Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

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thebobmaster

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Duel (1971), 7/10

Steven Spielberg's first feature length movie, it's about a man in a car getting harassed by and having to deal with a truck on the road. That's it. But there's so much more to unpack in it. You can pick up on undercurrents of gender roles, PTSD, industrialization, environmental issues and marital troubles. Or you can just watch it be about a man struggling with a truck. It never feels like it's trying to be anything else than that, and I'm willing to bet a lot of these things Spielberg didn't even intend. But it's so simple and so tightly scripted that you pick up on the slightest details, since they are put in the film intentionally.

The first act was maybe a bit slow for my tastes, it felt like it was repeating itself somewhat. But it picks up after that and introduces more variety to the proceedings and stays fresh all the way to the end. I love the ending shot especially, since it conveys so much with so little.
Fun fact: The part at the end of the movie where the truck goes over the cliff and you hear a roaring sound? Spielberg re-used that roar in the soundtrack when the shark in Jaws is killed, and his body is sinking to the ocean floor.
 

Xprimentyl

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American Underdog: ...Okay, Fine; It Was Good / Great

A film about the life of Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner. You don't have to be a fan of the sport to appreciate this movie. Warner had a hell of a life (in the pejorative sense.) Watched his NFL hopes dashed, settled into a life of mediocrity and near poverty, only to be called up to the St. Louis Rams and become the figurehead of the jaw-dropping, unprecedented offensive scheme that would change the league forever.

This was hard to watch. No, not for any of the reasons you might think. It was hard to watch because as a +30 year fan of the San Francisco 49ers, I know Kurt Warner and the "Greatest Show on Turf" all too well. It was hard to watch because for the first time in my life, I saw Warner with something more than contempt. I can't believe I'm saying this... I respect him now. His journey was incredible and he deserves every ounce of respect.

The Quarry: Good / Great

A reverend traveling to head up a church in a small, south Texas town discovers a man passed out on the side of the road. He takes him in, and despite his kindness finds this man to be less than forthcoming with who he is, where he's going, etc. The pair stop off a few miles from their destination, and a heated discussion leads the mysterious man to kill the reverend, bury him in a quarry, and assume his identity.

It's incredible in the very literal sense. I'm not a detective, neither do I live in a small town where everybody knows everybody else, but I find it impossible to believe that the lackadaisical policework at the center of this film's premise exists anywhere. Far fetched, but decent enough watch.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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MirrorMask

Mid 00's fantasy movie, produced by the Jim Henson company, directed by Multimedia artist Dave McKean and written by fantasy novelist and comic book author Neil Gaiman. It follows teenage girl Helena, daughter of a circus family. After her mother was hospitalized, Helena gets spirited away to a surreal fantasy world where she is tasked to find a charm called the MirrorMask to wake the White Queen and banish the evil Black Queen. Meanwhile her place in the real world is taken by the Black Queen's daughter, the delinquent princess of the dark world. Thus starts a journey through a strange land together with the bumbling juggler Valentine.

It's, effectively, a quirky take on Alice in Wonderland. Helena travels a bizarre monochomatic CGI dreamland that appears to follow its very own obscure logic and interacts with a variety of very odd creatures. It lacks Lewis Caroll's witty use of language, but does manage to have a simple but effective narrative hook that elevates it into an above average childrens fantasy story, rather than just a demo reel of inventive digital effects. MirrorMask does betray a somewhat limited budget when it comes to the execution of these digital effects, but the overall dreamlike tone, complemented by a quirky, jazzy score, is able to pass them off as just another aspect of its dreamlike atmosphere. It definitely is easy to imagine a somewhat better looking version of this with somewhat better CGI and a few more real sets and props, but I imagine a project with a style as unusual as this was unlikely to ever have a bigger budget. What it rather reminded me of, visually, was some sort of obscure 90's FMV game. It's offputting but for what it is, it works. That really is the best way to describe most of MirrorMask. It's an archetypal example of something that people made because they wanted to make it, not because they expected it to find much of an audience. Despite its limitation it still came out pretty well and made for an enjoyable watch.

MirrorMask is a movie with definite cult appeal, the visuals are incredibly inventive and the writing has just enough actual substance to it to turn them from pure artistic indulgences to effective visualizations of a teenagers internal life and struggles. It definitely is something that's written on a simple enough level that actual teenagers would be able to understand it and relate to it, but I can hardly fault it for managing to find a healthy balance between an expressionist art installation and a relatable kids adventure movie. By all means, something like that should probably not work at all. Truth be told, it's the sort of thing I could have seen myself really getting into when I was 15 or so, and just getting into surrealist aesthethics. But even now, I found it to be very compelling and entertaining.
 

Xprimentyl

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MirrorMask

Mid 00's fantasy movie, produced by the Jim Henson company, directed by Multimedia artist Dave McKean and written by fantasy novelist and comic book author Neil Gaiman. It follows teenage girl Helena, daughter of a circus family. After her mother was hospitalized, Helena gets spirited away to a surreal fantasy world where she is tasked to find a charm called the MirrorMask to wake the White Queen and banish the evil Black Queen. Meanwhile her place in the real world is taken by the Black Queen's daughter, the delinquent princess of the dark world. Thus starts a journey through a strange land together with the bumbling juggler Valentine.

It's, effectively, a quirky take on Alice in Wonderland. Helena travels a bizarre monochomatic CGI dreamland that appears to follow its very own obscure logic and interacts with a variety of very odd creatures. It lacks Lewis Caroll's witty use of language, but does manage to have a simple but effective narrative hook that elevates it into an above average childrens fantasy story, rather than just a demo reel of inventive digital effects. MirrorMask does betray a somewhat limited budget when it comes to the execution of these digital effects, but the overall dreamlike tone, complemented by a quirky, jazzy score, is able to pass them off as just another aspect of its dreamlike atmosphere. It definitely is easy to imagine a somewhat better looking version of this with somewhat better CGI and a few more real sets and props, but I imagine a project with a style as unusual as this was unlikely to ever have a bigger budget. What it rather reminded me of, visually, was some sort of obscure 90's FMV game. It's offputting but for what it is, it works. That really is the best way to describe most of MirrorMask. It's an archetypal example of something that people made because they wanted to make it, not because they expected it to find much of an audience. Despite its limitation it still came out pretty well and made for an enjoyable watch.

MirrorMask is a movie with definite cult appeal, the visuals are incredibly inventive and the writing has just enough actual substance to it to turn them from pure artistic indulgences to effective visualizations of a teenagers internal life and struggles. It definitely is something that's written on a simple enough level that actual teenagers would be able to understand it and relate to it, but I can hardly fault it for managing to find a healthy balance between an expressionist art installation and a relatable kids adventure movie. By all means, something like that should probably not work at all. Truth be told, it's the sort of thing I could have seen myself really getting into when I was 15 or so, and just getting into surrealist aesthethics. But even now, I found it to be very compelling and entertaining.
I absolutely adore MirrorMask, but hadn't thought of it in years. Just reading the title in your post almost made me gasp out loud. I just recently watched Pan's Labyrinth with my gf, and now thinking of MirrorMask, it's striking how similar in tone they are insofar as they deal with young girls suffering with harsh realities in vivid fantasy worlds. I'll have to watch it again.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

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I absolutely adore MirrorMask, but hadn't thought of it in years. Just reading the title in your post almost made me gasp out loud. I just recently watched Pan's Labyrinth with my gf, and now thinking of MirrorMask, it's striking how similar in tone they are insofar as they deal with young girls suffering with harsh realities in vivid fantasy worlds. I'll have to watch it again.
I didn't mention it, but very recently I've watched another Neil Gaiman adaptation, Stardust, which I remembered liking quite a bit and was pretty underwhelmed after seeing it again. Which made me a bit nervous to return to MirrorMask. That one holds up much better, though and I'm happy it does. I had fond memories of it and I'm glad they weren't crushed by a rewatch.
 
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thebobmaster

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Finally watched Eternals. To be clear, none of the MCU movies, to me, have been bad. This one...was one of the worst for me. The climax was quite well done, and I liked some of the characters. The problem is, when you have an ensemble movie like Eternals, just liking some of the characters isn't enough, and that especially holds true when the characters you care the least about are the main characters of that cast. So, I therefore spent a fair chunk of the movie watching character development for characters that I didn't connect with, enjoying the moments with the characters I did like when they were allowed to have some, and waiting for some action to happen every now and again. If it wasn't for the really well done climax, it would be strictly average for me, but that climax did bump it up to about a 6/10 for me. Still, one of the weakest MCU movies, and it didn't really justify the 2 and a half hour runtime.
 
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Xprimentyl

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I Am Mother: Good / Great

After an ostensible extinction event, an artificially intelligent robot (Mother) is tasked as the keeper of several human embryos in a bunker with which to repopulate the planet when the times is right. It decides to raise one female embryo (Daughter) as a trial run, and after about 20 years in strict isolation with Mother and believing herself to be the only living human, Daughter discovers another woman in distress just outside their bunker. In breech of Mother's strict protocols, she manages to sneak this other woman inside. This woman reveals dark secrets about the world as it now exists and Mother herself.

Decent movie, if a bit contrived. You can see where the film is going from a mile away, so most of it it spent waiting for it to catch up with you. I personally feel its most significant implications are a bit too subtle for its own good, but that wasn't a deal breaker.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

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World on a Wire/Welt am Draht (1973)

One of two rather long German science fiction movies I've been meaning to watch for a pretty long while now. The other one, of course, being Wim Wender's 5 hours extravaganza "Until the End of the World" which I'm saving for a rainy day. Anyways, Welt am Draht was directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and presents, as far as I'm aware, his only foray into Science-Fiction. It follows scientist Fred Stiller, portrayed by a fantastic Klaus Löwitsch, working for the fictional Institute of Cybernetics, an agency that has managed to create a virtual reality inside of its computers it uses for the purpose of simulation. After project leader Vollmer commits suicide after having seemingly gone mad and chief of security Lause dissapears without a trace at a crowded party, Stiller starts to investigate these mysterious happeninings and gets drawn into a paranoid futuristic mystery that, for something made in the 70's, feels very much ahead of its time.

Welt am Draht is, for all intents and purposes, a Cyberpunk movie. It's practically all there, except for the neon lights. The Film Noir inspired storytelling and visual design, the corporate conspiracies, the transhumanist and existentialist themes, it's actually pretty impressive how it serves as a blueprint for a type of futurist story that wouldn't have a name for well over a decade. What it doesn't have is the neon. Fassbinder's vision of a dystopian future is firmly grounded in that immediately recognizable modernism it shares with McGoohan's The Prisoner and Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, all blocky buildings, large CRT screens and cassette tapes. It never goes quite as psychedelic as these productions, instead maintaining a stoic, and very german, sobriety, even when the nature of reality comes into question. Eventually Stiller, going through an arc that takes him from a pragmatic manager and scientist, to a jaded Noir style investigator, to a paranoid wreck, makes not only the people around him but just as much the viewer wonder, whether he has lost his mind. The acting in Welt am Draht is very theatric, in a way that often calls attention to its artificiality. Welt am Draht is a far cry from the punk aesthethics of a Blade Runner or Robocop. It's a world of buraeucrats and technocrats, seen from the perspective of buraucrats and technocrats. All offices, laboratories and the occasional high class bar or club. It's main characters all living in large apartments that are the very definition of 70's luxury. Welt am Draht depicts the rotten ideal of the post WW2, western european bourgeosie, a world that's save and clean and wealthy and entirely dominated by a deeply corrupt class of CEO's, scientists and politicians. Here depicted most poignantly by Karl Heinz Vosgerau as the institutes chief Herbert Siskins, seemingly the prototype of every sleazy CEO that would follow after him.

Welt am Draht might not have the budget, the action or the stylish "coolness" of something like Blade Runner or The Matrix, both of which owe more than a bit to it. Its future isn't the grimy, orientalist American style metropolis of Ridley Scott, it's the paranoid mundanity of a world where the appearance of clarity and simplicity was making place for a byzantine network of incomprehensible technological, administratorial and economical connections, overseen not by the flamboyant strongmen of yesteryear but by an elusive and anonymous syndicate of unassuming and easily replaceable suits. In the middle of what was still very much an analogue age, Fassbinder managed to capture the anxiety of the digital man. Welt am Draht is a work of deeply prophetic, and still deeply resonant Science-Fiction that should not be overlooked by any fan of the genre.
 

Xprimentyl

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Cleaner: Good / Great

Samuel L. Jackson plays an ex-cop who has started a cleaning business that specializes in cleaning up violent crime scenes. One day, he is called to clean a scene in a posh neighborhood only to learn the victim is potentially a high-profile financial backer for corrupt cops, and his collection of evidence is the only record of what actually happened.

Decent enough if extremely formulaic. I'm actually getting tired of films that don't challenge the audience intellectually. This is about the third straight movie I've watched that I'd figured out [relatively] by the end, and it shows how lazy Hollywood has gotten. Pull down a million dollar name and fake it for two hours. It's old. Not a bad film, but not one I feel the need to recommend.
 

BrawlMan

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Cleaner: Good / Great

Samuel L. Jackson plays an ex-cop who has started a cleaning business that specializes in cleaning up violent crime scenes. One day, he is called to clean a scene in a posh neighborhood only to learn the victim is potentially a high-profile financial backer for corrupt cops, and his collection of evidence is the only record of what actually happened.

Decent enough if extremely formulaic. I'm actually getting tired of films that don't challenge the audience intellectually. This is about the third straight movie I've watched that I'd figured out [relatively] by the end, and it shows how lazy Hollywood has gotten. Pull down a million dollar name and fake it for two hours. It's old. Not a bad film, but not one I feel the need to recommend.
Was this movie straight to dvd, or was it made for streaming? I'm only asking, cuz I've noticed recently that a lot of straight to home video movies that went physical first, seems to be trying it more in the plot details or challenging the audience. That's not always the case, but it's more noticeable compared to theatrical releases of movies. Or shows that go straight to streaming.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Was this movie straight to dvd, or was it made for streaming? I'm only asking, cuz I've noticed recently that a lot of straight to home video movies that went physical first, seems to be trying it more in the plot details or challenging the audience. That's not always the case, but it's more noticeable compared to theatrical releases of movies. Or shows that go straight to streaming.
It as 2007 release, so it probably had a theatrical release and underwhelmed. It just reminds me of how lazy Hollywood has gotten.
 
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Thaluikhain

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The Incredible Petrified World (1959)

Doesn't feature a petrified anything, let alone a whole world, and it wasn't amazing at all.

From wiki:

Thomas Reddy in the Los Angeles Examiner commented "It's incredible that for more than a hour, nothing the least bit exciting happens"

Bill Warren said "The film is so uneventful that it's puzzling as to why it was ever made....it has no possible reason for existence."
 

gorfias

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I Am Mother: Good / Great

After an ostensible extinction event, an artificially intelligent robot (Mother) is tasked as the keeper of several human embryos in a bunker with which to repopulate the planet when the times is right. It decides to raise one female embryo (Daughter) as a trial run, and after about 20 years in strict isolation with Mother and believing herself to be the only living human, Daughter discovers another woman in distress just outside their bunker. In breech of Mother's strict protocols, she manages to sneak this other woman inside. This woman reveals dark secrets about the world as it now exists and Mother herself.

Decent movie, if a bit contrived. You can see where the film is going from a mile away, so most of it it spent waiting for it to catch up with you. I personally feel its most significant implications are a bit too subtle for its own good, but that wasn't a deal breaker.
I think...
we're are meant to take from it all that the "mother" intelligence was brought online, followed by "her" engaging in attempted genocide to replace existing humans with ones that are percect. I mean perfect.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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Ichi the Killer (2001)

Since I've finished No More Heroes 3 I've had a certain urge to undergo a bit of a Takashi Miike crash course. "Crash course" because the man has made, overall, more than 110 movies, being one of those directors who seem to make about 10 movies for the money before they make one for its own sake. So I've decided to at least watch some of his better known ones, starting with the hyperviolent 2001 Yakuza farce "Ichi the Killer", a movie following the conflict between deranged masochistic Yakuza enforcer Kakihara and brainwashed sadistic vigilante Ichi.

Ichi is certainly a very provocative movie. It revels in very explicit depictions of extreme violence. A man gets tortured by being hung up on meathooks on his back and having hot oil poured over him. Multiple people get cut open by the the blades in someones shoes. And there's a whole bunch of women being beaten or raped. Fun for the whole family, this isn't. That said, I never got the impression that the movies had no intent beyond shock value. The movie is very explicitly about people who fetishize violence and the impression I got was that it wasn't so much trying to glorify or condemn that fetishization as it was about taking it to its extreme and then presenting it with a matter of fact detachment that highlights its absurdity. There are some very interesting spects to its plot and presentation. Where Kakihara, while craving pain, is a flamboyant supervillain who could be at home in some violent, independent comic book, Ishi while receiving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain, is an emotionally stunted and childish man whose violent impulses are products of a trauma that turns out be based not on an actual experience but on him being indoctrinated with a fake memory of his childhood. Ishi the Killer connects violence, sex and trauma and my impression was rather than trying to shock or titilate the viewer, it more than anything wants them to contemplate it. Where Tadanobu Asano's highly energetic performance as Kakihara certainly steals the show, it's Nao Omori as Ichi who makes it come together, not despite but because his complete absence of any charisma. Omori plays a mindbroken manchild who only finds catharsis in violence, manipulated and weaponized by a mysterious man named Jiji. A man with little personality on his own except for a pavlovian association between cruelty and arousal.

Ichi the Killer is a violent movie, but what's even more important, it's a movie about violence. All the grime and sleaze lay bare the inner workings of a society built on violence. Police is depicted interchangeably with organized crime, every single character is either perpetrator or receiver of violence. People inflict pain and death. They seek pain and death. They use pain and death as a threat. They try to hide from pain and death. They retaliate to pain and death with pain and death. Violence is the fuel powering the engine that's moving all the individual pieces of Ichi the Killer's Shinjuku. It's a self perpetrating, almost mechanical parade of cruelties that's not realistic, not literally speaking, but addresses various realities of the society it depicts in a deeply uncompromising way.
 
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Xprimentyl

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I think...
we're are meant to take from it all that the "mother" intelligence was brought online, followed by "her" engaging in attempted genocide to replace existing humans with ones that are percect. I mean perfect.
Yes, that's what I meant by it's a bit too subtle for the more poignant points to land. That film tells the least interesting story of those on offer. Again, not a "bad" film, but the end implies there was a better story to be told, or at least a more engaging way to tell the story they chose.
 
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gorfias

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Yes, that's what I meant by it's a bit too subtle for the more poignant points to land. That film tells the least interesting story of those on offer. Again, not a "bad" film, but the end implies there was a better story to be told, or at least a more engaging way to tell the story they chose.
New on Netflix, I'll be checking out ASAP:
 

Bob_McMillan

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Finished Eternals. I genuinely thought this had the best action scenes in a Marvel movie since maybe Civil War or Winter Soldier. I was enjoying the movie and these characters, 2 and a half hours just flew by.

Then the major twist comes and it alllll goes to shit. They really wrote themselves into a corner for this one. Some plot points were so terrible it had me laughing like a maniac. The presence of Jon Snow (forgot the actor's name) is the most egregious Marvel set up since the awful Thor scenes in Age of Ultron.

In the end, this absolutely deserves to be the first "rotten" MCU movie. Which is a shame, because I thought it was more or less well made from a visual and audio standpoint. Good performances too.
 
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thebobmaster

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Finished Eternals. I genuinely thought this had the best action scenes in a Marvel movie since maybe Civil War or Winter Soldier. I was enjoying the movie and these characters, 2 and a half hours just flew by.

Then the major twist comes and it alllll goes to shit. They really wrote themselves into a corner for this one. Some plot points were so terrible it had me laughing like a maniac. The presence of Jon Snow (forgot the actor's name) is the most egregious Marvel set up since the awful Thor scenes in Age of Ultron.

In the end, this absolutely deserves to be the first "rotten" MCU movie. Which is a shame, because I thought it was more or less well made from a visual and audio standpoint. Good performances too.
Actor's name is Kit Harington. I think the enjoyment of Eternals really comes down to whether you connect with the characters or not. I connected with a few of them, but Sirse and Ikaris didn't really do anything for me...and having seen the movie, you know why that significantly impacted my enjoyment of the film.

I do agree that the action scenes were fantastic.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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In Time
(Prime video)

Rating: 7/10

Brief thoughts: A surprisingly stylish film that is a critique of he idea of Darwinian capitalism by way of Bonnie and Clyde
 
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