What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Craig fae the Vale]

Went to see Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire the other night. Was it a good movie? No. Did I have an absolute ton of fun? Yes. Big monsters fighting each other. Utter nonsense but delightfully entertaining.

[coprolite]

Leave the World Behind (2023)

Impromptu family holiday goes downhill due to increasingly bad shit happening. 

Despite having some big set piece CGI moments, it seemed quite televisual and low key. 

It felt like it was missing a sense of threat or danger (apart from immediate threat from approaching transport) and was telling rather than showing. 

Some good ideas and memorable bits. Some pointless crap that went nowhere. Too much time spent on fleshing out characters that were uninteresting. 

I really liked the ending. 

5/10

[MSU]

068 Scoop -- Great performances from Gillian Anderson, Billie Piper, Keeley Hawes, and Rufus Sewell but this BTS of the lead-up and negotiations to Andrew Windsor giving THAT Newsnight interview and Pizza Express endorsement is too well-known and too recent to be much more than a bit of well-executed cosplay. 5/10

069 Civil War -- This is a movie I've unwittingly had in my dreams since, oh, I dunno, round about 2020. Dreams of cities on fire, civilians being shot dead, chaos. How nice of Alex Garland to put the nightmares of my subconscious onto the screen and make matters worse by giving Jesse Plemons a gun and some funky shades. Brilliantly acted, directed, scored, and shot, it cleverly refuses to nail its flag entirely to the mast, although there are clues, and it makes the story about photojournalists who are there simply to record events and let others decide what's good or bad. As the movie says in one of many unbearably tense scenes, there are no good guys or bad guys a lot of the time, there are just two sets of people trying to kill each other. It kind of reminded me of a war movie (The Thin Red Line, maybe?) where in the midst of battle the camera focuses on a wee insect going about its day, blissfully unaware of anything going on around it and there's a shot here that almost looks like it's going to emulate it, but that to me felt reason enough not to give too much political detail away. A road movie at heart, it's also a story of the journeys Kirstin Dunst as Lee and Cailee Spaeny (so much better here than in Priscilla) as Jessie take, Lee being the hardened veteran and Jessie the naive rookie but every beat the movie takes to evolve these situations feels real and when they happen upon Jesse Plemons and those shades and that little scratch of his chin, five minutes feels like an hour and no one in the cinema dared to breathe. I can't remember a movie where something as mundane in fiction as a man being shot dead has shocked me so much, or been accompanied by a sound I felt in my feet and my stomach. It gave me cause to think of 20 Days in Mariupol with real Lees and Jessies, as well as The Road, which are both fantastic movies that I also never ever want to see again, and which have started trains of thought in my brain that will need to be derailed if I'm going to get to sleep tonight. 10/10

[Biscuits]

Back In Black.  Wanted to go and see Civil War but, as is life, overruled by mrs biscuits.  Really enjoyed it - music was outstanding obviously.  The paparazzi are c***s.  8/10 

[coprolite]

Shin Ultraman (2023)

Retro B movie giant alien guy fights other giant aliens. 

Enjoyably silly. Probably about 1/50 of the budget of Hollywood Kaiju but much more fun than recent Godzillas. 

I did quite enjoy some of the other aliens, but it was all a bit Saturday morning tv plot wise. 

4/10

[accies1874]

33. Mothers' Instinct - Cinema

Had the screening all to myself for this which made a fairly trashy film more enjoyable.

Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway are obviously two great actresses and they get given free rein in their lead performances as two friends and neighbours whose relationship turns sour after the death of Anne Hathaway's son. The whole thing is pretty schlocky which is reflected in their performances, but I suppose the challenge for them was to have fun with that tone while also having their ulterior motives bubbling underneath. Disappointingly, it's thin on the ground when it comes to those underlying tensions. What you see is mostly what you get, so things ultimately fizzle out a bit in the conclusion. 

That's a shame as there are good things in the film. I know the Utopic American Suburb with a Dark Secret is overplayed at this point (though I still like it), but the costuming, production design and cinematography do a good job of depicting that setting. There's an artificiality to the pastel colours of the costumes or sets, something that also reflects the conflict between Celine and Alice. 

It could have easily fallen into the Crazy Mother/Wife trope, but it's established in a pretty ham-fisted argument early on that the whole thing is about a loss of purpose when your environment forces you to exist as an extension of other people (your husband and son). 

34. Close Your Eyes - Cinema

Almost three hours long, but I found it to be completely mesmerising, despite the fact that it's pretty much just the main character, Miguel, talking to other people. It loves its dialogue and performances and is happy for the audience to just drink them in. 

I knew nothing about it going in, so I wondered at first if it was gonna be a mystery as it establishes that an actor went missing while shooting a film directed by Miguel, and starts with a scene from that film set in a 20th century country estate, however that setting is then replaced by a bus stop in modern day Madrid which encapsulates the film's perception of the past and present. Despite it being clear early on that how we access the past is gonna be a cornerstone of the story, it manages to take that idea in interesting directions across the near-3-hour runtime which also results in a lot of questions about identity too. Scenes fade black on a regular basis, almost like someone is closing their eyes to access a new memory. 

Music is used incredibly sparingly, though, as is often the case with films light on score, the music played by the characters becomes more effective. That lack of score adds a sense of immersion to those dialogue scenes, making the Now feel even more genuine in a world full of artistry and entertainment. 

[BFTD]

Wicked Little Letters (cinema) - in 1920's England, Olivia Colman's buttoned-up religious spinster becomes the target of a hate mail campaign, for which the finger of blame falls on young Irish immigrant Jessie Buckley, whose regular foul-mouthed tirades bear a striking similarity to the letters.

Really enjoyed this. There's been some criticism of the plot for not really being the whodunnit that some people were expecting, but that element's just seasoning on the delicious meal of an excellent cast being outraged while reading obscene letters aloud. Unfair to pick anyone out as they're all great, and it's just a really entertaining period flick of the type England does so well, with the added bonus of being quite amusing. Also quite alarming how much of it actually happened.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (cinema) - big monkey meet other big monkeys. Big lizard unhappy; no-one know why. Will fight happen? (spoiler: yes)

They've made a few sensible decisions in this series - Kong's the audience surrogate who we empathise with, they've kept Godzilla as an enigmatic force of nature with his own motivations that nobody tries to humanise, and increasingly the humans exist purely to explain why the big monsters are about to batter each other, just in case you weren't paying attention. It's a formula that works just fine if you're primarily concerned with seeing the big lads destroy cities, and it does the trick here too. None of these films are a patch on what the Japanese have been doing, but they scratch an itch of their own.

They'll eventually run out of steam - and there are signs already that they're struggling to top previous films in the series - but this is a perfectly acceptable entry if you're a fan of these things and don't mind turning your brain off for a bit of smashy-smashy fun times, as the plot's pretty risible. God only knows where they can go next, but there are probably quite a few of us who'd be happy enough with watching the big boys stomp some menacing threat in similar fashion for the foreseeable. Next stop might be some kind of kaiju Justice League, so it'll need to be something pretty big and nasty next time.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Wolfman (2010)
A horror fantasy with Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

Should be decent with those actors right?

Nah it's actually pish with horrible CGI for the time.

[BFTD]

1 minute ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Wolfman (2010)
A horror fantasy with Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

Should be decent with those actors right?

Nah it's actually pish with horrible CGI for the time.

I forgot about that. Apparently that was one of several attempts Universal made to create a Dark Universe series of classic monster movies before torpedoing the whole thing with The Mummy.

Just read that Renfield and that Abigail thing were originally supposed to be part of it too...I'm guessing the former turned out a lot different to how it was originally planned!

[tinkerbelle]

Just saw a trailer for the new Bond movie.

Bond being played by Henry Caville! Also starring Margot Robbie.

edit. Just found out that apparently it’s an AI fake.

Edited April 17 by tinkerbelle

[CraigFowler]

27. Monkey Man

John Wick-style revenge action thriller with similarly impressive choreographed fight scenes (especially as Dev Patel broke his hand very early in the filming and they had to change everything to make his other hand the dominant one). These type of movies... saying they're not my thing is maybe too strong as it implies I don't like them, which isn't the case, but it would take something spectacular for me to really say they were incredible pieces of work. The stuff about the Indian class system, sectarianism and trans community was all interesting, but left me wanting to know a bit more about that and less fighting in toilets. Good fun overall and I wasn't bored.

28. Civl War

I came out of the cinema thinking 'good but not great' but I find myself siding with the film a lot more as people take against it for, in my view, fairly absurd reasons. It seems to be getting hammered for not having anything to say about the current American political climate in an election year. Firstly, anything brought out in 2024 that was overtly 'American right-wing is bad' would just end up looking incredibly preachy and self-righteous and would achieve absolutely nothing in stopping that criminal, sexual-assaulting racist getting a second term. Secondly, it ABSOLUTELY DOES say something about the current political landscape. The president in the film has caused the Civil War by becoming a fascist dictator, as evidenced by the scene where it's revealed he gave himself a third term and disbanded the FBI. It's not a right v left story, it's an anti-fascist story, with California and Texas (two states with wildly different political ideologies in recent history) being the alliance to fight against the president. Another strength of it not being right v left is that one of the overriding points is that war is hell and ultimately it doesn't matter when you're on the frontline witnessing the daily atrocities, as our war-photographer protagonists are, because ultimately it just ends up being about one man trying to shoot another man. So I was completely on board with the message and there's terrific tension right throughout the movie. My main gripe was that I found the characters to be too one-dimensional and a bit cliched and didn't particularly care all that much what happened to them. Even with this, it's very good. Maybe not 'great' after all, but very good.

29. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

Now this is great. A lot of fun, consistently funny throughout, the animation is terrific as they adopt the Spider-Verse-esque style, and in the red-eyed wolf they have one of the scariest baddies in a family movie that I've ever seen. Thought they borrowed from fairytale mythology particularly well in this one compared to the other films in the Shrek universe. And even though I was initially irritated by Goldilocks and the Three Bears having thick cockney accents, I was charmed by them in the end.

30. Femme

One of the toughest films to watch that I've experienced in recent years. While it didn't quite hit the skin-shedding tension of the final scene in Immaculate, it was a consistently more stressful film throughout. That said, I thought it was a brilliant piece of work with strong messages about the futility of revenge, forgiveness, empathy, understanding, repression and self-hatred. I was a broken man by the end of this and I say that as a good thing. It had a real emotional impact and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. Both of the leads are absolutely brilliant and it's a shame this didn't get more attention because it deserves it. It's on Netflix the now. Watch it.

[CraigFowler]

On 17/04/2024 at 20:02, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Wolfman (2010)
A horror fantasy with Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

Should be decent with those actors right?

Nah it's actually pish with horrible CGI for the time.

Went to see that at the cinema. Absolutely rubbish. Thought it was hilarious when they tried to make the Anthony Hopkins reveal at the end a big twist even though they'd showed it happening earlier in the movie.

[accies1874]

Will have a couple of others to post later, but just wanted to get Civil War out there... 

36. Civil War - Cinema

God I loved this.

So much of the cinematography resembles the photographs being taken by Lee and Jessie with a lot of still, though not necessarily stationary, shots that are perfectly framed to observe the USA that has gone to shit. Whether that's depicting innocuous that shouldn't be there or something horrific, it's a great way to give you an insight into this world as well as the characters and themes. It has the crisper look that Men did (Rob Hardy has shot all of Alex Garland's films) which still looks a bit funny to me, especially with greenery, however what I find interesting about Garland is that he's someone who went from a writer to also directing yet his last three films* have all had a distinctive aesthetic that have served the story. Annihilation recreates the otherworldliness of the shimmer, Men resembles a fairytale and now Civil War has that photojournalist look. *I don't remember it being quite as noticeable in Ex Machina but it's been a while since I've seen that.

I think there's been a lot of chat about how Civil War is "apolitical", and yeah that's true to a certain extent as the "sides" are left relatively vague, but I absolutely don't think it's a film devoid of any commentary, particularly on apathy, action and ignorance. That first came to my mind when a gun-toting screwball takes Jessie to see a couple of looters he's got tied up. Jessie is given a choice to get the screwball to let them go or to shoot them, however, weirdly, the scene doesn't really come to anything. That made me realise that Jessie's inaction and us as viewers not seeing the consequences meant that we could remain ignorant to the outcome, but the looters will almost certainly die (which is later referenced by one of the other reporters, Joel) so they're almost like Schrodinger's Prisoners. Shortly after, the four of them travel through a picture-perfect suburb seemingly unaffected by the civil war. When they ask a shopkeeper if she realises that the country's gone to shit, it's not really any surprise when she says that it's easier to just not get involved. She's fine, her business is fine, where she lives is fine - why should she get involved? There are a few instances where questions are posed and we don't get the answers, similar to how Lee says that she views her job as a war photographer: document and let others ask questions.

That reflects Lee and Jessie and their struggles with grasping the role of a photojournalist. Lee says that she thought her previous work in other countries would have served as a warning to those back home, so she watches missiles fly overhead with dismay rather than horror. Why should she subject herself to all of this pain? Why does she? Her warnings weren't heeded. "The information-action ratio" as said by some mark named Neil Postman and quoted by Alex Turner. Jessie is the other side of the coin. She's younger, more enthusiastic and feels "alive" when she's on the frontline, but you get a sense of her terror too. I thought of her as the vehicle for the audience, which makes the path she goes down all the more compelling. I was initially worried about the mentor-protégé relationship between them being a bit trite, but it's key to the whole film and goes in interesting directions. Morality in war - does it exist? Do we believe it exists? What about morality in war correspondence? Or war films?

It's got these ideas within an exciting and tense mid-budget film. I thought it flew past. It's a road movie, kind of a hangout movie, but in the same vein as a lot of other post-apocalyptic films (which this essentially is - especially zombie flicks) where moving from moment to moment with a group of characters ratchets up the tension with every interaction. There's a constant sense of dread which comes to a head in the final act. The sound is unbelievable. I don't think that it uses music in its big set-pieces, instead opting for natural sound effects or silence which makes it all the tenser. The sound of bullets cut through the silence similar to how a horror would use a jump scare to startle you, but where they often feel cheap in that genre this feels completely earned and in-keeping with the film's paranoia. The final big scene then bombards you with all of the sound of gunfire that was previously isolated, but it manages to remain focused on Lee and Jessie among the chaos.

I shouldn't really be surprised that I liked it so much given how much I loved Annihilation and Ex Machina, but Men, while I thought there was plenty of good in that film, did show worrying signs of a filmmaker beginning to sniff his own farts. Civil War is a true return to form for Alex Garland.

Edited April 19 by accies1874

[BFTD]

The First Omen (cinema) - the story of how erstwhile Antichrist Damian was born.

This appears to have had decent reviews from both critics and audiences, which really surprised me as it's probably the worst film I've ever seen in the cinema. It's sinfully boring, doesn't feel anything like the prior films, performs some random retconning, and has at least three moments that are supposed to be in some way horrifying or disturbing, but are laugh-out-loud funny. It also does a bit of that "REMEMBER THIS FROM THE ORIGINAL? HERE IT IS AGAIN, DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?" shite that has become so common in franchise films over the past fifteen years or so.

I'm at a total loss as to why people liked this; The Exorcist: Believer was similarly atrocious, but this manages to be worse. The "twist" is very apparent from early on, is lazily ripped directly from several other classic Seventies horror films, and the shameless nonsensical sequel-baiting looks likely to come to fruition, unfortunately. Satan only knows what horrors await in the further comedy adventures of the

Spoiler

Damien Thorne family Satanfighting unit, but it's a shame they killed his Satanic Jackalfather as they could've brought him in for a redemption arc.

[sfha]

On 17/04/2024 at 20:02, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Wolfman (2010)
A horror fantasy with Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.

Should be decent with those actors right?

Nah it's actually pish with horrible CGI for the time.

2010? I was sure this was released a lot earlier! 

[accies1874]

35. Silver Haze - Cinema

Weird one. There are plenty of touching moments between Franky (a poor nurse who was burned in a fire when she was young) and Florence (one of Franky's patients with severe mental health issues) as they start their relationship and Franky begins to get introduced into her life, but both women's pasts result in outbursts of anger either at each other or at the supporting cast who drop in and out on a whim. Their relationship goes from tender to toxic without you really noticing, which makes sense for each of them but combined with the flitting between characters or stories I'd forgotten about it meant that it felt quite unstructured to me. 

That said, the focus never left Franky and her place among these stories, so I never quite lost interest but it wasn't as impactful as it could have been.

37. And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine - Cinema 

Quite funny watching this the day after I watched Civil War as it touches on a lot of similar themes regarding information and visual reporting, including alternative angles of photos taken from war zones or disaster zones which show photographers swarming round 'natural' events, often horrific ones, to show the world something that is very real but the different perspectives make seem very fake. I wasn't just reminded of Civil War though...

It's a documentary about photography/videography, pretty much the entire history of the camera which is of course wedded to the past ~150 years of history itself. That's a lot to take on for a 90-minute film, though does make for an engaging journey through society's relationship with consuming and sharing images. I think it's somewhat helped by the fact that the many questions posed are explored in greater depth in other films, so I was quite happy being reminded of more interesting stuff - even if that was unintentional.

There is a voice-over but it really just relies on showing us the development of social networking, entertainment and news (and entertainment-news) through archive footage and modern videos you might recognise, including the brilliant Guy Goma BBC interview which got a big pop out of me - maybe even the most I've ever laughed in a cinema. Those viral videos will provide laughs, but it is very much a removed observation of society.

[Scorge]

Last week or so, mixed bag:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - pfffffffrrrrrt. Almost passable and not as disengaging as I'd feared, but not much cop at all. Also just seems to feature Bill Murray popping his head in at random intervals to pick up the appearance money before fecking off again like a disinterested junior footballer at Blantyre Vics or somesuch.

Civil War - really, really bought into this until the last 5 minutes, when

 

the utterly contrived pathos involving Kirsten Dunst getting merked left me thinking 'aye, right', and left a slight aftertaste

. That aside, the film builds really nicely and gets the tension spot on for most of it, that Jessie Plemons cameo is a brilliant set piece.

The Rock - part of the Cineworld action fest, hadn't seen it for a long time. Michael Bay films tend to be a bit too coked-up for my liking, but this one is a bit more restrained, and has one of the best villians-who-isn't-a-villian in a film played to a tee by Ed Harris, so it's absolutely fine.

Sometimes I Think About Dying - Daisy Ridley as a very closed-book introvert type, adapted from a stage play IIRC. Wanted to like this more than I did because she plays her part as well as can be expected, but the film is unbelieveably sloooooooooow and pretentious and you'll likely dial out of it even though it barely touches an hour and a half.

Edited April 21 by Scorge

[DeeTillEhDeh]

On 11/03/2024 at 09:17, accies1874 said:

While I didn't love Oppenheimer as much as other folk, it's still cool seeing Nolan getting his Oscar. It was his Batman films that taught me, at least on the surface, how a director and creative vision can shape a film. In that time of my life (around 2015-2018, ages 16-19), I saw the most films that had the biggest impact on me and Christopher Nolan was a huge part of that. 

I personally thought Oppenheimer was dreadful. Overbloated, and, dare I say it, verging on the turgid.

[BFTD]

18 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Overbloated, and, dare I say it, verging on the turgid.

Your opinion is dreadful, but I'm stealing this for my dating profile.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

9 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Your opinion is dreadful, but I'm stealing this for my dating profile.