What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[coprolite]

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Much more like it. The dementors are properly terrifying for kids. 

There's an actual plot with twists and stuff. It's still silly obviously but not completely dumb. Brilliant scene-chewing performances dialled up to 11 from the ensemble of Thewliss, Oldman and Spall. But Alan Rickman steals the show in this one, i don't know how he manages to make "page 394" sound quite so sinister, but it's brilliant. 

The aesthetics in this one are much improved too. 

7/10

[MSU]

7 hours ago, coprolite said:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Much more like it. The dementors are properly terrifying for kids. 

There's an actual plot with twists and stuff. It's still silly obviously but not completely dumb. Brilliant scene-chewing performances dialled up to 11 from the ensemble of Thewliss, Oldman and Spall. But Alan Rickman steals the show in this one, i don't know how he manages to make "page 394" sound quite so sinister, but it's brilliant. 

The aesthetics in this one are much improved too. 

7/10

I think this is most people's pick of the bunch. Nothing about the series, particularly the books, really stands up to much scrutiny, but it really starts to drop off a cliff after this one.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I don’t know about the Mermaid movie but this is genuinely one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.

 

[MSU]

110 Robots -- The conceit of this movie is something Adam Sandler would probably pass on. In the near future, immigrants have been replaced by robots to do all the work the immigrants did. The robots are humanoid but are clearly robots. Somehow, Jack Whitehall's character gets his hands on one that looks and sounds EXACTLY like Jack Whitehall and because Jack Whitehall is a very lazy character, he uses his robot to go on initial dates with women before moving in and fucking them himself. He's a lovely guy. Then we have Shailene Woodley who also somehow has a robot who looks EXACTLY like Shailene Woodley and she uses her robot to go on dates with men and dig some gold out of them before dumping them when they stop splashing the cash. Due to an entirely predictable mix-up with dates and addresses, the two robots meet up, fall in love, and f**k off to Mexico. The problem for Jack Whitehall and Shailene Woodley is that possession of robots is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, and this is the case to make sure the movie can happen, so the two of them head off to track down their robotic counterparts, and wouldn't you know it, they also fall in love on the way. Shockingly predictable but there's a half-decent joke at Moby's expense that I quite enjoyed. 3/10

111 You Hurt My Feelings (#134 in the A24 series) -- When A24 isn't making the same drug movie over and over, it's quite good at making these wee character studies, and this is pretty decent. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies are Beth and Don, a long-married, successful and comfortable couple whose son works in a pot store, while Beth's sister, Sarah (Michaela Watkins) is an interior designer and her husband, Mark (Arian Moayed) is a struggling actor. Beth is a writer, Don is a therapist, and their marriage is given a shock when Beth overhears Don tell Mark what he really thinks about her latest book. The movie as a whole is all about characters seeking validation, but it seems only the kind of validation they want to hear. Beth wants Don to tell her he loves her book and mean it. Don struggles to be appreciated by his client list, a couple of whom actively hate him. Sarah can't find the perfect lamp for a particular customer, and Mark just wants the shortcut to fame. This is a problem as everyone seems to want the same thing, but it's maybe not so much of a problem as these are all fairly rich, comfortable white folks complaining that people aren't loving them in the right way. Still, pretty good fun and I chuckled quite a bit throughout. 7/10

112 Kandahar -- If you're a filmmaker in 2023 who wants Gerard Butler to star in your movie, you need to be prepared to answer four questions: Where is Gerard Butler currently? What is Gerard Butler's occupation? Where is Gerard Butler trying to go? Which holiday or celebration is Gerard Butler intending to share with his estranged daughter upon arrival? The second Gerard Butler movie I've seen this year is very much like the first one I saw, Plane. Except here, he's a CIA operative rather than a pilot, he's stranded in Afghanistan, rather than a SE Asian island, he's trying to get home to the UK in both movies, and his daughter is graduating rather than wanting to see in the New Year. It's a decent, if derivative couple of hours as Butler's character's cover is compromised after he destroys an Iranian nuclear facility, and he and his interpreter race to get to a CIA base in Kandahar, some 400 miles away. In hot pursuit, we have the Taliban, Pakistan's ISI, ISIS, and the BBC License Fee Collections Agency. The landscapes are amazing and there are a couple of decent setpieces that keep the interest afloat. 5/10

Edited May 28, 2023 by MSU

[Mark Connolly]

9 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

I don’t know about the Mermaid movie but this is genuinely one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.

 

It's not even the worst of the new songs...

[coprolite]

OHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The franchise doubles down on the dark bits with a battle royale/running man style school sports competition and grotesque baddy. 

Some inventive set pieces but generally all over the place. 

5/10

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Looks like "feminist" jk rowling belatedly realised that she only had one female character involved as an active character in plots so crowbarred a couple in. Mrs weasley's promotion to proper character and the weird irish girl were both welcome developments. Helena Bonham Carter was not. 

There are some visually impressive scenes but the film is all over the place-directionless plot and tone wobbly. 

4/10 minus one for the stupid bouffant mullet hairdos=

3/10

[supermik]

Sisu.

The most ludicrous, far fetched movie that I have ever seen.

I loved every second of it!
The guy is some sort of Finnish Techoviking character who should really have been called Rambosson. Blown up, shot, stabbed, drowned, hanged and a couple of plane crashes all fail to stop him.

Lots of gory deaths and not really for the squeamish. Think it would be awesome in the cinema.

8.5/10.

[Mark Connolly]

8 hours ago, coprolite said:

OHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The franchise doubles down on the dark bits with a battle royale/running man style school sports competition and grotesque baddy. 

Some inventive set pieces but generally all over the place. 

5/10

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Looks like "feminist" jk rowling belatedly realised that she only had one female character involved as an active character in plots so crowbarred a couple in. Mrs weasley's promotion to proper character and the weird irish girl were both welcome developments. Helena Bonham Carter was not. 

There are some visually impressive scenes but the film is all over the place-directionless plot and tone wobbly. 

4/10 minus one for the stupid bouffant mullet hairdos=

3/10

Goblet of Fire features my favourite scene from the Twilight series...

[accies1874]

On 29/05/2023 at 08:33, coprolite said:

OHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The franchise doubles down on the dark bits with a battle royale/running man style school sports competition and grotesque baddy. 

Some inventive set pieces but generally all over the place. 

5/10

 

I've not watched the Harry Potter films in years, but your description sounds far more interesting than my memory of this one is. 

[accies1874]

20. Beau is Afraid - Cinema

My thoughts on this are quite muddled as I kind of felt like I was responding to two separate things: 1) the atmosphere, tone and general "world building," and 2) the thematic stuff. When the former took precedence in the first half or so, I enjoyed considering the latter, but when there was more of an emphasis on the messaging (I'd say I began noticing that more once Beau leaves the doctor's house) I enjoyed it much less. Put simply, it starts out wildly entertaining in a perverse way before abandoning that for an attempt at a satisfying emotional wrap-up. I think folk will like that - and I'm surprised I didn't given that it feels really Charlie Kaufmanesque towards the end - but I think there was an element of it being a jack of all genres but a master of none, and I could've really done with it being a master of one of those early ones. 

It does feel like it's Ari Aster trying to go all-out in a weird direction after establishing himself as The New Horror Guy, but that unevenness across its different sections just means that it's unlikely to stick in my mind the way Hereditary has. It's actually kind of like an on-screen portrayal of how I compare Hereditary and Midsommar; Midsommar doesn't necessarily do anything wrong (and I've got a cool t-shirt from it) but it was just a let-down compared to Hereditary given that Hereditary pushed all of my buttons in a debut film. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here, but I'm gonna go on. 

The film's also an odyssey in a lot of respects as it appears to use this grand adventure to tell a story of both its main character's psychology and BIG themes - big purely in terms of the sheer amount that it chooses to tackle. At points I felt like I was watching a full on journey through American politics and how shit it is, but there's also the much more interesting - to me, anyway - idea of not having any control over the one life that you've been given. If I wanted to revisit this, which I might, then I reckon I'd do it in chunks over a day, and that might bring a fair amount of enjoyment as there seems to be a lot of hidden fun throughout, but it's tough to get through at three hours.

[DA Baracus]

The Wicker Man (The Final Cut)

The original, not the Nicholas Cage comedy.

It remains outstanding. Sergeant Woodward remains a dreadful, deeply unlikeable and arrogant bigot. He's an almost comically misguided and pig headed tit of a man who goes about absolutely everything wrong. His blustering, incredulous rants across the island are met with amused bewilderment mostly and you can't help but cheer his eventually fate.

Christopher Lee is tremendous as Lord Summerisle, a laid back, easygoing lad deeply amused by Woodward's pish.

Only thing I'm not clear on is why they wrote to Woodward in the first place (he says he was sent a letter addressed to him specifically). Why him? How did they choose him? Who knew him from the island? The Cage version actually explains this, but it's never touched on in the original.

[Empty It]

Just back from the cinema seeing Guardians Of The Galaxy 3, genuinely one of the saddest movies I've ever watched at parts.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Kandahar.

Gerard Butler ages like a fine Paisley wine.

6.5

[coprolite]

On 30/05/2023 at 13:09, accies1874 said:

I've not watched the Harry Potter films in years, but your description sounds far more interesting than my memory of this one is. 

Concept v execution innit

If Arnie had had to fight badly designed and even more poorly rendered cgi sabre tooth mermaids then the running man would have been shite too. 

Anyway 

Harry Potter and the half blood Prince

Actually enjoyed this one. Maybe a result of having my expectations lowered but i thought it had a consistent tone, Hogwarts was suitably unnerving and there was some proper dramatic tension with the Snape/ Draco plot. I'm also a sucker for a bleak ending. 

Wouldn't work as a stand alone but as part of a series was quite good. Maybe a bit on the dull side. 

5/10

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1

Deathly boredom more like. Episodic mcguffin quest. 

3/10

 

[Fullerene]

12 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

The Wicker Man (The Final Cut)

Only thing I'm not clear on is why they wrote to Woodward in the first place (he says he was sent a letter addressed to him specifically). Why him? How did they choose him? Who knew him from the island? The Cage version actually explains this, but it's never touched on in the original.

Maybe you didn't spot where it was.

They asked Hamish MacBeth if he knew any virgins and once they got a name they wrote to him.

[Jimmy Shaker]

FAST X

An unrelenting, 135-minute explosion of noise and sound. If nothing else, this film is loud. Really, REALLY fucking loud, almost to the point of distortion. Away from the sound being terrible, the CGI is piss poor in places for a film that cost one third of a billion dollars (sic), and the actual set they built for the favela in Rio looks like they spent one third of a dollar on it. 

There’s no dicking about either, other than a brief recap of the events of whatever the one in Brazil with the safe was, which sets up the pitch for the next two hours, the first of which is set entirely in Rome watching a football-shaped bomb bounce about the place while folk in cars try to get a tower crane to spin at the just the right moment to knock it into the river. And while they succeed, the whole Italian job isn’t even in the top five most ridiculous moments in the film. 

Vin Diesel escapes the shockwave of said bomb just by driving fast, and later makes two helicopters fly into each other using a car and some rope, but only after his own car is dropped out of a plane without incident, onto the bridge previously used in another FandF outing, for reasons unknown. John Cena smuggles a plane onto another plane and flies it out of the plane using vodka. Jason Momoa plays a bad guy that’s spectacularly over the top and a borderline tribute to Jack Sparrow, but if he didn’t play him like that he’d have been lost amid everything else. Charlize Theron kills an entire army. Helen Mirren shows up, but in at least one scene she features in you can’t see her face and it looks very much like they had to redo a shot without her. Jason Statham shows up, then disappears to sit in the stands and wait for Fast XI. Literally just drives off the set and isn’t seen again. Han looked sad. The action is simultaneously spread across Rio, London, Portugal and Antarctica. It’s like Diesel is in one film, Cena another, the B-list are in something else, and Theron and Rodriguez are in their own thing. Only rarely do any of the threads become entangled with others. Everyone gets shot, stabbed, maimed, blown up, shot down, or endures a car crash that would see a normal person spend a year in hospital learning to say their own :censored: name, but I can barely remember seeing blood spilt. A dam is blown up after Diesel drives down it to escape two colliding oil tankers while an explosion chases him, but obvs he survives - or does he? A plane crashes with the B-list on it but just off-screen so are they dead? Who knows. The Rock reappears. THE SUBMARINE REAPPEARS. 

I literally walked out with a sore head and had to sit in the garden in the quiet when I got home. This was a sensory experience and a half. A franchise that’s been at 10 for a long time, turned up to 11. Possibly 12. The plot made sense and yet at the same time the film as a whole made next to no sense, and it exists only to warm folk up for Fast XI. This must be what it feels like to have your first Fanta as a five year old. Intense, with a feeling of uncertainty as to whether it’s a good thing or not. 

A quite strange experience, truth be told.

[KingRocketman II]

2 hours ago, Jimmy Shaker said:

FAST X

An unrelenting, 135-minute explosion of noise and sound. If nothing else, this film is loud. Really, REALLY fucking loud, almost to the point of distortion. Away from the sound being terrible, the CGI is piss poor in places for a film that cost one third of a billion dollars (sic), and the actual set they built for the favela in Rio looks like they spent one third of a dollar on it. 

There’s no dicking about either, other than a brief recap of the events of whatever the one in Brazil with the safe was, which sets up the pitch for the next two hours, the first of which is set entirely in Rome watching a football-shaped bomb bounce about the place while folk in cars try to get a tower crane to spin at the just the right moment to knock it into the river. And while they succeed, the whole Italian job isn’t even in the top five most ridiculous moments in the film. 

Vin Diesel escapes the shockwave of said bomb just by driving fast, and later makes two helicopters fly into each other using a car and some rope, but only after his own car is dropped out of a plane without incident, onto the bridge previously used in another FandF outing, for reasons unknown. John Cena smuggles a plane onto another plane and flies it out of the plane using vodka. Jason Momoa plays a bad guy that’s spectacularly over the top and a borderline tribute to Jack Sparrow, but if he didn’t play him like that he’d have been lost amid everything else. Charlize Theron kills an entire army. Helen Mirren shows up, but in at least one scene she features in you can’t see her face and it looks very much like they had to redo a shot without her. Jason Statham shows up, then disappears to sit in the stands and wait for Fast XI. Literally just drives off the set and isn’t seen again. Han looked sad. The action is simultaneously spread across Rio, London, Portugal and Antarctica. It’s like Diesel is in one film, Cena another, the B-list are in something else, and Theron and Rodriguez are in their own thing. Only rarely do any of the threads become entangled with others. Everyone gets shot, stabbed, maimed, blown up, shot down, or endures a car crash that would see a normal person spend a year in hospital learning to say their own :censored: name, but I can barely remember seeing blood spilt. A dam is blown up after Diesel drives down it to escape two colliding oil tankers while an explosion chases him, but obvs he survives - or does he? A plane crashes with the B-list on it but just off-screen so are they dead? Who knows. The Rock reappears. THE SUBMARINE REAPPEARS. 

I literally walked out with a sore head and had to sit in the garden in the quiet when I got home. This was a sensory experience and a half. A franchise that’s been at 10 for a long time, turned up to 11. Possibly 12. The plot made sense and yet at the same time the film as a whole made next to no sense, and it exists only to warm folk up for Fast XI. This must be what it feels like to have your first Fanta as a five year old. Intense, with a feeling of uncertainty as to whether it’s a good thing or not. 

A quite strange experience, truth be told.

I am of the opinion that the Fast & Furious series of movies has got to be hands down the worst franchise in cinematic history. And inversely more and more popular/profitable. 

I say this as someone who really enjoys action movies - of course I prefer them to be well done with sharp original dialogue but I do not believe off the various FF movies I have seen, there is one positive thing that could be said for them. Even the old "you know what you are going to get/it's not Ingmar Bergman but good for switching your brain off for 2-3 hours" apologetic nonsense doesn't stand up when applied to these movies. 

 

[Jimmy Shaker]

The odd thing with the series - or at least the latest one - is if even if you think you know what you're going to get, you're still left open-mouthed at some of what's happening. I certainly was, and I've seen them all, most of them on the big screen as nature intended, and I still came away last night thinking 'what the f**k did I just see'. 

I dunno if I'm too old for this kind of thing, and I say that as someone quite content to watch stuff blowing up for any length of time. Problem with Fast X is it's literally just stuff happening constantly. There's no let-up. It is just relentless. Even in the likes of Terminator 2, Aliens, Speed, etc., there's brief moments of quiet, or scripted conversation to lead into a set piece, or just someone driving in silence or two folk speaking on a bus or something, anything. Fast X announces a scene change by having something explode. 

A third of a billion dollars to make that.

[accies1874]

21. Reality - Cinema

I knew literally nothing about this, so when it revealed early on that the dialogue was taken entirely from the transcript of the depicted interrogation, my interest was pique - and that's by far the most interesting part of a film that I really enjoyed. 

My take on that 'gimmick' is that it made me invest in almost every aspect other than the dialogue. Authentic, pre-determined dialogue means that there's not gonna be any subtext as no normal human being speaks in subtext, so that means that those involved need to find it in other places: the performances, the score and the rhythm of scenes were the aspects that stood out to me. I often found myself ignoring what characters were saying and instead focusing on how they were saying it, which is especially crucial early on where there's a mystery - for those like me who weren't aware of the details of the true story - as to what's bubbling underneath and who knows more than they're letting on (everyone!). The mystery then becomes more focused on the Why than the What but still retains everything that made it interesting in the first place. Obviously every single film goes through the thought process of layering in subtext through different means, but I just think that the self-imposed restrictions on the script meant that there was a unique layer of thought required. I suppose it's quite like how plays adapt existing plays as I believe their scripts tend to stay the same and find other ways of setting their own production apart. Speaking of plays, I actually wouldn't have initially guessed that this was an adaptation of one, but when they referenced it in the closing credits a couple of things did come to mind retrospectively that became a bit more naff. 

I liked Reality as a character which, again, is testament to the performance. She's appropriately and mysteriously reserved early on, but I found myself understanding her paranoia as the interrogation continued and the agents tried to peel back what seemed like slightly unusual but completely innocuous habits. I was thinking that almost everyone has idiosyncrasies when it comes to performing mundane tasks and picking them apart will inevitably lead to suspicion when you're face with people scouring for suspicious acts. By the end, I realised that the entire film was dedicated to humanising that political boogeyman which in turn brings attention to the fallacy of freedom.  

[coprolite]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2

Young Skywalker has completed his training and rejoins the rebels to see off the forces of evil, complete with ghostly mentors and colour coded light weapons. 

Actually a pretty decent end to the series even if the various plot twists don't actually make sense. 

6/10

Overall, as big budget series for kids go, not as good as Star Wars but better than Lord of the Rings.