What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[scottsdad]

7 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Super mario brothers

@scottsdad is wrong. This is great fun.

It's a bit turtlist, but they were different times. 

I tried this tactic as well with my wife and son. "You should go see it. It's great"

They could tell by the haunted look in my eye and the twitch that wouldn't stop that I was lying. 

[Craig fae the Vale]

Went to see Renfield tonight, first time at the cinema in 3 and a half years.

What a great time. Funny, gory and a scene stealing (and chewing) performance from Nic Cage. Would highly recommend. 

[Frankie S]

#37 Watcher (Chloe Okuno, 2022) Amazon Prime 9

‘Watcher’ is a taut psychological horror film, and represents a highly promising directorial and screenwriting debut from Chloe Okuno. Unlike many recent horror films, ‘Watcher’ doesn’t attempt to be too clever - it’s a solid Hitchcockian thriller that isn’t trying to deconstruct or reinvent the genre, and, thankfully, it eschews cheap jump scares. Maika Monroe is excellent as Julia, an American who has just relocated to Bucharest with her Romanian boyfriend, and who feels increasingly isolated as a serial killer stalks the city. This refreshingly well-crafted film is a bit of a throwback, and while its restraint is deeply unfashionable, it’s hugely welcome.

#38 Loving Highsmith (Eva Vitija, 2022) Criterion Channel 7

‘Loving Highsmith’ is an interesting, though hardly definitive, documentary about that most cinematic of authors - Patricia Highsmith. The ‘Ripley’ novels have been a particularly productive source for film adaptions, with René Clément’s ‘Plein Soleil’, Wim Wenders’ ‘The American Friend’, and Liliana Cavani’s ‘Ripley’s Game’ all figuring prominently on my list of favourite films, though Anthony Minghella’s ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ was rather less successful IMO. Other excellent adaptions include Alfred Hitchcock’s magnificent ‘Strangers on a Train’, and The Price of Salt’, which was adapted by Todd Haynes as ‘Carol’ in 2015. I’d like to have seen more emphasis on her literary career, and the films that translated her work to the big screen. Sadly, most of the film clips come from ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’, an exceedingly dull film that  resembles a glossy travelogue more than a psychological thriller, with a boyish Matt Damon singularly unsuited to the title role, which Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper and John Malkovich had all occupied so memorably in previous adaptions. ‘Loving Highsmith’ focuses on her personal relationships, both with her cold and distant mother Mary, and a selection of her former paramours. Relatively few insights are imparted about Highsmith’s literary style - other than the suggestion that her magnificently icy prose may have sprung from the unrequited love she possessed for her mother - and it sheds very little insight into the creative inspirations behind one of literature’s most iconic anti-heroes, Tom Ripley. Nonetheless, it’s still a fascinating profile of the writer’s struggles as a gay woman from conservative Texas who emerged from a stiflingly patriarchal society to forge a singular literary career for herself.

#39 She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz, 2020) Shudder via Amazon Prime 3

This 2020 horror film has had excellent reviews, so I was looking forward to it. One review suggested that it was ‘Lynchian’, and that ‘Twin Peaks’ was an influence. I’ve lamented the trend in modern cinema towards 3 hour epics, so it was refreshing to discover that ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ clocks in at a lean 85 mins. Everything about this sounded right up my street. Then the film started..

85 minutes in the dentist’s chair would have passed quicker than this. I watched it in three (increasingly reluctant) instalments, as I could barely endure the characters or the dialogue. One scene, featuring an extended conversation between a group of irritating young professionals focusing on the mating habits of dolphins, practically compelled me to switch the TV off and go for a walk. Perhaps it’s intended to be satirical, as the hipsters’ fixation with the sex lives of cetaceans continues unabated, despite the token ‘oldie’ in the cast interrupting to state that she’s ‘going to die tomorrow’. Then again, it might be a sincere attempt to reflect what passes for conversation in the homes of upwardly mobile millennials these days. Either way, the script would have benefited from a judicious edit, preferably involving a litre of petrol and a match. 

The aforementioned oldie is played by Jane Adams, who wanders through the entire movie in her pyjamas looking bemused, lest we be in any doubt that’s she’s a mad old boomer, which is about as deep as the characterisation gets in this film. 

As for the rest of the cast: when not exchanging vapid inanities, listening to Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ on repeat seems to be their primary role, just to underscore the prevailing atmosphere of existential dread, as they moodily contemplate their impending demises (which I wish had been greatly expedited), as irrational fear of imminent death seems to be as contagious as the excruciating dialogue. 

‘She Dies Tomorrow’ is essentially an art house ‘Final Destination’, minus anything resembling action, a script or a plot.

After dragging on for a seemingly never-ending 85 minutes (Zack Snyder’s 4-hour director’s cut of ‘Justice League’ fairly zipped along by comparison), the film ends so abruptly that it’s more charitable to believe that they just ran out of film stock than to dignify the sudden termination as intentional.

It’s worth noting that this is a postmodern ‘horror’ film, and as such is completely bereft of anything quite so mundane as horror, so if you’re a fan of the genre, there’s likely to be nothing much here for you. It was released in 2020, and contemporary reviews suggest it was greeted as a timely parable of the pandemic. Watching it in 2023, it just seems pointless, plotless and pretentious. 

That’s not to say that it’s a film completely without qualities - the director’s visual sensibility is exquisite: there are some nicely composed shots, and a bunch of lovely dissolves into psychedelic imagery that mark Seimitz out as a talented filmmaker, and it’s clear that she’s capable of much better than this.

#40 The Fall (Scott Mann, 2022) Amazon Prime 7

An efficient, unpretentious and enjoyable little B-Movie about two free climbers who get stranded at the top of an enormous TV tower. 

#41 Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) Kino Babylon, Berlin 9

For some reason I’d never seen ‘Metropolis’ before, but it was a hugely enjoyable experience seeing it for the first time in Berlin’s beautiful Art Deco Kino Babylon (which opened in 1929, two years after the film was released), with a live orchestral accompaniment. 

#42 The Super Mario Bros Movie (Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, 2023) Zoo Palast, Berlin 5

The Super Mario Bros movie is fun, especially if you’re a fan of the Nintendo platform games (as I am). It has none of the wit or panache of ‘The Lego Movie’, for instance, but it was an enjoyable enough way to pass ninety minutes with the kids during a rainy afternoon in Berlin.

#43 Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Sara Driver, 2017) Mubi 9

Excellent documentary profiling the meteoric rise of the prodigiously-talented Jean-Michel Basquait, which conveys a real sense of the dynamically creative New York art, film and music worlds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, with fascinating contributions from luminaries such as Fab 5 Freddy, Jim Jarmusch, Glenn O’Brien, ex-James Chance and the Contortions’ guitarist turned successful artist James Nares, legendary graffiti artist Lee Quiñones et al. It makes a great companion piece to Edo Bertoglio’s ‘Downtown ‘81’, another vital snapshot of the New York scene of the time.

#44 Dead Reckoning (John Cromwell, 1947) Indicator blu-ray 8.5

Underrated and uncompromisingly bleak film noir starring Humphrey Bogart as ex-serviceman Captain ‘Rip’ Murdock, who goes in search of a missing army colleague in the fictional Gulf City, and 40’s film noir regular Lizabeth Scott (apparently a late replacement for Rita Hayworth) as glamorous nightclub singer Coral ‘Dusty’ Chandler. Scott is enjoyably duplicitous as the husky-voiced femme fatale, and Bogey is Bogey. John Cromwell’s background was in theatre, and his filmmaking career was workmanlike, but this is a very solid noir. Another theatre veteran, Morris Carnovsky is excellent as the villainous nightclub owner Martinelli, and it’s a great shame that his cinema career was curtailed by the blacklist.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Frankie S

[accies1874]

I really enjoyed Watcher too, which is strange given how grim it is. It just perfectly scratched an itch for me. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

On 01/05/2023 at 11:28, BTFD said:

Evil Dead Rise (cinema) - Evil Dead, but in an almost-empty apartment block on the verge of being torn down.

Although a lot of people seem to have liked it, I thought the trailer looked a bit generic and pish, but the good reviews made me decide to give it a go. It's a bit of a weird one; there are plenty of moments and scenes that have promise, but overall it is just a bit meh. Definitely the worst of the films so far; also, the epilogue that bookends the film doesn't make a lick of sense when you think about it for more than a few seconds.

Renfield (cinema) - Count Dracula's erstwhile servant discovers self-help and friendship while his master recovers from a close call with vampire hunters.

This was a surprise in several ways. For one, it's really good, providing a mix of genuinely funny moments with balls-out horror. For another, it's ludicrously gory in an Evil Dead fashion; occasionally the OTT nature is funny by itself, but there are also some cracking gags involving dismemberment and explosive showers of viscera. Fans of the genre will likely enjoy the loving nods to classic vampire flicks, including a brief remake of Bela Lugosi's classic to start the film off ("I never drink...wine").

I'm not a big Nicolas Cage fan, but he's great as the Count; a vicious monster who raises laughs through his passive-aggressive gaslighting. Nicholas Hoult plays Renfield as a young Hugh Grant who lost his way, and it's kinda heartwarming to watch him gradually realise that he doesn't have to be the bad guy. Parks & Rec fans will be delighted to see Ben Schwartz essentially being Jean-Ralphio again, while Awkwafina is still mystifyingly named after PepsiCo bottled water. Each to their own.

Not sure if my lack of expectations helped, but this was really enjoyable - not quite at What We Do in the Shadows level, but they're very different types of comedy anyway. I could see a sequel with Dracula trying (or pretending) to becoming a caring New Age monster to get back into Renfield's favour for some reason, and I'd definitely watch it.

I greenied this purely because you put the letter h in the right place for the two stars of Renfield. 

[BFTD]

1 minute ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I greenied this purely because you put the letter h in the right place for the two stars of Renfield. 

P&B gives you loads of training in proper 'h' placement.

[JustOneCornetto]

30) The Forgiven (2021) – Sky Cinema

Quite a thought provoking film about a cultural clash when a bunch of rich Westerners head to a lavish party somewhere in the Moroccan desert. Matt Smith is the rich boy, with his boyfriend, laying on a party for a bunch of dislikeable people when Ralph Fiennes has an accident driving to the party and the rest of the film is about the effects this has on him and the family of the boy involved in the incident You feel the anguish of both sides and Fiennes character is portrayed really well with a very hard hitting end to the film. A film I will probably want to watch again. 7/10

(31) Mr Holmes (2015) – DVD

Ian McKellen plays a now retired Sherlock Holmes living out in the country and keeping bees. He has some memory issues and tries to piece together his last case with the help of the housemaid’s son played by Milo Parker who is a budding detective and becomes part of the drama later in the film. McKellen puts in his usual five star performance and I liked the way the flashbacks were done to tell the story. 7.5/10

(32) 2 Hearts (2020) – Netflix

The title of the film and the blurb pretty much tells you what the outcome is going to be and the way it’s constructed, showing the life of the two main characters, years apart, is well done but what lets it down, for me anyway, is that the two stories are just too lovey dovey and over romantic before you get to the final act where you see anguish on one side and extreme gratitude on the other. I know it’s based on a true story but didn’t work for me. 4/10

(33) Hitchcock (2012) – DVD

Anthony Hopkins plays Hitch in this film about the lead up and making of his controversial film Psycho. Being a big fan of Hitchcock and Psycho among my top films I thought it was really well done and not knowing a lot about his relationship with his wife I think Helen Mirren does a great job in filling in what I didn’t know. He was well known as a perv and he certainly surrounded himself with some of the most beautiful stars of Hollywood, with Scarlett Johansson playing Janet Leigh really well but I thought the portrayal of Anthony Perkins was a bit weak having read about his life Definitely a must watch for Hitch fans. 7.5/10

[supermik]

Lucy.

Scarlet Johansson!!!

Need I say more.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Burnt. 2015.

Bradley Cooper plays a chef aiming to rebuild his life and career and win a 3rd Michelin star.

It’s decent enough.

Chef with Jon Favreau is better cookery movie.

[Mark Connolly]

1 hour ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Burnt. 2015.

Bradley Cooper plays a chef aiming to rebuild his life and career and win a 3rd Michelin star.

It’s decent enough.

Chef with Jon Favreau is better cookery movie.

Chef is absolutely tremendous. Also recommend "The Chef Show" on Netflix, which is Favreau and Roy Choi, who was the consultant chef on the film, going round trying amazing food

[Steve_Wilkos]

On 06/05/2023 at 07:16, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Burnt. 2015.

Bradley Cooper plays a chef aiming to rebuild his life and career and win a 3rd Michelin star.

It’s decent enough.

Chef with Jon Favreau is better cookery movie.

 

On 06/05/2023 at 08:47, Mark Connolly said:

Chef is absolutely tremendous. Also recommend "The Chef Show" on Netflix, which is Favreau and Roy Choi, who was the consultant chef on the film, going round trying amazing food

Would recommend 'Boiling Point' on Netflix, a one-take film set in a restaurant.

[Mark Connolly]

4 hours ago, Steve_Wilkos said:

 

Would recommend 'Boiling Point' on Netflix, a one-take film set in a restaurant.

Is that the Stephen Graham one? If so, it’s on my to do list

[Savage Henry]

Prisoners 

 

Last minute decision on Netflix to watch this early Dennis Villeneuve film.  It’s a combination of Silence of the Lambs and Insomnia, and is 3/4 sensational.  It’s a case study in movies which need a good editor, as it’s about an hour too long, mainly because of quite a lot of hokum in the final act.  At its best, genuinely tense.  I’d highly recommend it.

7.1

[scottsdad]

John Wick 4.

A deep, emotional dive into the complex character, covering his childhood, first feelings towards women, mid life crises and struggles with everyday life. Reeves is a stick on certainty for an Oscar. 

 

 

Spoiler

Reeves says "yeah" 4 times, shoots about a thousand people and generally has violent fun. Like watching someone play a shoot em up on the PS. 

 

[Theroadlesstravelled]

4 movies with the delightful Lyna Khoudri.

Haute couture. Fancy dresses and second chances. 6/10.

Les Trois Mousquetaires: D'Artagnan. A movie based on the classic cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. 8/10

Houria. Emancipation is some good shit. 6/10.

Papicha. Women are strong. Suck on that Islamic state. 7/10

[BFTD]

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Guard Harder (cinema) - everybody's favourite NOT A RACCOON Rocket's past finally catches up with him, and his friends must risk their lives to save him from the obsessed eugenicist who made him what he is.

Possibly the weakest of the trilogy, but it's still a lot of fun when it needs to be, and absolutely pitch black at other points - there's some utterly grim backstory here, and if you've got any kids that are sensitive to animal cruelty, you might want to think carefully about taking them to this. It gets really dark and, despite it being pretty obvious where the story's going, it's still upsetting when it happens.

No spoilers, but it's a good ending to James Gunn's involvement, and they made some decent decisions regarding the characters (including some entertaining newcomers). Definitely the best Marvel film since the Thanos saga finished, but it's entirely isolated from their current Multiverse/Kang storyline, so that's perhaps not as big a win as it seems.

Obviously, a new Howard the Duck movie is the key to saving the MCU, and they're clearly desperate to do it. Make it so.

[Mark Connolly]

1 hour ago, BTFD said:

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Guard Harder (cinema) - everybody's favourite NOT A RACCOON Rocket's past finally catches up with him, and his friends must risk their lives to save him from the obsessed eugenicist who made him what he is.

Possibly the weakest of the trilogy, but it's still a lot of fun when it needs to be, and absolutely pitch black at other points - there's some utterly grim backstory here, and if you've got any kids that are sensitive to animal cruelty, you might want to think carefully about taking them to this. It gets really dark and, despite it being pretty obvious where the story's going, it's still upsetting when it happens.

No spoilers, but it's a good ending to James Gunn's involvement, and they made some decent decisions regarding the characters (including some entertaining newcomers). Definitely the best Marvel film since the Thanos saga finished, but it's entirely isolated from their current Multiverse/Kang storyline, so that's perhaps not as big a win as it seems.

Obviously, a new Howard the Duck movie is the key to saving the MCU, and they're clearly desperate to do it. Make it so.

Howard can f**k off, give Cosmo the spin off

[MSU]

101 Romy and Michele's High School Reunion -- I forget how much I love this stupid movie until I watch it, and so it always seems to be years between viewings, giving me enough time to forget the jokes and the little looks between Lisa Kudrow and (Academy Award winner) Mira Sorvino and Janeane Garofalo. The story of two stereotypical airheads in LA heading back to Arizona for their 10-year High School reunion is simple enough but the movie has a wonderfully good and honest heart and there are many, I think, universal truths of acceptance and nostalgia and how the hierarchy of school means that we were all somewhere in the middle, simultaneously being treated like shit by some while treating others like shit in return. 9/10

102 Die Another Day -- Pierce Brosnan's tenure as 007 ends with a whimper and very much the sense of what could've been. I maintain that he's a good, maybe even great Bond, but he's had a couple of absolutely stinking stories to work with, and this is the bottom of the barrel. The story is poor, but the dialogue put around it is criminal. There's a scene where our villain is being questioned by a British press pack and honestly, the questions that are asked sound like they've been devised not only by someone who has never seen the British press in action but also by someone who has never heard a question being asked out loud. By the time Madonna, in her Cockney phase, and Oliver Skeet turn up in cameo roles, I had long given up. Not even a reasonable turn by Rosamund Pike is enough to save this calamity, and that's before I mention an invisible car. 2/10

103 Mutiny on the Bounty (#8 in the Best Picture series) -- There's an awful lot to like and enjoy in this epic historical/nautical romp with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as the dastardly Bligh. Acting in the 30s is to a different standard than these days but once you get used to it and adapt to the slightly odd way people talk to each other, it's something that can easily be tolerated. The production and location work is quite impressive for the time -- parts of it really were filmed in French Polynesia -- which must've seemed like extravagancies. Historically, apparently there are plenty of inaccuracies -- for example, Bligh was nowhere near as ruthless as depicted and the number of floggings on the Bounty was below average -- but what it left makes for great entertainment and it's easy to see why it picked up Best Picture. Oddly, it lost out to The Informer in other categories, and having three actors up for the Best Actor gong resulted in the birth of the Supporting Actor category. So that's nice. 8/10

104 Romancing the Stone -- Forty years on, just about, and it's still a hoot and a half and everyone is SO IMPOSSIBLY YOUNG! I always suspected that more recent movies like The Lost City and Jungle Cruise owed Romancing the Stone a debt of gratitude, and that has been more than confirmed. Douglas and Turner work well together and Robert Zemeckis's direction, while never really diverting from the tried and tested formula of 80s romantic comedies, is vibrant and full of fun. A more than decent way to spend 100 minutes on a dreary afternoon. 7/10

105 Casino Royale -- What a difference four years makes, so much so that this feels like a new franchise. No transition from one Bond to another has been such a reinvention. Daniel Craig's 007 plays by his own rules and it's an incredibly welcome move. There are obvious throwbacks, of course. The cast of characters remains largely the same, the globe is sufficiently trotted, and the baddies typically have some visible deformity, but it all feels like it's in the new century for the first time. I can't imagine any effort from Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton featuring an extended base running sequence on a Madagascan construction site, although the thought of Roger Moore doing it is pretty amusing. Mads Mikkelsen is a fine villain, Martin Campbell's direction is an improvement on his work on GoldenEye, and Paul Haggis's script is sharp and thankfully not dripping in innuendo. This Bond is blunt, flawed, somewhat inexperienced, and brilliant. And the theme tune kicks serious arse too. 9/10

106 Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret -- Been a quiet couple of weeks at the movies if you're not interested in Marvel, so this was Mrs MSU's pick and I guess all the nostalgia and memberberries that this serves up worked better for her than it did for me. It's a coming-of-age drama-comedy that wasn't all that funny and didn't have much in the way of tension, but it was charming, cute, and surprisingly frank in places as Margaret attempts to negotiate a new school, new friends, and the threat of puberty. There's an interesting subplot of her maternal grandparents being Christian and disapproving of their daughter's marriage to a Jew but it didn't really pay off at any point. Rachel McAdams is acting within her means throughout, Abby Ryder Forston as Margaret and Elle Graham as her friend Nancy are great, but it's Kathy Bates as Margaret's granny that steals the show. 6/10

[BFTD]

I really liked Die Another Day at the time, despite the awful CG, which was still pretty common. It's probably the most ludicrous entry, but they'd been ramping up the set pieces and concepts for decades by that point, and gritty realism hadn't arrived in the action genre yet.

I'd be interested to see if I liked it because it had the "so bad it's good" thing. I do remember both Madonna's cameo and title song being fucking awful though; funny to think there was a time where she could just turn up to things and people would accept whatever she did because, hey, it's Madonna.

[Guest ICTFCwife]

I’m not sure if you would define it as a movie or more of a documentary/concert but the last movie I watched was “Bruce Springsteen,Western Stars” well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.