Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684712 times)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6860 on: January 14, 2023, 12:16:50 AM »

Sick (2023)
"I don't have a mask."
"Then I can't let you in. It isn't safe."


Exceedingly average slasher riding the co-writing credit by Kevin Williamson for all they can get out of it. Basically a Scream film set during the pandemic in a cabin in the woods, with barely enough material for 76-minutes. Mike Flanagan did more with less for 2016's Hush. Director John Hyams made Alone (2016), and he shows little flair here, with an over-reliance on shots of the killer standing in the back of the frame.
RATING: ★ ★ ½ enters the H/T 1000 at #981, and I expect it will drop out soon

Antares

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6861 on: January 20, 2023, 09:05:59 PM »
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987) 85/100 - For the last few days, I've been watching a channel on YouTube which has a collection of the old Siskel & Ebert shows from the late 70's through the 2000's. During one episode they were showcasing what they picked as the year's best films. The year was 1988 and one of Roger's picks was a documentary I had never heard of, but his description and Gene's agreement had me doing an immediate Google search. I found it on Vimeo and they're both right, it's one of the best documentaries I've watched about Vietnam. Using actual letters written by soldiers who were on their tour of duty and being read by an array of actors & actresses, for the first time you can put a face to the war. As this film was progressing, I time warped back to the late sixties and memories of family & friends who served in the war washed over me. Both of my mother's brothers served and were lucky to come home alive. But two kids who I would become friends with in mid-1968 had their older brother taken from their family in spring of 1967. We played baseball on a little league field right across the street from their house and the city placed a memorial plaque at the base of the flagpole on the other side of the centerfield fence. After all these years I still remembered his name from looking at that plaque on almost a daily basis. After the film was over, I went on the Vietnam Memorial Wall website and found him and there was a picture of him. I had never met him, he was just a name on a memorial stone to me. But now, after watching this powerful documentary, I was able to finally see what he looked like. And damn, did he ever look like his youngest brother!

I highly recommend this documentary, but be ready to shed some tears, especially when the last letter is read. Ellen Burstyn reads a letter from a mother who has visited the wall 15 years after the war has ended and found her son's name. The letter she wrote was a cathartic purging of the pain she felt when she found out many years earlier that the little boy she gave birth to, had died. It's a gut wrenching moment that had me sobbing like a baby, yet was a perfect way to end the film. Throughout the film, we hear the letters from disheartened and frightened young men. Her's is the only letter written by a non-combatant and when she laments the suffering her boy went through as he lay dying, it rips your heart out. The only reason that I don't give this film a perfect score is that it does for a few moments, fall into using the usual tropes of war documentaries. Exposition of current events interlaced with sixties music which has become cliché in war documentaries. Had the director shown restraint in this regard and added more letters, I would have given it a perfect score. Please check this film out...

https://vimeo.com/444983069
« Last Edit: January 20, 2023, 09:09:05 PM by Antares »
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Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6862 on: January 26, 2023, 07:53:59 PM »
Causeway (2022 Lila Neugebauer)

A quiet film about some of the struggles dealing with trauma. Unfortunately I was a little distracted at the beginning of the film, so it makes it harder to rate it. I did enjoy it. I particularly like that the film did not need to throw in some confected trouble that finds our protagonist, rather it observes the general trouble dealing with life after trauma. The 2 central performances by Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry were wonderful. I have really liked both performances (this and Bullet Train), that I have seen, from 2022 by Brian, an actor I did not know of before this year (although I had seen films he was in).

Rating: 74 / 100

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6863 on: January 31, 2023, 04:18:37 PM »
The Pale Blue Eye

Netflix does it again! I wish they'd stop.

jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6864 on: February 01, 2023, 07:20:12 AM »
I lost
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6865 on: February 03, 2023, 07:26:57 AM »
My Father's Dragon (2022 Nora Twomey)

Nora Twomey has added yet another reason for me to consider her one of the best animation directors around. If her works continues like this I would rank her in the same class as Hayao Miyazaki. I first came across her with The Book of Kells, then there was The Breadwinner, and now this. I just love the work and the story telling.

Rating: 84 / 100

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6866 on: February 03, 2023, 09:23:12 PM »
Interesting. I think about how Pete Docter has this incredible track record of 4 films that are all in the range of "classic". He isn't mentioned among the greats because he works in Animation, but at least he has a publicity department behind him. Hopefully, Nora Twomey will get at least as much recognition someday.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6867 on: February 04, 2023, 04:21:02 AM »
Yes hopefully she will.

Antares

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6868 on: February 04, 2023, 07:21:24 PM »
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

This started off very well, with a zany, campy tone like you might expect. Not a terribly long film but still felt like it overstays its welcome by the end.

That's pretty much Yankovic's career in a nutshell.  ;)
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Antares

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6869 on: February 04, 2023, 07:26:57 PM »
Executive Action (1973)
★ ★ ★ - Good
Effective and entertaining political fiction about how the Kennedy assassination was politically motivated and carried out by a cabal of disgruntled government officials. Oliver Stone's JFK is in my Top 50, and this is has a similar opinion, visualizing it with 70s thrills. Written by Dalton Trumbo and starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan as the masterminds behind the assassination.

I saw this in its original theatrical run back in 1973. I haven't seen it since and I wonder if it has dated well. I liked it when I was a kid, but I wonder what I would think of it now that I'm an aging adult.
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