is very rough and it is hard to even see the climax of the film and I was ready to turn it off in the first 10 minutes because of how poor the transfer is. The beginning of the film is also a bit of a mess which also didn’t help, but once the film gets going and it focuses on the Captain Khorshid character it is an engrossing film. Compared to the earlier adaptations of the film, Captain Khorshid played by Arjmand, is a much more cynical and gruff character – he doesn’t take shit from anybody and he had his arm previously cut off by the police, yet somehow can adeptly handle a rifle one armed. When the film focuses on him, the film shines, when it focuses on some of the other characters where the acting is a lot more uneven it meanders. His character is well suited to the gritty, impoverished, and corrupt village where he makes his live and at times the film feels like a western genre film (and not only because it’s located in a desert) filled with gunslinging outlaws and rich merchants who rob the townsfolk of their valuables. Certainly an interesting setting to adapt the story but for the most part it works well.

 

[kihei]

The Last Movie (1971) Directed by Dennis Hopper 3C

The Last Movie was quite the cause celebre at the time of its release. Dennis Hopper, known for being something of a loose cannon to begin with, had just directed Easy Rider, a money maker and critical darling that attracted a broad audience including counter culture types. He was basically given free rein to direct his next project without interference, which became The Last Movie. It was a disaster, way over budget, very late, and commercially unfeasible. The Last Movie is a metafictional, self-reflexive Western set in Peru that goes from confusing to aggravating to maddening in short order. Hopper plays Kansas, a stunt man working in a Sam Peckipah-type Western being made in Peru. When the shooting is complete, Kansas decides to hang around Peru, getting stoned, making obnoxious friends, acting like a dick, appropriating local culture, and abusing women. Meanwhile Peruvian peasants begin to make their own “make believe” movie, only they expect Kansas to actually die in it. Eventually that falls apart, too, and Hopper and fellow wing-nut Don Gordon yuck it up with one another about how much their characters are supposed to know about gold. There is a long scene at a whore house, a long uncomfortable party scene, discussions about finding gold, many nasty verbal altercations, a ton of misogyny, a fistful of bad acting, and probably a couple of pounds of peyote or mescaline consumed by cast and crew along the way. Throw in some Christ-imagery not to mention Hopper getting squirted with breast milk. The film was received as a pretentious, self-indulgent hot mess by critics and movie goers (and studio heads) alike. But there is some interesting stuff going on here.

The meta-meta framework is fun and wonderfully photographed by ace cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. The implied critique of Hollywood movies and the deleterious effect America can have on other cultures are somehow almost magically shoe-horned into the subtext of the movie. Whenever The Last Movie is shooting action, playing with film convention, and bouncing around meta notions, it’s fun. My problem occurs when actors start to actually exchange dialogue with one another. Much of the script sounds ad lib in the most amateurish sort of way and grating to boot; these scenes all add up to abject nastiness filled with unlikable characters behaving badly. It doesn’t help that Hopper as Kansas looks zonked half the time. If one could just eliminate these scenes from the movie and put something, anything, less awful in their place, The Last Movie provides the scaffolding for a better film. At the very least its strengths could be savoured more enthusiastically.

Criterion Channel

 

[heatnikki]

Oxygen 6.8/10
Pretty good French scifi film. Keeps you on the edge of your seat and guessing what is going on. One of the better recent films.

 

[Osprey]

The Last Movie is a metafictional, self-reflexive Western set in Peru that goes from confusing to aggravating to maddening in short order.

Me: "That, alone, will earn a 'like' from Pranzo."

The film was received as a pretentious, self-indulgent hot mess by critics and movie goers (and studio heads) alike.

Me: "Welp, there goes Pranzo's 'like'. Easy come, easy go."

 

[kihei]

Me: "That, alone, will earn a 'like' from Pranzo."


Me: "Welp, there goes Pranzo's 'like'. Easy come, easy go."

lmao

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Me: "That, alone, will earn a 'like' from Pranzo."

Me: "Welp, there goes Pranzo's 'like'. Easy come, easy go."

Key words are "received as", not "is". Baby steps!

Haven't seen the film, but yeah "meta" and self-reflexive" caught my eye.

 

[Osprey]

Key words are "received as", not "is". Baby steps!

Yeah, I realized that after I posted and it was too late. I was in too much of a rush to have a laugh at your expense. Can you blame me?

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Yeah, I realized that after I posted and it was too late. I was in too much of a rush to have a laugh at your expense. Can you blame me?

 

[Tkachuk4MVP]

1. Children of Paradise, Michel Carne
2. Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray
3. Jules and Jim, Francois Truffaut
4. The Double Life of Veronique, Krzysztof Kieslowski
5. Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais
6. The Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky
7. Blow Up, Michelangelo Antonioni
8. 8 ½, Federico Fellini
9. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai Ming-liang
10. After Life, Hirokazu Kore-eda

Quoting this post for future reference. As of right now I've seen exactly zero of those films, lol.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

I actually wanted to watch the entire series recently, but I could only get through the first three before I decided I had enough and had to call it quits. The series is pretty bad overall, even for 80s action flick standard, but it completely falls into parody status by Rambo III. 4, meanwhile, is Stallone's attempt to rediscover his lost stardom, but in the end, it, like 5, is just mindless violence with so much gore that nobody would want to sit though twice. Ironically, the video game Mortal Kombat XI actually understood the character far better than the movies, so much so that I care more about him in the game than when I watched him on screen.

Regardless, I do like First Blood the most in the entire series, but that is partially because it was filmed in Hope, British Columbia, about a two hours drive from where I live. In fact, the bridge that featured prominently in the movie stood until 2011, when it was dismantled. Personally, I actually find the behind-the-scene details to be more interesting than the actual movie. In the original book, Rambo was supposed to die in the end, and the filmmakers did want to follow the source material, but it tested terribly with the audience. As a result, the ending that we see now was filmed, and that decision inadvertently gave Stallone two movie franchises. Also, according to Stallone himself, the original cut was over 3 hours long, and apparently it was so bad, that he wanted to buy the movie and destroy it, as he thought it would kill his career. While Stallone can be factitious in his interviews, I think it is probably true, because there is no way anyone can sit through a movie like that for three hours, and the much shorter hour and a half version is at least bearable.

I have it at a 6/10. It is not great, and I wish the originally ending was kept, so we would not have been subjected to 3 to 5 in the franchise, but it has a very good story concept that had a lot of potential, and the acting, especially from Crenna and Dennehy, is actually pretty good.

I just love the first film and have for over 20 years. As for the rest of the Rambo flicks, I don’t care about the rest. Even when I was a kid, I never cared.

I think I’ve seen 10 minutes of “First Blood: Part 2” and I was like...meh.

 

[Tkachuk4MVP]

Ze French Connection (1971) - 8/10

Definitely one of those movies that make you say 'damn this is well-made' as you watch it. The patience of the chase scenes on foot along with the NY cinematography are really perfect. Film suffers from a lull in the middle and I didn't like Gene Hackman's over-acting of a cop on roid rage with little depth but as far as police procedural go, this is pure coppin'.

Still gonna give the edge to the chase scene in Bullit compared to the train chase scene here.

I found French Connection to be very underwhelming, and I think a large part of that had to do with the fact that I watched Bullitt (a much better film IMO) not long before it.

 

[nameless1]

I found French Connection to be very underwhelming, and I think a large part of that had to do with the fact that I watched Bullitt (a much better film IMO) not long before it.

On the contrary, I find The French Connection to be much better. Both Bullitt and The French Connection are best known for the chase scene, but the later one is much better executed. To be fair, Bullitt is very influential, and it pretty much becomes the prototype on how future car chase scenes are filmed, but I can see the hubcap falls off in one scene, and I can tell exactly where they splice the footage together. The French Connection, on the other hand, has no noticeable mistake. Furthermore, I find the story in Bullitt rather slow, especially in the beginning where the first 30 minutes character-building scenes does nothing to make the character more interesting, and the movie only starts to move at the halfway mark, whereas I am enthralled by the plot of The French Connection from start to finish. McQueen is cool as ever, but Hackman is just a much better actor, and I am more fascinated by him than McQueen's eponymous title character. I am actually bothered by how lax airplane rules are back then too, which one would think that they will change after many high-profile hijackings, but that did not start to change until the 1980s, so I really cannot fault the movie for what is to be an accurate portrayal.


I personally have Bullitt at 6.5/10. I cannot give an accurate grade to The French Connection just yet, because I last watched it over 15 years ago, and on a T.V. showing too, so I actually want to watch it again to confirm the grade.

 

[Pink Mist]

Quoting this post for future reference. As of right now I've seen exactly zero of those films, lol.

It's a very strong list. I haven't seen Pather Panchali , The Mirror, or After Life but everything else on there is really solid

 

[Osprey]

Here we go again...

Breach (2020) - 3/10 (Really disliked it)

Bruce Willis fights zombies in space... not to be confused with an aptly named film released 3 months later, Cosmic Sin, which was Bruce Willis fighting vampires in space. Believe it or not, the two films were written and produced by the same two guys. Maybe they were arguing over whether to make a space zombie movie or a space vampire movie and compromised by making both back to back. At times, though, they feel like the same movie, one that even SyFy would probably reject for not being up to the standards of a TV movie. They both have thin plots, awful dialogue (like, in this one, "We have to get to the security thing!"), cheap sets, cheap props (like cryo pods that look like wooden boxes painted white), poor effects (like fake muzzle flashes added in post production to what are clearly prop guns) and bad acting. At least Willis doesn't completely mail in his performance in this one--he actually makes facial expressions, which is more than he did in the last two films of his that I reviewed--but don't misconstrue that. He's still bad, just slightly less bad. No one else is any good, either, though it's not like it'd be easy to make dialogue this bad sound good. Also, at least the thin plot is understandable, unlike Cosmic Sin's. Basically, a bunch of colonists on an interstellar journey to a "new Earth" fight some kind of alien parasite that turns the crew into, you guessed it, zombies. There's a lot of sneaking around corridors that are dimly lit (probably to hide their cheapness) and engaging in firefights with the zombies. At least there's a fair bit of action (unlike its sister film), even though none of it qualifies as good. The movie is more watchable than Cosmic Sin, which I gave a 2/10, but that's not saying much. If you're going to waste an hour and a half of your life on one of Bruce Willis' latest cash grabs, this is probably the one to do it with, but I wouldn't recommend it, even with it being free on Prime Video.

BTW, this is the third recent Bruce Willis movie to clearly have an inflated RT audience score. I'm beginning to suspect who's been submitting the fake ratings.

 

[kihei]

Cleopatra (1963) Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz 4B

Four hours and eleven minutes. Not enough time for a movie of War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time, too long for everything else. Hollywood’s paean to wretched excess what with rebuilding parts of ancient Rome and using real gold in costume fabric, it is a miracle that Cleopatra didn’t sink 20th Century Fox and blockbusters in general. So how does it stand up as a movie nearly 60 years later. Not great, but it’s not a complete disaster either. The first half, a separate movie really, focuses on Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) and Caesar (Rex Harrison) and their fight to achieve supremacy over the other. In other words, its about empire building and power politics, not exactly compelling stuff though Harrison has fun with his role.

The second half of the movie is about Cleopatra’s romance with Antony (Richard Burton) and while they do indeed possess great chemistry poor Anthony is left to look like a weak, self-pitying schmuck always bending to other people’s will. The final scenes are played as though they are Shakespearean, and Burton gets to show off his considerable classical chops. In the end there is just too much dull material overall and very little action of any kind. At least an hour could be cut, likely more.

What saves the movie to some extent is Taylor with her genuine movie star power. When she gets excited and uses her upper register, she possesses the nasal whine of a displeased prom queen. But otherwise few actors can hold the screen the way that she does. Perfect for Cleopatra, she commands the audience’s attention. Cleopatra is a serious attempt at a movie, just a very overblown one.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Strange Case of The Exorcist 4 or Paul Schrader vs Renny Harlin: the Ultimate Showdown (2004-2005) - The only interesting thing about The Exorcist 4 is that it exists twice. First, Paul Schrader was hired to direct a project that was already well advanced. He shot the film, but when he handed in his first cut, the studio thought that it was pure crap and that it wouldn't sell, so they politely asked him to gtfo. They still didn't want to lose their investment, and they thought a low-level director with not much pride could carve something out of the Schrader material with minimal reshoot. In comes Renny Harlin. Problem is, he also thought the whole thing was crap, and since most of the original cast were "unavailable", he reshot over 90% of the film. Once they lauched the new film, they realized that it was pretty crappy too and wouldn't sell much anyway. In order not to lose all the money from the original shoot, they took Schrader back to complete his film, and they launched it too. So you have two films, sharing Stellan Skasgard and a few couragous extras, mostly the same sets, a few shots, and some basic plot points.

It's really a rare cinematic case of who wore it best? Something the nerds recently had with Justice League, but otherwise pretty rare. The closest thing I could think of were the quasi simulteneous adaptations of Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by John Irvin (The Fine Art of Love: Mine-Haha) and Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence) - two pretty interesting films, miles away from the crap that are the fourth Exorcist films. If the question was who whore it best? The answer would obviously be Harlin, even though the Schrader film was slightly better reviewed. Both directors ended up working with heavy contraints and that's always interesting, but ultimately, crap is crap. The Nazis, the CGI Hyenas, and the mishandling of the Merrin character make both films terrible Exorcist prequels. As a stand alone, I think I slightly prefer the Harlin film, more conventional crap, with cheap erotic undertones and a "twist". The Schrader film has moments of quasi-experimental inanity, and mishandled, that looks really bad. Both are subpar films in the finer "possession" subgenre and I'd have both at 2.5/10

 

[Chili]

Mutiny on the Bounty-1935

The classic sea tale based on the true story. Of the three film versions (that I seen), this is my favorite. The confrontational relationship at the heart of the story between Fletcher Christian and Captain William Bligh brought to life by Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, who were opposites off screen as well. Favorite scene is where Bligh is put out to sea by the crew who have taken control of the ship, the Captain as defiant as ever and vows vengeance.

The two ships were especially made replicas for the movie. They were sailed 14k miles to Tahiti. While Laughton was researching Bligh in England he found the real papers with details of his uniform, and the costume was made for him. Gable was not thrilled that he had to shave his trademark mustache.

The Marlon Brando version (1962) is awesome visually but I still prefer this version for the cast portrayals.

 

[kihei]

The Woman in the Window (2021) Directed by Joe Wright 3A

Amy Adams emotes her ass off in this egregiously awful ripoff of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Housebound Anna (Williams), a psychologist suffering from a major trauma of her own, believes that there has been a murder across the street involving her new neighbours. Everyone thinks Anna is bonkers. Figure out the rest. Director Joe Wright is trying for a vintage '50s/'60s suspense vibe but he has no idea how to create suspense. Even if he had, the script is so preposterous and under written that it wouldn't have helped much anyway. There's a fine cast involved--Adams, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, Anthony Mackie--but outside of Adams, they have virtually nothing to do and nothing to work with. Adams is on screen throughout the movie and she got on my nerves early and stayed that way. Netflix has to do better than this. The Woman in the Window is enough to drive me back to a movie theatre.

Netflix

 

[Osprey]

Netflix has to do better than this. The Woman in the Window is enough to drive me back to a movie theatre.

A little research reveals that it's actually a 20th Century Studios film that was intended to be released in theaters last Spring, but got delayed because of the pandemic and eventually sold to Netflix, instead. In other words, Netflix didn't make it and, if anything, saved you from enduring it in the theater.

I think that I'll watch it tonight. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[kihei]

I think that I'll watch it tonight. Thanks for the recommendation.

My pleasure. Hell, if you like this one, I've got a whole carload of 3As I can send your way.

 

[Osprey]

My pleasure. Hell, if you like this one, I've got a whole carload of 3As I can send your way.

That's very generous of you, but I'm only 20 minutes into this one and already wondering if I even want to finish it tonight. It's surprisingly dull and the direction is slowly getting on my nerves. A 3/10 feels like a safe bet from me, as well, unless it improves dramatically.