What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Raidernation]

Risky Business is great. 
80s teen movies loved a heavy dollop of class politics. 
 

And cleavage!

[101]

Die Hard, 9/10.

Watched this for the first time last night, brilliant film.

Alan Rickman is absolutely brilliant as per but Sgt. Powell might be one of the best characters I've seen in a long while. Outstanding. 

[sfha]

4 hours ago, 101 said:

Die Hard, 9/10.

Watched this for the first time last night

 

[killiepiemuncher]

 

He must be a young pup.

[101]

24 minutes ago, sfha said:

 

 

6 minutes ago, killiepiemuncher said:

He must be a young pup.

It did come out nearly a decade before I was born but yes I probably should have seen it before now.

[BFTD]

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

Edited December 13, 2021 by BFTD

[101]

4 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

[BFTD]

9 minutes ago, 101 said:

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

Looks like you can rent it on Amazon Prime or YouTube.

Damn sight cheaper just to nip down to your nearest charity shop and see if they've got a copy. It's a pretty common DVD to find. Grab Gremlins 2 if you see it too - very different film, it's like a satire of the first one, but it's still a very entertaining watch.

[Mark Connolly]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

f**k that, watch Die Hard 2 and Die Hard with a Vengeance.

A shame they only made 3 films in the series though...

[Paul Kersey]

Circle of Iron

Martial arts fantasy starring David Carradine. A young adventurer goes on a quest for enlightenment, and skelps a few coupons along the way.

This is corny in every way. The acting and dialogue is pretty poor and the fight scenes aren't too great. Still, I enjoyed it though. 

Garbage, but entertaining garbage.

7/10

[Arch Stanton]

Chinatown (1974)

Just one of many of Nicholson's outstanding performances in the 70s, ably abetted by Faye Dunaway and John Huston, this is a tremendous depiction of corruption in 1930s LA.

At that time LA was little more than a strip between the desert and the ocean and the wealthy who own the water supply also control which land which can become valuable.

As it's directed by Roman Polanski (who also has a really memorable cameo), it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea given his alleged sex crime but it is brilliantly directed and has a haunting Miles Davis-like trumpet permeating the score.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Arch Stanton

[Arch Stanton]

Five Easy Pieces  (1970)

Another 70s tour de force by Nicholson.

The movie starts with him as a blue collar guy working in an oil field. He goes ten pin bowling with one of his colleagues and the girlfriends. He's a total dick, treating his GF like shit by verbally abusing her and then  cheating on her.

However, about 15 minutes in he's in a traffic jam with his work buddy. They're bored, blasting their horn but JN spots a flat bed truck with a piano, jumps on and, surprisingly, plays Chopin.

When his sister contacts him to say their Dad is dying, there is a mini-road trip (including the famous "you want me to hold the chicken", "I want you to hold it between your knees" scene) and it turns out he is a classically trained concert pianist from a wealthy family.

It's a life he doesn't want, never more demonstrated when he's playing the piano at his parents and the camera does a 360 round the room and also the final scene where he just looks at himself in the mirror for about 30 seconds but it seems like 10 times longer.

[Bully Wee Villa]

8 hours ago, 101 said:

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

It's on Sky, but with it being vaguely Christmassy, it's bound to be on one of the terrestrial channels before the end of the month, I'd have thought. I think it is every year now. It's brilliant, BTW.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Small Bovine Maisonette

[Arch Stanton]

9 hours ago, BFTD said:

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

The John Huston version of The Maltese Falcon is a masterpiece in direction and acting.

I went to see it at the GFT about 5 years ago as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. It was on a Thursday morning and I was lucky I got there early...the queue behind was around the block and not everyone got in.

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by Arch Stanton

[54_and_counting]

On 13/12/2021 at 15:37, 101 said:

 

It did come out nearly a decade before I was born but yes I probably should have seen it before now.

Wait till you see the rest, well tbh you can skip 4 and 5 which are a bit shit, 2 is good, 3 is utterly tremendous

[coprolite]

Failing to grasp why anyone would have any respect or tolerance, never mind love, for Die Hard 2. It does hit the Christmas breif though by being a complete turkey. Ho ho ho. 

[BFTD]

3 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Failing to grasp why anyone would have any respect or tolerance, never mind love, for Die Hard 2. It does hit the Christmas breif though by being a complete turkey. Ho ho ho. 

Glad I'm not the only one, although I did find it passable last time it was on. I think it just came as such a disappointment after the original. To paraphrase Friends, the answer is clearly to watch Die Hard twice, then it's Die Hard 2.

#3 isn't a great film, but it's a lot of fun. It wouldn't be anything like as memorable without Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons' awful German panto villain.

[NotThePars]

The Matrix Reloaded (2003) dir. The Wachowskis

Idk if it's months of near Avatar level revisionism or the onslaught of soulless blockbuster monstrosities in the years since the movie was initially released but this fucking rocks man. I can't believe I was ever part of the "the sequels are bad" stuff. 

The action sometimes feels a bit weightless and nobody ever really feels in any danger but that's sacrificed in favour of making everything and everyone look and sound ultra cool which it succeeds in. The gestures to the world beyond the movie has me wanting to dive right back in to all the extended media. Even the scenes everyone hated, like the rave scene, are class. It's the only time I feel the movies attempt to visually counter Cypher's belief that ignorance is better than taking the red pill.

Knowing it was supposed to be Will Smith makes Keanu Reeves more enjoyable as well. His kinda stilted speaking works throughout especially as everyone else (Lawrence Fishbourne in particular) match it. The only real deviations are the Hugo Weaving who's a scene stealing villain every time he appears again and the Merovingian who sounds like he's having a whale of a time.

Also anyone that hates this movie when the Freeway scene exists deserves a scheme booting. Lawrence Fishbourne has a sword and a gun. 

[UsedToGoToCentralPark]

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (cinema) - reboot of the movie series based on the video games. A quiet company town is on the verge of closure as the corporation closes its facilities, only for a top-secret biological weapon to find its way out of their labs.
Pretty bog standard zombie flick, of the kind you'd expect to see on a streaming service (or straight-to-video back in the day). It's more faithful to the games than the original attempt, working through elements from RE1 & 2, but the original was probably more entertaining. This one's a bit slow, and people who aren't familiar with the "story" (what little there is) and the characters would probably be a bit bored, although genre fans might still find it passable. As a fan of the first three games twenty years ago, I thought it was OK.
Random thoughts: they decided to have the film take place in the late Nineties, and are weirdly keen to remind you that's where it's taking place, with a random assortment of "hey, remember this Nineties classic?" tunes thrown in, and oddities like a character playing Snake on their shitty old Nokia phone. Have we arrived at the point where 1998 is about to experience a retro revival? Also, this is one of those films where you get regular captions to remind you of the time, which doesn't always work out so well. At one point, we cut away from two characters urgently heading off to a nearby room, and cut back to them entering it after half an hour has supposedly passed.
They also used the John Carpenter typeface throughout, which is a cute touch, but also blasphemy.
Edit: forgot a monologue where a character essentially reels off a list of "things to do in 1998", including going to Blockbuster to rent a video. Very odd how keen they were to hammer home the time period considering the film could easily have taken place in present day without changing anything.

Went and saw this last night. As I'm a massive fan since PS1 of the games and really like the films finally found a free evening to go and see this. Thoughts are similar to yours. However, the first song being Richard and Linda Thompson was unexpected but fantastic. Obviously playing up for the fanboys. Not sure if there is much rewatch value here though.

[Detournement]

On 13/12/2021 at 15:40, BFTD said:

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

I don't know about that. With only four channels and 1 telly in most houses you watched what was on and as I remember growing up there was no shortage of old movies on TV during the day. The same way everyone who was a kid in the 90s watched old Columbo, Murder She Wrote, Steptoe and Son and Dad's Army.

The difference now is teenagers have had their own screens for their entire life and algorithms promoting films/shows made specifically for their demographic.