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The Last Movie(s) You Watched... (quick one or two sentence reviews)

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Panos Cosmatos' first film (before Mandy) draws on most of the same '70s and '80s film references that the Duffer Brothers did for Stranger Things, but doesn't incorporate any real story elements or character-building. It's painfully-slow cinema with an ending that almost seems like it came out of nowhere.

Blood Simple (1984)
I'd heard the Coen Brothers' first film was a pretty straight-forward neo-noir thriller, so I was all on board since No Country is my favorite film of theirs. The directing is a striking debut, but the writing of characters and motivations is frustrating. Worth seeking out for Coens fans, if not for others.

Hands of Stone (2016)
One of the few films to tell a Panamanian story, I was struck by the performances in this, especially Ana de Armas injecting layers into a somewhat thankless role. The boxing scenes are pretty bad, the drama is scattershot, the nationalism is skewed, but Armas is achingly-hot and liberally naked so it's pretty much a must-see for straight men/gay women/anyone-who-finds-Armas-hot/everyone.
 
^^ any movie can be summed up in a sentence ;) sometimes summing a film up in a single sentence can be the difference between it getting greenlit and not.
 
^^ I'll have to watch it first :unsure: Been meaning to read the book for an eternity.
 
Cloud Atlas is an interlocking series of short stories set in various timeframes from the far past to distant futures, showing the repetitions of themes in interpersonal relationships echoing through humanity's shared narrative, emphasized (to limited effect) by the same cast rotating through different roles in each epoch.
 
No offense intended if you like it, but another take:
Cloud Atlas is a pretentious anthology whose production choices confuse and ultimately derail an admittedly admirable attempt at telling a story about humanity.
 
^^^ Yep, that. My wife and I both like Tom Hanks' work, but we didn't finish this one--only had time to watch it in pieces on streaming...and forgot to watch the last part. Not a good recommendation.
 
asterixsmeagol said:
Cloud Atlas is an interlocking series of short stories set in various timeframes from the far past to distant futures, showing the repetitions of themes in interpersonal relationships echoing through humanity's shared narrative, emphasized (to limited effect) by the same cast rotating through different roles in each epoch.
Click to expand...
That is an impressive abuse of sentence structure. ;) Well done.

Ok, clearly I have to be more ambitious:
Sum up Sorry To Bother You in a sentence.
 
Gonna cheat here and post a couple reviews that are kinda sorta not really movies...

Macross II: Lovers Again (1992)
There is a movie cut of this but I watched the 160 minute mini-series. It's a somewhat unloved sequel to the classic Macross/Robotech series that happens 80s years later and hits many of the same plot points (as anime sequels are wont to do) but from a different angle. It's free on Youtube and has enough meta-commentary on Post-WWII Japan that I found it worth a watch.

Mezzo Forte (2000)
Another anime that is up on Youtube in 2 parts, I watched the version that thankfully cuts out the egregious hentai stuff. What's left is essentially a Michael Bay film with a Japanese twist. Not as good as the director's previous, Kite.

Caserta Palace Dream (2014)
Another up free on Youtube, this short film from James McTeigue (V For Vendetta) has all his glossy style but lacks a great narrative. Still, Richard Dreyfuss and stunning Italian scenery make this worth a watch.
 
The Power of the Dog. I have never really warmed to Jane Campion movies, but I liked this one. Do not read anything about it before watching. Absolutely nothing. Even this is too much so stop reading it.
 
JFK (1991)
My Oliver Stone marathon continues. It's funny, on Letterboxd, the consensus goes something like "The conspiracy theory is pretty ridiculous but this is some great filmmaking", which is a strange tact to take for a movie that often sacrifices audience engagement in order to better lay out the case for a conspiracy. It's a film that doesn't pretend to have figured out every aspect, but simply points out what is supposedly 'the truth' that we plainly know doesn't fit. That elements of the US government are lying about some of these events is indisputable; the only thing that remains is to find out why. Stone presents a compelling case.

Raging Phoenix (2009)
After her insane breakthrough in the film Chocolate, JeeJa Yanin should have been a martial arts/action film world star. Alas, this was her follow-up. A breakdancing/parkour/kung fu hybrid film should have been insane fun, but it fails on nearly every conceivable level.

Very Good Girls (2013)
Child star royalty Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen as high school seniors who want to lose their virginity before going off to college. Inexplicably, they're having trouble with this. Writing/directing debut of the Gyllenhaal's momma, it's about 20 years too late and seems like Sofia Coppola-lite, but it's got a killer cast and is better than the average rom-com.
 
The Courier. A Benedict Cumber-batch. After just seeing his excellent performance in The Power of the Dog, we watched The Courier. It’s a very John LeCarre type 60s era spy story. It’s very well done and it’s a shame, both, that it isn’t getting more attention and movies like this don’t get made more often. I loved it!
 
Spider-Man: No Way Home

Holland is great here, he's not the clown, he's not Tony Jr, he lives and breathes pure Peter Parker, making mistakes, paying the price, allows doubt to creep in, before ultimately striving to do better.
 
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