rate the last movie you saw

[Jedbu]

Got a couple of Blu-Rays (one for $1 and one for free-TG):

42-7/10

Nicely made film about Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier in baseball-smooth, craftsmanlike work from writer/director Brian Helgeland and solid performances by Chadwick Boseman as Robinson (doing a good job of playing a man, not the icon) and Harrison Ford as Dodger owner Branch Rickey-easily Ford's best work in years (he literally disappears into the character). Perhaps a little too polished but vastly superior to the older version of the story starring Robinson as himself, and a stunning reminder of how casual racism was less than 70 years ago.

SABOTAGE-0.5/10

One of the worst films I have ever seen, with pretty much all characters being so loathsome and stupid that about 1/4 of the way through I was hoping that they would die horrible deaths...and almost all of them do. Ah-nold and his merry band of undercover DEA agents (almost all of which are full-blown psychopaths) raid a drug cartel strong house and heist $10M but then someone steals the money and now no one trusts anyone, and then they start to die off one by one, and both the police and Ah-nold need to find out who...and I really didn't give a flying flamingo about any of this. The DEA crew are all sexist pigs, even the female member (Mireille Enos, in one of the worst performances I have seen in ages as one of the worst drawn characters in ages) who is married to one of them (Sam Worthington-sadly wasted here) but openly flirts and is even having an affair with another one of them. The two police detectives on the case (Olivia Williams & Harold Perrineau) are constantly being kept in the dark by Ah-nold and his crew, with Williams being so clueless as to even sleep with Ah-nold (a deleted scene shows her sleeping in a chair afterwards and looking like she has just been infected with something akin to Ebola) and Perrineau ending up as the only character in the entire movie with any ethics and the only one I hoped would not die by the end. There is enough blood and guts to make Tom Savini go "whoa-that's too much" and a final car chase in which two characters who have been dead shots the entire film suddenly cannot hit the broad side of a barn with a handful of gravel (not to mention more collateral damage than even Ah-nold's film with the same title). It got so ridiculous that I was almost shouting at the screen "just shoot them so that you both will shut up, already!" And the next time Terrence Howard complains about any roles he gets, those who do the hiring should just point to his character and performance in this and say "You were saying?" I usually get some entertainment out of films featuring the Governator, but this makes even COMMANDO seem like a Kurosawa masterpiece.

If there is someone you know who loves Schwartzenegger movies but you don't like them very much, buy this for them as a gift-it will piss them off and make you feel good.

[Paul MacLean]

Nothing wrong with Moonraker. Big colorful and fun...not to mention one of the biggest hits of the late 70s.

It's perhaps the most preposterous of the Moore films -- yet I find it entertaining. It's a great-looking movie, where Ken Adam really gets to indulge his imagination, while Derek Meddings effects are first-rate. The fact that the film was shot in France (with a French crew) gives it a slightly different feel from the other Bonds.

I agree with Michael on the greatness of Barry's score (but what a shame to read in John Burlingame's book that Albert Broccoli wanted Barry to write a slew of additional music to fill-out a proposed 2-record set -- which never came to pass ).

[Monterey Jack]

-The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996): 10/10

The most underrated film of Disney's 90's "renaissance" period? I've always loved this powerful, emotional take on Victor Hugo's novel, but it continuously gets slammed for "those stupid gargoyles" (who -- in my mind -- are funnier than Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King), which is an incredibly narrow-minded take on an otherwise intensely dramatic and involving film. Alan Menken does some of his best work for The Mouse, both in songs and score (his music for Quasimodo's rescue of Esmeralda at the climax wouldn't sound out of place in Jerry Goldsmith's The Final Conflict), the voicework is impeccable, the visual design sublime, and the overall tone startlingly adult (that this received a G rating -- a movie where the villain's motivation is a raging hardon for the heroine -- while comparatively benign and toothless Disney fare like Tangled and Frozen received PG ratings still baffles me). Anyways, it's weathered the years far better than you'd expect, and remains one of the best films Disney has released in the last two decades.

And Esmeralda...damn!

[AndyDursin]

Totally agree on HUNCHBACK. Menken's strongest score from top to bottom. A fully involving and memorable story...a picture so much better than POCAHONTAS it's criminal it didn't receive as much attention.

[Monterey Jack]

Totally agree on HUNCHBACK. Menken's strongest score from top to bottom. A fully involving and memorable story...a picture so much better than POCAHONTAS it's criminal it didn't receive as much attention.

The film's darkness probably drove audiences away...despite the gargoyle antics making sure it wasn't too traumatic for the kiddies, it's just so relentlessly intense and dramatic compared to the usual Disney fare of the period. It's just too bad it hasn't been re-discovered over the past fifteen+ years...as enjoyable as films like Tangled and Frozen are, they can't compare to Hunchback's music, visual scheme or involving storytelling. They're Teflon Disney, and as much money as Frozen made isn't going to change that fact that it's nowhere near the classic is was hyped up to be.

[Eric Paddon]

The Hasty Heart (1949) 8 of 10

-Probably Ronald Reagan's best post-WW2 movie though the focal point is Richard Todd's deservedly Oscar nominated performance.

[Eric Paddon]

Godilla (2014) 6.5 of 10

The Blu-Ray arrived today. On the second viewing it didn't impress me as much on the small screen compared to when I saw it in the theaters. I still appreciate its more serious tone and the absence of stupid comic relief characters but the pacing does drag a bit in the latter stages, plus the fight/battle sequences happening in the dark or in rain all the time (a flaw that goes back even to the bad 1998 version) isn't that impressive on the small screen either.

I'm a bit disappointed the extras don't have Akira Takarada's deleted scene or anything else of that nature.

[AndyDursin]

It is unquestionably the singularly darkest Blu Ray I've ever watched that's for sure.

I also agree on the pacing...multiple viewing does not help the film or the bland characters. Edwards' pulling back on all the monster action until the end is a one trick pony...there's no way he's going to be able to do that in the sequel or people will be even more irritated than they were with this movie.

That said it's a good movie for what it is. The light extras as I mentioned in my review are undoubtedly because a Special Edition will eventually follow.

[jkholm]

IT HAPPENED AT LAKEWOOD MANOR (aka ANTS!) 6/10

Not very believable though entertaining 1977 TV movie about a hotel overrun by hordes of (normal-size) poisonous ants. I remember watching this more than once as a kid and it was fun to revisit it. Many of the scenes with ants crawling all over the humans still have the desired effect of making you feel phantom bugs on your own skin. And some of these scenes looked like it was the actual actors. How did they stand it?? One drawback is all the fake ant trails but I imagine that if this was made today with CGI, there would certainly be more ants on screen, but they would probably look fake.

[AndyDursin]

THE EQUALIZER
6/10

An extremely well made but uncomfortable action film shot "the old fashioned way" without any CGI -- but also one of the most singularly violent movies I've ever sat through, utterly sadistic and so excessive that it makes any Stallone or Arnold '80s romp look like G-rated Disney fare by comparison. Denzel is cool and likeable in the film, and he has good chemistry with Chloe Grace Moretz as a young Russian girl being used as a hooker in the early going. But she very quickly disappears -- completely -- from the film when McCall takes on the Russian mob in a furious array of killings, each one gorier than the last. Missing is a sense of character development and drama, making the film soulless -- no matter how effective it may be in what it sets out to do, with Boston location filming that's quite good, and even an occasionally effective bit of scoring here and there.

While there are worse movies I've seen this year, this picture in many ways still represents everything that's wrong with Hollywood today. Does this film need to be this violent? What does it achieve by being this disgusting, especially when McCall uses every power tool in the Home Depot-like hardware chain he works at in dispensing the killers?

Years ago, Gene Siskel slammed bad movies and would say listening to a certain actor talk about themselves would be more interesting than the junk they were starring in. This film is really beneath an actor like Denzel Washington. He's an intelligent and charismatic star, and to see him reduced to playing a role that makes Bronson's DEATH WISH character seem like a David Mamet creation is sad...but all too telling of where we're at in 2014.

[Paul MacLean]

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson's film is well-acted but heavy-handed, and targets what Anderson appears to consider American culture's most malignant ills -- capitalism (as represented by Daniel Day-Lewis' cutthroat oil magnate) and religion (Paul Dano's hypocritical fire and brimstone preacher). Ironically, both characters are locked in mortal opposition, but since nether has a shred of virtue, it leaves the film with no real protagonist. I'm assuming this was an attempt to be clever and "redefine dramatic expectations", but it doesn't come-off at all. The casting of Dano in the role of both the preacher and his twin brother also leads to some confusion (as the two characters never appear in the same scene so it isn't clear if they are actually brothers, or if the preacher is schizophrenic, or using a different name, etc.).

For all its dramatic pretensions, the film's ultimate message is amazingly simplistic: religious people are phonies and/or superstitious imbeciles, and successful businessmen are amoral opportunists who murder their way to the top. There's really nothing more to it than that. I'm not saying an anti-capitalist perspective isn't valid, but Anderson doesn't bring it over with any degree of subtlety, persuasion or sophistication. Unlike Citizen Kane, in which wealth was shown to transform and embitter the protagonist, Lewis' character is rotten to the core pretty-much from day one, so there's little character development.

Johnny Greenwood's score is genuinely odd. Clearly he has a strong grounding in classical writing, and timbrally it is a refreshing change of pace from the Zimmer school of film scoring. Unfortunately the score has no emotional resonance at all. It tends to be minimalist in style, and dramatically is little more than white sound.

The film is certainly well-shot, with excellent art direction and costumes, good use of locations, and technically up to snuff all-round. But the film so revels in the hateful awfulness of its characters and their downward spiral, it's kind of like watching a road accident for two hours.

One can't deny Daniel Day-Lewis makes a fine effort, though his portrayal often borders on caricature (and at times almost seems to be a John Huson impression). Unfortunately even an actor like Lewis can't save the final scene, at which point the whole film unravels into unintentional hilarity, when Lewis starts making "milkshake" metaphors, and then loses his marbles and starts hurling bowling balls at Dano.



And that nutty violin music is the icing on the cake!

[AndyDursin]

Typically over praised Anderson fare. I found Day Lewis entertaining though I'm not sure it was for all the right reasons either Paul lol....and he basically just repeated the exact same performance in Gangs of New York as well.

[Jedbu]

Since the film was based on an Upton Sinclair novel ("Oil") I was not surprised about how the characters were drawn, although I was surprised that Anderson did not try to give them more shading onscreen. Day-Lewis mentioned in interviews that he modeled the character's speech patterns on Huston and when I saw the film I was amused as to how much he sounded like him. Taking all of that into account I thought it was an incredible film, especially Anderson's deciding to have no dialogue for the first chunk of the film, relying solely on the action and the reaction of the characters to let you know what was going on.

I'll bet just the mention of this film makes Eric Paddon's blood boil....

[mkaroly]

I absolutely HATED that film - absolute garbage IMO. I would have to go back and look at the review I wrote for it to state why I hated it so much, but that is one film I profusely regret seeing and will never, under any circumstances, watch again. As I type this I am beginning to remember why I hated it so much...lol...but I will keep silent.

[Paul MacLean]

Godzilla

I used to love Toho monster movies...but can't say they've really captvated my interest since the age of 8. However I found Godzilla a taut, effective film, impressively executed and well-acted. I also appreciated that the film eased into the appearance of the monsters, rather than trying to "wow" the audience with a turgid effects sequence at the outset -- a refreshing change of pace from the incessant effects overkill of The Hobbit and other recent films. One thing did strike me though -- why are filmmakers constantly destroying San Francisco? X-Men 3, the Planet of the Apes films and now Godzilla. (Perhaps it's due to Southern California's envy of its much nicer northern neighbor?)

Although Godzilla isn't a "classic" (even for the sci-fi genre), from my perspective it does more than succeed in its intentions (this is what Spielberg's War of the Worlds should have felt like). The only weak spot was the score. Desplat's music adequately supports the drama, but as usual, it just isn't very musical. The use of Gyorgy Ligeti in the "air drop" scene also felt a bit out of place (though musically much more interesting than the score).