Movies Rate and Discuss the Last Movie You Saw v.16

[eddymotto]

After Hours (USA, 1985)

American black comedy directed by Martin Scorsese.

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a lonely and bored NYC office worker. He is the sort of guy who reads Tropic of Cancer while eating alone at a diner.

He is surprised and pleased when the whimsical Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) flirts with him. She invites him to check out work from an artist friend of hers. Despite already being after midnight, the horny Paul heads downtown (SoHo) to see the artist and hopefully hook up with Marcy. The artist turns out to be the sexually aggressive Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) who works at a huge loft that she shares with Marcy.

Paul gets caught in a nightmare of bad luck and finds himself desperate to go home but unable to escape the clutches of SoHo.

I would call this film a black comedy but it generates a lot of anxiety. Paul is a bit of a dick at times but we can feel his exasperation and desperation because he just wants to go home.

Rating: 7/10

 

[HenryFlower]

You rated The Marvels higher than Trashin and Gleaming the Clube

because The Marvels was a perfectly “OKAY” movie. Thrashin’ & Gleaming the Cube are totally fun crapfests fueled by nostalgia vibes, but they are by no means good movies.

zero-G kittens was a better scene than anything in the latter two. facts.

 

[Michaelangelo]

 

[revoltub]

Cherry 2000 (1988)

-

Overall I had a good time with it despite the flaws. The robot girlfriend vs human girlfriend plot still holds up in today's world of AI girlfriends and looming sex robots. It's not Bladerunner or anything in that regard but still have to give it credit for relevancy.

It is presented as a scifi action movie, which it is, but the film is essentially a romance film at heart. I thought it worked, for the most part due to Griffith and Andrew's having decent enough chemistry and both coming across as likeable and easy to root for. Though neither will blow anyone's mind from a pure acting standpoint

Respectable 6.4 range. Flawed but fun.

 

[Peteyandjia]

Monkey Man (2024)
I thought I was gonna love this but it was just......alright. Billed as an Indian John Wick but it was nowhere near as memorable as those movies. It was just an okay action movie.
6/10

I felt the same at around a 6, they are churning out these revenge actions movies like crazy too so they really gotta bring something new to the table which is tough since John Wick 1-4 has covered alot most recently.

As soon as I saw the trailer, where they highlight him saying "... Yeah."

I was like, fuck you bullshit ass movie. There is only one John Wick. Don't be trying to rip off the greatest action franchise of this century, like right after it just ended, with this half-ass wack-ass ripoff.

It's like they're trying to release the Bollywood clone in the same country now. Fuck outta here. I would rather just rewatch an actual Wick again

 

[eddymotto]

Five Element Ninjas (Hong Kong, 1982)

Shaw Brothers kung fu film directed by the great Chang Cheh.

The Martial Arts Alliance (the good guys) are challenged for martial arts supremacy by Chief Hong and his students (the bad guys). At first it is all fun and games as the Martial Arts Alliance wins the first 9 bouts in a row.

Hong brings in a Japanese samurai as his ringer. The samurai wins his bout and then goads his opponent into committing suicide from shame. None of the losers of the previous 9 bouts felt compelled to kill themselves after losing and so this is a new wrinkle to the contest.

Stuff happens. The samurai vows that his ninja clan will seek revenge on his behalf.

A cycle of violent killings and revenge ensues.

This is an absolute upper tier kung fu movie. The wig game is exceptional, the fights are incredible, there is blood everywhere, and the costumes are unrivalled. The good guys wear white outfits that show cleavage in the front and are offset with little white capes in the back. Before fights they drop the capes and you just know that shit is about to get real. The regular ninjas mostly wear black ninja garb but when they fight in formations (gold, wood, water, fire, earth) they bring out special little super cool outfits. The best ones are clearly the gold ninjas who wear such shiny yellow uniforms that they can blind their opponents. This film was not even nominated for costume design at the Oscars and this will go down as one of the all time snubs by the Academy.

Cheh leans into the gore throughout the film. One of the good guys has to fight with his intestines hanging out. The injury is the result of him being stabbed repeatedly in the groin and ass. Despite his bravery, he accidentally steps on his own intestine and this proves to be a fatal mistake in the fight. If you do not recognize this as peak aspirational cinema, you should stop watching movies altogether.

The main female character, Jenko, is an unusually interesting female character for a kung fu flick. She is sexy and complicated and gets an actual character arc.

Spoiler

Jenko is a female ninja and she infiltrates the Martial Arts Alliance by pretending to be beaten by a man. The crazy thing is the dude is straight out punching her in the face in front of the good guys and only one of them has any interest in intervening. The main protagonist is like, "nah dude. Let them sort this out themselves. We have guarding to do". Later the Clan Leader says "best not to get involved in other people's problems". It is not easy being a woman in a kung fu movie. Even the good guys are mostly indifferent to you being savagely beaten in public.

This is a straightforward kung fu revenge movie. There is so much going on that the hero's revenge is relegated to the 3rd act. The only thing missing is a lengthy sequence where the hero learns new skills to overcome his adversaries. What we miss in that area is more than made up for with epic ninja fights and bloody deaths. The final scene is absolutely legendary. Great ending.

Rating: Bona Fide Kung Fu Classic

 

[HenryFlower]

As soon as I saw the trailer, where they highlight him saying "... Yeah."

I was like, fuck you bullshit ass movie. There is only one John Wick. Don't be trying to rip off the greatest action franchise of this century, like right after it just ended, with this half-ass wack-ass ripoff.

It's like they're trying to release the Bollywood clone in the same country now. Fuck outta here. I would rather just rewatch an actual Wick again

i swear you john wick gatekeeping dorks would rather watch the action genre rot instead of have its seeds germinate. i can’t even tell if you’re just being cheeky because there are legit people this lame

 

[ufcfan4]

After Hours (USA, 1985)

American black comedy directed by Martin Scorsese.

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a lonely and bored NYC office worker. He is the sort of guy who reads Tropic of Cancer while eating alone at a diner.

He is surprised and pleased when the whimsical Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) flirts with him. She invites him to check out work from an artist friend of hers. Despite already being after midnight, the horny Paul heads downtown (SoHo) to see the artist and hopefully hook up with Marcy. The artist turns out to be the sexually aggressive Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) who works at a huge loft that she shares with Marcy.

Paul gets caught in a nightmare of bad luck and finds himself desperate to go home but unable to escape the clutches of SoHo.

I would call this film a black comedy but it generates a lot of anxiety. Paul is a bit of a dick at times but we can feel his exasperation and desperation because he just wants to go home.

Rating: 7/10

I thought the film was really unsettling. There is some good humor, for sure, it’s not all bleak and intense but it definitely had a gnawing, disconcerting quality to it throughout. Dunne seemed like an ideal actor to pull off what Scorsese was going for there.

 

[ufcfan4]

The Squid and the Whale

Noah Baumbach film that focuses on the way a divorce impacts a family. The parents are intellectuals but the dad has a sort of cultural pomposity to him while the mom is more down to earth. The film does a good job of painting a nuanced portrait of the characters and the context. I think a major point of the film is that as much as the kids are looking for a hero and a villain to make sense of this difficult situation, there are no real good guys and bad guys here, though there are plenty of hurtful acts and painful disputes.

Baumbach covered similar territory with Marriage Story but that centered more on how acrimonious the actual divorce proceedings can be, while this one just shows more of the toll a separation can take on a family, even when the parents seem to start out from a place of cooperation and mutual respect.

While I thought Marriage Story was a very good film, The Squid and the Whale felt more like a fusion of comedy and drama. There are some very funny moments and character interactions. Some of those moments are supplied by the great Jeff Daniels, whose character says some quite inappropriate things with such a casual air that it comes across as funny.

Eisenberg and Kline are very good as the sons, each seemingly taking a side with one of the parents. Laura Linney who, like Daniels, can deliver in both comedic and dramatic roles, is also great in this. Billy Baldwin has a pretty hilarious role as the tennis pro at the country club, who is quite likable but whose worldliness seems to annoy the haughty Daniels to no end.

I really liked the screenplay and the performances. Daniels is such a pro. The fact that this guy can play this character and can just as convincingly play someone like Harry Dunne really impresses me. The only real complaint about the film is the brevity. It is a weird thing because while I think Baumbach does exactly what he intended with a very limited runtime, 75 minutes still strikes me as incredibly short for a motion picture. So I can’t really criticize the film for being too short to flesh things out because it really does capture quite a bit of depth despite the brevity, it still felt like there could have been more to it.

8/10

 

[I Am Legion]

i swear you john wick gatekeeping dorks would rather watch the action genre rot instead of have its seeds germinate. i can’t even tell if you’re just being cheeky because there are legit people this lame

I don't think anything needs to "germinate." Action movies have always been big draws. With streaming platforms we are getting some decent action lkike Extraction 1 and 2 etc. There will always be the top of the heap like Die Hard, The Raid, Aliens, Terminator....and then filler copy cats. And then straight garbage. Wick fans are passionate because they are top of the heap films.

 

[Peteyandjia]

i swear you john wick gatekeeping dorks would rather watch the action genre rot instead of have its seeds germinate. i can’t even tell if you’re just being cheeky because there are legit people this lame

"Seeds germinate" lol. That would imply this is growth over JW, which it is clearly not. Unless you mean tumor growth. It's regression

The way the action genre rots is if we pretend half-assed ripoffs like this one are anything more

And there's no gatekeeping going on, if an actual great movie comes out, I'm all for it. This ain't it chief

 

[eddymotto]

I thought the film was really unsettling. There is some good humor, for sure, it’s not all bleak and intense but it definitely had a gnawing, disconcerting quality to it throughout. Dunne seemed like an ideal actor to pull off what Scorsese was going for there.

I struggled to categorize the genre.

You did a better job of describing it than I did.

It is definitely absurdist and I felt genuinely stressed at times.

Spoiler

Near the end when Paul is trapped inside the hardened statue I was asking myself, "is this a low key horror film?". that scene freaked me out. Then the ending is mostly happy? He shows up at work after a wild night and everything is back to normal.

 

[ufcfan4]

I struggled to categorize the genre.

You did a better job of describing it than I did.

It is definitely absurdist and I felt genuinely stressed at times.

Spoiler

Near the end when Paul is trapped inside the hardened statue I was asking myself, "is this a low key horror film?". that scene freaked me out. Then the ending is mostly happy? He shows up at work after a wild night and everything is back to normal.

I think it’s a pretty damn funny ending. Happy in the loosest sense of the term in that

Spoiler

the return to his mundane, dull job is, by contrast to his odyssey, great. There is apparently some theory that Griffin Dunne’s character actually dies at the end. You could check out a YouTube video about it but I think it sort of negates the whole absurdist undercurrent you were talking about. The idea that he ends up right back at the office and just is ready to start his day again after that hellacious night is sort of the humor, no?

Yeah I feel like that character- the lonely woman was played by a well known actress of the 50s and 60s but I’m blanking on who. That scene is creepy for sure.

 

[burningspear]

Impressed with Dev Patel's debut, ochre photography hard focused on indian culture, revenge, hanuman and an enter the dragon homage, good fun. 7.6

 

[HenryFlower]

"Seeds germinate" lol. That would imply this is growth over JW, which it is clearly not. Unless you mean tumor growth. It's regression

The way the action genre rots is if we pretend half-assed ripoffs like this one are anything more

And there's no gatekeeping going on, if an actual great movie comes out, I'm all for it. This ain't it chief

sounds like a buncha boo-hooing over nothing to me. the only weirdos dunking on Monkey Man are the ones who’d put the john wick franchise as a personality trait on dating apps. i think it’s disingenuous to label Monkey Man a half-assed ripoff because it’s a legitimately well-directed debut effort w/ a legitimately good performance by Dev Patel. that’s enough of a floor to put it well above any actual half-assed ripoff

 

[revoltub]

Finished oz.

I think the show is great for the first 4 seasons. But I thought things started going downhill once

Spoiler

adebisi dies

. The show still stays afloat but I thought season 5 and 6 started to dwindle in quality a bit and I especially thought the finale was a bit of a whimper.

Overall still a solid show. I guess a 7 overall

 

[eddymotto]

Crippled Avengers* (Hong Kong, 1978)

*Not to be confused with the MCU movie of the same name.

Shaw Brothers kung film directed by the legendary master Chang Cheh and starring several members of the Venom Mob.

As with most Cheh films, we are immediately thrown into some action and have to figure out the context on the fly. In this case, three assassins with bad wigs show up at the house of tiger style kung fu master Dao Tian-du. Dao is away but his wife and young son are there. The assassins decide not to kill them but instead cut off the wife's legs and the son's hands.

Dao shows up immediately afterwards and, as you would imagine, he is pissed about the entire thing. He quickly delivers death blows to the assassins. His wife is dead (in a great piece of unintentional comedy, a doctor checks on the woman WHO IS CUT IN HALF before sadly shaking his head that she is not, in fact, going to survive. Cinema! Interestingly, she is probably the most prominent female character in the film. There is not a single other woman of note in the entire movie.). Dao promises his son that he will get him awesome metal hands and teach him kung fu.

The scene feels like the hero's origin story but it turns out to the opposite. Fast forward a couple of years and we see that Dao and Dao Jr. are sadists who terrorize the local town with brutal reprisals against anyone who displeases them.

The father and son team cripple 4 men in separate incidents. One is blinded, one is made into a deaf mute, one has his legs cut off, and one has his head squeezed in a vice until he becomes a simpleton.

The 4 cripples travel to learn kung fu styles that overcome their limitations.

After 3 years of training, they return to Dao's town to get revenge. It would not be a kung fu film without heroes seeking revenge. Cheh delivers!

The 2nd act is almost entirely devoted to watching the heroes train. The film drags at times in the 3rd act (odd for Cheh to let up on pacing) and the fights never hit peak Cheh but the acrobatics are impressive.

I would be remiss if I did not mention a stellar sequence where a dude is kicked so hard that his intestines flop out. He calmly tucks them back into his shirt and gets back to the business of fighting. Kung fu, baby!

Rating: Second tier Shaw kung fu flick but still worth a watch.

 

[ufcfan4]

sounds like a buncha boo-hooing over nothing to me. the only weirdos dunking on Monkey Man are the ones who’d put the john wick franchise as a personality trait on dating apps. i think it’s disingenuous to label Monkey Man a half-assed ripoff because it’s a legitimately well-directed debut effort w/ a legitimately good performance by Dev Patel. that’s enough of a floor to put it well above any actual half-assed ripoff

haven’t seen it yet but I really like Patel. He’s one of those guys who even in his lesser films seems to give a really good showing. And in his films that are legitimately good, he shines all the more. I really do tend to think that Slumdog Millionaire is one of the better best picture winners of the past 17 years. No Country is, in my opinion, pretty clearly the best but I think Slumdog very well could be the second best since 2007. I know it wasn’t without controversy but it had a cool Dickensian element to the story and Patel was excellent. Real breakthrough performance.

 

[revoltub]

I gave the breakfast club a needed rewatch. Spoiler tags added for the 3 people on earth who havent seen it.

Particularly 80s but the film has kept momentum since and kept up with new generations. Though I'm not sure if teenagers today know of it or watched it.

It holds up but there are some things that I didnt notice before. For example they make out right in front of their parents while they are waiting in the cars.

Spoiler

The whole situation with Hall bringing a gun into school is something that seems foreign in this day and age. Or at least it wouldnt be handled the same.

It can get a bit melodramatic but that is part of what makes the film work, since it is pretty dialogue driven. Each character gets a bit of something to chew on and gets rounded out.

I think most can relate to the clique dynamics of highschool, but it portrays things a bit black and white in that regard. At least for me, cliques were a thing but a little more fluid and gray. Also whenever I was in detention everyone just waited It out. Whatever, wont affect my review because works for the movie.

I think the biggest thing i can say about rewatching it is that it kind of made me miss highschool and think back on it a bit, which I rarely do. That's gotta be a win.

8/10 range.

 

[eddymotto]

I gave the breakfast club a needed rewatch. Spoiler tags added for the 3 people on earth who havent seen it.

Particularly 80s but the film has kept momentum since and kept up with new generations. Though I'm not sure if teenagers today know of it or watched it.

It holds up but there are some things that I didnt notice before. For example they make out right in front of their parents while they are waiting in the cars.

Spoiler

The whole situation with Hall bringing a gun into school is something that seems foreign in this day and age. Or at least it wouldnt be handled the same.

It can get a bit melodramatic but that is part of what makes the film work, since it is pretty dialogue driven. Each character gets a bit of something to chew on and gets rounded out.

I think most can relate to the clique dynamics of highschool, but it portrays things a bit black and white in that regard. At least for me, cliques were a thing but a little more fluid and gray. Also whenever I was in detention everyone just waited It out. Whatever, wont affect my review because works for the movie.

I think the biggest thing i can say about rewatching it is that it kind of made me miss highschool and think back on it a bit, which I rarely do. That's gotta be a win.

8/10 range.

I am one of the 3 people!