Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo

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Inglorious Basterds (2009) dir Quentin Tarantino

 

 

When putting together my list of favourite films from each year of my life I picked this for 2009, but until now I had never seen the whole film, all the way through in one sitting, just watched parts when it has been on TV. It's a WWII film, mainly, about a group of Jewish-American soldiers (name as in the film's title) operating behind enemy lines in occupied France, terrorising the Germans, and ultimately taking part in a mission to try and assassinate the entire n*zi leadership. But there is much more to the story than that with other plot lines. It is presented in chapters, each of which is almost like a short film in it's own right, that connects to the others, but they don't all feature the same characters, and some characters never meet each other.

It has a great ensemble cast, too many to mention all in detail. I guess you can just about say Brad Pitt plays the main character, Lt Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds. Christopher Walz won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Col Hans Landa. Often the bad guy roles stand out, and this is no exception to that. Landa is a truly evil, virulently anti-Semitic n*zi, assigned by Hitler to find all remaining Jews France. Melanie Laurent is also worth a mention as Shosanna Dreyfus, the lone survivor of a Jewish family that Landa had found and killed, now running the cinema in Paris where different plot elements come together. The others in the supporting roles include Eli Roth, Daniel Bruhl, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger and August Diehl. There's also a couple of cameo roles from Mike Myers (almost unrecognisable as a British General, who refers to distances in kilometres not miles! - I think that must have been deliberate) and Harvey Keitel (voice on other end of a radio conversation). The soundtrack is great, from a variety of composers and performers, featuring quite a few Ennio Morricone pieces, from other films he worked on, such as The Battle of Algiers and various westerns.

It's a very well written script, as you would expect from Tarantino. It's not a comedy but not that serious at times, like most of his films. Similarly can be quite violent, not hard given the genre, but there are rather more graphic scenes than your average war film includes. There are a couple of scenes of intense drama. One that stands out is when Shosanna is forced to  meets Landa, she knows who he is but he does not remember her. The meeting is just about a film the Germans want her to screen for them. She just about manages to keep her composure before breaking down after he leaves.

 

9/10

 

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My document with my reviews on it got corrupted and I can't be bothered to re-write them, so this one will be a bite-sized special.  Normal service will resume next week.

What I Watched This Week 157 (Dec 30-Jan 5 2025)

Sweet Smell of Success 

dir. Alexander Mackendrick/1957/1h37m 

 

Burt Lancaster plays a ruthless, influential New York columnist who manipulates sleazy publicist Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) into breaking up his sister's relationship with a jazz guitarist by any means necessary.  They both give amazing performances as totally contemptable *ssholes, with a moody jazz score matching the tone perfectly.  9/10

Two Adam Elliot shorts:

Harvie Krumpet

2003/23m 

 

 

Ernie Biscuit

2015/21m 

 

Less autobiographical than his other work, these two claymation shorts are character studies of two foreigners who inadvertently end up in Australia, a Polish man with Tourette's and a deaf French taxidermist.  Celebrating the beauty of life even when it's at its most bleak these are two very life-affirming films may lack the personal touch of his other films but are still very good.  A combined score of 8/10

Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars

dir. Jean-Luc Godard/2023/20m 

 

A posthumous work by the legendary French director who passed away in 2022, this is an avant-garde collage essay film where he is in discussion with the very act of filmmaking.  Handmade and tactile, this is sometimes incomprehensible to a moron like me, but I love how this goes beyond experimental and shows how innovative JLG was right into his nineties.  7/10

I Saw the TV Glow

dir. Jane Schoenbrun/2024/1h40m 

 

Teenager Owen (Justice Smith) and his friend Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) are obsessed with an old TV show, The Pink Opaque.  Soon his reality starts to fracture and he believes that he is one of the characters trapped in another dimension.  A real soft burn of a sci-fi film, much like the recent The Vast of Night, this acts as an allegory for the trans experience that is never preachy.  A fantastic synth score adds to the nostalgic feel of the film.  8.5/10

Werckmeister Harmonies

dir. Bela Tarr/2000/2h19m 

 

Lars Rudolph  plays a postman in a small Hungarian village that is one day visited by a circus where the main attraction is a stuffed whale.  Soon after, the village sees an escalation in violence as society starts to break down.  Grimly beautiful and hypnotic, this is made up of very long shots with the camera roving and exploring the space, as is Tarr's trademark, some going for over ten minutes before cutting.  Ever since I watched Satantango and it became my favourite film of all time I've been scared to watch any more of his work because it couldn't possibly compare.  I was wrong.  10/10 Lime's Film of the Week!

Knock at the Cabin

dir. M. Night Shyamalan/2023/1h40m 

 

Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge play a couple with a young daughter who are visited at their cabin in the woods by Dave Bautista's Leonard and his crew, who have an improbable and impossible task for them.  Very Twilight Zone and pulpy, this is elevated by the lead performance from Bautista.  Being a Shyamalan film I was waiting for a huge shock twist at the end, and was left somewhat disappointed by the lack thereof, with the payoff not living up to the set up much like the recent Heretic.  Still a fun watch though.  7/10

A Countess from Hong Kong

dir. Charlie Chaplin/1967/1h47m 

 

Chaplin's final film (though he only has a cameo appearance here) stars Marlon Brando as a US diplomat in Hong Kong who is traveling back to America, but a Russian countess played by Sophia Loren, has stowed away in his cabin.  This feels cheap, with most of the action taking place in a couple of sets, and Marlon Brando, as talented an actor as he is, is just not funny.  Loren was fun, and Chaplin's son Sydney is very good as Brando's assistant, but this is a long way from his best work.  6.5/10

Finding Nemo

dir. Andrew Stanton/2003/1h40m 

 

Clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) has to go on an epic journey across the ocean after his son Nemo (Alexander Gould) is captured by a diver.  Pixar's streak of bangers continues here as this is one of their very best films.  It still looks amazing, with the underwater world looking bright and full of life, and their human characters no longer induce nightmares.  The script is funny and touching with not a second of wasted time.  10/10

Two Radu Jude shorts:

The Tube with a Hat

2006/25m 

 

Shadow of a Cloud

2013/30m 

 

Two films from the Romanian filmmaker here, including his very first, which is about a father and his son taking their broken TV to the local village to get repaired.  Shadow of a Cloud follows a priest who is asked to pray over a dying woman, but not all of her relatives are happy about it.  These films don't really feel like Jude films, as we know them now.  There's no sense of surreal absurdity but the style comes close at points, particularly Shadow of a Cloud.  Following the priest around feels like a prelude to the recent Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World.  A combined 7/10

Ostinato

dir. Sonia Furier/2024/7m

(no trailer for this)

This animated short is about a composer trying to write a piece on the piano, but her tinnitus keeps getting in her way, until she finds a way to make the discordant noise a part of her composition.  This is a very vibrant film, though the animation does feel a little cheap at times.  Decent enough but it feels insubstantial.  5.5/10

Edited January 7 by LimeGreenLegend

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Wifelike (2022) dir James Bird

 

 

 

 

There have been quite a few films in the last few years about life-like, AI, android companions, and they are nothing new, think of Ridely Scott's' Bladerunner (1982) and Steven Spielberg's AI (2001). This is another, and it's a really badly made film. I was almost tempted to turn it off and find something else, but I haven't given a film a really bad rating for a while, so I thought I would persevere. Set in not that distant future a company, Wifelike, is making artificial wives for those very wealthy men able to afford them. These are basically very expensive s*x toys and, not surprisingly, there is a vocal protest movement campaigning against them. Some of the protestors steal and “liberate” the artificial wives, others have found a way to hack into them and turn them into weapons to use against their owners and the company. So there is a special police squad who's job it is to find and return the missing ones. The main character, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is one of these agents and the best there is. So following the death of this human wife the company has provided him with an artificial version of her played by Eleanor Kampouris, who also plays the human wife in flash back scenes. She then starts to have strange dreams and appears to be getting contacted by a group of the protestors, who her husband then tracks down.

Rhys Meyers's acting is truly awful in this, as is that of most of the rest of cast. Kampouris is OK, but the way she plays the artificial wife, I assumed instructed to do so by the director, is very silly. They over accentuate the artificialness of her movements and speech at first before she learns how to do those things properly. This made no sense to me. If the company has the technology to design and build these things then surely they can train them to walk and talk in the factory. There are other plot elements that are similarly nonsensical or highly implausible too.

I cannot work out what sort of film this was meant to be. Maybe it was a terribly executed attempt at a serious film looking at the ethics of this sort of thing if / when it ever becomes possible, i.e. when does a machine become so intelligent and aware of it's own existence that it should be granted human-like rights and be allowed to decide who it lives and sleeps with? Or maybe it was just meant to be a cheap thriller, an excuse to show lots of scantily clad, sometimes naked, women and have a few fight scenes for some action? Either way it's a bad film.

If you think you might like this, watch Bladerunner instead,

3/10

Edited Sunday at 12:40 PM by djw180

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What I Watched This Week #158 (Jan 6-12)

The Taste of Things
dir. Tran Anh Hung/2023/2h15m 

This French drama is set in 1899 and stars Benoit Magimel as renowned chef Dodin Bouffant who lives and works with his lover of over twenty years, Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), who has repeatedly rebuffed his proposals of marriage.  This is a gentle and understated romance that shows how much real love and care goes into a meal, and in turn how the process of preparing those meals is a way for Benoit and Eugenie to display their emotions for each other.  This is a sumptuously shot film that revels in the food on display, really taking its time in making it look as delicious as possible, and they've succeeded on that front.  There's not really a plot that propels the film, it's more a study of this couple, but it does hit some big emotional beats yet never strays into melodrama.  Magimel and Binoche are wonderful here, you can really feel the decades of affection between them just in the way they are able to share the space in the frame so comfortably.   I was also impressed by the young Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire as Pauline, a girl who has a talent for cooking and becomes an apprentice to Dodin, and almost a daughter figure to him and Eugenie, bringing them even closer together.  A feast for the eyes and the soul.  9.5/10 Lime's Film of the Week!

Smoking Causes Coughing
dir. Quentin Dupieux/2022/1h17m 

When the world is threatened by the Emperor of Evil, Lezardin (Benoit Poelvoorde), who are you gonna call?  Tobacco Force!  A cigarette themed team of five superheroes – and their robot assistant Norbert 500 (Ferdinand Canaud) – but not before they've gone on a team building trip to boost morale on the orders of their chief, a rat puppet that drools green goo.  Imagine Power Rangers but weird and French and you're halfway there.  The other half is made up of a handful of stories told by the characters – and a barracuda at one point – that escalate in both surrealness and grotesqueness.  What I love about the weird worlds of Quentin Dupieux is that when he has an idea, no matter how strange it is, he goes all in.  What really makes this film work is how seriously and sincerely the characters are, especially the leader of Tobacco Force, Benzene (Gilles Lellouche).  A brilliantly bizarre anti-superhero film.  8.5/10

Police Story
dir. Jackie Chan/1985/1h39m 

Jackie Chan directs and stars as Hong Kong cop Chan Ka Kui who is tasked with protecting the star witness in the trial of a major drug-lord, the gangster's secretary Selina (Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia).  The plot here is very simple and predicable, but that's not what you're watching this for.  You're here for the amazing stunt set-pieces and innovative and intricately choreographed fight scenes, and this film has an abundance of both.  It starts off with a car chase that destroys an entire shanty town and finishes with a fight that trashes a shopping mall.  These scenes aren't just about the action but are also packed with personality thanks to Chan.  He's like a silent-era comedian at times with his slapstick style and it makes him so endearing.  He owes as much to Charlie Chaplin as he does Bruce Lee.  The supporting cast are fine but none really match up to Chan, and the final third feels rushed and ends abruptly, but this is still an exciting and entertaining ride.  8/10

Pandora's Box
dir. G.W. Pabst/1929/2h15m 

Pandora's Box is a hugely influential silent drama that stars Louise Brooks as Lulu, a woman so captivating and beautiful that men can't help but fall obsessively in love with her, leading to the downfall of all involved.  Her four main suitors are newspaper publisher Dr. Schon (Fritz Kortner), his son Alwa (Francis Lederer), seedy old man Schigolch (Carl Goetz) and circus strongman Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Rasching).  They spend the film acting as both ally and enemy to each other as they all vie to possess Lulu.  And, controversially for the time, there is an implied l*sbian relationship between Lulu and Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts).  This is an excellently shot film with great use of shadows to set the mood and some really eye catching compositions.  Brooks, with her iconic bob hairstyle, is captivating in the lead as she's not just a femme fatale leading men to their doom but a victim herself, and she goes through a wide range of emotions that are conveyed more subtly then you would normally expect for this era.  It is a bit slow to get going, but once we're introduced to our main cast of characters it becomes a real tragedy of near epic proportions.  9/10

The Foul King
dir. Kim Jee-woon/2000/1h52m 

This is a Korean comedy starring Song Kang-ho, who has gone on to become one of the countries most respected actors, as a hapless loser of a bank clerk who suffers the ultimate humiliation of being head-locked by his boss (Song Young-chan) in the bathroom.  In response he starts training to be a wrestler under the tutelage of Jang Chil-sam (Jang Hang-seon), becoming a popular heel – bad-guy wrestler – and more confident in his personal life.  This is a really endearing film with a quirky and offbeat sense of humour that never feels zany or over the top.  Song is excellent in the lead, and he looks like a pretty decent wrestler, he has a very nice drop-kick.  In fact, all of the wrestling scenes are really well done and gives a pretty good insight into what the business is really like.  This is a classic underdog story but with a punchline at the end of every scene, even the very last one where you think he's going to get some measure of revenge on his boss.  Just like you don't need to be a fan of boxing to like Rocky, you can have no interest in wrestling and still have a blast watching this charming and funny film.  9/10

The Fast and the Furious
dir. Rob Cohen/2001/1h46m 

The first film of the long running series stars Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, leader of a gang of street racers who are also suspected of being behind the heists of several trucks carrying DVD players (they really raised the stakes in subsequent films).  Paul Walker is Brian O'Conner, the undercover cop sent to infiltrate them.  This is such a time capsule of the early 2000s from the music to the fashion to the cinematography and editing – once I heard Limp Bizkit's Rollin' playing at a car meet early on I knew it was on.  None of the performances are bad but none really stand out either, but I did like the sincerity with which everything was delivered, particularly in the scenes between Diesel and Walker.  It's become a meme that these films are all about “family”, but you really do believe that these characters care deeply about each other.  If you're into cars then you'll get more out of this – most of them look ugly as hell to me – and there are a couple of nice chase scenes, but a lot of them suffer from the choppy and hyper kinetic editing of the time that makes it hard to see what's actually going on.  6.5/10

Legend
dir. Ridley Scott/1985/1h34m 

Ridley Scott's fairy-tale fantasy stars a young Tom Cruise as Jack, a forest dwelling lil fella who must go on an heroic quest to rescue Princess Lili (Mia Sara) and save the world from the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry).  The plot here is very basic and predicable, full of all of the usual fairy-tale tropes and cliches – unicorns, goblins, fairies, etc – but, as with The Fast and the Furious, the sincerity of Cruise's performance really sells it and gets you invested.  He's kinda perfect as this pure and innocent fairy-tale hero.  Curry is as wonderful as he always is and even though he doesn't show up until late in the game he still manages to run away with the film.  He's almost unrecognisable under layers of incredible looking makeup that is genuinely intimidating, and he lets that makeup do a lot of the work, giving what is for him quite an understated performance, though there are still a few choice cuts of ham in there.  The production and costumes also nail that fairy-tale aesthetic, with everything covered in glitter.  Not quite on the level of contemporary family-friendly fantasy films like Labyrinth, this still has its share of charm and magic.  7/10

The Green Man
dir. Robert Day, Basil Dearden/1956/1h20m 

Alastair Sim stars as Hawkins, an unassuming watchmaker who is also a professional assassin whose speciality is explosives in this quaint and charming British black comedy.  His latest target is sleazy politician Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) who he plans to take out at the titular hotel where he has gone for a weekend rendezvous with his secretary Joan (Eileen Moore).  Getting in his way are new neighbour Ann (Jill Adams) and vacuum cleaner salesman William (George Cole) who team up to play amateur detectives.  Sim is excellent in the lead, able to switch from charming to malicious with the slightest change of expression or tone of voice, and I really like the pairing of Adams and Cole, who was particularly funny as a bumbling but well meaning salesman.  Terry-Thomas and his iconic gap-toothed smile also makes a memorable appearance as a hotel guest.  The gentle yet dark comedy is right up my aisle, though it's not quite as dark or as funny as the Ealing films of the time like Kind Hearts and Coronets and most famously of all The Ladykillers.  But that's not a fair comparison as those films are out and out masterpieces.  Not quite a classic, this film is still a blast.  8/10

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David Lynch, my favourite filmmaker of all time, died yesterday aged 78.  Not only did he make some of the best films I've ever seen - Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive - but was also, by all accounts, a wonderful person who was just as strange as his films.  

I think this video sums him up perfectly and, if you've never seen any of his work, will make you want to check them out (I'd start with The Elephant Man).