Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 7

The Witch (2016), dir. Robert Eggers

I finally got to see this, though the closest theater still showing it was 45 minutes away. Well worth it. A gripping, tense film with some really disturbing imagery. It introduces intrigue and an underlying terror early by showing us the naked, gnarled old woman steal the newborn baby in the beginning, then focus almost entirely on the family after that. The whole time I was preoccupied with "How long has this naked old woman been living in the woods? What led her to this? Where do witches come from?", and the film answers that with a gleeful insidiousness.

 

Fantastic movie.

 

Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

 

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), dir. Steven Soderbergh

I haven't seen this film since I was like, 15 or 16, and my only knowledge of Soderbergh was the Ocean's series. He's become one of my favorite directors, but I haven't revisited his debut feature until now, around 10 years after I first saw it. It's just as great. Better, actually, now that I'm a lot better at watching movies. In a post-the O.C. context it's fun to watch Peter Gallagher play a married lawyer with morals that run polar opposite of Sandy Cohen. My favorite thing about this re-watch might be how Andie MacDowell's repressed, yearning character here, dealing with an inattentive husband, re-contextualizes her casting in Magic Mike XXL and makes that film even more brilliant on that layer.

 

I watched inception again on the weekend.

9/10

 

Solaris (2002), dir. Steven Soderbergh

Continued on the Soderbergh train today, though I hadn't seen Solaris before. I loved it a hell of a lot. A really tense and aching portrayal of a grieving man fixated on his past who gets the chance to physically confront it when he's visiting a space station in distress and a being comes to him in the form of his dead wife. Absolutely stellar George Clooney performance, maybe my favorite all-time. I haven't read the book or seen the Tarkovsky adaptation, I know they're both considered exceptional while Soderbergh's version isn't held in the highest regard by some. But Solaris is now one of my favorite Soderbergh films and rivals Out of Sight for my favorite Soderbergh/Clooney collaboration.

 

Porumboiu' The Treasure is wonderful. He's such an oddity in the Romanian New Wave, taking the style of his straight faced peers and twisting it into deadpan comedy. I was watching the film and didn't have much to say about it (I still don't) but it just works so well. Maybe I'll come back to this with some thoughts (probably not) but I was sort of feeling exhausted on film the last week and this worked as a beautiful palate cleanser.

 

10 Cloverfield Lane
7.5/10, idk

This movie was one of the year's most distressing, tense thrillers...until it wasn't.

I love Cloverfield. I had a good idea about the film's third act going into it. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to tell that the film was not originally meant to be connected to Cloverfield. And that would be fine. Everything leading up to the film's finale was near-perfect; it's amazing what they can do with only three characters, and all three leads kill it. The left-turns keep even those who know they have some of the twists figured out guessing, and the film's shifts in tone from humorous to unbearably tense are seamless, until that damn third act. It's just executed so poorly. The aliens and their ships have zero connection to Cloverfield, which again, would be fine, except our leading lady turns from a heartbreakingly real character into an action star who single-handedly destroys an alien ship with a single molotov cocktail, survives a truck dropping at least 25 feet which miraculously lands upright, passess out without any of the surrounding aliens noticing her, and even makes a quip the first time she ever sees an alien ship.

I love sci-fi, and I'm not one to complain about realism, but this film felt so real...until it didn't. It throws everything away for an (imo) poorly executed Shyamalan twist. It's not enough to make me hate the film, and the ending probably isn't even as bad as I'm making it, but man, I left the theater feeling disappointed. The sad truth is that without having Cloverfield in its title, this film would have left a lot more people upset with its ending.

 

I loved it, ending included

@Aaron Mook is the quip you're talking about where she sees the ship and says "oh, fuck?" A podcast I listen to pointed that out as kind of a playful way of acknowledging the sudden shift in tone.

 

It is. The exact wording was "Come on..." Unfortunately, I didn't find any of it playful. Just upsetting haha. I thought the film would have been so much better as a stand-alone thriller. I still really enjoyed it, though.

 

Everyone who's participated in this thread has been great so this isn't anything accusatory, but a few people have talked about condescension and arguments and pretension and talking about movies with some people being intimidating or unwelcoming. Since this site is in its early days, and this thread is probably my favorite to check up on and post in, I thought I'd share some bits from Film Crit Hulk's Never Hate a Movie piece. His all-caps/Hulk-speak gimmick is I'm sure hard for some to get past, so I've converted the case on a few select passages here to hopefully work as an example of how this thread could be a place of welcoming, inclusive, interesting, and productive discussion.

This isn't to say that you can't still engage in the thread however you want. I tend to write long stuff and can ramble on, though hopefully for the benefit of everyone being more active with my letterboxd will help shave my posts here down to more manageable sizes. Someone else can just post a simple sentence or two. This isn't even to say you can't joke about bad movies or go on about why a movie really bothered or frustrated you. That stuff is all great. There's room for all kinds of film fans and all kinds of movies and all kinds of ways of talking about them. I remember a user in the AP Last Movie thread who pretty consistently wrote thought out reviews of I think exclusively anime. I loved it. I don't particularly prioritize anime but I love reading what people think about movies and I love writing about movies. I don't want anyone to see this thread and feel like they don't want to engage with it because of a bad atmosphere. If we're posting in or viewing this thread, we like movies and see this as an outlet for our thoughts on them. We're also all still learning. I write long ass posts but I'm just as dumb as anyone else, all I'm doing is writing about what I experienced. Hopefully through that and engagement with others, I can continue to learn and grow.

And again, everyone in this thread has been super, super great. I hope this doesn't come off as self-serious or preachy. Given the mention I've seen previously of people feeling bummed out about the AP Last Movie thread and then that post about film culture a few posts ago, I just wanted to kind of nudge some energy towards where it might help this place be better than those places.

 

The issues I have with with 10 Cloverfield Lane's ending stem from it being so drawn out after what should probably have been the climax. After being really invested in what happens prior, the main scene plays out pretty much as an unnecessary diversion.
In principle I don't think that ending was necessarily a bad idea though, or that it was necessarily out of place thematically. I was very conflicted about it at first but at this point I think the film could've probably had it both ways if it was cut down and not turned into a set piece in itself.

 

Went with this instead of BvS huh?

 

The Guest (2014), dir. Adam Wingard

What a fun, layered movie. Dan Stevens was so good in the lead, simultaneously endearing and off-putting. I loved the deconstruction of the male action film hero, the film positing that in order to be that badass hero we all cheer for, the guy is probably a psychopath. Also loved the political implications as an American soldier comes into a situation he doesn't know much about with intentions to help and then destroys nearly everything he touches.

One thing I noticed and haven't quite been able to connect was the gay subtext. There were a few threads to pick up on, when talked about the deceased Caleb it was pretty passionate and could be read deeper than friends/fellow soldiers, he was initially apathetic, even bored looking when having sex with a beautiful young woman, and he vehemently and aggressively dealt with an instance of the f-word used as a slur. So that's all there, but I can't quite tie it to the thematics of the rest of the film.

 

The Witch is apparently going back in theaters this weekend only, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet

 

Hopefully I got a lot out of me in my writing on letterboxd. I know I can go on a little bit about movies, often rambling and going on and on. I just watched Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, which has given me more to think about and write about than just about any film I've ever seen.

It's hard to really get into Margaret, which is about so much and contains so much. I think it can be lazy to go into superlatives like "best" and "worst", so I try to avoid it in favor of highlighting what's unique about a great or terrible film. But I just have to say that Anna Paquin's performance here is one for the ages. It is unbelievable and one of the most powerful portrayals I've ever seen onscreen. Just incredible.

Margaret is as complex, nuanced, and exploratory a film as I've ever seen about how we react to grief and growing up. Generally I believe that, often, our greatest works of art reveal common truths in revelatory ways. In lieu of rambling on too much, I'll say that following that line of thinking, Margaret is one of our greatest works of art.

 

The Falling -

this movie imo was just... bad? the plot was just all over the place, characters had no discernible arc, it was tedious and lacked suspense despite feeling like it kept trying to build it... i felt like there was a bigger metaphor that I was missing, some kind of grander point, but even as a big arthouse fan not only did i not care about the movie, it also annoyed me because of how slow and ultimately pointless it felt.

 

Watched Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'amour this morning and something of his finally clicked with me. I'd previously seen Goodbye Dragon Inn, The Hole and the mid-length Journey to the West (which I did love, but was still struggling with his features). I had kind of written him off as one of those rare auteurs that didn't work for me after The Hole, but I read comparisons to Antonioni on this one so I had to give it a go. It's certainly more sparse than Antonioni but I can see how his early 60s work paved way for this. I think what made this one for me was that I finally felt invested in the characters. It also seems a little less alienating than the other works I've seen, but not by much. It's still largely without dialogue and thinly plotted. I've still got a few of his I want to watch (at least The River) and I'm feeling a bit more confident in it now.

 

I really didn't like What Time Is It There? much at all, so it's nice to know there are others worth at least checking out.

 

I loved Take Shelter and I'm really excited for Midnight Special. I have neither seen Mud nor heard anything about it, though. Is it good?

I guess the last movie I saw was Deadpool? It's basically everything I expected/wanted it to be, thin story included.

I tried to avoid getting into a discussion with my friends about when damsel-ing becomes okay, but I guess we can talk about it here. The other film I saw recently in theaters was Star Wars, and she got out of that on her own. In Deadpool, she had a bit of help, but otherwise she was badass the entire time, I think, so it's okay. Am I wrong? I mean, I guess continual usage of the trope is problematic, but I don't think we can do anything about that.

 

That's another one I've had to watch for ages. I watched the others I picked mostly because they were shorter works of his and I figured they were less daunting because their shorter running times. I know he's held to the highest standard mostly from people that watch a lot of avant garde work, which isn't really my deal, so I'm not surprised I don't go crazy over him. But I love his peers from the era of Taiwanese cinema (especially Hou) so he's always on my radar.

 

Haven't seen Mud since it was in theaters but my impression at the time was that it is Nichols' weakest by a pretty significant margin. He's still a very exciting film maker and Take Shelter is one of my favorites this decade. Shotgun Stories is also incredible.

 

You'll be disappointed in BvS then.

 

has tetra made the switch yet? This entire forum doesn't work without him

 

Freep Film Festival kicks off tonight. My friend has free tickets to see Kevin Smith, which, sure, alright. But I'm excited to see some of the smaller local documentaries I might not be able to otherwise, plus there's an Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness double feature as part of it. I'd love to see Apocalypse Now on the big screen.