Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 218

Also just watched eraserhead for the first time. I don’t think I can even give it a rating.

 

It's great to see a bunch of people checking out one of the best films ever made.

 

Gargoyles season 1 - 8.5/10
I didn’t have the Disney Channel growing up, but I heard this show is a cult classic. I’m loving this so far. Season one is only 13 episodes and the pilot is a five-parter, but season two seems to have a lot more episodes. This show is DARK for being Disney. The drama, characters, voice acting, and dark tone are really impressing me. Commander Ryker and Deanna from Star Trek voice two main characters, so that’s makes me like this more. Check this out if you like Batman: The Animated Series.

 

Been meaning to check that out. I'm a few episodes into the second season of Xmen myself

 

Longlegs - 8/10

this really worked for me. I was anxious because I’ve seen/heard somewhat mixed reviews (especially around here) but I suppose that’s what hype oftentimes gets you. Cage wasn’t nearly as creepy as I thought he might be and in many ways I think that might’ve added to the allure of his character for me. he’s not some otherworldly villain but rather just a fucked up weirdo at his core (albeit with the devil on his side). I have very few complaints and I’m so happy I finally saw it

 

The Godfather Part 2 - 4.5/5

not as good as the first one

 

We need more than that.

 

One of Pacino’s best performance before he starts to go way too big. I thought De Niro was just okay and his Brando impression came and went. I did think we’d spend more time with his story though and was surprised at where it ended. I thought it looked great and I miss when movies didn’t have to hold your hand constantly and would show you instead of tell you.

 

The murder of Fredo and shutting out Kay are obviously bigger moments, but my favorite scene from either film is the last meeting of the inner circle where Michael reveals he knows Tom Hagen had interviewed elsewhere and threatens knowledge of his mistress and shutting him out. Hagen asks why he is hurting him and this is the same scene where he orders the pointless suicide mission against Roth. At this point Michael is a lost cause.

 

I know the 3rd is everyone’s least favorite of the 3 but how big of a step down is it?

 

3 isn't a bad movie. If it was a standalone film it would probably be received a lot better. However, it doesn't compare to the other two films for a lot of reasons. Hagen isn't around due to trying to underpay Duvall and without going too much into the plot almost all of the characters are not behaving in a natural way that extended from their arcs from the previous films. For a movie series grounded in realism, there is a scene with a helicopter attacking a meeting in a skyscraper like some sort of action film. Coppola has admitted to just doing it for money.

 

I tell myself 3 isn’t canon.

 

2 is the end of the story, and it mostly reinforces what we could see coming at the end of the original film. Michael isn't literally dead but he doesn't exist as a person to those around him. Tom has been threatened, Connie has been subdued to become a surrogate mother, and Kay is cast out. He has abandoned any pretense of going legitimate and is both unable to become the idealized version of his father that he was trying to replicate while repeating the same mistakes that led to the tragedies in the family when his father was alive. After fratricide, where else are you going to go narratively?

 

it's been a long time since i've seen any of them, but from what i've heard, while the weakest of the 3, the Coda version of the third film released a few years ago is a somewhat more preferable cut than the "III" theatrical cut. probably fitting to call it Coda then, i imagine.

 

Yeah Coda is the only one streaming I think. Don’t know if I should watch that or track down the original version.

 

Getting to see the 50th anniversary edition of Part I at the fancy Orlando theater was like a religious experience. I had tears from the beginning of I believe in America to the introduction of Luca Brasi.

I saw Part II in theaters 13 years ago but it was just a Blu-Ray blown up and it was not nearly as important.

 

It also made me miss when stuff was shot on location with real people and everything wasn’t on a sound stage or CGI.

 

My parents were never big cinephiles but there were a few films my mother tried to introduce to me when she felt the time was right. They had a VHS copy of the Godfather Saga, which added a lot of deleted scenes but is most famous for putting the two films in chronological order, which means young Vito is the beginning. It might be interesting to watch it that way if you know the movies but it is a terrible way to watch it for the first time. It is slow and feels pointless when you don't know the importance of Vito and since so much of that act is in Italian it can really turn people off.

 

I had no idea that existed lol now I’m curious to watch it that way

 

It was so confusing when I eventually saw them the "right" way. Part 1 has the family going to see Genco at the hospital as he is dying and Part II has a scene where they track down Fabrizio and blow him up.

 

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - 8.5/10
Post-Scream but pre-Cabin in the Woods, the sweet spot for a rare and earnest mockumentary of sorts that bends narrative formats to offer something totally unique (for the time) to genre audiences. That narrative shift in the third act may feel a little off-putting now, but the rest of this is just handled so, so well that it's hard to care. Genuinely funny and mostly very well-performed (it's shocking that Nathan Baesel hasn't been in more films). Leslie should have been our next slasher icon. A must-watch for horror fans.

Hell Hole - 3/10
I didn't particularly love The Adams Family's Hellbender (2021), but when I saw that this was being promoted as a mix of The Thing and Tremors, I was a pretty easy sell. After all, it would be very difficult to make me dislike anything remotely resembling those two films. Well, the devil works hard, but The Adams Family works harder. I don't want to shit on independent filmmakers getting exposure via Shudder, which rocks, so instead, I'll just say that this one starts interesting and sputters out after the first act. A parasite that somehow keeps a French soldier alive for over 200 years just to infect more people is very cool; an hour of talking about said CGI parasite (and about voting for Bernie) with little payoff is significantly less so. Honorable, but a swing and a miss.

AGGRO DR1FT - 7/10
I am fully aware that this is not a very good movie, if you even want to call it that. The dialogue is insane and mostly poorly written, often poorly delivered, and characters seemingly walk around repeating themselves and certain actions that really, really lend to this being Korine's take on video game NPCs. But love Korine or hate him, his choices are deliberate, and while that might not make them "good," it certainly makes them interesting. Why is Travis Scott acting like he's in a completely different movie? Why does a demonic crimelord emply a gang of little people with machetes? Why has the plot been stripped bare of anything that isn't "hitman spending time with his model wife and kids" or "killing spree?" I regret to inform you that none of this really matters, because this is a film literally filled with some of the coolest looking shit I've ever seen in my life. The infrared SOV thing is 100% inspired and the reason Korine still gets my attention. I recognize how flawed this is, and yet I can't stop thinking about it, and I can't help but think its warped execution will only grow on me upon rewatch. If you like Harmony Korine, experimental films that feel like student films, Mandy, Grand Theft Auto, or 70s/80s exploitation movies, you're gonna wanna dish out the 80 minutes to experience this. For better or for worse.

 

Inside Out 2 was really good! Was excited for Ayo but omg Maya? Maya. Perfect casting.

 

I probably saw the original West Side Story before but I wasn't sure so it went on the list. It is clearly important and so much of it has reached cultural osmosis, but it might be the rare time where the remake is a better film, at least in terms of recommending to someone wanting to know what all the fuss is about. The mostly white actors playing the Puerto Rican sign is known and a product of the times, but it is hard to put that against the amazing work that Spielberg and the actors can do in the modern version.

Ran was the film that was the biggest embarrassment on the list. For some reason, the fact that it was in color made it feel so alien to the black-and-white Japanese films from Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. Like the switch from silent to sound, black-and-white directors had taken those limitations and found ways to use them to their advantage in setting up these images through the suggestion of color. Kurosawa was so often making periods, so as time has become flatter as his films become memories just like the eras he focused on, the black-and-white gives them an almost authentic, docudrama-like feeling. With color, and especially the very loud and bright colors he chooses (you would never lose these people in the woods), he defines the lines between fathers and sons, allies and enemies. History can be a funny thing; while something like Seventh Samurai feels of its era because we live so far outside of it, it is fascinating to think that this films exists in the same period as Return of the Jedi, The Terminator, and bad horror movies. It is part of the reason it is so sad when a longtime director dies; not just for the films they will never make, but also because of that link to an era that is gone forever once those last artists have gone. In America, we still have those handful of directors that predate the rise of the blockbuster; what happens when those last ones are gone and virtually everyone has grown up post-1975?

 

Oddity. 4/10

The more I think about this movie the more I hate it. The initial set up is excellent. The setting is perfect for a horror movie. Acting good enough. Overall, the intrigue and atmosphere is all there. Like, this director certainly has a future....but.... in the end it was just a series of horror tropes, vaguely if at all connected. Is it a haunted house? Are the sisters psychic and have special abilities? Is the wooden creepy statue haunted? Or wait, is it just a murderer doing all these things...or is it all of them. This really fell apart in the 3rd act and an ending that isnt satisfying or horrifying or in any way good.

I'm mad because it felt like a great movie but then you think about it for a second and you get very mad