rate the last movie you saw

[Paul MacLean]

Belfast (7/10)

I'm a huge admirer of Kenneth Branagh (and consider Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing two of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever made). This latest effort however left me underwhelmed. Branagh's story depicts a working class family struggling to get by amidst "The Troubles" in 1969 Northern Ireland. But it comes off as little more than a mashup of Hope and Glory and Angela's Ashes (only minus the wartime terror of the former and the crippling poverty of the latter).

I give a lot of points to the cast -- who are superb, and guided by Branagh's confident hand, but in the end Belfast just doesn't have a whole lot of emotional resonance. It is also at times slow-moving and feels padded. The score (what little there is of it) is lousy; Branagh unwisely benched Patrick Doyle for this one and handed the scoring reins to Van Morrison.

Other than that's there's not much else to say.

[AndyDursin]

I didn't care for it either. I know you aren't a fan of Hope and Glory but for me it's a far better movie, as is Angela's Ashes. I think you nailed it Paul when you said it felt padded and it's barely over 90 minutes!

[esteban miranda]

The Silencers (3/10)

Ok, I wasn't expecting Goldfinger, but come-on. I'm not sure if this 1966 movie was intended to be a James Bond imitator or spoof, but in any case, despite its entertaining setup, The Silencers is a total bore. More romantic comedy than espionage yarn, action sequences are at a minimum, and the film's attempts at comedy -- mostly concerning Dean Martin's Matt Helm as he contends with an accident-prone leading lady -- are just stillborn.

The type of exotic locales that typify the Bond films (and add to their allure) are nowhere in sight here; this movie was obviously shot entirely in Southern California. And how are we supposed to believe Matt Helm is an elegant, debonair ladies man, when he drives...a station wagon?

Elmer Bernstein's score is terrific however, and another one of those examples of a composer scoring what the film could have been, as opposed to what is was.

I think all four of the Matt Helm movies coast on Dean Martin's personality. If you like that, you're more likely to enjoy the movies (at some level).
I like the first 2 pretty well, the third (The Ambushers) is very disappointing. The fourth (The Wrecking Crew with Sharon Tate) is only a slight improvement from The Ambushers.

[Paul MacLean]

Old (8/10)

M. Night Shyamalan's latest effort is one of his best, the tale of several vacationers who find themselves stranded on a beach with a strange influence which causes their bodies to mature rapidly. It's hard to describe beyond that without too many spoilers, but it is an intense (and effectively disturbing) film. My only criticism is that the child characters take on more mature mindsets as they age -- which doesn't seem entirely plausible to me (emotional and psychological maturity only comes with life experience), but other than that it is an effective and first rate thriller/horror picture. Recommended.

[Monterey Jack]

Strenuous disagree on Old, which I thought was a massive regression for Shyamalan following Split and Glass. It wasn't quite Lady In The Water or The Happening levels of bad, but...it was baaaaaaaaaaad.

[AndyDursin]

Did Paul's account get hacked? I kid I kid.

I didn't care for it either but in all seriousness I love the disagreements.

[Eric Paddon]

As we'll be approaching Easter season soon, I decided this far out to get a headstart on my annual Easter movie viewings by looking at some of the Biblical and non-Biblical epics of the Old Testament era for the first time in a while. So far I've watched these:

The Bible (1966) (8 of 10)
-The last of the "old school" Biblical epics that began with "Samson And Delilah". There are some areas that are more miss than hit (I don't like Abraham's initial angry defiance when God tells him to sacrifice Isaac. Scripture records no such thing, and this is then compounded by his further raging during the walk through the ruins of Sodom), but overall the film succeeds for me.

Land Of The Pharaohs (1955) (4 of 10)
-This film has to come first in placement of Egyptian epics since it deals with an "Old Kingdom" subject of building the Great Pyramid (which is well over 1500 plus years before the time period of "The Egyptian" and "Ten Commandments"). Howard Hawks was out of his element with this kind of film and it shows because it comes across as simply boring for the most part (the fact it hasn't gotten a Blu-Ray mastering and looks a bit washed out on DVD probably causes the action/building scenes to look less impressive). The storyline gives us absolutely no interesting characters. Yes, Joan Collins deliciously gives us a preview of the villainy that would make her famous, but Jack Hawkins' Pharaoh is hardly a paragon of virtue as he's basically a greedy plunderer who enslaves a population for his own private edification. The absence of a likable central character makes the goings-on nothing the audience can sink their teeth into.

-Peter Bogdanovich did an alleged "commentary" for this film that featured clips of old interviews he did with Hawks. Like the misguided Coppola commentary on "Patton" this is a case where having a big name who really doesn't know much about the production details leads to endless tedium and repetition of generic points. Bogdanovich rightly notes that Hawks clearly didn't "believe" in the material the way DeMille did with his films, but honestly these points could have been made in a five or six minute featurette given how little Bogdanovich knows about the film's production history.

-I'm hoping for better results from revisiting "The Egyptian" later this week.

[Paul MacLean]

Strenuous disagree on Old, which I thought was a massive regression for Shyamalan following Split and Glass. It wasn't quite Lady In The Water or The Happening levels of bad, but...it was baaaaaaaaaaad.

I certainly didn't think it was the best movie ever made, but I thought it succeeded in its intentions, and in the context of Shyamalan's body of work it stood out. I found it infinitely superior to Unbreakable and Glass. It's not Seven Samurai or Chinatown, but I was engaged, I was disturbed, and I was drawn-in the characters' plight.

And it was a lot better than most anything else from the past year. I enjoyed it more than I did No Time To Die or Belfast!

[AndyDursin]

STATE OF GRACE (1990)
6/10



Overshadowed (deservedly) by the likes of Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" at the time of its original release, this gritty 1990 mob drama stars Sean Penn as a young Irish-American who, years after leaving his old neighborhood, heads back to Hell's Kitchen -- there, childhood pal Gary Oldman and his crime boss older brother (Ed Harris) are up against it with Italian gangsters, both looking to lay down the law on their respective turfs. Penn's motivations -- unless you read the plot synopses for this film -- aren't actually divulged until nearly a third of the movie has gone by, which does make the picture more compelling once that element kicks in, but this is nevertheless a very flawed film that, in many respects, wastes its hugely talented cast.

Throughout the course of its 135 minutes director Phil Joanou's movie just can't seem to settle on a comfortable rhythm. Perhaps that's because the script by playwright/novelist Dennis McIntyre has to balance too many characters and too many conflicting motivations -- Penn's protagonist ought to be the focus, but there's far too much of flamboyant Oldman playing Harris' nutcase younger brother, eating up screen time at an expense to the overall drama (it's bad enough he refers to "his brother" and "his sister" nearly a handful of times early on, providing audiences a road map to the characters and how they're connected -- none too subtly). One of those instances where not only can't you envision Oldman and Harris as brothers, but are never convinced a character like Harris' would ever put up with his behavior in the first place, "State of Grace" also suffers from Oldman's showy, out-of-control performance -- one that generates more laughs than uneasiness.

The movie is chock full of future breakout stars, from John Turturro to John C. Reilly, plus Robin Wright (as the younger sister of Harris and Oldman's that Penn left behind) and a couple of familiar faces from "Goodfellas" itself -- but the final third is a real drag. After a fairly compelling build-up, Joanou and McIntyre have nowhere to go but a slew of conventional movie shootouts and an ending that's as unsatisfying as it is relentlessly predictable.

Nevertheless watchable for Jordan Cronenweth's nuanced cinematography and one of Ennio Morricone's better American scores, "State of Grace" was basically left for dead by Orion, which tried platforming the movie into limited release in September 1990, at roughly the same time "Goodfellas" went into national release. Meeting with mixed reviews and indifferent critical notices, they never gave the picture wider distribution once Scorsese's classic mafia saga took over the marketplace and captivated audiences in a way their own movie couldn't have.

[Paul MacLean]

The Green Knight (2/10)

(Spoilers)

Ostensibly an adaptation of the Arthurian legend "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", director David Lowery's picture is pretentious and slow-moving, and bares only a passing resemblance to the story on which it is based. I've read the original Medieval tale (which was translated by J.R.R. Tolkien actually), in which a strange, phantom-like Green Knight gate-crashes the Christmas festivities at Camelot and challenges any knight, who is brave enough, to try and cut off his head. Only Sir Gawain rises to the occasion, cleanly decapitating the strange visitor -- who promptly replaces his head onto his shoulders. Gawain is then told he must journey to the Green Knight's realm a year later where he will be dealt with in kind.

This basic premise is retained in Lowery's new adaptation, but the ensuing films is bogged-down in pointless episodes which are irrelevant to the overall story. In the original tale, Gawain, in his journey to face the Green Knight, is given shelter by a powerful lord. While the lord goes off hunting every day, Gawain is left with the lord's wife, who flirts aggressively with Gawain -- but the young knight never gives into her charms. At the story's climax, when Gawain faces Green Knight, he is spared -- the Green Knight revealing himself to be none other than the lord who gave Gawain shelter. The lord's purpose was the test the bravery and chivalry of Arthur's knights -- and Gawain has passed the test.

In the movie, Gawain is also given shelter by the lord -- but there is no payoff. In Lowery's film, Green Knight is not the lord in the disguise (in fact we're never told who or what the Green Knight is at all). The final ten minutes of the film shift into this bizarre vignette in which the next 20 years of Gawain's life are shown -- but it has nothing to do with the previous two hours. Then, in the final scene, we're shown that the 20-year vignette was just a dream or premonition, and Gawain is back with the Green Knight, who tells him it's time to lose his head. The end.

Apart from the unsatisfying narrative, this film is full of things which make no sense -- Arthur and his knights wear pagan pentagrams, yet hold Christmas mass. A CGI fox appears and becomes Gawain's companion on his journey -- but serves no real purpose to the overall story. Towering naked giants who show-up for about a minute and a half in one scene -- and are never seen again. Casting is ludicrous -- Gawain is played by Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel (who of course is exactly what comes to mind when trying to picture a knight of the Round Table in Britain, circa 650 A.D.). In one scene a puppet show is performed for a group of village children, whose ethnicities comprise European, African, Asian and Middle Eastern. How did these kids wind-up in first millennium England?

The "score" (like so many others these days) is mostly repetitive "loops" and and assorted wails.

But ultimately, the biggest problems with The Green Knight are its convoluted, incohesive script, and its agonizingly boring pace, which render the whole movie an emotional flatline. Truly, this is one of the most slow-moving films I've ever seen. All the actors take twice as long as is necessary to deliver their lines. All the camera moves are slow, and many shots last three times longer than they need to. I nearly turned this movie off (as I did Lowery's likewise boring Pete's Dragon a couple of years ago) but I decided to stick it out -- and that was a mistake.

[Chris Shaneyfelt]

But ultimately, the biggest problems with The Green Knight are its convoluted, incohesive script, and its agonizingly boring pace, which render the whole movie an emotional flatline. Truly, this is one of the most slow-moving films I've ever seen.

I agree with every word of your review, Paul. Great analysis. I love the original Gawain poem, which is brilliantly structured and moves at a steady pace, in contrast to this dreary, convoluted film. Often elements of the poem retained in the film are undercut by the pagan universe the film evokes. For example, like the poem, the inside of Gawain's shield has an image of the Virgin Mary - Gawain is devoted to the Medieval virtue of Chastity - but we see Gawain sleeping with a prostitute at the beginning of the film. Huh? Structurally, many aspects of the film make no sense when deprived of the Medieval Chivalry and Christian virtues that permeate the poem.

[AndyDursin]

CODA
8.5/10

Finally caught up with this and even though I had person after person telling me "you've got to see this!" raising my overall expectations, I have to confess this movie still worked. Really worked.

Yes you can say it's contrived -- the hearing teen daughter of a deaf fishing family from Gloucester, Mass. discovers her voice (literally) just as they need her help to stay at sea -- but after a somewhat predictable start, "Coda" settles into a character driven drama that's just irresistible. Gentle humor and believably depicted personalities make this a warm-hearted movie that has an unpretentious human factor absent from the bulk of its Best Picture Oscar competitors -- this year or the last few. And yes while the movie doesn't offer anything remarkable from an asthetic filmmaking perspective, its performances and main story are enormously appealing. Emilia Jones is positively delightful in the lead and has a great singing voice to match, and anchors the movie with a star making performance.

The movie, a remake of a French film, does not offer some massive agenda or check a bunch of aggrvieved demographic boxes -- it simply preaches humanity and understanding in a refreshingly believable manner, even if its formulaic. A hugely appealing film worthy of it's praise.

[Eric Paddon]

The Egyptian (1954) 6 of 10
-Much better than "Land Of The Pharaohs" since at least there are characters who are positive, but it's still overly plodding and really takes a while before I felt I was "in" to it. I don't think Marlon Brando would have been better than Edmund Purdom necessarily because the character of Sinhue isn't well-written to begin with.

Hoping to get to "Ten Commandments" and "Samson And Delilah" before Holy Week so I can set aside time for the NT epics then.

[AndyDursin]

IMPULSE (1990)
7/10



Derided by most critics at the time of its original release -- with the notable exception of "Two Thumbs Up" from Siskel & Ebert -- Sondra Locke's IMPULSE is a surprisingly good thriller that refuses to veer into exploitation sleaze or outright cliche. Theresa Russell gives one of her best performances as a tough L.A. undercover cop "on the edge", put upon by her supervisor (a slimy George Dzundza), and soon to be wrapped up in the investigation of a mob boss -- one that also conflicts with her new relationship with a local DA (Jeff Fahey).

I'm not sure what I was expecting here, because I recall this April '90 Warner release jutting in and out of theaters quickly with little fanfare -- but "Impulse" manages to straddle the right line of escapist entertainment and "gritty suspense" with a lead character caught inbetween a number of opposing forces. Yet the movie isn't as predictable as I anticipated, and Russell -- who was typically icy on-screen in roles soon to be usurped by the likes of Sharon Stone -- gives one of her better performances, playing off her typical persona but with more a sympathetic component. She also works well with Fahey, and the movie does a good job portraying her heroine in credible terms than the subject matter of "cops going over the edge!" usually gives us on-screen.

While not a great movie, this is a solidly entertaining picture -- well directed by Locke, who was unfairly dismissed from studio filmmaking thereafter -- that held my interest and it's much better than other "lady cop" thrillers of the 90s like the dismal, later Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle "Blue Steel." It's also relatively hard to find, as only Itunes has an HD master available of it (Warner Archive released a DVD years back).

[Eric Paddon]

The Ten Commandments (1956) 9 of 10
-Squeezed this in last night and to my annoyance discovered that Disc 1 of the two Disc Blu-Ray I have that dates back to 2011 had a bunch of annoying freezes and skips in spots. That is unacceptable for a film like this so while I slogged through to the finish I also ordered a replacement copy last night. Disconcerting to see that happen especially for a classic such as this, that still stands out as one of the greatest works of cinematic spectacle ever made. Perhaps if DeMille hadn't gotten his "life's work" Oscar with the Best Picture for "Greatest Show On Earth" (which IMO gets a bum rap; to me the Academy's real blunder had taken place the year before with "An American In Paris") they might have done so with "Ten Commandments" for Best Picture since I would certainly rate it ahead of "Around The World In 80 Days" (not that I dislike that film either but if you're going to go with the popular choice over "Giant" then "Ten Commandments" deserved the honor more). DeMille and Bernstein were certainly gypped in not getting nominated.