Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +1

ORRFForever

Registered User
Oct 29, 2018
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My favourite line, of many, from Thunderbolt and Lightfoot :

Lightfoot : You can drag a mule to water but you can't make him drink it.

Leary (pissed off) : That's a horse. Not a mule. It's a horse.

Lightfoot laughs to himself.

***

Then, of course, there's Thunderbolt's reaction to Lightfoot kissing Leary. Priceless!!!

And you get to see Catherine Bach before she got famous on the Dukes Of Hazard.

87% on Rotten Tomatoes. It deserves better.
 
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kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,551
10,140
Toronto
Dorothy Parker was once playing a word game and given the word "horticulture" as her challenge. Her instantaneous play-on-words response was "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." That's as good as it gets in my book.
 

ORRFForever

Registered User
Oct 29, 2018
17,678
9,222
Dorothy Parker was once playing a word game and given the word "horticulture" as her challenge. Her instantaneous play-on-words response was "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." That's as good as it gets in my book.
:)
 

Shareefruck

Registered User
Apr 2, 2005
28,875
3,570
Vancouver, BC
Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind (1984 with 2003 English dubbing) - 7.5/10

Better than Princess Mononoke because it's more subtle or rather, less obnoxious with its environmental message. The visuals are also a bit more cohesive and charming and I found this film to flow well. Still, it's a cartoon film at the end of the day and meant for pre-teens not me so it's hard to fully connect.
I agree about Princess Mononoke (I feel as though it's the least Ghibli of the Ghibli films-- Almost as though Miyazaki was giving a go at making a traditional Western film while injecting his own sensibilities into it) and to me there was a bit of a disconnect with Nausicaa as well, but that's completely the wrong way to think about Studio Ghibli films in general, IMO.

They're so much more than just kids movies aimed at pre-teens, and it's really depressing and lame how animation tends to be treated like an inherently lesser and easier to dismiss medium by people. Their movies do as strong of a job of expressing raw unfiltered humanism and beauty as just about anything, IMO.
 
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kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,551
10,140
Toronto
goalie-20196874.jpg


Goalie (2019) Directed by Adriana Maggs 6A

Goalie
begins with the autopsy of former Red Wing and Leaf goalie Terry Sawchuk (Mark O’Brien, in a performance worthy of praise). A pathologist carefully enumerates Sawchuk's many facial scars that he received during his career, almost all of which was played without a mask. What follows is a somber biopic that, though very bleak, leaves out a lot of information about Sawchuk’s philandering, boozing and marital discord. Even though only selectively sampling the depth of Sawchuk’s misfortunes, the movie remains a grim piece of work. Sawchuk was not a happy man, and did not lead a happy life. All he could do was stop pucks but that came at the price of frequent injuries (he once took three stitches in his eyeball), severe depression, and an inability to cope with past rejections. Goalie portrays him as a victim of cold, unemotional parents which caused him to mistakenly think he had found a father figure at last that he could trust in Red Wings’ General Manager Jack Adams. Such was of course not the case, and Sawchuk never emotionally recovered from his experience with the Wings. It’s not a bad movie, but I have no idea in the world for whom it is intended.

Historical note: Sawchuk was in goal for the game that clinched the 1967 Stanley Cup for the Leafs.
 

Nalens Oga

Registered User
Jan 5, 2010
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Canada
Full Moon In Paris (1984) - 7/10

Usual Rohmer film with good visual steadiness, pacing, and talkative philosophizing characters stuck longer up their narcissistic asses than the length of a baguette. The bony bitch who plays the protagonist in particular is insufferable but Rohmer is talented enough to make her feel real enough and even a bit sympathetic when needed but foolish as a whole, it's almost like he's making fun of the characters which he creates. The other protagonist, her friend Octave is a bigger creep than the perv in Claire's Knee but the rest of the support characters help ground the film somewhat in reality and I wish the conversations centered more around them.

Falling Down (1993) - 7.5/10

Love that early 90s aesthetic on film yet hate the orange glow and overly warm palette used on the entire film. Does a better job of capturing the aesthetic of frustration from economic inequality boiling over on a hot day in LA than Do The Right Thing. Unfortunately the dialogue is just a bit weaker and the characters feel more exaggerated and not as interesting as a whole. It becomes somewhat obvious in scenes where Robert Duvall is acting circles around the rest of the mostly-budget cast. The ending is a bit of a letdown but it's a good film in terms of the journey alone which I don't usually say since I weigh how a film ends heavily.

Zulu (1964) - 7/10

Long long battles in arid scenery with a sly-ish young Michael Cain. It's a bit too one-tone and drawn out and too British-huzzah to be that interesting but a decent enough watch for an old war epic. Disappointingly, the film never goes much into the historical context, it focuses instead on one battle alone.
 

Puck

Ninja
Jun 10, 2003
10,770
415
Ottawa
I watched Holy Motors last weekend. Just when I thought I was becoming more cultured in my appreciation of eccentric art-house type movies, boom, this set me back a year. I'm sure the artsy Cannes crowd liked it, it was a runner up in 2012. I had a hard time getting into it, they definitely lost me at the Eva Mendes as a model segment (when he gets a full frontal hard on). I was warned that I might have to watch it a few times in order to 'get it' but I think I will pass on that idea. I watched the last third on mute with some hard rock playing in the background instead (laughed during the accordion scene), it was funnier that way not knowing what they were saying. I definitely have a ceiling or threshold of pain when it comes to art-house movies and this one hit it. minus 1 / 10

MV5BODk2MDc4MDk2OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTcyODY1OA@@._V1_UY268_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg


Holy Motors (2012) - IMDb
 

OzzyFan

Registered User
Sep 17, 2012
3,653
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Captive State
2.00 out of 4stars

It's a muddled mess with scattershot ideas and it leaves so many questions unanswered that it's incredibly annoying. That said, it's got a decent twist and was a bit thought provoking to me (maybe because my mind drifted from the poorly written script). Is there any difference between a revolution and terrorism? Is even just an attempt at revolution worth it if the result is say 10's of thousands of innocent neutral lives ending as a result? In the end, is political power/support/strength/change the best and most logical way to get the changes you want? How bad does it take for life to become before you go to criminal measures to make it better? Also, wouldn't someone get accustomed and adjust to almost any repeating life situation they are dealt with (example: parapalegic, jail,, etc)? And why not, if aliens ever invaded and threatened earth, would we surrender if they offered peace and wanted full control or would we attempt a war?
 

Pranzo Oltranzista

Registered User
Oct 18, 2017
3,826
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By referencing Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, you scared me off.

Life's too short to watch cinema that slow.

On top of kihei's pertinent response, I'd add that there's some form of aesthetic jouissance in boredom when it's craftily mastered. Raoul Ruiz's pointed that out somewhere in his Poetics of Cinema. Some of Ozu's, or Tarkovsky's, or Ceylan's films are very "boring", but you can switch your brain into some different form of appreciation and take a lot of pleasure out of them. There's a lot more rythm to experience in these slow films than in most of blockbusters. My favorite examples, I think I've said it elsewhere, are Un homme qui dort and Le Navire Night.

As for the last films I've seen.......

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - went a little too far into absurdity with the drunk cop, a little too Coen-ish for my taste, but still plenty to like in here. 6/10

Rampage - oh well... 3/10
 
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ProstheticConscience

Check dein Limit
Apr 30, 2010
18,459
10,107
Canuck Nation
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.

with scammers and the scammed.

Documentary of how sociopathic conman Billy McFarland (who looks and has a name eerily like Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame but isn't actually related to him as far as I can find out) partnered with rapper Ja Rule to promote the Fyre Festival: an exclusive music festival in the Bahamas with sun, private yachts, five star accommodations, sparkly celebrities and all the social media orgasms you can stand...but suffered from the tiny weakness that didn't actually exist. It started as a tie-in for the Fyre app, which was supposed to be an online booking tool for rappers or musical acts, but then the scam mushroomed out of control as more and more money and promotion was poured into it.

Case study of how a ponzi scheme works. Remember kids: just because you saw some pretty pictures of things online doesn't make them real.

On Netflix now.
 
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sr edler

gold is not reality
Mar 20, 2010
11,846
6,290
Anyone's seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) and wants to give a review? I started watching the film and thought the build up/first scene when they arrive down a mountain on mules and one of them finds a coin was promising. Mainly because of Tim Roth's eyes. Then the joke quickly deteriorated/dragged out and I thought for myself "no, I'm not watching this shit" and turned it off.
 

Nalens Oga

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Jan 5, 2010
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Canada
I was warned that I might have to watch it a few times in order to 'get it' but I think I will pass on that idea.

I don't think it's worth it. It might be worth it for people who work in film in some way but for us average people, movies should be fun or interesting not a 'challenge' or something that frustrates you.

Also I believe this movie was the highest or one of the highest rated in that recent BBC Poll of best film of the 21st century but of course, they just polled film critics not normal people.
 

ORRFForever

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Oct 29, 2018
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Triple Frontier [2019] :

Hans Gruber : "When you steal 600 million, they will find you…"

5 American mercenaries rob a Columbian drug lord. They escape with a quarter of a billion dollars. To no one's surprise, Columbian drug lords don't take kindly to being robbed and getting away with the loot will not be a walk in the park / jungle.

Triple Frontier is a Netflix (big budget) Original and if this is what we can expect from future projects, bring them on because the writing, direction and acting are all top notch.

8/10

Movie Trailer :

 
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Mario Lemieux fan 66

Registered User
Nov 2, 2012
1,927
406
the karate kid: 8/10 mister myagi, the score and the cobra kai coach made it a pretty epic movie.

Triple Frontier: 7/10 decent action movie despite a questionnable ending.
 

Pranzo Oltranzista

Registered User
Oct 18, 2017
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I don't think it's worth it. It might be worth it for people who work in film in some way but for us average people, movies should be fun or interesting not a 'challenge' or something that frustrates you.

Also I believe this movie was the highest or one of the highest rated in that recent BBC Poll of best film of the 21st century but of course, they just polled film critics not normal people.

What I meant is that there's more fun and more interesting stuff in more complex films. Of course, if it's going to be a pain in your ass, it's no use, but I still think it's important to stretch your expectations' horizon to things that aren't out of a mold - and that has nothing to do with working in film!

On the other hand, it might just be that very slow films just don't appeal to you and bring you none of that jouissance! :) Maybe just try something more dialog-driven than Ceylan. Last Year at Marienbad is an amazing film, which is suspenseful enough to keep you interested and might introduce you to the splendors of cinema, if you haven't seen it yet!
 

ORRFForever

Registered User
Oct 29, 2018
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Level 16 [2019] :

It's difficult to review Level 16 without spoilers, so I'll just say the plot is similar to Sir Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which was a painfully depressing read - I never saw the movie of the same name.

As for Level 16's other elements :

* The first hour is terrific. It's a tense dystopian science fiction thriller that keeps you guessing.
* The second hour loses focus and the ending is a disappointment - predictable and gruesome.
* Canadian director Danishka Esterhazy does a fine job with a razor thin budget, but could have saved even more money by cutting 20 minutes from the 102 minute run time.
* All the young actresses are terrific.

Because the movie is Canadian, I'm giving it an extra point. :thumbu:

7.5/10

Movie Trailer :
 
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Shareefruck

Registered User
Apr 2, 2005
28,875
3,570
Vancouver, BC
What I meant is that there's more fun and more interesting stuff in more complex films. Of course, if it's going to be a pain in your ass, it's no use, but I still think it's important to stretch your expectations' horizon to things that aren't out of a mold - and that has nothing to do with working in film!

On the other hand, it might just be that very slow films just don't appeal to you and bring you none of that jouissance! :) Maybe just try something more dialog-driven than Ceylan. Last Year at Marienbad is an amazing film, which is suspenseful enough to keep you interested and might introduce you to the splendors of cinema, if you haven't seen it yet!
Yeah, I 100% disagree with Nalen Oga's attitude.

Probably an obnoxious and unpopular opinion, but....

Honestly, I feel that the pace of normal movies often can't capture anything that fully resonates half as strongly as these slower movies that take their sweet time do (when they're done as well as they can be, anyways). Like you say, you sort of need to have the time/excessive breathing room to sink into a moment completely in order to fully appreciate the introspection/intellectual gravity, poetic rhythm, and mood of every moment.

Yes, by default, I think our initial raw instincts are to reject stuff like that and opt for things that are much easier, but it's more worthwhile to be willing to trade accessibility and immediacy for the potentially greater and more rewarding heights in satisfaction that you can only get from more challenging things. I think the idea that the onous is on movies to be conventionally "fun", "engaging", and "actively hold your attention" is a mostly meaningless and limiting cop-out. If one wants to make the distinction between how normal people react and how critic-y film-obsessed types do, that's fine, but I don't buy for a second that the two are getting an equivalent caliber of experience-- The latter is getting infinitely more out of the medium precisely because of that willingness to put the effort in and try to tap into that frequency, and the former would benefit greatly from adopting the same attitude (whether they have actual film knowledge or not). The idea that the former have it right and that's what "movies should be about" is just total nonsense, as far as I'm concerned.

I do struggle with slow movies myself, like most people, but it is absolutely worth pushing through when you can manage the attention. While I don't have the willpower to do it consistently, enough of those types have clicked with me that I've concluded that movies are generally **** when you just fold your arms and expect them to cater to your immediate whims and meet you entirely on your own terms. The good movies are the ones that challenge you and eventually make you realize that your own initial terms were wrong and not really worth **** to begin with, and push you closer towards what's actually the better experience, IMO. And I imagine it's the same with any medium, really.
 
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kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,551
10,140
Toronto
Yeah, I 100% disagree with Nalen Oga's attitude.

Probably an obnoxious and unpopular opinion, but....

Honestly, I feel that the pace of normal movies often can't capture anything that fully resonates half as strongly as these slower movies that take their sweet time do (when they're done as well as they can be, anyways). Like you say, you sort of need to have the time/excessive breathing room to sink into a moment completely in order to fully appreciate the introspection/intellectual gravity, poetic rhythm, and mood of every moment.

Yes, by default, I think our initial raw instincts are to reject stuff like that and opt for things that are much easier, but it's more worthwhile to be willing to trade accessibility and immediacy for the potentially greater and more rewarding heights in satisfaction that you can only get from more challenging things. I think the idea that the onous is on movies to be conventionally "fun", "engaging", and "actively hold your attention" is a mostly meaningless and limiting cop-out. If one wants to make the distinction between how normal people react and how critic-y film-obsessed types do, that's fine, but I don't buy for a second that the two are getting an equivalent caliber of experience-- The latter is getting infinitely more out of the medium precisely because of that willingness to put the effort in and try to tap into that frequency, and the former would benefit greatly from adopting the same attitude (whether they have actual film knowledge or not). The idea that the former have it right and that's what "movies should be about" is just total nonsense, as far as I'm concerned.

I do struggle with slow movies myself, like most people, but it is absolutely worth pushing through when you can manage the attention. While I don't have the willpower to do it consistently, enough of those types have clicked with me that I've concluded that movies are generally **** when you just fold your arms and expect them to cater to your immediate whims and meet you entirely on your own terms. The good movies are the ones that challenge you and eventually make you realize that your own initial terms were wrong and not really worth **** to begin with, and push you closer towards what's actually the better experience, IMO. And I imagine it's the same with any medium, really.
One of the joys of these movies done well is that there can be more in them than you can get in one viewing. Case in point: Loveless. Loveless was my favourite film of 2017, and I screened it for friends again the other night as they had not seen it. I was absolutely blown away by how much there was to the film that I failed to notice upon first viewing. I got the "human" dimension of the film well enough first time around, but there is a social critique in that film literally about Mother Russia that I only grasped the shape of vaguely when I saw it at TIFF. But that dimension of the film was much stronger and much more cleverly presented than I had noticed initially. While I wouldn't call Loveless slow cinema exactly, the film does proceed at a deliberate pace and lacks the imposed melodrama that passes for emotion and meaning in many films. However, like perhaps most great art, Loveless possesses a depth and complexity that rewards multiple viewings. In other words, to me, such films are worth the initial effort because, potentially anyway, there is the possibility of getting so much more from the experience of watching them than I can get from many of the films that I see.

Plus, the older I get, the better they get. Now why is that I wonder?
 

Pranzo Oltranzista

Registered User
Oct 18, 2017
3,826
2,673
Yeah, I 100% disagree with Nalen Oga's attitude.

Probably an obnoxious and unpopular opinion, but....

Honestly, I feel that the pace of normal movies often can't capture anything that fully resonates half as strongly as these slower movies that take their sweet time do (when they're done as well as they can be, anyways). Like you say, you sort of need to have the time/excessive breathing room to sink into a moment completely in order to fully appreciate the introspection/intellectual gravity, poetic rhythm, and mood of every moment.

Yes, by default, I think our initial raw instincts are to reject stuff like that and opt for things that are much easier, but it's more worthwhile to be willing to trade accessibility and immediacy for the potentially greater and more rewarding heights in satisfaction that you can only get from more challenging things. I think the idea that the onous is on movies to be conventionally "fun", "engaging", and "actively hold your attention" is a mostly meaningless and limiting cop-out. If one wants to make the distinction between how normal people react and how critic-y film-obsessed types do, that's fine, but I don't buy for a second that the two are getting an equivalent caliber of experience-- The latter is getting infinitely more out of the medium precisely because of that willingness to put the effort in and try to tap into that frequency, and the former would benefit greatly from adopting the same attitude (whether they have actual film knowledge or not). The idea that the former have it right and that's what "movies should be about" is just total nonsense, as far as I'm concerned.

I do struggle with slow movies myself, like most people, but it is absolutely worth pushing through when you can manage the attention. While I don't have the willpower to do it consistently, enough of those types have clicked with me that I've concluded that movies are generally **** when you just fold your arms and expect them to cater to your immediate whims and meet you entirely on your own terms. The good movies are the ones that challenge you and eventually make you realize that your own initial terms were wrong and not really worth **** to begin with, and push you closer towards what's actually the better experience, IMO. And I imagine it's the same with any medium, really.

As much as I agree with you, I still don't think there's a right or better way to approach cinema. And I think you can get as much intellectual pleasure from Friday the 13th par VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan than from Solaris. I just think that it would come a lot easier to someone who knows how to appreciate Solaris.

That being said....

Dunkirk - It's nicely crafted, but it's not the masterpiece I was told it was... 6/10
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

Hey! We won!
May 30, 2003
15,509
3,331
Finding Neverland. A powerful and damning portrait of a predator who happens to be the most famous (and maybe most beloved) man in the world.

Triple Frontier. A silly movie that I wish would have had the balls to steer full bore into its silliness. It flirts with some levity, but just can’t quite fully let go of its whole we’re warriors/we’re brothers/the system failed us GRAVITAS, so it ultimately takes itself way too seriously. The music cues are the most comically on point since Watchmen. The character decision making is a little eyebrow raising at times. Yes, yes I get how greed, you know, CORRUPTS, man. Doesn’t preclude me from calling stupid decisions stupid. The ending is awful (though the juxtaposition of the final two scenes accurately sum up a movie that can’t decide whether it wants to be a serious movie about damaged men or an ass-kicking romp). All of that said ... I still managed to enjoy it. Growing up in the 80s, cable was rife with the likes of Uncommon Valor and Let’s Get Harry and similar ragtag mission type flicks, so I have a soft spot for this stuff. I just wish everyone involved would have realized this is a B movie, not an A.
 
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Mario Lemieux fan 66

Registered User
Nov 2, 2012
1,927
406
Which part of the ending didn't you like?

Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler









The part where they all gave up their share of the money despite almost dying 10 times. They knew the risk. Giving the dead guy a share is already nice enough. Taking no share is pure madness.
 
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ORRFForever

Registered User
Oct 29, 2018
17,678
9,222
One of the joys of these movies done well is that there can be more in them than you can get in one viewing. Case in point: Loveless. Loveless was my favourite film of 2017, and I screened it for friends again the other night as they had not seen it. I was absolutely blown away by how much there was to the film that I failed to notice upon first viewing. I got the "human" dimension of the film well enough first time around, but there is a social critique in that film literally about Mother Russia that I only grasped the shape of vaguely when I saw it at TIFF. But that dimension of the film was much stronger and much more cleverly presented than I had noticed initially. While I wouldn't call Loveless slow cinema exactly, the film does proceed at a deliberate pace and lacks the imposed melodrama that passes for emotion and meaning in many films. However, like perhaps most great art, Loveless possesses a depth and complexity that rewards multiple viewings. In other words, to me, such films are worth the initial effort because, potentially anyway, there is the possibility of getting so much more from the experience of watching them than I can get from many of the films that I see.

Plus, the older I get, the better they get. Now why is that I wonder?
Forgive me, Kihei, but Loveless is an overrated film. There is NO way people would react the way ALL the characters reacted - cold and indifferent to a missing child. Even the grandmother didn't care!!! It was all done to illicit a reaction from the audience.

I didn't buy it.
 
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