What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fullerene]

On 12/11/2022 at 11:13, Savage Henry said:

Three Billboards Outside Webbing Missouri;   Sam Rockwell is just a sensational actor, as is Frances McDormand. It’s been a while since I watched this, and I’d forgotten how tough a watch it is in parts.  It’s a fine film.  9.7

Filmed in Sylva, North Carolina, just west of Asheville.

[BFTD]

Silent Night (splice the mainbrace) - a group of old friends gather at a family home for one last Christmas before the world ends.

Well, this sucked. If your idea of a good time is being thoroughly irritated by some incredibly annoying overprivileged hoorays, only to be asked to feel sorry for them later, knock yourself out. There's hardly any story, and the script reveals all of its secrets by the half-hour mark, so it's also incredibly dull. Essentially a character study of people you can't wait to see die and (spoiler) when that's exactly what happens there's not even anything satisfying about it.

The alternately twee and saccharine soundtrack is also like nails down a chalkboard (Michael Buble! The theme from Fame! Latter-day Sting!) and I can't believe it's taken me this long to realise, but Keira Knightley is an absolutely diabolical actress. Seriously, she's fucking awful at emoting anything other than haughty outrage, and looks like she's shitting out hedgehogs when asked to portray grief. She's not the only one, as there are some horrifically mannered performances kicking about in this, but she's the real stand-out.

I think this is probably the worst film I've seen this year.

Edit: this was so annoyingly bad that it's been on my mind all day. Would you believe that

Spoiler

there's a scene where a couple take suicide pills to escape the imminent apocalypse, only for one of them to vomit her tablet back up because she's so drunk. The other one (just a shockingly annoying character) is horrified by the idea that her girlfriend will suffer the terrible, lingering death that's coming, so she STABS HER IN THE FUCKING STOMACH to save her from it. Because this is an atrocious film, rather than suffering a terrible, lingering death from this, she dies almost immediately.

I'm struggling to think of a stupider decision made by a character, and it's by no means improved by the film validating it.

Edited November 15, 2022 by BFTD

[DA Baracus]

Equilibrium

I thought this was cool as f**k when it came out. In my defence, I was 17 and an idiot.

Patrick Bateman/Paul Allen plays a Grammaton Cleric, a type of stoic badass government enforcer. You see this movie tries to weld 1984 and Brave New World together to come up with something slightly newer. There has been a WW3, and the government of this place (Libria, where the survivors of WW3 now live) have decided that feelings are to blame. As such, feelings are outlawed and everyone must take a daily injection to suppress them. The Grammaton Clerics spealise in hunting down 'sense offenders', those who dare to feel. 

A big hook of this film was the ludicrous 'gun-kata', a frankly laughable bag of shit that sees a person fire two guns at the same time whilst flailing their arms around. Did I mention that they stand still whilst doing this? They do, and yet no one can shoot them back for some reason. The 'gun-kata' is used often and usually by Bateman, usually when he's surrounded.

Anyway, after Bateman/Allan's cleric partner, Alex Trevelyn from Goldeneye (how did he survive the fall off of that big aerial?), starts skipping his daily injections (it's called 'Prozium II') he begins to feel, the big fucking softy. He's swiftly found out and Patrick himself kills him.

BUT...this plants a seed of doubt in Bateman's mind. One day he accidentally spills his vial of Prozium II and skips his daily injection. Gradually he begins...TO FEEL!

He gets a new partner who in turn begins to suspect that Bateman is feeling. Bateman soon gets involved with the resistance, who plan to overthrow the tyrannical government, lead by Robert The Bruce, who is the direct conduit to 'Father' (the narrator from Masterchef), the benevolent overseer of Libria.

Anyway, shit goes down. There are double crosses, triple crosses, sword fights, gun-kata, big reveals, gun-kata, a cute puppy, folk incinerated, gun-kata, a whole lot of silliness and more gun-kata.

A very silly movie.

[BFTD]

51 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

A very silly movie.

It is, but it's fucking great! It's all been downhill for Christian Bale since.

I seem to remember the director or writer having a tantrum because their "vision" of gun-kata was changed during the making of Equilibrium, so they made another one that was "true" to their idea, and it turned out to be incredibly shit.

[8MileBU]

On 11/11/2022 at 13:10, Squalor Vic said:

Terrifier 2 

Kinda had to with all the hype. Im not a huge fan of horror films and gore but this is so over the top it's actually pretty funny at times. Reminds me of Evil Dead or George Romero with the practical effects and deaths. One scene is pretty tough and goes on a bit long but the guy playing Art the Clown is a hoot and looks like he's having a great time. Wee creepy lassie was a bit freaky

It's way way too long though. 2 hours 15 mins for this type of movie is ridiculous.

Watched the first one then the second one after reading all the hype about idiot yanks passing out, throwing up or getting that hysterical they needed medical attention from watching this sequel to a movie I’d never heard of. 

Thought the first film was worse in the gore stakes. That scene you mentioned in the second one does go on a bit. The second movie is way longer than it should be despite Art The Clown being an absolutely wonderful character. 

What a lot of utter pish though!

 

[coprolite]

Wakanda Forever (2022)

Magic potions, superpowers, cgi, mawkish sentimentality, really, really, shit baddies. 

5/10

The Drop (2014)

Competent crime thriller. Fairly offbeat feel to it, decent characters but let down by a weak story. 

6/10

Uncle Buck (1989)

Slacker man child has to look after his brother's family for a week. Gets a bit corny at points, loads of "growth", but properly funny. 

7/10

[DA Baracus]

8 hours ago, BFTD said:

It is, but it's fucking great! It's all been downhill for Christian Bale since.

I seem to remember the director or writer having a tantrum because their "vision" of gun-kata was changed during the making of Equilibrium, so they made another one that was "true" to their idea, and it turned out to be incredibly shit.

Hmmm, I found it to be a bit 'meh'.

I would like to see what this original gun-kata was like though.

[spud131]

Equilibrium
I thought this was cool as f**k when it came out. In my defence, I was 17 and an idiot.
Patrick Bateman/Paul Allen plays a Grammaton Cleric, a type of stoic badass government enforcer. You see this movie tries to weld 1984 and Brave New World together to come up with something slightly newer. There has been a WW3, and the government of this place (Libria, where the survivors of WW3 now live) have decided that feelings are to blame. As such, feelings are outlawed and everyone must take a daily injection to suppress them. The Grammaton Clerics spealise in hunting down 'sense offenders', those who dare to feel. 
A big hook of this film was the ludicrous 'gun-kata', a frankly laughable bag of shit that sees a person fire two guns at the same time whilst flailing their arms around. Did I mention that they stand still whilst doing this? They do, and yet no one can shoot them back for some reason. The 'gun-kata' is used often and usually by Bateman, usually when he's surrounded.
Anyway, after Bateman/Allan's cleric partner, Alex Trevelyn from Goldeneye (how did he survive the fall off of that big aerial?), starts skipping his daily injections (it's called 'Prozium II') he begins to feel, the big fucking softy. He's swiftly found out and Patrick himself kills him.
BUT...this plants a seed of doubt in Bateman's mind. One day he accidentally spills his vial of Prozium II and skips his daily injection. Gradually he begins...TO FEEL!
He gets a new partner who in turn begins to suspect that Bateman is feeling. Bateman soon gets involved with the resistance, who plan to overthrow the tyrannical government, lead by Robert The Bruce, who is the direct conduit to 'Father' (the narrator from Masterchef), the benevolent overseer of Libria.
Anyway, shit goes down. There are double crosses, triple crosses, sword fights, gun-kata, big reveals, gun-kata, a cute puppy, folk incinerated, gun-kata, a whole lot of silliness and more gun-kata.
A very silly movie.

I remember seeing this years ago and thought it was a lot of nonsense, and then Brian Connelly turns up halfway through it which just made it weirder!

[BFTD]

3 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

Hmmm, I found it to be a bit 'meh'.

I would like to see what this original gun-kata was like though.

Looked it up - it was the Milla Jovovich film Ultraviolet.

Nothing but silly action in bad CGI environments; one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Probably the worst film she's been in, which is some going considering she seems to actively look for dreck.

[accies1874]

203. Clerks (1994)* - Sky Cinema

The fact that this is good defies most logic. It really does feel like a student film, maybe because it inspired a lot of them, with iffy characters who speak like they know they’re in a film. However, it’s really enjoyable as a reflective day in the life of this guy who sees the world moving around him while he’s stuck in this store. It’s a lot funnier than it should be, too, and the cast of characters are really memorable which is key for what is almost a sketch show.

204. Memories of Murder (2003)* - All4

One of those unsatisfying mystery thrillers that actually becomes really engaging towards the end because the time spent with the characters wasn’t anywhere near as interesting to me as watching the plot unravel. But then it never gets solved, because it’s one of those unsatisfying mystery thrillers. So it sort of fell between two stools for me.

205. The African Desperate (2022)* - MUBI

This is absolutely bizarre. At points I felt like I was watching The Room with its otherworldly deadpan protagonist and characters sounding like their lines are the result of a shoddy A.I. program, but there are also moments of strange Gen Z-ness which I’m stuck between calling experimental and baffling. Some of that takes the form of ‘quirky’ editing and occasionally supernatural cinematography, and some of it takes the form of random interjections of outdated memes flashing up on the screen. There’s also a scene which has several masturbating and ejaculating penises on multiple screens - weird. 

It's documenting an American art student’s night out (as well as the build-up and aftermath) and, if nothing else, is a terrific portrayal of what it’s like to be absolutely out your face – unnervingly so. The whole night out itself is weirdly hypnotic despite always feeling like you’re watching something that was arduously filmed across a year of film school. Some of the sets even reminded me of the fake sets in The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II. It feels like a project.

But that project is kinda cool.

206. Barbarian (2022)* - Cinema

If you’re gonna see this, I’d recommend going in blind, as the way the narrative unfolds is really interesting and unexpected. I hadn’t seen any trailers and just read vague buzz about it (now I’m seeing everyone say that you should go in blind which makes me feel like a sheep) which definitely helped. I’m not 100% sure that I would recommend it though.

It’s a really surprising and fun film that has some tremendous moments of tension (tense more than scary imo) and is very slickly made which all make it an enjoyable watch on the whole. The more I learned about it, though, the less interested I became. Now that’s kinda contradictory – that the plot revelations are great but learning more isn’t – but it led me along wondering what was gonna happen next, and while every turn was interesting, the road it led to wasn’t. I’d imagine this would have a brilliant synopsis, however it became thinner and thinner once they started expanding it. Quite hard to go into detail while staying spoiler-free.  

I also occasionally wondered if it was trying to parody some things as the tone felt a bit off. This wasn’t a regular occurrence, but it was most prevalent towards the end so it was fresh in my mind once it finished. Plus it’s really on the nose at points; the dialogue and messaging. Again, this became more of a problem for me towards the end. It’s funny how a lot of films end up being about the same(ish) thing in a short space of time and there a few in 2022 similar to Barbarian: Amulet, Men and She Will. That’s not necessarily bad for the film as I was thinking throughout how I preferred it to Men’s depiction of the subject matter, but Amulet was a really clever subversion of the main character and male privilege, and She Will, while a bit more inaccessible, does some cool things. I know I shouldn’t compare, but it’s hard not to when your film doesn’t really add much to the conversation except perhaps the comparison of females and males in horror films/horrific situations.

I was disappointed but it seems to have gone down very well so more power to them.

P.S. @BFTD I'm not sure about the ending being reshot, as jarring as it was. I think it's trying to show how the growth of the character was purely superficial but I could be wrong. I can't remember the CGI shot? Feel free to chuck it in spoilers. 

207. The Housemaid (1960)* - MUBI

Apparently this inspired Parasite which you can kind of see throughout in terms of its class protection and infiltration with a lot of peering inside and outside, looking upstairs and downstairs. The presumably restored dubbing isn’t great and there are quite a few moments where the high quality restoration dips into how it looked upon release, but you can still see how well directed it is even if I did find it a bit too long.

[BFTD]

4 minutes ago, accies1874 said:

P.S. @BFTD I'm not sure about the ending being reshot, as jarring as it was. I think it's trying to show how the growth of the character was purely superficial but I could be wrong. I can't remember the CGI shot? Feel free to chuck it in spoilers. 

It felt to me like the film was just entering its third act about ten minutes before the end, and I was hoping for at least one more surprise, that was all. The end felt like it happened really suddenly. Aye, I presume they just wanted to demonstrate that the character growth was non-existent, but I thought it'd have been nice if there'd been more time to lay that out, because it was literally minutes between them having a dawning realisation then deciding to be a c**t regardless.

Spoiler

It's when our heroine is shoved off the watertower at the end. She falls in slow-mo, which is fine. But then we switch to her perspective looking back up at the watertower, and the abused inbred lassie launches herself down towards her like Superman    Giggles across the audience. 

Also, they seem to have implied that she caught up with the heroine and turned in mid-air to brace her fall with her own body, which was massively bollocks.

 

[Detournement]

2 Days, 1 Night (2014)

Apparently there are no employment laws in Belgium and Marion Cottilard who is about to return from long term sick gets sacked from her job after her boss gives her colleagues a vote on a 1000 Eur bonus but only if she is let go. She then has to convince her co-workers to change their votes over the weekend. A very engaging film which explores the pressures that ordinary people are under. Cottilard is incredible. 

I've never seen Equilibrium but it sounds like Hollywood was looking for Matrix rip offs and someone came up with Alphaville but with loads of guns which is quite amusing. 

Edited November 16, 2022 by Detournement

[Gianfranco]

Le Mans ‘66 is a superb movie. Christian Bale is so good as Ken Miles I didn’t even realise he was in the film.

[54_and_counting]

On 12/11/2022 at 12:16, KingRocketman II said:

this post credit scene kind of explains it (and presumably involved a perfectly plausible Cerebro assisted search for a Charles look-a-like who happened to be in a coma):

 

 

Was it not meant to be his brother ir something like that? 

[Hedgecutter]

Terrifier 2

Following on from Terrifier yesterday evening, which was just a mere appetiser ahead of tonight's serving of undiluted gore.  Just mental, and I can see why some folk have been vomiting in cinemas.

Image below in spoilers, to cater for the squeamish:

[Shandon Par]

The Wonder.

This year’s big Netflix film set in a shack in the middle of nowhere with some actors doing some serious acting.

How to describe without spoilers? The trailers make it look like a horror film and it’s just not, though the subject matter (a 14 yr old girl  in 19th century Ireland who has not eaten for 4 months) obviously means there’s some religious miracle or some skullduggery going on. 

Like a dark Scooby Doo, but with Florence Pugh.

8.95/10, Netflix or cinema

 

[DA Baracus]

Sphere

Watched this last night and surprised it was released in 1998, as it came across as an early 90s film (with Dustin Hoffman dressing like a nerdy child from then) and some questionable effects.

It suffers a bit by not nailing down what it wants to be. Is it a sci-fi thriller? A horror? A psychological thriller? It oscillates between all of them. It wants to be Event (Deepwater) Horizon.

Still, there's some good here. The cast is good (Samuel L Jackson, Sharon Stone, Liev Schriber and the aforementioned Hoffman) and they all put in good performances. Jackson especially gives a totally different performance to what would become what you'd imagine from him.

The plot is convoluted and sometimes hard to follow, but they do eventually tie it together.

There's some good scenes involving jellyfish, giant squids and squid eggs and some imaginative demises.

[BFTD]

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (cinema) - after the death of King T'Challa, Wakanda encounters new threats both from other nations and beneath the sea, without the protection of the legendary Black Panther.

Aside from the obvious personal tragedy, the death of Chadwick Boseman must have thrown plans for this series into chaos, and the film's probably better than you'd have thought. However, it's surprisingly dull, with the middle third especially soporific. It definitely feels like it would've benefited from some trimming and, surprisingly, the expected scenes of mourning weren't the problem.

Part of the issue is that, for the first time, Marvel have produced something reminiscent of DC, rather than the other way round. I wasn't much of a fan of Aquaman either, and there's a whole bunch of undersea superhuman stuff in this too. The threat just feels very uninspired and I wasn't interested in the long stretches of deep water magic and exposition. I guess others have felt differently.

Also saw the trailer for Avatar 2 beforehand, the appeal of which seems to be based on lengthy shots of underwater scenes. Boy, does that look shite. I really don't get James Cameron's obsession with the sea.

[sfha]

On 12/11/2022 at 11:13, Savage Henry said:

Three Billboards Outside Webbing Missouri;   Sam Rockwell is just a sensational actor, as is Frances McDormand. It’s been a while since I watched this, and I’d forgotten how tough a watch it is in parts.  It’s a fine film.  9.7

 

Agreed. I could watch these two til the cows come home. And a brilliant film.

Edited November 19, 2022 by sfha

[jimmy boo]

Aftersun. Watched this after a glowing review in the Saturday Herald. Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are estranged father and daughter who go on holiday to Turkey. Corio is outstanding in this given her age of 11. A bit confusing at times for me with flashbacks and forwards with subtle clues to the fathers issues. Gushing reviews on imdb must've been watching a different film as I was lost at the end but still enjoyed it despite ending without any resolution as far as I could see....7/10.