What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Mark Connolly]

Elvis

It's Baz Luhrmann, so it looks spectacular, it's Elvis, so the soundtrack is brilliant, and both Austin Butler and Tom Hanks are absolutely superb.

I knew Col Tom Parker was a nasty c**t, but fucking hell.

[accies1874]

113. Pleasure (2022*)* - MUBI

*Pretty sure this was a 2022 release here despite being listed as 2021 elsewhere so I'm counting it. 

While I don’t think there are many porn stars on here, I thought a lot of the ideas were ubiquitous, especially to those who have experience trying to break into a crowded field, with questions about how low you’ll go to get high, how you react when you do get success, and how people in power exploit that desperation. Framing it all in the porn industry enhances the Power v Desperation idea though.

All that stuff got me through the first wee bit as I didn’t find Bella the most interesting character, but as time went on I defos became more and more engaged with her arc which also probably makes the beginning better in hindsight. 

Echo all the above thoughts on the discomfort of some scenes. 

114. Abducted in Plain Sight (2019)* - Netflix

Would’ve been better as a biopic imo. Might’ve lessened the emotional and shock factor, but the latter was lessened anyway by being presented in blandly lit talking head segments with the odd interruption of reconstructions that could’ve almost belonged to a plethora of different stories. It’s an interesting story but not a particularly interesting documentary.

115. Emergency (2022)* - Prime

I saw a trailer for this and was hooked after it revealed its premise: three college students (two of whom are black, one Hispanic) discover a passed out white girl in their living room. It got a tiny cinema run so I had to wait, which was probably a good thing as I remember the trailer showing too much. 

Anyway, starts off with two well-defined main characters who sadly became more and more like caricatures as time went on, then a third is added who is another caricature. This kinda works for two reasons. Firstly, while it’s not the subtlest way of doing so, it does establish the justifications for the moral dilemmas which carry on for throughout the runtime. Also, and I’m not sure if this is deliberate, but it feels very much paralleled with Superbad. There’s a trio of friends (one poindexter, one slacker, and one loser who the slacker doesn’t really like) who must go on an odyssey through suburbia to get to a party and achieve goals along the way. There’s also an underdeveloped z-story about the poindexter not going to the same college as the slacker who doesn’t know but the Poindexter does. The reason I think it might have been deliberate is because it might be working as a commentary on white privilege and how these three non-white students get tangled up in awkward situations similar to the Superbad dudes, but their experiences and paranoias are different due to their race. I could be reading too much into it, but using another very popular and culturally influential film to contrast racial experiences is really clever.

Tbh I’m a sucker for films that mostly take place during one night, particularly when the characters have to navigate the streets, so I was ready to like this anyway, but the encounters are fun/tense/good enough that I think it’s good even beyond my preconceived bias. There are a couple of Get Out-esque awkward moments that worked well.

116. The Virgin Suicides (2000)* - DVD

I was just constantly being reminded of better films (Heathers, Royal Tenenbaums, Carrie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Fruitvale Station) that actually have heft to their emotional beats rather than feel desperately hollow in an attempt to hit all the bullet points presumably from the book. It feels rushed at 90 minutes while still being incredibly boring to me. 

[DA Baracus]

Add me to the list of folk who think Everything Everywhere All At Once is amazing. Fucking love this film. Genuinely one of the best things I've seen in years.

[MSU]

080 -- The Blackcoat's Daughter (#47 in the A24 series) A weird, creepy wee horror story set in a Catholic boarding school over a winter break with three storylines about three women who are drawn to the place. Director Oz Perkins keeps the cards close to the chest so for long periods not an awful lot of it makes sense. I'm sure it would make more sense and all fit into place after another watch, but it's unlikely that I'm going to find the time or the inclination to afford it another chance. 4/10

081 -- Free Fire (#48 in the A24 series) Cillian Murphy, Michael Smiley, Sam Riley, and others are a gang of IRA members in Boston in the 70s to buy a cache of guns from arms dealer Sharlto Copley, and his associates, Babou Ceesay, Jack Reynor, and Noah Taylor, with Brie Larson and Arme Hammer acting as intermediaries/introducers. The deal takes place in a disused factory and is already tense when the guns aren't the right type, but it really goes south when one of the dealer's heavies realizes that the guy he got into a fight with the previous night for assaulting his sister is one of the IRA guys. With all these guns lying around, it quickly escalates into a shoot-out between the two groups, and the rest of the movie, the remaining hour and a quarter or so, is basically watching the shoot-out play out, as everyone sooner or later picks up an injury or two along the way. What I loved about it was the logistic setup of who is where with whom, and the chess game of moving these characters from one bit of cover to another, all the while maintaining a weird hybrid of tension and fun. The sound design is so sharp it had me ducking at the ricochets more than once. Great stuff. 9/10

082 -- The Lovers (#49 in the A24 series) Mary (Debra Winger) and Michael (Tracy Letts) are an older married couple estranged from each other but both involved in affairs that have been going on for some time. Mary has Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Michael has Lucy (Melora Walters). Their lovers have both emphatically demanded they break up the marriage and Mary and Michael have vowed that they will do so after a visit from their son, Joel. But a random morning kiss leads somewhere and all of a sudden, the married pair start to remember what they saw in each other in the first place. It's a brilliantly pitched and observed movie where most of the genius comes from the lines that aren't said. 8/10

083 -- Nope. Horse wranglers OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister, Emerald (Keke Palmer), hear noises from the sky above their Californian desert ranch, experience weird electrical issues, grow convinced about the presence of a UFO and become determined to capture evidence, make their fortune, and live happily ever after. Billed as a horror movie it isn't horrific at all, and it isn't even all that scary. It is, however, a lot of fun, and given the title, it's never not amusing when a character, usually OJ, assesses a potentially dodgy or foolish situation and declares Nope before retreating, something that characters in this type of movie aren't famed for doing. Kaluuya and Palmer have great chemistry as brother and sister, with his quiet stoicism playing off well against her more flamboyant personality, and the extra-terrestrial being is done in such a way that even when it's in plain sight, you can be forgiven for not entirely being sure of what you're looking at. I can't quite put my finger on why the night-time shots look so amazing. As much fun as it was, there were some flourishes from Jordan Peele, typically involving a grumpy chimp, that gave a little bit of concern and reminded me a bit too much of Tarantino in a self-indulgent mood. 8/10

[Shandon Par]

House of Gucci (Amazon Prime)

It’s very long. Lady Gaga is very good. Al Pacino and Jared Leto crash in like a couple of panto dames. It’s like the four main characters were told not to do any research or told what the tone of the film would be so all turned up looking and acting like they are in different films. 
 

6.75/10

[Arch Stanton]

Loads of great performances by David Warner over the years.

For a feel good movie to change the mood after watching the Tories spouting pish, I narrowed it down to two.

However, I watched the splendid Time After Time not so long ago and am now watching the equally splendid Time Bandits.

 

[Fullerene]

14 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Loads of great performances by David Warner over the years.

For a feel good movie to change the mood after watching the Tories spouting pish, I narrowed it down to two.

However, I watched the splendid Time After Time not so long ago and am now watching the equally splendid Time Bandits.

He also starred in Nightwing (1979).  I just watched the entire film on YouTube.  Enjoyable enough 6/10.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Terminator: Dark Fate

I don't post about films because I don't watch many and don't really feel confident writing about them with any authority. This is one of the most aggressively stupid and pointless things I've ever seen. Every aspect of it was terrible. I'm glad it was a box office failure and lost a lot of money.

[coprolite]

Been watching some random cack

Fury 2014

Tank crew in war is hell buddy movie.

This film takes itself very seriously. It shouldn't have. I think they were going for a Saving Private Ryan/ Band of Brothers realism vibe. 

The cinematography is in the realist style and is a real plus point. You can almost smell the corpses at points.  Overused the head explosion effect though. 

Unfortunately the characters and everything that happens are completely dumb. 

4/10

Die Hard 2, Die Harder (1990)

Baddies hijack an airport with John Mcclane in it. Bad move. 

I hated this when i first saw it. Thought it was stupid. It really is about the dumbest film i can think of. 

The whole premise makes no sense. People react in unbelievable ways to events. Technological stuff happens that seems improbable. 

A guy gets squashed to death by a roller on the suitcase conveyer while bigger suitcases go through it. 

Spoiler

The baddies flawless plan ends with them flying out on a jumbo jet WITHOUT ANY HOSTAGES. 

Still. Was good fun. Big explosions. Zingers. Etc

6/10

In the loop (2009)

Thinly veiled reimagining of the events around the Dodgy dossier.

This was better than i remembered. I was in fits of laughter at points. 

Swearing is funny. Best ever excuse for infidelity. 

"don't call me English" 

9/10

 

 

[Arch Stanton]

The Gray Man. Sub MI/Jason Bourne/John Wick pish which Netflix claim cost $200M to make.

Utter tosh from start to finish, I only watched it to pick out the scenes filed in Prague (Vitkov Hill and other parts of Zizkov, the National Museum extension, the shootout outside the Rudolfinum etc).

The tram chase was pretty well done culminating in the partial destruction of buildings on Namesti Republiky  but the movie was pretty poor overall.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Argo 2012
Ben Affleck plays an CIA extractor who gets 6 American out of hiding in Iran by posing as a film producer scouting locations.

It was alright but way over done.
The tension moments at the end were so ridiculous I just wanted the movie to end.

I don't know why it won so many awards. Ben Affleck is emotionless and has like line 10 lines. Alan Arkin just plays the same character in everything.

[Arch Stanton]

Tumbleweed (1953).

Was visiting my Mum this afternoon. 5 Action is often on when I visit as she loves a western. Today's featured Audie Murphy as a steward escorting a wagon train.

When Indians threaten to attack, he rides off to meet the chief to persuade him to call it off (in a backstory Murphy had previously saved the life of the chief's son) but they imprison him and attack anyway and kill everyone bar 2 women.

He escapes and makes it back to town but is now arrested as a deserter. With the help of the chief's son he escapes from jail, is chased by a posse who are then attacked by the Indians.  After a shootout the chief corroborates Murphy's innocence.

80 minutes of highly enjoyable tosh also featuring a young Lee van Cleef.

[Fullerene]

21 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

I don't know why it won so many awards. Ben Affleck is emotionless and has like line 10 lines. Alan Arkin just plays the same character in everything.

Alan Arkin played a number of characters in "Wait Until Dark".

A great film.

[Detournement]

Some Like It Hot (BBC2)

Absolutely brilliant. Billy Wilder was a genuine genius.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Big 1988.

A 13 year old kid gets his wish granted to be big and is turned into a 30 year old man.

A classic movie for the ages and for all ages.

 

I’d be on Elizabeth Perkins every night. 

[accies1874]

117. City of the Dead (1960)* - Arrow

"Turn that shit fog machine off" - LG x

118. Source Code (2011)* - DVD

It’s weird, they had quite a good premise but didn’t rely on that and instead tried to grow arms and legs from that foundation to talk about ideas. Could’ve been a whodunnit, could’ve been about trying to find the bomb, but it was instead more about its characters, talking about the government/military and a fairly contained thriller. Personally, I would’ve preferred the viewer participation of a whodunnit or ‘where’s the bomb’ film, but they were so ahead of the viewer (almost to a fault) that that couldn’t happen. 

Some of the visuals and moment-to-moment editing is quite shit though.

119. Touch of Evil (1958)* - DVD

I found it quite hard to follow, but I’d blame the noise of my PS4 drowning out the audio more than I’d blame Orson Welles.

120. She Will (2022)* - Cinema

This is a tough one to talk about. I definitely thought it was quite unwieldly initially, but I think I had a clicking point maybe halfway through that made the second half more ‘enjoyable’. I felt that the character’s trauma was more observational as a viewer and hidden behind ambiguity rather than me actually going through it with them, but I reckon this would be solved on a rewatch, once I start to actually know what’s going on. In all likelihood, there's a really good film in here. 

There’s some really cool imagery, lighting and editing which, again, for whatever reason, wasn’t gripping me in the same way another film like it would, so I’m not sure if that’s just me or if it was because the characters weren’t engaging me. I liked its depiction of ageing, confronting trauma and abuse, so I don’t want to say that it’s all flashy images and no substance as that isn’t true. I heard Mark Kermode talk about how good the sound is which wasn't the case in the cinema I went to, so maybe that's the problem. 

121. The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)* - Horror

Goes on a wee bit too long imo, but it’s a well-made, tight, enjoyable story. 

[MSU]

084 -- The Exception (#50 in the A24 series) The last Christopher Plummer movie I watched was a couple of months ago in Remember when he played a man tracking down an Auschwitz blockfuhrer. Here, he's playing Kaiser Bill and the whole thing isn't nearly as entertaining. In a somewhat fictionalized account of the start of WW2, Jai Courtney plays a disgraced German captain who is sent to The Netherlands essentially to be a bodyguard for the elderly Kaiser who is no longer a political force but remains a source of inspiration for the German people. Rumor has it that the Kaiser is the target of a British assassination attempt. The Captain moves into the Kaiser's mansion and quickly becomes entangled with a new maid, Lily James, and they start an affair. Historical romance isn't really my bag. The pace is sluggish in places. It's really only Plummer's performance that makes it anything like watchable, but it's a bit of a hard slog when the main thread of the relationship between Captain and maid somehow doesn't really work, and the movie spends an awful lot of time trying to get you to sympathize with the Nazis. 4/10

085 -- Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (#117 in the A24 series) Marcel, his grandmother Connie, and his extended community are a collection of shells that live with a human couple, Mark and Larissa, who are unaware of their existence. But when the couple breaks up and leaves, turning the house into an Air BnB, Mark inadvertently takes the whole community in his sock drawer, abandoning Marcel and an increasingly frail Connie. When film director Dean's marriage breaks up, he ends up at the Air BnB, discovers Marcel and becomes so fascinated with his optimism and whimsy that he makes documentary shorts about him that slowly but surely attract both wanted and unwanted attention. It's cute. The animation looks stop-motion in places but I'm sure is more sophisticated. Marcel's little quips and observations are insightful, life-affirming, and perfectly-timed for the age in which we find ourselves. But for me, it just fell short at every opportunity it had to elevate itself, and the overall story lacked surprise. The dual threads of Marcel finding his family, and Dean dealing with his failed marriage, are never really given the same prominence. The shorts all last 3:21 and that doesn't end up meaning anything. I really wanted to cry, it felt like a movie where I should want to cry, but the tears only threatened to sting my eyes during a sequence I'd seen coming from the opening scenes. Dean Fleischer Camp (in his feature directional debut), and Jenny Slate have created an interesting little character and, like Paddington, the whys of the situation are never asked or answered, and the movie is definitely worth 90 minutes of anyone's time, but there's a ton of potential here that's never fully realized, and an imbalance of style and substance, and that leaves a frustrating taste in the mouth. 7/10

Edited August 11, 2022 by MSU

[coprolite]

Sonic (2020)

As a rule i don't watch movies of computer games because they're faeces. My youngest wanted to see this though. 

Was actually ok on its own terms. Jim Carey's Robotnik steals the show. Not too long, a few laughs. 

6/10

Emoji Movie. (2017)

The opening 10-15 minutes had it set up as a charmless remake of Wreck it Ralph. I don't know how it panned out because i fell asleep. 

Unscored, but -1 for James Corden

Die Hard 4 (2007)

I posted a review of die hard 2 recently, see that but replace "airport" with "internet". 

6/10

I Robot (2004)

Some interesting questions about the nature of free will and the relativistic nature of morality skated over to cram in too much low quality CGI. 

Almost works as a big summer blockbuster. Fails horribly as Sci Fi. 

Will Smith is a decent lead, as usual, but the love interest's acting was woeful to the point of being hard to watch. And if it wasn't annoying enough there's a gratuitously annoying Shia LeBeouf thrown in for no reason. 

The big silly main plot is engaging enough though and there's enough action to keep it ticking along.  

5/10

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Sicario 1 & 2

The first one is the best.

Maybe because he played Thanos but I though Josh Brolin was tall, around 6’4”. It’s weird seeing people look down on him.

[accies1874]

122. National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)* - TCM Movies

I watched Christmas Vacation last year and thought the satire of this rich family was really funny, even if I wasn’t always on board with the film. Tbf, in this one Chevy Chase is still great in the role, and he and Beverly D’Angelo play off each other well. There are still plenty of laughs. The all-American satire is still funny. But my God is this terrible.

The narrative only really forms when we get to Rome (around 30 mins from the end) which has a bit, but not much, to do with what’s come before. You could remove 90% of the scenes with no consequence as they very, very rarely lead into one another; it’s a pretty poor sketch film with some good gags within the context of moments that hardly count as scenes. They don’t tend to have a beginning or end, and don’t even act as a means of getting from one place to another. Characters pop up in places, something funny happens, then they’re suddenly in another location. I can only guess that there was no script, only locations for the actors to do something in.

It got to a point, after the millionth time a character referenced something that hadn’t happened, where I realised that it’s essentially 90 minutes of listening to someone’s holiday stories. They vaguely recall the “interesting” parts but don’t really give any context or structure to them (which is fine when you’re not trying to make a film) and you’re left to haplessly piece together what the holiday might have been like.

123. Hit the Road (2022)* - Cinema

This was a last-minute choice at a loose end to kill some time. Had never heard of it until I bought a ticket. 

Four Iranians and a dog are travelling somewhere in a car – hopefully to L.A. to pick up their well-deserved Oscars as they should be sweeping the acting categories. Even the dog, f**k it. The four (human) characters all take turns at owning the film at certain points as it weaves between each of their perspectives really, really well which is huge props to the actors for all having such a standout effect and also speaks to how well they’re written. I reckon you could show this to a family and they’d each find a different character to latch onto – they’re that well-rounded.

Also on the writing – and acting – it’s the funniest film I’ve seen this year. I’m not even sure if it’s a comedy, but it’s really, really funny in a range of ways. There might be a point where the kid could start to grate on people but I think that makes the early parts of the film more interesting when you start to learn more about what it’s about.

Might as well chuck the cinematography award its way too. It looks incredible with quite a strange colour palette. It’s not necessarily vibrant but still looks magic. Not just the landscapes, too, even the way the scenes in the car are shot look great and sometimes serve to set up and pay off jokes. One slight negative was that the subtitles distracted from some incredible shots which isn’t any fault of the creators.

The tone is quite strange and hard to nail down – comedy, hopelessness, wistfulness, emotional armageddon – but they come together perfectly. It’ll have an effect on almost everyone who sees it, and I’d recommend it to pretty much everyone due to the resonance of the characters, subject matter and themes.