Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 9

After the general shrug this got from most of those I talk to, I rather enjoyed it. Still wrestling over my feelings on it, but it felt like a slightly more relaxed Tarantino (all things relative), and I kind of loved that about it.

 

Oh man, did I love Zootopia.

 

American Ultra was a lot of fun, had some real heart to it too.

 

Pitch Perfect 2 was a million times better than it had any right to be. An immensely sloppy film with a paper thin plot, but very entertaining

 

This movie was so good. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart are so good together. And yeah, from the trailers, I did not expect it to have so much heart to it.

 

Yeah I'm surprised more people didn't dig it, it was so panned when it came out.

 

Eye in the Sky made me miss Alan Rickman a lot. It was an effective philosophical and moral challenge to an audience, even though my theater crowd might have mostly picked their side in the conflict a little too easily for my comfort. Aaron Paul is really good at playing a good-hearted kid thrust into a moral dilemma where a cold, calculating boss is urging him to do horrible things.

Zootopia was very fun and very complex. I want to think a little longer on the racial analogues it drew up, but overall I appreciated its ambition in not shying away from anything, really.

 

The Night Before: B-

It was pretty funny during the first half but it didn't keep my attention after that. I didn't really expect much going in and it didn't do anything to change that.

 

One of the best of last year. It had such a great energy to it.

 

Man From U.N.C.L.E and Spotlight make for a weird double feature, but U.N.C.L.E. surprised me so much.

 

Watched some lower budget horror movie called Would You Rather last night. It was pretty mediocre, kinda bad at times, but a fun thing to watch when you're falling asleep at like 4am after a night out. Some of the gore was pretty good looking, probably the best compliment I can think of

It was cool seeing Robb Wells in a movie where he didn't play a degenerate haha

 

Law-Abiding Citizen and holy fuck what a dumb movie

the main character literally burrowed into every single cell in prison, acquires military weapons despite being in solitary confinement, murders the shit out of like eight government officials and nobody really does anything about it

 

Where Eagles Dare - 10/10

Thought I would watch a favorite of mine for my first rating on this new site and I adore pretty much everything about this film be it the actors, the action or the score. Not many WW2 set films I would rate as highly as this and even though I will admit it isn't the best WW2 set film it is quite possibly my favorite in that setting.

 

zootopia had a great message. 7/10

step up from frozen. like a whole damn flight of stairs up from frozen imo

 

I rented What We Do In The Shadows from rebox last night, and holy crap was it the funniest thing I've seen in a while.
A wonderfully grounded vampire comedy along the lines of monty python or portlandia in tone. I highly recommend it

 

I watched Prejudice yesterday night. It is from Belgium/France. Great movie with intense dialogues and wonderful casting.
Kind of a mix between Festen and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

8/10

 

Hot Tub Time Machine 2: nowhere near as good as the first. I didn't hate it, and I laughed here and there, but it felt more like a direct-to-DVD sequel.

Digging for Fire: Really enjoyed it. Jake Johnson continues to be great. Loved Drinking Buddies too, so it's now time to check out Happy Christmas.

 

The Amazing Spider-Man

I've dogged on the Amazing Spider-Man for not giving Peter an arc, but upon re-watch realized I was wrong. There's more going on here thematically than I ever gave the movie credit for. They hammer a theme about Peter finding himself, which makes sense because he is a few different versions of Peter throughout the film. He starts out a good-hearted kid who stands up to bullies, then gets his powers and turns into a dick who harasses a bully and (unintentionally) sexually harasses a girl on a subway and then beats the shit out of everyone who gets angry at him for it. Uncle Ben calls him out on that, passing on advice that Peter's dad always used to give, which was "If you could do good things for other people, you had a moral obligation to do those things... Not choice, responsibility", which is this movies way of dancing around "With great power comes great responsibility". Peter balks at the words though, and later lets a robber go free to spite a convenience store clerk. The robber goes on to kill Uncle Ben, and Peter goes on a rampage, tracking down any suspects who fit the murderer's description and harassing them and leaving them for the police. Captain Stacy calls him out on this, calling out the personal vendetta that he's been acting on is actually to help himself, not anyone else. So Peter goes out of his way to help people from a lizard monster and saves a little boy. The boy's father asks who he is, and Peter reflects for a moment before replying, "I'm Spider-Man". Okay. He's grown. He's learned.

Unfortunately the Gwen/Peter romance flies in the face of all of this. Most of their interactions throughout the film are the two of them literally struggling to form complete sentences to each other while they flirt. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone sell really empty dialogue, they're fun to watch. But they're saying nothing of consequence, and Peter seems actively disinterested in Gwen beyond a physical, surface level. He never asks her any questions about herself, he webs her butt to kiss her and when she states her surprise and confusion he literally tells her to shut up. There's really ugly stuff going on in this relationship, especially given that the one time Gwen expresses any agency (though that agency is still in relation to furthering Peter's plot), she tells Peter how hard it's been to have a dad who goes out and risks his life every day, mirroring Peter's Spider-Man duties. Peter is wounded, at his most vulnerable, and rather than divulge anything revealing about himself, he just furthers the plot by saying he has to stop the lizard, then he takes her web swinging. It's style over substance, pretty romantic visuals over actual character. When Captain Stacy dies and makes Peter promise not to date Gwen (as his being Spider-Man puts her in danger), Peter agrees. He has the opportunity (obligation, to use the film's wording) to do something good for the Stacys by honoring his promise to Captain Stacy and keeping Gwen safe. Instead, literally eight minutes of screentime after he makes that promise, he whispers to Gwen that promises you can't keep "are the best kind". All that stuff about responsibility and growth and doing good for others and sacrifice is shot down just like that.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I fucking love watching the Spider-Man in TASM2 be Spider-Man. His costume is perfect, the colors brightened from a muted palette in the first movie. Garfield is actually having fun under the mask, something that the first film forgot to further emphasize about halfway through the movie. It's really, really great. Then the movie keeps going and I realize I have no idea what it's about. There's a plot involving a mystery around Peter's parents that in total takes up about 20 minutes of screentime but is dropped an hour and a half into the movie with no further reference. Harry Osborn learns he's dying and needs Spider-Man's blood to possibly cure himself. Peter and Gwen can't decide whether or not to be together or not. Max Dillon is a sympathetic weirdo who's turned into a supervillain called Electro. These are the main plot points, and none of them have any thematic weight on the other. The Peter's dad stuff could be dropped completely and not affect the film's story at all. In spite of the campiness, dubstep, and overdone CGI, I actually kind of like Max Dillon, until he disappears so completely into Electro that the action climax between him and Peter is purely in service of plot, forgetting any semblance of character. Harry knows Peter takes pictures of Spider-Man, knows Spider-Man got his powers from a secret project Peter's dad was working on, and has sit-down conversations with both Peter (his childhood best friend) and Spider-Man, and yet doesn't put together that Peter is Spider-Man until two hours into the movie when he first appears as Green Goblin (for which he's in action for literally three minutes). The Peter and Gwen stuff is a slight improvement over the first movie, because Peter's guilt over breaking his promise to Captain Stacy from the first movie presents an actual challenge to their being together, something the first movie didn't have at all. So he breaks up with her, but then stalks her throughout the rest of the film (when Gwen asks how often he follows her he says "Once a day... Sometimes more"). The two have a bunch of cute romantic scenes before deciding to continue to be together (so Peter's not really struggling with that guilt all that much, really). These plots don't have any bearing on each other.

Given that Peter sees the ghost of Captain Stacy throughout the film, you'd assume his guilt is going to play into Gwen Stacy's inevitable death. By breaking his promise and continuing to see Gwen, Peter is making himself complicit in whatever happens to her. But the film goes out of his way to remove as much fault as possible from Peter. Peter does everything he can to keep Gwen out of danger, but she shows up to the final battle site anyway, yelling at Peter that "Nobody makes my decisions for me. This is my choice". The film is literally having her tell Peter it's not his fault when she dies. The film goes even further by replicating the Gwen Stacy fall/Spider-Man web catch from the iconic comic story, but in the comics, the recoil from Peter's web catching her breaks her neck. Again, Peter is complicit in her death. In this film, Gwen's head bounces against concrete. Peter wasn't at fault, he was just too late. Then the film has about eight minutes left to wrap everything up, and rather than have Peter directly confront any guilt he does feel, it goes for this unearned happy ending where Peter is still a hero, beloved by the city. This film bums me out so much.

 

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
6.5/10

Alright, so Batfleck was great, Eisenberg was great, the score was great. The dialogue was weak except for Eisenberg's monologues (I especially loved his biblical references) and the Martha scene was great. I definitely think there was some fat towards the middle that could have been trimmed, including the bullet sideplot and the Justice League setup, and Doomsday looked like shit/also probably could have been cut tbh.

I still very much enjoyed it for what it was. I wanted a Zack Snyder movie and I got a Zack Snyder movie. I got some popcorn, turned my brain off for two hours and enjoyed the ride.

The Hateful Eight
9/10

Finally, finally saw this and honestly I think it's in the top half of his latter filmography. It didn't strike me as much as Django on first watch, but I loved the way the tone shifts halfway from the film from a "whodunit" to a campy, bloody mess. Tarantino's characters and the worlds he builds around them are a testament to how masterful a storyteller he's become.

 

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
I really, really enjoyed this. I want to give it another viewing before I try assigning a rating or analyzing what I liked/didn't like. All I can say now is that my enjoyment of the film was 10/10 all the way through and I'm super stoked for future films in the DCEU (I guess that's what it's called?). I know once I watch it again I'll be able to pick out the parts that really worked and the parts that could've been better, but I'm guessing my overall rating will end up being an 8/10 just based on the fact that I enjoyed it so much.

Zootopia – 9/10
Oh man. What a fantastic film. Just saw it last night. Definitely taking my sister later on this week to see it, because she'll love it and I don't think she's seen it yet. Absolutely loved everything about it—and good heavens those puns.

Probably going to catch something later on today—I was planning on 10 Cloverfield Lane, since I haven't seen it yet, but honestly I might end up just seeing Zootopia again.

 

Avalanche Sharks - 2/10

 

According to my Trakt (which dang, I haven't watched a move in over a month now), it was Room. It was phenomenal. So many feels - I teared up at parts. Highly recommend it!

 

Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums

Adored both. Schwartzman has always been phenomenal, I see. All I have left is Grand Budapest but it's pretty safe to say Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors.

 

Spectre:

6/10

Not mad I watched it, but certainly the worst of the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Disappointing because Skyfall might be my favorite Bond film ever.

 

I love Rushmore. I feel like its the edgiest of andersons films