What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Blootoon87]

What year is this?

I absolutely shat myself at that.

[Detournement]

I sat in the dark for about five minutes after the credits post "What year is this?". Fire Walk With Me and Inland Empire end on notes of huge positivty but The Return tears everything away. 

Anyway.... I just watched The Worst The Person In The World after reading a few comments here. I liked how neutral it was, every character was flawed but also justified in their actions. Norway is probably the most affluent society that has ever existed so it's interesting to see they interpret that. The new Knausgaard novel has quite a few characters like Julie who are just able to drift along aimlessly in a way that isn't really possible in the UK. 

Bits of it reminded me of the more meta parts of the new Matrix but obviously far, far better. 

[MSU]

038 -- The Rover (#10 in the A24 series). Guy Pierce and Robert Pattinson in a western that just happens to be set in Australia after some apocalyptic event. Guy's car is nicked by Robert's brother and his gang after a robbery and Guy isn't having any of it. It's quite weird in places and tries to hide its secrets a bit too hard in others but great performances from the two leads cover up most of the cracks in a fairly thin plot. 6/10

039 -- Life After Beth (#11 in the A24 series). It's a RomZomCom that didn't make me think of Shaun of the Dead once, so extra point for that. Zack's girlfriend, Beth, dies unexpectedly and in his grief he spends time trying to process everything by hanging out with her parents. But they've secretly been hiding Beth from him and the outside world when she came home after digging herself out of her grave. It's an odd little comedy of manners type thing as they all attempt to hide the fact that Beth is a zombie from her. Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, John C Reilly, Paul Reiter all make pretty good work of a script that made me laugh out loud several times. An enjoyable romp. 7/10

[accies1874]

60. Tangerine (2015) – MUBI

A really funny farce for pretty sad reasons. There’s a real loneliness to the characters and I think SOCIETY means that they don’t really know how to process their emotions properly which leads to farcical situations. Funny, sad, farcical situations.

Filming on an iPhone worked in this too, as the lens made lonely characters even lonelier and the kinda shite quality was as if Sean Baker just covertly filmed in LA. The fact that he likes to use non-professional actors helps too.

61. The Worst Person in the World (2022)* – Cinema

This is a therapy movie delving into the mind of this one character and I found it really captivating. There’s a scene where time stops that won’t be bested this year and tbh might be my favourite of recent years too, but as with a lot of the film I can’t quite explain what made it so effective, it just really worked on an emotional level. It’s at its best when that’s the case. It’s got some really funky moments and techniques that are more flourishes which are quite low-key in how often they happen but work really well and make the film all the funnier.

Bad cinema experience though. The room was tiny with a pretty big screen so I often had to sacrifice the subtitles for the images (and vice versa) so I didn’t get THE FULL EXPERIENCE. Quite a few a-holes in the screening too. Worth going though.

[Paul Kersey]

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Super cool French thriller about a tough guy slumlord who dreams of being a concert pianist.

Everything about this is hip, from the clothes, the indie soundtrack, the good looking female support cast. 

This is a remake of an American film from 70s called Fingers, which I've never seen so I've no idea how they compare.

8/10

 

[DrewDon]

I finally got round to watching Boiling Point today. It was an intense, relentless experience. 

It was really good, and I made a point of watching it because Stephen Graham is always excellent, but I was kind of willing it to finish so that my blood pressure could begin to recover. 

[Detournement]

I just watched Scorsese's After Hours. It's the first time I've seen it. A very strange movie which seems to have loads of MK Ultra references despite being made in 1985 and a few scenes which are referenced in Shutter Island which is definitely a MK Ultra film.

There's also moments that are echo'd in Lynch productions and also Eyes Wide Shut. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Detournement

[velo army]

Glad to hear some good reviews of good movies. I haven't watched Lynch, so I'll have to remedy that.

Anyway.

Lost Island (2022)

I laughed at the trailer, so I had hoped that this would be enjoyable and funny. Bullock is a fine comedy actress and Pitt had me chuckling watching the trailer. I wasn't expecting Marx Bros level comedy, but a light movie with some good laughs.

It started well enough, with the snobbish Bullock and the vapid but well-meaning Tatum providing a bit of absurdity. The big baddie of the movie is played by Daniel Radcliffe, and the scene where they meet for the first te is just boring. Dull as f**k dialogue and Radcliffe has zero charisma. 

The adventure starts and we're introduced to Pitt's character. Pitt is a fine comedy actor and sends himself up perfectly here. I was looking forward to seeing more of him. 

Normally I don't spoil, but he gets shot in the head. It's very sudden and shocking. It absolutely shook me tbh. It was a tonal shift that was unnecessary, and the worst part was, we were expected to go right back to the "comedy". The scene that I laughed at in the trailer (a car falling off a cliff) was done immediately after this, but I was still in shock. It was a fucking gory death too, with brains spattered over Tatum. 

I was already being tolerant of a script that was just full of empty dialogue. That modern style of "comedy" where everything is over explained and the arse is booted out of "jokes" rips my knitting, and there was loads of that. Tatum's character was ridiculous too. Just a helpless and stupid manchild who needed constant mothering. I didn't stick around to see how it all played out. Any good will had evaporated with what felt like an entirely spiteful and incongruous shooting scene. I left the cinema about 10mins later, felling pretty shaken up. 

2/10, one each for Pitt's performance and character.

[BallochSonsFan]

You Only Live Twice.

Decided to try to watch all  the Bond movies in order whilst they're on Prime. I grew up watching Bond films without being a massive fan. My era of cinema Bond started with Brosnan. I thought You Only Live Twice was the weakest of the first 5 films. Best of the first 5 for me is From Russia With Love. I think that FRWL got the balance right between classic suspense movie and exotic spy film. Bond isnt some gadget using super hero in the movie. Something that I don't think they really got right in a lot of later films. YOLT was fun enough, but the plot is preposterous and a lot of the characters are really terribly written. I know its a product of its time, but From Russia With Love just feels like a far better movie. It's telling that pretty much everything that Mike Myers parodied with Dr Evil seems like it came from You Only Live Twice.

Watching On Her Majesty's Secret Service now. A movie I've managed to miss so far. Always knew it was eventually very well received after initially being seen as a complete outlier. Planning on getting through at least 2 tomorrow in between the Irish national racing.

Edited April 17, 2022 by BallochSonsFan

[MSU]

039 -- Cow. In the last year or so, Mrs MSU and I have seen Pig, Wolf, and Lamb, so we were always going to see this. It's a documentary about a dairy cow on a farm in England. It's an oddly moooooving (sorry) and heartfelt look at what a cow's life really looks like and although it seems to be a well-run farm with people who love the animals, it's still a bit depressing. 6/10

Edited April 18, 2022 by MSU

[coprolite]

Been catching up on some comedies i missed when they came out. 

Little Miss Sunshine

Family of misfits go on a road trip. 

Mostly pretty amusing. The main plot, about trying to get a young girl to a beauty pageant and then her being out of her depth, was engaging and had a good deal of inherent satire. 

The subplots were all hamfisted and ott, totally over-cooking the satirical angle and just bolting on over-kooky characters. 

Everything about the brother's subplot was really shit.

I'm sure that rattling on about nietzsche and Proust probably means it was very clever but that just annoyed me. 

Lots of good stuff too though. They just threw too much in. 

6/10

Juno

Teenager gets pregnant. 

Some of the attempts to be "cult", like namedropping sonic youth and The Stooges, felt a bit forced. Some of the soundtrack was irritating. 

That's all i can say bad about it. Sucked me right in and played me like a fiddle. 

The lead performance from Ellen (as was) Page was great at capturing the impetuousness and spontaneity of youth. The main  supporting performances (4 of them: her Dad, the Couple and her friend) were perfect, and Michael Cera's one baffled expression worked too. The teen talk dialogue felt natural and was funny, which is an achievement. 

I can't remember the last time i got so emotionally involved in a film. 

8/10

[BFTD]

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (cinema)

Dragged to this as my son was determined to see it, for some reason. Quite a remarkable film in that my mind drifted off to other things many times, yet I didn't feel like I'd missed anything when brought back to reality. Between returning Jim Carrey to his signature comedy stylings and the absolute mountain of references to old films, I think the makers were definitely aware that this could be tough viewing for parents and have tried their best to make it as bearable as possible, and it washes over the indifferent mind quite easily as a result.

[Detournement]

I thought Rudd's character being a Sonic Youth fan was spot on. There are millions and millions of men who try to hang onto their youth by obsessing about musicians they loved in their teens and early 20s. 

The best bit of the film is when they are dancing to Superstar and he basically has to decide whether to follow his immature impulse and try and shag Juno or act like a responsible married man and not cheat on his wife with the the teenager who is pregnant with a baby they are going to adopt. 

 

[Lofarl]

No time to die.  0/10.

 

I’d rather watch goats smegma dripping onto the floor than watch that pile of shite again.

[Detournement]

Blue Collar - A fairly restrained Paul Schrader film with Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Koto working in a Michigan car factory and getting themselves in trouble by digging into their corrupt union. It handles the racial angle very cleverly (and depressingly) and has that old time cinema feature of characters who have money problems that you don't see much of any more. Koto is amazing and steals it from the other two greats. 

 

 

[welshbairn]

52 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Blue Collar - A fairly restrained Paul Schrader film with Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Koto working in a Michigan car factory and getting themselves in trouble by digging into their corrupt union. It handles the racial angle very cleverly (and depressingly) and has that old time cinema feature of characters who have money problems that you don't see much of any more. Koto is amazing and steals it from the other two greats. 

 

 

That was my favourite film for a while when it came out. Glad to see it's holding up.

[Paul Kersey]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

Blue Collar - A fairly restrained Paul Schrader film with Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Koto working in a Michigan car factory and getting themselves in trouble by digging into their corrupt union. It handles the racial angle very cleverly (and depressingly) and has that old time cinema feature of characters who have money problems that you don't see much of any more. Koto is amazing and steals it from the other two greats. 

 

 

That is a fantastic film  it deals with a serious subject matter but some of Pryor's rants are amusing.

[Detournement]

6 minutes ago, Paul Kersey said:

That is a fantastic film  it deals with a serious subject matter but some of Pryor's rants are amusing.

His character really changes as the film progresses from being a light hearted funny guy to having the weight of the world on his shoulders and having to harden himself so his family can survive. There are so many films and shows where the characters learn to work together despite their differences but Schrader subverts that to show the real truth about how American capitalism divides and conquers. 

It also shows the horrible consequences of partying all night past the age of 35. 

 

[Twinkle]

19 hours ago, Detournement said:

Blue Collar - A fairly restrained Paul Schrader film with Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Koto working in a Michigan car factory and getting themselves in trouble by digging into their corrupt union. It handles the racial angle very cleverly (and depressingly) and has that old time cinema feature of characters who have money problems that you don't see much of any more. Koto is amazing and steals it from the other two greats. 

 

 

Where did you find this? Ive been trying for over a year to find a decent stream/ netflix etc

[Detournement]

35 minutes ago, Twinkle said:

Where did you find this? Ive been trying for over a year to find a decent stream/ netflix etc

I use a VPN to get on Pirate Bay and download torrents.