Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Cunk on Life [2024] - deadpan documentarian Philomna Cunk breaks down life and what it all means. Very funny, highly recommend.

There is also a series released last year on Netflix called "Cunk on Earth" that consists of 5 - 30 minute episodes that I would recommend watching first to see if you like it. If you do, you'll love the movie.

 

Nosferatu
2024

Eggers is one of my favorite directors and Nosferatu is another high quality film from he and his team. The movie features his trademark impeccable attention to period detail and stunning cinematography. The actors are all top notch as is the score and overall production.

Nosferatu is one of the best versions of this story and one of the best films of 2024. Will definitely be adding this on physical media when it is released.

 

The Formula. The Formula has a little bit of seventies conspiracy thriller atmosphere, it has George C. Scott and Marlon Brando, it has Nazis. But it doesn’t have a convincing plot, and it doesn’t find a way to be particularly engaging, so it just stumbles along.

The plot has Scott as a cop investigating a murder that leads him into a big conspiracy to hide the existence of a Nazi formula for synthetic gasoline. It’s a dull, trite conspiracy-theory concept where nobody uses the breakthrough that could make them rich because, woooooo, oil companies are evil! The film is so dumb that it squanders the little bit of atmosphere that it generates. Mostly it’s just Scott talking to people who immediately get killed, the kind of overly convenient conspiracy plotting that comes off as lazy, not menacing. It’s not worth the time.

 

Pocahantas (1995)
Period accounts of her life are contradictory, and Disney manages to contradict all of those as well. I wasn't expecting exact historical accuracy, but this is just way out there. Artwork is mostly good-looking. Characters are 2-d at best. Cartoon animal antics are annoying. Songs are forgettable, except Colors of the Wind, which I kind of like.

 

I'm envious; the last time I was in a theater (late November at an AMC for Gladiator II), there was 7-goddamn trailers, plus an ad for Coca-Cola AND a Nicole Kidman AMC promo. Infuriating.

 

I plan to watch this back to back with Gladiator II.

(Never thought we'd ever get a sequel to that last one and it seems pretty unnecessary.)

But yeah, I hear that Nosferatu is loyal to the vampire lore.

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The January Man detective Nick Starkey is forced to leave the police force following a scandal and becomes a fire fighter. When a serial killer is stalking NY his brother, the commissioner, reinstates him to help catch the killer. Can he crack the case with the help of his new love interest (the mayors daughter), his former flame who’s now married to his brother and his weird artist companion?

This has a good cast with Kevin Kline as Nick, Harvey Keitel as his brother and the gorgeous Susan Sarandon and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as his former and current love interests respectively. But it doesn’t exactly keep an even tone, it’s bordering on brutal with the killers methods and yet it’s lurches to zany with some of Klines antics and without spoiling anything the finale almost becomes slapstick. Still it’s an ok thriller, that I guess can sit comfortably alongside this late 90s / early 90s genre of serial killer films.

 

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2025)

Everyone's favorite sweet and gentle character is back, along with his rather eccentric human owner. Thirty years ago, Aardman Animation won many awards for its celebrated short film, The Wrong Trousers; where Wallace and Gromit meet penguin who moves in and develops a plan to steal a precious diamond from the local museum. In this new film (a Netflix exclusive), the incarcerated penguin has a new plan to get back at both of them. It's a charming film with some lighthearted comedy as you'd expect in the franchise.

 

Gladiator II (2024)
Directed by: Ridley Scott

Whenever Macrinus is not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Macrinus?"

Anyway, as someone who likes the original, but doesn't have any paritcular attachment to it, I had a good time with this one. Script is kind of a mess, but Scott serves up some solid meatheaded sword-and-sandals spectacle.

 

Gladiator II

The dumbness of this movie was most perfectly described by "What we do in life echoes in eternity" written in English on the wall of the Maximus shrine. Scott valued the intelligence of his audience so little that he thought that line from Gladiator had to be written in English, on a wall, even though a character speaks it out loud in English. That scene represents the rest of the movie perfectly. Please, Hollywood (including Scott). Try to understand that ancient history is way more interesting than the hack writers you employ to interpret it. And then make movies set in ancient times again.

And whatever you do, do not cast Paul Mescal in any of them.

Don't taint your Nosferatu experience by watching Gladiator II after it. I'd say don't watch the latter at all, but if you feel compelled to do so, watch it as far away from Nosferatu as possible, so that you don't accidentally associate the two in your head in the future. Trust me. This is important.

 

Five Graves to Cairo. I’ll generally enjoy any wartime movie about beating the Nazis, but one by Billy Wilder? You bet I’m interested.

Five Graves to Cairo reworks a play set during World War I, and does a good job of updating it for the current war. Franchot Tone plays a British soldier stranded in the desert after a defeat who manages to stagger into a hotel run by Akim Tamiroff. The Germans arrive soon after and make the hotel headquarters for Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), and Tamiroff passes Tone off as a dead waiter to protect him. But it turns out the waiter was actually a German spy, and Tone is now trusted by Rommel. He uses his position to gather intelligence, but has to deal with the hostility of French maid Anne Baxter, a defeatist who resents the British for failing to save France and would prefer to curry favor with the Germans to get her brother out of captivity.

It’s a quick-moving picture full of intrigue and tension, and Wilder of course ably handles it. The cast is solid, with von Stroheim’s bombastic performance as the arrogant field marshal a particular highlight. It’s not just a good wartime propaganda flick; it’s a good movie period.

 

I had to re-read this about 3 times, cause I thought is was something that need a spoiler tag

 

Into the Woods (2014)
I'm not really a fan of Sondheim. He's a good composer, I get that, just not my taste. Still, for a fairy tale starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, and Christine Baranski, I'll give it a chance. Turns out the real scene-stealer was the little girl playing Red Riding Hood. James Corden was much better than I expected too. The story went darker than I expected, and dragged on longer than it needed. Also, Depp's Big Bad Wolf was really icky, and not in a good way.

 

A Complete Unknown
2024

It's great. The songwriting is great.
The music is great. The cast is great.

It's a nice clean cut film about a song and dance man from a carnival in New Mexico.

 

I'm just gonna try to forget that you don't like Sondheim

 

Violence. Eddie Muller introduced Violence on Noir Alley by admitting it’s not good, but describing it as interesting. A cheap, short B movie, it’s clumsy and not very engaging, but it’s boldly topical, tackling veterans’ postwar frustrations and the dangers of demagoguery. I get Muller’s angle, but I don’t think it’s even that interesting.

Nancy Coleman plays a reporter undercover as a secretary in a veterans’ organization run by Emory Parnell. Parnell is a demagogue who plays on the resentments of alienated veterans in the weak postwar economy to build up fortune and power. The whole thing is a violent, populist scam, as Parnell is just a crook, but Coleman’s exposé is in danger after she gets amnesia.

The plot is nonsense, and Parnell’s whole scheme is more incoherent than topical. It’s all over the map and it’s never very clear what he’s actually supposed to be after or how he’s selling anybody on his venture. The whole film is a mishmash of ideas and bad cliches stuffed into one of the worst narrative structures I’ve seen for a while. Even under an hour and a quarter, it’s not worth anyone’s time.

 

Nosferatu- The new one. This is actually the one of his films that I like the least. There are a couple factors at play here. First, he really excels in immersing us in cultural contexts outside our own. But this one was either already the most intelligible to modern Western audiences, or else least well realized, or probably both. Further, they usually lead to interesting philosophical considerations. Here, we don't get much outside of "What if evil needs a Bang Maid?" Acting, atmosphere and story-telling is still great, but this one fell sort of flat for me.

 

Let Go (2024)

A Swedish film about a family therapist who asks his own wife for a divorce; but she's apprehensive about it and pushes him to take one last trip together as a family, with their two children. It's a poignant drama that will likely have you crying by the end.

 

I'm usually a huge fan of Sondheim, but this movie is a very mixed bag. Streep is fantastic, and I especially love her rendition of Last Midnight. Chris Pine is a hoot, and his rendition of Agony is pretty damn funny. And...that's basically it. The rest of it is pretty forgettable, and I agree with you 100% on the casting of Johnny Depp

And if I got those song titles wrong, I don't care

 

Despite all the disturbing visuals, Nosferatu doesn't pack anything remotely close to the punch of The Lighthouse.

 

I should really watch that last one.

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Uprising (2024)
South Korean action drama about slaves caught up in the Japanese invasion of Joseon. There is some very nice sword-fighting choreography, but the film is good but never great,imo.

 

Oh, I'm interested in this. I'll check it out!

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