Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[T.H.]

Everywhere Everything blah blah looks so gimmicky and obnoxious.


Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) - While one can argue that it didn't need to be north of two hours in length, maybe one of the reasons why the last act works so well is because it really lulls you into thinking it's going to be a realistic crime and prison drama experience. Well, it certainly deviates from that formula, but in a somewhat natural way, or gradually. This is one of the rare modern movies with some balls and a soul -- as opposed to the hyper-corporate bullshit that zombie Hollywood always churns out. B+

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) - All I know is, this Lo Pan character comes out of thin air in the middle of a goddamn alley while his buddies are flying around on wires cutting everybody to shreds, and he just stands there waiting for me to drive my truck straight through him with *light* coming out of his mouth! A

[noodles_leone]

Living up to its title doesn't make it a good movie of course. But what you and DJ were saying hints that you haven't really tried to understand what the offer was here (except for the videogame inspiration, but that isn't the interesting part to me). I'm waiting for a price drop in VOD so I can. buy it and watch it again, then I'll tell more about it. To be clear I don't know if it's a good movie or not. But I love what it tries to do and sometimes achieve, and more importantly, I'm not sure most of its flaws could be corrected without killing the whole movie... which is a fact that should be exciting as hell for anybody remotely interested in the artform.

TH: don't watch it you are gonna hate it. It is actually way more gimmicky and obnoxious than you think it is. Imagine Scott Pilgrim, except it's getting more and more gimmicky as it goes and the gimmicks progressively become not only the plot but also the structure.

[noodles_leone]

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) - While one can argue that it didn't need to be north of two hours in length, maybe one of the reasons why the last act works so well is because it really lulls you into thinking it's going to be a realistic crime and prison drama experience. Well, it certainly deviates from that formula, but in a somewhat natural way, or gradually. This is one of the rare modern movies with some balls and a soul -- as opposed to the hyper-corporate bullshit that zombie Hollywood always churns out. B+

Have you seen his other ones? I don't remember if you already discussed them here.
I have to say I have real issues with the last act but that's mainly because, as you have noted, I'm not the biggest "campy z movie" kinda guy. But I do love S. Craig Zahler. I wonder if he is ever gonna make a truly great film. I hope he never goes mainstream.

[T.H.]

Have you seen his other ones? I don't remember if you already discussed them here.
I have to say I have real issues with the last act but that's mainly because, as you have noted, I'm not the biggest "campy z movie" kinda guy. But I do love S. Craig Zahler. I wonder if he is ever gonna make a truly great film. I hope he never goes mainstream.

I highly, highly doubt contemporary Hollywood would ever give him a shot.

I probably like Bone Tomahawk even more than Cell Block 99. It was my favorite western featuring Kurt Russell from 2015. It felt like a William Wellman western that effectively went off the rails.

I haven't seen the one with Gibson and Vaughn, it's like 2 hours and 40 minutes, but I'll eventually get around to it.

[noodles_leone]

I highly, highly doubt contemporary Hollywood would ever give him a shot.

I probably like Bone Tomahawk even more than Cell Block 99. It was my favorite western featuring Kurt Russell from 2015. It felt like a William Wellman western that effectively went off the rails.

I haven't seen the one with Gibson and Vaughn, it's like 2 hours and 40 minutes, but I'll eventually get around to it.

It's his most mainstream one, which is why I hope he isn't gonna keep pushing that way. It has great stuff, but the mainstream-like framing device hurts his radical style.

[T.H.]

It's his most mainstream one, which is why I hope he isn't gonna keep pushing that way. It has great stuff, but the mainstream-like framing device hurts his radical style.

He probably has to shift to a more mainstream style, otherwise he might enter caricature territory where he's the guy that tackles various genres and subgenres where the movies always become insanely gory. I think he needs to zag somewhat, as much as I like those two movies. I wouldn't want to see him become a Wes Anderson where he's a slave to his formula.

[noodles_leone]

Sure! Let us know what you think when you catch Dragged Across Concrete. At some point it was on the french Amazon Prime.

[Novecento]

I remember being impressed by Bone Tomahawk. Might need to check out some of his other stuff.

[dave jenkins]

Then again, some of my absolute favorite films (Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean, Cross of Iron) are barely appreciated by others. So I get it.

Funnily enough, I saw The Ocean-Going Pianist (i.e. The Legend of 1900) for the first time, just tonight, at my wife's insistence. Now I hate Tornatore, so I expected to be gritting my teeth the whole time, and at first I could see only the negatives (bad writing, mostly). But then we got to the Piano Duel scene, and suddenly the film clicked for me. It's never going to be my favorite flick, but it does have something (lots of Morricone, for example (which is really important in a film about music)). I'll probably be watching it again real soon.

Of course, I've always loved Cross of Iron.

Gee, novecento, what else do you like (or, alternatively, hate)? Mank completely sucks, right?

[Novecento]

I hope you didn?t see the butchered version called ?The legend of 1900?. You need to see the full length original cut known as ?The legend of the pianist on the ocean?. That piano duel is so Leone.

Yup, gave up on Mank pretty early on. Couldn?t make it through it.

But as nice as it is to agree, you don?t like Larrain?s Neruda?

[dave jenkins]

The Trial (1962) 1080p - 4/10. Twenty-five years ago I bought this film on LD for its improved image (improved over VHS). I don't in fact remember what that image looked like, but I do recall the discs themselves being gold-colored. The film has now been restored and issued (in the UK) on blu-ray (a Criterion edition is probably forthcoming in the late fall). The restoration and transfer look very good. Unhappily, the film itself is just as bad as it ever was.

Granted, the photography and the striking images are what this movie has going for it. Not so much the performances: line readings are often amaturish or under-rehearsed. And of course there's Welle's annoying habit of post dubbing every male character, apart from his lead (Anthony Perkins), with his own voice. Michael Lonsdale, for example, has a wonderful voice but no, Welles has to speak for him. The other main problem is the writing; Welles has pretty much lifted the scenes straight from Kafka without much alteration. With some writers that would be fine, but Kafka needs adaptation. There isn't much narrative drive in the novel (probably because Kafka never finished it), and Welles should have added dramatic structure. The one good change he made was to extract "Before the Law" from the middle and move it to the front. But having made that change, there was then no need to bring that bit back in, as he does, for an encore--the cathedral scene is redundant and should have been jettisoned.  And then Welles botches the ending.

Part of the problem, I think, is that Welles really hadn't any affinity for Kafka. Which is to say, Orson wasn't Jewish enough. One must never forget that much of Kafka's program operates as an assimilated male Jew reacting to Torah, and although Welles is pretty good when it comes to applying the New Testament in his work, his appreciation for the Old is lacking. Take for example the bad ending I mentioned. Again, Kafka never finished writing The Trial, and the ending we have is due to a posthumous editorial decision made by his publisher, and although it works, it would have been possible for Welles to have done something else. Welles does the worst thing imaginable with it here: he keeps it as is, almost, and then adds a cartoon-like pack of dynamite sticks and a superfluous explosion. Those silly additions completely ruin the tone of the ending. In the original, the scene is a clever (and terrifying) reworking of the Akedah--the binding of Issak--reimagined without Abraham and requiring Joseph K. to be a new self-sacrificing Issak. The scene must be handled delicately, but Welles was, I guess, in too much of a hurry and just blew everything up (and "It blowed up real good!"). [One way to handle things would have been to move the end to the beginning, and then use "Before the Law" as an epilogue.] In any event, Welles's narrative choices are often inelegant. He needed to take more time; or, he would have benefited (once again) from having a writing partner.

The lack of narrative structure, and the repetitive nature of many of the scenes, reduces the whole to an exercise in tedium. The dialog is unendurable. The film is best enjoyed as a series of impressive stills, with the sound off.

[dave jenkins]

I hope you didn?t see the butchered version called ?The legend of 1900?. You need to see the full length original cut known as ?The legend of the pianist on the ocean?.

The version I saw was 2 hrs. 42 minutes. Is there a cut longer than that?

[Novecento]

Sounds about right. From IMDB: "Original version released in Italy is 2 hours and 45 minutes long. A 123-minutes version premiered at the Locarno film Festival in July 1999. This shorter version is the same released in the USA by Fine Line under the title "The Legend of 1900""

[greenbudgie]

My latest vintage thriller ratings on IMDb are:-

6/10 - Subterfuge - Complicated Cold War thriller with an American agent in Swinging London, 1968.

6/10 - Apology For Murder - Poverty Row's PRC 1945 copy of the Double Indemnity story.

7/10 - The Whistler - The first of the Whistler stories onscreen with Richard Dix as an ill-fated man as usual.

7/10 - Among the Living - Identical twin brothers at a Southern mansion, one of them a possible killer, 1941.

6/10 - Pendulum - Murder of a Police Captain's wife brings him under suspicion himself, 1969.

[noodles_leone]

Funnily enough, I saw The Ocean-Going Pianist (i.e. The Legend of 1900) for the first time, just tonight, at my wife's insistence. Now I hate Tornatore, so I expected to be gritting my teeth the whole time, and at first I could see only the negatives (bad writing, mostly). But then we got to the Piano Duel scene, and suddenly the film clicked for me. It's never going to be my favorite flick, but it does have something (lots of Morricone, for example (which is really important in a film about music)). I'll probably be watching it again real soon.

The book is pretty good too. I liked it better, I think its brevity and humbleness makes that particular  story works better than the relative ?this is a big movie? feel that the movie has.