What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Miguel Sanchez]

Philadelphia (1993) Tom Hanks gets bad AIDS and gets fired and hires Denzel Washington for the wrongful dismissal lawsuit. A film about a difficult subject which doesn't perfectly straddle the line between corny and emotional is still saved in its weaker moments by its leads. Note: I watched this on TV at half six in the evening so some of the saucier language was missing. Note 2: It's actually interesting to watch this and see that Tom Hanks can act. Then the year after this he did Forrest Gump. Woof.

The Fugitive (1993) Harrison Ford is framed for the murder of his wife and Tommy Lee Jones is the US Marshal trying to capture him when he evades custody. Despite some... convenient plot contrivances which allow Han Solo to clear his name, this is a fantastic action movie with great performances throughout and a very grounded and realistic depiction of Chicago, where it was filmed and set. Note: A young, moany Julianne Moore is a nice addition.

Psycho (1960) Even though I'd seen it before this is the sort of film it's impossible to see blind. I've seen The Simpsons, so I've seen large parts of this, shot for shot. And I know what happens anyway. And reading about it, the notion of it being scandalous because it features an unmarried woman in her underwear is quite funny. And some action/killing scenes are so obviously fake and badly acted they practically break the fourth wall. Despite all of this there's an undeniable tension watching this as you wonder when and how he's going to be rumbled. 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Miguel Sanchez

[MSU]

203 The Creator -- Gareth Edwards' first movie after Rogue One is visually incredible, all the more so with a supposed budget of $80m, but has a storyline that seems to borrow a bit too much from Avatar and the aforementioned Star Wars prequel thing. Some decades in the future and man's pursuit of advancing AI has ended in the only way it can possibly end: the annihilation of Los Angeles in a nuclear explosion. Following this, the US understandably takes against AI and seeks to rid the world of it, but a country called New Asia remains as last bastion of the technology where human, robot warriors, and sort of halfway-house simulants live in harmony or something. A mission is launched to track down and kill Nirmata, an AI messiah who is rumored to have built a weapon capable of taking down The Death Star, or NOMAD as it's called here; an enormous airborne laser station that's capable of destroying anything in its path. Maybe it is called The Death Star. I forget. John David Washington plays Joshua, a former special forces agent who lost his pregnant wife, discovers that the weapon is a 9-year-old girl. Madeleine Yuna Voyles is amazing as the kid, but the storyline is overblown in terms of the runtime, the depth of the world it creates, and the political and ethnic issues it drags up. I feel like it's trying to say something about the treatment of refugees in the real world, trying to remind us that we're all the same underneath it all, we're all trying to give our kids a future, but it goes about that side of its business in a heavy-handed, exposition-laden, and dismissive way, so the emotional beats designed to coax a tear from my robotic eye feel cheap. 5/10 

204 The Bourne Legacy -- I don't really care for Jeremy Renner -- to me, he's always just the boring Avenger that's, I dunno, a good aim or something. So I had issues substituting him in for Matt Damon while keeping the Bourne name in the title. Surprisingly, the first section of this with Oscar Isaac and Renner in the Alaskan wilderness is actually pretty decent stuff, but it becomes a bit dull after that when I suspect it's supposed to get exciting. All the stuff about chems and reds and greens just sounded stupid and I never really felt engaged with the story. I still like the way it messes with its own timeline but this is a low point in the series by a clear margin. 5/10

205 The Exorcist: I'm a Belieber -- This is a brilliant example of a movie, cynically and lazily made, that doesn’t earn anything it’s trying to do. I imagine David Gordon Green and Danny McBride sat down and watched The Exorcist, or read its plot summary on Wikipedia, and hot on the heels of making disappointing Halloween movies, decided to go one better by making an awful Exorcist sequel. The first one opened in Iraq? Let’s open this one in Haiti! The first one has one little girl? Let’s have two! Reprise the utterance of *that* line and throw in a head-spin? Why the hell not! And while we're at it, let's ignore the ambiguity around why Regan got possessed in the first place and this time we'll make it crystal clear. I'm not a huge fan of The Exorcist -- it's fine -- but even I can see some of the elements that Green and McBride have ripped off here without the first clue of why they were important or how they served the story, and it leaves me sad that they somehow convinced Ellen Burstyn to be involved. I didn't expect this to be a definitive take on the Exorcist mythos, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad and dull and empty, and only Pazuzu himself can have the faintest idea of what horror awaits in the proposed sequels. If the makers have any conscience, those sequels will never see the light of day, and the master copy of this will be thrown down a very steep flight of stairs. Without all the baggage of being an Exorcist sequel, this is probably a 3/10 movie but because of what it's trying to emulate, it's a 1/10 every day of the week.

206 On Fire -- A "true" story of a family who are forced to evacuate their home when they're caught up in a Californian brush fire is timely enough and fair play to the folks who made this, they've succeeded in making a movie and getting it a release and that's pretty impressive, and they've done that without looking like they've spent a fortune in doing so. But by any other measure, this is a dreadful experience, poorly acted, woefully scripted, stupid and funny in an unintentional way, and actually has a character screaming, "f**k you, fire!" at the fire. It has a feel of an 80s made-for-TV movie that's based on an outline of an idea that no one could be bothered fleshing out into anything more substantial. The mother in the family is 8-months pregnant, the father-in-law misses his deceased wife, and the son runs cross-country and you can honestly fill in most of the movie's plot points from that information alone. It does, however, feature the dad vampire from Twilight who I have now seen in four movies that have a combined score of 6/40, which is impressively low. 2/10

[welshbairn]

The Creator. Was hoping for some thoughtful sci-fi but yet another remake of the Vietnam War with the plucky napalm bombed peasants literally played by robots. Bladerunner it ain't. 

Edited October 8, 2023 by welshbairn

[JustOneCornetto]

(71) Europa Report (2013) – Netflix

Very much my type of sci-fi, this is about a mission to explore Europa, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. The story of the mission is done in documentary style showing found footage from various cameras on the ship and we also see some live action aboard the ship so once you get used to the way it skips about the film has a lot of tension and some great shots giving a real sense of being in space, The crew are all likeable enough and I’d recommend if you liked films like Moon, Gravity and The Martian. 7.5/10

(72) Oxygen (2021) – Netflix

Not recommended if you are claustrophobic. A woman wakes up from a cryogenic sleep in some sort of pod with no recollection of how or why she is there. It’s all filmed in this small space and with oxygen running out it’s a race against time to try and find out how she got there and how to escape with her only help being the onboard computer assistant. Difficult to say any more without revealing spoilers but it all becomes a much bigger premise than first imagined. 7/10

(73) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) – Sky Cinema

Was sure I had seen this but turns out this was my first watch and what a nice surprise. It’s basically a rom-com wrapped up in a sci-fi concept where all memories about a partner are able to be wiped out. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are good together then add in a great supporting cast to make this a really daft but endearing film at the same time. 8/10

(74) Dr Strangelove (1964) – DVD

Brilliant satire on the Cold War and the nuclear threat. So many gags with Peter Sellers at his very best as he plays the stiff upper lip British Officer, the US President and the eccentric Dr Strangelove, with George C Scott also proving he can do great comedy as well. ‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room’ is one of the greatest lines ever. 8.5/10

[DA Baracus]

17 hours ago, JustOneCornetto said:

Was sure I had seen this but turns out this was my first watch

Very good.

[scottsdad]

Airplane!

Simply the funniest movie ever made. 

 

[coprolite]

This week I fell asleep watching and didn’t finish two half arsed nostalgia cash ins.

Top Gun was just really boring. I was expecting dumb and cheesy, but incredibly it wasn’t dumb and cheesy enough. 
3/10

Space Jam new legacy was just shite. Never saw the original, don’t know basketball (I assume all the tall people were real players) and was unimpressed by WB showing off their IP portfolio. 2/10.

 

[paranoid android]

Licorice Pizza.

Not sure what to make of it, tbh - quite a fan of PTA's films.

Not many likeable characters, and it felt like a budget version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood without the violence. 

[Comrie]

65

After Earth, but just about competent. Still not great, but it's short.

5/10

[Flybhoy]

Rise of the Footsoldier, Origins. 

The Tony Tucker story. 

6/10

Does what it says on the tin, don't expect too much in the way Oscar winning method acting or deep human interest stories 

Just yet another episode of this overdrawn franchise depicting another chapter of Essex gangsters and drug dealers robbing, torturing and killing one another with some obviously grossly exaggerated violence and made up scenes with some cheesy dialogue inserted in amongst it all to lighten the load.

Given it's principle characters were killed in real life and in the first movie they are now making umpteen prequels to cash in on it, frankly they have ripped the arse out it but, strangely still a mildly enjoyable hour and a half with a cracking 80's soundtrack, some proper gorey/comedy violence and a sprinkling of foxy young ladies , its target audience is obvious, read online there is another one just released, assuming the next prequel will have Tucker, Tate and Rolf robbing other kids dinner money in the playground with a Stanley knife. 

Okay for that kind of thing if a bit predictable. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Flybhoy

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Mummy (1999) Some harm comes from reading a book. The ultimate blockbuster - action, horror, comedy, a history lesson, a healthy fear of the unknown and a distrust of Americans. And some utterly heinous CGI. As good now as it ever was. I watched this on TV at half six in the evening so some of the gorier bits were missing.

The Exorcist (1973) Priest has spiritual crisis and resolves it by going for a trip. Some films I watch and just instinctively know I'm watching something good, even if I don't fully appreciate and understand every aspect of it the way I'd like. Is it because I spend a lot of time watching Mark Kermode reviews on youtube? Probably. All I know for certain is this is just captivating from beginning to end, now matter how unsettling it is.

Alien (1979) What is it with horror films and people not acting the way people do? John Hurt is an astronaut on a ship that receives a strange signal from a nearby moon. He and his crew investigate and discover a huge spaceship crash landed on it. It's huge, it's black and glossy, filled with extremely intricate architecture and structures. There's a giant humanoid skeleton on a plinth with something sticking out of its chest. John Hurt finds a bunch of eggs surrounded by mist in a room. He goes and looks at one of the eggs and sees something moving inside, so he sticks his face over the top and the thing jumps out and wraps itself around his face. His crew take him back to his ship and do some investigating. They try cutting it but it has literal acid for blood. Then they go away and leave him for a bit. Then they go back and the thing has left his face and seemingly lies dead on the floor. Then they leave him for a bit again. Then they come back and he's up and fine and hungry so they go and have dinner and then the Alien bursts out of his chest. 

I've seen this before and never really taken to it, despite it largely having a bunch of traits that I like. I realised partly why I've struggled this time around. There's something... presumptive about the way the characters talk to each other and do things. I don't know if I'm just stupid but nobody talks to anyone, nothing is explained, they just seem to move to the next bit of the ship so the next scene can happen. There's very little conversation and really there's not much that suggests to me this crew know each other very well or really care. Luckily we have a young Sigourney Weaver who looks like the least likely survival horror action star possible but pulls it off very well. While watching this I discovered I've only ever seen her in three films - this and Ghostbusters 1 and 2. This is her best.

Boiling Point (2021) The world's most Scouse chef has the ultimate kitchen nightmare. Shot as a one-take (but not really, even though I watched it on streaming with ad breaks you can see the few cuts it has) we see everyone in a restaurant have a night. It's very real. It's so real you spend the run time even more wound up and anxious and angry than all of the people you see. You're in the restaurant as much as they are. You loathe and sympathise with certain characters, whether they're objectively annoying or terrible or not. Very good, but it will raise your blood pressure. If you've ever worked in a restaurant or bar this is probably the sort of fever dream you have years later where everything that can go wrong in a night does.  

[Roger the cabin boy]

There Will be Blood

No Country for Old Men 

It Could Happen to You

Con Air

 

 

[Ewanandmoreagain]

 

Judgement at Nuremberg - finally                                                                   managed to finish watching this fictional tale of four judges , etc on trial for crimes against humanity during the Nazi time in power

Incredible cast , including William Shatner , who are mostly brilliant . I do not think I am a Burt Lancaster fan but I imagine I am in a small minority. 

 

 

[RuMoore]

17 hours ago, Roger the cabin boy said:

There Will be Blood

No Country for Old Men 

It Could Happen to You

Con Air

 

 

I know it's nowhere near the best if you're a movie buff but for me it's in my top 5. 

Absolute classic. Some great acting, some great cinematography, some great lines, perfect length of film and a lovely soundtrack. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

On 14/10/2023 at 12:01, Roger the cabin boy said:

No Country for Old Men 

Brilliant film.

John Wick Chapter 4, exactly what you expect from a John Wick film, an enjoyable finale, topped off by the origin story of the Continental.

[Bert Raccoon]

Went to see Saw X on Friday. It was a Saw film and was as expected. Still hugely enjoyable of you're into that kind of thing 

[MSU]

207 The Exorcist -- This, I think, is my third viewing of The Exorcist, unashamedly triggered by the recent requel that's doing the rounds. First time I saw it was on a well-worn dodgy VHS back when it was still banned in the UK, or at least unavailable for home viewing, and it wasn't the crispest of experiences. I remember being baffled by quite a lot of it, especially the Iraqi intro. It freaked me out a little, and I was maybe 20 at the time, so it didn't leave me with a feeling that I'd seen a masterpiece of cinema or anything like it. It was fine, but little more than that. Second time was at the UCI in Edinburgh for its 25th anniversary. On the big screen, it was a far better visual experience but unfortunately, there was a group of girls in the audience who found the movie hilarious and guffawed all the way through. Again, not ideal conditions, and again I appreciated some of it but left somewhat underwhelmed. Tonight I feel like I watched it for the first time and for the first time, it blew me away. It's such a harrowing, disturbing, and thoughtful movie, a carefully structured movie, and it delivers so much with breathtaking performances. I genuinely got chills during Karras's silent dream sequence, watching his mother at the subway entrance as the demon's face flashes up and Mrs Karras begins her descent. Chilling. I've got goosebumps just thinking about it as I type. And despite all the possession stuff, surely the angiography scene is the most unsettling of all. I'm so glad I watched it again. I've never really described myself as a fan of this movie but it's never really been given a chance to impress me. I'm impressed now. An absolute masterpiece that absolutely is not about a possessed little girl. 10/10

208 The Storms of Jeremy Thomas -- So little on at the cinema this week if you're not interested in Taylor Swift. For the second week running, I ignored Paw Patrol and went to see something else and for the second week running, I regret this decision. When documentarian and narrator Mark Cousins asks Jeremy Thomas if David Bowie was a star, and then indulges in a word association game for what felt like ten minutes, you know, if you weren’t already fully aware, that this is a documentary where the maker is putting in way too much of himself.  You would think that after being involved in 60 odd movies as a producer and director that Thomas would have an abundance of cool stories to tell during a needlessly long 5 day 1,000 mile drive to Cannes, but if he does, Cousins doesn’t let him tell them, or ask the right questions to provoke them. Instead, we have vague, abstract conversations about sex and politics and death interspersed with Cousins quoting lines from Thomas’s movies and asking if he thinks the sentiments are true. I have no clearer idea of Jeremy Thomas now than I did before I sat down in my seat, and the meager contributions from Tilda Swinton and Debra Winger did little to illuminate matters. Thomas is important because everyone says so, and he thinks Marlon Brando was a star, and he associates nightmares with terror. I guess that’s something to be going on with. 2/10

[Gibby82]

The Long Good Friday.

Very dated and some really dodgy racist dialogue but good fun and Bob Hoskins is excellent as per. Bonus points for Helen Mirren being Helen Mirren, a cameo from the guy off Brush Strokes and silent IRA assassin/pretend homosexual Pierce Brosnan.

7/10

[scottsdad]

4 hours ago, richardsedmond said:

Tonight I am watching "Sound of Freedom" The film that everyone that as watched says it will blow you away and possible it could be film of the year.... Oddly enough it was made in 2018 but they could not get any studio to back it due to the topic that it covers.....

And the fact that it is worshipped by lunatics. That's what put most folk off. 

[Pocketman]

11 hours ago, richardsedmond said:

Tonight I am watching "Sound of Freedom" The film that everyone that as watched says it will blow you away and possible it could be film of the year.... Oddly enough it was made in 2018 but they could not get any studio to back it due to the topic that it covers.....

 

6 hours ago, scottsdad said:

And the fact that it is worshipped by lunatics. That's what put most folk off. 

I imdb'd it and was reminded this was the movie that conforms to right wingers' view on many conspiracy theories going around, centred around what seems to be one of their favourite subject matters - paedophillia. Saying that I liked Jim Caviezel in Persons of Interest and who doesn't like seeing a former US government agent pulled out of retirement to undertake a mission allowing him to kill johnny foreigner with such abandon?