rate the last movie you saw

[Eric Paddon]

GORGO (1960)
8/10

Vinegar Syndrome's new 4K UHD restoration is nothing short of STUNNING, showing Technicolor hues probably unseen since its theatrical run, which means this is the first time I've experienced this 1960 monster favorite like this. The image adds immeasurably to the entertainment value, with rich color and high detail. Highly recommended.

I got my copy of this and yes, it looks terrific. But this has the impact of making the F/X scenes look more fake than ever, especially the two money scenes of the destruction of Tower Bridge and Big Ben. And I also noticed for the first time the use of repetitive F/X scenes as things go along.

Narrative wise, the film is a mess and inferior to the best Japanese kaiju movies. The movie has two dull leads who are never well-defined and this film also unfortunately spawns the kind of character that the Gamera films would later give us with a vengeance, the annoying kid who is the only one who "understands" the monster and who of course will get himself put in a precarious situation of danger because of his fascination with the monster (except in "Gorgo" it doesn't happen in a way that makes narrative sense. We see the kid first getting into the back of an army truck surrounded by soldiers, the next time we see him he's sitting on the steps gazing up in adoring fascination at the giant mama Gorgo which is fast approaching until Bill Travers drags him away) I found the narrative and pacing dull and excruciating for the most part and consider me one of the few people not impressed by the "monster as victim" narrative when so many are lying dead.

The commentary track is a giant snoozefest most of the time with a lot of dry reading of credits in typical IMDB recitation style. We get the obligatory comments about the blacklist era (not as bad as what I've had to endure on other commentaries but I always wonder if I'll ever escape having to listen to some pretentious discourse on this subject) and a lot of tangents on things that I wasn't particularly interested in either.

[Eric Paddon]

Left Behind (2014) 6.5 of 10
-I don't know what compelled me to pick this up. I think it was because I was recently doing a re-inventory of all the Christian audio drama I have on-file which included the magnificent "Focus On The Family Radio Theatre" programs and also taking stock of what I had of the "Left Behind" audio drama series which was a plodding 144 episodes (12 episodes for each book in the series) and offered me a stark reminder of how poorly developed that series was in terms of effective drama. I am not a believer in the interpretations of Revelation put forth by the novels, but would have gladly enjoyed a compellingly written and dramatized story about people thrust into the kind of scenario of raptured Christian believers prior to the final phase of the "End Times" and the rise of an Anti-Christ. The "Left Behind" novels and the audio drama series despite their best intentions just failed to do that.

I never saw the three movies based on the early novels that were made in the late 90s with Kirk Cameron as I recall on low budgets. I was aware of the 2014 remake of the first novel with Nicolas Cage but heard all kinds of bad reviews that made me avoid it too. But I decided to give it a shot for some free credits and see if this stand-alone version would offer something different. Much to my surprise, this is a refreshingly different take on the first novel in the series. In the novel and audio drama (and I assume the original movie version) is that we cut to the chase right away of the Rapture taking place during the middle of an overseas flight and we get introduced to the un-Raptured airline pilot Rayford Steele who failed to listen to the warnings of his devoutly faithful wife and then we meet his un-Raptured rebellious college age daughter etc. Then the story is about giving us the parallel rise of the Anti-Christ, Romanian president Nicolae Carpathia.

That's not what we get here. Instead, we are just given the first part of the novel, the premise of the Rapture taking place during this flight and whereas in the original story the shell-shocked Rayford and his co-pilot just fly their plane with its depleted passenger count home, this instead gives us a disaster movie twist after events take place because Rayford's co-pilot this time is a Raptured Christian leaving him alone to pilot things back. We get a harrowing collision with another jet that has lost both its pilots endangering its ability to get back. And we get a lot more anguished reactions from the bewildered passengers who have been Left Behind. I have to say that this was a much more interesting take because it was showing the shock and panic of people and not overly laying on the religious explanation too thick at the outset. Also, in contrast to the novel, we get some more exploring of Rayford's increasingly deteriorating family situation at home before events happened that come off as a lot more believable and better written that the novels and audio drama did things. Daughter Chloe, who was stranded out west and only returns home after mother and younger brother are Raptured, instead has made her way home before it happens, has quarreled with her Christian mother (Lea Thompson) and is out with her little brother at the mall when events happened. The Rapture moment itself is done effectively as is the chaos on the ground that bewilders people. For the first three-quarters of the film, I was to say the least quite impressed and was prepared to give this film a 7 to 7.5.

Then unfortunately the film went off the rails in its final segment by deciding to go from pseudo-believability to a wild action film finish that is just completely out of place (but offers a reminder of the kind of crazy action sequences that made the later novels hard to take). In this new version, the damaged plane can't land at JFK Airport (I'd note this take changes the locale from Chicago to NY even though it's shot in Louisiana!) so they have to find a spot to set down and its connecting with Chloe who saves the day by finding a spot for her Daddy's plane to land on! This was too much for me to take. If they had just shown the plane limping back to JFK and given us a tearful reunion between the Left Behind father and daughter and ended the film with them seeing a TV broadcast with a glimpse of the Nicolae Carpathia character making some kind of TV address on the disappearances throughout the world, they would have had the perfect finish. Instead they went for too much of a "mainstream summer blockbuster action film" ending that knocked it down a peg completely. They had the right idea trying a new take that focused on the Steele family's plight and showing a more understated reaction to events (indeed the word "Rapture" is never uttered in the film) but then lost their moorings in the final act. Still, given how poor so much Christian oriented movie-making tends to be, I give them points for almost pulling it off.

[mkaroly]

Much respect to you Eric for being able to sit through and put up with rapture theology...I cannot do it as I believe it to be a faulty perspective within Messianism (and lots would disagree with me on that). I read a book recently by J. Richard Middleton called A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology and he does a good job debunking myths about the 'rapture' (though he misses the boat on other things, IMO). One great point he makes concerns a pericope in Scripture that is oftentimes used to defend rapture theology (Matthew 24:36ff.) - note however that in the context of what Jesus says (Noah and the flood), he argues the ones who disappear are the ones being judged, not the ones who survive through the judgment. So those who survive judgment are "left behind" on the earth which says the opposite of what rapture theology claims those verses to be saying. I agree with Middleton on that. Anyway, I know there is the Revelation 20 passage as well (oftentimes read apart from its Jewish apocalyptic context, complex as all that material is). Funny, when I read the title of your review I was thinking you watch The Last of Us (based on the video game series) and was shocked you had an interest in that! Lol...then I realized I made an error.

[Eric Paddon]

I grew up with a lot of Rapture theology because in the early to mid-80s it was *really* a big deal in Evangelical circles when Cold War tensions reached their last great phase. Sadly, too many people convinced themselves that there were OT references to Russia or that 40 years after the establishment of a state of Israel would be the "moment". I remember my youth group taking me to a multi-media presentation on the Book of Revelation that was all geared towards "we're in the Last Days" and this included a gross misinterpretation of Revelation which takes the letters Jesus asks John to send to various churches as some kind of prophetic timeline on the history of the church and that the last one, Laodicea, which gets harsh judgment is what we're living in now. The sad thing is that this fixation is something that in the broader scheme of Christian belief isn't something that affects one's salvation if one is wrong unlike some other stances that drive denominations apart but those who become remembered for pushing this line of thinking when events then prove it to be false end up having their reputations as Christian teachers destroyed forever (Harold Camping comes to mind).

The Hal Lindsey school of thinking fell out of favor with the end of the Cold War but the "Left Behind" series basically give the theological arguments for it new life with the novel series. If only it were a well-written storyline in the same way that "The Omen" (in which David Seltzer drew heavily from Lindsey in coming up with his pastiche story) works as a horror film, I could have appreciated it but it failed miserably on that level for me. To me, a story that gives us the premise of a Rapture should focus less on pyrotechnics and everything about how it affects individual lives in a more complex, believable way.

Today, I don't hear "End Times" thinking stressed as much in Evangelical circles as it used to be (at least not in the circles I'm part of). I think we recognize that history shows us that nations rise and fall, and even if America falls as it's in the process of doing that doesn't necessarily mean we are in "The Last Days" but that history is moving towards a general time of Final Judgment in which the day is known "only to the Father" and that not even the most gifted of believing minds is capable of discerning when its going to happen. It's that lack of humility that I always found off-putting in "End Times" advocates as a youth and I think its the reason why my faith in the end wasn't harmed by the fact that I was exposed to this kind of wrong-headed thinking because I had the good sense to separate the End Times obsession from the wise teachings about the Gospel and Salvation itself.

[Eric Paddon]

Three Days Of The Condor (1975) 5 of 10

-The last of the 70s government conspiracy films I'd never seen before. I was in the end highly underwhelmed. Not because as I'd always been led to believe that I'd be offended by the plot because frankly the politics of the film are almost non-existent when you see this film outside of the Cold War era. The real problem is the plot is just too muddled and on top of that, there are some poor gaps in the narrative. I wasn't buying the sudden ability of Faye Dunaway to be able to tail Cliff Robertson to where he's having lunch. And plotwise I was really bothered by how Dunaway submitted herself to Redford for sex for no other reason except......he's Robert Redford! I'm hardly what one would call woke, but this scene was just disturbing on all levels to me and made both characters weak. But the thing that really bugged me was the about-face it does with Max Von Sydow's assassin at the climax. This is the guy who gunned down all of Redford's friends in cold blood but suddenly we're supposed to believe *he's* the more noble person and Redford isn't capable of still feeling one bit of anger in him over the fact that regardless of who gave the orders, Von Sydow was still the one who pulled the trigger? That was too much for me to swallow, especially since as one perceptive IMDB reviewer noted the film seems to want us to believe that bureaucrats like Robertson are more evil than hired killers like Von Sydow if the hired killer at least has some air of European sophistication about him. And the ending is really lame.

OTOH, the film scores with its great location photography and I was unaware of all the shooting that took place inside and around the World Trade Center that now has an even greater poignance (the coincidence of my seeing it just after the 9/11 anniversary drove that home further).

[Paul MacLean]

Hasn't been a great week for movie choices...

Cocaine Bear (2/10)

Okay, I wasn't expecting Citizen Kane, but this movie is devoid of virtually any redeeming qualities. It's comedic aspirations are sabotaged by needlessly gut-wrenching violence and gore -- plus the fact none of the humor is actually funny. The CGI bear looks like an effect from twenty years ago, and (like all CGI monsters) isn't the least bit threatening in appearance. I can't believe this movie made money, as it is one of the most un-entertaining, tedious and (despite its 96-minute running time) boring movies I've seen in years. The story is set in Tennessee, so naturally director Elizabeth Banks decided to shoot the movie in Ireland (which doesn't look like anyplace in the US). That said, the Irish countryside does look nice, and proves the the film's only redeeming feature.


Cold Pursuit (4/10)

An unsatisfying movie, which could have been a good thriller, but for its oddly uneven tone. Liam Neeson plays a snowplow operator in an alpine town (unnamed but obviously inspired by Aspen or Park City) whose son is murdered by drug dealers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a bit of sleuthing, Neeson discovers the identity of the culprits, and sets about doing away with them. However this only leads to a turf war between the local drug lords and a Denver-based Native American crime lord (as the former assumes it is the latter who has been killing their operatives).

Again, this could have been an effective thriller, but the filmmakers also wanted it to be a comedy, so we have scenes of vengeful, punitive violence intersperced with moments of silliness, and it just doesn't work. There are also too many characters, which convolutes the narrative.


Day of the Locust (2/10)

A thoroughly ugly and grotesque waste of time. William Atherton plays an aspiring production designer in 1930s Hollywood, hopelessly in love with aspiring starlet Karen Black, an opportunistic (and slightly deranged) woman who seduces and manipulates men.

John Schlesinger’s bitter, scathing condemnation of Hollywood comes-off as very hypocritical, seeing as the business he lambastes was very good to him, and he enjoyed considerable success as a director (both before and after this film was made). Other than Atherton, the characters in this film are totally unsympathetic, being either opportunists or pathetic patsies. I’ll give the film some credit for being well-acted — Donald Sutherland in particular stands-out. But Day of the Locust is just so unrelentingly grim, and culminates in an utterly gruesome climax, in which Sutherland incites a riot -- during a premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater -- when he beats a child to death. The ensuing pandemonium is like something out of an Irwin Allen movie, and manages to be at once disgusting and completely laughable. John Barry's score is (by his standards) serviceable, but Schlesinger doesn't give him an opportunity to do much. The most striking thing about the score is that it doesn't even sound like John Barry much of the time (and which is unusual for a composer with such a signature style).


The Robe (7/10)

20th Century Fox's obvious attempt to follow-up (and trump) MGM's Quo Vadis boasts "CinemaScope" and impressive sets, but is also over-theatrical and at times stilted. Richard Burton was one of the great actors of his generation, but it's clear watching this film that he was unused to film acting -- his often abrupt gestures and line deliveries are very much those of a stage actor (when that kind of performing needs to be dialed-down for a movie). Victor Mature certainly had an impressive physique, but he wasn't much of an actor, and his rather wooden performance further compromises the movie. Jeans Simmons is terrific however -- naturalistic, sympathetic and wholesome.

Alfred Newman's score is very good, but not a patch on those Miklos Rozsa composed for the genre (indeed Newman's score is very-much influenced by that of Quo Vadis). The Robe isn't a terrible film, and I can't balk at its faith-affirming message, but artistically it pales in comparison to a lot of other "religious" epics of that era.

[AndyDursin]

Thank you for that review Paul, I hated DAY OF THE LOCUST!!

One of the most disturbing, gross movies I've ever watched. With almost nil entertainment value to redeem it.

[Paul MacLean]

Thank you for that review Paul, I hated DAY OF THE LOCUST!!

One of the most disturbing, gross movies I've ever watched. With almost nil entertainment value to redeem it.

Yeah, at least The Lonely Lady was funny!

[BobaMike]

Going to stick this here (I don't think there is a concert thread)

I got to see Giacchino's Marvel short film "Werewolf by Night" performed at the Kennedy Center with the NSO last night. It was a really fun concert, a Halloween/Spooky movie themed one. He was there, along with Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige, and they introduced many of the pieces. Giacchino was very funny and personable, and my son enjoyed it all.

The first half of the concert was various scary/fun movie pieces.
1) Hans Salter's "The Incredible Shrinking Man"- the Jazzy/pop version of the music.
2) Tchaikovsky's music used in the “Phantom of the Opera” Unmasking Scene (live to picture)
3) Franz Waxman's Creation of the Female Monster from Bride of Frankenstein (short version of it)
4) Bernard Herrmann's 3 part suite from Psycho. Audience laughed at the shower music (that always annoys me)
5) Giacchino's suite from Batman (which I like the middle section of, but the repeating beginning and end are just loud and dull. Giacchino, has a tendancy to write repeating phrases that just get louder and louder, without much variation.
6) Giacchino's suite from Super 8 (live to some of his old films he made as a kid. Fun, but distracting from the music, which is one of my favorite's of his.
7) After the intermission, they did his score to Werewolf by Night. It was in color, but the film is so dark, much of it was hard to make out. They played the marvel special presentation theme, and the horror version of the Marvel them, which I love. The guitar version on the soundtrack of the main theme was sadly not played. The audience cheered and clapped at the huge brass outbursts/ jump scares.
for an encore, they played the theme from Coco. Fun, but I would have preferred the Incredibles or Ratatouille instead:)


Everything was performed very well, the place was packed with people of all ages (some in costume).
I've been a Giacchino fan since I first got his Medal of Honor soundtrack (my very first purchase on Amazon years ago), so this was a treat.


side note: The gentleman next to me recorded the entire concert from his bookbag. So it's out there somewhere!

[AndyDursin]

Thanks for the round-up Bobamike, sounds like fun! I'm not a big fan of his per se (I liked the MEDAL OF HONOR scores and his early stuff but that's about it) but it sounds like a concert I would've enjoyed...despite the audience laughing at PSYCHO!!

[Paul MacLean]

Shutter Island (3/10)

SPOILERS!!!

Leonardo DeCaprio plays a federal marshal investigating the escape of an inmate from a maximum-security insane asylum (which is located on a supposedly inescapable island).

The body of the film is a very well-acted, and often-suspenseful thriller. But the ending ruins the whole thing, as we discover that DeCapprio is merely an inmate himself, and whole scenario an elaborate ruse concocted by the asylum staff to try and cure him from his delusions. Basically it is Angel Heart with a less-interesting visual style, and a far-less interesting twist.

The use of music is also infuriatingly pretentious, utilizing needle-drops of late 20th century classical composers -- none of whom have anything in common with each other (John Adams writes nothing like Krzysztof Penderecki). One gets the distinct impression that Scorsese and "Music Supervisor" Robbie Robertson (a pop/rock musician with no classical background) were trying to show how smart they are by drawing on "esoteric" music.

[AndyDursin]

Excellent review, you're very considerate Paul, though I think it's been long enough the "spoiler" has been out of the bag on that movie for a while (kind of like THE SIXTH SENSE).

Agreed 100%, it's another overrated Scorsese-DiCaprio collaboration (as most of them are IMO).

[AndyDursin]

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)
7.5/10

The widely acclaimed 1983 box-office smash, which swept through much of the Oscars at the expense of “The Right Stuff" (and which I've never reviewed before, somehow, all these years), receives a 4K Paramount Presents package on November 14th.

This is certainly the embodiment of an emotional movie experience, built for adults when movie theaters once routinely showed movies (and more than one!) for audiences over the age of 12, especially at this time of the year. Director James L. Brooks adapted Larry McMurtry’s book and positioned it as a serio-comic study of the life of Texas widower Shirley MacLaine and her relationship with daughter Debra Winger. Taking place over several decades in an episodic form, “Terms of Endearment”’s mix of laughs and sentiment is striking at a time when movies don’t tend to wear emotion on their sleeves, following the rocky yet loving relationship between the duo, who stay the course even through Winger’s turbulent marriage to college professor Jeff Daniels.

There’s a lot of dramatics in the film: Winger’s realization that Daniels is cheating on her, her struggles taking care of their kids, MacLaine’s bevy of suitors including a playboy astronaut (Jack Nicholson, a character added for the film), and eventually a tragic diagnosis that turns the last half-hour into a depressing and at times difficult to watch experience all make for an episodically structured picture. As such, Brooks constantly walks the tight rope here but infuses enough humor that the movie comes out on the right side, keeping “Terms of Endearment” grounded even while you feel like you’re being manipulated by its rollercoaster of emotions.

Mostly though it’s a balancing act that works thanks to its cast: Winger is terrific and MacLaine, who netted an Oscar, gives a wonderfully nuanced performance. So too does Jeff Daniels, who fills his difficult role with sympathy and dimension, while Nicholson’s inclusion was a necessity to offset the picture’s later passages. Additional turns from John Lithgow and Danny DeVito are likewise welcome in a uniformly superb ensemble.

One could see “Terms of Endearment” going haywire had the performances and writing not been sensitive and effective – in fact, one only has to look at the movie’s disastrous 1996 sequel, “The Evening Star,” to see how a busted adaptation could easily go the other way. I’m still quite sure the wrong 1983 movie won Best Picture, but this is, giving credit where it’s due, at least an effective, crowd-pleasing soap opera from an era in which stories grounded in the human dimension still existed in the box-office marketplace.

Paramount’s 4K UHD of “Terms” offers a superb Dolby Vision HDR (1.85) transfer with 5.1 DTS MA sound, the movie having been released in mono but with only its music here remixed for true stereo sound. Speaking of that, Michael Gore’s lovely score (orchestrated and conducted by Richard Hazard) is a major plus thanks to its memorable main theme, which supports the movie’s flowing dramatic structure. Extra features include a new Filmmaker Focus interview with Brooks and an older commentary with him, co-producer Penney Finkelman Cox and production designer Polly Platt, plus the Blu-Ray and a Digital HD copy.

[Paul MacLean]

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (7/10)

On a whim I pulled this one off the shelf tonight for another viewing (my first since 2016).

I have to say this movie isn't standing the test of time. In the past I found The Phantom Menace enjoyable, exciting and appreciably sincere. I certainly thought it had faults as well, but they were outweighed by its virtues.

This time, I found the movie tedious -- it's overlong, convoluted and has too many characters. The original Star Wars had Han, Luke, Leia, Obi Wan, Vader, and distinctive supporting characters Chewbacca, the droids, Tarkin and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru (the latter two written-out before the the film was even half-over). Here we have Qui Gon, Obi-Wan, Padme, Anakin, Jar-Jar, the droids, Palpatine, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Boss Nass, Panaka, Watto and a bunch of CGI Trade Federation characters you can't tell apart because they all look the same. And it's just overpopulated.

The story is honestly hard to follow at times. Again, the premise of original film was more comprehensibly streamlined -- "where are the Death Star plans?" After multiple viewings of The Phantom Menace, I still can't follow the basic premise. Some kind of trade union is blockading some planet called Naboo for some mysterious reason, but it's all a set-up controlled by some evil guy in a hooded cloak...and...and...wait, could you repeat all that please?.

In the original film we have a spectacular climactic battle to destroy the Death Star. Here, the climax consists of the the Gungans doing battle on the field, while Padme simultaneously tries to infiltrate the palace, while Anakin accidentally takes-off in the fighter and joins the space battle, while Obi-Wan and Qui Gon battle Darth Maul -- and it's just too much. And while the lightsaber fight is spectacular, things falter when we cut to the rather less exciting infiltration of the palace -- and then the dramatic tension evaporates when the film cuts to the silly space battle with Anakin.

And lets face it, Jar-Jar Binks is the worst character in all of episodes 1-6. He serves no purpose, none of his scenes advance the story and he is nothing but superfluous "comic relief" (which is totally unfunny). And why -- during the climax of the film, while people are getting killed in battle -- does Jar-Jar continue to "be funny" and do silly things, when it completely shatters what should be a very serious and suspenseful sequence of the movie? (Also, to this day, I can barely understand a word he is saying.)

There are some terrific things about this movie -- Liam Neeson and Ewan McGreggor are great, and some of the action sequences are impressive. You also can't balk at the sincerity of the film, or the fact that it manages to tell an adventure story without any bad language or gratuitous violence and sex. John Williams' score is probably my favorite of his Star Wars efforts (though it's hard to appreciate it in the film, as it is buried under sound effects most of the time).

Viewing The Phantom Menace on a larger screen this time, I was also struck at how low-rez this movie looks. For shots that feature no optical effects, they obviously went back to the 35mm negative to remaster that footage. But scenes with effects shots look extremely "soft". A few even look DVD quality. I don't mean this so much as a criticism -- this kind of effects work was in its infancy at the time, and the film was very ground-breaking (and effective) in its integration of CGI -- but how does this movie fair on UHD disc?

After selecting this movie to watch, I had planned to go through the subsequent Star Wars movies again -- but this one proved so disappointing (I even considered turning it off at a few points) I can't see sitting through Attack of the Clones again!

[AndyDursin]

The UHD is also pretty soft Paul. I wonder if it's due to the digital nature of the elements and when it was made, but there's not a ton of detail. Of course there's also hardly any detail in AMERICAN GRAFFITI also which makes me think George prefers it that way!