What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Mark Connolly]

6 hours ago, Herc said:

Barbie

Barbs deserves a post of her own. Thought it got the mixture of sickly sweetness, satire, silliness, sarcasm and seriousness spot on. Gosling and Robbie were perfect as was Barbieland. Enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would.

Thought Gosling was excellent, and the fight with Simu Liu was hilarious

[Arch Stanton]

Oppenheimer...

Yeah, I freely admit I'm a Nolan fanboy.

Watched it this morning in IMAX and it was phenomenal. Long, detailed and the usual Nolan "fucking about" with the timeline...what's not to like.

Brilliant performances by Murphy and Downey Jnr.

Those who like "action" movies,  such as the Fast and Furious series, will be bored after 20 minutes but when the bomb scene finally arrives (after 1 hour and 58 minutes...exactly when Oppenheimer says it will detonate) it's a fantastic bit of film making.

Go see it, it's superb.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Arch Stanton

[Mark Connolly]

15 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Oppenheimer...

Yeah, I freely admit I'm a Nolan fanboy.

Watched it this morning in IMAX and it was phenomenal. Long, detailed and the usual Nolan "fucking about" with the timeline...what's not to like.

Brilliant performances by Murphy and Downey Jnr.

Those who like "action" movies,  such as the Fast and Furious series, will be bored after 20 minutes but when the bonb scene finally arrives (after 1 hour and 58 minutes...exactly when Oppenheimer says it will detonate) it's a fantastic bit of film. making.

Go see it, it's superb.

I've seen a lot of people describe it as "long", but it certainly never felt that way for me, the first hour or so felt really well paced, and after the bomb went off, the time seemed to fly in.

I'm actually considering going back to see it again, as I'm sure I have missed plenty

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Belfast.

Boring shite.

Report ends.

[BFTD]

18 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkay said:

Belfast.

Boring shite.

Report ends.

^^^ Shitting Stories thread for this pish

[Squalor Vic]

Babylon (2022)

Big, flawed, messy, over the top and 3 hours long but I really enjoyed it and was never bored. The three leads were excellent, and it looked amazing. If the opening 20 mins or so, featuring shitting elephants, pissing and a huge debauched orgy doesn't put you off then it's worth sticking with. 

Could it be shorter, of course, would I want it to be, not really.

[MSU]

143 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation -- The resurgence of this franchise continues with Christopher McQuarrie in the director's chair, where he will make himself comfy for the next few movies. It also introduced the never not wonderful Rebecca Ferguson into proceedings as a feisty British agent working to her own agenda. The shadow of PSH still casts deep and heavy, but it's absolutely fine as far as MI movies go, and more Tom Cruise movies should have Nessun Dorma in the soundtrack. Is it all starting to feel a bit samey, though? Do they always have to be the most impossible mission ever? Does no one ever listen to the IMF? All this said, the ending is pretty satisfying. 6/10

144 Mission: Impossible - Fallout -- I liked this one a lot. I may have liked it a bit more if it had come in twenty minutes shorter, but hey, you can't win them all. Unless you're Ethan Hunt. This is a breathless romp around the globe again with chases and stunts galore but what really made it for me was the reintroduction of Julia, which gave the movie a bit of a personal touch. I started out this journey through the franchise thinking of Mission: Impossible movies as a poor man's James Bond. That's not really the case at all, they're doing similar but different things, and the one thing that Mission: Impossible has never tried to make me do is think that underwater fight scenes are impressive or tense, and I have to thank it for that. 8/10

145 Shaun of the Dead -- I never get tired of watching this, helped by there always being a new bit of foreshadowing or a callback to spot. This time, I don't think I've ever caught the fact that the guy calling Ed for drugs near the start is Shaun's underling at the store. If ever there was a movie to prove how much thought and attention people put into their work, this is it. And as clever as it is, it has the fun and the drama and the emotion and zombie flesh-eating to back it all up. My one complaint is that I wish Edgar Wright had given Nick Frost a couple more takes for some of his lines. It's become a classic in the last twenty years and a bit of a predictor for human behavior during certain real-world events. A great comedy, a great zombie flick, just perfectly written and directed. 9/10

146 Threads -- A cheery wee look back at Cold War nuclear armageddon anxiety. I was 10 or 11 when this came out and I remember watching it on BBC2 at the time. What were my parents thinking? Forty years later, give or take, and it's no less harrowing now than it was back then. Growing up in the 80s, we were terrified of nuclear war without really knowing what that meant. This changed that. So often, war is told from the perspective of those fighting or those issuing the orders, but the impact of this comes from telling the stories of everyday people in a 1980s Britain that is very recognizable. Impossible to say that I enjoyed it and if I see it again in another 40 years it'll be too soon, but vital viewing. 8/10

147 Hot Fuzz -- I wish I'd seen this in the cinema, just to feel the frustrating joy of the eighteen false endings with a larger group of people. I wonder if there were riots. I adore this. There's the same Shaun-of-the-Dead-esque meticulous attention to detail and careful arrangement of set-ups, callbacks, and foreshadowing that always make a rewatch a rewarding experience, Frost's acting is better, and the setting of a hard-boiled action movie in a quiet English town, with all the requisite hat-tips, is absolutely perfect. Definitely in my Top 10 favourite movies of all-time. 10/10

148 They Cloned Tyrone -- There's an awful lot in here to unpack, many genres touched upon, some more than others, and maybe overall just a few too many to keep the whole cohesive, but it's a pretty clever, occasionally hilarious, constantly odd wee tale of social satire with gentrification taken to an unexpected level. The three leads, John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris put in barnstorming performances as a drug dealer, a customer, and a prostitute who uncover a government conspiracy in their neighborhood. It's Juel Taylor's directorial debut after writing a Creed sequel and the Space Jam revamp and this is clearly his most impressive and ambitious work. I'd maybe question that it's literally (and maybe figuratively) too dark in places, but the tone from the fonts used and the slightly grainy film stock rather brilliantly evokes a 70s blaxploitation flick and maybe the lighting is part of that. All in all, a bit of a mindfuck that provokes a lot of thought and surprises right to the final word. 7/10

149 The World's End -- I'm not sure what exactly it is that makes this last part of the Cornetto trilogy such a disappointment. Is it Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's role reversal? Is it that it takes 38 minutes for the sci-fi part of the story to begin? On paper, the idea of a group of friends returning to their hometown to do a pub crawl, only to find that the town has been overrun by clones should work, and it's hilarious that Edgar Wright talked the studio into throwing $20m at this idea. The group slowly getting drunker and drunker as the movie progresses is kinda funny and the fight scenes are pretty satisfying, as is the CGI, but it just doesn't connect in the way that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz did with ease. The overall message of the human race being f**k ups and we don't like being told what to do hasn't aged all that well either. 6/10

150 The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster -- It's such a great hook of a title and the basic premise of an urban retelling of Frankenstein doesn't sound too shabby either. Teenage Vicaria's mother and brother are both killed in her neighborhood and she sees death all around her. Deciding that she can cure death, she brings her brother back with predictably unpredictable results. The first half of this or so is really quite fantastic. Laya DeLeon Hayes is superb as the protege scientist and the fact that she's never allowed to veer too far from what the neighborhood deems her to be worth is rather sad. For most of the movie, her glasses are broken. Her teacher at school, rather than supporting her or encouraging her free-thinking, is a racist asshole. The gangs want her to make drugs for them. The social commentary blends in quite neatly with an interesting paradox of bringing someone back from the dead into such bleak surroundings that are dripping with death, and the movie tries to run with this as much as it can. I don't know if it's a lack of budget or script, but it wanders away from tough questions in the second half and becomes a bit of a by-the-numbers slasher instead. 6/10

[Wee-Bey]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

Do the Turtles need another reboot ? Probably not tbh, especially if you're not doing anything wildly different than before. This rifts heavily from Spiderverse in both animation and tone. They've changed April, Bebop and Rocksteady do a face turn and there's no Shredder until the post credits. A bit meh but the wee man enjoyed it more than the live action ones and placed it 2nd in the list of turtle films behind Turtles Forever (2006)

[accies1874]

30. The Artifice Girl - freevee

Pretty solid considering it's just, at most, three and a half different people chatting in three different rooms across three different time periods. That could easily feel stagey, but, if anything, actually comes across as hyper-cinematic due to its energy and script (the latter is a bit of an issue in this respect but decent overall). 

It starts off mysterious as a loser, who was clearly inspired by Jesse Eisenburg in The Social Network, is questioned by two special agents about peado hunting which is when the film is at its most entertaining - not least because of the really strange sense of humour through the whole thing - but it quickly becomes a relatively interesting A.I. morality tale that doesn't really take a side as it's all questionable yet all kinda correct. 

There are some iffy performances but the actual "Artifice Girl" goes from excellent as an eerie computer presence to really quite poor, which is an issue as we're supposed to believe she's developed into a human state but what we see is still incredibly unhuman - this sort of botches the climax in the midst of decent conversations. 

[coprolite]

Garfield (2004)

Lazy greedy anthropomorphic cat has an adventure in half arsed family Tom com.

Bill Murray is ok as Garfield’s voice. Other people out of stuff are ok. Garfield learns stuff. 
 

For the sub genre of live action films with main characters with inaudible voices, it places above look who’s talking too and Cats and Dogs but below Baby Geniuses and the original look who’s talking. 
 

I thought I’d hate it as much as I hated the strip and the car toys in the 80s, so meh is a big win.

4/10

[Lyle Lanley]

On 30/07/2023 at 14:03, MSU said:

 

146 Threads -- A cheery wee look back at Cold War nuclear armageddon anxiety. I was 10 or 11 when this came out and I remember watching it on BBC2 at the time. What were my parents thinking? Forty years later, give or take, and it's no less harrowing now than it was back then. Growing up in the 80s, we were terrified of nuclear war without really knowing what that meant. This changed that. So often, war is told from the perspective of those fighting or those issuing the orders, but the impact of this comes from telling the stories of everyday people in a 1980s Britain that is very recognizable. Impossible to say that I enjoyed it and if I see it again in another 40 years it'll be too soon, but vital viewing. 8/10

 

Always wanted to watch this but can't find the full film anywhere. 

[Arch Stanton]

15 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

Always wanted to watch this but can't find the full film 

Don't say I'm not good to you...

https://archive.org/details/threads_201712

ETA...don't blame me if you have nightmares tonight.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Arch Stanton

[MSU]

51 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

Always wanted to watch this but can't find the full film anywhere. 

 

42 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

Don't say I'm not good to you...

https://archive.org/details/threads_201712

ETA...don't blame me if you have nightmares tonight.

Lyle, you may want to have a support puppy at the ready.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Deep Impact (1998): Emotionally manipulative bullshit. Morgan Freeman is the leader of the free world and I'm cheering for the meteor to destroy the earth. 

Rain Man (1988): The Wikipedia page for this film claims the film raised awareness of autistic spectrum disorders when it was released. I can only hope this is true, because watching it just made me feel very uncomfortable. Tom Cruise is an android who learns how different humans think. The day after I watched this Lisa's Substitute was on TV, so the film remains the second best thing I've seen which ends with Dustin Hoffman leaving on a train as the main character ponders how he altered their view of the world and themselves.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001): I went to see this on a school trip when it was released. It was probably the first film I'd seen based on a book I knew, and since I was 9 I'd obviously read however many books there were at that time enough to know them off by heart. The film was not a perfect recreation of what I had seen in my mind, so naturally it was the worst thing in the world. Watching it now, I realise I misunderstood it. Absolutely hysterical. No wonder Americans think British people all talk that way.

Underwater (2020): Kristen Stewart has seen Alien at some point in her life and obviously felt like shaving her head and running around a narrow, poorly-lit engineering location in her undies. The main difference is that Alien has tension, suspense, action, characterisation, coherent camerawork and good acting. I've just looked it up and discovered it apparently cost at least fifty million dollars to make. It must have gone on waterproofing Kristen's eyeshadow which remains flawless throughout. 

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019): I saw about ten minutes near the end of this when it was on TV as I went to bed. I decided to watch until I could understand what was going on. Someone who isn't Tobey Maguire does some extremely unconvincing CGI to try and stop a guy from using a bunch of drones to make it look like Tower Bridge is being attacked. My understanding of Marvel is that there about a hundred films that are all like this. God help us all.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Miguel Sanchez

[Guest]

On 25/07/2023 at 13:54, coprolite said:

Saw the opening half hour of Dune (2021) then fell asleep. It was definitely telling the story better than the Lynch version. Looks like a tv movie with a big CGI budget and the music was an intrusive drone. Showed just enough to make me want to watch it when I’m less tired, but not sure I’d have felt the same if I wasn’t a bit of a sci fi nerd. 

How did they build the massive concrete headquarters on a world with no water? And don't say Postcrete.

[Fullerene]

4 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Deep Impact (1998): Emotionally manipulative bullshit. Morgan Freeman is the leader of the free world and I'm cheering for the meteor to destroy the earth. 

In Jaws, there was a real shooting star that appears in the film purely by chance.

Spielberg added it artificially into some of his other films as something of a trademark.

It was inevitable he would eventually make an entire film about something similar.

[Lyle Lanley]

10 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Don't say I'm not good to you...

https://archive.org/details/threads_201712

ETA...don't blame me if you have nightmares tonight.

 

9 hours ago, MSU said:

 

Lyle, you may want to have a support puppy at the ready.

Just finished watching it. 

That's my nightmares sorted for the future. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

15 hours ago, MSU said:

 

Lyle, you may want to have a support puppy at the ready.

And some bulky pee pants

[Squalor Vic]

Oppenheimer

Really enjoyed it, a ream throwback film that doesn't really get made on this scale very often. Seen some comparisons to JFK, which I get, though I'd say JFK is a lot more thrilling/entertaining. 

Top drawer across the board from everyone and, like Babylon which I watched earlier in the week, I was never bored through the 3 hours.

Quite amazing how little I knew of Oppenheimer and this whole story tbh, despite it being 'the most important thing to ever happen in the fucking world' (to paraphrase Matt Damon's character)

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Departed (2006) Do you think people from Boston get sick of the Dropkick Murphys? I would. Thanks to this film I've also learned there's a Wikipedia article titled "List of films that most frequently use the word f**k" which is very amusing. An assortment of famous people go looking for a rat. They all find one, one way or another. I still don't think I know how the film ends the way it does.

Memento (2000) Man with very bad tattoos has an extremely bad day. I actually paid attention while watching this trying to follow the black and white sequences, which is sort of the point. I don't think the payoff is very rewarding though.

Sully (2016) As I watched this I thought the scenes with the NTSB were a bit ridiculous. As I was watching I looked the film up, and saw that this was noted and generally agreed with which I found reassuring. When the film finished and DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD appeared on screen, everything made sense. If I'm on a plane I want men with spectacular moustaches flying it. Or at least Tom Hanks. 

Moon (2009) Man on the moon discovers it's clones all the way down. Perhaps it's a symptom of a film like this being made and well-received, but I feel as if the classic science fiction questions explored in this are things I've seen in Black Mirror or other anthology series. It's a good performance from Sam Rockwell and the premise wasn't actually what I thought it was, so I'll give it points for that.

Predator (1987) What a fucking film this is. Immaculate. The irony is I could see humans, millennia from now when we can travel far enough in space, taking on the role of the Predator, going to other planets and hunting for sport. Cheating, as we use our thermal vision, invisibility armour and mounted laser guns to kill some poor buggers who don't know we're there.