What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[paranoid android]

Watched some of I, Tonya last night - we love Margot Robbie because she's a babe, but it really struck me what a brilliant dedicated actress she is - is there a better young actress active at that level at the moment?

I watched most of Picnic at Hanging Rock the other night - that is one eerie movie! 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2023 by paranoid android

[WC Boggs]

I watched Ghostbusters Afterlife.  I'll leave criticism to the critics. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[velo army]

Source Code (2013?)

Time travel adventure with a twist starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan. Jake G is a former air force captain sent back in time to a parallel dimension to stop a bomb. Time travel is a tricky thing to surf in movies as it creates all sorts of plot holes. It's dealt with very well here, with the parameters and rules explained concisely. It's a very well done movie and it felt like it went by in a flash.

Jake G and Vera Farmiga are excellent, as is Monaghan. The plot is easy to follow which means I was invested very quickly. The ending is hopeful and the message is overall one of hope, perseverance and embracing the unexpected. 

I absolutely loved this.

 

 

[Steve_Wilkos]

Aftersun - 7/10

The Banshees of Inisherin - 8/10

The Menu - 8/10

Barbarian - 8/10

I have got a Disney Plus subscription for a month.

Does anyone have any film recommendations on there? Cheers

[Geddy_Lee]

4 hours ago, Steve_Wilkos said:

I have got a Disney Plus subscription for a month.

Does anyone have any film recommendations on there? Cheers

Prey - Very good installment to the Predator series (8/10)

and a couple of decent easy to watch 90 minute films..... Underwater (7/10) and No Exit (7/10)

and Danny Boyle's Sunshine from a few years back is also on there (watched it at the weekend) 8/10.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

The King of New York (1990) all time classic this one, made me realise it had been too long since I last watched it. John and the Hole (2021) a young lad discovers an unfinished bunker in his garden and promptly drugs his family and chucks them in it. Weird. Prevenge (2017) slasher film about a pregnant woman. This was funny in spots with some recognisable faces in the cast.

[Mark Connolly]

12 hours ago, Steve_Wilkos said:

Aftersun - 7/10

The Banshees of Inisherin - 8/10

The Menu - 8/10

Barbarian - 8/10

I have got a Disney Plus subscription for a month.

Does anyone have any film recommendations on there? Cheers

Amsterdam

See How They Run

[scottsdad]

Turner and Hooch

Struggling to find something to watch with the kids last night, I came across this old classic on Disney Plus. It took a bit of convincing them that a 35 year old film was worth the effort, but they trusted me.

It was fun - a few good laughs and a feel good movie all round...

But I had completely forgotten that the fucking dog gets shot to death at the end. Utter minter from me. The dog is lying on the table, the vet is shaking her head. The kids - expecting a modern day miracle of the dog perking up - were horrified. What a brutal ending.

[Steve_Wilkos]

Dead Silence - 2/10

[JustOneCornetto]

(08) His Girl Friday (1940) – DVD

This is one of those screwball comedies popular back in the day. It’s all very fast talking with plenty of laughs including some Hollywood in-jokes. Cary Grant is excellent in a plot based on the successful Broadway show The Front Page with him playing a newspaper editor who makes every effort to stop his star reporter, who is also his ex-wife played by Rosalind Russell, from leaving to marry boring Insurance man played by Ralph Bellamy. Stands the test of time really well and the satire on political corruption is spot on even today. 8/10

(09) A Man Called Otto (2022) – Cineworld

Maybe my expectations were too high but found this bit disappointing. American remakes of Scandi films do tend to be inferior, I’m thinking of The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhall for example, however with Tom Hanks in the lead role I was hoping for a better film. Considering the central theme of grief over the loss of his wife I thought the humour would have been very dark but it’s all pretty predictable and even though Hanks is trying to be Mr Grumpy you always view him as a loveable character. 6/10

(10) Cisco Pike (1971) – Talking Pictures

Great cast with Kris Kristofferson in his first acting role along with Gene Hackman, Karen Black and Harry Dean Stanton. Hackman is a crooked Cop who blackmails ex-rock star Kristofferson into selling a load of stolen drugs for him. It’s all very sex, drugs and rock & roll with that obvious 70s feel to it. It does plod along a bit but the last few minutes are pretty exciting. 6/10

(11) Alice (2022) – Sky Cinema

Based on real-life history of some Black Americans enslaved well after the Emancipation Proclamation. The plot has similarities to M Night Shyamalan’s The Village with Alice managing to escape from brutal plantation owner played by Jonny Lee Miller and finding herself in a totally unfamiliar environment. It’s a good story and you do root for her however her transformation is extreme but it does lead to a satisfying ending which has you cheering for her when she becomes like Pam Grier and seeks revenge after she’s helped by a Black political activist who takes her to see the film Coffy. 6.5/10

Edited January 26, 2023 by JustOneCornetto

[Frankie S]

#9 The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) Disney+ 9

I loved Martin McDonagh’s debut feature ‘In Bruges’, but was relatively cool on his next two films (‘Seven Psychopaths’ and ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’), but I’m delighted to say that ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is a real return to form. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who made such a great double act in ‘In Bruges’ are reunited here, and their rapport is better than ever. It’s an improbable tale of a petty feud between two lifelong friends who live on a remote island set off the west coast of Ireland, but McDonagh’s script is superb, the cinematography is gorgeous and the entire cast is first class. The film starts off as a gentle comedy, but things get progressively darker as the feud escalates. Quite simply, this is a delight from start to finish.

#10 Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022) Disney+ 6

‘Barbarian’, the debut film from American comedian and actor Zach Creggar, has been greeted with glowing reviews, so I was looking forward to it. It starts off promisingly, with the protagonist Tess (played by Georgina Campbell) checking into an Air BnB only to discover that it’s already occupied by (an apparently nice) young man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård).

Spoiler

However, given the terrible weather, and the lack of available hotel rooms in the city (merely the first in a long line of highly improbable developments - a convention in town is hardly likely to result in every hotel room in Detroit being taken), she unwisely accepts Bill’s invitation to stay the night. The house is situated in a distinctly unpromising area, and it’s clear from get go that she should get the hell out, but her bizarre decision to stay is subsequently compounded by an exponentially escalating series of irrational decisions, and her reckless disregard for her own safety seems to be contagious, as she’s far from the only character to defy logic. Rather like ‘Men’, this film transitions so abruptly from one theme and mood to the next that I felt like I had whiplash. One switch that works rather well is when the film suddenly segues from the dark corridors lurking beneath the Air BnB, grimly located in the blasted wasteland of Detroit’s hinterland, to an idyllic scene of an open-topped sports car cruising down sun-kissed Big Sur in California, accompanied by the mellow vibes of Donovan’s ‘Riki Tiki Tavi’ (a superlative needle drop), before quickly veering into even darker territory. The film then morphs rather clumsily into a Jordan Peele-style issue horror film, before turning into ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ meets ‘The Evil Dead’.

It’s very watchable and indisputably well-made nonsense, but like a lot of recent horror films, it’s simply trying to be too clever for its own good.

#11 Resurrection (Andrew Semans, 2022) 8

This is a very strange film. It’s a psychological horror film with a premise so bizarre that it reminded me of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 film ‘Possession’, another film that makes no sense by any conventional standards, but is nonetheless so unremittingly creepy and unsettling that it scares the hell out of you anyway. ‘Resurrection’ succeeds by taking its absurd premise seriously, suffusing the film within such tension and existential dread, that it practically compels you to buy into the implausible central conceit (which for most of the film’s duration is wisely shrouded in ambiguity). It doesn’t hurt that the excellent Rebecca Hall, who is carving out a niche for herself in superior horror films (see also ‘The Night House’) is superb here, and Tim Roth also does great work as her creepy ex-boyfriend, though Hall’s stellar performance as a successful career woman disintegrating into obsession and madness overshadows everything else. It’s a solid 9/10 effort all the way through, until the final stretch, where much of the film’s mystery dissolves, as it embraces rather more conventional horror tropes. I wish it had ended on a more ambiguous note, as the tantalising, ominous build up and the committed performances of the leads certainly earned it.

#12 Tár (Todd Field, 2022) Vue cinema 9

This very long but engrossing film takes an elliptical approach towards dealing with some fairly weighty topics (cancel culture, abuse of power within cultural institutions, #MeToo, inter-generational conflicts), and has been unfairly criticised in some quarters (IMO) for presenting a complex, layered portrait of an essentially unsympathetic protagonist - the conductor Lydia Tár. The film leaves little doubt that Tár is a monstrously manipulative character, even as it showcases her tenacity and brilliance, so I think the suggestion that Field should have nailed his colours rather more firmly to the mast, to signal which side of the culture wars he’s really on, are misguided. One thing about the film that’s beyond contention is that Cate Blanchett is sensational in the lead role. The film starts sedately, but slowly transforms into a beguilingly surreal work. Bizarrely, it plays like a (highbrow) super-villain origin story. I look forward to the next chapter in the Tár Cinematic Universe.

#13 Spiral (Darren Lynn Bouseman, 2022) Netflix 4

Unlucky number 13. This spinoff of the ‘Saw’ franchise is as bad as you might expect. I’m not sure why I watched it. I suspect my never-ending frustration with the depressingly shallow selection of films available on Netflix boiled over momentarily, and rather than do something better instead, I pressed ‘play’ impulsively on my remote. In mitigation, it was almost certainly a Pavlovian response to seeing the names Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson (both of whom I usually like) on the cast list. Rock is quite good here, but he’s got very thin material to work with. It’s a police procedural horror film, though it’s not remotely in the same class as the best examples of the genre, such as ‘Cure’ or ‘The Wailing’, or David Fincher’s ‘Se7en’ and ‘Zodiac’.

Spoiler

There’s one amusing moment, when Rock’s character Detective Zeke Banks prepares to raid a drugs den, and he quips to his partner Detective William Schenk (played by Max Minghella), ‘This is some serious ‘New Jack City’ shit right here’, slyly referencing his role as the crack addict Pookie in that film.

Overall though, it’s a by-the-numbers cash grab masquerading as a movie.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Frankie S

[Scotty Tunbridge]

Show me someone that enjoyed Babylon and I will show you a liar.

[accies1874]

14 minutes ago, Scotty Tunbridge said:

Show me someone that enjoyed Babylon and I will show you a liar.

I'm hoping to see it today so I'll let you know xx

[accies1874]

I was re-watching Gone Girl (still great) which chucks in Don't Fear the Reaper at point. There can't be any song that's appeared in more films/games/TV episodes than this has? It's popped up millions of times for me in the past year or so. 

[Molotov]

30 minutes ago, accies1874 said:

I was re-watching Gone Girl (still great) which chucks in Don't Fear the Reaper at point. There can't be any song that's appeared in more films/games/TV episodes than this has? It's popped up millions of times for me in the past year or so. 

I’d see that as a bit of a worrying sign. 

You either have voices in your head or you watch too much TV. 

Did that song ever appear in this film series?

 

[KingRocketman II]

4 hours ago, accies1874 said:

I was re-watching Gone Girl (still great) which chucks in Don't Fear the Reaper at point. There can't be any song that's appeared in more films/games/TV episodes than this has? It's popped up millions of times for me in the past year or so. 

Gimme Shelter gotta be up there.......

[accies1874]

3. Babylon - Cinema

Boy, this film sure does like to babble on, doesn't it? 

Damien Chazelle knows how to make spectacular cinema. I re-watched Whiplash last week which is one of my faves of the 2010s, La La Land is wonderful on a technical level and then there's Babylon which just screams epic (First Man is an outlier as it sidelines a lot of the style in favour of character, and I've not seen his debut which doesn't even seem to exist anywhere). So if you've got First Man's character study on one end of the spectrum and La La Land's technique on the other - Whiplash perfectly in the middle - then where does Babylon sit? Well, it smashes well past La La Land.

It's incredible at points. During the two early behemoths of scenes, all you can do is sit back and soak it all in. Intense and hypnotic with that goddamn catchy theme which manages to evoke that intensity and hypnotism and is just a fucking tune. Some of the 'one-takes' are ridiculous, too, and, while they're entirely showy, they are spectacular which also works as a depiction of a vulgar, narcissistic yet still spectacular Hollywood. So much of it is paced so ferociously that you feel exhausted when it does slow down - and that's when the problems start. 

As much as I loved the craft of those early scenes, I began to realise how little I was invested in the characters or ideas* when it began to linger on them. There was nothing about their rise that I took any interest in, and it wasn't like Tar where you were desperate to see how their fall came about as it's pretty clear early on what kind of story it plans on telling. That becomes an issue when the spectacle peaks at, at most, a third of the way through a 3-hour film and you're left with characters who you're pretty indifferent to, which gets very irritating when it gives the impression of winding down about five or six times (or maybe even more) so you begin to resent that it's still going. One thing I did like in the latter part of it, though, was how they contrast two parties, both near-identical but experienced by a character at two different stages of their life so are portrayed differently. You get the feel that they're different, but it's clear in the moment and in retrospect that the bad shit is still the same as what was once epic. Cinema. 

*I wasn't invested in the ideas at the time, but I was thinking on my walk home how I liked its wrestle with the resentment and fulfilment that comes with paving the way for a new generation and just ageing in general. It did sort of provoke reflection at the end by making me think about just how much the characters had gone through to get to the point they reached at the end - and how their decisions at the end defined their character - but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it at the time. 

On my in, I also saw The Banter King himself walking by the cinema with Matthew Shiels so his presence put me in a top mood before watching. @Scotty Tunbridge

[MSU]

016 Searching -- After seeing Missing, I was sure I'd seen Searching but it was back when I was "still drinking" so my memories were vague of it. There's a lot in here that carried forward into Missing and it's told the same way where it's 99% a computer screen, but it's a dad looking for his daughter rather than the daughter looking for her mother, and the characters aren't quite as sympathetic and the story not so strong. Still decent fun. 6/10

017 Elementa -- Nothing but an unabashed attempt to color in some unusual countries on my Letterboxd map. It's a 45 minute black and white nature documentary, mostly told as a triptych which gives it a lovely pretentious art installation feel. We travel from pole to equator to pole, witnessing nature in its least disturbed. A turtle in Galapagos just wanders over there for a bit. A sloth hangs out on a branch and eyes up a different branch. A Canadian bear cub walks along the rocky banks of streams and thinks about what to have for dinner probably. I found it a beautiful, soothing experience, ambiently soundtracked, that in the absence of a story seems to do an incredible amount to find out what it takes to connect to a world that exists despite us, what has always been here before us, and what will be there when we're gone. 10/10

018 Sick -- Kevin Williamson's latest attempt to revitalize the slasher genre isn't quite as effective or accomplished as Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer but it's still a fairly sassy, smart affair. Set at the start of COVID, the reminder of what life was like in March 2020 with sparse supermarket shelves, arrows on the floor, six-foot distances, and Daily Fauci is a bit shocking to see a mere two and bit years later, but that backdrop is a brilliantly unsettling introduction. 

Best friends Parker (Gideon Adlon who played the geeky, closeted lesbian in Blockers) and Miri (Bethlehem Million) travel to the former's family's lake house to see out quarantine. They receive cryptic messages on their phones, are startled when Parker's ex-boyfriend shows up, and they are further alarmed when a knife-welding maniac appears on their property intent on more than stealing a spare roll of toilet paper.

The script is bright, the characters a sympathetic blend of skeptics and germaphobes, and there are some inventive CGI-enhanced kills along the way before the movie takes a bizarre turn as motives are revealed. None of this is helped by a young Carole Baskin look-a-like, but an 82-minute runtime achieves a fair amount of tension, delivering an odd historical touchpoint. 6/10

019 Stir Crazy -- I haven't watched this quite as often as Jaws 2, but it's probably close. Still, I hadn't seen it for probably more than a decade and it's far lighter on story than I remember, and easier on tension. Maybe it’s familiarity but apart from a few scenes, notably involving Pryor reaching for a pillow, the laughs were mostly smiles and the smiles were mostly on the inside. But for a 100 minute 80s comedy set mostly in a prison, it’s aged remarkably well, even if the romantic angle between Wilder and his lawyer’s niece is a bit yikes. Also, seeing Jonathan Banks as a nasty inmate is probably worth the effort of watching on its own. 6/10

020 The Outsiders (#1 in the Brat Pack series) -- The first acknowledged Brat Pack movie is an absolute galaxy of stars. C Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise. Ooft! It's interesting to see them all share sets and scenes, but it's Macchio's performance that stands out. He stars as Johnny, friend of Ponyboy (Howell) who are part of a gang of greasers in 60s Oklahoma, rivals to the more upwardly mobile socs gang. When they kill a soc during a brawl, it sparks a chain of events that people are powerless to stop. It's Francis Ford Coppola behind the camera just in case the cast list isn't weird enough. It's a bit of a usual gang story where we struggle to identify true heroes, and the theme of class is one that will be revisited in many Brat Pack movies. It feels like a movie that I would've absolutely loved if I'd seen it in my teens. Now, though, in 2023, it's a bit underwhelming, a bit naive even, but there's so much talent involved I don't really know how anyone could come away from this with a negative opinion. 7/10

021 Class -- I never really got the point of Andrew McCarthy. Watching this again for probably the first time since I was a teenager, I was surprised by some things -- for example, the insult "douchebag" is aired for the first time in movie history as far as I know -- but my attitude to McCarthy and his portrayal of Jonathan is exactly the same. Jonathan is a new student at a fancy Midwest prep school where he meets his asshole roommate, Skip (Rob Lowe), who may just be the worst person to ever live. The two become friends after a fashion, and for reasons of plot, Skip sends Jonathan into the city to pop his cherry, which successfully occurs with an older woman, who just so happens to be Skip's mother. Yikes. It does have some vague curio value, such as early appearances from Joan and John Cusak, it was co-written by Jim Kouf who would go on to help pen National Treasure, plus there's that douchebag thing I've already mentioned. But that's about it. 4/10

022 Shotgun Wedding -- It's kinda rare to see a movie whose writers so clearly started with a title, moved to the poster tagline, went to see The Lost City a couple of times, and then came up with a plot to fit. Jennifer Lopez (in ANOTHER wedding movie) and Josh Duhamel star as an oddly-matched couple preparing for their wedding on an exotic private island when the proceedings are invaded by a crew of pirates (not that kind) who take everyone, including Jennifer Coolidge playing Jennifer Coolidge, hostage. It's up to the squabbling bride and groom to -- ahem -- save the day. It lacks warmth, charm, and laughs, and not even a heavily-armed J-Lo running around a jungle in a grubby wedding gown flashing her arse, or a movie-stealing minute or two from Coolidge, are enough to soothe the anxiety that most of the runtime generates. I really expect more from Jason Moore, who directed Pitch Perfect for the love of God, and whoever talked Lenny Kravitz into appearing really should be working for the UN. 2/10

023 Infinity Pool -- They say the man who is bored of Mia Goth's side-boob is tired of life. Oh well. Cronenberg Jnr makes a better movie than his dad did with Crimes of the Future last year, but like Shotgun Wedding and The Menu and the new Glass Onion and Triangle of Sadness, it's yet another shot at making a movie about rich people being p***ks in a place.

Alexander Skarsgård and Cleopatra Coleman are James and Em, a married couple on vacation in the fictional country of Latoka. They meet Jalil Lespert and Mia Goth, who are seasoned visitors to the country, and illegally exit the compound to picnic in the country. On the way back, James runs over and kills a farmer walking at the side of the road. Quickly detained, James learns that when a foreigner kills a citizen, the relatives of the deceased are permitted to kill the foreigner. If the foreigner has sufficient wealth, a clone can be made of them, complete with their memories and their guilt, and they can stand in as a proxy. James opts for the latter, goes through a long, painful, and expensive cloning process and later watches as the farmer's son stabs his double to death.

And herein lies the nub of the movie. If the holidaymakers have enough money -- and they wouldn't be there if they didn't -- apart from some temporary discomfort, there is nothing preventing them from behaving like savages, although James is quick to stumble on the existential conundrum. Who's to say that the original version wasn't the one who was killed and the clone survived? Em is disgusted by the experience but James finds it somewhat titillating and discovers his tourist companions have also fallen foul of the law. 

Cronenberg Junior keeps the camera close on faces at times, throws characters far to the wrong edge of the frame, and the whole thing helps to keep the audience on edge and uneasy, even before events take their inevitable turn and head in the direction of the end of Society. It's been easy to forget in 2022 that Mia Goth is English so it's a bit of a novelty to hear her closer to her native accent here, but there's something about her performances here and in X and Pearl that keep me at arm's length. Skarsgård's performance is, for the most part, the exact tonal opposite to The Northman, and again that provides a bit of interest without really fully connecting. Poor Cleopatra Coleman is an afterthought and plot device. The movie exists and is nothing without a few minutes of WTF and when the credits come up, that's pretty much all that's left. 6/10

Edited January 29, 2023 by MSU
The censor edited the name of the bloke who soundtracked the wee nature movie.

[UpInTheAyr]

Been on a Twin Peaks binge past couple of weeks. Hadn't watched it in years but being a bit older now I could 'understand' it a lot better than I did the first time, well as much as you can understand Lynch.

Season 2 was severely bloated and season 3 I thought was just incredible, especially episode 8. 

Interestingly there's another version of Fire Walk With Me called Missing Pieces, which is a collection of deleted scenes. Well worth a watch as it adds a lot context to the original movie. 

[accies1874]

4. Holy Spider - Cinema

This has no pretences about what kind of film it wants to be; it's a crime thriller that shows you the murderer before the main character is introduced which immediately establishes that you shouldn't expect a huge mystery. The trailer had a quote comparing it to Zodiac which I think is pretty fair considering Zodiac is more about the effect of the murders than the murders themselves, and Holy Spider is more about the kind of environment that allows the murderer's beliefs to flourish. They both use a real case to comment on a wider societal attitude. It doesn't really take its ideas beyond what it sets out early on, although you kind of see it in a different - but still depressing - light towards the end, culminating in a final scene that's more disturbing than any of the flashes of brutality that came before. I suppose the arc of Establish Attitudes => Reveal Murders => Reinforce Attitudes is quite different and pertinent.