Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 116

I'm Thinking of Ending Things - 9/10

 

The Harley Quinn Movie - N/A

Got too drunk/high and forgot I watched it. Don't remember the ending, but the first half was ok. Not good enough where I have to go back and rewatch the ending though.

 

Are you taking about Birds of Prey?

 

Gemini Man 4*/5

Hands down the most gorgeous 4k presentation yet. I wasn’t expecting it to be this good overall

 

Guns Akimbo was kinda dumb (I mean, even dumber than the trailer/synopsis would lead you to think), but at least it was fun. I love that after HP D-Rad is doing films like this and Swiss Army Man. Love Samara Weaving in everything.

 

Stay (2005) - 7/10

Honestly? Thought this was going to be much worse than it was. Even despite Ewan McGregor's mediocre performance and the extremely mid 2000s ass editing I enjoyed it quite a lot.

 

Giant - I enjoyed the evolution of Leslie and Bick's relationship. Love at first sight to Leslie suddenly realizing she is being pigeonholed and fighting back against that while also trying to maintain the "dream" so to speak. The final scene contradicts the more progressive elements of the movie, but I suppose that should be expected from a movie made in the 50's. I also didn't realize this was James Dean's final film. Great performance to go out on I suppose.

Yojimbo - I was going to watch A Fistfull of Dollars, but then I read that it was a pseudo remake of Yojimbo, so I watch this instead. I can never get enough of Toshiro Mifune. The man is just a joy to watch. Also, the score is one of my new favorites. Overall another fun samurai flick.

Erin Brockovich - A movie I thought I had seen, but I guess I never had. Really enjoyed the script and the way Soderbergh uses very dull and monotone lighting whenever Erin is visiting any of the victims of PG&E. Some all-time one-liners in this.

My Best Friend's Wedding - I know most romcoms don't age all that well, but this one is pretty bad. Could use about 100% more George. There's nothing at the beginning to make the audience like or sympathize with Julia's character so we're just kind of rooting against her the entire time.

Steel Magnolias - Continuing the Julia Roberts theme. I loved this. I saw it sporadically as a kid growing up thanks to my mom and sister, but I never really paid attention. All I remembered was the armadillo cake and Julia Roberts having diabetes. Sure it's a little meandering and some of it feels very on the nose. Still, great chemistry between the lead actresses and the dramatic beats work for me. Even when its light-hearted, I can still feel the weight of burden on Sally Field's shoulders that none of the male characters seem to actually carry. Everything seems to bounce off the men and she's forced to carry it. Side note, I'm not sure Dylan McDermott has ever been likable.

 

I LOVE Steel Magnolias. What an ensemble.

 

It's official now, I'm just working my way through Julia Roberts filmography. This week was two more of her biggest rom-com hits.

Pretty Woman - So, I was always skeptical about the premise of this movie holding up in 2020. Good lord, I wasn't skeptical enough. Sure, Julia Roberts is charming as all hell and I do like the song, "Pretty Woman", but that's all I can really say for this movie. How was this such a big hit and seems to still be revered today? I do not know. There is zero, perhaps negative chemistry between Gere and Roberts. In fact, Gere's performance is ultimately what ruins the whole movie. He comes across as a creepy predator the entire time. During their first night together, I kept thinking this was a prequel to American Psycho. The way he stares at her is extremely offputting. Every sex scene made me cringe. There's also a ton of weird standalone shots scattered throughout which would be necessary if they had any plot or character payoff, but they seem to just be filling time. Terrible movie.

Runaway Bride - Less problematic, but somehow worse? And yet, this also seems to be a standard-bearer for 90s rom-coms? Gere is again unbearable but at the other end of the spectrum. He's again creepy but in a more impertinent way. You just want to punch him in the face. And I really can't wrap my head around the plot. It's disappointing because I think the premise has potential in the rom-com genre, but the whole thing is just a mess. They remake classics all the time, can we remake this one with someone who knows what to do with the material? Someone who could frame it as a satire of the impulsive nature of rom-com relationships. And without Richard Gere?

Regardless of the quality of both movies, Julia Roberts is still magnetic on-screen. I can understand why she was such a big star.

 

Happiness (1998) - 8/10

This wasn't quite as sidesplittingly funny as I expected but the scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman on the couch slowly sliding his hand over with the music in the background is one of the funniest things I've seen in any movie ever

 

I love Happiness so much.

 

Haunt. 7/10. Decent slasher.

 

Mandibles 7/10

Super weird, super fun, highly recommend

 

Beetlejuice - 8/10. I’ve actually never seen it, so I wanted to catch up. Pretty spooky.

 

Night of the Creeps - 7/10

this is a very bad movie, and I loved it.

The Night Eats the World - 4/10

this is a very bad movie, and I hated it.

 

Is this streaming anywhere?

 

Miller's Crossing - 9.5/10

loved this one

 

Borat 2 - 5/10

ehhh

 

Halloween (1978) - 8/10

 

Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island - 8/10, mostly nostalgia. It scared me as a kid when it came out back in the day. It was the first Scooby show/movie where the monsters were real.

Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost - 8.5/10, this is a better movie than Zombie Island. I didn’t realize Tim Curry did the voice for the writer. My wife has been singing the Hex Girls song all month, so we had to watch it.

 

Enola Holmes - 8/10

 

Flesh-Eating Mothers - 6.5/10

 

Hillbilly Elegy was awful, but not in the type of way that you would expect given the conversation around the book; instead of serving as an apology for Trump Country, it is mostly just an inept mishmash of weird camera angles, acting without direction, and bizarre tonal shifts from the central conceit, which cuts in between the present-day J.D. Vance and his childhood. These are all real scenes that happened in the movie.

1. When Amy Adams walks into the staff locker room, a co-worker asks her "how was the funeral?" in the same tone that you would ask someone how their weekend was.
2. After Amy Adams' father dies, we are told that he was the only person that she connected with, even though he only had had one line and was overshadowed by the histrionics of Adams and Glenn Close.
3. When J.D. Vance is at a fancy dinner, he sees a formal dinnerware layout, including multiple forks and a breadplate, and the camera tightens into a POV shot with a tinny sound like the soldiers marching on Normandy in Saving Private Ryan.
4. Glenn Close is obsessed with Terminator 2, for some reason. The "good Terminator bad Terminator" nonsense is already in the trailer, but in the film we see the scene where the liquid Terminator enter the helicopter, and then less than a minute later there is the scene where Schwarzenegger says "hasta la vista, baby" and shoots the frozen Terminator. These scenes have a huge car chase scene in the middle, but in the film they happen within a minute or so.
5. Teenage J.D. Vance is portrayed as incredibly smart for his age, preferring Meet the Press to watching The Terminator, but when his grandmother is in the hospital he starts crying and asks her exactly when she is going to die, like a small child might.
6. When Vance gets upset with his family for asking him to provide clean urine, he storms out of the house. The film follows the grandmother going outside to leave the house, and it sounds like you hear practice at a shooting target, which would have been an interesting cut. Instead, Vance is literally standing outside throwing a basketball at the garage door, over and over.
7. When the grandfather dies, the funeral procession goes through the small town's version of Main Street. Literally everyone stops and puts their hats on their heart, like it was the President or something.
8. At the aforementioned dinner, the Ivy League deans and presidents ask probing questions about Vance like he is a science experiment. This is the most overtly political scene; it is emblematic of what Trump supporters think coastal elites act like.
9. In the present-day, Vance has a girlfriend who does nothing but answer his phone calls, express support, and ask how he is doing. She has no function other than this. Similarly, the sister is not given any real inner conflict other than concern for Crazy Mom.
10. The mom litters her outbursts with some of the most unconvincing, seemingly forced profanity. While it is believable that that character would use f-bombs like a 15-year-old, it feels like even Amy Adams was embarrassed by the dialogue.

I don't usually comment on actors. Actors are increasingly less classically-trained, and are often pretty people who can do well with the right director or disastrously with the wrong one. Even generationally great performers like Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep, can stumble without a competent director. With that said, Gabriel Basso, who plays our main character, has the charisma of a bag of potatoes. I looked him up and it seems like he has not been in anything - film, television, video game - in four years, which is not too surprising. Inexplicably, we are supposed to care about the inner turmoil of this empty cipher, and root for him to settle his family problems so he can rush back to Yale in time for an interview for an internship. The film just sort of ends; his mother is trying to quit drugs yet again, and he drives home to see his girlfriend. The obligatory ending intertitles tell us that he married the girlfriend and the mother was able to get sober, but we never had any reason to care about these characters. It is a biopic about a wholly unspectacular person.

 

Crash (1996) - 7/10

 

Not sure how this ended up happening but here's the last two movies I watched:

The Prom - I started watching this about 45 minutes in and maybe I missed the good stuff. This was pretty bad. The whole thing felt designed to pander, not to the LGBT community, but to people who claim to be allies to the LGBT community. Casting James Corden didn't help. I don't even loathe him like many seem to, but his American accent is horrendous and his performance felt like it was just playing off stereotypes. Also, the songs were all pretty terrible. Has anyone seen the original musical? Was it good?

Anyway... at some point the decision on what to watch next was...

High School Musical - I never watched this even though I was probably the right age for it when it came out. Look it's not good, but I had fun. The edible I took near the end of The Prom probably helped, but whatever, it's kind of hilarious to watch Zac Efron with dumb floppy hair and playing such a likable character.