What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Comrie]

Revenge of Billy the Kid

 

A more wholesome film than you'd expect about bestiality and the half human spawn going on a rampage but christ those accents grate.

5.5/10

Edited November 10, 2021 by Comrie

[Detournement]

On 09/11/2021 at 08:02, Paul Kersey said:

Risky Business

There was f**k all on TV last night so I blindly reached into my DVD cupboard and pulled out this classic 80s teen comedy.

A fresh faced Tom Cruise plays a high school kid who rattles a gas cooker and then finds himself on a pretty steep learning curve when he falls foul of her psycho pimp.

A very entertaining film. A good blend of humour and drama. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack adds to the atmosphere. Oh, and Rebbeca De Mornay is smoking hot as the escort/love interest.

8/10

 

 

Risky Business is great. 

80s teen movies loved a heavy dollop of class politics. 

 

[NotThePars]

Censor (2021) dir. Prano Bailey-Bond

Niamh Algar plays a woman who works for the censors at the BBFC reviewing all the video nasties that comes through but she also has childhood trauma from her sister going missing without much recollection of why that happened. Obvs she one day comes in to find a video appearing to shed light on what happened.

Every movie has to be about mental illness these days but this is maybe one of the better horror movies that is unsubtly about being no well. The acting is generally good, it portrays with devastating accuracy the misery that comes with living in Britain (and Thatcher's Britain must've been the nadir of this awful country) with the same colour palette that's splashed across Children of Men, and the soundtrack is suitably moody (Blanck Mass feature). It plods along a little bit at points but I thought the ending was pretty good albeit it's much better for being sub-90 minutes. Make more movies finish in under 90, imo.

Anyway, it's alright. Would recommend if you're bored one afternoon.

[accies1874]

I really wanted to see Censor in the cinema but sadly missed the boat. I still check every so often to see if it's got a special screening somewhere.

[Scotty Tunbridge]

King Richard - 8/10. Biopic where Will Smith plays Richard Williams father/coach of the Williams sisters. I really enjoyed this Smith’s performance was excellent and you can see why he’s odds on for the Best actor Oscar at the moment, at the end it shows you some clips of the real life people and similarities are striking. The movie itself only goes as far as Venus playing in her first real tennis tournament rather than going through their full careers but there is  enough story within that. Jon Bernthal is also fantastic when he enters in the films second half.

[Twinkle]

No Time To Die 7/10

 

Didnt have the feel of a Bond film which isnt  a criticism and went on a bit too long as well however i enjoyed it. Not quite sure how they are going to shape this going forward though given the latter stages of the film

[Detournement]

On 11/11/2021 at 10:28, Scotty Tunbridge said:

King Richard - 8/10. Biopic where Will Smith plays Richard Williams father/coach of the Williams sisters. I really enjoyed this Smith’s performance was excellent and you can see why he’s odds on for the Best actor Oscar at the moment, at the end it shows you some clips of the real life people and similarities are striking. The movie itself only goes as far as Venus playing in her first real tennis tournament rather than going through their full careers but there is  enough story within that. Jon Bernthal is also fantastic when he enters in the films second half.

Is he a total weirdo or portrayed sympathetically?

[Paul Kersey]

Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan

Hackneyed Aussie war movie about a bunch of raw conscripts who travel to Vietnam in order to massacre as many of the locals as possible.

Not exactly original, there was no real political message other than to show the bravery of the Aussie troops. The Viet Cong were kinda two dimensional enemies, cannon fodder whose own bravery was glossed over.

Still, it was entertaining enough. 

6/10

 

 

[Detournement]

Shutter Island.

Scorcese made a movie about MK ULTRA. Mind blown.

[Detournement]

Spoiler

So the Eyes Wide Open interpretation of Shutter Island is that Leo's cigarettes are stolen on the boat and Mark Ruffallo begins poisoning him with tapped fags. Ben Kingsley jokingly says what's your poison and the Nazi doctor repeatedly says he has strong defence mechanism. They break his defences using various psychological techniques until he confesses. At the end he has recovered his identity so they send him for a lobotomy.

It's impossible that Di Caprio's character would know about North Korean 'brainwashing' of POWs if he was in hospital from 1952 which means he couldn't have imagined the woman in the cave. Di Caprio's character being named Teddy also seems like a nod to Ted Kennedy who read the details of Frank Olson's due to MK Ultra into the Congressional record. 

My take on Shutter Island

[accies1874]

It's kind of like The Shining for me in that I like reading the different theories but don't really care about what's "true" as the film probably does just enough to lay the foundations of a bunch of different theories.

I really like Shutter Island as it finds a nice blend of taking itself ultra seriously while knowing that it's daft and fun. You can watch it for a kind of goofy throwback or to get dragged into the rabbit hole and there's enjoyment to be found either way.

[Scotty Tunbridge]

On 13/11/2021 at 09:03, Detournement said:

Is he a total weirdo or portrayed sympathetically?

The movie being about him means it does aim to portray him in a good light.

However it still touches on the fact he’s got like 12 other kids that he doesn’t speak to and the way he refuses to let either of them play actual matches is an odd look.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Scotty Tunbridge

[BFTD]

Goldfinger (DVD) - after the disappointment of Live and Let Die, the wean's decided to watch the Bond films in order. I don't have copies of Dr. No or From Russia With Love, so this is where we're starting. Spoilers for a sixty year old film, BTW.

Hadn't seen it since I was wee, and was pleasantly surprised. A very well put together action thriller, and Connery is just mesmerising. It's hard to think of a film star that the camera loved more. Contains a lot of the famous Bond moments, and my son amused himself by doing the Austin Powers "I love goooold!" whenever the titular villain appeared on-screen. He also noticed that the current young Q does seem to have channelled Desmond Llewellyn a fair bit, which is a nice touch.

The barn scene with Pussy Galore is a fun bit of horseplay until Bond forces her to submit to his tadger. Presumably Q gives the 00 agents some kind of mind-control injections to the prostate, considering Bond's success rate in turning female villains with only his willy. Also just realised that the name Pussy Galore is more likely to be a reference to her platoon of hot female pilots, rather than because she has a massive vaj (as I say, haven't seen it since I was wee). Honor Blackman was some piece of kit, though - I remember watching some terrible Eighties ITV sitcom purely for her, and she was about fifty years older then me.

Someone mentioned the fight scene with Oddjob being shite a while ago - I'll give it a pass because Bond's obviously completely outclassed by the big lad, and Oddjob knows it. He also knows they're both about to die in a nuclear explosion (which he's remarkably OK with), so he's just killing time by chucking Bond about for shits 'n' giggles. He's suddenly a terrible aim with his bowler hat, though. It's a nice touch how Bond clearly doesn't know what he's doing with the bomb and doesn't get to save the day at the end; he doesn't actually need to be there at all, considering the soldiers would've just shot Oddjob once they got into the vault.

One other thing that occurred - considering how you tend to think of Bond saving the world, it's surprising how often he's involved in relatively small-potatoes plots. Goldfinger's just trying to destroy America's gold reserves to make his own gold more valuable. It's interesting, but not as high-stakes as you'd imagine. It's like how Lex Luthor is always trying to run scams to increase land value in the Superman films; it does rather seem like something that somebody else could be clearing up while the Man of Steel punches giant space reptiles or whatever.

[Detournement]

7 hours ago, accies1874 said:

It's kind of like The Shining for me in that I like reading the different theories but don't really care about what's "true" as the film probably does just enough to lay the foundations of a bunch of different theories.

I really like Shutter Island as it finds a nice blend of taking itself ultra seriously while knowing that it's daft and fun. You can watch it for a kind of goofy throwback or to get dragged into the rabbit hole and there's enjoyment to be found either way.

I don't think it's a coincidence that he had made a movie about Whitey Bulger who was an MK Ultra subject in a prison experiment during the 50s before he made Shutter Island.

Eyes Wide Shut is the best example of a film where the meaning changes drastically if you are able to decode it. The documentary about The Shining theorists avoided some of most obvious subtext about child abuse which I thought was strange. 

Edited November 14, 2021 by Detournement

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

 

One other thing that occurred - considering how you tend to think of Bond saving the world, it's surprising how often he's involved in relatively small-potatoes plots. Goldfinger's just trying to destroy America's gold reserves to make his own gold more valuable. It's interesting, but not as high-stakes as you'd imagine. 

The capitalist economy in the 60s was designed around the Bretton Woods agreement which meant that the dollar was the reserve currency and countries who built up reserves of dollars could exchange them for gold at the federal reserve. In the 60s the USA ran up huge deficits which they didn't have enough gold to cover which led to the UK and France asking to swap dollars to gold and Nixon eventually ending Bretton Woods. This led to the Petrodollar, the financial boom of the 80s and directly to the current shitshow. 

I don't know how many people in the audience would have got it but the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England would have understood the importance of American gold reserves.

In the Fleming story Pussy Galore was a lesbian who gets straightened out by Bond.

[BFTD]

55 minutes ago, Detournement said:

In the Fleming story Pussy Galore was a lesbian who gets straightened out by Bond.

I must have read that somewhere before, as I was expecting some kind of vague '60s-friendly nod to her liking girls, but there's really nothing. They even kept her interactions with her team of pilots to a bare minimum.

Of course, she didn't immediately want to shag Bond, which makes her positively flaming by the standards of the Bond films.

Edit: if the Shining documentary you mentioned is the one I'm thinking about, they got into some absolutely outrageous clutching-at-straws conspiracy theories by the end  

Edited November 14, 2021 by BFTD

[welshbairn]

16 minutes ago, BFTD said:

I must have read that somewhere before, as I was expecting some kind of vague '60s-friendly nod to her liking girls, but there's really nothing. They even kept her interactions with her team of pilots to a bare minimum.

Of course, she didn't immediately want to shag Bond, which makes her positively flaming by the standards of the Bond films.

Edit: if the Shining documentary you mentioned is the one I'm thinking about, they got into some absolutely outrageous clutching-at-straws conspiracy theories by the end  

I worked with Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) on a show when she was in her late seventies, still wearing leathers and scooting around on a Kawasaki 850. The lesbians in Bond films were always evil old henchwomen and torturers.

Just saw Dune, not bad, quite true to the book but had the feel of a pilot, so I was kind of hoping there would be a TV series to binge on coming up. Turns out there is one in production, a kind of prequel to the film, but won't be ready for ages. Part 2 of the film won't be out till 2023 and there will be a part 3. 

Edited November 14, 2021 by welshbairn

[BFTD]

10 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I worked with Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) on a show when she was in her late seventies, still wearing leathers and scooting around on a Kawasaki 850. The lesbians in Bond films were always evil old henchwomen and torturers.

I seem to remember this coming up before, as I accused you of being Paul McGann  

Aye, Fleming held some very odd views on homosexuals, beyond even the ones standard for the time.

[velo army]

Just watched No Time to Die at the pictures and I have a few opinions on it.

Phoebe Waller Bridge needs to be nowhere near a Bond film. The dialogue in the scenes she wrote (you can tell where the re-shoots and re-writes happened) were characterised by goofy and neurotic "humour" that bordered on shite parody. I genuinely can't stand that type of humour. Awful stuff. The baddie in it is utter rubbish (because he's poorly written, and despite a game turn by Rami Malek) and the pre credits sequence is insipid and largely forgettable. The action scenes are excellent, and the relationship between him and the new 00 has real promise. They actually have good chemistry together and I'd have liked that to have been given greater prominence. Lashana Lynch has a whole lot of charisma and she and Craig spark off of each other well. The Phoebe Waller Bridgeness of some of Lynch's scenes can be quite jarring. There's a scene where Bond gets a 00 code and she asks "00 what?" a couple of times in a meeting that just make her look like an insecure wee lassie. This would be fine for one of those shitey modern comedies like Brooklyn 99 or somesuch, but here it undermines her as a character. 

The script at times is utter dung and the treatment of legacy characters is baffling. Blofeld and Leiter deserve better. Actually, Blofeld deserved better than Spectre too, but that's for another rant.

Ana De Armas was great too. I liked that she was in it for only one mission as that felt quite grounded in reality. The opening scene of hers is clearly PWB's doing as she's goofy and childish, before suddenly reverting to highly capable spy. That felt a little unnatural. But she's tremendous on screen.

Overall it had good emotional punch in places, but I thought that it was all a bit of a mess. There were quite obvious re-shoots after backlash from the fanbase after the last trailer, and the new scenes were spliced in. It left it all feeling a bit disjointed. One of the scenes (an interrogation between Bond and Blofeld) has some of the worst dialogue I've seen in a movie. Shocking. 

 

[mishtergrolsch]

Watched Geostorm last night.

Holy fucking hell is it shite.

Nobody that worked on it knows how weather, space or climate change works. Gérard Butler plays the same character as he does in almost every film he's in. The plot is generic and predictable and the CGI is bordering on rancid in loads of scenes.

The final act is literally the most generic thing I've ever seen.

 

 

9.5/10 would recommend