What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Hedgecutter]

Halloween Ends

Good old HD pirate copy offshore.  Better than the current IMDB rating of 5.1 imo as I'd go for 6.4, but much of that is because Andi Matichak is pretty cute in it.  Some unexpected good funny moments too.

[JR74]

Smile (2022) - Cinema

Definitely suckered into seeing this by the marketing (which I thought was really effective in fairness). The film itself felt very much like a combination of The Ring and It Follows. For me, it felt like being on the cusp of being a decent horror film, but ultimately a bit frustrating. There was a lot of potential in the backstory, and I think the film's biggest strength was when it explored that (to a fairly limited extent), but it felt like they skirted around it a bit too often in favour of throwing in some cheap scares instead. A decent enough watch in the cinema at this time of year, but not the most memorable.

Elvis (2022) - Prime (rental)

Watched over a weekend due to the runtime but really enjoyed this. Thought Butler was great. Shoutout for Billy from Stranger Things being in it also.

Casino Royale (2006) - Prime

Currently doing a rewatch of the Craig-era Bonds. Lost count of how many times I've seen this one now, but still tremendous viewing. Think I've always liked that this one feels significantly more gritty, and of course there's Mads Mikkelsen as an excellent villain.

Quantum of Solace (2008) - Prime

I really couldn't remember much about this one prior to rewatching and I hoped that wasn't because of the panning which it usually gets (though I did expect that to be the case). I went in with fairly low expectations, but it really is a forgettable watch. On a rewatch, I do wonder if they needlessly rushed production - released only two years after Casino Royale and a runtime which is a full forty-five minutes less than the rest (and an hour less than No Time to Die).

[BFTD]

49 minutes ago, JR74 said:

Quantum of Solace (2008) - Prime

I really couldn't remember much about this one prior to rewatching and I hoped that wasn't because of the panning which it usually gets (though I did expect that to be the case). I went in with fairly low expectations, but it really is a forgettable watch. On a rewatch, I do wonder if they needlessly rushed production - released only two years after Casino Royale and a runtime which is a full forty-five minutes less than the rest (and an hour less than No Time to Die).

IIRC, the problem was that there was a writer's strike when it went into pre-production, and it wasn't finished before filming had to start, so the film was made with an outline and no actual script. I'm sure I remember hearing that Daniel Craig was making up dialogue during scenes that they were fleshing out on the day. Sounded like a total disaster.

Anyway, I watched films this week.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (totally not dodgy file) - a young adopted woman discovers that her mother was part of a small Amish community, and travels to find out more about them.

Think we've arrived at the 'straight to video' era of this series and, TBF, you wouldn't notice much of a difference from the cinema films. This is nothing to do with them, which is probably just as well, as they were very much out of ideas by the release of #4, never mind Ghost DImension. It's not as bad as it could've been, but breaks with convention by imposing sound effects and suchlike that obviously aren't happening in the reality of the film, and doesn't make any attempt to make the constant filming believable. It's not terribly inventive and generally not great, but I suppose it's marginally better than the aforementioned entries. Could easily have never seen it and missed nothing.

The Changeling (completely cromulent mkv) - after his family die in a tragic accident, composer George C. Scott moves to a new job and is offered a large old house to stay in. Spookiness occurs.

I know this is considered a bit of a classic, but I get the feeling I'd have enjoyed this a lot more back in the Eighties, as the central mystery is surprisingly straightforward, and there's no real effort made to conceal that there's actual paranormal activity happening, which feels like a relic of the era. I wouldn't really call it a horror film; it's more of a mystery. Frankly, if it wasn't for George C. Scott, I'd have found it to be a bit mediocre.

Not often I think this, but this is maybe an occasion where a modern remake with a more complex script would actually be worthwhile, although it feels a bit like The Ring already was.

20 hours ago, accies1874 said:

At least TLJ had a script as opposed to the theme park ride of TFA or whatever the f**k TROS was

You know how sometimes people will say things like, "how come you never see people go to the toilet in films?"

The Last Jedi feels like it was made by those people, doing their best to do things in the script that don't happen in dramatic fiction, without any thought for why nobody does them. I half expected it would finish with everyone realising there'd been some kind of misunderstanding between the Rebels and the First Order, and they'd been fighting each other for nothing, before a five minute epilogue where everyone shuffles about staring at their shoes and mumbling "sorry".

Would've been all for that if it had meant that I hadn't been forced to watch Palpatine 2: Palpatine Harder, or whatever that was called.

Edit: The Force Awakens had a script! It had three scripts! Unfortunately, they'd already been made into Star Wars films before.

Edited October 16, 2022 by BFTD

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Last Jedi was alright. I didn't see what all the fuss was about, but then I'm not a Star Wars fan from the internet.

[scottsdad]

4 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

Halloween Ends

Good old HD pirate copy offshore.  Better than the current IMDB rating of 5.1 imo as I'd go for 6.4, but much of that is because Andi Matichak is pretty cute in it.  Some unexpected good funny moments too.

My brother in law works offshore and says you guys all watch bongo movies on the big screen. Is he right, or talking shite? 

[Hedgecutter]

6 hours ago, scottsdad said:

My brother in law works offshore and says you guys all watch bongo movies on the big screen. Is he right, or talking shite? 

Talking shite I think, from my experience anyway.

So far this 'shift' I've watched Belfast (started off promising before the sh*t anticlimax of a second half), Taxi Driver, Free Guy, Ex Machina, The Rescue, and am currently midway through Carry on Cruising...

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Hedgecutter

[BFTD]

1 hour ago, Hedgecutter said:

Talking shite I think, from my experience anyway.

So far this 'shift' I've watched Belfast (started off promising before the sh*t anticlimax of a second half), Taxi Driver, Free Guy, Ex Machina, The Rescue, and am currently midway through Carry on Cruising...

  Hide contents

What's up with the lube dispensers and box of tissues on the chair, then?

Nah, surely nobody's actually choosing to watch stuff like that in public anymore. Or porn, for that matter.

[MSU]

141 Halloween Ends -- David Gordon Green and Danny McBride revamping a classic franchise was, perhaps, a warning in itself. In all honesty, I didn't mind the 2018 Halloween but by agreeing to make a trilogy, they have to spread an already thin story across another three or four hours and there just isn't enough there to do that. Halloween Kills, which picked up when the last one left off, had Laurie in hospital for most of the movie, and while I thought the mob mentality bits were quite interesting, it was ultimately a disappointment. Halloween Ends, which by all standards of storytelling should be a continuation of the same night as the previous films, picks up a year later, and then three years later, so already there's a separation and perhaps admittance that there isn't the material here to do a proper trilogy. Halloween Ends starts brightly and quite bravely by switching away from the showdown between Laurie and Michael we were promised by the trailer, but that optimism doesn't last long, it veers into Natural Born Killers territory, and then winds up a confusing mess. By agreeing to three movies instead of one, the only thing that David Gordon Green succeeds in doing here is confirming the idea of reducing returns since 1978. 4/10

142 Smile -- Writer and director Parker Finn borrows an awful lot from the likes of Ring and It Follows in this concept horror, but he does so incredibly well. Sosie Bacon is Dr Rose Cutter who is an insomniac doctor in an emergency psychiatric hospital. She sees Laura, Caitlin Stasey from Neighbours, who is suffering visions of a smiling entity after she witnessed her college professor bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer. When Laura kills herself in from of Rose, she too begins to see the same visions and struggles to tell if she's asleep or awake as events spiral out of control. I really enjoyed this. There are a couple of decent jump scares but overall there's a real creepy sense to it that genuinely gave me chills. Finn gives away the movie's secrets at just the right time and deals with themes of trauma and history very well. A cracking horror movie in a year that's had its share already. 9/10

Edited October 17, 2022 by MSU

[Detournement]

Going Places (1974)

I came to this through reading Frederic Raphael's Eyes Wide Open which is his a strange book about his dealings with Stanley Kubrick when he was hired to write Eyes Wide Shut. At one point he tells a female TV executive that she needs to watch this as it's the best French film of the 1970s and later he has Kubrick advising him to cast Gerard Depardieu and Miou Miou who are in this together in another film he is writing adapted from Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang. The film is about two petty criminals who begin as rapists but through a series of misadventures learn to become considerate lovers. It's pretty rubbish apart from a 15 minute section where they decide the best way to meet a woman is to hang around outside a women's prison and they pick up Jeanne Moreau who by the end of the night has committed suicide in a very degrading way. 

Bottle Rocket (1996)

Wes Anderon's first film which i've seen people say is his best but they must be either idiots or contrarians. Owen Wilson is decent in it and Luke Wilson is as rubbish as he always unless he's playing Richie Tenenbaum. You can tell they didn't have much money because the only songs in it are Love's Alone Tonight Again and The Proclaimers Over and Done With. James Caan steals the film in the few scenes he's in.

The Marriage Of Maria Braun (1978)

This was brilliant. It's set in post war Germany and follows the title character Maria through the grinding poverty of the end of the war, the occupation, POWs returning from the USSR, then the economic miracle right up to the climax as Germany win the World Cup in '54. It's the first Fassbinder film i've watched and has a very distinctive off kilter vibe to it.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

The Island of Dr. Moreau. 1996.

Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer.
 

A hot mess but still not as bad a movie as Life of Pi though.

[coprolite]

Things to Come (1936)

Ambitious sci fi futurist epic in three acts over a century. 

A massive war and plague destroys much of civilisation and the scientists and engineers survive to create a utopian future. 

It's really weird now seeing a film that's almost completely optimistic about a technological future. Slightly disconcerting that the good guys look a bit nazi ish. 

It's all really well done, looks fantastic and there's great scripts and acting, if a bit stagey as was the fashion. 

The third act (the shiny future) lacked the grit and tension of the first two and i didn't really buy into the reasons for events. 

It's always interesting to see what people thought the future would be like, but this is a really good film on its own merits. 

7/10

[Ludo*1]

Smile 

Lot of promise but a huge overreliance on jump scares. Should have explored the lore more which was the more interesting part for me. Comparisons to It Follows and The Ring are accurate but not as good as either. Hugely impressive marketing campaign and a decent time passer but far from a classic.

5.5/10

Halloween Ends

A fucking terrible film. Honestly couldn't believe what I was watching. Turning Michael Myers into a bitch that gets beat up by a teenager was a bold move. The less said about the ending, the better. I've watched every single film in the franchise and this is on par with the worst such as Rob Zombie's part 2 or the one where the premise was a reality TV show spending the night and a rapper having a kung-fu fight with Michael. Disappointing lack of mentions to Loomis as well.

In fact, this isn't even a Michael Myers film. It's a film about a teenager falling off the rails and choosing a darker path with Myers tacked onto it to try and get people to buy tickets.

0/10.

[BFTD]

6 hours ago, Ludo*1 said:

Smile 

Lot of promise but a huge overreliance on jump scares. Should have explored the lore more which was the more interesting part for me. Comparisons to It Follows and The Ring are accurate but not as good as either. Hugely impressive marketing campaign and a decent time passer but far from a classic.

5.5/10

Can't remember if I mentioned this, but there ought to be some kind of list for trailers not to watch if you're planning on seeing a film anyway.

The one for Smile was as bad as I've seen recently, preparing the audience for just about every creepy scene or jump scare in the film.

[Ludo*1]

13 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Can't remember if I mentioned this, but there ought to be some kind of list for trailers not to watch if you're planning on seeing a film anyway.

The one for Smile was as bad as I've seen recently, preparing the audience for just about every creepy scene or jump scare in the film.

Agree with this. That final scare in the trailer was what convinced me to go and see the film but was probably the most effective jump scare in the film!

[accies1874]

It got a hard "No" from me after seeing the trailer but the buzz on here and elsewhere is a bit tempting.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Scent of a woman. 1992.

Pacino at his best.

9/10

[Arch Stanton]

Mulholland Drive (2001)

I am a bit of a Lynch fanboy and having seen this when it came out in the cinema, I watched it again recently for the first time in 20 years.

Lynch himself says there are to clues in the pre-credits scene..

Spoiler

Naomi Watts character is bathed in light in the way that an awards winner might be portrayed indicating that this is a fantasy and just before the credits we see a POV shot of something (a person) face planting onto a pillow indicating either a dream state of a drug-fuelled hallucination.

It can easily be argued that "it was all a dream" is a lazy trope but it is done really well with an excellent performance by Watts. The lesbo scenes with Harring are a nice bonus (if you like that sort of thing).

[accies1874]

173. The Void (2016)* - Prime

V creepy and manages to do the underground finale thing without properly botching the ending, mostly because it's told in a pretty interesting way with good characters and well-done horror.

174. The Thing (1982) - DVD

I don’t really have anything to say about this that hasn’t already been said a million times, but I did find it interesting that, having watched it a couple of times, I was less interested in the mystery of who’s infected and much more engaged in the paranoid atmosphere as a result of the mystery. That’s a big part of why it has so much rewatchability, as well as the stuff that’s already been said a million times, as you can watch it again and again and still be enveloped in the atmosphere.

175. Jeepers Creepers (2001)* - Horror Channel

I didn’t know anything about this so when it seemed liked the entire film was gonna just be the couple on the run from the monster on the roads, my interest was actually piqued. That didn’t last, though, as it falls into a familiar horror trap and stretches a good opening or ending across 90 minutes to create something unsatisfactory.

176 & 177. Fear Street Part One: 1994* & Fear Street Part Two: 1978* (both 2021) - both Netflix

But not Fear Street Part Three: 1666, which probably tells you what I thought of the first two.

I can sum up my thoughts in one. They clearly had talented technicians involved as they're really glossy with funky editing and camerawork, but it ultimately comes across as an advert as it’s got all that gloss without any purpose, almost like a showreel of talented people trying to prove to employers that they’ve got all of these skills. Some moments also feel like a really long trailer, too, as the editing through a scene often resembled how a trailer would be edited.

 I quite like the idea of the street-level worldbuilding in horror as some of the best have properly distinct suburban areas, however the crux of the worldbuilding - the curse - was far less interesting to me than the atmosphere of the town, how they interact with the other town and how the town responds to the horror. That was all sidelined for exposition – esp in part 2 – which you do not want in your spooky horror movie.

178. Candyman (2021)* - Prime

To me, this felt very closely aligned with 2020’s The Invisible Man, the kind of horror remake that took a known property and tried to make something quite artsy with it as opposed to simply wanting to make a quick buck (although a quick buck would’ve been nice). Despite Candyman probably dealing with grander concepts than TIM, the simplicity of the latter’s premise made it so that you almost always knew what was at stake, how the killer operated and so on. I was left completely confused once Candyman started going down its narrative rabbit hole, despite its attempts at keeping my attention with some flashes of brilliance and occasionally interesting ways to shoot a scene, but it was the detached horror that I found most effective as it was depicted nonchalantly as if you were an irl onlooker and that kind of stuff ended up few and far between.

I found some of the social commentary quite interesting, stuff that I didn’t know about previously, but the ending is way too OTT. Maybe that’s what life’s like, idk, but it was Green Book levels of crudeness.

[BFTD]

23 hours ago, accies1874 said:

175. Jeepers Creepers (2001)* - Horror Channel

I didn’t know anything about this so when it seemed liked the entire film was gonna just be the couple on the run from the monster on the roads, my interest was actually piqued. That didn’t last, though, as it falls into a familiar horror trap and stretches a good opening or ending across 90 minutes to create something unsatisfactory.

Public Information Message: director Victor Salva is a convicted paedophile who filmed himself sexually abusing a 12 year old on the set of one of his first films, and continues to find work in Hollywood to this day. The kid he abused went to the polis during filming, and was (accurately) told he'd never work in Hollywood again by producer Francis Ford Coppola, who would later sue the kid for breach of contract.

Anyway, I ended up seeing Smile again last night. Still entertaining, and obviously it'll get a sequel, so here's hoping they make a good job of it.

[BigDoddyKane]

is Queen and Slim any good?