Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[dave jenkins]

Last of the Independents: Don Siegel and the Making of Charley Varrick (2015) - 10/10. Amazingly good 73-minute documentary on the making of a pretty good film.

http://www.fictionfactoryfilm.de/2015/04/last-of-the-independents-don-siegel-and-the-making-of-charley-varrick/

[noodles_leone]

The Machinist - 4/10
No wonder why everybody kept saying "Wow, Bale lost a lot of weight" and pretty much nothing else about this movie.

[cigar joe]

Dark Country (2009) is the sort of desert Neo Noir that plays like a Twilight Zone episode,
Death Valley/Nevada locations, interesting treatments to the images. 6/10
 

Impulse (1990) directed by Sondra Locke is a gritty story of an LA femme Vice Cop and her dance,
at the cusp of Noir with death, love, and temptation. Beautiful cinematography. 9/10

[dave jenkins]

Ant-Man (2015) IMAX 3D - 8/10. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Includes the greatest Thomas the Tank Engine gag evah!

[cigar joe]

8 Million Ways To Die (1986) about a 7/10 some nice sequences.

[dave jenkins]

Mr. Holmes (2015) 9/10. Late in life, a Sherlock Holmes on the brink of senility "solves" three intertwined cases. It is 1947 and Holmes is in his 90s. Watson is out of the picture and the great detective is retired, living in the country and tending to his apiary. His housekeeper and her son are his only companions. Holmes has recently returned from Japan, where he went in search of something called prickly ash, an alternative restorative to royal jelly. He needs this to improve his faculties for one last task he wishes to undertake before he dies: to write a correction to the false account Watson gave of Holmes's final case. Unhappily, Holmes is having a hard time remembering just exactly what happened, but with the help of the housekeeper's son, he recovers the story step by step (which we see, of course, in flashback). Meanwhile, he must also produce a solution to a problem that arose on the Japan trip. And then there are the mysterious deaths of the bees in the hive . . . Montage wonderfully shuttles us between the three cases, and we are forever jumping about in time. Plotting and dialog are excellent; the photography is beyond splendid; the Carter Burwell score is OK. Particularly outstanding is the acting, with Ian McKellen as Holmes and an amazing child actor as the boy (precocious but not cute precocious, a kid who, if he really existed, wouldn't require immediate strangulation). I was completely caught up in the film, but now that I know the solutions to all three problems there is little chance of my re-watching it. That is, until my own memory starts to go . . . .

[Dust Devil]

The Grifters (1990)  - 5 to 6/10

I don't know, just couldn't get into it.

[moviesceleton]

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) - 6.5/10
I prefer Dryer's version. I like Bresson's three previous films, though.

Les diaboliques (1955) - 6.5/10
Overrated. Can't see what's the big deal. The twists came as surprises and all in all the script is the strongest part of the film. But the directing (blocking, camera angles, acting) is mostly run of the mill, save a few scenes.

[drinkanddestroy]

I liked the first half of DIABOLIQUE (when it seemed it would be a drama.) The second half (when it turned into a thriller) wasn't nearly as good. Bathtub scene is memorable, though.

[dave jenkins]

Two from the "Mexico at Midnight" exhibition at MoMA (hey, that alliterates!) Both were projected digitally, and a note indicated the transfers were from nitrate prints. Both looked fabulous in b&w.

En la Palma de tu Mano/ In the Palm of Your Hand (1951) - 7/10. A phony psychic (some guy with a mustache) tries to shake down a rich widow (Leticia Palma) and she attempts to turn the tables on him. Their maneuverings get a guy killed. Then the two spiral downward together. There's a charming lightness at the beginning of this film that disappears once the murder occurs. Then noir fatalism takes over and it isn't as much fun anymore. Also, the fortune-telling background goes out the window, Mustache Man could be just any shlub. The predictable ending is contrived mostly by the police withholding routine info for no reason at all.

La Otra / The Other One (1946) - 8/10. A destitute woman (Dolores del Rio) murders her wealthy twin (also Dolores del Rio) and assumes her identity. Then her real troubles begin. This was remade with Bette Davis as Dead Ringer (1964) and I've seen the basic plot used other places. Lots of expressionist lighting makes this a visually impressive film.

[Dust Devil]

Find Me Guilty (2006) - 6.5/10

I couldn't buy this as a comedy.

[noodles_leone]

Ant-Man (2015) IMAX 3D - 8/10. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Includes the greatest Thomas the Tank Engine gag evah!

Is that 8/10 like an Avenger or Iron Man movie or is it a real 8/10? Because I was gonna skip this betrayal (if Wright had directed it as he was supposed to, I'd have seen it 20 times).

[dave jenkins]

I was gonna skip this betrayal (if Wright had directed it as he was supposed to, I'd have seen it 20 times).

You won't like the corner-cutting direction. But the film IS funny.

[dave jenkins]

Two more from "Mexico at Midnight".

La noche avanza / Night Falls (1952) - 7/10. This is from MoMA's write-up of the title:

Directed by Roberto Gavaldón. With Pedro Armendáriz, Anita Blanch, Rebeca Iturbide. This Gavaldón classic suggests that what the boxing world is to the American film noir, the high-speed game of pelota (jai alai to American tourists) is to its Mexican cousin. Pedro Armendáriz, Mexico’s great romantic lead, plays against type as an arrogant pelotari who seduces and discards women at will, until he becomes the target of a cunning revenge plot.

I hesitate to call this a noir, though, since the hero is due a comeuppance he eventually receives. It's more a simple morality tale with noir trappings. Very entertaining, all the same.

The Kneeling Goddess (1947) - 5/10. Holy nitrate, Batman! The digitally projected image I saw of this was incandescent. The silver screen is back! Unhappily, the story here is made of lead. It starts out well, with the introduction of María Félix, who was, apparently, the Ava Gardner of Mexico. She is having an affair with Mustache Man (OK, I guess the actor's name is Arturo de Córdova), who is married. The pair, separately, think better of the situation and break up for a time, but are brought back together by a sculpture, The Kneeling Goddess. Maria, of course, is the model, and when Mustache sees the statue he's just got to have it for his fountain in the back yard. His obsessive contemplation of it, however, begins to unnerve his wife. Soon there is all the fun a love triangle can contain, and then a mysterious death. The question is then one of did-he-do-it-or-not? Everything up to this point is handled well, but then the main characters go to Panama, and the whole production goes south with it. The carefully arranged ambience of all the preceding action is jettisoned, and the film never again regains the proper tone. Worse, the statue whose name gives the movie its title is forgotten, and only makes a final appearance at the very end. So much for iconography. By the end I'd given up caring about any of the characters, but man, they sure did look good. Oh, this is only a noir if Hitchcock's Rebecca is also one.

[noodles_leone]

Honeymoon 6/10
A horror movie that looks like a real movie? They still do these? Strong performances and real direction. Once again, it looks like a real movie! The ending feels unfortunately rushed and unsatisfying.
Spot on review: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/honeymoon-2014

BoJack Horseman, season 1 8/10
I was turned off by the visuals that's why I never tried this although images of the show were pretty much everywhere on the Internet. I was wrong. This is the saddest comedy piece I have seen since A Serious Man, and yes, it's a great compliment.
It's South Park meets Arrested Development meets Californication.
Opening credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3r2IXuSN1g