Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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A ★★★★★ review of Taxi Driver (1976)
Hard Mode: Review this post 2019 without ranting about Todd Phillips or Joker missing the point.
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A ★★★★★ review of Taxi Driver (1976)
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." This film was not super troubled, despite being an early effort from Martin Scorsese. He was introduced to screenwriter Paul Schrader through a mutual...
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Cruella
This...ok, not a good movie, but I didn't really expect it to be. I did, however, expect Emma Stone to be wonderfully over the top, and she was.
The story was rather all over the place, and it didn't know what sort of theme it was going for, kept jumping all over the place between very camp and silly, somewhat dark and serious, or gross out comedy.
As an aside, there's a bit where it looks like Emma Stone is going to re-enact the Terminator attack on the police station...which given that the film is set in London in the late 70s, yeah, don't try that. I mean, don't try that at other times, but when the IRA was hitting places in London, the police would take their security rather seriously. Admittedly a minor point, but still.
This...ok, not a good movie, but I didn't really expect it to be. I did, however, expect Emma Stone to be wonderfully over the top, and she was.
The story was rather all over the place, and it didn't know what sort of theme it was going for, kept jumping all over the place between very camp and silly, somewhat dark and serious, or gross out comedy.
As an aside, there's a bit where it looks like Emma Stone is going to re-enact the Terminator attack on the police station...which given that the film is set in London in the late 70s, yeah, don't try that. I mean, don't try that at other times, but when the IRA was hitting places in London, the police would take their security rather seriously. Admittedly a minor point, but still.
A ★★★★ review of Infernal Affairs II (2003)
“What goes around, comes around.” As a prequel taking place several years prior to the events of the original film, it was decided that while their characters would be returning, Tony Leung and Andy Lau would not. However, Andy Lau did remain as producer and co-director, as well as returning...
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I just watched Frankenstein (the new one), and I don't know how much I loved it or if I loved it at all, but it was surprisingly captivating. Story wise there isn't really anything I hadn't seen before, this being the umpteenth Frankenstein retelling, but simply as a modern (genre) movie I was very taken with it. It felt like a movie with a smell - like you can see a character, how they're dressed, or a room, and you can instantly tell the smell of it. I never figured this to be something I appreciated in movies except with how flat a dull movie visuals have become in the streaming era. This Frankenstein felt fished from the early 00's when we had richly textured movies like Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean (and I don't even like that movie).
I also liked how del Toro didn't put any sort of pandering spin on it. He didn't add action, sex appeal, or a cool factor - he kept it all very classical. It had a pretty decent soundtrack too.
So yeah, I think I actually kinda liked this.
I also liked how del Toro didn't put any sort of pandering spin on it. He didn't add action, sex appeal, or a cool factor - he kept it all very classical. It had a pretty decent soundtrack too.
So yeah, I think I actually kinda liked this.
A ★½ review of The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
“I so despise these song and dance routines.” Unlike most DisneyToon Studio output, there were actually a couple of things to note about the production of this movie. Firstly, the plot we ended up with was actually not the first idea for a Jungle Book sequel. In the 1990's, screenwriters Bob...
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The Woman in the Line (La mujer en la línea)
Based on a true (ish) story. Natalia Oreiro plays a woman whose son gets arrested for armed robbery, then gets jailed for six months while awaiting trial. Rather than experiencing his side of the story as he gets meat shafted for half a year, we join the mother in mild inconveniences like making the drive, waiting in line (ugh), dealing with unhelpful bureaucrats, etc. I'm supposed to be shocked - shocked! - by her ordeal. All the while she makes life harder for her kid by getting into catfights with the other moms during visiting hours. When the kid gets sick of her and stops calling, she asks another inmate to report daily on him, then she rewards him with pie and prison sex for the trouble.
The kid ends up being convicted of robbery but receives a suspended prison sentence. In reality he was never actually convicted - turns out it was all a misunderstanding over some stolen empanadas - and I thought it was extremely weird of the movie to change that, but also report to it at the end ("For dramatic purposes, we made this ultimately innocent person into a criminal" - wtf?). And apparently the mom continued to pork this other perp in prison for 14 years before he was finally released. That's what I call a happy ending!
Based on a true (ish) story. Natalia Oreiro plays a woman whose son gets arrested for armed robbery, then gets jailed for six months while awaiting trial. Rather than experiencing his side of the story as he gets meat shafted for half a year, we join the mother in mild inconveniences like making the drive, waiting in line (ugh), dealing with unhelpful bureaucrats, etc. I'm supposed to be shocked - shocked! - by her ordeal. All the while she makes life harder for her kid by getting into catfights with the other moms during visiting hours. When the kid gets sick of her and stops calling, she asks another inmate to report daily on him, then she rewards him with pie and prison sex for the trouble.
The kid ends up being convicted of robbery but receives a suspended prison sentence. In reality he was never actually convicted - turns out it was all a misunderstanding over some stolen empanadas - and I thought it was extremely weird of the movie to change that, but also report to it at the end ("For dramatic purposes, we made this ultimately innocent person into a criminal" - wtf?). And apparently the mom continued to pork this other perp in prison for 14 years before he was finally released. That's what I call a happy ending!
A ★★★★★ review of The Princess Bride (1987)
“We’ll never survive.” “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.” Rob Reiner had been interested in making an adaptation of the William Goldman novel of the same name ever since proving himself as a filmmaker with This Is Spinal Tap. He discussed his idea with Paramount...
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Playdate
A buddy action comedy starring Kevin James and Alan Ritchson, beleaguered by the fact Ritchson is trying too hard and James isn't trying at all. It's also doing the Seth Rogen comedy thing where everybody acts like a coked out frat bro that really grinds my gears.
Karate Kid: Legends
Basically a remake of the first movie, with the new karate kid being flown from Beijing to NYC and Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio playing his two Mr. Miyagis. Now the first movie really is about the relationship between Daniel and Miyagi more than anything else, and here we don't get anything of that caliber. It's all about going through the same motions. Remake on, remake off. It ends with Johnny whatshisname from the first movie speculating on new ways of exploiting the Miyagi brand for profit, which I found depressing.
A buddy action comedy starring Kevin James and Alan Ritchson, beleaguered by the fact Ritchson is trying too hard and James isn't trying at all. It's also doing the Seth Rogen comedy thing where everybody acts like a coked out frat bro that really grinds my gears.
Karate Kid: Legends
Basically a remake of the first movie, with the new karate kid being flown from Beijing to NYC and Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio playing his two Mr. Miyagis. Now the first movie really is about the relationship between Daniel and Miyagi more than anything else, and here we don't get anything of that caliber. It's all about going through the same motions. Remake on, remake off. It ends with Johnny whatshisname from the first movie speculating on new ways of exploiting the Miyagi brand for profit, which I found depressing.
A ★★★ review of The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
“Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of...am I on speaker-phone?” This film was conceived by Joss Whedon as, in his own words, a "loving hate letter" to the horror genre, aimed at both poking fun at the parts of horror he enjoyed while jabbing at...
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One Battle After Another (2025)
Most recent movie of Paul Thomas Anderson, based very loosely on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, making it his second Pynchon adaptation and the second piece of evidence to suggest that he's not a great person to adapt Pynchon.
Where Vineland followed aging Hippie Zoyd Wheeler in the 80's trying to retrieve his daughter Frenesi Gate from ruthless government agent Brock Vondt who might or might not be her biological father, OBAA transplants the story into... roughly speaking, "the present" or something just slightly ahead of it. Wheeler's counterpart "Ghetto Pat" Garrett, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is an aging radical in a more or less contemporary post democratic United States who sees his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti, a name that already sounds like it belongs to a Pynchon character) kidnapped by ruthless Colonel Stephen Lockjaw, played, brilliantly, by Sean Penn.
The thing about this retelling of Vineland is that I don't think it does a very good job of capturing the book it's inspired by, nor does it bring all that much to the table by itself. Vineland, as its name suggests, was a loose tangle of plotlines that, yes, did intersect, if only very casually, but what it was about, like most of Pynchon's book, was painting a picture of a cultural turning point as the revolutionary spirit of the 60's and 70's was snuffed out under Reagan era authoritarianism, omnipresent the "tube", as Pynchon derisively called it, television, now the dominant medium, selling the American public on a false promise of security and cultural identity.
The thing about OBAA is that, despite transplanting parts of the plot into a modernish or near future America, its worldview still feels old fashioned to a fault. Instead of exploring the way new media is used to keep the population complacent, instead of exploring the ways race, gender and sexual orientation are used to draw lines and hierarchies in a society that naively considered itself past these things, instead of exploring the unreliable nature of information in a world 10 year past being declared postfactual, it explores dichotomies that, hell, even the early 90's book it alleges to be inspired by didn't take at face value.
The thing is that Pat and his old outfit, the French 95, are still very much hippie coded, a vague amalgamation of Weather Underground, Black Panthers and other old guard boomer resistance movements; tech illiterate, vaguely maoist, paramilitary structure, far removed from anything that would possibly manifest in the 2020s. The other side not faring much better, sean Penn's Colonel Lockjaw effectively playing a more nuanced version of Colonel Quaritch, the villain from Cameron's Avatar movies, an archetype unthawed from somewhere during the Bush administration.
All of which make One Battle feel like a movie about the 20's, written by a guy stuck in the 00's, directed by a guy stuck in the 70's and neither of these guys is all that sharp, all things considered. Pynchon, aside from being one of the greatest satirists in English speaking literature, aside from being the person to write the definitive map to western parapolitics in the 20th Century, is a man who, now almost past his 80's, has always kept an ear to the ground. Earlier this year his latest book, Shadow Ticket came out. Somehow a book with much more to say about the 2020's despite being set in the 1930's, than OBAA has.
The other thing, in addition to the first thing alluded to two paragraphs earlier, is that Anderson's just not as whimsical as ol' Tommy Pynch. The original book Vineland features a punk band named "Billy Barf and the Vomitones" and this movie couldn't dream of having anything as funny in it. Anderson, one imagines, wouldn't be caught dead ever directing a musical sequence, much less dive into the books zanier elements like an insurance adjuster following Godzilla around. Hell, his adaptation of Inherent Vice already went out if its way to write around all of that. All OBAA has, really, as a uniquely pynchonian touch not half heartedly lifted from the book is the racist fraternity Lockjaw is trying to join, an order called the "Christmas Adventurers", a joke that doesn't extend much beyond their funny name.
Make no mistake, this is a well made movie in most regards. Acting is impeccable, DiCaprio, Penn, Infiniti and Benicio DelToro are killing it, it looks beautiful and moved along nicely. The discordant free jazz piano score annoyed the hell out of me, though. But I don't think the screenplay is actually any good, though, I'm sorry. It feels like a movie about "today" written by a guy who's never been on the internet, use of the term "semen demon" near the end nonwithstanding. It's absolutely sad that this is the only guy adapting Pynchon. Eddington was a better pynchonian film. Under the Silver Lake was a better pynchonian film. Big Lebowski was a better pynchonian film. Hell, Southland Tales is probably still the best pynchonian film. One Battle After Another is a well meaning but overall underwhelming attempt at one.
Most recent movie of Paul Thomas Anderson, based very loosely on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, making it his second Pynchon adaptation and the second piece of evidence to suggest that he's not a great person to adapt Pynchon.
Where Vineland followed aging Hippie Zoyd Wheeler in the 80's trying to retrieve his daughter Frenesi Gate from ruthless government agent Brock Vondt who might or might not be her biological father, OBAA transplants the story into... roughly speaking, "the present" or something just slightly ahead of it. Wheeler's counterpart "Ghetto Pat" Garrett, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is an aging radical in a more or less contemporary post democratic United States who sees his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti, a name that already sounds like it belongs to a Pynchon character) kidnapped by ruthless Colonel Stephen Lockjaw, played, brilliantly, by Sean Penn.
The thing about this retelling of Vineland is that I don't think it does a very good job of capturing the book it's inspired by, nor does it bring all that much to the table by itself. Vineland, as its name suggests, was a loose tangle of plotlines that, yes, did intersect, if only very casually, but what it was about, like most of Pynchon's book, was painting a picture of a cultural turning point as the revolutionary spirit of the 60's and 70's was snuffed out under Reagan era authoritarianism, omnipresent the "tube", as Pynchon derisively called it, television, now the dominant medium, selling the American public on a false promise of security and cultural identity.
The thing about OBAA is that, despite transplanting parts of the plot into a modernish or near future America, its worldview still feels old fashioned to a fault. Instead of exploring the way new media is used to keep the population complacent, instead of exploring the ways race, gender and sexual orientation are used to draw lines and hierarchies in a society that naively considered itself past these things, instead of exploring the unreliable nature of information in a world 10 year past being declared postfactual, it explores dichotomies that, hell, even the early 90's book it alleges to be inspired by didn't take at face value.
The thing is that Pat and his old outfit, the French 95, are still very much hippie coded, a vague amalgamation of Weather Underground, Black Panthers and other old guard boomer resistance movements; tech illiterate, vaguely maoist, paramilitary structure, far removed from anything that would possibly manifest in the 2020s. The other side not faring much better, sean Penn's Colonel Lockjaw effectively playing a more nuanced version of Colonel Quaritch, the villain from Cameron's Avatar movies, an archetype unthawed from somewhere during the Bush administration.
All of which make One Battle feel like a movie about the 20's, written by a guy stuck in the 00's, directed by a guy stuck in the 70's and neither of these guys is all that sharp, all things considered. Pynchon, aside from being one of the greatest satirists in English speaking literature, aside from being the person to write the definitive map to western parapolitics in the 20th Century, is a man who, now almost past his 80's, has always kept an ear to the ground. Earlier this year his latest book, Shadow Ticket came out. Somehow a book with much more to say about the 2020's despite being set in the 1930's, than OBAA has.
The other thing, in addition to the first thing alluded to two paragraphs earlier, is that Anderson's just not as whimsical as ol' Tommy Pynch. The original book Vineland features a punk band named "Billy Barf and the Vomitones" and this movie couldn't dream of having anything as funny in it. Anderson, one imagines, wouldn't be caught dead ever directing a musical sequence, much less dive into the books zanier elements like an insurance adjuster following Godzilla around. Hell, his adaptation of Inherent Vice already went out if its way to write around all of that. All OBAA has, really, as a uniquely pynchonian touch not half heartedly lifted from the book is the racist fraternity Lockjaw is trying to join, an order called the "Christmas Adventurers", a joke that doesn't extend much beyond their funny name.
Make no mistake, this is a well made movie in most regards. Acting is impeccable, DiCaprio, Penn, Infiniti and Benicio DelToro are killing it, it looks beautiful and moved along nicely. The discordant free jazz piano score annoyed the hell out of me, though. But I don't think the screenplay is actually any good, though, I'm sorry. It feels like a movie about "today" written by a guy who's never been on the internet, use of the term "semen demon" near the end nonwithstanding. It's absolutely sad that this is the only guy adapting Pynchon. Eddington was a better pynchonian film. Under the Silver Lake was a better pynchonian film. Big Lebowski was a better pynchonian film. Hell, Southland Tales is probably still the best pynchonian film. One Battle After Another is a well meaning but overall underwhelming attempt at one.
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I'm about halfway through the new Frankenstein, going to finish it tomorrow. Not grading anything yet, but I simply cannot get over this film's look. It should look fantastic: the sets, costumes and locations are all lavish and well executed, and the cinematography and camera work are great. But the lighting, oh the lighting. If there was ever a movie that should have a ton of darkness, deep shadows and bold contrasts, it's this. But literally everything's way overlit and overexposed. No matter if you're in the middle of a rainstorm, in an underground bunker, or in the black of night on the North Pole, you can always see all elements of the environment clearly. There's next to no use of negative space or darkness, everything's pretty much even. And it's distracting as shit!
The Running Man (2025) - A much better adaption of the book, but still does its own thing separate the 80s version and the book. Edgar Wright may have adapted, but his own personal touches in the film. That includes the tone, the action, humor, and dialogue. I have no complaints on this. I find the film about just as good as the original, and I can watch them back to back. Glen Powell does sell the idea better with Ben Richards being an every man and turning him more into John McClane type character, but still unique. Compared to the original, which Arnie was pretty much a gladiator fighting other gladiators.
A ★½ review of Shipwrecked (1990)
“Every ship has her own secrets. And every true sailor knows when to keep his mouth shut...for the sake of his ship. And his mates.” This film was actually a Scandinavian production of a Norwegian novel titled Haakon Haakonsen: En Norsk Robinson, which translated is Haakon Haakonsen: A Norse...
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A ★★★½ review of School of Rock (2003)
“I have been touched by your kids, and I'm pretty sure I've touched them.” Inspired by The Langley Schools Music Project, Mike White wrote the script for this film. However, he found out during the premiere of the movie that gay stereotypes had been played up for humor in the final product...
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This is heartening because I wanted to see it but reviews have been disappointingly mid. Only Kermode seemed to like it.
I've noticed recently, that I've been on opposite ends with YouTube film critics. Lately they either have these really dumb takes, or have become really snobbish and turned into the things they hated about film critics of old and yesteryear. Or they think their opinions are the only ones that matter. Double Toasted did like movie, but I didn't watch the whole review to avoid spoilers.
Only you can decide for yourself, but I highly recommend giving this movie a chance. I am getting this day one when it hits home video.
Playdate (2025)
Netflix mismatched buddy action comedy with Alan Richson as an ex-special forces soldier and Kevin Hart as a forensic accountant. Kevin Hart is not a good start point, and it has a rating of abour 20% on Metacritic. Sounds bad? Well, this film is genuinely one of the most stupid films you will see all year. It has plot holes, characterisation is flaky. It seems rushed and poorly edited, in areas, it just doesn't seem to care whether it makes any sense. Although not really a satire, it has some moments of satire which are painfully obvious and not well thought out. It's a A Kevin Hart movie, for heaven's sake. It should be awful.
But that's the trick, isn't it? Should be.
I really enjoyed it.
It's extremely silly and it manages to just not give a shit in a way that somehow threads the needle into working. It's fast pacing perhaps covers some of weak points because they're just gone in a flash. I like its gleeful lack of consideration for many of the support characters who are harmed in the process of the main characters going on their rampage. I mean, movies have extras and bit-part characters maimed and killed all the time: why not make it... kind of funny? A note of support here for Alan Richson who possibly works a lot in it's favour, as I think he's one of those actors who comes across well as very endearing (like, for instance, Jason Momoa).
If you made 100 movies like this 99 of them would genuinely suck as you'd expect. But one would, freakishly, somehow work. This is that one in a hundred movie: the one for which all the omens are poor, which is in some ways definitely, objectively poor, and yet somehow staggers out of the film-making process as a genuinely enjoyable product. It's not big, it's not clever, it's barely art, but why not give it a go.
Netflix mismatched buddy action comedy with Alan Richson as an ex-special forces soldier and Kevin Hart as a forensic accountant. Kevin Hart is not a good start point, and it has a rating of abour 20% on Metacritic. Sounds bad? Well, this film is genuinely one of the most stupid films you will see all year. It has plot holes, characterisation is flaky. It seems rushed and poorly edited, in areas, it just doesn't seem to care whether it makes any sense. Although not really a satire, it has some moments of satire which are painfully obvious and not well thought out. It's a A Kevin Hart movie, for heaven's sake. It should be awful.
But that's the trick, isn't it? Should be.
I really enjoyed it.
It's extremely silly and it manages to just not give a shit in a way that somehow threads the needle into working. It's fast pacing perhaps covers some of weak points because they're just gone in a flash. I like its gleeful lack of consideration for many of the support characters who are harmed in the process of the main characters going on their rampage. I mean, movies have extras and bit-part characters maimed and killed all the time: why not make it... kind of funny? A note of support here for Alan Richson who possibly works a lot in it's favour, as I think he's one of those actors who comes across well as very endearing (like, for instance, Jason Momoa).
If you made 100 movies like this 99 of them would genuinely suck as you'd expect. But one would, freakishly, somehow work. This is that one in a hundred movie: the one for which all the omens are poor, which is in some ways definitely, objectively poor, and yet somehow staggers out of the film-making process as a genuinely enjoyable product. It's not big, it's not clever, it's barely art, but why not give it a go.
Appreciation gained, but overall watch-ability for me remains the same. The best parts of the movie were before there was any inclination of a witch.
Interesting comment -
@jayiu9170 1 month ago
For me, the greatest thing that Cregger has acomplished was recreating an old folktale in such a modern and perfect way. You have the main protagonist, an innocent child that has to save his family, a children "eating" witch that came from nowhere, and the narrative is divided by chapters, like a book.
OT, Frankenstein (2025)
Loved it for what it was, but it let on very early and had me lol’ing for how hard del Toro leans into the fantastical sense. Pushing a massive ship out of the ice is just…ok sure, he’s a very powerful monster but still bound to the laws of physics no? A letter conveniently surviving a massive explosion? Frankenstein being completely impervious to (not yet invented) dynamite? Yeah, it’s that type of flick, but barring these absurdities it looks and sounds rather wonderful.
There's a reason I roll my eyes a bit at anyone who refuses/will only watch a movie based on what their favorite YouTube reviewer says. Even the one I watch that I agree with 95% of the time (he's not really a reviewer, but James A Janisse will always give his thoughts on movies when he does a kill count on them) still has that other 5%. And yeah, a lot of them have a real "My opinion is objectively right" vibe.