What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[54_and_counting]

On 13/12/2021 at 15:37, 101 said:

 

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

Wait till you see the rest, well tbh you can skip 4 and 5 which are a bit shit, 2 is good, 3 is utterly tremendous

[coprolite]

Failing to grasp why anyone would have any respect or tolerance, never mind love, for Die Hard 2. It does hit the Christmas breif though by being a complete turkey. Ho ho ho. 

[BFTD]

3 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Failing to grasp why anyone would have any respect or tolerance, never mind love, for Die Hard 2. It does hit the Christmas breif though by being a complete turkey. Ho ho ho. 

Glad I'm not the only one, although I did find it passable last time it was on. I think it just came as such a disappointment after the original. To paraphrase Friends, the answer is clearly to watch Die Hard twice, then it's Die Hard 2.

#3 isn't a great film, but it's a lot of fun. It wouldn't be anything like as memorable without Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons' awful German panto villain.

[NotThePars]

The Matrix Reloaded (2003) dir. The Wachowskis

Idk if it's months of near Avatar level revisionism or the onslaught of soulless blockbuster monstrosities in the years since the movie was initially released but this fucking rocks man. I can't believe I was ever part of the "the sequels are bad" stuff. 

The action sometimes feels a bit weightless and nobody ever really feels in any danger but that's sacrificed in favour of making everything and everyone look and sound ultra cool which it succeeds in. The gestures to the world beyond the movie has me wanting to dive right back in to all the extended media. Even the scenes everyone hated, like the rave scene, are class. It's the only time I feel the movies attempt to visually counter Cypher's belief that ignorance is better than taking the red pill.

Knowing it was supposed to be Will Smith makes Keanu Reeves more enjoyable as well. His kinda stilted speaking works throughout especially as everyone else (Lawrence Fishbourne in particular) match it. The only real deviations are the Hugo Weaving who's a scene stealing villain every time he appears again and the Merovingian who sounds like he's having a whale of a time.

Also anyone that hates this movie when the Freeway scene exists deserves a scheme booting. Lawrence Fishbourne has a sword and a gun. 

[UsedToGoToCentralPark]

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.

Went and saw this last night. As I'm a massive fan since PS1 of the games and really like the films finally found a free evening to go and see this. Thoughts are similar to yours. However, the first song being Richard and Linda Thompson was unexpected but fantastic. Obviously playing up for the fanboys. Not sure if there is much rewatch value here though.

[Detournement]

On 13/12/2021 at 15:40, 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.

I don't know about that. With only four channels and 1 telly in most houses you watched what was on and as I remember growing up there was no shortage of old movies on TV during the day. The same way everyone who was a kid in the 90s watched old Columbo, Murder She Wrote, Steptoe and Son and Dad's Army.

The difference now is teenagers have had their own screens for their entire life and algorithms promoting films/shows made specifically for their demographic. 

 

 

 

[scottsdad]

Batman And Robin (1997)

My trek through the 80s/90s Batman movies ended with the worst of the lot. I only ever saw this when it was first released and my memory was that this was bad. Having just been through the previous three movies "bad" is a massive understatement. This series fell off a cliff and thankfully never came back. 

The gravitas and storytelling of the Burton movies was stripped right out. Joel Schumacher might as well have dressed George Clooney in Adam West's 1960s outfit, as that is where he was taking this series (including comedy sound effects). 

It was a very lazy film too. It starts with "Batman, there is a new baddie at the museum. He calls himself Mr Freeze". No back story, no origin, just that.  The dialogue was dreadful as well. In that first fight in the museum, Freeze actually shouts to his goons "Get them! Get the heroes!" The special effects budget must also have been slashed as it looked really cheap and nasty.

I remember at the time a rumour that Patrick Stewart was approached to be Mr Freeze but turned it down. A wise career move if true. Clooney was even worse than Val Kilmer; Kilmer at least had an air of arrogance that made his Bruce Wayne believable. Clooney looked uncomfortable all the way through.

I had forgotten that Alicia Silverstone was in the movie. A pointless character all told. And it was a bit weird seeing her "reveal" as Batgirl being close up shots of her crotch and chest - doubt they'd get away with that today. Uma Thurman hammed it up as well as she could but also, this was just painful to watch.

Thank God I'll never watch this pish again.

[Detournement]

 

Schumacher is possibly the ultimate 90s director. Just knocking out all sorts of films.

[scottsdad]

2 hours ago, Detournement said:

 

Schumacher is possibly the ultimate 90s director. Just knocking out all sorts of films.

I can never get my head around the fact that the guy who did really excellent John Grisham movies is the same guy who produced such a steaming pile of shite.

[Detournement]

27 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

I can never get my head around the fact that the guy who did really excellent John Grisham movies is the same guy who produced such a steaming pile of shite.

I think the quality of the films probably reflects his attitude towards the source material. They are effectively 90s versions of the Adam West show. 

The concept of a brooding, quasi fascist superhero to excite young men on internet forums had not yet come to bloom. 

Anyway I'm going to rewatch 8mm soon off the back of this. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Detournement

[BFTD]

9 hours ago, Detournement said:

I don't know about that. With only four channels and 1 telly in most houses you watched what was on and as I remember growing up there was no shortage of old movies on TV during the day. The same way everyone who was a kid in the 90s watched old Columbo, Murder She Wrote, Steptoe and Son and Dad's Army.

The difference now is teenagers have had their own screens for their entire life and algorithms promoting films/shows made specifically for their demographic. 

I dunno, when I was young everybody switched channels when anything black and white came on. I presume that's why they started fannying around with that colourising shite that made everything look like a pastel painting.

Not sure about when I was a teenager/twentysomething, as obviously I was far too busy studying/working to be lazing about in my pants watching Brief Encounter at 11am on BBC2  

[BFTD]

3 hours ago, Detournement said:

I think the quality of the films probably reflects his attitude towards the source material. They are effectively 90s versions of the Adam West show. 

The concept of a brooding, quasi fascist superhero to excite young men on internet forums had not yet come to bloom. 

Anyway I'm going to rewatch 8mm soon off the back of this. 

Joel Schumacher's CV definitely stands up to scrutiny; he really doesn't deserve the reputation Batman & Robin landed him with. Renny Harlin's another one from the same period who has a terrible reputation, but always produced entertaining films, even if they were objectively shit (see his Exorcist prequel, for example).

I just rewatched 8MM a while back, and it's still utterly mental and completely riveting. I really hated Nicolas Cage back then, although I appreciate him more now, but he was born to be in films like that.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

My wife is getting us to go through all the Harry Potter films (as they are available on SKY right now) - I don't think I watched any of them all the way through the first time round.

I now realise why - they really are fucking tediously boring.

[accies1874]

I want to revisit them one day. I haven't seen any since I was at school and it's always interesting rewatching things you liked as a kid to see how well they're actually made.

[Lofarl]

On 16/12/2021 at 11:45, Detournement said:

 

Schumacher is possibly the ultimate 90s director. Just knocking out all sorts of films.

I made him a few quid back when I worked in Global Video if you are old enough to remember that.  You were meant to play promo dvds of what was out.  In the evening I'd just stick on Phone Booth and watch it.  People got captivated by it and rented it.

[BFTD]

3 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

My wife is getting us to go through all the Harry Potter films (as they are available on SKY right now) - I don't think I watched any of them all the way through the first time round.

I now realise why - they really are fucking tediously boring.

They get better, probably peaking with the one about the Phoenix.

My wife liked the books, so I got dragged along to see them all in the cinema. The first two were absolutely arse-achingly dull, twee, derivative, and entirely made for small children.

[underdogunderdog underdog]

Just watched The Hand of God on Netflix. It was excellent.

[BFTD]

Spider-Man: Home on the Range (cinema) - a young man is bitten by a radioactive spider. No spoilers, but you won't believe what happens next!

Really enjoyed this. Lovely to see some of the returning characters, and they pulled off the overarching premise nicely (albeit with practice from Into the Spider-Verse). There are some genuinely touching moments, some nice closure for prior storylines, and some quality work from the experienced thesps (although Tom Holland and Zendaya are quite charming). It finally feels like the Spidering Dude is part of Marvel's official universe, rather than a nice add-on. For the first time, I'm interested to see where they go with him now.

[accies1874]

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

It's fine. 

Can't say I understand folk losing their minds over a less good yet more calculated Into the Spider-Verse, but it's good fun and there's enough good stuff to balance out the bad.

I was on board after the first 20/25 minutes. The opening sequence was great fun and really well done, and the character moments in that time were decent enough. This was probably more to do with the premise and ideas rather than Ned and Zendaya being good characters, but the film was bookended by nice wee moments that were effectively shunned when all the other stuff was happening in between. I didn't like the way FFH ended as it felt like the trilogy was getting further and further away from what made Homecoming so good, but they actually clawed that back at the start of this and made me want a whole film of chucking celebrity status into Peter Parker's traditional issues. 

NWH's at its best when Spider-Man, Ned and Zendaya are talking or the (too many) villains are interacting and these two things never really feel like they share the same film which left me wondering why we had an identity revelation storyline and the multiverse nonsense in one. Tbh you could've removed the other Spider-Men and improved it. If you're too lazy to come up with new characters/actors then have this Green Goblin be transported into the MCU with NO WAY HOME and he actually does stuff with the identity revelation. Spider-Man could send him back to get iced by Tobey Maguire again but makes the tough choice to redeem him (NO ANTIDOTES). It's the same crux as what we got but removes unnecessary villains retreading stuff from the previous films and gives a clearer choice for Tom Holland to make while also actually staying true to the initial premise. 

I was actually surprised, in a good way, by how small-scale it all was. Spider-Man doesn't work when there are Earth-shattering consequences so just having him finding cures for baddies was more fitting. The villains' set-pieces are all contained enough, and the Spider-Man v Goblin stuff has plenty of weight behind it. The others not so much. I was also pleasantly surprised by how little they played up the nostalgia aspect, despite the grating fan service. The nostalgia all seemed to be in the marketing as opposed to the film itself, although there was too much fan fiction written by Online Teenagers and Losers. 

It'll be interesting to see how this is received once the hype wears off. I get the feeling it'll have a Force Awakens and Endgame (which are also both good fun) kind of reassessment. 

Finally, using spoilers to market your film is actually really clever and allows a load of unpaid people (i.e. the general public and critics) to do their job for them. It's all one big FOMO which is ridiculous considering 99% of people know what the BIG SECRETS are, thanks in part to some probably-deliberate leaks. 

[Meldrew]

On 07/12/2021 at 21:08, sfha said:

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

There was some current day musician who said it was shite and the shark looked fake as f**k, it caused a stink on twitter

Edited December 21, 2021 by Meldrew