What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Detournement]

24 minutes ago, BFTD said:

He could absolutely tell you that he greatly prefers modern examples of these forms and not be wrong, even if you think they're shit. You do understand that, right?

Aye but you have to be prepared to say that some things are better than others. If someone tells you they prefer Red Notice to the The Thin Red Line it's their opinion but it means they have shite taste.

 

 

[Thorongil]

Ghostbusters Afterlife. Really quite enjoyed it!

[Thorongil]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

That's not really what I think. It's difficult to explain but I think that our experience in the digital/internet age is means that films and novels aren't as well suited to conveying contemporary experience as they once were.

I'm not going to run out of good books to read or films to watch so no need to feel too sorry for me.

I think there is a good point here. I find the film media to be largely unsatisfying now, especially in terms of adaptation. I still enjoy a good film from time to time but I far prefer to seek out high quality television.

The Sopranos - 86 episodes
Mad Men -92 episodes
The Americans - 75 episodes

No films of equivalent genre can come close to the depth and quality of storytelling that is offered by top level television.

 

[coprolite]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

Really? Which symphony music of the past 30 years is comparable to the most revered music by Beethoven or Rossini or Wagner? Also it's difficult to think of anyone considered as great a poet TS Elliot or Pound were in their lives. 

If you don't believe that cinema has peaked then watch L'Aventurra and La Notte by Antonioni released in consecutive years and compare them to anything that has come out recently.

I don't think Wes Anderson is an all time great filmmaker and he makes it's clear in his movies that he doesn't either. I do like them a lot though because they are mainly about experiencing older and arguably better forms of culture.

I don't need to know great composers or poets to know that people still participate in communication through those media. 

Just because they are not the biggest thing doesn't mean they can't be good or relevant to the minorities who still engage. 

It should be possible to just say "i like old stuff" without disparaging anything that's recent, just for being recent. 

[Thorongil]

18 hours ago, MSU said:

Just out of Ghostbusters Afterlife and it wasn't for me. It wasn't helped by being in an audience that didn't seem to get out of the house much and when they did, they'd never been to a movie before. There were folks literally slapping the arms of their seats with laughter. There was a wee woman in front of me who seemed to be mumbling a conversation with the characters all through the movie. I was really disappointed at how much was just lifted from the first movie and it didn't make me laugh, which even the Lady Ghostbusters was able to do a couple of times. The kids seemed to enjoy it at least a bit more than me but my step-daughter was curiously very offended at the ghostly cameo towards the end.

In my showing it was quite appropriately muted in terms of audience reaction apart from one woman. She shrieked and bawled with laughter at the wee marshmallow men. I couldn’t believe that anyone could find that so funny that they would scream with laughter. Must have been doing it for some narcissistic fake reason IMO. It angered me.

[Thorongil]

5 hours ago, accies1874 said:

From these:
 

 

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 38, 1 previous film)

Why Don't You Just Die (Kirill Sokolov, 32, no previous)

The Assistant (Kitty Green, 37, a few previous)

Waves (Trey Edward Shults, 33, 2 previous)

Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 31, no previous)

Relic (Natalie Erika James, 32, no previous)

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, 42, 2 previous)

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu, 36, 1 previous)

The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, 39, no previous)

The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 44, 2 previous)

Horse Girl (Jeff Baena, 44, a few previous)

Make Up (Claire Oakley, 36, no previous)

Blow the Man Down (couple of c***s with no Wikipedia page)

Some/a lot/all of these won't be for everyone and at least half of the directors won't amount to anything, but it's a diverse group of films made by a load of folk under 50. And that's just last year.

 

Never heard of a single one of these.

[MrWorldwideJr]

I'm pretty confident in saying that the majority of my favourite films have been released in the last 10-15 years and that's not for want of watching older cinema. None of them are Red Notice btw although I'm sure you're aware that's a ludicrous strawman.

 

Fair enough if you disagree with that, we all have different taste after all, but I tend to think that taking such an absolutist 'nothing good gets made anymore' attitude on any art form is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy and says more about you than it does about the quality of new stuff being released.

[Detournement]

9 minutes ago, MrWorldwideJr said:

Fair enough if you disagree with that, we all have different taste after all, but I tend to think that taking such an absolutist 'nothing good gets made anymore' attitude on any art form is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy and says more about you than it does about the quality of new stuff being released.

I've never said that there an no good movies any more. From this shortened year's releases i really enjoyed Card Counter, Riders of Justice and French Dispatch. I like Dune. I'm looking forward to Liquorice Pizza and Matrix 4. I'll watch Power Of The Dog despite Cumberbatch doing my tits in. Spielberg's West Side Story and Denzel Washington as Macbeth should be entertaining as well.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Watched Mad Max for the first time last night. I can see why it's so popular. I never got used to seeing Mel Gibson look so young.

[NotThePars]

It's the conditions in which movies are created which is the issue. Good movies are still made but the landscape feels more narrow and homogenised than it did at any other point in recent history. Whether that's the MCU's corrosive effect on cinema, Disney's general hoovering up of everything they can, the budgets for movies getting ludicrous or the viewing habits who knows. There's probably dozens more reasons you could point to. 

Personally I blame Cinemasins.

[Biscuits]

Rocky vs Drago.

I enjoyed it but I’m not sure it’s any better than the original. Seemed to get more of Drago being used by the government and a few glimpses of him as an actual person.

No more annoying robot scenes and the music is quality although doesn’t belong in Rocky IV.

[Detournement]

 

When the extended universe is good. 

[Detournement]

On 22/11/2021 at 19:25, Thorongil said:

I think there is a good point here. I find the film media to be largely unsatisfying now, especially in terms of adaptation. I still enjoy a good film from time to time but I far prefer to seek out high quality television.

The Sopranos - 86 episodes
Mad Men -92 episodes
The Americans - 75 episodes

No films of equivalent genre can come close to the depth and quality of storytelling that is offered by top level television.

 

Films are still better than TV. There have only ever been a handful of great TV shows whereas you still get good films every year that are far more ambitious and interesting than the best TV. 

[Detournement]

10 hours ago, NotThePars said:

It's the conditions in which movies are created which is the issue. Good movies are still made but the landscape feels more narrow and homogenised than it did at any other point in recent history. Whether that's the MCU's corrosive effect on cinema, Disney's general hoovering up of everything they can, the budgets for movies getting ludicrous or the viewing habits who knows. There's probably dozens more reasons you could point to. 

Personally I blame Cinemasins.

Frederic Jameson's idea from the 80s was that everyone in the West's lives had become so dominated by mass media, capitalism and consumerism that it became increasingly difficult to create art that transcended those factors. 30 odd years on we are much deeper in that hole. 

 

[Thorongil]

2 hours ago, Detournement said:

Films are still better than TV. There have only ever been a handful of great TV shows whereas you still get good films every year that are far more ambitious and interesting than the best TV. 

Nah.

[Lurkst]

On 14/11/2021 at 18:58, velo army said:

Just watched No Time to Die at the pictures and I have a few opinions on it.

Phoebe Waller Bridge needs to be nowhere near a Bond film. The dialogue in the scenes she wrote (you can tell where the re-shoots and re-writes happened) were characterised by goofy and neurotic "humour" that bordered on shite parody. I genuinely can't stand that type of humour. Awful stuff. The baddie in it is utter rubbish (because he's poorly written, and despite a game turn by Rami Malek) and the pre credits sequence is insipid and largely forgettable. The action scenes are excellent, and the relationship between him and the new 00 has real promise. They actually have good chemistry together and I'd have liked that to have been given greater prominence. Lashana Lynch has a whole lot of charisma and she and Craig spark off of each other well. The Phoebe Waller Bridgeness of some of Lynch's scenes can be quite jarring. There's a scene where Bond gets a 00 code and she asks "00 what?" a couple of times in a meeting that just make her look like an insecure wee lassie. This would be fine for one of those shitey modern comedies like Brooklyn 99 or somesuch, but here it undermines her as a character. 

The script at times is utter dung and the treatment of legacy characters is baffling. Blofeld and Leiter deserve better. Actually, Blofeld deserved better than Spectre too, but that's for another rant.

Ana De Armas was great too. I liked that she was in it for only one mission as that felt quite grounded in reality. The opening scene of hers is clearly PWB's doing as she's goofy and childish, before suddenly reverting to highly capable spy. That felt a little unnatural. But she's tremendous on screen.

Overall it had good emotional punch in places, but I thought that it was all a bit of a mess. There were quite obvious re-shoots after backlash from the fanbase after the last trailer, and the new scenes were spliced in. It left it all feeling a bit disjointed. One of the scenes (an interrogation between Bond and Blofeld) has some of the worst dialogue I've seen in a movie. Shocking. 

Just been to see NTTD and I would pretty much agree with all of this.

That said I thought it was a hugely enjoyable romp as a piece of cinematic escapism after a couple of years away for me.

[scottsdad]

Ghostbusters Afterlife. 

It was very good, much needed after that horror show of a reboot a few years back. A fairly direct sequel to the 1984 movie. 

Good characters, good story. Genuine scary bits and quite a few laughs (the wee marshmallow men had my kids in stitches).

Two drawbacks for me....

Spoiler

Paul Rudd not there at the film's climax. Having been a major character all the way through, it felt he had been shunted aside at the finish. 

And the cameos. For me, great as it was to see these guys, they jumped in right at the part of the movie it was all building up to. It was quite disjointed, leading all the way to this big finish and then having these chaps show up and be all sentimental. For me, it would have been better to have them in it earlier and leave the finale of the movie to the main cast.

 

[velo army]

14 hours ago, Lurkst said:

Just been to see NTTD and I would pretty much agree with all of this.

That said I thought it was a hugely enjoyable romp as a piece of cinematic escapism after a couple of years away for me.

For all of my complaining I did enjoy it too. The cinematography was lovely and the action scenes (especially the one in the forest) were tremendous.

[Miguel Sanchez]

On 23/11/2021 at 23:51, NotThePars said:

It's the conditions in which movies are created which is the issue. Good movies are still made but the landscape feels more narrow and homogenised than it did at any other point in recent history. Whether that's the MCU's corrosive effect on cinema, Disney's general hoovering up of everything they can, the budgets for movies getting ludicrous or the viewing habits who knows. There's probably dozens more reasons you could point to. 

Personally I blame Cinemasins.

I say "ding!" in my head whenever I see one. The internet was a mistake.

[Paul Kersey]

On 23/11/2021 at 16:03, Miguel Sanchez said:

Watched Mad Max for the first time last night. I can see why it's so popular. I never got used to seeing Mel Gibson look so young.

It's a classic. Mad Max 2 is better imo. One of the few sequels better than the original.