What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[DA Baracus]

Clerks 3. Didn't even know this existed until @BFTD mentioned it.

Enjoyable film.

Great soundtrack.

Ya fucker, wasn't expecting that end! Tears man, tears.

[LoonsYouthTeam]

Clerks 3. Didn't even know this existed until [mention=38705]BFTD[/mention] mentioned it.
Enjoyable film.
Great soundtrack.

Ya fucker, wasn't expecting that end! Tears man, tears.

I enjoyed it, was a bit unsure after being totally underwhelmed by the last Jay and Silent Bob film. Really liked the idea behind it, and some of the call backs were done really well.

Yeah, was such an emotional film throughout, especially the ending. Gutting, but also think it's a perfect end for it

[BFTD]

Haven't seen Clerks 3 yet. Kevin Smith's all over the place these days quality-wise, as I think he's just making stuff that amuses him personally, which is fair enough. Nice that he can still pull out something of quality when it suits - I don't think I've genuinely liked a film he's made since Red State in 2011, but I'm always interested when he's got something new out.

I picked up a copy of Yoga Hosers on Blu-Ray for $5 last time I was in the States; the lassie at the counter asked if I was a Kevin Smith fan and said I wouldn't be once I'd watched it    If I had to use one of my discs as a coaster in an emergency, it'd be the first one I'd reach for.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Knock Knock. 2015. 
Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas in a “horror”/thriller.

I like Keanu Reeves but he’s terrible here.
Ana de Armas on the other hand is captivating and, of course, exquisitely beautiful.

 

It’s pish but I’d definitely rewatch it. Let’s leave it there.
.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Theroadlesstravelled

[KingRocketman II]

13 hours ago, BFTD said:

Haven't seen Clerks 3 yet. Kevin Smith's all over the place these days quality-wise, as I think he's just making stuff that amuses him personally, which is fair enough. Nice that he can still pull out something of quality when it suits - I don't think I've genuinely liked a film he's made since Red State in 2011, but I'm always interested when he's got something new out.

I picked up a copy of Yoga Hosers on Blu-Ray for $5 last time I was in the States; the lassie at the counter asked if I was a Kevin Smith fan and said I wouldn't be once I'd watched it    If I had to use one of my discs as a coaster in an emergency, it'd be the first one I'd reach for.

that emergency being an errant cup/glass placed on a coffee table with all other coasters in use? I'm in a flutter just thinking about how I would react in such a situation....I'd like to think I would be calm, measured and reactive but you just never know till it happens, do you? 

Edited October 30, 2022 by KingRocketman II
spelling

[accies1874]

Gonna need to do a third part for the Halloweens so here's 6, H20 and Resurrection...

193. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)* - Lionsgate+

I’ll be honest, I’m really not putting much thought into these Halloween films and at this stage they’re rolling into one, but, for some reason, my brain switched on with 15/20 minutes to go and I started to wonder what the f**k was going on. That’s partly because nothing makes sense logically or visually; it’s a visual medium but the director had no interest in letting the audience know what was happening. These films also have no idea how to shoot Michael Myers as he simply looks like a stupid Halloween costume at this point. I accept that that might have been the case in the original too, but the all-round cheapness of these later releases really exemplifies it. The stupid sound effects and musical cues they’ve added in this one are ridiculous. 

I was thinking that Donald Pleasance was looking particularly tired here but was still a bit sad to see it end with an “in memory of”.

194. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)* - Netflix

Definitely a big step forward, but I don’t even want to know what a step backwards would’ve looked like.

It’s clear very early on that there’s a bit more grandeur to this instalment and that it’s taken a lot of inspiration from Scream which is apparent throughout. It’s funny that Scream was inspired by Halloween, but then Scream inspires a Halloween sequel, then a Halloween sequel (2018) inspires a Scream sequel (2022). We’re just in one big, vicious cycle.

Anyway, I know my standards are ridiculously low at this stage, but having a Halloween film that at least has the veneer of being cinematic made me happy, and that style did actually make the final act more enjoyable despite being a) completely generic, and b) devoid of any emotion. You can see that despite trying to give off the impression of emotion, the film just isn’t interested and rushes through some parts that should’ve had weight during the climax. That said, props to it for following a similar structure to the original (and Scream) and not giving us any on-screen deaths after the opening until around the 55-minute mark. Despite the film being ruined whenever anyone opened their mouth, I appreciate that they at least tried to build up to something rather than throwing in studio-mandated deaths.

Jamie Lee Curtis’ introduction in this is great too. She hadn’t played the character for 17 years which nowadays would warrant either a sitcom introduction (the new Spider-Man) or a “Chewie, we’re home” introduction, but in H20 she’s introduced by screaming in her sleep. Nothing glamorous about it but reflects the character. Again, this is appreciated due to lowered standards but it’s appreciated nevertheless. On the trauma of her character, I think the constant fake-out jumpscares were used as a means of showing the audience how she lives her life in fear, but I could be giving it too much credit as they probs just realised folk would be bored for 45 minutes and wanted to give them a jolt.

I’ve always found it a bit off-putting how momentous an occasion the events of the original film were in the universe of the franchise. This is common in modern films too – apparently the new Ghostbusters is really bad for it – but they’re more talking about the significance of the film itself rather than the events of it, which can completely miss the mark tonally (not so much here tbf). The reason I bring it up is because it would’ve been interesting, to me, if folk hadn’t heard and/or didn’t care about what happened to Laurie Strode 20 years ago. It was ‘just’ a handful of teenagers getting killed; it’s America, that’ll happen all the time. I think that would’ve added another layer to Laurie’s trauma as she’s had to live with it for 20 years while the world has completely moved on. What I do respect them for is actually trying to acknowledge the absolute nonsense of 4-6, even if it’s disregarded in one line.

The title is awful though. I always thought it was a water-themed Halloween instalment.

195. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)* - Sky Cinema

“Slasher Michael Myers discovers that a web geek is making a Big Brother-style show in his house.” Sky’s synopsis makes this sound like the greatest film of all-time. You’ll be surprised to hear that it’s not. The lead actress was unable to scream so they had to dub them in, and one of the original titles was “Halloween: MichaelMyers.com”. That’s what we’re dealing with.

I don’t really have anything to say about this one – it’s just pish. Belongs in the early 2000s/late 90s and should’ve been eviscerated before release.

[BFTD]

3 hours ago, KingRocketman II said:

that emergency being an errant cup/glass placed on a coffee table with all other coasters in use? I'm in a flutter just thinking about how I would react in such a situation....I'd like to think I would be calm, measured and reactive but you just never know till it happens, do you? 

I couldn't think of a sensible reason for destroying a perfectly good piece of optical media.

Maybe ninjas break in and I need a throwable object to decapitate them with? Aye, that's better.

[Arch Stanton]

The Exorcist was on BBC2 last night and will be available for a while on iplayer.

A pity it wasn't the extended version with the "Spider Walk" but it still creepy AF both with the several single frame shots of the Demon and McCambridge's voice.

[Squalor Vic]

6 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

The Exorcist was on BBC2 last night and will be available for a while on iplayer.

A pity it wasn't the extended version with the "Spider Walk" but it still creepy AF both with the several single frame shots of the Demon and McCambridge's voice.

I didn't appreciate how good it was until I watched it for a second time only recently. Remember watching it when I was 15/16 and thinking it was utter shite. 

Had a similar reappraisal of Texas Chainsaw Massacre after listening to a couple podcasts and revisiting it.

[BFTD]

I preferred the spider walk in the book, which describes Regan's mother standing in the doorway of a room talking to people, when her daughter silently glides up on all fours, bent impossibly backwards, and licks her mother's ankle. I read that at night in bed, and didn't get a lot of sleep.

First time I saw the original Texas Chain Saw, there was a guy in the back row pishing himself laughing all the way through, and I remember similar reports when The Exorcist was finally re-released in the UK after years being unavailable. I think the problem with both films for younger audiences is that they can come across slightly like a toddler having a tantrum and screaming obscenities to be shocking, which was shocking at the time, but we've had fifty years of people pushing that particular envelope even further.

[Stellaboz]

There's a reflex of laughing sometimes at something really seriously wrong or fuxked up.

 

The exorcist wasn't it for me though, I fucking hate that creepy, uneasy shit. I laugh at the slasher films but that fucking freaks me out. 

[deegee]

I watched The Omen last night on BBC Scotland. Much like a couple of comments above, I’ve not rewatched it in years (decades, probably) and whilst the special effects are “ of their time”, the actual story, creepy vibes and tension made it a right scary watch tbh. 
 

[accies1874]

196. Halloween (2018) - Digital Rental

I know folk like this one, and there are good things about it, but it was probably just similar to my reaction to H20 in that folk’s standards were so low that they thought this was good.

The positives. The climax is really good: much more effective at building Laurie’s character than all of the OTT interactions earlier in the film, and I thought the flipping of roles from the 1978 climax was quite clever (think this might’ve been foreshadowed with the Bonnie and Clyde costumes). It’s also quite funny every so often, intentionally so. They try and build out characters before they’re iced which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but it’s a decent idea. I was also never bored which is quite uncommon for these films.

However, the character moments are, pretty much without fail, horrendous. If you found the median of Jamie Lee Curtis’ 100mph overacting and her daughter’s lazy performance, then you’d probably have an alright actor on your hands. They’re both really, really bad and both try to do different things with the difficult hand they were dealt as the dialogue requires every character to say exactly how they’re feeling with very little escalation to the dramatic moments. Jamie Lee Curtis turns up to dinner and immediately tans a glass of wine; the main character’s boyfriend randomly kisses another girl and then chucks his girlfriend’s phone into a dessert for no reason; the dad is just a constant dickhead. It all feels very artificial without being stylish enough to pull it off.

197. Halloween Kills (2021)* - Sky Cinema

Well I got my wish from my review of 4:

On 28/10/2022 at 15:56, accies1874 said:

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)* - Lionsgate+

“A town full of beer bellies running around in the dark with shotguns” is quite funny though. Should’ve just made a film about them.

This is the stupidest film of all time. It definitely has Entertaining Crap qualities but a lot of it is incredibly, incredibly boring and an absolute mess. The links to the original are genuinely hilarious as they seemed to just scramble together a bunch of people who had an encounter with Michael Myers and when they got to three, had to make up new ones in contrived ways. I’m not actually sure if they thought they were profound with their social commentary, but it resulted in the funniest parts of the movie.

Big John and Little John were highlights though.

EVIL DIES TONIGHT!!

198. Halloween (1978) - DVD

Spoiler

Watching this every year for the past five years or so has very much elevated it to becoming one of my all-time favourites. I always appreciated the technical aspects – score, creeping camerawork, lingering editing – but it wasn’t until recently that I really started to love the script as well.

Laurie’s a great character. The first time we see her, Annie and Lynda together, the detail of Annie and Lynda sharing a cigarette and not even offering Laurie a draw is perfect and tells you what you need to know. There’s obviously the whole theme of sex but it’s more about repression manifesting as oppression. I think a lot of the film can be viewed as a realisation of Laurie’s anxieties on the cusp of adulthood, as she still retains a lot of her childishness (she, like the kids, sees Michael Myers stalking her while her friends either never see him or don’t see him until it’s too late) which ultimately allows her to evade this man who sees it as his duty to kill teenagers who are getting it on. The law enforcement is also not only a man but the father of one of the main teenagers, and Laurie’s two friends both appear to (but don’t really) wilt to the pressure of their boyfriends’ sexual desires. Then there’s the classroom scene where FATE is overemphasised to the point where it appeared to me to definitely be a taunt in Laurie’s head where she can’t allow herself to descend into debauchery as Michael Myers is a personification of her FATE: this thing will kill her if she shags someone or even outwardly displays desire. That scene’s followed by a bunch of kids running out into the streets – are they destined for the same fate? In that scene, the older kids tease Tommy about the boogieman, but one of them still shits himself when he bumps into Michael Myers. Annie, however, tries to confront him twice and Lynda laughs him off – they’re both killed with their backs turned to him. Laurie is apprehensive about Annie's hostility to his presence and she fears him much more due to what she believes him to be capable of. She thinks she knows what it takes to survive. 

Her survival is something that I’m a bit less sure about. I initially went with the idea of her only being saved by the film’s vehicle for exposition (i.e., the knowledge saved her), but I was listening to something today that suggested she was only saved by the psychologist who put an end to the nightmare which I think is a neater conclusion and reading of it when you interpret it all as Laurie’s psychological issues around sex coming to the fore on the eve of her homecoming dance. The people who suggested that also put a lot of credence to the fact that she almost didn’t survive; she didn’t do what her friends did yet that still almost didn’t save her, only the psychologist put an end to it. 

When folk in the sequels refer to “the boogieman”, it’s comical because they don’t seem to understand why it’s so effective in this one. It’s said by the kids (and maybe ironically by others) as an immature and unfounded means of scaring someone, so when you’ve got Laurie – 17, smart and trusted to look after children – cowering in tears about the boogieman, that’s effective. Especially when Loomis confirms her fears with the last line of dialogue in the film.

I wondered in my 6 review whether my criticism of how they filmed Michael Myers would turn out to be hypocritical when I watched this but nope, they knew exactly what they’re doing in the original and keep him wide enough that he doesn’t look like a Halloween costume, go right up close (without showing his face) at the right points, and – most importantly – light him so you don’t see too much of the skin around his eyes. It falters a tiny bit in that respect towards the end, but even the look of Michael Myers in daylight is miles and miles better than the sequels as he very much appears to be this ghostly figure taunting Laurie. That breathing too – perfect.

I have always found the deathless 50 minutes the strongest part of the film just due to the atmosphere, character building and stuff, but there’s still no denying that the Michael Myers reveal at the start (surprisingly good, unnerving child acting) and Annie and Bob’s deaths are as surprising as ever. Not to mention the intensity of Laurie in the cupboard.

There's all this and undoubtedly more going on, yet it has spawned some absolutely atrocious sequels which is actually impressive as it clearly works on so many levels. 

201. Halloween Ends (2022)* - Cinema

The first Halloween film I’ve actually seen in a cinema. I wouldn’t have bothered if I wasn’t going through the series, but it does kind of realise one idea I was interested in seeing the franchise try out. I’ll spoiler tag it below*, but I do have a couple of other brief thoughts. There might be more over time but I only finished watching it a couple of hours ago. 

I don’t believe any of the writers have ever actually been privy to any conversation in their lives as the conversations in this trilogy are all over the shop but are, hilariously, actually trying to be serious. It's another mess, although maybe more so tonally and in terms of character this time as opposed to Kills which was a narrative disaster. Like the original, I think the first kill after the opening is around minute 55, but the lacklustre writing means it feels like wasted time other than its shoddy buildup of an idea (in spoilers). 

It’s devoid of any tension other than one scene which has nothing to do with inspiring fear.

Spoiler

^^^ the Laurie Strode suicide fake-out fwiw.

*With Michael Myers as a villain often feeling tired, I wanted to see how they’d approach a copycat killer. I think this was mooted for one of the entries but I can’t remember which one. I appreciated that they tried to do something different with this and tbf I found Corey quite a discomforting presence because they I think they wanted to make a film about the angry, young white male. Sadly, their execution wasn’t good as it appears on first watch to be completely hollow – a common theme for this trilogy – and detached from both the rest of the trilogy and the Halloween name as a whole, although it’s closest to Rob Zombie’s first film than anything else. Everything that has the Corey x Michael Myers relationship seem like a buddy movie is laughable.

[Blootoon87]

Knock Knock. 2015. 
Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas in a “horror”/thriller.
I like Keanu Reeves but he’s terrible here.
Ana de Armas on the other hand is captivating and, of course, exquisitely beautiful.
 
It’s pish but I’d definitely rewatch it. Let’s leave it there.
.

It's the worst acting performance I've seen in a Hollywood film, just appalling. Entertainingly shite film though.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

11 hours ago, Blootoon87 said:

On 30/10/2022 at 00:29, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Knock Knock. 2015. 
Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas in a “horror”/thriller.
I like Keanu Reeves but he’s terrible here.
Ana de Armas on the other hand is captivating and, of course, exquisitely beautiful.
 
It’s pish but I’d definitely rewatch it. Let’s leave it there.
.

It's the worst acting performance I've seen in a Hollywood film, just appalling. Entertainingly shite film though.

IMO it was still better than Eternals.

[Steve_Wilkos]

Terrifier 2 - 7/10

[scottsdad]

Off to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets at the cinema with the kids tonight.

[UpInTheAyr]

Terrifier 2 - 7/10

Love horror and a good slasher film but this was really out there. I mean I liked it its a good film but even I was sitting there thinking Ooft that's a bit much.

[UpInTheAyr]

It's the worst acting performance I've seen in a Hollywood film, just appalling. Entertainingly shite film though.

His performance in the last Bill and Ted movie was worse.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Flesh and Blood. 1985

In the year of our Lord 1501 two guys simp after the same girl resulting all sorts of historical capers.
Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh star and Verhoeven wrote and directed. It's strange to think Verhoeven went from this nonsense straight to RoboCop and Total Recall.

Jennifer Jason Leigh's character made the movie interesting enough that I wanted to see how it ended.
A solid 6/10.

I watched the edited TV version. The uncut wrong'un version has apparently more tits and fanny but also more sexual assault.