What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[BFTD]

I haven't seen it in years, but I remember being unnerved by how much of Red Dwarf was ripped off from Dark Star.

[MSU]

077 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga -- I don't remember all that much about Fury Road other than there was an awful lot of driving between places, and while my own experience isn't nearly as apocalyptic and nor does it feature as much fire or sand or impressive make-up, I do enough driving between places in real life to be all that bothered by a movie about it.

This prequel to all that driving between places also features quite a bit of driving between places, although there is something more of a story filling in the gaps.

Chris Hemsworth is great as the larger-than-life baddie who kills Furiosa's mum and sparks a years-long tale of revenge. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the adult Furiosa and says about 100 words in the whole movie but the kids they get to play younger versions look so appropriate that it's difficult to pinpoint the moment where Anya Taylor-Joy's work begins.

It's very long and two-and-a-half hours of the same note wears thin after a while. Funnily enough, after we left the theater and I was waiting in the foyer outside the IMAX screen for five minutes, all I could hear was the soundtrack and it was impossible to tell where in the movie it was. Some of the special fx were pretty ropey and elasticated, but it's the dynamic between Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy that maintains the interest.

For a big summer blockbuster, though, it's hard not to be a little disappointed by it all. 5/10

078 The Garfield Movie -- I honestly don't know who this is aimed at or who it will work for. Mild peril. 3/10

[accies1874]

45. In Flames - Cinema

This takes a couple of turns early on before removing any narrative thrust so becomes a bit meandering, stretching very little out across another hour. The poor projection (didn't take up the entire screen) was also annoying as it's otherwise a handsome film, especially the way Mariam's outfits shimmer. Weaving in horror elements through dream sequences tends to rub me up the wrong way, too - despite Mariam and her mother's hauntings being key to the film - as they tend to be devoid of stakes and, in this film, a vehicle to add tension to the meandering stretches.

46. The Settlers - MUBI

A character gets iced for calling a Scottish guy English, so this is already the greatest film ever made.

I'm a bit annoyed that I watched it on MUBI as it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. It looks incredible. The colours are so rich both from the three horsemen and the Patagonian countryside they ride through. At certain times of the day, the image looks slightly overexposed which gives off a sense of the cold weather conditions (something I actually think La Chimera didn't quite achieve), but the there's still a texture to the image which avoids the potential pitfall of this overexposure looking cheap. I'm not sure how they lit the night-time scenes, but it at the very least looks like natural light emanating from fires and the moon. It's very much a case of 'every frame a painting' and I'm disappointed that I couldn't see it in the cinema.

It took me until about the halfway point for me to remember that there was a story being told beyond that beauty, and while it pulls together some interesting themes found in other films, I couldn't quite escape the feeling that I'd seen a lot of it before in stuff like The Power of the Dog, Killers of the Flower Moon and The Promised Land. Granted, not the story itself - ethnic cleansing in Patagonia - but more the driving forces behind it.

[KnightswoodBear]

Watched a couple of films this weekend

Civil War: Really enjoyed this, it looks lovely and some really nice performances from the cast.  There is nothing that isn't improved by having Jesse Plemmons appear in it for any length of time.  9/10

The Fall Guy: Absolute nonsense, but one of those films that everyone looks like they're having a great time making and it carries you along with it.  Plus, Emily Blunt. 7/10 

[jimmy boo]

19 hours ago, KnightswoodBear said:

Watched a couple of films this weekend

Civil War: Really enjoyed this, it looks lovely and some really nice performances from the cast.  There is nothing that isn't improved by having Jesse Plemmons appear in it for any length of time.  9/10

The Fall Guy: Absolute nonsense, but one of those films that everyone looks like they're having a great time making and it carries you along with it.  Plus, Emily Blunt. 7/10 

Watched Civil War last night and thought it was dreadful. 

[coprolite]

Was watching Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times last night. Didn't make it all the way through because i was knackered and fell asleep.

But i've a question for the film buffs on here. 

It kept coming up with dialogue boards as you'd expect for a silent film. But there was a narration and when his boss was speaking, it looked like a recorded and synchronised track. Was this some sort of a hybrid silent/ talkie? Or is this just how this version is shown on telly? 

[accies1874]

47. Hit Man - Cinema

Conflicted about this. 

I certainly found it to be an entertaining couple of hours and enjoyed the setup of this dweeb, Gary (played by Glen Powell), assuming different hitman roles to entrap people who want to hire "him". Tbh I would've liked more of an exploration into these different people both for the fun of understanding why Gary chose his roles and also to delve into the precarity of love and hate which was alluded to but not quite done justice. Maybe it's the Hitman(game)-player in me, but imo the planning stage is the best part about this sub-genre. I appreciate that that wasn't necessarily the story that Linklater wanted to tell, but it's teased in the first act, which I thought was the most fun part of the film.

There's a clear question of humans' (and particularly adults') capacity for change, but Gary's choice of being a poindexter or being a cool dude who gets ass was just too straightforward imo. His character was grating at first, a cartoonishly harmless loser, so deciding to be consumed by the hitman persona without the killing and with no real obstacles standing in his way made the film feel devoid of any stakes. He could have maybe lost his job with the police, but it's the sleazy paedophile antagonist, Jasper, who's trying to bring him to 'justice', so the jeopardy just isn't there. I thought that it might have been setting up some ambiguity as to whether Jasper had changed and that was the reason he was going after Gary, which would've at least made the conflict a bit more compelling and related to overall theme, but, like I said, it's just played too straight in that respect. That said, I do wonder what point the ending was trying to make, as it might have had a larger societal point rather being purely focused on Gary. It comments on the justice system and death penalty, and I reckon the ending makes things a bit more fatalistic, but I'll probably fancy rewatching when it comes onto Netflix next week. 

For anyone who doesn't like Linklater's philosophising characters, you'll be glad to know that the main character is a philosophy professor, though, aside from one unnecessary interaction, it doesn't grate quite as much as I thought it would and actually helped to focus my mind a wee bit. 

Edited May 30 by accies1874

[JustOneCornetto]

Cinema Paradiso (1988) - GFT

A favourite film of mine so couldn't turn down the chance to see it on the big screen for the first time. Not quite a packed cinema but it was good to hear so many people laughing at the many funny scenes. Basically a coming of age story following young Toto as his friendship with Alfredo, the projectionist, blossoms with his whole life revolving around films. Delightful story and great film.

[Ewanandmoreagain]

On 15/05/2024 at 10:55, KnightswoodBear said:

The endings of the first 3 are all pretty bleak

  Hide contents

"You blew it up!"

Chuck nukes the entire planet

Zira and Cornelius and their baby (but it isn't really) get shot to death and she throws the weans body into the sea

I can't mind how the other two end, but I'm hoping for less infanticide

1 - Chuck goes into the forbidden zone and finds the top of the statue of liberty peeking out of some beach

[velo army]

Started watching "Reality" as it said it was a whistleblower drama and it had thon parfum de mois Sydney Sweeney in it, so thought it might be dece. 

I lasted 17 minutes into it and it's utter shite. They tell you at the start that the film is taken from a verbatim FBI transcript of conversation between agents and Reality Winner (the actual name of an actual person) but nobody told the film-makers that they had to make it gripping and interesting. 

FBI transcripts are not made to be engaging. Films ought to be. Putting a film to a transcript should only be done if the dialogue is out of this world unbelievable. It isn't. It's highly banal, in fact. 

So aye. This is pish and you should avoid it. 

[Craig fae the Vale]

Watched the Ron Howard documentary Jim Hendon: Idea Man this afternoon on Disney+. A really good look back at a genius' life, but nothing I didn't know already from Brian Jay Jones' excellent book. Worth a watch for the really old footage.

[Sergeant Wilson]

On 28/05/2024 at 15:23, KnightswoodBear said:

 

Civil War: Really enjoyed this, it looks lovely and some really nice performances from the cast.  There is nothing that isn't improved by having Jesse Plemmons appear in it for any length of time.  9/10

 

 

On 29/05/2024 at 11:18, jimmy boo said:

Watched Civil War last night and thought it was dreadful. 

I appointed myself judge on this one. It passed the time, but it was shite. I'm all for suspending belief, but the last half hour was ludicrous and the end was telegraphed not long after the start.

[Craig fae the Vale]

Went to see The Crow tonight for its 30th anniversary. One of my favourites as a teenager and couldn't pass up the opportunity to finally see it on the big screen. It's still a great film and I really enjoyed seeing it the way it was meant. 

Absolutely tragic what happened to Brandon Lee, he could have had a fantastic career.

[MSU]

078 In a Violent Nature -- I was reminded of Skinamarink quite a bit while watching this, which is a little odd because the two movies are pretty different. Both, though, are keen to get mileage out of nothing much happening, and when things do happen they're frequently quite dull. If you've even played Red Dead Redemption 2 and had Arthur just wander through a wooded area for an hour and a half randomly killing the occasional person, you could be mistaken for thinking you've seen this before.

That said, there are spells where what Chris Nash's movie does is pretty effective at subverting what people expect from slashers. It seems to begin in its own sequel as the theft of a necklace from an abandoned shack in the middle of a wood is enough to stir our villain, Johnny, from his grave in search of bloody revenge. The teens generously supplied for dispatch have snatches of conversations that we can only partially hear and we really know nothing about any of them. Their friendships and histories and motives are treated as unnecessary complications and I quite like how the film has the courage to go with that. The kills, when they eventually get going, are inventive and practical and there's one in particular that'll linger in the mind.

The final ten to fifteen minutes are going to be contentious among horror fans, I imagine. For me I appreciated Nash attempting to make us fill in our own denouement, but an hour or so after leaving the cinema, I'm still not sure how successful it was.

The camera work is great, the music is non-existent, the acting is almost uniformly dreadful, unaided by a sloppy script, but overall, much like Skinamarink, I think I'm quite impressed. 7/10

079 The Dead Don't Hurt -- It looked like this might be a bit more than your typical western. The timeline isn't linear, the protagonists are immigrants from Europe and Canada, and there are lots of Joan of Arc references and armored figures on horseback.

The movie starts near the end with a couple of events that increase in stature the further we go back into things, which ends up doing the movie a bit of a disservice. For all the flashbacks and Joan of Arc and speaking in French, and despite the fact that Viggo Mortensen just fucks off to fight in the civil war at the drop of the hat, while this might looks like being Vicky Krieps' story, it really isn't.

And that's a shame as she's by far the most interesting character. Far more interesting than the Danish man in her life, far more interesting than the dastardly man in black, far more interesting than the dastardly man in black's daddy with the big plans to take over the whole gosh darn town.

As well as acting in a lead role, Mortensen directed, wrote, produced, composed the score and probably did the catering, and he does a decent job of most of these things. Just a pity he didn't see where the real story lay. 5/10

 

[BFTD]

18 minutes ago, MSU said:

078 In a Violent Nature -- I was reminded of Skinamarink quite a bit while watching this

f**k. I'd fancied watching this too  

[BFTD]

On 30/05/2024 at 10:13, coprolite said:

Was watching Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times last night. Didn't make it all the way through because i was knackered and fell asleep.

But i've a question for the film buffs on here. 

It kept coming up with dialogue boards as you'd expect for a silent film. But there was a narration and when his boss was speaking, it looked like a recorded and synchronised track. Was this some sort of a hybrid silent/ talkie? Or is this just how this version is shown on telly? 

Wiki refers to it as a "part-talkie", so presumably part of the transition between the eras.

Silent films seem to have been fiddled with a fair bit over the decades in a bid to keep them relevant to audiences of the time. With some, you'd originally have an orchestra playing in the theatre, so restorations had to add music to match the intended experience.

[MSU]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

f**k. I'd fancied watching this too  

Yeah, it's a bit of an acquired taste.

[CraigFowler]

May is, understandably, probably my busiest time of the year except the Christmas period, so I've been slacking on keeping up to date on this thread. Still managed to get in a good few movies though, both at home and at the cinema, which I'll rattle through now.

34. Challengers

I really enjoyed this. I liked the dynamic between the characters, the way it was told across different timelines, how much it seemed to understand tennis, and I particularly enjoyed the music. There was only one scene in which the OTT techno beat didn't work for me, and felt they should have gone with something a little less intrusive (or no music at all) but any other use of it worked perfectly. It's funny in parts, it's tense just about the rest of the time and I was satisfied with what could be perceived as an abrupt ending.

35. Abigail

A lot of fun. Always a sucker for a heist (or in this case, kidnapping) movie in which you get the lowdown of every character in one scene, and this did that well. There's a lot of humour and a lot of cartoonish gore. Horror comedies are a very difficult balance and this slanted towards the comedy aspect a lot more, but I laughed consistently and there was just the right amount of tension. My main (and only) gripe is that it's 20 minutes too long, especially as the ending is pretty crap compared to the rest.

36. Boy Kills World

Similar to Abigail in many ways. Funny and lots of OTT violence, but with some impressive martial arts combat. Telling the story through the mind of the narrator rather than his voice was fun, and H. Jon Benjamin must have one of the best comedy voices in the world. Was also impressed with Bill Skarsgård, who did a lot of fine acting without the ability to talk. The big problem with the film is the balance between the comedy and the back story, which is really, really dark. It worked for me until the last 20 minutes or so, when it completely forgot about the comedy aspect, when then leaves you wondering "so what story were you trying to tell here?" I also saw (half of) the twist coming. All the same, I liked it.

37. The Idea of You

Pretty rubbish but not awful. Presents a good question of why it's OK for older famous men to date much younger women, but when the reversal happens everyone flips out, but it's too much of a bog-standard, cliched rom-com to do anything more than loosely pull at that thread. Also, by making the male love interest mega-famous, and therefore that in itself becoming a huge issue, it kinda loses that thread even further.

38. Brokeback Mountain

Finally got around to watching this. I'm really not into slow-paced movies where there's a lot of stoic brooding and people not really saying much, so I was a bit restless for points of this, which is over two hours long. However, Heath Ledger is absolutely superb. It's one of the best acting performances I've maybe ever seen. It's also, undeniably a very important film, especially for the time. It really shows how much we've moved as a society where the name of this film used to be an homophobic punchline for about a decade. Ahead of its time and an impressive piece of work, even if it moved a little slowly for my tastes.

39. The Fall Guy

I disagree with other commenters, and some reviewers, who say Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt have chemistry in this. Comedic chemistry, perhaps, but romantic chemistry absolutely not. There were also a couple of scenes where they kicked the arse out of the joke so much that I started to cringe in my seat. It's also too long and the "twist" is very predictable. And yet, in spite of all those flaws, I had a good time watching it. It's dumb, popcorn fun. The stunts are impressive, especially the manner in which they were able to inject so much comedy into them. Gosling has got serious skills as a comedic actor. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was nailed the part of the A-lister douchebag. And it's got a great performance from a French-speaking dog.

40. Blockers

Essentially, supposedly-smart-but-actually-dumb parents try to interfere in their kids' lives and end up being more immature than the teenagers, especially when they consistently don't listen to reason. It's fairly by the numbers, but it was decent enough. Leslie Mann can do these types of movies in her sleep, John Cena was a pleasant surprise and the redemptive arc of Ike Barinholtz's character was my favourite part of the film. The kids themselves are all pretty likeable and easy to spend time with. It passed the time with a few laughs.

41. Along Came Polly

Never fancied this at the time it came out and I was right to avoid it for so many years. It's a better acted movie than I thought it was going to be, but I barely laughed at all during the runtime (and this is ME we're talking about here) and neither liked Ben Stiller nor Jennifer Aniston in their respected roles.

42. Battle of the Sexes

This was on my list to watch since it came out in 2017, but I wouldn't say it was worth the wait. I liked it, but I was a bit disappointed overall. It's an enjoyable enough watch, I guess I just expected a bit more. It took me a while to put my finger on exactly why and I think it's trying to be too much at once. It's about equality, social injustice, sexism and fighting back against all of that - but it's also a comedy. That tone is down to Steve Carrell's take on the gregarious showman that was Bobby Riggs. I've since said reviews that criticised the film for making him too sympathetic, but I've also seen it written that the portrayal was fairly accurate. Yes, he had outdated views, not uncommon at all for the time, but he was viewed as a decent person and someone Billy Jean King herself liked very much. So we skip between them throughout the run time, but also get King's affair with her secretary (changed to her hairdresser in the film). This, like the portrayal of Riggs, was true to life, but sometimes you need to take more of a creative license in order to make a better movie. The comedic aspect jarred with King's story and what she was fighting for as Emma Stone's portrayal comes across almost adrift in her own film. In the end, the creators tried to fit in too much and ended up making something that was just a bit too vanilla to be memorable.

43. Scoop

I'm a sucker for films about the journalistic process so this was very much in my wheelhouse, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Rufus Sewell is brilliant as the nonce prince, but I shall reserve some extra praise for Billie Piper who excelled in the main role. I also liked the way Keeley Hawes' character underlined how the royals a) can get away with having a prominent member as a big fat sex offender, and b) why they thought it was in any way a good idea to stick him on television in the first place. Because both have the same reason, the disturbing revery towards them and how some people just don't think they can do any wrong. 

44. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Loved it. Absolutely loved it. At almost 150 minutes runtime I had my reservations going in, but it gripped my attention from the first minute to the last. It's a terrific spectacle. Chris Hemsworth really shines in his role and Anya Taylor-Joy is excellent as she is in everything. The action scenes are incredible and I did appreciate that the story slowed down and revved back up again, unlike Fury Road which was pretty much a chase scene from start to finish. Though it is almost literally hell on earth, I enjoy spending time in The Wasteland. The world-building elements worked for me. I didn't think Fury Road could be topped but, for me, this did it.

45. Hit Man

Writing this not long after coming back from the cinema to see this. As it wasn't reviewed on Kermode and Mayo (have a feeling there was no press screenings as it's a Netflix production) I didn't really know what to expect and only saw a brief summary of the plot. Turns out, it's a very fun but also very well made movie. Glen Powell was last seen assisting Sydney Sweeney and their fellow cast members to stink up the joint in my least favourite film of the year so far, Anyone But You, but he very much makes up for it here. He really gets to show off his charm and have a lot of fun playing different characters within the one role (his American Psycho impression had me giggling away). It was a little difficult to buy him as a geeky, unlovable loner when he still looks like Glen Powell. Also, they brought back the 'ugly duckling' Hollywood cliche of just needing to remove glasses and get a better haircut to truly be your best self (I was half-expecting a Rachael Leigh Cook cameo), but I did believe him as someone putting on ice-cool confidence instead of that being the real him. As an intended comedy, there are several funny moments and some strong supporting performances, but it was also very tense at times and he has some real chemistry with the female love interest (whom I hadn't seen before). I even liked the scenes where it goes back to him teaching his students about psychology and morality, as I found them interesting. 

[accies1874]

11 hours ago, MSU said:

078 In a Violent Nature -- I was reminded of Skinamarink quite a bit while watching this, which is a little odd because the two movies are pretty different. Both, though, are keen to get mileage out of nothing much happening, and when things do happen they're frequently quite dull. If you've even played Red Dead Redemption 2 and had Arthur just wander through a wooded area for an hour and a half randomly killing the occasional person, you could be mistaken for thinking you've seen this before.

 

 

10 hours ago, BFTD said:

f**k. I'd fancied watching this too  

Well, that opening has sold me on it. 

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, accies1874 said:

Well, that opening has sold me on it. 

I recommend following it up with Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. A classic of the slideshow genre.