Jump to content

What Was The Last Movie You Watched?


Rugster

Recommended Posts

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 by MSU
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mission:Impossible - all of them

Film 4 showed one every night last week, so we've watched them all. They are all massively stupid and entertaining. Tom Cruise might be a Scientologist nutcase, but he fucking loves a good stunt. Running round the Burj Khalifa in the 4th one, and the one in Fallout, where he genuinely broke his ankle, but it looked the best so they just used that take, are my favourites.

Also, any film series with Thandie Newton, Michelle Monaghan, and Rebecca Ferguson gets bonus points. The new ones will also have the lovely Hayley Atwell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, accies1874 said:

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.

I think you probably saw a TV edit version of the film with the nudity, sexist and racist bits removed.

Edited by Detournement
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

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.

I just saw the first one recently. Pretty hard-hitting stuff.

I assumed that Sicario 2 would be a straight-to-video piece of crap just made to grind out a bit more cash. Is it actually worth seeing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, BFTD said:

I just saw the first one recently. Pretty hard-hitting stuff.

I assumed that Sicario 2 would be a straight-to-video piece of crap just made to grind out a bit more cash. Is it actually worth seeing?


It’s ok. The story isn’t as good but it looks nice.
A 6/10 compared to 8/10 for the first. 
It’s not Starship Troopers 2 straight to VHS crap. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 27/07/2022 at 21:07, Arch Stanton said:

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.

The wife picked this out. I asked what it was about she got about 6 words into the description when I said Nope.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 01/08/2022 at 15:22, coprolite said:

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. 

 

I generally avoid cartoons. Unless they are pre1960s Tom and Jerry, or Tex Avery

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, pozbaird said:

Just watched ‘Last Night in Soho’. Stylish, great soundtrack, and a more than decent thriller / horror plot. A decent twist and all in all, enjoyed it.

Yeah, it's one of the more interesting films I've seen this year, and I think both the female leads are great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...