Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 165

Tangerine: 10/10. I first saw this a few years ago and loved it, but this recent viewing really cemented it as an all time favorite. The sun-drenched saturation, the frenetic pace of the story (and the camera work to match), hysterical, tragic performances from the two leads. It's a movie about friendship and survival that is subversive and thrilling. I always thought I preferred The Florida Project, but I no longer think that is the case. I also still need to see Red Rocket. I was a little worried about choosing Tangerine as the nightly Christmas movie, but thankfully my girlfriend loved it.

 

Godzilla vs. Biollante - 7/10
I like this, and I could watch hundreds of these movies and still have a good time, but based on other reviews, I wish I liked this just a little bit more. It's insane and over-the-top in a very fun way, but even diehards would admit there should be more Godzilla vs. Biollante! Still a fun introduction to the Heisei era.

 

Great movie

 

Christmas dump incoming (shitter was full)

Love Actually - 2/10 Before the Brits fully came to terms with the fact that they were a dying empire, they believed they were powerful enough to stand up to that Big Bully America, and the Average Bloke thought his accent could swoon January Jones. Mawkish patriotic hog swill. I wanted this to put me in the Christmas spirit, but all it did was reaffirm my hatred of all things Bri'ish and remind me of how inconvenient it is that Joni Mitchell removed her music from Spotify.

A Christmas Story - 3/10 Not a lot going on here. Kid wants a BB gun. His dad wins a leg lamp. Yada yada yada. "You'll shoot your eye out". Yada yada yada. Leg lamp breaks. Kid gets his BB gun, then shoots his eye out. The end. Didn't hate it, but expected more from it, considering how revered it is in certain circles.

Black Christmas (1974) - 6/10 Never in a million years would I have guessed that the director of Porky's did a pro-choice slasher film in the 70s. This was really great and full of suspense, from the controlling boyfriend to Billy's phone calls to the house getting quieter and quieter as each victim dies. Beautifully shot, and the POV scene in the beginning obviously influenced Carpenter.

Jingle All the Way - 2/10 Why is anybody supposed to be cheering for Arnie's character here? He is a selfish husband and a negligent father who constantly lies to everyone around him and only manages to save the day in the end by accident. The Phil Hartman subplot is so bizarre and tonally out of place with the rest of the movie, and the only good acting comes from 7-year-old Jake Lloyd. Weirdly, there are technically two Vertigo references in this (Sinbad directly mentions the film by name while climbing up a ladder, and there's a dolly zoom on Schwarzenegger's face).

Krampus - 5/10. Fantastic cast, great costume design, and some really cool practical effects. It is mostly let down by the script, bad CG, and the half-assed 'It was all a dream... or was it...?' ending. Bonus points for using the Bright Eyes version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' though.

The Polar Express - 7/10 I am now firmly on the side of people who think this is a good movie. Everyone always complains about the poor PS2 graphics in this, but it is really only the faces that look bad! The pacing is fairly uneven at points (the train arrives at The North Pole half-way through the movie, and then the kids get lost needlessly for 20 minutes), but it's one of the few Christmas films that accurately captures the age where you desperately wanted to keep believing, even when all of the evidence was pointing elsewhere. The only good film Zemeckis has ever made.

Elf - 1/10 The movie that made me hate Will Ferrell and his forced, cartoonish style of "comedy". This is a bad skit stretched into a feature-length film, with Ferrell repeating the same bit ad nauseam throughout. Buddy the Elf walks from The North Pole to New York to meet his workaholic biological father (who is on the naughty list!). He gets hit by a taxi, eats gum off the street, gets into a fight with a mall Santa, and walks in on his coworker while she is naked in the shower. In the end we get shown the real meaning of Christmas, though, when Buddy's father quits his job and starts singing 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town'! There wasn't a single laugh to be had in the entire movie. Just awful, awful, soulless drivel. A punishing watch that feels so much longer than its 90 minutes. Not even James Caan or Zooey Deschanel could salvage this.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - 4/10 Mostly feels like a sloppily assembled selection of slapstick running gags (Chevy Chase does the Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes bit), but does have it's share of genuinely funny moments. Completely loses all steam towards the end. The last release Angelo Badalamenti scored before Twin Peaks aired.

 

that's bait

 

The Boy and the Heron is good, a little confusing but very pretty. (I think I mightve missed some crucial world building dialogue when I went to the bathroom halfway through; I'm sure looking up a quick synopsis will clear up anything I didn't get)

 

Please do this again but for movies that don't totally rock

 

That list peaking with Black Christmas at 6/10 is wild

 

We all know what the real best holiday movie is anyway

 

Correction, peaking with Polar Express (7/10) ABOVE black Christmas (6/10) is wild

 

Pacifition (2023) - I'm in love with this. Tahiti’s most powerful man making moves waving his dick around. The island has different plans, at its own hypnotic pace it slowly zooms out revealing how completely out of control and unknowable the world is, how its waves of influence crash and spill into each other.


May December (2023) - Its topping lists for reasons, characters, drama, its funny, its got style and its got depth. “I want to apologize for the slowest version of this song you've ever heard. Its the drummers fault” LMAO

 

Christmas movies are bad because Christmas is bad.

 

I just watched this one the other day. It is a great highlight of the increasing impotence these former great powers are feeling. A more meditative version of Denis' White Material a decade ago.

 

Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo - Evil Dead II by way of Troma and Winterbeast. Really fun, great claymation FX as well as some dope gore. Fun characters. Two original songs about chili. Thumbs up, an annual winter watch. 8/10

 

also bait

 

you had me at Winterbeast

 

It’s less insane than Winterbeast but the vibes are similar

 

I might have believed it if, after all those tauntingly low scores, he hadn't gotten greedy with the 7/10 for The Polar Express. Bit of a hat on a hat, really.

 

Lubitsch made a Christmas movie so that’s automatically the best one, the Shop Around the Corner

 

don't worry, there's more on the way lol

thinking of bumping my rating of the polar express up to an 8 now because of this

 

Christmas isn't bad, it's for children

 

Christmas is the worst because it is really hard to find something to eat on those days, followed by Thanksgiving. New Year's is the best because we are celebrating the solar chart like our barefoot ancestors intended. Mardi Gras is a special mention if you are in the right part of the country at the time.

 

how do you feel about Halloween?

 

Halloween blows and is hugely overrated

 

that’s wild to say but to each its own