Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Movie-mber Edition

[Osprey]

Interesting how many of his movies are remakes or have been remade. Sorrowful Jones was a remake of Little Miss Marker(Shirley Temple) and remade again (Walter Matthau). Was watching Nothing but the Truth and thought of Liar Liar. The Ghostbreakers must have inspired Ghost Busters a bit too.

I'll watch Nothing but the Truth. Thanks for the tip. Yeah, I read that Ghostbusters has a very loose connection to The Ghost Breakers.

Get a kick out of Bing Crosby's cameos in some of these films.

Yeah, those are very unexpected and fun. I'm really fond of the Road to... films. I remember watching my first when I was young and being surprised that Bob Hope was actually young once, too. I recently collected all seven and have been planning to go through them soon, which will be fun, especially since I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen all of them.

 

[kihei]

It Must Be Heaven (2019) directed by Elia Suleiman

A director (Elia Suleiman, playing himself) leaves Palestine to go to Paris and New York City to attempt to secure funding for his latest project. Along the way he observes the absurdity of life in those cities, such as French cops dancing on segways, parkgoers fighting for the last seat in the park, streets deserted in Paris except for mounted policemen and tanks, every person on the street open carrying firearms in NYC. All of this is played as an absurd comedy with Suleiman watching silently bemused. In this he draws parallels between Palestine and these cities to suggest that life there isn’t too much different from life in Palestine, in that the oppressive elements of daily life are not restricted to Palestine but are found abroad too. Excellent film with sharp social commentary but with an absurd comic edge. I haven’t seen any of Suleiman’s other films, but this film reminds me of Roy Andersson’s work.

It Must Be Heaven made my top twenty last year. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[Franck]

Diego Maradona (2019) Directed by Asif Kapadia (documentary) 8A

Diego Maradona, for some the greatest soccer player in history, died on Wednesday. He was only 60, but as this excellent documentary makes clear, he was probably lucky to make it that far. Though it would have been a cliche to do so, director Asif Kapadia (Amy; Senna) could legitimately have called his documentary The Rise and Fall of Diego Maradona because that is certainly what it is about. No athlete ever rose any higher than Maradona. His athletic gifts made him a player with no peers and his exploits on the field are legendary, superb individual play and a commitment to team excellence that saw Napoli rise from the dregs of Italian soccer to win the Serie A league championship twice (the only times in their history), the UEFA Cup once, not to forget his World Cup win for Argentina. In Naples, his celebrity was unparalleled. It was if you combined Jesus and the Beatles in one person. That celebrity became his downfall as it led to associations with Camorra crime bosses and addiction to cocaine. Maradona's personality also underwent significant change as his mental equilibrium deteriorated and the once adored footballer became a hated figure in Naples and throughout Italy. As he did with Amy and Senna, Kapadia is great at locating the human being overwhelmed by his or her inescapable notoriety. Kapadia expertly uses archival footage and Maradona's own words to tell his story. Diego Maradona has resonance beyond it being just about Maradona. The documentary is a cautionary tale about what happens when an otherwise ordinary person gets caught up in something beyond their or anyone else's control. At this level, fame becomes the harshest of mistresses.

subtitles

Kapadia is the only director I know of who can legitimately rival Adam Curtis when it comes to using archive material as a storytelling device, but while Curtis uses his skill to create a veneer of profundity on what is mostly vague, shallow and often incoherent contrarianism Kapadia makes highly focused deep-dives into tragic figures that genuinely feel enlightening.

I have mixed feelings about documentaries, much of it leans too heavily on being informative and ends up being dreary and devoid of any artistic quality, while others make use of cinematic style and narratives as a form of manipulative activism, it is directors like Kapadia who make wonderful, skilled and eye-opening works that keeps me from abandoning the genre entirely.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Diego Maradona (2019) Directed by Asif Kapadia (documentary) 8A

Diego Maradona, for some the greatest soccer player in history, died on Wednesday. He was only 60, but as this excellent documentary makes clear, he was probably lucky to make it that far. Though it would have been a cliche to do so, director Asif Kapadia (Amy; Senna) could legitimately have called his documentary The Rise and Fall of Diego Maradona because that is certainly what it is about. No athlete ever rose any higher than Maradona. His athletic gifts made him a player with no peers and his exploits on the field are legendary, superb individual play and a commitment to team excellence that saw Napoli rise from the dregs of Italian soccer to win the Serie A league championship twice (the only times in their history), the UEFA Cup once, not to forget his World Cup win for Argentina. In Naples, his celebrity was unparalleled. It was if you combined Jesus and the Beatles in one person. That celebrity became his downfall as it led to associations with Camorra crime bosses and addiction to cocaine. Maradona's personality also underwent significant change as his mental equilibrium deteriorated and the once adored footballer became a hated figure in Naples and throughout Italy. As he did with Amy and Senna, Kapadia is great at locating the human being overwhelmed by his or her inescapable notoriety. Kapadia expertly uses archival footage and Maradona's own words to tell his story. Diego Maradona has resonance beyond it being just about Maradona. The documentary is a cautionary tale about what happens when an otherwise ordinary person gets caught up in something beyond their or anyone else's control. At this level, fame becomes the harshest of mistresses.

subtitles

This dude had Napoli wondering whether they should cheer for Argentina in a World Cup Semi-Final against their own country. I know there's always been political tension between the North and the South there, but damn.

 

[Osprey]

Iron Mask aka Journey to China: The Mystery of the Iron Mask aka Viy 2: Journey to China (2019) - 3/10 (Really disliked it)

I'm not sure where to begin, except with the basics: it's a Russian-Chinese blockbuster CGI-fest that features Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bunch of other people (including Rutger Hauer in one of his last film roles, but it beats me where because I never identified him). It's primarily set in China and England in the 18th century, but an 18th century that features magic, dragons, pixies and other fantastical things. I'm honestly not sure about the plot. It's something about Peter the Great being imprisoned in the Tower of London and escaping to China... which makes no plot sense, but makes real life sense if you want to court Chinese film investors. Chan plays a fellow prisoner and Arnie plays the "warden," two roles that feel like they were added just to cast them. There's a fight between them that is probably the highlight of the whole film (not that that's saying much), even if it's still lame, 30 years too late and between two 70-year-olds in real life. At least, for once, their acting doesn't stand out so much because the acting throughout the film is bad and over the top... and that's just the lines spoken in English. At least half of the movie is dubbed in English, which is even worse. The attempts at humor are also horrible. The movie goes for a Pirates of the Caribbean kind of silliness, but much worse. As stupid as the whole thing is, though, it's sort of amusingly stupid. It was sort of fun to laugh at how bad it is. Also, it has good visuals and action, so it's watchable in an eye candy sort of way. Make no mistake, though: it's really bad.

 

[kihei]

Save the Green Planet (2003) Directed by Jang Joon-hwan 8A

Save the Green Planet is about as wild a ride as I have had at the movies in some time. Part science-fiction, part detective story, part horror movie, part gore-fest, part demented comedy, this South Korean movie imaginatively mixes together a host of popular genres to pleasingly outrageous effect. A disgruntled UFO-enthusiast kidnaps a rich industrialist because he believes the industrialist is an alien from Andromeda. There is nothing the industrialist, who gets tortured in a myriad of creative ways, can do to dissuade him. The cops are on the trail, especially a talented rookie and a former police detective turned lone wolf. A dying mother, a tight-rope walking, not very bright lover, and a really cute dog also play roles in the shenanigans. The mood is usually lightly comic, but still somehow naggingly unsettling. Save the Green Planet’s last half hour or so turns the dial up to 11, no, make that 12--there is nothing quite like it. People sometimes think that modern entertainment movies lack imagination. That’s a claim that cannot be made against Save the Green Planet.

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Criterion Channel

 

[Pink Mist]

Amour (2012) directed by Michael Haneke

An elderly couple (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) live an independent life as a happy couple, until a stroke paralyzes Anne’s (Emmanuelle Riva) body and she becomes increasingly dependent on Georges. Beautifully played by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film explores the bonds of love near the end of life in an almost documentary way. It does not hold your hand like a Hollywood film would treat this subject, with glimmers of hope or happiness; it is relentless in its portrayal of watching one’s soulmate slowly die. Deeply moving and an absolutely devastating film, a masterpiece in my books.

 

[Franck]

Amour (2012) directed by Michael Haneke

An elderly couple (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) live an independent life as a happy couple, until a stroke paralyzes Anne’s (Emmanuelle Riva) body and she becomes increasingly dependent on Georges. Beautifully played by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film explores the bonds of love near the end of life in an almost documentary way. It does not hold your hand like a Hollywood film would treat this subject, with glimmers of hope or happiness; it is relentless in its portrayal of watching one’s soulmate slowly die. Deeply moving and an absolutely devastating film, a masterpiece in my books.

Best film of the 2010s, in my opinion.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Happiest Season (2020) - 6/10

I hate movies that involve too many cringy scenes like this did. Kristen Stewart, David, Aubrey Plaza, and Mackenzie Davis' overly strong Canadian accent which I can't help but notice in every film were the highlights, everything else was a low light.

 

[kihei]

Like the 2000s before it, the 2010s is a great decade for movies;

2000s Top Ten

1) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai, Taiwan
2) Still Life, Jia, China
3) In the Mood for Love, Wong, Hong Kong
4) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Mungiu, Romania
5) Mulholland Drive, Lynch, US
6) L'enfant, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium
7) City of God, Meirelles, Brazil
8) No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen, US
9) Revanche, Spielmann, Austria
10) Police, Adjective, Porumboiu, Romania


HM: Alexandra; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Death of Mr. Lazarescu


2010s Top Ten

1) Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Weerasethakul, Thailand
2) Loveless, Zvyagintsev, Russia
3) Amour, Haneke, France
4) The Assassin, Hou, Taiwan
5) 24 Frames, Kiarostami, Iran
6) Gravity, Cuaron, US
7) A Simple Life, Hui, Hong Kong
8) Once upon a Time in Anatolia, Ceylon, Turkey
9) Somewhere, S. Coppola, US
10) Roma, Cuaron, Mexico

HM: Parasite; Moonlight; Tomboy

 

[Langdon Alger]

The Hangover part 3 - 2013

Never was interested in seeing this since I thought the second one was just the first one all over again, but they went in a different direction for this one, and I think that was the right call. Starts off slow. Why does Alan have a giraffe, and why is he driving on the freeway with it? I almost turned it off after 10 minutes, but I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did. I ended up liking the movie.

I know it got bad reviews, but I really like these characters and actors. Throw John Goodman in the mix, and it’s a good way to spend 100 minutes. I don’t know what the general consensus amongst fans is, but I liked it.

7/10

 

[kihei]

Finally picked up Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse after avoiding it. Really enjoyed it. Surprising how the animation really opened up the story telling in a way that, with rare exceptions like The Guardians of the Galaxy, the more traditional live-action efforts from Marvel only do sporadically because they depend so heavily on repetition. This one felt like a breath of fresh air and light rather than ponderous.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

9) Revanche, Spielmann, Austria

I love that you have Revanche in there, a film I like a lot. I could do a pretty good 2000s top-10, but I really have dropped the ball since 2010 (the year I stopped teaching actually).

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I checked and I have exactly 10 films with 10/10 ratings on IMDB from 2000 to 2009 - with 3 directors having 2 films each.

Windows on Monday (Kölher, 2006)
What Time Is It There? (Tsai, 2001)
Éloge de l'amour (Godard, 2001)
H Story (Suwa, 2001)
Combat d'amour en songes (Ruiz, 2000)
Caché (Haneke, 2005)
Uzak (Ceylan, 2002)
Notre musique (Godard, 2004)
Code Inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages (Haneke, 2000)
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai, 2005)

I also have 20 films at 9/10, including Revanche.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

Best film of the 2010s, in my opinion.

Cannot disagree. The films that made me cry can be counted on one hand, and Amour took two fingers.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Like the 2000s before it, the 2010s is a great decade for movies;

2000s Top Ten

1) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai, Taiwan
2) Still Life, Jia, China
3) In the Mood for Love, Wong, Hong Kong
4) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Mungiu, Romania
5) Mulholland Drive, Lynch, US
6) L'enfant, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium
7) City of God, Meirelles, Brazil
8) No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen, US
9) Revanche, Spielmann, Austria
10) Police, Adjective, Porumboiu, Romania


HM: Alexandra; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Death of Mr. Lazarescu


2010s Top Ten

1) Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Weerasethakul, Thailand
2) Loveless, Zvyagintsev, Russia
3) Amour, Haneke, France
4) The Assassin, Hou, Taiwan
5) 24 Frames, Kiarostami, Iran
6) Gravity, Cuaron, US
7) A Simple Life, Hui, Hong Kong
8) Once upon a Time in Anatolia, Ceylon, Turkey
9) Somewhere, S. Coppola, US
10) Roma, Cuaron, Mexico

HM: Parasite; Moonlight; Tomboy

I'm still thinking about Loveless months later.

 

[kihei]

Death in the Garden (1956) Directed by Luis Bunuel 5A

In a remote mining village way off in the jungle, the lives of a small group of people are threatened by a roaming militia. A motley collection of five individuals—a tough fortune hunter who slaps women around, an old man and his mute daughter, a priest, and a hooker (a young Simone Signoret, no less)--try to escape into the dense bush. If the bad guys don’t get them, maybe the jungle will. Death in the Garden is a Luis Bunuel film that I had never seen nor ever even heard of. It is one of the movies that the great Spanish surrealist made when he was forced to flee Fascist Spain and seek exile in Mexico for several years. Though Death in the Garden is fluidly directed, I would have never realized it was the work of Bunuel. There are no surreal dimension to the film; it’s a kind of adventure movie about people trying to survive in extreme conditions. Bunuel is usually firmly anti-clerical but his priest in this one is a largely sympathetic character this time around, a flawed good guy. And the fortune hunter here bears more resemblance to Indiana Jones than he does to the kind of bourgeois scumbags that Bunuel usually sticks pins into. It all adds up to nothing very memorable, but I didn’t hate it. Not much of a recommendation, that.

subtitles

MUBI

 

[OzzyFan]

The Croods: A New Age
2.70 out of 4stars

Solid and light whacky over the top "child"-ish humor that adults who are young at heart can enjoy and have fun at.

Run (2020, Sarah Paulson)
2.75 out of 4stars

Good thriller with some decent twists in a subgenre that's been played out a bit (mother doesn't let her teenager daughter of the house and controls everything in her life).

Fatman (2020)
2.25 out of 4stars

Mel Gibson as a humanized Santa and Goggins is a hitman going after him? Sounds much better on paper than it's actual outcome. Had potential, but worth a couple laughs.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2.30 out of 4stars

Better than I thought it would be with more hits than misses, but the schtick has gotten a bit old. Not to mention, it feels a bit odd targeting random people(for the most part) and needing the right responses for your jokes to land correctly.

Honest Thief (2020)
1.75 out of 4stars

Overly tame and watered down Neeson action movie.

The War with Grandpa
1.75 out of 4stars

What the hell is Robert De Niro doing with his life now?

 

[Mantis]

Pootie Tang

11/10

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Halloween (Green, 2018) - Finally catched that one now that it's on Netflix Canada... Never understood how they thought it could be a good idea to, once again, make a sequel to only part of the Halloween films (H20 + H:Resurrection tried that with Jamie Lee Curtis and failed, and now the premise was even worse, also ignoring Halloween II, which is probably the best film of the whole lot, and only to put aside the brother-sister relationship). But no, they had to do it so extra-old Laurie Strode, now with a big "what would Sarah Connor do?" fetish, would get a third timeline (she already died twice!) to go against her non-brother. She has 40 years to prepare and both her trap and her plan are completely dumb. The Zombie films were far superior. 3/10

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

(nevermind)

 

[Osprey]

(nevermind)

I'm imagining this as your review of the sequel, Halloween Kills, which was supposed to come out last month. It sums up 2020 perfectly.

 

[Langdon Alger]

Pootie Tang

11/10

Great name for a movie.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Like the 2000s before it, the 2010s is a great decade for movies;

2000s Top Ten

1) I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai, Taiwan
2) Still Life, Jia, China
3) In the Mood for Love, Wong, Hong Kong
4) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Mungiu, Romania
5) Mulholland Drive, Lynch, US
6) L'enfant, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium
7) City of God, Meirelles, Brazil
8) No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen, US
9) Revanche, Spielmann, Austria
10) Police, Adjective, Porumboiu, Romania


HM: Alexandra; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; The Death of Mr. Lazarescu


2010s Top Ten

1) Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Weerasethakul, Thailand
2) Loveless, Zvyagintsev, Russia
3) Amour, Haneke, France
4) The Assassin, Hou, Taiwan
5) 24 Frames, Kiarostami, Iran
6) Gravity, Cuaron, US
7) A Simple Life, Hui, Hong Kong
8) Once upon a Time in Anatolia, Ceylon, Turkey
9) Somewhere, S. Coppola, US
10) Roma, Cuaron, Mexico

HM: Parasite; Moonlight; Tomboy

I know a book's a book and a movie is a movie, but considering the screenplay is essentially verbatim to the book, I'm surprised you have No Country for Old Men on your list. I thought you didn't like McCarthy and the Coen Brothers both? Or am I thinking of another poster?

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Croods: A New Age
2.70 out of 4stars

Solid and light whacky over the top "child"-ish humor that adults who are young at heart can enjoy and have fun at.

Run (2020, Sarah Paulson)
2.75 out of 4stars

Good thriller with some decent twists in a subgenre that's been played out a bit (mother doesn't let her teenager daughter of the house and controls everything in her life).

Fatman (2020)
2.25 out of 4stars

Mel Gibson as a humanized Santa and Goggins is a hitman going after him? Sounds much better on paper than it's actual outcome. Had potential, but worth a couple laughs.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2.30 out of 4stars

Better than I thought it would be with more hits than misses, but the schtick has gotten a bit old. Not to mention, it feels a bit odd targeting random people(for the most part) and needing the right responses for your jokes to land correctly.

Honest Thief (2020)
1.75 out of 4stars

Overly tame and watered down Neeson action movie.

The War with Grandpa
1.75 out of 4stars

What the hell is Robert De Niro doing with his life now?

DeNiro is such a hack now. Lost his soul the moment the clock hit midnight on 01-01-00.