What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[scottsdad]

1 hour ago, KnightswoodBear said:

I did a Star Trek one at the about to be demolished ABC in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. 

TMP, WoK, III, IV, V, and VI (I can't remember if Generations was included as well)

I think I had a sleep during V.

[ICTChris]

Saw Alien: Romulus today.  I enjoyed it but it's a flawed film

What I enjoyed about it

Visually, the set design and the look of the film are excellent, really in keeping with the original two classics.  The vibe of 'truckers in space' is very strong, harking back to the first film.  

The special effects were good, significantly less CGI and lots of rubber suited guys in xenomorph costumes and face huggers shaking and shifting.  Very good and far, far better than any rendered look.  Ian Holm returning was a bit creepy and not entirely necessary but hey ho.

There were good performances from Cailee Spaeny as Rain and David Jonsson as Andy.  They gave the movie a heart and stopped it being 'blank spaces being killed by a monster' type movie.  David Jonsson did really well as Andy, he could so easily have got it crushingly wrong but he nailed it.

The scene is set nicely I thought and they don't rush into the action, the tension is built really well.  If there's one thing Alvarez can do it's build tension in a movie - Don't Breathe was a great example of this.  He can also do gore well, as the Evil Dead remake showed and he handles the chest-bursting scenes well.  I like Alvarez' movies and his direction and writing are good, they avoid the pretentiousness of Prometheus and Covenant.

The plot is simple and, while a little bit derivative of Aliens, it works well - race against the clock in a rapidly destructing space ship while being hunted by the Aliens.  Can't beat it.

 

What I didn't like about it

The third act is just silly.  The themes of motherhood are important to the Alien series but it seems that every film now has to have a super exploitative preanancy/death/horror birth aspect.  The 'Offspring' ending is just too much.  In addition, it doesn't work in terms of the plot - the antagonist at the end is only introduced right at the end, there hasn't been any foreshadowing of them and they aren't built up as a threat or an enemy.  You just get to the end and the film goes "here's this weird looking thing that's emerged from the pretty pregnant lassie!".  In the first two films there are similar endings but the antagonist is either the main character (Alien) or clearly introduced and understood (the queen in Aliens). 

The callbacks to the previous films, which accelerate during the ending, are very clunky.  My wife, as big a fan of Aliens as you'll find, rolled her eyes at the "get away from her.... you bitch" scene and the slipping into the spacesuit is also a bit passe.  It's like they didn't really know how to end the film so just reguritated a load of stuff from previous ones and put in some really gross stuff about childbirth.

 

Overall I'd say it's a 7/10.  As noted, it's the best outside the first two.

[BFTD]

As Alien: Romulus has been out for a while now, I'm going to mention a "spoiler".

I'm literally the only one to have pointed out that there's an alien breastfeeding scene in this film. That's a thing that happened. I'm assuming you've all tried to scour that memory from your brains, but I'm here to tell you that you did see that and it wasn't a horrible fever dream. Somebody thought this was a good idea, and was paid money for it.

[scottsdad]

15 hours ago, BFTD said:

As Alien: Romulus has been out for a while now, I'm going to mention a "spoiler".

I'm literally the only one to have pointed out that there's an alien breastfeeding scene in this film. That's a thing that happened. I'm assuming you've all tried to scour that memory from your brains, but I'm here to tell you that you did see that and it wasn't a horrible fever dream. Somebody thought this was a good idea, and was paid money for it.

[MSU]

18 hours ago, BFTD said:

As Alien: Romulus has been out for a while now, I'm going to mention a "spoiler".

I'm literally the only one to have pointed out that there's an alien breastfeeding scene in this film. That's a thing that happened. I'm assuming you've all tried to scour that memory from your brains, but I'm here to tell you that you did see that and it wasn't a horrible fever dream. Somebody thought this was a good idea, and was paid money for it.

[ICTChris]

The guy who plays 'The Offspring' in the movie is this guy, Robert Bobroczkyi, a Romanian basketball player.

 

Don't think I've ever seen a more terrifying human being than that.

[54_and_counting]

Demolition Man

On netflix, stuck something on in the background while working, yup its an oldie but imo it's a classic for just good quality fun

Nope you dont need to focus on the plot, yes there's a lot of "just forget about normal stuff and enjoy this wild nonsense" moments

But its still one of my favourite films, bullock, stallone and snipes all work well together, some of the one liners are just tremendous to the point you can repeat them word for word as they are so memorable, the fight scene between stallone and snipes in the museum is top dollar 

[scottsdad]

1 hour ago, 54_and_counting said:

Demolition Man

On netflix, stuck something on in the background while working, yup its an oldie but imo it's a classic for just good quality fun

Nope you dont need to focus on the plot, yes there's a lot of "just forget about normal stuff and enjoy this wild nonsense" moments

But its still one of my favourite films, bullock, stallone and snipes all work well together, some of the one liners are just tremendous to the point you can repeat them word for word as they are so memorable, the fight scene between stallone and snipes in the museum is top dollar 

How do the stones work as bog roll?

That is my abiding memory.

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, ICTChris said:

The guy who plays 'The Offspring' in the movie is this guy, Robert Bobroczkyi, a Romanian basketball player.

 

Don't think I've ever seen a more terrifying human being than that.

A long career in horror films awaits, much like Doug "The Human Pretzel" Jones.

[54_and_counting]

8 hours ago, scottsdad said:

How do the stones work as bog roll?

That is my abiding memory.

The 3 seashells? f**k knows, was never explained, we just got 30 seconds of stallone swearing to get the fine notices to use as toilet paper

[Swarley]

8 hours ago, scottsdad said:

How do the stones work as bog roll?

That is my abiding memory.

[accies1874]

72. Cuckoo - Cinema

I liked this best in its earlier scenes, particularly while at the hotel which gave off Twin Peaks and The Shining vibes. Twin Peaks due to the strange, illogical goings on involving guests in a old-timey hotel similar to the Great Northern, especially when you can hear the muzak in the background; The Shining due to Gretchen being a character who is haunted by what she's brought into the hotel. The antiquated hotel sets are contrasted with the sterilised bright whites of Gretchen and her family's new home as well as the hospital in which a decent chunk of the film takes place. You get a real sense of all of these locations due to the mega wide frame. The contrast between them almost makes it feel like two different films - and that's kind of my problem. 

From a story perspective, playing the old and the new off of each other makes perfect sense, as Gretchen is struggling to come to terms with her new family dynamic (there's a scene and line of dialogue around midway through that brings this into clear view), unaccepting of her half-sister, haunted by the presence of her dead mother. However, my issue is that I felt there was just too much going on in a film that could've been delightfully simple if it just focused on a teenage girl starting a job in a strange hotel to escape her disrupted family. I don't think that it needed all that fat involving conspiracies and pregnancies, as they showed throughout with the creepy images, glimpses of an unsettling atmosphere and terrific use of sound that all of the film's best parts were in the mood-setting, so I'd have been perfectly OK if they just relied on that.

73. Kneecap - Cinema 

Did I dislike this or did I just dislike the tanked up Irish maws in the screening who treated it like a pantomime? Who's to say. 

Starting on a positive note, the way in which it forces you to consider Irish sectarianism and British oppression by referring to the American Civil Rights movement and Native Americans was interesting to me, as it took an eminent moment in history that's still taught in schools and represented in popular culture and used that to help you understand an issue that doesn't have quite the same binary outlook as the one it references. That does bring me onto a comparatively minor issue, though, and that's that a lot of its central ideas felt like they were just applying an Irish coat of paint to things that I've seen explored in millions of other films.

That wouldn't be quite as much of an issue were it not for the fact that I found it to be a complete mess and kinda insufferable at points, getting bogged down in the kind of patter that could only have been written by a teenager who thinks that they're the dog's bollocks because they *break the law* or a middle-aged man who's spending this morning fretting about Oasis tickets (I quite like Oasis but it's an effectively evocative link to make). On the topic of music, while I'm not a hip-hop fan, I did appreciate how the songs' lyrics developed from boring Going Out and Getting Smashed to become a bit more meaningful - it helped to track the characters' development in a messy, messy script. 

I feel a bit bad about being harsh, as the trailers didn't make a good impression on me and I only saw it out of convenience.

[BFTD]

5 hours ago, Swarley said:

I'd totally forgotten Deuce Bigalow was in that. Now better known as a comedic performance artist, of course.

I've also just discovered he was in an American remake of Men Behaving Badly  

[Starksdynamo]

Finally got round to watching The Iron Claw the other day without knowing anything about the true story it's based on.  f**king hell... not even much of a crier over films but that really got me.

[Mark Connolly]

4 hours ago, Starksdynamo said:

Finally got round to watching The Iron Claw the other day without knowing anything about the true story it's based on.  f**king hell... not even much of a crier over films but that really got me.

The real story is actually even sadder.

It's well worth having a read about the Von Erichs

[welshbairn]

Ferrari. What a pile of shite. The trailer made me think was about a strong woman and a talented engineer putting their heads together to create a world beating car company, instead it was a psychodrama about a psychotic ruthless c**t and his pathetic women, sprinkled with corpses.

[BFTD]

Blink Twice (cinema) - a couple of servers at a high society event are invited to a billionaire's tropical retreat with a group of friends and hangers-on, and find themselves enjoying a fun booze and drug-fuelled holiday. But is all as it seems? (no)

Didn't know much about this going in but quite enjoyed it, despite having an inkling about what was happening fairly early on. It's a massive #metoo allegory and has plenty to say, but it's entertaining and is satisfying when it matters. Also has a few amusing moments and doesn't go for what would be the obvious ending in this genre. Can't say it particularly needs to be seen in the cinema, but the soundtrack was quite effective, and it might be a film that's worth seeing a second time; I can think of one or two moments that will play differently. Zoe Kravitz has done a good job with her first film in the writer/director's chair, and it's an interesting cast (one or two of whom seem born to play their roles TBH).

If you're the type who gets outraged by anything "woke", or regularly thinks abused women deserve what they get, you'll probably want to give this a miss (and see a therapist).

Edit: for anyone else who's seen this - did you find this film hard to follow? I had a couple of total arseholes behind me who talked loudly all the way through, mainly asking each other what was happening and why. They weren't doing the teenager thing of being engrossed in their phones until something exciting happened either; they just seemed really dense  

Edited September 1 by BFTD

[MSU]

On 31/08/2024 at 20:52, BFTD said:

Blink Twice (cinema) 

Edit: for anyone else who's seen this - did you find this film hard to follow? I had a couple of total arseholes behind me who talked loudly all the way through, mainly asking each other what was happening and why. They weren't doing the teenager thing of being engrossed in their phones until something exciting happened either; they just seemed really dense  

Saw it today and there was an old couple in front of me and the guy asked at one point, "What's he doing?" to which his wife hissed back, "She's killing him, dear."

Edited September 2 by MSU

[BFTD]

14 minutes ago, MSU said:

Saw it today and there was an old couple in front of me and the guy asked at one point, "What's he doing?" to which his wife hissed back, "She's killing him, dear."

That was the level of conversation behind me too  

The flashbacks really seemed to throw them for a loop. Pretty standard for a story to be told out of order at this point, surely. One couldn't understand how the protagonist got her scar towards the end when she'd already had it at the beginning of the film  

[MSU]

110 Incoming -- Well, at least this week's Netflix offering isn't about a secret CIA agency or Kayley Cuoco being an assassin. However, it is another attempt at combining the teen-comedy lightning in a bottle of Superbad and Booksmart and generating something much, much worse, even worse than The Package, aka Dude, Where's My Penis. The premise, brimming with originality, ignores the fact that Gen Z is the generation least interested in booze so the movie can happen, and insists on centering on a high school party that descends through a violent, horny, drug-and-alcohol-fueled, scatological spiral of debauchery as 300 people cram into a suburban home. The one positive it has in its favor, in amongst all the vomiting and shitting and humping and people who can't act drunk to save their lives, Bobby Cannavale is kinda amusing for a while as the cool-in-his-head teacher who crashes the party and winds up setting that bitch on fire. Literally. 2/10

111 Slingshot -- Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and Tomer Kapon are the crew of Odyssey 1, on their way to Titan to establish a supply of methane from its oceans that will save mankind. During their journey, they spend three month spells in stasis, being revived for brief spells to check diagnostics. The problem being, the process of hibernation involves copious amounts of drugs that can cause confusion, paranoia, and hallucinations. Sounds like someone should put out a tender for an alternate drug. This affects Casey Affleck who has frequent flashbacks to his time before the mission where he dated a scientist colleague, and strongly affects Tomer Kapon who becomes sure the ship won’t survive the necessary slingshot around Jupiter. The premise is intriguing as it dances around some familiar tropes and it’s benefited from a cracking set of performances, particularly Affleck. It’s shot tightly with an engaging script and the whole thing feels claustrophobic and tight. Given the side effects of the drugs, it’s no surprise when we start questioning the reliability of the story and we expect a twist. I was all for that, enjoyed the ride up to a point but Mikael Håfström‘s direction is too keen to wring every last bit of intrigue and diversion when less being more would correctly suggest a much earlier exit point, where a few t’s were left uncrosses, would’ve been a more satisfying experience. And surely by this point, no one's getting in a spaceship with Laurence Fishburne. 7/10

112 Afraid -- This might be one of the best 4/10 movies I've seen this year. It's M3gan without the doll, basically, and it's a little unsettling that it stars John Cho who I last saw in Searching where he was using technology to track down his daughter, while here, a six year advancement in that technology is determined to destroy his family. I had a bit of fun with it, I suppose. I didn't hate it. But the start and end didn't make a huge amount of sense, and the bits in the middle didn't do an awful lot to get the pulse raised. There's a satisfying revenge porn subplot and the whole thing was quite funny in places, but I wish it had played on the humor a bit more because that seemed like a more sensible path through the nonsense. 4/10

113 Blink Twice -- The more I think about this movie, the more I realize how much I enjoyed it even if it started by seemingly calling back to that slate of movies from 2022 about Rich People Being P***ks in a Place: The Menu, Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness. While there are certainly moments in that general area, thankfully it's about more than that.

Channing Tatum who I simply can't help but enjoy plays a different sort of character than we're used to here and the switch works very well. Here, he's a tech billionaire recovering his profile after "an incident", and after a suitable amount of therapy and self-reflection, he claims to be reformed and often retreats to the solitude of his own private island. Along comes Naomi Ackie as Frida, a cocktail waitress at an event of his. She and her pal manipulate their way into the after-party and find themselves invited to the island with some of his hangers-on for some sun, booze, food, and responsibly-enjoyed drugs. Things, though, quickly go awry.

Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut is very impressive and her co-written script drips with class. Her use of color -- particularly yellows and reds -- is wonderful and there are callbacks aplenty that make sure attention doesn't wander, and there are a few small moments that have brilliantly significant effects. It's like she has the inside track on Things I Love in Movies. And with Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, and Geena Davis's performances, Kravitz ends up with a movie that has a huge amount going for it. The story, I suppose, could be accused of being a bit too straightforward and lacking surprise, and the path to the final moments perhaps holds a little too much back, but all in all, and after sitting on it for an hour or so, I think I'm appreciating a bit of a highlight of 2024. 9/10

Edited September 2 by MSU