RATE or REVIEW The Last Movie You Watched.

I'm in agreement that Salem's Lot was pretty bad. A lot of stuff that happens later in the film had me rolling my eyes big time. The main dude fighting off 3 vampires at once while lying on his back made the movie feel like a joke. And how the main characters seemingly always decided to enact their plans at 7pm for some reason. And how the sun moved across the sky at random speeds depending on whether they needed to add tension to a scene or not.

Just finished the new Salem's Lot. It wasn't good. Characters really had no rational thinking. It felt very . . . . sanitized and very rushed. You can't rush horror movies. They need time to build an atmosphere of dread. Has been a while since watching the original version. Maybe I should give the Rob Lowe one a spin first.

Last night I watched the final movie in a stack of blu rays that I’d been meaning to watch, one per night, and it was Tenet. The 4K disk looks fantastic. Blu ray in general and 4K blu ray in particular looks amazing on an OLED TV. And for Tenet the cinematography, set and art design, and costumes for Tenet are all very good. It’s pretty to look at. And the score is pretty good.

As a cinematic experience Tenet failed hard for me, though, for a number of reasons. First, it simply required way too much conscious energy, focus, and hard work mentally to grasp all the details that were whizzing past my head rapid-fire like bullets. I got the basic gist of the story, but a story comes together in its details. Even though the movie does us the favor of explicitly spelling out what things mean, that exposition is delivered so fast that it’s next to impossible to digest. To figure out what all those things were I would have to have paused and rewatched the dialogue many times throughout the film to make sure I understood (or make a decent enough interpretation of) what they were talking about. That’s a huge ask from the getgo. And given my second reason I felt unmotivated to do that: the story and performances didn’t make me care what happened to anyone. I didn’t develop an emotional attachment and investment in anyone’s wellbeing or growth arc. None of the characters were particularly likable or relatable to me. And I guess then that the third fail for is that the acting just isn’t compelling enough either. The acting performances are solid enough at a fundamental level. But given the severe problems that I’ve mentioned there’s little that any of the actors can do to make me root for them or truly care about them. About halfway through this mess I kept watching only because I had made it to the last film in the pile of disks, and I was determined to complete the project of watching all those movies.

The sci-fi premise of the movie, the physics of reverse entropy, was a chaotic mess. And I do get that it’s supposed to be a mess. The movement is in the forward direction for non-time travelers, and for time travelers moving in reverse everything is flowing backward. And when time travel occurs these two directions of entropy are intersecting. But how satisfying is that aesthetically as a film experience? To me the answer is only a just a little. Plus the notion of opposite effects to the reverse entropy just felt silly, e.g., they have to breathe the oxygen from the time they travel from, fire causes ice crystals, and all that.

The one positive thing I can say is that the action in the film at least helped me complete the watch. The action scenes are pretty well choreographed.

So the watch project ended on a bit of a dud. But it was a fun experience overall to finally get around to watching the entire pile of movies. The weekend before I had managed to get in four other films prior to the last ten day watch period, so here’s the entire pile:



From this bunch the ones that gave me the most enjoyment are:

Ben-hur (1959)
One-eyed Jacks
Barry Lyndon
Cloud Atlas
The Woman King
Chronicles of Riddick
The Last Emperor
Malcolm X

Alatar said:

Last night I watched the final movie in a stack of blu rays that I’d been meaning to watch, one per night, and it was Tenet. The 4K disk looks fantastic. Blu ray in general and 4K blu ray in particular looks amazing on an OLED TV. And for Tenet the cinematography, set and art design, and costumes for Tenet are all very good. It’s pretty to look at. And the score is pretty good.

As a cinematic experience Tenet failed hard for me, though, for a number of reasons. First, it simply required way too much conscious energy, focus, and hard work mentally to grasp all the details that were whizzing past my head rapid-fire like bullets. I got the basic gist of the story, but a story comes together in its details. Even though the movie does us the favor of explicitly spelling out what things mean, that exposition is delivered so fast that it’s next to impossible to digest. To figure out what all those things were I would have to have paused and rewatched the dialogue many times throughout the film to make sure I understood (or make a decent enough interpretation of) what they were talking about. That’s a huge ask from the getgo. And given my second reason I felt unmotivated to do that: the story and performances didn’t make me care what happened to anyone. I didn’t develop an emotional attachment and investment in anyone’s wellbeing or growth arc. None of the characters were particularly likable or relatable to me. And I guess then that the third fail for is that the acting just isn’t compelling enough either. The acting performances are solid enough at a fundamental level. But given the severe problems that I’ve mentioned there’s little that any of the actors can do to make me root for them or truly care about them. About halfway through this mess I kept watching only because I had made it to the last film in the pile of disks, and I was determined to complete the project of watching all those movies.

The sci-fi premise of the movie, the physics of reverse entropy, was a chaotic mess. And I do get that it’s supposed to be a mess. The movement is in the forward direction for non-time travelers, and for time travelers moving in reverse everything is flowing backward. And when time travel occurs these two directions of entropy are intersecting. But how satisfying is that aesthetically as a film experience? To me the answer is only a just a little. Plus the notion of opposite effects to the reverse entropy just felt silly, e.g., they have to breathe the oxygen from the time they travel from, fire causes ice crystals, and all that.

The one positive thing I can say is that the action in the film at least helped me complete the watch. The action scenes are pretty well choreographed.

So the watch project ended on a bit of a dud. But it was a fun experience overall to finally get around to watching the entire pile of movies. The weekend before I had managed to get in four other films prior to the last ten day watch period, so here’s the entire pile:

View attachment 732481

From this bunch the ones that gave me the most enjoyment are:

Ben-hur (1959)
One-eyed Jacks
Barry Lyndon
Cloud Atlas
The Woman King
Chronicles of Riddick
The Last Emperor
Malcolm X

Click to expand...

My friend, Your reviews are comprehensive and impressive.... I remember 42.

Alien Romulus - 7.5/10

It was great to see the franchise go back to its horror roots, but it was a bit heavy handed at times with the callbacks to previous entries.

The cinematography and SFX were amazing. Such a beautiful movie.

The Thing 1982. 10/10

My 13yo boy was interested in watching old, good, classic movies.

He watched it and loved it. Of course, the special effects are dated, but the movie is not about that. It is the tension the movie gives when you first watch it all the way through.

The unkonwn on what is going on, what is that thing, how do you kill it, who could be a thing. All of that just keeps building up to a great resolution.

Now, we gotta go through the pre-sequel just so he can know how it all started.

Remembermyname said:

My friend, Your reviews are comprehensive and impressive.... I remember 42.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your kind words! It’s all offered in the spirit of fun, creative play. Mainly, I love the art form and it’s an expression of that, honestly.

I can’t imagine that I’ll ever see 1/6 figures for those favorite films! It would be a minor miracle if any of them ever got made, anyway. It’s a wish list that’d never be filled but the following figures would be awesome for me:

Ben-hur - Juda Ben-hur as charioteer
One-eyed Jacks - Kid Rio
Barry Lyndon - Redmond Barry
Cloud Atlas - Meronym (future earth Halle Berry)

I particularly love those films. And imho those figures would all be chockfull of shelf presence.

Keep the reviews coming, I shall be reading them all.

Alien Romulus is now officially the first movie in this franchise I could not even bother finishing. Super annoying characters, laughably bad CGI for the talking "Ash" robot (Looked like Annoying Orange's retarded cousin), an overly cluttered set design and unfittingly frantic camera work all helped bring this down. There might have been a semi interesting plot hiding in there somewhere but the script and execution was very sub-par i.m.o. Hoping the upcoming streaming series will be ALOT better...

wormlander said:

Alien Romulus is now officially the first movie in this franchise I could not even bother finishing. Super annoying characters, laughably bad CGI for the talking "Ash" robot (Looked like Annoying Orange's retarded cousin), an overly cluttered set design and unfittingly frantic camera work all helped bring this down. There might have been a semi interesting plot hiding in there somewhere but the script and execution was very sub-par i.m.o. Hoping the upcoming streaming series will be ALOT better...

Click to expand...

I thought Prometheus was at times laughably bad. The way the archeology was conducted was incredibly poor science, like downright foolish. And I literally laughed out loud when the rolling donut shaped giant space ship is “chasing” them for almost a full minute and no one thinks to run away perpendicular from its path! At that moment I entertained the idea that Ridley Scott was possibly saying that human beings are probably too stupid to survive, and that we deserve to go extinct.

Oddity (2024) Horror/Thriller - 7.5/10

Was pleasantly surprised by this. While there's not a lot of gore, which I'm personally OK with, there are some genuinely creepy scenes in this. The plot is good. Pacing was fine. Acting was serviceable.

It grabbed me from the beginning and wouldn't let go. I like movies that do that. Of any genre.

There is a couple twists in the plot in the final act that made me appreciate it more than I would have otherwise. And the ending felt right. Pretty good little film. Not a lot of re-watch value tho.

Smile 2 - 10/10

I went into this one without seeing the original movie, but I enjoyed it a lot. It's part psychological thriller combined with cosmic horror. Probably the creepiest most disturbing film I've seen in recent years.

X: 7/10

Good, suspenseful horror film. Obvious callbacks to Texas Chainsaw and female exploitation movies. Hard to believe it had a $1 million budget as it was extremely well made, and was a convincing period picture to boot, with what appeared to be CG in at least one scene and extensive makeup for the Pearl character. Editing was of a very high caliber. I didn't realize Jenna Ortega was in it until she showed up on screen. Quite a jump from this to kids shows and movies.

Solidus said:

Smile 2 - 10/10

I went into this one without seeing the original movie, but I enjoyed it a lot. It's part psychological thriller combined with cosmic horror. Probably the creepiest most disturbing film I've seen in recent years.

Click to expand...

I would agree. The first Smile was just a meh Ring rip off. Smile 2 was fantastic. You really got into the insanity Skye was going through. And wow, Naomi Scott gave one hell of a performance.

I watched Days of Heaven last night. First time ever seeing it. I watched the Criterion 4K blu ray on an OLED.

Sure enough, Days of Heaven lived up to the hype of being one of the most painterly films one could ever hope to watch. The film earned an academy award for best cinematography that year, 1978. The cinematography captures the wide open vistas of 1916 Texas panhandle wheat fields—although actually shot in Alberta, Canada—in all its subtle splendor. Director Terrence Malik famously shot nearly every scene during the “golden hour” either just before dusk or at dawn when the sun is at a low angle. The quiet physical beauty of nature, the vast undulating sea of wheat married with giant open sky and the clouds, is the true star of the movie.

I was also struck by just how good the other fundamentals are for the overall visual experience. The art and set design, costumes, and makeup (lots of dirty faces and clothes for the migrant farm workers) does a superb job of recreating that era of American life shortly before World War I. Everything looks and feels what I reckon would be authentic to that time and place.

The score is also excellent.

Going into the watch, in the back of my mind I wondered whether the story itself would end up playing second fiddle to the cinematography. But for me it really doesn’t. The tension the love triangle between Abby (Brooke Adams), Billy (Richard Gere), and “The Farmer” (Sam Shepard) sets up ramps at a good pace and progressively builds. At certain points my wife and I found ourselves whimsically yelling at the screen “Are you crazy? what the heck are you doing?” The acting performances are just about perfect. The camera loves all the actors in this movie. They deliver that sort of low key but powerful performance that echoes the grace of the physical world around them.

Each of the three in the triangle are deeply flawed. Billy is a hothead likely doomed to a tragic fate for that reason, especially given his ambitions vis a vis the low strata of society he’s born into. Abby is basically just trying maneuver and to survive somehow given the power dynamics of the time for gender and class. And The Farmer has strong and noble instincts of emotional sincerity, vulnerability, and compassion—but they are very childlike. We all know it can’t end well.

Linda Manz as Billy’s little sister steals the show with her touching melding of toughness and world-weariness and youthful naïveté and inexperience. She has learned how to survive by giving a shrug to everything. She embodies the Jungian “Orphan” archetype. And her voiced-over narration mirrors a quality of ego immaturity quite similar to that of the adults. They’ve all become quite capable at surviving physically. But they seem utterly lost as to how to live emotionally fulfilling and existentially rewarding lives with one another.

Just a meditation of my own: Since humans developed agriculture, which in turn gave rise to civilization, we have in the most immediate ways become masters of the physical natural environment. For example, we cultivate wheat at an impressive level. We invent tools to make that possible at a large scale. But human beings possess precious little wisdom, grace, humility, and love for one another. And what there is of that remains firmly rooted in a very primitive layer of existence driven by survival. My own personal association is that at the hardwired level of the brain, even with the technology that dominates life since the industrial age we arguably still have the psyche of hunter-foragers! Human connection and trust, and the virtues of courage and honesty, are still important at the individual level, and the level of the family and clan. But managing the our social relationships and organization at the societal level poses a problem that may actually be as difficult—or maybe moreso—than mastering the natural environment. And as the locust infestation in the story illustrates, mother nature is still way more powerful than our species.

One thing that I found a bit odd is Billy’s choice to insist that Abby is his sister. Being an unmarried couple having sex would have been frowned on in the Bible Belt at that time, sure. But they could simply have lied to others that they were a married couple. Who would ever fact check that? Especially for migrant farm workers in 1916! No one. Was it perhaps because Billy was on the run from the law in Chicago for killing (?) the steel mill foreman? That is, if Abby was openly his wife or girlfriend then perhaps that might make him easier for someone to identify Billy as a fugitive?

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It’s perhaps just another foolish choice among many.

Wolfs - tired, cliched odd-couple fixer movie barely held together by Pitt and Clooney's ageing charisma/10

EVILFACE said:

I would agree. The first Smile was just a meh Ring rip off. Smile 2 was fantastic. You really got into the insanity Skye was going through. And wow, Naomi Scott gave one hell of a performance.

Click to expand...

Great performance from the actress, indeed - well suited for the role. I figure I'll give the first movie a watch sometime this week, with lowered expectations of it not being as good as the sequel.

Smile 2: 8.5/10

Smile 1: 7.5/10

Yes Smile 2 was better than Terrifier 3…way better.

I'm halfway through Smile 2. It's OK. But it's a rehash of the first one. There's nothing new here. I think I'm gonna just give up on this one.

The motivation and outcome of the "entity" is too simple. It needs to be expanded upon. If you've seen the first one, you're essentially just re-watching it with the sequel but with a new cast and different kills.

There's not enough meat on the bone to keep me watching the same movie again. I'm not real sure how this film is getting the praise it is but I'm glad folks are enjoying it. So that's something. It's just to.. "been there done that" with the plot for me.

I cannot imagine a trilogy or more of films redoing this overly simplistic formula over and over. But who knows, maybe it will happen and people will continue to love them. First one was good and enough for me.

Based on what I've watched, 6/10

Cell: 4/10

My favorite King book. People said they massacred it. They didn't were they correct.

Terrible CGI. Cusak is terrible in it. Sam Jackson tried to save it but even he can get away from this turd.

Crazy bad effects .....what's with King? He should guard his properties better.....

Think The Langoliers but somehow worse.

They even butchered the simple ending.