Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[cigar joe]

Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) - This movie's unrealistic, dirt noir version of 1950's New York looks really good, and the visual atmosphere is by far the movie's strength -- though Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance also stands out. But, outside of those strengths, this movie is spectacularly bad. I don't know if it's trying to go for some ironic, campy tone, but the accents, performances (JJL's love interest has some creepy low voice that was possibly dubbed) and plot points are just silly. It doesn't fully regress into pure episodic shitshow territory, but there's the same bizarro silliness found here. There's nothing remotely realistic about this movie, or its version of the 1950's, so I don't even understand what it's even trying to say, or subvert. I'm assuming I'd find the so-called classic novel to be a total piece of crap unless the director really butchered this material. D+

Agree, its a weird one. Bizzarro Brooklyn. It does look really good but it's pretty far fetched. Realistically some of the gay characters wouldn't have lasted ten minutes in real 1950s Brooklyn. lol

[noodles_leone]

Roma came out pretty quickly. That one definitely merited a release.

<3


The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, 1976) - 7/10
For some weird reason it's the only Eastwood western I had seen only once. It was much better than I recalled, with some really good highliights (in characters, lines and some of the gunfights). I also remembered it to be the most SW-ish movie done by Eastwood and that part I got right.
Also I was pleasantly surprised to see that as in the Forest Carter's books I've read, the KKK/fascist inspiration isn't too flagrant if you don't know what to look for.

Last but not least, although I didn't know Cimino worked on that screenplay, the closeness between Eastwood's and Cimino's cinema was made very clear to me.

[T.H.]

Agree, its a weird one. Bizzarro Brooklyn. It does look really good but it's pretty far fetched. Realistically some of the gay characters wouldn't have lasted ten minutes in real 1950s Brooklyn. lol

Haha, none of it makes any sense. It would work better if it was set in some Dark City (1998) type of universe instead of actual 50's Brooklyn.



RE: Josey Wales - High Plains Drifter is Clint's most Italian feeling western by far, to me. That could have been a Corbucci movie. Josey Wales feels much more like a Boetticher inspired western than something from Leone or Corbucci.

As for Cimino, I'd agree that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has a lot in common with Eastwood and Don Siegel, but Cimino became a very European style filmmaker for his next two movies. Clint the director is definitely the spiritual successor to Siegel, they're both highly efficient filmmakers with a no frills flair to their work. The Deer Hunter and especially Heaven's Gate are the antithesis of Eastwood's style and philosophy, what have you.

[dave jenkins]

The Pope's Exorcist (2023) - 5/10. About what you'd expect, but slightly elevated by some of the the performances. Russell Crowe as the title character actually makes a credible Italian priest, and Franco Nero is the best pope ever. He'll get my vote at the next conclave.

Suzume (2022) - IMAX 8/10. Latest Shinkai anime, not as good Your Name but much better than Weathering With You. World building is easy when you can use Shinto as a base. Wow, I never thought I'd live to see the Toho logo projected in IMAX.

Saw these consecutively at the local Cine-plex, chosen almost at random. Afterwards I realized they were the same film.

[cigar joe]

Galia (1966) A New Wave Noir Femme

Directed by Georges Lautner (The Road To Salina). Written by Vah? Katcha and adapted by him and Georges Lautner. Cinematography was by Maurice Fellous, Music by Michel Magne, title sequence JS Bach. The film stars Mireille Darc as Galia, Venantino Venantini as Greg, Fran?oise Pr?vost as Nicole, Jacques Riberolles as Matik, Fran?ois Chaumette as Wespyr.

Lautner creates an interesting and beautiful film that gives us a view back to a 1965 swinging sixties Paris (and Venice). Galia is a free and independent sexually active young woman who gets gets slowly trapped in a web of love with the wrong guy. Mireille Darc gives a nice convincing performance and will remind you a bit of Brigitte Bardot. Venantino Venantini is believable as the womanizer with a chick magnet while Fran?oise Pr?vost is equally compelling as the distraught wife. Fran?ois Chaumette as the hedonist Wespyr is creepy.

A very well made, quirky, talky, intelligent, everyday Woman's Noir  that could use English subs. 7/10.

[noodles_leone]

RE: Josey Wales - High Plains Drifter is Clint's most Italian feeling western by far, to me. That could have been a Corbucci movie. Josey Wales feels much more like a Boetticher inspired western than something from Leone or Corbucci.

As for Cimino, I'd agree that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has a lot in common with Eastwood and Don Siegel, but Cimino became a very European style filmmaker for his next two movies. Clint the director is definitely the spiritual successor to Siegel, they're both highly efficient filmmakers with a no frills flair to their work. The Deer Hunter and especially Heaven's Gate are the antithesis of Eastwood's style and philosophy, what have you.

The thing is there are a lot of different Eastwoods. Unforgiven is closer to what Cimino would do for instance.

[T.H.]

The thing is there are a lot of different Eastwoods. Unforgiven is closer to what Cimino would do for instance.

There's not though. Regardless of the scope of a story, Eastwood is going to finish under budget, keep the story grounded and tell said story in an efficient manner. Maybe 1974 Cimino would make a movie like Unforgiven in whatever way, but late 70's Cimino is the polar opposite of Eastwood in every way imaginable.

[dave jenkins]

Destroyer (2018) - 3/10. In a change-of-pace role, Nicole Kidman plays a burned-out LA cop who worked undercover 17 years ago on an operation that went bad and who is, only now, seeking closure. After 17 years? Here's how she works this cold case: she goes to see a guy who just got out of prison who tells her about another guy she goes to see who tells her about another guy who may be able to help her who puts her in touch with a gal who has access to the guy she wants to take down. To hide the fact the plot is idiotic we get lots of flashbacks to the events of 17 years ago and the idiotic things the characters were doing then. Also, in the present, the cop has problems with her rebellious 16-year old daughter. At the end Kidman has a beatific vision as light fills the screen. Uh . . . . .

[Novecento]

There's not though. Regardless of the scope of a story, Eastwood is going to finish under budget, keep the story grounded and tell said story in an efficient manner. Maybe 1974 Cimino would make a movie like Unforgiven in whatever way, but late 70's Cimino is the polar opposite of Eastwood in every way imaginable.

What about Year of the Dragon, The Sicilian, Desperate Hours and Sunchaser?

[noodles_leone]

Also the fact that they're both somewhere between american anarchism and libertarianism and made tons of movies about that. They are very similar to me. Although of course Eastwood at his best as a filmmaker never comes close to Cimino at his best.

[cigar joe]

Also the fact that they're both somewhere between american anarchism and libertarianism and made tons of movies about that. They are very similar to me. Although of course Eastwood at his best as a filmmaker never comes close to Cimino at his best.

Agree Eastwood in the old days would have made a good studio director get the product at or under budget out and on to the next one. I find most of his films not very artistic.

[T.H.]

Noodles, it sounds like you're confusing Cimino with John Milius. There are really no similarities between them after Cimino's first movie.


Something like Year of the Dragon has much more in common with Michael Mann, or They Live and Die in LA era Friedkin.


Cimino might fuck up Unforgiven or Joey Wales script, while Eastwood is always going to deliver and (at least) give you something entertaining and respectable even if the script is ass.

[Novecento]

Agree Eastwood in the old days would have made a good studio director get the product at or under budget out and on to the next one. I find most of his films not very artistic.

Yes, agreed. His fare is generally worth watching and sometimes powerful, but it is not artistic like something by Cimino or, indeed, Mann.

[cigar joe]

Deep End (1970) Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.

Written by Jerzy Skolimowski (Knife In the Water), Jerzy Gruza, and Boleslaw Sulik. Cinematography by Charly Steinberger. Music by Can... (as The Can) and Cat Stevens.   

The film stars Jane Asher (Alfie (1966)) as Susan, John Moulder-Brown as Mike, Karl Michael Vogler as swimming instructor, Chris Sandford as Chris, the fianc?, Diana Dors (Room 43, Tread Softly Stranger, The Unholy Wife, The Long Haul, Blonde Sinner) as Mike's first lady client, Louise Martini as prostitute, Erica Beer as baths cashier, Anita Lochner as Kathy, Annemarie Kuster as nightclub receptionist and Burt Kwouk (Cato in A Shot in the Dark and The Pink Panther Films).

Jerzy Skolimowski's art direction uses the familiar Neo Noir palette of clashing colors carnal reds against dead body blues, grimy puke yellows, with peeling intestine greens, all offset with bathhouse pastels heavy on the turquois.

Jane Asher and John Molder Brown are excellent and very compelling. They make it all quite believable. Diana Dors is great as the eccentric customer who likes to talk football, she also dubs the hooker with a broken leg. The rest of the cast is good and the overall effect of the combo of Soho & Munich gives the film a very familiar but definitely off swinging sixties vibe. It's a nice surprise. 8/10

[dave jenkins]

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - 7/10. Waiting For Godot meets Hamlet. A clever stunt, once upon a time, it's now hard to care much about the play anymore, or this filmed adaptation. Interestingly, the playwright, Tom Stoppard, is also the film's director. On the old Image DVD there's an interview with Stoppard in which he explains he had to direct the adaptation himself because when it came time to make the film, the play (which debuted on Broadway in 1967) had by then become a minor classic. Stoppard saw that transforming the property into film would require making a lot of changes, but that anyone else directing the movie would feel a necessity to honor the original text. Stoppard thought he would be the only one who felt free to mess things about. This is the only film Stoppard ever directed, and the only one of his plays ever to be made into a film (I kinda think that might now change with "Leopoldstadt", though). Stoppard has a funny story about beating out Goodfellas for the Golden Lion at Venice.