What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[scottsdad]

 

[Mark Connolly]

 

[supermik]

My name is Otto.

Tom hanks movie. Still watching it, not even half way through it yet.

Feckin brilliant.

edit.

Just finished watching.

It may not be a Philly, Gump or Ryan but it is a very entertaining movie nonetheless.

8/10.

Edited July 15, 2023 by supermik

[MSU]

134 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (#88 in the A24 series) -- This love letter to San Francisco and commentary on gentrification takes a little while to get going, and seems to have a bit of Waiting for Godot in the characters of Jimmie Fails (playing himself in a story based on his life) and his buddy Mont, Jonathan Majors. Jimmie spends his days maintaining a Victorian house his grandfather built in the 1940s, against the will of the current owners. When they are forced to leave, and Jimmie learns it may sit vacant for years while an estate is sorted out, he and Mont decide to move in and squat. The movie looks longingly at the city and the speed at which it evolves while attempting to observe what makes Jimmie tick, and does so with an air of surreality that keeps on reminding me of the Beckett play. Joe Talbot's debut seems impossibly accomplished, as warm as it is melancholy, as it grieves for changes that can't be undone. 8/10

135 Knives Out -- Four years, it seems. Four years is the perfect time to leave between viewings of this movie. I vaguely remembered whodunnit, couldn't really recall why they'd dunnit, and misremembered a bunch of stuff along the way. I'd also forgotten just how great the movie is in general and I may have enjoyed it more on the second viewing. Knowing a bit about Benoit Blanc bypassed those awkward few moments where the only thing that registered was Daniel Craig's accent. Rian Johnson's story is witty and inventive, brilliantly filled with twists and turns, told in a non-linear fashion that never feels like a gimmick, and proceedings are delightfully hammed up by a truly stellar cast. A slight lull with a side-plot involving the housekeeper maybe stops it from being flawless but when I next watch this in 2027, I can imagine happily getting beyond that. 9/10

136 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One -- If 2022 was the Year of Rich People Being p***ks in a Place (Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu), then 2023 is fast becoming the Year of People Trying to Bring Two Parts of Something Together When it Really Should Just Be Destroyed (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and now this). Fans of Tom Cruise running will not be disappointed and neither will fans of Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, or Vanessa Kirby who are all excellent. Even Simon Pegg, who seems to be aging at four times the rate of Mr Cruise, is decent comic relief although it's hard not to look at him and think Shaun of the Dead suddenly got good at computers. It's fast-paced, ridiculously hi-octane, thrill-a-minute stuff. My only real gripes concern the plot which is feeling oddly derivative already, and it does that thing with exposition where there's one person in a room who doesn't understand something, three people who do understand it, and they all divide the exposition up into sentence-long chunks then go round in a circle explaining it. It does that a lot and I hate it. Other than that, though, I was concerned that jumping into the franchise at this point, especially a two-parter, would've left me floundering, but it was a pretty satisfying couple of hours and kinda made me wish I'd forked out the extra couple of bucks for IMAX. Probably off to watch the other ones now. 7/10

Edited July 17, 2023 by MSU

[Swarley]

Ant-Man and the Wasp - Quantumania. Pretty awful. 

[accies1874]

I was off last week so managed to squeeze in a few new releases with varying results:

25. Influencer - Shudder

For about 15 minutes in the middle, this became quite a funny horror-comedy where the main character's attempts to kill someone keep getting thwarted by an unexpected guest, but sadly, like the rest of the film, that didn't amount to much. I'm also not sure if it was intentionally comedic. It almost left an impression on me towards the end where I thought it was going to have an OK portrayal of the connection between influencers and their followers, but, again, this is a very brief flash which wasn't effectively built up to or paid off. What occasionally promised to be a mix of Hitchcock and Ingrid Goes West sadly ended up being 90 minutes of nothingness - not bad or boring, just nothing. 

26. Smoking Causes Coughing - Cinema

This is the weirdest film I've seen this year. The main characters are an offbeat version of French Power Rangers who spend about 80 minutes in a Tales from the Crypt scenario telling the strangest brand of comedic ghost stories you're likely to see. I found it completely bizarre in almost every way and I can't get to the bottom of it whatsoever. There are some really funny moments and I enjoyed the nonsensical retrofuturism which, juxtaposed against the very real-world setting, made the Tobacco Force (the aforementioned French Power Rangers) seem quite pathetic - they're literally out of time despite possessing a self-seriousness which deliberately comes across as pathetic to the viewer. All that stuff is quite fun, as is the dynamic between members of the group, but the ghost stories stuff is what I can't get a handle on despite it being pretty entertaining. 

27. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre - Prime

A Guy Ritchie x Jason Statham action spy flick which I turned on because I fancied a daft new release before my Prime free trial ran out. I've always preferred the spy components of these kinds of films more than the action stuff, so I tend to get bored as time goes on and they delve into the bombastic action rather than the fun spy scenes. There are explosions and chases, there's globetrotting and punching - it does what it says on the tin for a Guy Ritchie x Jason Statham action flick. 

28. Broker - Sky Cinema

Shoplifters got me hooked on watching anything that Kore-eda releases which has been slightly tested when I've gone through his back catalogue (some great films but they can be ridiculously slow-paced), however I enjoyed The Truth which was his follow-up to Shoplifters and Broker is excellent. He seems to be obsessed with the concept of family and loves to deconstruct it. This often felt like a companion piece to Shoplifters in that it considers the sacrifices of familial love and what ultimately constitutes a family, all told through a road movie across parts of South Korea as two guys travel with a mother to illegally sell her child. That premise combined with Kore-eda's propensity for moral ambiguity and deep characters makes for a compelling couple of hours - it can be a bit predictable emotionally, but still effective. There's also the idea of fate and lost causes, and the characters are all brilliantly fleshed out to convey these themes through their own backstories (upbringings and circumstances). It definitely reminded me of Decision to Leave at points with law enforcement in a car tracking characters who they have an unconventional connection to, but I found there to be more heart in this than Decision to Leave which was a masterclass in just about everything but heart. 

[Arch Stanton]

I'm re-watching LA Confidential.

Just in case, you know, KS loses his case.

How Titanic won any Oscars ahead of this magnificent piece of filmmaking is one of life's enduring mysteries. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Collateral (2004) - Tom Cruise is a bad guy, but the kind of bad guy you like. Jamie Foxx has a real bad day. Michael Mann does LA with a much worse soundtrack. Gripping.

War of the Worlds (2005) - Tom Cruise fights an unbearable amount of bloom, the world's most irritating child and the solar system's most useless embedded advance force. Andy Dufresne digs another tunnel. Any sense of social uncertainty from the source material doesn't translate.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) - Tom Cruise gets in a bad place then turns his life around having sex with a woman because he is a man. Also some stuff about war being bad.

Gravity (2013) - Sandra Bullock has a real bad day, hallucinates a bit then embodies an evolution of a new existence. The Russians do a thing. Character study feels like something that works better with proper context, throwing in an offhand reference in a conversation with someone who would already know your life doesn't work. Still very good. Can only imagine what it would have been like on a big screen.

[JustOneCornetto]

52 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Gravity (2013) - Sandra Bullock has a real bad day, hallucinates a bit then embodies an evolution of a new existence. The Russians do a thing. Character study feels like something that works better with proper context, throwing in an offhand reference in a conversation with someone who would already know your life doesn't work. Still very good. Can only imagine what it would have been like on a big screen.

Absolutely amazing visual experience and that's why I've resisted watching it on tv but saying that I've recorded it from last night and aim to watch it on Sunday.

[sparky88]

1 hour ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

 

Gravity (2013) - Sandra Bullock has a real bad day, hallucinates a bit then embodies an evolution of a new existence. The Russians do a thing. Character study feels like something that works better with proper context, throwing in an offhand reference in a conversation with someone who would already know your life doesn't work. Still very good. Can only imagine what it would have been like on a big screen.

By a considerable distance, the best 3D film I've seen in the cinema.

[scottsdad]

17 minutes ago, sparky88 said:

By a considerable distance, the best 3D film I've seen in the cinema.

I saw Jaws in 3D at the cinema last year, that was the best for me. 

[BFTD]

I saw Jaws 3D on release when I was wee and it was fucking horrid. They fucked up the 3D so badly that they've never been able to make a decent looking 2D print, so it looks fucking horrid too.

Why Jaws: The Revenge gets the crown for worst Jaws film is beyond me.

[Squalor Vic]

On 16/07/2023 at 08:02, Swarley said:

Ant-Man and the Wasp - Quantumania. Pretty awful. 

Generous. It was borderline unwatchable. An absolute mess of a film that looked horrible. I don't, or didn't, mind the marvel films, in fact there's a few I really like but nearly everything since Endgame has been dung

[coprolite]

I thought Quantumania was entertaining nonsense in the cinema. Rewatched at home and it was just shite. 

22 minutes ago, Squalor Vic said:

Generous. It was borderline unwatchable. An absolute mess of a film that looked horrible. I don't, or didn't, mind the marvel films, in fact there's a few I really like but nearly everything since Endgame has been dung

Two spidermans, guardians and chang shi were decent (imo). i thought black widow & Dr Strange were ok but I'm in a small minority on that. 

[scottsdad]

Following the strong recommendation of @Miguel Sanchez we started the Mission Impossible series.

2 movies in. Not much plot wise, the whole thing is geared around the big action set pieces. 

[Mr. Brightside]

Oppenheimer 9/10

One of the most in-depth biopic/character studies I have ever seen, with some excellent performances from RDJ and Damon, but special praise must be reserved for Cillian Murphy who will certainly get an Oscar nomination for this.
The first hour of the film sets up the following two hours, and as such, feels a bit slow. However, the next two hours of the film fly past, making it hardly seem three hours long at all. The film is very dialogue heavy and ultimately not much time is given to the bomb itself, but as I found myself invested in Oppenheimer's PoV it doesn't matter too much.

The only issue I had was the audio mixing was poor for maybe the first 20/30 minutes, it was quite hard to make out what people were saying at points.

[Arch Stanton]

Asteroid City.

Now we all know Wes Anderson is a unique and quirky director. 

The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel are great movies but in AC he is pretentious to the point of disappearing up his own arse.

Genuinely, try explaining it to someone who hasn't seen it. There's no protagonist, no plot, no jeopardy.

Just a series of set plays involving bizarre characters.

[welshbairn]

7 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Asteroid City.

Now we all know Wes Anderson is a unique and quirky director. 

The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel are great movies but in AC he is pretentious to the point of disappearing up his own arse.

Genuinely, try explaining it to someone who hasn't seen it. There's no protagonist, no plot, no jeopardy.

Just a series of set plays involving bizarre characters.

I was in high hopes after enjoying The French Despatch which doesn't have much of a plot either but this was taking the pish, he even has a bit at the end with the cast trying to wake up the audience. Quite enjoyed the first hour as a bit of scenic art but that was plenty.

Spoiler

It should have ended after the first alien landing.

P.S. Good advice here I think for Barbageddon.

I survived the Barbie-Oppenheimer double-bill and I don’t recommend it

[SweeperDee]

Oppenheimer. Just left me profoundly sad. Can’t really express why. Just in awe.

 

[stanton]

21 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

Oppenheimer. Just left me profoundly sad. Can’t really express why. Just in awe.

 

I’m probably going to go see it sometime this week