What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[accies1874]

37. Cobweb - Cinema

After the shambles of The Blackening, it was nice to be in a screening with just one other person who sat pretty much at the other end of the room, and the sound quality was much better this time around too. 

It seems that Cobweb's distributors have had a couple of f**k-ups. Firstly, it was released in the US alongside Barbie and Oppenheimer so absolutely tanked over there, and now, in Britain, it's released around a month earlier than it should have. Halloween plays a big part in the film: there are more pumpkins than you've ever seen in your entire life, the climax is centred around kids trick-or-treating and it's set in a town called "Holdenfield" ffs. If I watched this around Halloween then I, and I'd imagine others, would've enjoyed it a bit more, but I ended up seeing it on one of the hottest days of the year and it's not even gonna get close to running until Halloween - I'd be shocked if it was still in cinemas in October. I could maybe see it doing OK on digital around that time, but the title and premise doesn't do much to draw you in (kid hears a tapping in his walls which is a result of his parents' dark secret). What did draw me in, for a while anyway, was the aforementioned atmosphere and a sort of artificially stylised story: the characters don't feel real, they don't talk like normal people and they live in a house that can only belong in a horror film. Imo that can work in horror more than perhaps any other genre as the bare minimum requirement is to creep the audience out for an hour and thrill them for the final 30 minutes. This just about managed to do achieve the former, but the final 30 minutes... oh my. 

Like I said, I'm pretty much always happy to overlook issues in a horror if the film works in other ways for me. What I'm not willing to overlook is when I can't see what's fucking going on in a visual medium. Fair enough, you want to make your horror dark and atmospheric, that makes sense, but at least use the tools at your disposal to direct our eyes to what you want us to see rather than just a smear of blueish blacks - that would be atmospheric lightning, not just 'dark.' I literally had to guess what was happening based off of the overt music cues which told you something bad was going down. This could've been an issue with the projection, but I also thought that the editing was too quick to cut when we needed key visual information to understand what the threat was to the protagonist, something I thought was an issue as soon as they introduced the supernatural element. 

It's a shame as I think I would've looked back on it with some fondness if it landed its climax, but it ended up leaving a really bad taste in my mouth. 

[accies1874]

On 10/09/2023 at 00:16, welshbairn said:

So, what's Craig Fowler Fowler like in real life then? A bit shorter than you expected?

Takes too long in a queue imo

[Wee-Bey]

Blade, Blade 2, Blade 3

Watched these again. Can't be arsed writing them up separately, there's little difference between the 3. Some debatable SFX, lots of vampires, blood and martial arts. The opening scene in the club in the 1st is the highlight alongside some 'I forgot he was in this' appearances from various actors. As comic book films go, they're actually alright compared to some recent efforts.

Jurassic Park 

This was on at the cinema, so took the bairns to see it. Spielberg, Dickie Attenborough, Goldblum, the T rex.

They don't make them like this anymore.

 

[DA Baracus]

10 hours ago, Ziggy Sobotka said:

Blade, Blade 2, Blade 3

Watched these again. Can't be arsed writing them up separately, there's little difference between the 3

Hey now, that's incorrect!

Blade is outstanding. Blade 2 is OK. Blade 3 is pish.

[Wee-Bey]

1 hour ago, DA Baracus said:

Hey now, that's incorrect!

Blade is outstanding. Blade 2 is OK. Blade 3 is pish.

Yeah, the 1st one is probably the best. Was disappointed with 2 as del Torro was directing.

[BFTD]

Never seen the Blade films, but I did enjoy the compilation of clips from the third one demonstrating how Wesley Snipes went into a massive huff and put absolutely zero effort into his performance, often refusing to speak.

I've just noticed that he apparently refused to open his eyes during one scene, so they had to CGI eyes onto his eyelids  

[JustOneCornetto]

(67) M3GAN (2022) – Sky Cimema

Enjoyed this, just the right amount of humour and horror, which doesn’t go over the top. Obvious comparison is Child’s Play but while Chucky was inherently evil M3gan uses sarcasm as a weapon and any bad things she does are purely as a way of protecting her host. Visually it looks good and the film never drags so overall a well-deserved 7/10

(68) T.I.M. (2023) - Netflix

Seemed right to watch this after M3gan as it’s all about an advanced robot who starts to have feelings for his host, Abi. Very much like a Black Mirror episode with near future tech stuff including driverless cars and a house with all the latest tech which TIM soon takes full control of and starts to find ways of splitting up Abi and her husband Paul. It all becomes very violent but it’s not a bad watch overall. 6/10

(69) Ex Machina (2014) – Sky Cimema

Since I was on an AI theme thought I’d give this my first rewatch since seeing it on release 9 years ago. A really good film with the 3 characters all doing a great job. Oscar Isaac is very creepy as the billionaire tech entrepreneur who handpicks Domhnall Gleeson to carry out a Turing test on his advanced AI, Ava, played brilliantly by Alicia Vikander. The interactions are fascinating and Gleeson starts to question his role while you’re never sure how much Ava knows and if indeed she is just playing the 2 of them. The way it ended I’d love to see a sequel but in the meantime Ex Machina is an excellent film to watch over and over. 9/10

(70) Fremont (2023) - GFT

This was a real treat, a low budget independent film about an Afghan immigrant, Donya, who lives in Fremont and works in San Francisco making fortune cookies. Anaita Wali Zada is a pure joy as Donya as you find out about her through a series of interactions with the people in her life. She’s very much like a fish out of water, having fled from the Taliban, after working as a translator for the US Army but there’s a lot of dry humour especially with the psychiatrist she is seeing. Nice gentle pace with an interesting twist and an ending that leaves you wanting more. Bonus was the filmed introduction, especially for Glasgow, by the director Babak Jalali. 8/10

[MONKMAN]

Barbie - utter shite.

Coda - simply brilliant. 

[Squalor Vic]

13 hours ago, MONKMAN said:

Barbie - utter shite.

.

Thought this too. Found it practically unwatchable and turned it off.

Was actually disappointed as the reviews and general consensus was that it was pretty much a solid comedy hit and some of the film podcasts I listen too bigged it up, but I just didn't get it. 

Got so bad I watched Plane with Gezza Butler instead, which was far funnier listening to his accent go from Castlemilk to Colorado and never settling anywhere. Him using the words 'Haggis, neeps and tatties' at one point was better than anything in Barbie 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Squalor Vic

[MONKMAN]

4 hours ago, throbber said:

What is your excuse for watching Barbie in the first place?

Because we (wife and myself) thought we’d give it a watch just to see what all the hype was about, after seeing and reading various mixed reviews. It’s shite and I’ll certainly never watch it again. The film did its job though and made a shitload of cash. 

[MONKMAN]

3 minutes ago, throbber said:

It looks genuinely offensive.

It is.

[BFTD]

Barbie's worst crime is that it's really quite boring by the end, and a beginner's guide to lazy screenwriting in the second half. It's the absolute antithesis of "show, don't tell", and becomes as much of a polemic as Fahrenheit 9/11, which is presumably enough for some folk who feel oppressed and just want to righteously agree. 

However, it doesn't strike me that there's much to feel offended about, other than the lack of effort.

[BFTD]

4 minutes ago, throbber said:

Not much to feel offended about? Look at it for goodness sake 

 

Can't remember if you have any daughters, but you're in for a shock when you take them to Toys R Us!

(or whatever has replaced it)

[Zetterlund]

5 minutes ago, BTFD said:

Can't remember if you have any daughters, but you're in for a shock when you take them to Toys R Us!

(or whatever has replaced it)

Toys Were Us, I think.

[Mark Connolly]

19 hours ago, JustOneCornetto said:

(68) T.I.M. (2023) - Netflix

Seemed right to watch this after M3gan as it’s all about an advanced robot who starts to have feelings for his host, Abi. Very much like a Black Mirror episode with near future tech stuff including driverless cars and a house with all the latest tech which TIM soon takes full control of and starts to find ways of splitting up Abi and her husband Paul. It all becomes very violent but it’s not a bad watch overall. 6/10

Reported for trying to get round the word filter, Big Team Found, etc

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Godfather (1972): Looked nice. I was with it up until the last part when Michael came back and the pacing went to hell. 

The Godfather Part II (1974): Boring and completely incomprehensible. De Niro does a decent impression of Marlon Brando. I'd like to think if I was the head of a Family I could find a more attractive and less annoying wife than Diane Keaton.

The Book of Eli (2010): Someone watched The Road, didn't read it, and thought "I'm going to make a film like that only more pretentious." The first half of this is Denzel Washington kicking f**k out of people and I still don't care.

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020): In the words of the director, this fixes the problems with the film. I hadn't seen the Godfathers and, well, I'm not in a rush to see them again. The very last scene of this is different from the original, and since I knew that was coming and felt robbed I went on youtube and watched the original. There was more emotion and sympathy in that than the previous nine hours I'd spent with Pacino and friends. 

The one thing I'm going to take from watching these is that Sofia Coppola is, by some distance, at least as far as I can remember (which isn't far tbf), the worst actor I have ever seen. An absolutely astonishingly out of her depth performance. 

[The Naitch]

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (Disney Plus)

8/10 - very decent way to round off the trilogy, glad I finally got round to watching it.

[MSU]

187 First Blood -- Well, I guess I'm watching Rambo movies this week. Why do I still know the words to the closing theme tune of this? WHY? Our introduction to one John J Rambo is a prime example of a 90-minute 1980s action movie. It's tight, it's thrilling, it's one man against the world, and its score is enough to get you punching the air at appropriate moments. I've always loved this movie and I loved it just as much for the 20th time as the actors have the good grace to follow along to the script that's also stored in my memory for some reason. As I get older, though, the exploding-shoebox-story ending becomes a little less satisfying, although it's still way better than the disregarded alternative I saw on YouTube. Rambo might still be a bit of a killing machine -- although his personal kill count here is (arguably) zero -- but he has corners and edges and layers and is all the better for it, especially as he demonstrates few of those nuances in future installments. Tod Kotcheff would go on to direct Weekend at Bernie's. 8/10

188 Rambo: First Blood Part II -- I remember watching this on video in 1986 with my parents AND a grandparent and we all LOVED it. Watching it now, it lacks the heart and depth of First Blood and with James Cameron's involvement in the script, it feels pretty formulaic as the pace and storyline rise and fall with Swiss-precision toward what is, admittedly, a pretty satisfying conclusion. Rambo kills a bucketload of Johnny Foreigners to make up for the poor bodycount in the previous movie which leaves no time for character development. Still, that 90 minute 1980s action movie thing still rings true and it's a pretty exciting watch if absolutely surface-level jingoism only. 6/10

189 Rambo III -- It says a lot that in a movie where Rambo joins the Mujahadeen -- awks -- that he has the worst haircut of them all. The most meager of set-ups positions Rambo against the pesky Ruskies with the leftover helicopters from Part 2, and has him play Sheepball with the rebels, which is quite fun, before going on to rescue Trautman who was stupid enough to get himself captured by the Soviets in the first place. If nothing else, it serves as a relevant tableau of the transient nature of foreign policy. How different this series could've been had Brian Dennehy just driven Rambo to a Tim Horton's in the first movie. 5/10

190 Rambo -- Starring, written by, and now directed by Mr Stallone. For the unprepared, this fourth installment of the Rambo saga is shockingly brutal and visceral. Living a quiet life in Thailand, Rambo is coaxed by a group of pesky Christian missionaries to take them upriver into Burma. When the do-gooders are captured, Rambo teams up with a group of mercenaries -- including the bloke who played Sally-shagger Chris in Coronation Street in the late 90s -- to rescue them from the horrible Burmese regime. Yet another rescue mission killing a new nationality doesn't, on paper, appear that different from the second and third outings, but the sheer bloodlust of the movie elevates it into uncharted territory and as a result, it's surprisingly enjoyable. Stallone directing does a decent job -- the man knows action movies -- and it's shot pretty well, especially when there aren't limbs and heads flying across the screen. Admittedly, this doesn't apply to a single second of the last 20 minutes where the bodycount seemed to be a target. 7/10

191 Rambo: Last Blood -- Is it fitting that a series that started as First Blood ends with Last Blood? Or is it a bit on the nose? The final installment actually starts off pretty promisingly, stereotypical names notwithstanding. Rambo is finally home, back living on his deceased father's ranch in Arizona where he inexplicably digs tunnels under his house, he's a friend to his father's Mexican housekeeper, Maria, and uncle to her granddaughter, Gabriela. When Gabriela learns of her estranged father's whereabouts in Mexico, she goes off to find him, against Rambo's wishes because of how horrible and dangerous Mexico is, and how it's full of drug cartels and human trafficking and wouldn't you know it, that's what Gabriela finds, leading Rambo to set off on one last rescue mission. The version of John Rambo at the start at least feels more in keeping with the Rambo from the original. He's unspeakably damaged, on meds, has tremors, the whole tunnel thing FFS, but any good work this does is quickly forgotten and I realized about halfway through, how despite all the furious bombastic gore of Rambo 4, it actually tied up the series very well. This undoes all that, and instead rests on a tired view of Mexico that played pretty well to a certain wall-building demographic in 2019. By the end, it doesn't even feel like a Rambo movie, it's kinda boring, and then it chickens out of the only thing that could've given the movie purpose, and the tunnels that 90 minutes earlier had harkened back to tunnels built by the Vietcong, turned into a subterranean gory Home Alone that isn't nearly as much fun as it should be. Rambo slaps cheeks with aftershave. Oh. 3/10

192 Freaky -- Well, I guess I'm a fan of Christopher Landon. Considering how bad this could've been, how mean-spirited it could've been, it's almost worth an extra half-star for how well it turned out. Freaky Friday the 13th manages to do what other Landon movies have done, but amps it up for a more adult audience. We're giving out no prizes for originality here but, as usual, his twist on a well-established trope is executed brilliantly. Full marks to Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton for the duel roles they play, particularly Vaughn who is hilarious as a 17-year-old girl, but both their little micro-expressions are so on point. The downside of most comedy-horror movies is that they aren't as funny as they should be and nor are they as scary as they should be and they struggle to find the right balance, but this came pretty close to the sweet spot for me. 8/10

193 A Haunting in Venice -- I watched this as God intended, on a massive IMAX screen, and I was going to joke that it's probably the movie least suited for such a grand projection, but in actual fact, it really suited it. There were many moments where the sweeping camera made me grab onto the side of my chair, which is nice because nothing much else in the movie came close to making me do so. A Haunting in Venice is very loosely based on Agatha Christie's Halloween Party and veers far more drastically from the source material than Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile did, and to be honest, it suffers a bit from it. There's a reason why people are still making adaptations of Agatha Christie's work: she knew what she was doing. Hercule Poirot is called out of retirement by author Ariadne Oliver, Tina Fey, to debunk Michelle Yeoh's medium, Joyce Reynolds, at a decaying, haunted Venetian mansion where the owner's daughter had recently been driven mad and committed suicide. When Reynolds herself dies in mysterious circumstances and an attempt is made on Poirot's life, he's forced to put his skills of deduction to use again while surrounded by supposed ghosts. Kenneth Branagh is, as usual, rather magnificent as Poirot, but Yeoh is underused and Fey feels miscast and the story rarely broadens in interesting directions. The scenery and surroundings look less CGId than previous movies, but it's edited quite poorly which left the ending underwhelming and the sense that not all the loose ends have been tidied up. 5/10

194 Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates -- I was surprised to see that this movie was from 2016 as it felt more 2006 on this rewatch. I remembered very little from the first viewing, and it's okay, I guess. There are a few decent moments and a couple of chuckles but it's a comedy far too weighed down by its own conceit so that by about halfway, it's as good as done. Anna Kendrick was great in a what-would-happen-if-Pitch-Perfect-smoked-meth type way, and actually the main cast is mostly all better than the movie. The problem lies in a patchy, uneven script by writers who would go on to do slightly better with The House in the following year. 5/10

[accies1874]

Freaky is just tremendous fun. It does pretty much everything right for a film of its ilk. 

I'm not sure if I've liked either of Branagh's Agatha Christie films (I definitely didn't like Death on the Nile, and that was before this week's news!) but I'm gonna keep coming back for them.

[coprolite]

Jurassic World (2015)

CG dinosaurs, improbable action, shit attempts to introduce some emotion. Just enough action to hold attention. 

4/10

Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom (2018)

More CGI dinosaurs. Much better baddies, even more improbable action (lava/physics). The velociraptor being a goodie strangely reminded me of terminator sequels. 

5/10 - insufficient encouragement to fork out for the third one. Will wait for freebie. 

The Killing (1956)

Heist caper. Auteured by Kubric, apparently before he had the budgetary clout to hire decent actors. Also appears to pre-date him finding his style. 

Still enjoyable enough.

A convoluted plan to rob a racetrack by a mismatched crew is told by a series of flashbacks out of sequence.  I wasn't a fan of the voice over but i got properly drawn in.  There were aspects of it that felt very modern, but the music kept reminding me it was from the 50s.

The acting was, apart from the main character and a femme fatale, pretty dire. The plot wasn't quite clever or suspenseful enough for a classic heist movie. 

6/10