Rate the last film you watched out of 5

[neoELITE]

Ron Went Wrong

Disney+

Me and Mrs neoELITE watched this just now. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It borrows from ET and Big Hero 6 and it's not a specifically original take on an overused theme but it's funny, charming and has heart. 

It was very good.

4/5

[glb]

Dear Evan Hansen - 1/5

 

Mawkish horseshit.

 

Still, 14 more films to go to reach 600 for the year!

[Stig]

600 

 

Are you keep track on Letterboxd at all?

[glb]

1 hour ago, Stigweard said:

600 

 

Are you keep track on Letterboxd at all?

I did try Letteboxd but never got into the habit so still just log ratings on IMDb. Maybe I’ll try Letteboxd again in the New Year. With a few festivals in Q1, should reach 4,000 early on in the year (currently 200 away)

 

I’m tempted to aim for 1,000 next year for no other reason than it feels doable. Weekdays aren’t an issue as screen pretty much daily for work, but weekends tend not to watch too many films. Still, expect to be working from home in January at least, so if I get off to a flyer, maybe 1,000 will be on. Dream big!

 

[Vimster]

Thought I was doing alright aiming for 200.

[glb]

It’s only by virtue of working on film channels again. When I was on sport I barely got through 100 films in a year 

[Bazjam]

The Power Of The Dog - 5/5

 

I think this is the best thing that Jane Campion has done. I'd say the same for Benedict Cumberbatch too, he's fantastic in this, would be amazed if he doesn't win the Oscar for his role.

Some of the story telling is so subtle that I had to Google a few points after watching the end (then kicked myself as everything is there on the screen.)

 

It's on Netflix so I'll watch it again soon and soak up all the detail.

[Qazimod]

Space Jam: A New Legacy

 

Not amazing but not offensively bad. I think someone in this thread mentioned the runtime and it is surprisingly long for a movie like this. The initial setup or "first act" definitely could have been tighter and the climactic match at the end is pretty much what you'd expect. Happily, you don't need too much knowledge of the first movie (I have a copy of it and I was tempted to watch it in preparation) but I feel like the original was paced slightly better?

 

Around a 3/5 but (like GvK) I'm more forgiving about dumb nonsense so whatever.

[Loik V credern]

22 hours ago, Vimster said:

Thought I was doing alright aiming for 200.

 

I usually aim for 150 but then only watch 70 by September then cram one a day in until Christmas. A film every 2/3 days seems alright. This year I thought I could reach 200 but...nope. 

 

There's a number of letterboxd users who watch 600+ a year, ultimately that's only still two films a day but still seems outrageous to me. Outrageous hmm maybe not that. It's not an outrage. Ridiculous...it's not that either. Doable but abnormal. Unusual. Extreme. Not really extreme. Maybe  just unexpected. 

 

Most of the time after I watch a film I like to let it sink in, listen/look up reviews online or theories. Sometimes a film is so draining or exhausting that after going through all its emotional peaks I'm all emotioned out and not ready to do it again for something entirely different. 

 

It's all but certain every other person alive will have more priorities than me and less time so I really don't know how people find the time consistently to use up 4-5 hours of their day on films. The letterboxd users who watch 2/3 films a day also post up long detailed reviews every other day. It's a real commitment. Even working at home I still don't know how people keep it up day after day. Unless people watch stuff in the background. 

 

I've noticed with letterboxd since I've started to put up mostly negative reviews I don't get new watchers any more.  

[Stig]

Only 122 films for me this year, but 76 of those are 2021 releases which is pretty good going.

 

I'll probably finish on around 135 total now.

 

 

[kthxbliz]

Spider-Man: No Way Home 

 

Ill preface this by saying I got a free ticket to accompany a friend to this, Marvel stuff isn’t really my thing. 
 

That said, I enjoyed it for what it was, a kids film. The effects were good and the novelty of seeing how they brought the generations together was warming. 
 

2.5/5.

[Vimster]

30 Days Of Night (2007)

A small town in Alaska cut off from the world and under siege by vampires for a whole month of darkness. The premise is delicious, and that's dangerous as it conjures images that, for some people, the actual film may not live up to. However, if you simply engage with the film and not let your imagination run away with you you'll get a varied, never-dull vampire survival film. Short bursts of manically visceral action, with the vampires here being strong and fast. Yet there's room for character development and some surprises too. It felt a touch uneven in places, there were lots of good ideas and sequences tied together with style though.

 

3.5/5

[Vimster]

2 hours ago, Loik V credern said:

 

I usually aim for 150 but then only watch 70 by September then cram one a day in until Christmas. A film every 2/3 days seems alright. This year I thought I could reach 200 but...nope. 

 

There's a number of letterboxd users who watch 600+ a year, ultimately that's only still two films a day but still seems outrageous to me. Outrageous hmm maybe not that. It's not an outrage. Ridiculous...it's not that either. Doable but abnormal. Unusual. Extreme. Not really extreme. Maybe  just unexpected. 

 

Most of the time after I watch a film I like to let it sink in, listen/look up reviews online or theories. Sometimes a film is so draining or exhausting that after going through all its emotional peaks I'm all emotioned out and not ready to do it again for something entirely different. 

 

It's all but certain every other person alive will have more priorities than me and less time so I really don't know how people find the time consistently to use up 4-5 hours of their day on films. The letterboxd users who watch 2/3 films a day also post up long detailed reviews every other day. It's a real commitment. Even working at home I still don't know how people keep it up day after day. Unless people watch stuff in the background. 

 

I've noticed with letterboxd since I've started to put up mostly negative reviews I don't get new watchers any more.  

I'm up to 136 according to Letterboxd. although I'll basically be watching films all over Christmas week as I'm off all week, so we're talking about 150 or so.

 

I could watch a film every day, there's nothing stopping me other than my inability to focus, plus I have this annoying trait where I feel the urge to do something else when I am doing anything. But I might go for 300 next year, really make the effort. It would be a tall order though. 600, that's just all your free time watching films, get in from work, watch two films, go to bed, every night, all year.

 

It is all about the priorities though, and when you take real life out of the equation there's still gaming, reading, sleeping, something called socialising (not sure what that is), and other bits too. You really need some dedication and discipline.

[Loik V credern]

2 minutes ago, Vimster said:

I'm up to 136 according to Letterboxd. although I'll basically be watching films all over Christmas week as I'm off all week, so we're talking about 150 or so.

 

I could watch a film every day, there's nothing stopping me other than my inability to focus, plus I have this annoying trait where I feel the urge to do something else when I am doing anything. But I might go for 300 next year, really make the effort. It would be a tall order though. 600, that's just all your free time watching films, get in from work, watch two films, go to bed, every night, all year.

 

Yeah it's the passive nature of films, I just want to play or do most of the time. You have to put your life on hold to follow these strangers lives and sometimes I think; I don't care. But then I've just been in Waterstones and looked at all the autobiographies out there from people who I think; even you have a book about your life? You could be bothered to try to remember everything and put it all down?

 

I have anecdotes really so boring that after telling them once I don't think are worth the energy to tell again. I'm likely incredibly boring. But one might involve being punched in the head by a stranger out of nowhere for no reason (as opposed to punched out of nowhere with reason) or putting myself in peril. I don't think peoples lives are that interesting really, we just pretend they are because we're all self absorbed. erm. yeah but I like the world building.

 

It's the variety of time periods films are set in, it's like you're a time traveller when you look at your last 5 films watched, they're always so different. And the tones a director can achieve that makes the medium interesting to me, not always the story which I guess everyone is thinking 'well, yeah? Of course'. Most stories use the same cliches or tropes or formula.

 

I just watched Sean Penn's The Pledge and amazingly well directed I thought, it feels extremely real, all the secondary characters and the weather, the grit, the close ups, the tone. Watching Jack Nicholson you know you're watching a film, however understated he is. But the film just becomes less interesting as it progresses really so if it wasn't for the direction I can't really say it's worth watching. But obviously Penn saw something in it. It's about obsession I know. 

 

2 minutes ago, Vimster said:

It is all about the priorities though, and when you take real life out of the equation there's still gaming, reading, sleeping, something called socialising (not sure what that is), and other bits too. You really need some dedication and discipline.

 

Yeah, well cooking would be one for me. I've spent the last three months on my own travelling the south of England in my campervan, doing nothing except go out into cities about two/three times a week, go through photos after, cook, play games, read the internet and drive. And still a film a day is all I could manage. They'll be a five day chunk when a film took three days to get through or I just wasn't in the mood. 

[glb]

Spider-Man: No Way Home - 3/5

 

Fun, really fun in places, but feel a tad disappointed the major surprises leaked well in advance. Guess that’s not the fault of the film, more the voracity with which the internet thrives on reasons to generate clickbait.
 

However, also felt the film didn’t really do too much with the multiverse concept beyond the initial, ‘this is cool’, and the climax was, well, anticlimactic.

 

Spoiler

I know the trio of Pete Spidermens were there but the film seemed too pleased with the idea of their presence rather than doing anything overly inventive with them.

 

That said, Maguire and Garfield had lovely chemistry, and if anything overshadowed Tom Holland who at times didn’t seem wholly comfortable in the threesome. As it were.

A good bit of frothy escapism but it’s no Into the Spider-Verse.

[Silent Runner]

Azor
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11136276/

 

Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, goes to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumours, who disappeared overnight.

 

Saw this mentioned on a few best of 2021 lists. It's a very impressive debut set in Argentina in 1980. A Swiss-banker arrives in Buenos Arries after his business partner goes missing. His job is to keep his banks clients on side while investigating what happened to his colleague. As soon as he arrives he finds himself immersed in the Junta and it's civilian enablers. 

 

I thought this was really good. It's quite slow but never dull. We gradually learn what (probably) happened to the first banker. And what his partner might do about it. Nothing is ever explicitly explained but there's enough detail in the casual conversations between characters to keep us informed. 

 

It looks great - full of drab 80's interiors and gauche party scenes. The acting is excellent, particularly from the lead guy, there's a great minimalist synth soundtrack and the last few minutes are really haunting. 

 

I don't think this would make my top 10 for the year but it wouldn't be too far behind. 

 

4.5/5 (Mubi) 

[ZOK]

Nice, that’s been on my watchlist since it appeared, sounds spot on!

[Captain Kelsten]

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

I haven't seen this since it first came to home video back in the 90s and, in my mind, it had a terrible reputation for being rubbish, although apparently it was quite liked at the time, critically.

 

Watching it again tonight, I can understand why. It's grandiose, overwrought, self-indulgent and, often, a bit weird. 

 

But damn, if it isn't a film buff's film. Coppola pays homage to so many techniques, advances and styles of cinema to tell his version of the novel which is sticks surprisingly close to in general, despite the central premise - the love story between Dracula and Mina - being just for this film and not from the book.

 

The biggest problem for me, however, is precisely this love story. The chemistry between Oldman's Dracula and Ryder's Mina is non-existent (no doubt due to their reportedly frosty relationship on set). The love story isn't given any time to breath or develop naturally, which may have made Dracula a tad more sympathetic, and instead it's all just a bit...rapey. It feels tacked on because, well, it was.

 

Oldman and Hopkins shine, everyone else is either terrible (Ryder, Reeves) or just...there (Elwes, Grant, Campbell, Frost). But yes, Ryder and Reeves are utterly crap in this film. Whether it's their dodgy accents, their godawful acting, Reeve's dodgy grey hair that changes length and colour repeatedly (all the amazing practical and in particular creature effects, and they couldn't give him decent hair?). Just imagine how much better it could have been with some decent actors in the roles!

 

As was tradition in the 90s, it got turned into a terrible platform hack n slash game where Harker takes on such tasks as fighting a fire-breathing dragon and a giant Renfield. Castlevania it ain't.

 

 

2.5/5

[Vimster]

Miami Connection (1987)

Opens with some serious energy, it has everything you'd want from a straight-to-video 80s action flick, and generally we're on so-bad-it's-interesting ground here, with music, fights and truly awful acting bulking out this film. But there are serious issues with pacing, padding is a big problem. One scene saw me go to the loo, make a drink and return to find characters till sparring. As it goes on it makes less and less sense, but maintains the energy it clearly wants to aspire to. The sort of film tedious "reviewers" on Youtube like to cite, although is better experienced without being told how bad it is. I have failed.

 

3/5

[Silent Runner]

Sweetheart
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10919362/

 

A socially awkward, environmentally conscious teenager named AJ is dragged to a coastal holiday park by her painfully 'normal' family, where she becomes unexpectedly captivated by a chlorine smelling, sun-loving lifeguard named Isla.

 

This is a British, debut feature that covers fairly well-worn territory but doesn't really do anything new. A family go on holiday to a caravan park, the annoying teenage daughter falls for a pretty lifeguard who works at the park, there's some arguments and it ends.

 

I get what the director was trying for here but the lead performance is straight from Kevin and Perry - her look and mannerisms are pure Harry Enfield and it's impossible to see past it. It looks nice enough, the shots of the coast and the seaside are good and there's some colourful interiors. The music is fairly forgettable, I don't think there's any licences tracks on it. I was pretty bored by the end.

 

2/5

[SpagMasterSwift]

Shadow in the cloud

 

Possibly the most ridiculous movie of the year, but the determination by  Chloë Grace Moretz to sell it with a straight face was at least admirable. 

 

2/5

[Triple A]

Spider-Man No Way Home

 

Quality writing with a ton of heart.  Go in as cold as you can.

Top 5 MCU movie for sure, maybe top 3.

 

4

[Mikes]

The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do it

 

...Shit, I don't know....2? I honestly have trouble remembering what happened. It was all very bland.

[Talvalin]

10 hours ago, Triple A said:

Spider-Man No Way Home

 

Quality writing with a ton of heart.  Go in as cold as you can.

Top 5 MCU movie for sure, maybe top 3.

 

4

 

I think there was an article about the reveals now being part of the hype train rollout for each new film, so going in cold means avoiding a large swathe of the internet for months at a time for MCU films (possibly not helped by certain cast members not giving a fuck and openly talking about their involvement but eh). That said, IGN (I know, if I wanted to keep it a surprise, why the fuck am I reading reviews eh?) said something along the lines of there being plenty of surprises beyond the trailer so maybe I won't be completely spoiled between now and when I eventually watch it.

[Triple A]

I'm of full understanding that the campaign for something makes part of its total offering.

Marvel/Sony etc. will have debated the campaign for this movie in particular, a lot.

My personal view is that elements from themes and motifs through to specific details, would have hit even harder had they not been publicised.  Some people want/need the context etc. that the promo campaign would provide, me not so much.

[Bazjam]

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover - 5/5

 

Haven't watched this (or any Greenaway film) since the late eighties, early nineties, and was a bit worried it wouldn't hold up, or come across as pretentious wank. But I needn't have worried, it's great. The cast are all fantastic, and the set design is second to none. This could well be the most visually stunning British film ever made. And of course there is the soundtrack. Michael Nyman really is one of the very best.

[glb]

Days of Bagnold Summer - 2/5 (FilmFour/All4)

 

Inoffensive but pretty slight. Not a bad way to pass an hour and a half, just not a particularly memorable one.

 

Superintelligence - 2/5 (Sky Cinema)

 

If you’re going to make a comedy about a super intelligent AI, don’t get James Corden to voice it. Wanted more of the chemistry between Melissa McCarty and Bobby Cannavale, which deserved a far better film.

 

Val - 4/5 (Prime / Sky Documentaries)

 

A really poignant documentary about Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s great enigmas. Told through home footage video it reveals far more than most such portraits usually do. Won’t say too much more but think he comes across far better than the gutter gossip columns chose to portray him.

[Nick R]

For A Few Dollars More

4/5

 

In A Fistful of Dollars, the thing the villain did that made poetic sense but very little logical sense was to always aim his gun at the heart, not the head. (You might say it made sense in the heart, but not the head. 😏)

 

In For a Few Dollars More, the equivalent thing that I found bothersome is that the "fire your gun when the music stops" rule actually disadvantages the villain who initiates it, because the tune has a slight false ending! The pocket watch chimes slow down towards the end, so that it's hard to tell when they've stopped completely, and then seem to pause for a moment before playing one last note that really does signal the end. Anyone who doesn't know the tune would take this momentary rest as the signal to fire - but our baddie Indio, who does know the tune (and mostly seems to play fair by it), would wait until the real ending a beat later:

 

*Chimes slow down... and slow down...*

*Chimes go silent for a beat*

*Challenger who doesn't know the tune takes this to be the ending, and fires at Indio*

*Chimes play one last note for real*

Challenger: "Oh crap, I thought it had finished! Sorry about that, Indio!"

 

The absence of a sound makes a pretty ambiguous signal for someone to react to. What's more, the people Indio duels are really really angry at him, making it even more likely that they'd jump the gun and fire early!

 

So the guy who initiates the rule is put at a disadvantage by it! That seems a very silly way to conduct a duel, if you ask me.

 

That bit of pedantic nitpicking about the film's central gimmick bothered me so much when I first saw the film about 15 years ago, that it's stuck in my memory as the main reason this was my least favourite of the Dollars/Man With No Name trilogy.

 

But watching the first two films again in the last few months, I'd like to retract that opinion. In almost every respect, FAFDM is one of the sequels that improves on its predecessor.

 

Are we all in agreement that Lee Van Cleef out-badasses Clint Eastwood in this film? We are? Good? Good.

[Jamie John]

There Will Be Blood (2007)

 

 

Up there with my favourite ever films. Everything about it. The writing. The performances. The photography. The score. The lighting. Funny and repulsive and heart-breaking and utterly enthralling from start to finish.

 

Magisterial.

 

5/5

[kthxbliz]

21 (2008) 

 

Entertaining enough without being anything particularly special. I like how they wrap it all up with a final little twist reaffirming that the house always wins. 
 

2.5/5 (Rewatch).

 

High Crimes (2002)

 

I’ll preface this by saying I’m a sucker for legal and courtroom thrillers / dramas. This definitely had a 90s cliche overacted vibe to me. A Few Good Men this is sadly not. I’m adding half a point because Amanda Peet is so hot and does the slutty sister role well but when that is the notable highlight it gives you an idea of the moves overall limitations.

 

2/5

 

12 Angry Men (1997)

The original is definitely one of my favourite films of all time so I was a little nervous and skeptical of any 90s attempt at a remake. While I think that Gandolfini could have given us more, Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott were excellent and I found this a respectful remake clearly made with a lot of heart and a great desire to keep it it as true to the original as possible.

 

4/5