What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[JustOneCornetto]

How I Won The War (1967)
Another anti-war film directed by Richard Lester which has some great biting satire but could probably have been edited down by about 20 minutes to make it a bit tighter. Saying that the cast is great with Michael Crawford the incompetent officer tasked with building a cricket pitch in North Africa with the aid of his troop including John Lennon, Roy Kinnear and Ronald Lacey. Also liked the real life war sequences interspersed in the film and shown with a colour tint.
7/10

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[MSU]

031 -- Spring Breakers (#3 in the A24 series).  God, I hate James Franco. Here he plays a Florida white-rapper who bails out four largely interchangeable and unlikeable college girls who have robbed a restaurant to get a week of debauchery in St Petes. I think if I was 13 this might just be the best movie ever made and I'd be blind before by 14th birthday. As it is today, in 2022, there are other places to go for this sort of thing. Directed and written by the bloke who wrote Kids for Larry Clark 30 years ago and it kinda covers similar ground of apathetic, disaffected youth, only this time in the sun and with fancy teeth. 3/10 

[accies1874]

031 -- Spring Breakers (#3 in the A24 series).  God, I hate James Franco.

I don't think you're the only one

[MSU]

032 -- The Bling Ring (#4 in the A24 series). This is the first movie I've ever seen that's based on an article in Vanity Fair, and claims to have its basis in fact where a group on fame-obsessed teens in LA track the whereabouts of their favorite celebrities and then burgle their homes when they're out. It's weirdly interesting, especially considering that the majority of the movie feels like it's young girls and a boy cooing as they discover Audrina Patridge's handbags, Megan Fox's home security, or Paris Hilton's pet monkey. It's like the world's most pointless crime heist movie. Imagine Ocean's Eleven were planning on stealing Andy Garcia's moisturizer and you're not far off. In its favor, the look and music of the movie are both fabulous, and Emma Watson's turn as a vacuous Hollywood wannabe is pretty convincing, as is her accent, but the whole thing has a pet project feel to it, particularly as it comes 10 years after Lost in Translation. It's like the main objective was to just get it made and concerns about quality were much further down the list. I wish I knew if it was meant to be funny. 5/10

[BFTD]

11 minutes ago, MSU said:

Audrina Patridge

If anyone else was wondering, it's not worth the five seconds Googling it.

[MSU]

5 minutes ago, BFTD said:

If anyone else was wondering, it's not worth the five seconds Googling it.

A hover-over on the movie's Wiki page is all that's required.

[BFTD]

9 minutes ago, MSU said:

A hover-over on the movie's Wiki page is all that's required.

That's more effort than right-clicking her name on here, FFS.

Stop encouraging people to waste their precious seconds!

[Detournement]

14 hours ago, MSU said:

031 -- Spring Breakers (#3 in the A24 series).  God, I hate James Franco. Here he plays a Florida white-rapper who bails out four largely interchangeable and unlikeable college girls who have robbed a restaurant to get a week of debauchery in St Petes. I think if I was 13 this might just be the best movie ever made and I'd be blind before by 14th birthday. As it is today, in 2022, there are other places to go for this sort of thing. Directed and written by the bloke who wrote Kids for Larry Clark 30 years ago and it kinda covers similar ground of apathetic, disaffected youth, only this time in the sun and with fancy teeth. 3/10 

Spring Breakers is utter genius. So is Korine's most recent film The Beach Bum. He understands America.

 

[Paul Kersey]

Amazon Hot Box

Trashy "women in prison" film.

An innocent female student is wrongfully locked up in a third world prison with cruel Nazi guards.

Utterly ridiculous but with enough gratuitous nudity and gore to keep it entertaining. 

6/10

[MSU]

032 -- The Spectacular Now (#5 in the A24 series). A fairly straight forward coming-of-age drama that sees Miles Teller (out of the new Top Gun if it ever comes out) at the prime age of 25 try to pass for a high-schooler in what at first appears to be a piss poor Ferris Bueller. Generous casting aside, a sparkling script that doesn't try to make every teenager's line of dialog full of irony makes this the first of the A24 movies I've genuinely enjoyed. A supporting cast that includes Bob Odenkirk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Brie Larson, and Shailene Woodley all seem to be buying into it and giving it their best. 8/10

[scottsdad]

The Dark Knight Rises.

For a movie I enjoyed when I first saw it, I was bored rigid re-watching this. Of the Nolan trilogy only The Dark Knight stands up well nowadays. Overly serious, often tedious.

Having recently gone through the Batman movies (except the new one in cinemas), Tim Burton's are clearly the best (and I'd have Batman Returns over Batman). Then The Dark Knight. Then the 1966 Batman. Joel Schumacher's movies should just be burned they were so very awful.. 

[Stellaboz]

4 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

The Dark Knight Rises.

For a movie I enjoyed when I first saw it, I was bored rigid re-watching this. Of the Nolan trilogy only The Dark Knight stands up well nowadays. Overly serious, often tedious.

Having recently gone through the Batman movies (except the new one in cinemas), Tim Burton's are clearly the best (and I'd have Batman Returns over Batman). Then The Dark Knight. Then the 1966 Batman. Joel Schumacher's movies should just be burned they were so very awful.. 

I recently watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight with the missus. She wasn't impressed with them, though it's not her sort of film. Told her if she's not into them, then it's not worth watching this one as it's more of the same. 

 

Saying that, I LOVE them, The Dark Night is clearly the best of the 3 though and The Dark Knight Rises doesn't introduce anything new. 

[Pocketman]

3 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

I recently watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight with the missus. She wasn't impressed with them, though it's not her sort of film. Told her if she's not into them, then it's not worth watching this one as it's more of the same. 

 

Saying that, I LOVE them, The Dark Night is clearly the best of the 3 though and The Dark Knight Rises doesn't introduce anything new. 

I think the Joker's grand plan where he relied on certain actions and decisions being taken from a number of reasonable options doesn't stand up very well when you revisit it, particularly when assessed against a few films from that time that relied on that same plot device - Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness for one. I still loved the movie though retain a soft spot for Batman Begins. 

My order of favourites is the order of the trilogy, then Batman 1989, Batman Returns, The Batman, Batman 66, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. 

 

[Mark Connolly]

Returns is absolutely tremendous. DeVito is fantastic as the Penguin, and the Batman-Catwoman/Bruce-Selina relationship is played brilliantly by both Keaton and Pfeiffer.

Plus Michelle Pfeiffer is absolutely perfectly cast as Catwoman.

 

[accies1874]

47, 48 & 52

The Batman (2022) (and Zodiac (2007) and Se7en (1995)) - Cinema, Netflix, DVD

Ok so The Batman. I was really looking forward to this as it looked really funky and different from a lot of the other Batman stuff. However, it didn’t work for me despite giving it a couple of goes, so I decided to take a look at a couple of its influences to see what they managed to do that Batman didn’t. I’ll start with Batman’s good stuff as I can talk about them without talking about the other two.
Firstly, the sound is class. Whether it’s the rumbling of the Batmobile for the first time or the screaming of folk at the funeral, it managed to create terrific anxiety. I also liked this Batman/Bruce Wayne as he carries an immaturity and vulnerability that we haven’t really seen in a full film before (Batman Begins spent a bit of time there). The world really appealed to me, even with its architectural inconsistencies; I saw a review that said the reoccurring locations like the Iceberg Lounge and the scaffolding made for familiarity and sense of place which I agree with. This isn’t something you see a lot of in big blockbusters, especially considering the locations are a bit grimy. Jeffrey Wright’s a good actor but gets some shit expositional dialogue here.
Which brings me onto the negative – the script.
Even beyond the on the nose, portentous voice-over and often clichéd dialogue and plot points, a lot of choices made it quite unsatisfactory for me.
There’s some decent enough character stuff with Batman’s growth but I could’ve done with Bruce Wayne going on a similar journey which might have even made it click a lot more. Maybe the sequel eh? I also felt a lack of stakes throughout. Batman is mostly passive, the mystery is largely boring considering the cast of characters aren’t interesting enough to carry the twists and turns, and the resolutions all seemed to be a bit after-the-fact. So... Se7en and Zodiac.
They both have a villain whose step-ahead nature causes chaos within the minds of procedural, orderly people. Zodiac uses those minds to show the effect of the mystery on a big scale while Se7en is more focussed on the two leads and how they represent something wider. At the centre of both is a clear figurehead that causes friction with the characters we’re supposed to connect with. The Batman, meanwhile, has a bunch of different plot elements that don’t really feel like they tie in with one another. It’s hard to explain but almost every strand and character felt disconnected.
The Riddler also never clicked for me as a villain. He was too detached without being detached enough like John Doe or the Zodiac. The Zodiac’s unpredictability makes him scarier imo but tbf The Batman wants to tell a different story which is fair enough but just makes it a bit more meh. If you had the Riddler more shadowy then it could do the “Batman causes baddies” more effectively like Zodiac; whenever the killer is off-screen he feels like he could be anyone but when he’s there for the killings you sure as heck know he’s there. John Doe in Se7en is largely invisible which makes his chaos more uncontrollable and scarier imo. Mills and Somerset are chasing shadows that are causing a great deal of destruction and there’s nothing they can really do about it. John Doe is unseen and unrelenting, whereas they kinda try and do that with the Riddler but he’s the villain in a comic book movie so he has to be on screen for a certain percentage of the runtime. That means they have him as a physical being, either in the shadows or on a phone, which makes Batman look incompetent as opposed to the Riddler being clever. That interrogation scene was a masterclass in overacting a craaaazy person too. The Riddler's morality and psychology is OK in relation to the film's messaging but is really overplayed when you compare it to how Se7en does a very similar thing...

In Se7en, John Doe’s reasoning is so fucking stupid. This guy thinks folk should be murdered because they’re fat or they’re vain – of course he and Mills are different. However, he still manages to make a killer of Brad Pitt when he has every opportunity not to. There’s nothing forcing him to kill John Doe (other than the fact he’s played by Kevin Spacey), nothing bad will happen to him if he doesn’t, yet he still goes through with it because of the actions of someone with such a warped view of reality.

Despite Joker being a bit naff, I think The Batman suffers a wee bit from it coming out a couple of years ago. The whole "angry at Waynes - do they have a mysterious past?!" thing was done in literally the last Batman-world film in cinemas.

[scottsdad]

18 hours ago, Mark Connolly said:

Returns is absolutely tremendous. DeVito is fantastic as the Penguin, and the Batman-Catwoman/Bruce-Selina relationship is played brilliantly by both Keaton and Pfeiffer.

Plus Michelle Pfeiffer is absolutely perfectly cast as Catwoman.

 

Agree completely. Having recently re-watched the lot, this for me was the best. 

Don't forget Christopher Walken - another proper baddie. 

[scottsdad]

18 hours ago, KingRocketman II said:

I think the Joker's grand plan where he relied on certain actions and decisions being taken from a number of reasonable options doesn't stand up very well when you revisit it, particularly when assessed against a few films from that time that relied on that same plot device - Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness for one. I still loved the movie though retain a soft spot for Batman Begins. 

My order of favourites is the order of the trilogy, then Batman 1989, Batman Returns, The Batman, Batman 66, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. 

 

Jesus I hate that film. Never in my life have I been so disappointed.

Two thirds of the way in, I am bouncing in my cinema seat. Surely this is the best ST movie ever made. Then they turned it into a parody of The Wrath of Khan, recycling lines and scenes. Left the cinema angry, like I had been mugged. 

[MSU]

033 -- Everything Everywhere All At Once. Came out of the cinema feeling the same way I did at the end of Scott Pilgrim and Kill Bill Vol 1, figuring that I've just seen one of my favourite movies ever and I'm going to go back to it many many times. 10/10

[Comrie]

Ultra Q The Movie: Legend of the Stars

Imagine the X-Files, set in Japan but with kaiju and Stuart Gordon deciding the angles. It sounds weird, but it works surprisingly well despite clearly no having much of a budget. Strangely hypnotic.

7.5/10

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Lost in translation 2003

A rom com about a 50 year old guy who tries to groom a teenager. 

 

The film wouldn’t be made nowadays.