What did you watch this week pretty eyes?(04/22-04/28)

My ratings of what you watched:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 7/10
Precious 7/10
Wanted 7/10
I own The Handmaiden on blu ray but haven't watched it yet.

My ratings of what I watched:
Ocean's Eleven (1960) 5/10
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) 4/10
Seven Psychopaths (2012) 7/10
A Decent Woman (2016) 6/10
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (2009) 5/10
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) 6/10
We Go Way Back (2006) 7/10

Movies:

-Night Game (1989)
A thriller starring Roy Scheider. Not good. Felt more like a 70s movie.

-Troll 2 (1990)
Ridiculously funny movie. Not as funny as The Room (which I'm gonna watch next Friday!), but still, that popcorn scene!

-Arachnoquake (2012)
Wow, ab-so-lute crap.

TV Shows:

-The Librarians - "And the Graves of Time"

-Midsomer Murders - "Who killed Cock Robin?" and "Dark Autumn"
The end of season 4, so here's where I'm gonna stop.

-The Flying Doctors - "E.T.- New Girl in Town"

-Man About the House - "The Party's Over!"
First episode of season 6.

-Family Matters - marathon

-Hotel - marathon

-Unsolved Mysteries - marathon

-The Bold and the Beautiful - marathon of very old episodes

-Buffy The Vampire Slayer - "Inca Mummy Girl" and "Reptile Boy".

Movies:
Star Wars Last Jedi 6/10
Kingsman Golden Circle 5/10
A Quiet Place 3/10
Resolution 6/10
Goodnight Mummy 5/10
Raw 7/10
Ready Player One 6/10

TV Shows
Walking Dead Season 8 1/10
Le Chalet 8/10

[deleted]

You Were Never Really Here (2017) - What a screwed up movie. A veteran with PTSD ( Joaquin Phoenix) helps track down a missing girl. Are we suppose to take this movie literally or is it more like The Killing of a Scared Deer ?? I honestly don't know. 5/10

World War Z (2014) - Former United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself. A somewhat entertaining zombie film. Brad Pitt was not convincing enough. 6.5/10

Detective Story (1951) - On one day in the 21st Precinct squad room, assorted characters form a backdrop for the troubles of hard-nosed Detective Jim McLeod. Kirk Douglas plays Mcleod who is a self-righteous asshole with no redeeming qualities. At the end they tried to redeem him real fast. The ending was also a bit hokey with the last rites thing. Solid movie until the end. Lee Grant was very good in an Oscar nominated performance. The movie reminded me of Barney Miller. 7/10

Vera Cruz (1954) - During the Mexican Rebellion of 1866, an unsavory group of American adventurers are hired by the forces of Emperor Maximilian to escort a countess to Vera Cruz. Burt Lancaster is at his swaggering best in this movie and steals the show from Gary Cooper. An Entertaining western. 7.5/10

Burden of Truth (2018) Season 1 - A Canadian produced drama following a big city lawyer who goes back to her hometown to take the case of a group of girls suffering from a mysterious illness. Kristin Kreuk was pretty good in the lead role. The plot was fairly compelling considering that no one dies in the whole series. 7/10

i've seen all of the movies on your list, a first since i began contributing, i believe.

i think i may have been the person who mentioned diving bell. i watched it quite recently, and thought it was an absolute masterpiece. i also read the book shortly afterwar, and thought it was also truly great. if you like the film, i very much recommend that as well. it's quite short, probably could be read in a single afternoon, very simple but very powerful, much like the film.

precious is a film that i haven't seen since its release, and my memory of it has dimmed quite a bit, but i recall that it had some unrelentingly bleak moments, among the darkest i've seen in a film.

i am a big, big fan of the handmaiden - caught it theatrically at the time of release, and have watched it twice since. i can understand where you're coming from, but for me it was pretty close to a perfect film, and i'd probably rate in my top 20 of the decade so far, perhaps in the top 10. and i enjoyed the spectacle in it quite a bit myself - one of the steamier films in recent memory, imo.

my week in film:

the unbelievable truth (1989) 3.5/5 hal hartley's 2nd film, i believe. the 90s hal hartley that i know and more or less love isn't quite fully developed here. it feels a bit embryonic, but the deadpan feel and detached humor works its way to the surface. not the place to start, but it's a fun watch if you like his stuff & want to fill in all the colours.

i'm not there (2007) 4/5 my first watch, oddly enough, even though i was a dylan fanatic for decades & a fairly big todd haines fan as well. the easy, even trite thing to say is that this movie is as simultaneously fascinating & infuriating as its source material, but it's very true. it's fascinating watching this film wind it's way through the various dylan incarnations, but like the man's career, we're never really left with a true sense of who the real person is.

magical girl (2014) 3/5 "A desperate man (Luis Bermejo) blackmails a mentally ill woman (Bárbara Lennie) to buy a dress for his terminally ill daughter (Lucía Pollán)." just a touch too long & a shade too ponderously paced, and the pieces don't quite mesh in the most satisfying way, ultimately. there are enough interesting moments in here to make this a recommendable film, but i definitely found it frustrating & a bit less than what it could have been.

sins of the fleshapoids (1965) 3.5/5 "The survivors of a nuclear war are taken care of by robots called “fleshapoids.” bizarre, absurdist cult item that has moments of delirium that made me laugh and a few that grated on me, the last few moments in particular. worth a look, and given its brisk running time probably worth seeking out if you fancy weirdness in your films.

the nice guys (2016) 3.5/5 - feels very much like the kind of smile-inducing film you might have seen starring elliot gould around 1973. a few of the jokes don't quite land, and i don't think the plot made a great deal of sense, but it's mostly quite a good time.

the girl without hands (2016) 4/5 animated telling of the very dark 'brothers grimm' fairy tail, done with a unique, truly different & i thought very beautiful animation style. i did feel there was a touch too much vagueness in the story-telling here & there, as i did find myself stumbling over occasional plot points, going back as i felt i might have missed something. but quibbles aside, this is a really terrific little gem, clearly made with a lot of care & craft.

The Fall (2013, UK)
TV series set in the north of Ireland, which I binge-watched last Sunday and Monday. When a series of murders takes place in Belfast, a policewoman from England is brought in to take charge of the investigation and concludes there's a serial killer. Meanwhile the murderer tries to maintain his family man facade and avoid the police as he carries out his acts. The show stars both the investigator and the murderer and we see it through both of their eyes as they play cat and mouse over the course of the show. Very interesting and well-made series. 8/10.

Pulgasari (1985, DPRK)
Set in ancient Korea where an oppressive king is driving the peasants into destitution. The king's governor confiscates villagers' tools and cookware to make weapons for the army to suppress a band of rebels, leading to a riot, after which the village blacksmith is imprisoned and starved. As his last act, he creates a figurine out of a handful of rice, and calls on the gods to turn it into a living being that defends the oppressed. On his death, the figurine comes alive as Pulgasari, a monster that lives and grows by eating iron. The peasants form an army and, with Pulgasari by their side, start a revolutionary war to bring down the hated monarchy. I really like this movie. It's not the best north Korean movie, the production values are rather low and it doesn't have much in the way of special effects, but it's the only communist kaiju film out there. 6/10.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975, UK)
Hilarious parody film centered on the legend of King Arthur. In 10th-century England, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table engage in a series of surreal adventures as they search for the holy grail. This is the first Monty Python production I've seen and I wasn't sure what to expect from it, I haven't seen much British comedy, but I laughed through the entire thing. It was so bizarre I frankly don't know how to describe it, but it was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. The humor was silly but intelligent at the same time. And highly quotable. I recognized a lot of quotes I've seen a lot around the internet but never knew where they came from. "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!" 9/10.

Dragonheart (1996, US)
In a medieval fantasy world where dragons exist, an idealistic knight, Bowen, is tasked with training prince Einon, the son and heir of a tyrannical king, and tries to teach him to live by a code of honor and be a better king than his father. Einon becomes king when his father is killed during a peasant rebellion. Einon is mortally wounded in the same battle, but Bowen takes him to a dragon to plead with it to save him by magic. The dragon gives Einon half of its heart to restore him to life. But this backfires when Einon turns out to be as much of a monster as his father. Bowen, disillusioned, blames the dragon and makes it his life's mission to hunt it down. Eventually finding the dragon, the dragon convinces him that Einon was no good to begin with, and Bowen and the dragon team up to overthrow Einon. This is kind of an odd movie, but it has its charms. A surprisingly strong cast too, with Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, David Thewlis and Pete Postlethwaite. Not a great movie, but entertaining enough. 6/10.

A Night in Old Mexico (2013, US)
When Red, a cantankerous old Texas rancher played by Robert Duvall, loses his land after being unable to repay a bank loan and is expected to move into a retirement community, he rebels and decides to go on one last adventure. With his grandson visiting from New York, he spontaneously goes on a trip to Mexico to relive his youth. Along the way they bump into a pair of drug smugglers and inadvertently drive off with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Arriving in Mexico, they encounter a woman down on her luck with dreams of being a singer but who's stuck stripping for gringos in bars. Together the three of them argue about what to do about the money and try to escape the drug smugglers looking for them. Honestly I found the movie pretty mediocre. I love Robert Duvall, and he's the main reason it isn't terrible. The dialogue left a lot to be desired, it was never believable to me that the stripper woman would want to join up with Red and his grandson, the drug gang wasn't as menacing as it should have been, and the portrayal of Mexico felt stereotyped and cliched. The movie did have its moments though, and Duvall of course is good in anything. 5/10.