What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Geddy_Lee]

Underwater (Disney+), easy to watch 90 minute Sci-Fi action flick set at the bottom of the Mariana Trench....zips along at a decent pace !!

Edited December 25, 2022 by Geddy_Lee

[accies1874]

240. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - DVD

As much as I can understand why folk don’t like this – I wasn’t head over heels the first time I saw it but still enjoyed it – it is good, lads. I couldn’t say for certain how it was lit, but it gives off the look of being like Barry Lyndon in that it seems to just use in-frame light sources to light its scenes which can give off a whole host of moods but the most notable one is given off by the Christmas lights. Kinda warm, kinda dreamy, it should be as memorable as the Barry Lyndon NASA cameras or tracking shots in The Shining – but probably isn’t – and places it firmly within the pantheon of Christmas movie classics.

I prefer Kubrick when he’s pairing up his technical mastery with the ambiguous dreamy/hallucinatory stuff so this is more catered to me than some of his other more revered films as it’s an interesting way to both merge and separate the fantasies of humans and their actions which then feeds into the class structure theme. Also, since I read that this was Kubrick’s Epstein expose (probs from a post on here), that was stuck in my head during a lot of it. I don’t think I buy it, but it’s quite an amusing way to read the film. I suppose that gives greater weight to how oppressive the atmosphere becomes in the second half - it's not Three Days of the Condor or something, but it is effective. Speaking of which, at nearly three hours, I couldn’t believe how it flew in. Sometimes you just need to accept the indulgence of the creator when they or their film works so well, and this was defos one of those times.

What better way for the big man to go out than the final word in his final film being “f**k”?

241. Black Christmas (1974) - Digital Rental

This, imo, will always be hindered by the fact Halloween came out afterwards and did almost everything better, which I’m sure must piss Bob Clark off as I remember hearing that he had an idea for a Halloween-themed sequel to Black Christmas called… Halloween. He spoke to John Carpenter about it and Carpenter made one of my all-time favourites. What I can’t remember is how detailed Clark’s idea or discussion were, so f**k knows if it was just outright plagiarism or two buddies sharing ideas.

242. A Christmas Story (1981)* - BBC Two

The most adorable film ever made? It’s laugh out loud funny, appropriately stupid and a really good portrayal of the mind of a young American boy. Wasn’t sure about the narration, but it ultimately does enhance the comedy and adds to the storybook tone. It’s definitely gonna be a regular Christmas staple for me.

243. Arthur Christmas (2011) - DVD

Pretty sure this subconsciously taught me about the three-act structure when I saw it as a kid/early-teenager as, watching it now, it’s clearly very rigid in how it sticks to that. I think it’s beneficial for this kind of story, though.

244. Elf (2003) - Sky Cinema

It definitely tails off in the second half, but the first half is so strong and the second still solid enough that it certainly doesn’t ruin the experience. I admire how Jon Favreau is restrained enough to create the goofy, stylised vibe early on but resists the temptation to carry that over to when the story is taken to New York; there are a lot of neutral, bland colours and there aren’t the same daft editing and sets/costume decisions which made it funnier for me. The world is pretty much just your average film set in New York, but placing this ridiculous, funny character in a green and yellow elf costume against the backdrop of that boring aesthetic is great. I’ve no idea how much of the big laughs in the film were actually scripted – I’d guess that a lot of this was letting Will Ferrell loose on set in his costume – but it absolutely deserves its place among the Christmas classics.

[BFTD]

16 hours ago, Geddy_Lee said:

Underwater (Disney+), easy to watch 90 minute Sci-Fi action flick set at the bottom of the Mariana Trench....zips along at a decent pace !!

Is that the one with what's-her-name from the Twilight films?

Aye, I remember that being better than expected.

[Geddy_Lee]

13 hours ago, BFTD said:

Is that the one with what's-her-name from the Twilight films?

Aye, I remember that being better than expected.

Yep, Kristen Stewart is the lead actor (Wikipedia told me she was in the Twilight films). 

[stanton]

Oliver Twist ( 1948 ) Cracking version . Alec Guinness is great as Fagin and Robert Newton is very convincing Sykes . It’s probably my favourite version of the story 

[LongTimeLurker]

The Northman while on a plane to Canada a couple of days ago. Quite enjoyed the Viking angle because I have some Shetland ancestry and that part of my family were always firmly of the opinion that it would have been better to have stayed Norwegian, but the director overdid it a bit on the austere landscapes and sending a boatload of slaves from Russia to Iceland didn't exactly make sense for anyone who dabbles in geography. DNA research suggests the Faroese and Icelanders are patrilineally Norskie and matrilineally Irish/Scottish Gael. Nicole Kidman's character unlikely to win an award for being Mother of the Year. Didn't even realise it was Bjork until I saw the credits, but was barely awake by that point.

[Arch Stanton]

The Lair of the White Worm. Typical Ken Russel visuals, young Peter Capaldi and young Hugh Grant, and a smokin hot Amanda Donohoe in a variety of fetishy outfits.

[Detournement]

28 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

The Northman while on a plane to Canada a couple of days ago. Quite enjoyed the Viking angle because I have some Shetland ancestry and that part of my family were always firmly of the opinion that it would have been better to have stayed Norwegian, but the director overdid it a bit on the austere landscapes and sending a boatload of slaves from Russia to Iceland didn't exactly make sense for anyone who dabbles in geography. DNA research suggests the Faroese and Icelanders are patrilineally Norskie and matrilineally Irish/Scottish Gael. Nicole Kidman's character unlikely to win an award for being Mother of the Year. Didn't even realise it was Bjork until I saw the credits, but was barely awake by that point.

The Vikings were into sailing down the Volga and taking slaves. They got around. 

[Detournement]

No Direction Home (2005) 

Marty Scorsese rescues the footage of Bob Dylan's 1966 world tour in a nearly 4 hour documentary which takes you from Dylan's childhood up to his motorbike crash in 1966. Dylan does his usual trick of telling outright lies or saying nothing at all and most of the narrative comes from his friends from the period who are a mixed bunch. The footage of absolutely raging young English fans after the electric concerts is priceless. He's still winding up idiots 60 years later. 

Bed and Board (1970)

The fourth film in Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series. If there were 100 of these I'd watch them all as Jean Pierre Leaud is so entertaining to watch doing anything as Antoine. Here Antoine has found marital bliss but throws it away for some very exotic strange. The moral of the story is affairs are a bad idea and if you have an itch that needs scratched get yourself to a brothel. France in the 70s.

Pickpocket (1959)

A lonely young man learns how to be a crack pickpocket in Paris. The scenes when they are out stealing are thrilling but it feels strangely old fashioned compared to Breathless and The 400 Blows which came out the same year. 

 

 

[AyrshireTon]

Wayne’s World

My son (15) had never seen it so I decided it was time, given that he liked the Bill and Ted films. He really enjoyed it, and got most of the gags (save the Laverne and Shirley bit). 

[welshbairn]

"Nobody" on Amazon, if the rampant Russophobia doesn't bother you it's a tightly plotted quiet suburban family man with a hidden past takes on the mob thing with crackingly choreographed scenes of violence a plenty, and quite a few laughs, and only 92 minutes long. 7/10.

[BFTD]

11 hours ago, AyrshireTon said:

Wayne’s World

My son (15) had never seen it so I decided it was time, given that he liked the Bill and Ted films. He really enjoyed it, and got most of the gags (save the Laverne and Shirley bit). 

Did Laverne & Shirley make it over here? I remember being whooshed by references to that several times in Nineties film/TV.

Just looked it up, and I never knew it was a Happy Days spin-off either.

[AyrshireTon]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

Did Laverne & Shirley make it over here? I remember being whooshed by references to that several times in Nineties film/TV.

Just looked it up, and I never knew it was a Happy Days spin-off either.

I can remember it being on TV in the 70s and was later shown early in the morning on one of the first Sky channels when satellite TV was becoming a thing.

[accies1874]

245. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)* - Netflix

One of the more spectacular films I’ve seen this year in terms of technical achievements, even if the emotion of the piece doesn’t quite do enough to justify the excessive runtime or all-round indulgence. That’s not to say there’s nothing there – there are some incredibly dark comedic moments and a couple of proper emotional ideas – but all it needed was quite a bit of trimming to achieve greatness.

It gives the impression of being a therapeutic autobiographical existential drama where Inarritu works through his ageing, pressures of success, loss of identity and all-round regrets which felt, to me, as detached as it sounds, despite coming up with incredibly inventive ways to portray them on screen. I couldn’t really escape the notion that we were watching someone work through their problems through a film as opposed to us watching the character working through their problems, which I suppose might mean that he failed in his script.

There are really obvious and boring comparisons to be made to 8½ and Roma, the former due to the tortured artist aspect, the latter due to being a semi-autobiographical Netflix original set in Mexico – Roma was helped by having a much stronger protagonist though. All three share the same epic visuals, too, and Bardo has a load which will stick in your mind. One scene in particular starts with a tracking shot from a quiet apartment block into a bustling street, then the image of literally everyone on screen dropping dead, then a pile of bodies on which the main character has a murky, silhouetted convo with Hernan Cortes. The film’s surrealism is both justified and contributory to some of the best shots of the year.

246. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2015) - DVD

This will always hold a special place in my heart as I remember it being a bit of an eye-opener for me. It kinda showed me that this is what can be achieved through cinema at a time when I was mostly interested in big superhero fare, appropriately given what this is about. I’m obviously never gonna get that same experience watching this again, but I have revisited it a few times and think it mostly still holds up.

You can’t really talk about Birdman without talking about the cinematography. The fake one-shot is obviously cool and manages to work whichever way the scene requires it to; exciting during the exciting parts, serene during the serene parts and surreal during the surreal parts. What I think I appreciated most about the cinematography this time around was just the sheer imagination of how to get from one scene to another and, weirdly, the establishing shots too. It got me thinking “how did they come up with that?” several times. I accept that sometimes it is more impressive to tell a visually coherent story while using loads of cuts, and this is obviously showier, by my God is it good. 

The one-shot presumably asks a lot of the actors too and Edward Norton is the boy in this. He’s quite a mysterious character whose facades mean that we never truly understand what his motivations are: is he truly an a-hole or is everything all a persona (still making him an a-hole)? I think he’s the one actor – with the possible exception of Zach Galifianakis – who manages to pitch his performance just right. Michael Keaton has such a wide range of characters to play off and I think he manages just fine, and I wondered at some points if his performance was actually a portrayal of Riggan’s actor side taking over and hamming it up in real life which would've made him more impressive. I could be looking into it too much though. Emma Stone’s definitely the weakest, both as a performance and as a character, however she does act as a conductor to bring out the interesting aspects of Norton and Keaton, so is very much required. 

It is an incredibly personal story told through a famous former millionaire about someone's life beyond its breaking point. We're very much aware that the events of the film are seen as his final chance not as an artist but as a person. I love how it intertwines what both of those things mean - artistry v humanity. 

247. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)* - Netflix

Well, it’s no Knives Out. The usual caveat for puzzle box mystery films applies in that there’s often more to appreciate second time around, but I’ve got to admit that one watch in, this felt like the direct-to-video/streaming sequel that it is. All of the components from the first one are there, but they’re diluted in a way that makes it much less memorable. The social commentary is the one thing that isn't diluted yet manages to be much less clever. This article sums it up nicely – don’t think there are any spoilers in it – although I did quite like how the satire was tied into the solving of a mystery even if it won't do much for the folk who thought TLJ treated the audience like schmucks.

https://theface.com/culture/all-eat-the-rich-satire-looks-the-same-now-anti-capitalism-critique-film-tv-glass-onion-menu-white-lotus-triangle-of-sadness

This is more of a conventional whodunnit mystery, albeit with a couple of fun and clever variations on the genre’s tentpoles. Packing what could’ve been 45 minutes of a mystery into a five-minute (at most) gag was incredibly funny and was the point where I thought I was gonna be hooked, desperate to see where it went next. The setup didn’t grab me due to the issues spoken about in the next paragraph, but Rian Johnson is playful enough that I had faith he had something up his sleeve – and he did (for half an hour or so). Despite not being particularly interesting, the way he tells the story after a big plot point is just so fun that it felt like we were back in action with the world class entertainment we saw in Knives Out, not due to what he was telling (a pretty shallow whodunnit) but the way in which he told it. Everything that feels fresh/original about this film is great, however we do kind of fall back into convention towards the conclusion, resulting in an ending that’s fairly unsurprising and devoid of emotion or satisfaction due to its bland satire. The James Bond villain lair might have been more interesting on a cosmetic level, but it resulted in a loss of authenticity which made the playfulness of Knives Out’s location all the more interesting. This island just felt fake, despite the fact that they did actually travel to an island to shoot a lot of it.  

What I think truly lets it down more than anything else, though, is how bland I found the ‘supporting’ cast with the exception of Edward Norton (again!). There are two suspects who are rapidly fading from my mind as I type, one who only stands out because Dave Bautista is a recognisable actor, one who’s only memorable by virtue of being a caricature and a final character who is written well but really needed a top actor to not waste the fun of the character – I dunno, someone like Ana De Armas.

[MSU]

168 Empire of Light -- After the disappointment of The Fabelmans, I was looking forward to this being this season's love letter to cinema instead. Written and directed by Sam Mendes, cinematography by Roger Deakins, music by Trent Reznor, starring Olivia Colman, Toby Jones, and Colin Firth, you can almost smell the Oscar buzz. Sadly, despite the best efforts of Deakins, Reznor, and Colman, it's another disappointment. About halfway through, I was still wondering what it was about. Is it about racism? Is it about workplace sexual impropriety? Is it about mental health issues? Is it about two people who find each other somewhat unexpectedly during tumultuous times in their lives? It doesn't feel like Mendes knows himself. Also, for a movie set at the start of the 80s, and for as much as Mendes enjoyed reminding the audience of the fact, there was some language and turns of phrase that just felt out of place. 4/10

169 Avatar: The Way of Water -- wee blue dude runs about trying to f**k a whale for three hours. 7/10

[BFTD]

11 hours ago, MSU said:

169 Avatar: The Way of Water -- wee blue dude runs about trying to f**k a whale for three hours. 7/10

That's a damn sight more interesting than anything they put in the trailers.

[scottsdad]

Channel 4 have most star trek films on demand, so watching The Search for Spock. 

Cut most of the "Klingon b*****ds, you killed my son" scene. No swearing at all. But by cutting it almost to nothing, they cut out a major part of the movie. Really annoying. 

 

[coprolite]

Was enjoying the silliness of Carry on Cowboy for about 20 minutes until there was an uncomfortably long can-can scene. It was (young attractive female) can can dancers showing their pants for about five minutes while Sid and co letched at them, going "cor, weurgh, mmmm." Extremely disturbing. Olden days were fucked up. 

[BFTD]

17 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Channel 4 have most star trek films on demand, so watching The Search for Spock. 

Cut most of the "Klingon b*****ds, you killed my son" scene. No swearing at all. But by cutting it almost to nothing, they cut out a major part of the movie. Really annoying. 

I was going to say, "why on Earth would you have censored TV cuts of films on your on-demand streaming service?" but then I remembered seeing something decades ago that the BBC and ITV had no say in what versions of films they were sent to broadcast, and it would usually be a PAL version of a ludicrously-butchered American TV edit, with words like "damn" changed to "dang". It's probably still a similar situation.

9 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Was enjoying the silliness of Carry on Cowboy for about 20 minutes until there was an uncomfortably long can-can scene. It was (young attractive female) can can dancers showing their pants for about five minutes while Sid and co letched at them, going "cor, weurgh, mmmm." Extremely disturbing. Olden days were fucked up. 

It seems bizarre now, but that was literally part of the attraction for seeing them in the cinema on release - the chance to ogle a bunch of women. The Carry On films were the precursor to the Seventies sex comedies, and the successor to the trend of people going to see "educational" naturist films purely to see people in the buff.

Censorship led to some fucked-up avenues that people had to pursue in order to build their w**k banks.

[welshbairn]

Bad Times at the El Royale on Film 4. Bunch of strangers arrive at an isolated motel with different events in their pasts connecting them with the place. Bit of an Elmore Leonard vibe about it, a bit contrived, bonkers, but very funny amidst the melancholy of lost dreams and shattered lives. 8/10.