Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 201

Freddy Got Fingered.

Well, yeah. If you choose to believe that Tom Green intentionally wasted millions of Hollywood studio dollars on this, all as a joke, it’s a total success. It’s fucking insane. It’s hilarious. It’s also awful and too long. It’s not about ANYTHING. How did he get away with it? I need an oral history or a documentary, lol.

 

It's about chasing your dreams and never giving up.

 

Rip Torn immediately throwing him into the glass shower door, it shatters, and Tom Green gets up like nothing happened at all lol

 

Respectfully, please do not refer to the newly anointed Criterion film Freddy Got Fingered as "awful and too long"

 

yeah it's only 87 minutes

 

The Holdovers - 8/10
Punishingly cozy and feel-good, even if it feels somewhat predictable. In this particular case, that is a feature and not a bug. You could probably shave 20 minutes off the the first half of the film considering the insane (and very funny) plot device they use to get the rest of the titular Holdovers out of the school for Christmas break, but the movie is truly just so goddamn pleasant that you don't really care. Payne putting this good of a cast in a snowy New England setting and making a film that looks this good doesn't feel like a "comeback" or a "return to form," it feels like a victory lap. The Holdovers is lovely enough to become an alternative holiday staple, but crass enough that you get to hear Paul Giamatti call someone "penis cancer in human form." What more do you people want?

In a Violent Nature - 8/10
A fresh, capital-S Slasher that somehow manages to be exactly what it's marketed as (Friday the 13th almost completely from Jason's perspective) while also being something completely different (a satire on the genre as a whole and what those films look like through the current lens of elevated art-house horror). Is it slow and brutal? Yes. Is it filled with supernatural lore that is taken at face value, shitty teen dialogue, and borderline comic timing during the year's most vicious kills? Also yes. In other words, it's very, very close to being great, and it may even become great over time. You certainly haven't seen anything like it, even if the initial description feels a bit like throwing it back to Michael's POV scenes in Halloween. Beautiful, ambient, creative, ultra-violent, and shockingly funny. I can't wait to see it again.

Funny Games (1997) - 5/10
Undeniably well-directed, just unflinchingly harrowing and nihilistic cinema with absolutely outstanding performances. That being said, I can't in good conscious give this film a higher score when I so vehemently disagree with what it's trying to do. I'm sure this may have been interesting to certain filmgoers in 1994, but it's tough to judge a film designed to provoke the audience this way when it feels so dated and proto-edgelordy now. (In all honesty, Lanthimos' Killing of a Sacred Deer does Funny Games' premise better, even if it obviously borrows from this film). Taking issue with violence in media is one thing, and Haneke's opinion as a non-American director may very well be worth hearing out, but while the fourth wall breaks are interesting in theory, making (in his words) a "meaningless" film to simply call its audience complicit for enjoying violent film is eyeroll-worthy and dorky as hell. The most realist performances in the world can't save you from on-the-nose dialogue about reality vs. fiction and a TV splattered with children's blood. I know subtlety isn't the point here, but I think a little would have gone a long way.

 

The First Omen - 7.5/10

beautiful cinematography, and some truly terrifying moments (in particular that one). not as terrifying as others made it out to be, however. still a fun watch. my partner found it "Ari Aster-esque".

 

On The Waterfront (1945, Elia Kazan)
Hot dog this was my first young Brando and it delivered. Great performances framed beautifully what more can you ask from cinema? Union politics that dont veer so close towards suggesting that telling the police is the pinnacle of morality. Thankfully it course corrects and comes together at the end.


Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, George Miller)
Fun, more fun than Fury Road. We spend more time with the interesting characters (the bad guys) and get a wider variety of action sequences. It's good that everyones doing the accent again.


Hit Man (2024, Richard Linklater)
Fun, not as fun as Everybody Wants Some!! but EWS had disco and thats unfair.

 

Serial Mom - 8.5/10
So glad I finally got around to this one. I struggled with the real animal cruelty in Pink Flamingos, so I actually enjoy the more structured and polished feeling of a latter-career John Waters film. The extremes to which he takes the "perfect family hiding a terrifying secret" premise here are hilarious, with slapstick kills being brought to life by an incredible performance from Kathleen Turner (not to mention supporting roles from Ricki Lake and a young Matthew Lillard). The satire starts to veer into a muddier direction in the film's final 20 minutes or so, but this thing is just so fun and vibrant and funny that it is largely irresistible. Serial Mom feels like a Tim Burton feature from the same period, but dialed up to 10 and without any of the weirdo creepazoid stuff.

Cecil B. Demented - 8/10
My love of Serial Mom brought me here. I've seen the poster and title floating around for years, but never knew if Waters flicks were something I would enjoy. I'm glad I was wrong. This is a unique satire that manages to be obnoxiously in-your-face while also being very sharp and somehow just as pointed towards militant film school snobs as it is towards the horrible, predatory studio system. Much like Mr. Demented himself, Waters' eye for talent is unmatched and it's shocking what he's able to pull together with a dedicated cast. Not many films are able to have their cake (film is art and art is revolutionary) and eat it too (we really don't need to take ourselves so seriously), but the madman pulls it off here. All of the in-film movie and sequel jokes here are so, so funny. Casting Nealon for a Forest Gump sequel is inspired.

Hauntedween - 7.5/10
Yet another title I've heard plenty of times from other Vinegar Syndrome fans that I can finally see for myself thanks to their Homegrown Horrors Vol. 3 boxset. This is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a "haunted attraction is real" movie, except years before that concept became popular. As such, the first hour of this is mostly a hangout movie with fraternity characters hitting beer bongs and trying to get laid. Throw in the fact that you get an original theme song with the film's title, actors consistently stepping on each others' lines, and a LOT of knockoff Halloween music, and you've got yourself a pretty charming slice of 80s regional horror!

Prom Night (1980) - 7.5/10
Another blind spot fixed for the With Gourley and Rust podcast. I love the coziness of these early 80s slashers, but a lot of times, you have to worry about how dry or by the numbers they'll be. Fortunately, while this plays off Halloween a bit (even ignoring the presence of a young Jamie Lee Curtis), it winds up turning into something that feels closer to proto-Scream with the sheer number of red herrings throughout. When the killer is finally revealed before the film's abrupt end, it all feels a bit rushed and undercooked, but that's not enough to keep this from being a head above a number of other slashers from the same period. If a good slasher is one-half atmosphere, the other half is decent writing, and this has both of those things. Mostly.

 

Dogma - 3.5/5

I hadn’t seen this since high school and had to illegally stream it since you can rent it anywhere and the local resell place wanted $35 for the dvd. Anyway I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would in 2024. Just enough of the Kevin Smith BS before he became unbearable and decided to make unwatchable films. Several locations are only a few minutes from my apartment too which @JoshIsMediocre is jealous about.

The Big Chill - 3.5/5

I watched this after a few beers so I don’t know if it counts.

 

Dogma definitely holds up better than most Smith films. Still need to watch The Big Chill.

 

If you can let go of all the cultural baggage and projection and copycatting around The Big Chill, it's really goddamn good.

 

The Machine That Kills Bad People (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

We start with land developers and capitalists accidentally mowing down a mythical saint Andrea on the day of his feast in the town. If you were a superstitious type, you'd probably agree that's not a good omen. There's a magical realist concept to Rossellini's neo-realism here, the saint awakens as a non-descript old man, unnoticed by the villages, granting a local man the power to kill people by taking a picture of them.

It becomes fairly radically politically, even if it does slightly walk that back towards the end. For most of its runtime, we see the murder of people as a divine, saintly act. Direct action is often the best course of action for the working and ignored class, against a ruling class that simply has no motivation to act in their interest.

However, ultimately Rossellini is a humanist, and all people (and even all saints), no matter how evil they may be, have the capacity for redemption and change, and a better future is possible, without murder. Wrapping the ending around what came before does feel a little bit of whiplash, especially as Rossellini has gone out of his way to show how irredeemable some of these people are, however maybe your capacity for death and suffering is a lot different in 1952 than it would be otherwise.

I love the way it's introduced as a fable, with an unseen hand setting up the stage, environment, and dropping the characters into the middle. Despite the fantastical premise, it still feels like a neo-realist tale, shot on location in a fishing village, and with an almost documentary aesthetic at times, particularly when capturing the feast of the saint. There's also some great jokes, particularly the specially made coffin for the fascist who died mid-salute.

 

I also watched Hit Man, and I love how the film does the same thing that late 90s Teen movies do, where they would dress a beautiful girl up in bad clothes and glasses, and then do the "transformation" where we see she's actually hot all along. In this case, we're doing it with Glen Powell, who we see in a badly fitted shirt, jean shorts and big square glasses, for the film to attempt to convince us he's not incredibly handsome, which is a hard sell.

 

Challengers was good. A little hard to hear the dialogue when the music got too loud

 

Watching The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Its off to an awful start dont think ill be able to finish it.

 

never got around to that

 

I turned it off after the Paddington 2 scene, it felt like it was written by reddit commenters

 

It was pretty bad.

 

i thought it was fun

 

I enjoyed it for what it was

 

Century just hates Nic Cage I think

 

I think he’s been kind to certain Nicolas Cage movies iirc

 

I thought that movie was a blast