What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[accies1874]

Great write-ups @MSU. My thoughts on Oppenheimer will be very similar, although I'm gonna give it a go in Imax before doing post. 

You allayed my fears about the fish out of water stuff in Barbie but then @sparky88 had to go and shit over that. Still have high hopes for it though (when I'm finally able to stomach watching it in the cinema).

[coprolite]

Saw the opening half hour of Dune (2021) then fell asleep. It was definitely telling the story better than the Lynch version. Looks like a tv movie with a big CGI budget and the music was an intrusive drone. Showed just enough to make me want to watch it when I’m less tired, but not sure I’d have felt the same if I wasn’t a bit of a sci fi nerd. 

[pub car king]

Barbie, 6/10

This is a strange one really, you have one of the best selling toys of all time, loved by children of multiple generations.

They then make a film that isn't for children. There are some spectacular set pieces the sets look huge, some laughs (for the adults) and the cast are very good, Ryan Gosling steals the show rather ironically. 

The second half it attacks the "patriarchy" which is going to go over the head of your average child. It also done in a very ham-fisted way with an ending that doesn't really resolve anything.

But I'm not really the target audience in fairness. My 8 year old said she was bored for bits of it, and my 12 year old said she got the adult jokes but that it went on a bit. 

Edited July 25, 2023 by pub car king
.

[JustOneCornetto]

(52) Big Boys Don’t Cry (2020) – Netflix

Michael Socha is really good as he plays the part of Paul Connolly in the true story about abuse in a children’s home in the 70s and the effect it had on the boys abused. It switches between his life in the home and 20 odd years later when he’s released from prison and goes back to his job as a bouncer. When he finds out that the home is under investigation and that some 7 or 8 boys had subsequently committed suicide you see his anguish and unresolved anger at what happened to him and his pals. Bit harrowing at times but well made and worthy film. 6.5/10

(53) They Cloned Tyrone (2023) – Netflix

Billed as a sci-fi comedy it’s all very daft but just nonsensical enough to make it a decent enough watch. The 3 main leads, John Boyega, a drug dealer, Jamie Foxx, a pimp, and Teyonah Paris, a prostitute, are all good as they get together to try and find out what’s happening in the ‘hood’ as it seems some sort of mind control project and cloning of main players in the Black community is being conducted.The humour is not laugh out loud but more satirical and it’s all very self-deprecating. 6/10

(54) Gravity (2013) – BBC

My first rewatch since seeing it 10 years ago in 3D on the big screen and you definitely don’t get anywhere near the same impact on the small screen. Saying that I love films set in space and this is still visually stunning and without a complex or even much of a plot it’s more of a survival film which keeps you engaged and the run time of 90 minutes is just perfect. 8/10

(55) Oppenheimer (2023) – Cineworld

This is a big story to tell and Nolan certainly does that in this 3 hour epic. Like previous comments I agree that most of the film is dialogue driven and it does help to have some understanding of the subject matter. I thought the sound throughout was ok and didn’t miss anything they said but it is a film that requires a lot of concentration and must admit I was getting a bit mixed up with some of the names of the scientists and officials. Robert Downey Jr puts in a great performance so much that you really hate him by the end of the film. For me the standout scene was the test explosion with the delay between sight and sound both breathtaking and gut wrenching. That scene made me think of David Lynch’s interpretation of that moment which you can see in Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return (which is the best hour of tv I have ever seen). Interesting that Nolan cast his own daughter to show the image of a burn victim which Oppenheimer sees in his mind. Still thinking about the film a day after watching it which is always a sign at how good it was. Sure to pick up a few Oscars. 9/10

Edited July 27, 2023 by JustOneCornetto

[MSU]

41 minutes ago, JustOneCornetto said:

(53) They Cloned Tyrone (2023) – Netflix

Billed as a sci-fi comedy it’s all very daft but just nonsensical enough to make it a decent enough watch. The 3 main leads, John Boyega, a drug dealer, Jamie Foxx, a pimp, and Teyonah Paris, a prostitute, are all good as they get together to try and find out what’s happening in the ‘hood’ as it seems some sort of mind control project and cloning of main players in the Black community is being conducted.The humour is not laugh out loud but more satirical and it’s all very self-deprecating. 6/10

This is next up on my watchlist. I tried to start it last night but it didn't grab me so I ended up watching Shaun of the Dead again instead.

[Mark Connolly]

Thought Oppenheimer was absolutely tremendous.

Not much I can add to what everyone else has said, other than I didn't clock that it was Gary Oldman playing Truman until the credits, and it must have been tough on Cillian Murphy having to go to work and hang out with Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt

[well fan for life]

On 23/07/2023 at 19:42, SweeperDee said:

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

 

Aye. Went to the IMAX at Silverburn last night for it. Visually spectacular and really well paced. But for sure when the credits started rolling I just felt really, really sad. 
 

The cast is so unbelievably stacked as well. Shout out your man from Drake & Josh rising to the occasion and being the guy on the big red button.

[Mark Connolly]

[Cheese]

Not been on this thread for a while. Shout out to Miguel's withering reviews of dross Hollywood blockbuster franchises, some great lines.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse.

I enjoyed the 1st alongside the wee man and the sequel manages to match it and leaves a nice wee cliffhanger for the 3rd installment, although I do wonder how long before people get tired of multiverse plots in films (if they aren't already)

The Flash

More multiverse stuff. Film only kicks in once Keaton gets involved after a dreadful start and weird looking CGI/effects and there's some neat cameos. It's at least equal to the recent declining in quality Marvel output.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

It's better than Crystal Skull, although that's a particularly low bar to clear. The opening scenes are fantastic until we abruptly cut to an old man in his pants, then shortly after, a ridiculous car chase. There's something about Waller-Bridge I can't take to which means I find her characters annoying and unlikeable. Hopefully this brings an end to the arc after this films ending and if the franchise has a future, it's certainly not with a geriatric Ford hobbling around chasing an unlikeable sidekick (huge lol at wee Shia getting bumped off off screen) and surely in a computer generated prime Han Solo punching Nazi's in the face to stop them grabbing a world ending Macguffin.

 

[Cheese]

Barbie

Barbs deserves a post of her own. Thought it got the mixture of sickly sweetness, satire, silliness, sarcasm and seriousness spot on. Gosling and Robbie were perfect as was Barbieland. Enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would.

[Miguel Sanchez]

A Quiet Place Part II (2020/2021): Did A Quiet Place need a sequel? Not really. Does it need the further sequel it's getting? Not really. Does it need the prequel it's getting? Not really. Does it need the video game it's getting? Not really. At least I live on an island. 

Armageddon (1998): Spectacular. Surprisingly hard to follow when they're actually on the meteor, even by Michael Bay's standards, but still spectacular. There's also a character in the credits listed as "Nerd" which I found hilarious.

Arrival (2016): A genuinely great film, ironically spoiled by the fact I'd seen it before. The visuals and premise of the first half are still engrossing though. I'd like to live in Amy Adams' house. 

Braveheart (1995): Quite possibly the strongest concentration of nonsense ever committed to film. 

Robocop (1987): The world's worst police force fail to protect capitalism's wet dream. Capitalism tries to replace them with robots. Hilarity ensues. The first time I saw this I thought it was rubbish and lacking Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Ironside, the more I see it (I think this was the third time) the sadder and less dated it gets.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Miguel Sanchez

[accies1874]

I quite liked A Quiet Place 2. It's a retread of the first in a lot of ways, which is kinda good as it maintains the grounded nature when it would've been predictable to go bigger, but it still fleshes out the world in decent ways. A solid 7/10 imo.

The only idea I have for how the game could play out is if it's entirely the Don't Move/Breathe sections from Until Dawn and The Quarry. Sounds kinda shite. 

[Mark Connolly]

6 hours ago, Herc said:

Barbie

Barbs deserves a post of her own. Thought it got the mixture of sickly sweetness, satire, silliness, sarcasm and seriousness spot on. Gosling and Robbie were perfect as was Barbieland. Enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would.

Thought Gosling was excellent, and the fight with Simu Liu was hilarious

[Arch Stanton]

Oppenheimer...

Yeah, I freely admit I'm a Nolan fanboy.

Watched it this morning in IMAX and it was phenomenal. Long, detailed and the usual Nolan "fucking about" with the timeline...what's not to like.

Brilliant performances by Murphy and Downey Jnr.

Those who like "action" movies,  such as the Fast and Furious series, will be bored after 20 minutes but when the bomb scene finally arrives (after 1 hour and 58 minutes...exactly when Oppenheimer says it will detonate) it's a fantastic bit of film making.

Go see it, it's superb.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Arch Stanton

[Mark Connolly]

15 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Oppenheimer...

Yeah, I freely admit I'm a Nolan fanboy.

Watched it this morning in IMAX and it was phenomenal. Long, detailed and the usual Nolan "fucking about" with the timeline...what's not to like.

Brilliant performances by Murphy and Downey Jnr.

Those who like "action" movies,  such as the Fast and Furious series, will be bored after 20 minutes but when the bonb scene finally arrives (after 1 hour and 58 minutes...exactly when Oppenheimer says it will detonate) it's a fantastic bit of film. making.

Go see it, it's superb.

I've seen a lot of people describe it as "long", but it certainly never felt that way for me, the first hour or so felt really well paced, and after the bomb went off, the time seemed to fly in.

I'm actually considering going back to see it again, as I'm sure I have missed plenty

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Belfast.

Boring shite.

Report ends.

[BFTD]

18 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkay said:

Belfast.

Boring shite.

Report ends.

^^^ Shitting Stories thread for this pish

[Squalor Vic]

Babylon (2022)

Big, flawed, messy, over the top and 3 hours long but I really enjoyed it and was never bored. The three leads were excellent, and it looked amazing. If the opening 20 mins or so, featuring shitting elephants, pissing and a huge debauched orgy doesn't put you off then it's worth sticking with. 

Could it be shorter, of course, would I want it to be, not really.

[MSU]

143 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation -- The resurgence of this franchise continues with Christopher McQuarrie in the director's chair, where he will make himself comfy for the next few movies. It also introduced the never not wonderful Rebecca Ferguson into proceedings as a feisty British agent working to her own agenda. The shadow of PSH still casts deep and heavy, but it's absolutely fine as far as MI movies go, and more Tom Cruise movies should have Nessun Dorma in the soundtrack. Is it all starting to feel a bit samey, though? Do they always have to be the most impossible mission ever? Does no one ever listen to the IMF? All this said, the ending is pretty satisfying. 6/10

144 Mission: Impossible - Fallout -- I liked this one a lot. I may have liked it a bit more if it had come in twenty minutes shorter, but hey, you can't win them all. Unless you're Ethan Hunt. This is a breathless romp around the globe again with chases and stunts galore but what really made it for me was the reintroduction of Julia, which gave the movie a bit of a personal touch. I started out this journey through the franchise thinking of Mission: Impossible movies as a poor man's James Bond. That's not really the case at all, they're doing similar but different things, and the one thing that Mission: Impossible has never tried to make me do is think that underwater fight scenes are impressive or tense, and I have to thank it for that. 8/10

145 Shaun of the Dead -- I never get tired of watching this, helped by there always being a new bit of foreshadowing or a callback to spot. This time, I don't think I've ever caught the fact that the guy calling Ed for drugs near the start is Shaun's underling at the store. If ever there was a movie to prove how much thought and attention people put into their work, this is it. And as clever as it is, it has the fun and the drama and the emotion and zombie flesh-eating to back it all up. My one complaint is that I wish Edgar Wright had given Nick Frost a couple more takes for some of his lines. It's become a classic in the last twenty years and a bit of a predictor for human behavior during certain real-world events. A great comedy, a great zombie flick, just perfectly written and directed. 9/10

146 Threads -- A cheery wee look back at Cold War nuclear armageddon anxiety. I was 10 or 11 when this came out and I remember watching it on BBC2 at the time. What were my parents thinking? Forty years later, give or take, and it's no less harrowing now than it was back then. Growing up in the 80s, we were terrified of nuclear war without really knowing what that meant. This changed that. So often, war is told from the perspective of those fighting or those issuing the orders, but the impact of this comes from telling the stories of everyday people in a 1980s Britain that is very recognizable. Impossible to say that I enjoyed it and if I see it again in another 40 years it'll be too soon, but vital viewing. 8/10

147 Hot Fuzz -- I wish I'd seen this in the cinema, just to feel the frustrating joy of the eighteen false endings with a larger group of people. I wonder if there were riots. I adore this. There's the same Shaun-of-the-Dead-esque meticulous attention to detail and careful arrangement of set-ups, callbacks, and foreshadowing that always make a rewatch a rewarding experience, Frost's acting is better, and the setting of a hard-boiled action movie in a quiet English town, with all the requisite hat-tips, is absolutely perfect. Definitely in my Top 10 favourite movies of all-time. 10/10

148 They Cloned Tyrone -- There's an awful lot in here to unpack, many genres touched upon, some more than others, and maybe overall just a few too many to keep the whole cohesive, but it's a pretty clever, occasionally hilarious, constantly odd wee tale of social satire with gentrification taken to an unexpected level. The three leads, John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris put in barnstorming performances as a drug dealer, a customer, and a prostitute who uncover a government conspiracy in their neighborhood. It's Juel Taylor's directorial debut after writing a Creed sequel and the Space Jam revamp and this is clearly his most impressive and ambitious work. I'd maybe question that it's literally (and maybe figuratively) too dark in places, but the tone from the fonts used and the slightly grainy film stock rather brilliantly evokes a 70s blaxploitation flick and maybe the lighting is part of that. All in all, a bit of a mindfuck that provokes a lot of thought and surprises right to the final word. 7/10

149 The World's End -- I'm not sure what exactly it is that makes this last part of the Cornetto trilogy such a disappointment. Is it Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's role reversal? Is it that it takes 38 minutes for the sci-fi part of the story to begin? On paper, the idea of a group of friends returning to their hometown to do a pub crawl, only to find that the town has been overrun by clones should work, and it's hilarious that Edgar Wright talked the studio into throwing $20m at this idea. The group slowly getting drunker and drunker as the movie progresses is kinda funny and the fight scenes are pretty satisfying, as is the CGI, but it just doesn't connect in the way that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz did with ease. The overall message of the human race being f**k ups and we don't like being told what to do hasn't aged all that well either. 6/10

150 The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster -- It's such a great hook of a title and the basic premise of an urban retelling of Frankenstein doesn't sound too shabby either. Teenage Vicaria's mother and brother are both killed in her neighborhood and she sees death all around her. Deciding that she can cure death, she brings her brother back with predictably unpredictable results. The first half of this or so is really quite fantastic. Laya DeLeon Hayes is superb as the protege scientist and the fact that she's never allowed to veer too far from what the neighborhood deems her to be worth is rather sad. For most of the movie, her glasses are broken. Her teacher at school, rather than supporting her or encouraging her free-thinking, is a racist asshole. The gangs want her to make drugs for them. The social commentary blends in quite neatly with an interesting paradox of bringing someone back from the dead into such bleak surroundings that are dripping with death, and the movie tries to run with this as much as it can. I don't know if it's a lack of budget or script, but it wanders away from tough questions in the second half and becomes a bit of a by-the-numbers slasher instead. 6/10

[Cheese]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

Do the Turtles need another reboot ? Probably not tbh, especially if you're not doing anything wildly different than before. This rifts heavily from Spiderverse in both animation and tone. They've changed April, Bebop and Rocksteady do a face turn and there's no Shredder until the post credits. A bit meh but the wee man enjoyed it more than the live action ones and placed it 2nd in the list of turtle films behind Turtles Forever (2006)