What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[BFTD]

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (cinema) - reboot of the movie series based on the video games. A quiet company town is on the verge of closure as the corporation closes its facilities, only for a top-secret biological weapon to find its way out of their labs.

Pretty bog standard zombie flick, of the kind you'd expect to see on a streaming service (or straight-to-video back in the day). It's more faithful to the games than the original attempt, working through elements from RE1 & 2, but the original was probably more entertaining. This one's a bit slow, and people who aren't familiar with the "story" (what little there is) and the characters would probably be a bit bored, although genre fans might still find it passable. As a fan of the first three games twenty years ago, I thought it was OK.

Random thoughts: they decided to have the film take place in the late Nineties, and are weirdly keen to remind you that's where it's taking place, with a random assortment of "hey, remember this Nineties classic?" tunes thrown in, and oddities like a character playing Snake on their shitty old Nokia phone. Have we arrived at the point where 1998 is about to experience a retro revival? Also, this is one of those films where you get regular captions to remind you of the time, which doesn't always work out so well. At one point, we cut away from two characters urgently heading off to a nearby room, and cut back to them entering it after half an hour has supposedly passed.

They also used the John Carpenter typeface throughout, which is a cute touch, but also blasphemy.

Edit: forgot a monologue where a character essentially reels off a list of "things to do in 1998", including going to Blockbuster to rent a video. Very odd how keen they were to hammer home the time period considering the film could easily have taken place in present day without changing anything.

Edited December 5, 2021 by BFTD

[yoda]

I watched Drive My Car over the weekend. It's good. Very good. But it stumbles a bit in the third act. An enjoyable way to spend 3 hours of an evening though - I sat back and just lost myself in the film.

Two of the better films I've seen in the cinema over the past few years have been based on Murakami short stories (this and "Burning"). Food for thought, certainly. Or more likely a coincidence.

[Meldrew]

On 08/09/2021 at 08:47, Shandon Par said:

Betty Blue

A nice film about painting and decorating that turns a bit dark when someone pulls their eye out.

10/10

Saw this on Channel 4 probably sometime in the early to mid 90's

On 10/09/2021 at 09:31, well fan for life said:

Nobody - 8/10

Like John Wick but with a bit more nonsense. Very entertaining. 

Saw this at the weekend, agree it was pretty entertaining, the fact that the main guy was like ''yer da'' and didn't rip his top off to reveal 22 inch arms made it all the more enjoyable and less cliched 

[Hard Graft]

Just Mercy - watched this on a plane the other night and it was gripping. What a way to treat human beings.

[sfha]

On 27/11/2021 at 22:02, jagfox OG said:

Jaws - brilliant 9.5/10

That's  too low a rating, my friend. Nothing less than 10/10 for this film. A classic in every sense.

[scottsdad]

Batman Forever

My trip through the 80s/90s Batman films with the kids continues. Having enjoyed Batman Returns more than I remembered, I was a touch hopeful about this one. I remembered it as being a bit naff but maybe, 25 years on, it wasn't so bad?

My thoughts:

• Vil Kilmer, very badly miscast. That said he wasn't as dreadful as I remember. 
• The genuinely awful acting came from Tommy Lee Jones - who just cackled all the time - and Nicole Kidman. I normally like Kidman but William Shatner would have given a more convincing performance as Dr Chase Meridian, the love interest. 
• I can see what Joel Schumacher was trying to do. Taking the very dark Burton series and adding in some slapstick comedy. It just didn't work. The storyline was just dreadful and Jim Carrey was just goofing around playing himself. 
• The best parts of the movie concerned Robin. When he came into it the film calmed down a lot and became much more enjoyable. The first 30 minutes were utterly atrocious.
• You can see that the peak had passed and we were now well on the downhill slope of this series. Just 1 more to go...Batman & Robin
• I had completely forgotten that Drew Barrymore was in this film.

Spoiler

 

[Raidernation]

Risky Business is great. 
80s teen movies loved a heavy dollop of class politics. 
 

And cleavage!

[101]

Die Hard, 9/10.

Watched this for the first time last night, brilliant film.

Alan Rickman is absolutely brilliant as per but Sgt. Powell might be one of the best characters I've seen in a long while. Outstanding. 

[sfha]

4 hours ago, 101 said:

Die Hard, 9/10.

Watched this for the first time last night

 

[killiepiemuncher]

 

He must be a young pup.

[101]

24 minutes ago, sfha said:

 

 

6 minutes ago, killiepiemuncher said:

He must be a young pup.

It did come out nearly a decade before I was born but yes I probably should have seen it before now.

[BFTD]

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

Edited December 13, 2021 by BFTD

[101]

4 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

[BFTD]

9 minutes ago, 101 said:

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

Looks like you can rent it on Amazon Prime or YouTube.

Damn sight cheaper just to nip down to your nearest charity shop and see if they've got a copy. It's a pretty common DVD to find. Grab Gremlins 2 if you see it too - very different film, it's like a satire of the first one, but it's still a very entertaining watch.

[Mark Connolly]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

f**k that, watch Die Hard 2 and Die Hard with a Vengeance.

A shame they only made 3 films in the series though...

[Paul Kersey]

Circle of Iron

Martial arts fantasy starring David Carradine. A young adventurer goes on a quest for enlightenment, and skelps a few coupons along the way.

This is corny in every way. The acting and dialogue is pretty poor and the fight scenes aren't too great. Still, I enjoyed it though. 

Garbage, but entertaining garbage.

7/10

[Arch Stanton]

Chinatown (1974)

Just one of many of Nicholson's outstanding performances in the 70s, ably abetted by Faye Dunaway and John Huston, this is a tremendous depiction of corruption in 1930s LA.

At that time LA was little more than a strip between the desert and the ocean and the wealthy who own the water supply also control which land which can become valuable.

As it's directed by Roman Polanski (who also has a really memorable cameo), it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea given his alleged sex crime but it is brilliantly directed and has a haunting Miles Davis-like trumpet permeating the score.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Arch Stanton

[Arch Stanton]

Five Easy Pieces  (1970)

Another 70s tour de force by Nicholson.

The movie starts with him as a blue collar guy working in an oil field. He goes ten pin bowling with one of his colleagues and the girlfriends. He's a total dick, treating his GF like shit by verbally abusing her and then  cheating on her.

However, about 15 minutes in he's in a traffic jam with his work buddy. They're bored, blasting their horn but JN spots a flat bed truck with a piano, jumps on and, surprisingly, plays Chopin.

When his sister contacts him to say their Dad is dying, there is a mini-road trip (including the famous "you want me to hold the chicken", "I want you to hold it between your knees" scene) and it turns out he is a classically trained concert pianist from a wealthy family.

It's a life he doesn't want, never more demonstrated when he's playing the piano at his parents and the camera does a 360 round the room and also the final scene where he just looks at himself in the mirror for about 30 seconds but it seems like 10 times longer.

[Bully Wee Villa]

8 hours ago, 101 said:

Any idea what platform it's on? Or will I have to get the DVD?

It's on Sky, but with it being vaguely Christmassy, it's bound to be on one of the terrestrial channels before the end of the month, I'd have thought. I think it is every year now. It's brilliant, BTW.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Small Bovine Maisonette

[Arch Stanton]

9 hours ago, BFTD said:

Aye, for anyone old enough to have watched Die Hard when it first came out, youngsters watching it now would be like us watching something like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon back in 1988. Nobody under 30 was doing that except genuine cinephiles and hipsters ("films were so much better in black and white; you wouldn't understand").

Edit: @101 - watch Gremlins next.

The John Huston version of The Maltese Falcon is a masterpiece in direction and acting.

I went to see it at the GFT about 5 years ago as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. It was on a Thursday morning and I was lucky I got there early...the queue behind was around the block and not everyone got in.

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by Arch Stanton