What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[killiepiemuncher]

Lone Survivor (2013)
True story about a small group of US special forces that were sent on a mission to take out a Taliban leader in 2005. A mistake is made and the mission is compromised.
The battle scenes in this film were very, very good. Riveting
I quite like these true story/survival films, Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale was decent & the one with Owen Wilson downed in Yugoslavia was ok.
Lone Survivor was probably on par with them. There's a nice montage at the end just before titles kick in.
7.5/10
 

If you like true story war films you’ll like 12 Strong, worth a viewing.

[accies1874]

I watched this a couple of weeks ago at the GFT. One of the most frustrating films I've seen in years. I didn't like it and I didn't dislike it, just really frustrated by it. Elements of it were very good, other parts were just abysmal. I left with a feeling of "what the f**k was that?"
My brother saw it the week before at Eden Court and loved it though.
 

It's truly guff, but I wanted to like it. A good premise without a script to make you invest in its lofty premise.

[ajwffc]

If you like true story war films you’ll like 12 Strong, worth a viewing.

I agreed that 12 Strong is worth a watch if you liked Lone Survivor

 

[Stellaboz]

The Invention of Lying. 7/10,i enjoy Gervais he knows how to do the awkward character.

[sureiknow]

On 12/04/2019 at 09:41, NewBornBairn said:

I'd give it an 8. It doesn't grab you by the throat and take you on a roller coaster of emotions, but it stays in the memory long after the closing credits. Probably my favourite film so far this year - so much so I felt moved to comment here, something I don't normally do. 

Yes it was sad to see them,  and i could see the Actors as Stan and Ollie getting old and at the end of their careers.

I wonder how non fans seen the film though?

[BFTD]

Captain Marvel - figured I'd better drag us all along to this before the new Avengers film. Was expecting a decent, but unadventurous primer for the main event at the end of the month.

Far more enjoyable than I'd thought. Sam Jackson and Brie Larson are great together, and this youthenising technology is fucking impressive these days. Jude Law is well used, and I liked their approach to one of the alien races. Marvel do a great line in light incidental dialogue without overdoing it. Also, flerken.

Likely to be the best film this year in which Sam Jackson loses his shit over a cute cat.

[Ranaldo Bairn]

Lords of Chaos.
Loved it. Being an actual fan of the music from back then and before, the look and feel of the film is absolutely perfect. There's a couple of iffy bits but overall it feels authentic.

[Silverton End]

Halfway House (1944) 

10 people, all with problems are drawn to the Halfway House, an Inn, in the Welsh countryside during WWII in 1943. 

The owner & his daughter all give hints as to why they are there as the guests check in. It's a bit of a morality tale with the supernatural thrown in. 

Gem of an old Ealing Studios movie. Easy viewing

7/10 

 

[Christophe]

(95-99)

Out of Blue 7/10

Interesting little film this one. A re-working of a Martin Amis novel (Night Train) by Carol Morey, starring Patricia Clarkson (who’s a wonderful actor but not at the top of her game here) as a homicide cop who can’t remember her childhood, investigating the apparent murder of a young woman who is a theoretical astrophysicist. On the surface it’s a noir thriller but it goes into issues of particle physics, Schroedinger’s cat, multiple universes, duality in general. Even Eels gets a namecheck, in relation to his dad Hugh Everett III who posited the many worlds theory and asked for his remains to be put out with the rubbish. It’s a tightly told story which brings together multiple strands in a satisfying conclusion and I really did enjoy it quite a lot. I suspect however that it’s not quite as clever as it thinks it is - perhaps a bit like Martin Amis! (cinema)

Dumbo 4/10

Literally, what is point?* It was, like, ok, kinda, I guess, but what.is.point? 

*Point is Burton’s Alice films drew well over a billion dollars. Because people are stupid. 

*Other point is that if Disney don’t use their IP rights then they fall into public domain. (cinema)

The Fugitive 7/10

One of a funpack of six DVDs I got from CEX (others: Fargo, Fish Tank, Eternal Sunshine, Lawrence of Arabia, Inglorious Basterds) for £3 (mostly teaching aids). Always had a bit of a love for this but probably my first watch in 15 years. Mostly it holds up - the pace is constant but never overly quick, there are spots where things breathe, even though in the first half hour Harrison Ford goes from free man to arrested to trial to prison bus to on the lam to diving off a dam - without losing focus on other characters, emotional development, etc. The ending is great too, for the kind of film it is (superior thriller/action) - Ford is absolved, the One-Armed Man is caught and the friend who betrayed him vanquished, but there’s this hollowness, like, great, got to go back to my wifeless freedom. It does feel like a TV movie in parts from the perspective of 2019 bit generally a good template for future endeavours should people consider the need to make films from templates.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 7.5/10

Think it’s still pretty good and clever despite feeling like a lot of sad indie songs of that time. The visual tricks are amazingly well done and am surprised Gondry hasn’t gone on to be one of the main filmmakers of our time. 

McQueen 6/10

Documentary about fashion enfant terrible (bad child) Alexander McQueen, very interesting lad if you like this sort of thing which i do. (Netflix)

 

[Silverton End]

Theeb (2014)

Set in the Jordanian desert during WWI, Theeb is a young Bedouin boy.

One night a British soldier & his Arab guide enters Theeb's home camp, they stay a few days and the boy's brother Hussein is assigned to guide the soldier and Arab safely to a well/meeting point, Theeb sneaks out & follows them.

Trouble breaks out & the film follows Theeb's journey in the Jordan desert lands.

Something a bit different, it was a good movie. Enjoyed it .

7/10

[Trackdaybob]

Currently watching The Shawshank Redemption. Again.

Just simply epic. 

 

[D'Jaffo]

The Witch

A family of English settlers in 1630s New England are tormented by a witch. Sounded like guff when I found it but I really enjoyed it and I’m not a huge fan of supernatural horrors.

8/10

[Christophe]

(100-104)

Death Race 2000 3/10

Trashy carsploitation film about a continental car race where you get points for mowing down innocents. Meant to be a satire of America’s love of gory and violent spectacles like football, nascar, and war, but comes across like a stupid film that is too knowing to be camp. I never got on board with trash cinema as a revivalist thing and genuinely would rather watch a slow film about an old person’s memory fading from the perspective of tin of Woodbine that watch too many of this dreck. Stallone is the best thing in it, David Carradine is the wildly uncompelling star. (YouTube)

The Promise 8/10

Got my box set of the first six films by the Dardenne brothers whose names completely eluded me until a few weeks ago. So here’s the story. Igor is a 15 year old kid whose dad is a slum landlord and puts illegals to work on a building site. A total shite. Igor, when he’s not being an apprentice in a garage or hanging out with his dodgy pals, helps collecting rent, ferrying passports around to enact various dodginess, and settling scores between bickering immigrants. One day the work inspectors come around Igor tells everyone to hide. Amidu, a Burkina Fasoan, falls off the scaffold and dies. In his last breath he makes Igor promise to look after his wife and kid. Igor hides the body and later on he and his shithouse dad bury him in cement. The rest of the film is Igor deciding whether to help Assita or whether to keep on this path. Regardless, they don’t tell her, instead telling her that he’s run off and then faking a telegram from him so they can get rid of her too. I’ll leave the plot there. It’s a really good - not perfect - film that tackles something serious in a serious way. It looks kind of grotty, all slums and dank bits of Liege in winter. Their style would refine between this and Le Fils (this is less minimalist in camerawork, there are lots of cuts) but this is a good first film (they disowned their real first two, to be fair). (DVD)

Shazam 7.5/10

Apparently this comic dates back to 1939 so it’s one of the oldest comic book characters out there - and was even more popular in the 40s than Superman was. Ironically the character was originally called Captain Marvel, but they changed it to Shazam (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury) for reasons I don’t know but not related to the Marvel character of the same name. The thing about this character is that it seems like the most obvious superhero imaginable - what would happen if a teenage boy - the people who are reading the comics - suddenly and for no real reason obtains seemingly infinite superpowers. The idea was central to ‘Chronicle’ which is a found footage film which I really enjoyed, but was very dark and went into how wrong that could go. Think also about ‘Big’ where Tom Hanks wakes up as an adult but is still a kid inside. This was a film which played more with the latter than the former and was much more feel-good than ‘Chronicle’. The hero is an abandoned kid who keeps running away from foster homes and eventually winds up at what is essentially the perfect foster home but can’t bring himself to feel at home. And when he obtains his superpowers he and his somewhat annoying but still likeable foster-brother explore what powers he does or doesn’t have. That’s the best part of the movie but it’s really good all the way through. Zachary Levi (who was Chuck in the eponymous TV show which I really liked) was absolutely great as a grown man who is actually 15 years old and Mark Strong is an excellent villain who is obviously enjoying himself as much as Levi is. It’s remarkable how much more fun this is than the rest of the DCEU, even including Nolan’s Batman films, and after Aquaman, which had significant flaws, it does seem that Warner Brothers have found an equivalent but different feel to Marvel/Disney’s monopoly. It was really good. (cinema)

22 Jump Street 8/10

Rewatched this. What a fucking great comedy. A parody of buddy cop films, and of sequels, and yet a great buddy cop film and sequel in its own right. So many hilarious set-pieces, I absolutely love it. Jonah Hill and especially Channing Tatum are just brilliant. (Amazon Prime)

Rosetta 8/10

Another from the Dardenne boxset. A girl who lives in a trailer with her pisshead mother in a shitty bit of Belgium just wants a job and a normal life. Another very good little tale of a young woman getting pissed on by fate and society, trying to keep it together, but everything is against her. In the final third she seems to break this tight little moral code she has developed by ratting out this one person who loves her and supports her - is she desperate or is she a shithead - it’s left for you to piece together. Reminded me less of Alan Clarke this time and more of the post-war Italian realism, laden with a bit more symbolism, particularly the downbeat ending. Really good. (DVD)

[oldbitterandgrumpy]

On 4/12/2019 at 07:50, NewBornBairn said:

Stan & Ollie

 

Loved it. Coogan gets a lot of plaudits for playing Laurel but John C Reilly is also superb as Hardy. A gentle film looking at the twilight moments of their career, I just found myself enthralled throughout. 

Couldn't agree more.

[YER SISTERS YER MAW]

Patriots Day

Don't know why I've only just got round to watching this. It's a very well made film of the events. I really got into it. 8/10

[Christophe]

(105-106)

Pet Semetary 5.5/10

Mixed feelings about this. Went with Mrs Christophe’s bro who insisted on going to the cinema about 15 miles away as opposed to the one down the road (about 4 miles away). Anyway, this is a pretty pedestrian adaption of a book I’ve not read. Quite slow and relatively sparing with the special effects. Basically, four characters in the whole thing (ignoring a dead dude who keeps popping up and whose purpose is never really explained)...Reminded me of horror from them days (late 1980s)...enjoyed it for that, really...like, that adaption of IT the other year was too in your face whereas this pootles along with a few jump scares to keep you awake. Ultimately quite underwhelming, though. (cinema)

Missing Link 8/10

An absolutely lovely stop-motion plus CG comedy from the makers of ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ and ‘Coraline’. Zak Gali..Galfi..Gafli...the guy with the beard from ‘The Hangover’ plays the last Bigfoot in Washington State, Huge Action plays an English explorer who wants nothing more than to join the explorer’s club in London but every time he finds something remarkable he loses the evidence. Very funny all the way through. (cinema)

[YER SISTERS YER MAW]

Arctic

Good survival movie. Enjoyable! 7/10

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

Bad Times at the El Royale, 9/10

Fucking marvellous.

[D.A.F.C]

Black clansman, not as political and shocking as I thought it would be and a decent watch.  Big fan of denzels son from ballers and thought he was decent.

[rhliston]

Wild Rose 8/10

Story about a Country Singer from Glasgow trying to make it to the Grand Olde Opry in Nashville.