The Last Movie You Watched? ver.2.0

‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ is the only 5 out 5 flick … I’d agree with that rating - Saw it for the first time about 10 years ago … I was really blown away by it. Staggering and unique … and it’s not often I use those words regarding a film. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I Agree, in my opinion there aren’t that many 5/5 pics, but Aguirre is definitely one of them

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Aguirre for me not, but the narratively and visually overwhelming Chinatown yes.

Starman (1984) - 9/10 - I absolutely loved this Carpenter flick. Corny, maybe a little bit cheesy, but it’s got that really nice, mellow tone to it, really romantic and sweet and stuff. It’s more about the style, the visuals and the overall atmosphere conjured up by the director than some tangible, hard proof upsides in the form of excellent screenplay or things of that nature. It was nice to see this other side of Carpenter’s filmmaking.

The Morning After (1986) - 5/10 - A decent late-night-TV-sort thriller about an aging, unsuccessful actress that winds up in bed with a stiff and has no recollection of whether she killed him or not. The plot is ruggedly interesting if sometimes a tad predictable. I enjoyed it, nothing special, but it delivers.

Ladyhawke (1985) - 5/10 - Oh boy. There are so many things I both dislike and love about this movie I’m not even sure whether I like it or not. The dialogues and the overall tone verge on comedy, particularly in the former half, while the core story and the cinematography are done with more care and charisma, so to speak. The movie basically flip-flops between excellency and wretchedness every 10 or 15 minutes or so. The music only makes things worse. Tangerine Dream it ain’t, that’s all I’ll say. I usually love electronic soundtracks, but poppy electronic bits feel completely out of touch and out of place here. Storaro needs no introduction and he definitely beautifies the flick quite a bit. I really don’t know what else to say. The perfect and most “excruciating” example of a mixed bag if I’ve ever seen one.

Kill Me Again (1989) - 7/10 - A nice, nasty little thriller. While not exactly in the same ballpark as The Last Seduction (1994), it still delivers the goodies. It’s got that lovely late 1980s/early 1990s neonoir vibe to it that distinguishes it from other movies of its kind. It gets a bit too hectic and out-of-focus towards the end which may explain why it feels like it’s run out of steam around the time the resolution comes. It’s still a damn good thriller though. If you enjoyed The Last Seduction or Body Heat, be sure to check this one as well, even if it’s not quite as good as those two.

Last week or so:
Carry On Henry (Thomas, 1971) :star::star::star:
Badlands (Malick, 1973) :star::star::star::star:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978) :star::star::star::star:
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, 1976) :star::star::star::star:
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978) :star::star::star:
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) :star::star::star:
Mad Max (Miller, 1979) :star::star::star::star:
Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971) :star::star::star::star:
Jason X (Isaac, 2001) :star::star::star:
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009) :star::star::star:
Live and Let Die (Hamilton, 1973) :star::star::star::star:
Willie Dynamite (Moses, 1974) :star::star::star:
The People vs. Larry Flynt (Forman, 1996) :star::star::star::star:
Carry On at Your Convenience (Thomas, 1971) :star::star::star:
California (Lupo, 1977) :star::star::star:
Compañeros (Corbucci, 1970) :star::star::star::star:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Peckinpah, 1973) :star::star::star::star:
Hostiles (Cooper, 2017) :star::star::star::star:
Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971) :star::star::star::star:
Rollerball (Jewison, 1975) :star::star::star:

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What happened here? Rather low marks for these classics

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I Think 4 stars is the top score for Last.caress, so not bad

Compañeros (Corbucci, 1970) :star::star::star::star:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Peckinpah, 1973) :star::star::star::star:

Maybe it’s because it’s not the right time of year or something but I really wasn’t feeling Halloween at all this time around. Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance remains unusually strong for this type of picture (as does Carpenter’s score) but I didn’t feel that any of the rest of the movie held up particularly well given the classic status attributed to it. I don’t think I’ve ever watched it outside of the Halloween period and, of course, that really shouldn’t matter when judging the qualities of the film. But it does, somehow.

Taxi Driver - I like the movie a lot but, for me, it loses marks for that bloody ceaseless and deeply irritating Bernard Herrmann score. I can’t stand it, and it never stops. I feel similarly about Once Upon a Time in the West. Can’t stand the music cues for Harmonica and Cheyenne, and they feel as though they take up most of the bloody movie. Maybe I’m just sensitive to overly-repetitive scores. They turn into earworms in my head.

I like all of them to at least some degree. Unless it’s a brand new picture which isn’t out to buy yet/still at the cinema (like the fantastic Hostiles), they’re all my DVDs/blu-rays.

Halloween was a rip-off of Black Christmas, but a good rip-off.

Terrifier (Leone, 2018) :star::star:

In which a wordless psychopathic clown rips people to absolute f#cking pieces for a shade over eighty minutes. Loosely extrapolated from an earlier short movie by a guy - Damien Leone - who previously specialised in makeup effects and it shows, there being little else to the picture but extreme sustained gore for gore’s sake. This grindhouse approach on the part of the filmmakers is deliberate; it’s hardly as though they tried and failed to imbue the plot with any depth or particular focus. It’s just a guy in a clown costume who picks a random girl to terrorise throughout a nondescript location, killing a heap of random people along the way in quite astonishingly nasty fashion. It’s like a horror version of porn. Everybody in the sparsely populated picture is there only to either a) kill or b) be killed, and every single scene is simply a loose frame around which to hang a f#ckload of viscera. If that sounds in any way appealing to you then, make no mistake, this is your new favourite movie of the year.

The shame of it for me is that whilst I don’t care for gore flicks which only exist for the sake of the gore therein, they’re definitely onto something here with the creation of Art the Clown. I couldn’t give a runny shitbum for clowns one way or the other, they neither scare nor amuse me, but David Howard Thornton’s performance as Art is fantastic, a good few leagues above the atrocious acting all around him through the rest of the movie. As an antagonist, he’s the most creepy and potentially interesting I’ve seen in a horror in decades. He just needs a better movie than this within which to play. He doesn’t necessarily need a backstory, but some motivation at least would help immensely. I mean I suppose there’s a measure of shallow, gormless, gonzo fun to be had from the picture if you take it on its own shallow, gormless, gonzo terms but there’s potential for more, I feel.

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Not 5?

Yes 5, I remember a lot of 5-star-movies in his lists

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Border Incident (1949) -7/10

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Black Out (2010) -6/10

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The Affairs of Messalina (1951) -5.5/10

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The Party Crashers (1958) -5/10

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All the Way Boys (1972) -4.9/10

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The Teenage Prostitution Racket (1975) -4/10
This Euro sleaze film from Lizzani didn’t do anything for me. The only thing I liked was Morricone’s score,

download (1)psychoI love movies

Three masterpieces ^ :+1:

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Noah

Mixed feelings about this movie. With my Biblical background this movie was far from what I tought to expect.
They could have done a much better job, especially with the animals that came to the Ark
Very disappointing

Eva marie Saint is otherworldy beautiful in on the waterfront . Dean I couldn’t agree more as to these films standing .

When I think about overrated classics, then On the Waterfront is one of the first which come to my mind. Not a bad film though, but 6/10 do it for me. Kazan made better films.

Which ones would you recommend the most? I believe I’ve only seen his On the Waterfront (7/10) and A Streetcar Named Desire (6/10). I liked both, but not that I’m crazy about them. Kinda surprised with the low ratings I gave them.