What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[KnightswoodBear]

Dune Part Two.

I thought this was excellent and visually stunning.  If I'm being ever so slightly picky, it's not quite at the level of Part One.  They've made a couple of big changes from the book and left out a really pretty major plot thread that will need to be introduced if Part Three is made.

I felt that it rushed the ending slightly as well.

[MONKMAN]

Poor Things - spent the majority of the film wondering what the f**k I was actually watching.
Visually, it’s superb.  It’s as engrossing as it is messed up, which is a lot. I lost count of the amount of times the wife and myself just looked at each other in agreement thinking “what the f**k is actually going on here”. Utterly bizarre film that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. 
Emma Stone deserved her Oscar though, she was superb. 

[BFTD]

Madame Web (totally legal download) - there's a pregnant spider lady who dies in the Amazon, and the fabled spider-men of the rainforest spirit her baby away, then thirty years later her killer has these fever dreams about teenagers coming to kill him, and the spider-lady's daughter has visions of the bad guy killing them first, so she has to rescue them, and...jeezo.

Just, everything is wrong with this, right from the script stage. Morbius was bad, but this is such a miserable, mediocre mess that it seems like that's what they were aiming for. Barely anybody reacts to anything like a human being, the CG is occasionally hilarious, and the painful attempt to make this the start of a series is delusional. Presumably the idea is that Sony want to humiliate Disney into paying them to stop making these things.

[Bully Wee Villa]

Surely there must be other comic book characters they could buy the rights to rather than keep making films about bit part players to a more famous person who isn't featuring in the film?

Does anyone have the film rights to Desperate Dan, Bananaman or Sid the Sexist?

[velo army]

11 hours ago, KnightswoodBear said:

Dune Part Two.

I thought this was excellent and visually stunning.  If I'm being ever so slightly picky, it's not quite at the level of Part One.  They've made a couple of big changes from the book and left out a really pretty major plot thread that will need to be introduced if Part Three is made.

I felt that it rushed the ending slightly as well.

I loved this. The cinematography is incredible and the soundtrack is perfect. The performances are beyond anything I've ever seen. Everyone is great in it. Lea Seydoux is in it for about 5 minutes and is magnificent. Austin Butler and Javier Bardem could both take the supporting actor gong for this. Butler is a potential all time great. His performance is one of the best I've ever seen.

Chalamet has real presence on screen and I didn't expect that. 

It was long (the lassie I watched it with, of Indian ancestry, said it was longer than a Bollywood movie ) but I'll go and see it again.

[accies1874]

25. Monster - Cinema

Monster is three linking stories that all begin with the same fire and end with the same storm. The first is about a mum who thinks her son is being bullied by a teacher, the second is about the teacher and the third is about the son. Rashomon is an obvious comparison as you see events from different perspectives and peel back what might be a case of unreliable narration, but it becomes more and more like a Kore-eda film as time goes on, culminating in something very touching. 

I think it's hard to talk about a new Hirokazu Kore-eda film without considering his wider filmography as, from the ones I've seen, they're so often moral deconstructions of family. In Monster, this didn't appear to be the case for a fair chunk of it, but you get more of a sense of how this fits in alongside the likes of Shoplifters, I Wish or Broker with every shift in perspective. He's also very good at letting you see the world through the eyes of children with all of their naiveties and delusions which can almost take the form of fairytale-esque moments. Here, that's bright green foliage in the third story to punctuate the greys and beiges that tend to make up the colour palette. 

The fact that so much of the film's heart is found in the final section means that it would be natural to complain about the first two, but they set up a compelling mystery about truths, facades and relationships within the confines of a school (if you've seen The Teachers' Lounge, it'll remind you of that) which also makes it perhaps the most 'entertaining' Kore-eda film I've seen. That mystery has a real purpose too. It poses the question about how much you know about a person from limited interactions, flipping what you see on its head quite a few times, which works perfectly with the story it's telling. You could reverse the order of the three stories and it would become a different film, but its structure conceals information about characters' relationships which makes the emotional beats all the more impactful when you begin to learn what was going on. 

I'm being quite vague as I think you should experience the story playing out naturally. I also had a complaint about it having a few generic things but specific comparisons would probably spoil the mystery, and tbh Monster's structure sets it apart from those other films anyway. 

[BFTD]

6 hours ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

Surely there must be other comic book characters they could buy the rights to rather than keep making films about bit part players to a more famous person who isn't featuring in the film?

Does anyone have the film rights to Desperate Dan, Bananaman or Sid the Sexist?

Not a fan myself, but I'm genuinely a bit surprised that Dan Dare hasn't had a relaunch. I guess maybe there isn't an international fan base.

If you recall, they tried making a Fat Slags film, which was an inexplicable flop. Maybe Roger Mellie would be a better bet?

[19QOS19]

Trying to get through 'the classics'/Best Picture winners. Watched a few already and thought they were worth the hype then there's this:-

 

The Deer Hunter 

Didn't get this. At all. Don't know if it's of its time or it's my lack of interest in the Vietnam war but I struggled to get through this. I know the point was to see how the characters were effected by the war but for me the character development wasn't there for me enough to care. A 3 hour film and they just didn't develop then well enough. About half an hour spent watching a boring fecking wedding yet the Vietnam stuff felt rushed and minimal. 

I'll need to watch the other nominees of that year to see how shite they were for this to win. Though I watched Midnight Express when I was a lot younger and thought it was ok. Certainly better than this. 

Unforgiven up yet. 

[Boo Khaki]

Titane

French thing where a wee lassie gets a steel plate put in her heid after a car accident. She grows up with a sexual attraction to motors, and gets pumped by the spirit/ghost thing of a custom car. She then murders a load of folk for no apparent reason, goes on the run, pretends to be a laddie, hooks up with a load of extremely homoerotic firefighters, and eventually gives birth to some sort of baby/transformer/cyborg thing.

Can't decide if it's a work of genius, insanity, or a bit of both. 

[accies1874]

Definitely both. I still remember the dread I felt in the cinema when things started getting very nasty in the first half, then the admiration when I realised it was veering off in a completely different direction (and why it was doing so). 

[mathematics]

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

[accies1874]

26. The Delinquents - Cinema

My thoughts on this are slightly clouded by the fact that I could feel a cold coming on over its 3+ hour runtime. It's long and it feels long, mostly because the film likes to linger in moments which is especially true in the second half. 

It starts out like some classic crime capers (the score is proof of their influence on this film) with an everyday, boring man, Moran, living his boring white-collar job at the bank, but things take a turn when he steals a load of cash from his work and ropes in his colleague, Roman, to look after the money as Moran hands himself into jail ("three-and-a-half years in prison or 25 years working at the bank" is his reasoning). The rest of part one is what you'd expect - guilt and paranoia as the fallout from the robbery unfolds - but there's an intermission around 85 minutes in, after which the film changes course slightly. 

Roman's guilt and paranoia become too much, so he hides the money in the countryside which is where part one ends and two begins. The whole film's about freedom, demonstrated by the "three-and a half years or 25 years" line, and the second part is mostly about lingering in that freedom. There are interruptions, but they tend to contrast the freedom that Maron and Roman feel in the country away from their white collar jobs in the city, almost like an art house Office Space - a film that was certainly on my mind when watching the bank's politics following the robbery. It also reminded me of a film from a couple of years ago that no one saw called Memoria in which Tilda Swinton absconds to the Colombian countryside, as both that and The Delinquents have a great appreciation for finding purpose in emptiness. I don't think The Delinquents' soundscape was impressive as something like that or Samsara from earlier this year, but the camerawork is really observational.

I wouldn't really recommend it at almost 200 minutes, even if I do love to wallow in existentialism, as I felt that its ideas went round in circles a bit at points which meant that it could be a bit of a drag in that second part, but it's absolutely fine. Also think that this was only the second time after the final Harry Potter film (which I saw in Portugal) that I've had an intermission at the cinema. I could see the benefits of it as a way of letting the audience know that they're moving into something a bit different, and it made the start of part two a bit more impactful for me, but it was still quite a strange experience.

27. Late Night with the Devil - Cinema

Starring That Guy You Recognise From A Bunch of Supporting Roles (But Don't Know His Name)!

In a sense, Late Night with the Devil has clearly been released too early in the year as it would've been a brilliant cinema trip on an October night given the fact it takes place on Halloween, but it actually scratched an itch by being a hella entertaining hour-and-a-half on Good Friday afternoon. That suggests it's fluff, which I don't think it is, but it's undoubtedly entertaining. 

It commits to its premise of being a broadcast of a late night 70s talk show (with occasional black and white sections during 'ad breaks') in pretty much every technical aspect, but also due to the ambiguity that surrounds the 'legitimacy' of the events that are taking place on the show. It's a Halloween-themed talk show desperate for ratings with special guests of a medium, a sceptic, a doctor and a girl who might be possessed. The cynical part of the viewer will usually side with the sceptic, but there'll be another part that wants to believe that there really is some funny shit going down, and that speaks to perhaps the main theme of the film: exploitation.

It's similar to Jordan Peele's Nope in terms of being a comment on what depths people will plumb to succeed, with a specific focus on exploiting others. I also got Scream vibes from the fact that it holds a mirror up to the audience, making us question what we look for from entertainment. The whole premise of it being a 'broadcast' makes us the viewers tuning into this trashy, exploitative talk show. There's also a meta quality from the separation of fiction and reality that I'm kinda struggling to articulate but comes from how audiences get excited by fear and even more so when there's authenticity to the source of fear. YouTube videos of people's traumas have millions of views, including the tapes of Anneliese Michel's exorcisms (something that was at the forefront of my mind while watching this), and it's interesting to consider why that's the case. This film doesn't really delve into that - it instead focuses on David Dastmalchian's character's drive to succeed - but it at the very least got me thinking about it. 

A part of me actually would've been more interested if they did away with the black and white scenes filling in the blanks and just showed the 'broadcast'. I think that would've brought an interesting challenge as to how to weave necessary information into televised interactions, and all of the ambiguity would have been retained. That's somewhat minor though and perhaps me just wanting something completely different. 

The ending also lost me initially, despite it being the kind of ending I tend to like in horror, but it drew me back in with a fun twist that tied it up thematically. Tbh the film just had me hooked and is a lot of fun. Despite some gruesome moments, it's by and large a crowd pleaser. It knows what it's doing tonally, too, as it had me smiling at some of the more horrific things, though I wouldn't necessarily label it a horror-comedy. 

[JustOneCornetto]

On 30/03/2024 at 09:35, mathematics said:

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

The wonderful Caroline Munro who you can see currently on Talking Pictures free streaming service TPTVEncore where she does introductions to a collection of B movies, mostly horror and sci-fi, in the section called The Cellar Club

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Ghostbusters: Frozen Throne.
5/10

Spoiler

If there's something strange. In your neighborhood. Who you gonna call?

A family of 4 middle class Jews.

 

[coprolite]

The Flash (2023)

Fast weird kid has multiverse antics with very (deliberately sometimes) CGI.  Right up there among DC's recent best, which means it's mediocre in the wider world. 

Enjoyably unserious and judicious use of Cameos. Time travel is a shite plot device. 

5/10

[MSU]

061 Road House -- Much like the 1989 version, it's best if you don't take it too seriously, or at all. This one wears its ridiculous heart on its preposterous sleeve a little more obviously and teeters on the brink of outright stupidity quite a bit of the time, but it's a lot of fun. Jake Gyllenhaal is a pleasantly more self-aware version of Patrick Swayze's Dalton and there's a comedic henchman played by Arturo Castro, from The Menu, that I enjoyed an awful lot. Conor McGregor was a peculiar choice but he was sufficiently over the top to just about make up for the fact that he can't act a jot. I don't doubt for a moment that I'll watch it again. 6/10

062 Immaculate -- f**k around with a nun from Michigan and find out, ammarite? I enjoyed this more than I was expecting. As a nunsploitation meets Rosemary's Baby type thing, the first half relies far too much on jump scares to keep us engaged but the craziness of the second half made up for it. Sydney Sweeney is a compelling lead, what it has to say about some body autonomy issues is pretty clear, and the final sequence is absolutely bonkers. I think I'd have preferred it to be a bit scarier, but it more than passed the time and made me feel guilty for munching on my popcorn during some of the more questionable moments. 6/10

063 Imaginary -- Started out a decent Blumhouse PG13 bit of hokum but by around the halfway point, I wanted the bear to kill them all. Especially the neighbor. 3/10

064 Late Night with the Devil -- I'm of an age that not only do I remember BBC's Ghostwatch, I remember watching it live and I remember shitting my pants just a little bit at it. Anyway, Late Night with the Devil is very much from the Ghostwatch school of mockumentary although given we have to go to the cinema to see it, it's far more obvious as it goes about its business. Presented as a 1970s Late Night show hosted by troubled Jack Delroy, it follows the conceit of the late-night genre brilliantly and in a special Halloween episode, Delroy looks to test the boundaries of the supernatural and, of course, it all goes horribly wrong when a possessed little girl is his main guest. The confines of the show and the transitions between on-air and behind the scenes make it feel like a cross between This Time with Alan Partridge and Scanners and there's a lot of fun to be had in the conversations and the conniving that goes on. When the shit hits the fan, the movie delivers with some genuinely creepy moments and then in the close, just when it threatens to veer off the tracks, it brings everything back in a pretty satisfying way. David Dastmalchian is great as Delroy, Rhys Auteri was born to play a talk show sidekick, and Ingrid Torelli as the creepy wee lassie is just perfectly off-kilter all the way through. 1970s production design is spot on and its directed with enthusiasm by Cameron and Colin Cairnes. All in all, between this and Talk to Me, Australian horror is in pretty rude health. 9/10

[The Naitch]

Watched Dune 2 over the weekend - could easily have chopped half an hour off, dragged on for way too long. Good, otherwise.

[54_and_counting]

MI: Dead Reckoning pt1

Usual MI stuff, decent enough storyline given the MI ones are usually this far fetched anyway

Bonus points to it for having Hayley fucking Atwell, man she is fucking glorious 

[Bully Wee Villa]

Barbie - pretty solidly excellent throughout. Ideal fun bank holiday film.

[mathematics]

3 hours ago, The Naitch said:

Watched Dune 2 over the weekend - could easily have chopped half an hour off, dragged on for way too long. Good, otherwise.

I’m of the completely opposite opinion: felt the last 30-60 minutes were far too rushed. I’d even go as far to say that the two films could’ve been three.