Last Movie You Watched (2017)

Av Demeisen said:
I wasn't able to finish the last couple of movies I watched (Logan, T2 Trainspotting). Movies have been kind of dead for me for years now. I am more interested in quality tv shows (no, not GOT). Perhaps we could start a similar thread for television watching?

Anyway, David Lynch is back in a big way with the brilliant Twin Peaks: The Return, showing us why he is the greatest living filmmaker.
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Did this actually, finally, happen? Wait'll I tell my wife! It will make her day.
After Inland Empire, I watch films in a different manner.
DL is my fave filmmaker for those 'magic moments', but I prefer PTA overall.
As for quality TV...yeah, well...:)
 
The Unforgiven, with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn says "ain't" three times. (She plays a Kiowa woman raised by an Anglo family on the plains after their own child dies...unfortunately an enemy of the family stirs up a mob and the Kiowas against the family.)
 
Watched Ex Machina a few nights ago. Highly recommended, creepy and consistently surprising. Better than most of the big budget SF movies I've seen over the past 3 or 4 years.
 
Ropie said:
Watched Ex Machina a few nights ago. Highly recommended, creepy and consistently surprising. Better than most of the big budget SF movies I've seen over the past 3 or 4 years.
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Totally agree. A great film. BUT...

is it three minutes too long?

My daughter and I had great fun debating the merits of the ending/s.
 
JunkMonkey said:
is it three minutes too long?
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To be honest I just accepted the ending for what it is, although I was wondering
what would happen to her when someone finds out she is an android (as is bound to happen).
Caleb was a bit of a pathetic character - although initially he seemed intellectually rigorous during his 'discussions' with Ava, he quickly fell for her rather obvious fugazi charms. To me the movie is not really about him at all. Which side did you come down on?
 
Structurally the film was about him, to start with -
but it became Ava's story. When I first saw it I felt the last few minutes were unnecessary. I felt that the 'story' ended with him trapped and Ava walking away. (I'm a sucker for ambiguous / downbeat / unresolved endings. Far too many films these days spend far too long on the denouement wrapping everything up and putting it back where the filmmakers found it so the audience doesn't feel uncomfortable having to carry anything out of the cinema with them.) But on reflection I realised that, yes, the creators' stories might have ended but 'hers' was only just beginning and we needed to see the start of it. If we hadn't seen her out in the larger world our focus would have still been on Caleb's situation. He had become irrelevant; to Ava and the story, and, by extension, so had the whole human race.

I had no problem with Caleb falling for Ava so quickly. It was a forgiveable narrative necessity. To (almost certainly) misquote Hitchcock: "We wouldn't have had a movie otherwise".
 
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JunkMonkey said:
I had no problem with Caleb falling for Ava so quickly.
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No, me neither. It showed how easily influenced he was - although the odds were purposefully stacked against him, I'll give him that.
 
Saw Wonder Woman tonight. Really liked it, very well done. The final battle & climax -- essentially the last 10% of the movie -- was the only part that was a bit off, but overall, very solid effort. I still prefer the ones with humor (WW does have a little, which is well done, but humor isn't an integral part of it like say Iron Man), but this was right up there otherwise.
 
This evening I watched a very low-key SF film called Chronological Order. I'd have to describe it as 'slacker SF' because the main character really does almost nothing during the film except lazily chase himself through time thanks to a special door he finds washed up on the beach. In fact, I'd also have to say I didn't think too much of it. If it had just been a simple film, in the French style, of a man wandering about a town with a small mission or purpose to his movements I would have enjoyed it more. There were a few vaguely amusing scenes and I liked his put-upon friend, a lawyer, who he lets in on the secret. The time travel aspect was little more than a distraction though. It reminded me of that other low budget time travel ideas-movie, Primer, which I also really wanted to like but just couldn't.
 
Another I watched this so you don't have to warning.

The last 'movie' I watched was a piece of s**t (that's a technical term) called Alien Infiltration (aka Alien Opponent) - a would-be science fiction, straight to eBay, horror-comedy. Which failed to make the grade in any category. (Apart from the eBay bit: 75p including postage? - I should have known better.)

The 'plot'. An alien crash lands in a rural junkyard and gets between some greedy arseholes and the body of the man they've murdered. They need the body to make an insurance claim. In frustration they do what everyone would do under the circumstances - go on television and offer a huge reward to anyone who can retrieve their victim. The rest of the film is spent watching the 'hilarity' that ensues as wannabee body retrievers run around getting shot in the head, eaten by alien parasites, electrocuted sawn in half by robots etc. etc. In one, played-for-a-laugh, scene a group of small children are sliced into pieces with an alien monofilament wire. Oh what fun.

What makes the thing even worse than it sounds is that it's all so badly done, so irredeemably bad in fact, that it made Roddy Piper, the biggest name in the show and obviously just phoning in his part, look like a serious actor. Roddy PIPER! I really hope I don't see anything quite as shitty as this for the rest of the year.
 
  1. Fear Chamber (1968) - Boris Karloff's last film. Made in Mexico it is an extraordinary film lots of bad and incoherence mixed in with a few moment of utterly wonderful weirdness. The basic plot is that a kindly old prof. (Karloff) discovers a rock based life form deep within a volcano. The rock can only live and grow by being fed a chemical found within the brains of terrified women (!) so the doctor obliges. Not wishing to actually kill anyone he somehow contrives, in the space of a jump cut, to start an employment agency/hostel for foreign women with a medieval dungeon and high-tech lab in the cellar. The rest of the film is an amazing farrago of pseudo-science, sadism, and weird editing involving a creepy sunglasses wearing turbaned Indian, dwarf murdering, revolving bedrooms, lecherous Lesbian whippings, strip tease, kidnapping, skeletons in wigs, exploding computers and some of the most gloriously bonkers editing I have ever witnessed (and I worked on a Donald Camell movie!). At one point I was convinced a sequence had been shot by the cast playing catch with the camera. In the end our kindly prof., realising the true import of his deeds destroys the sentient rock by playing all the computer records made of its growth backwards at it thus reducing it to a mere sample, easily destroyed with a hammer. Probably the most ludicrous, get out of jail free science fiction ending ever. Entropy reversal by data rewind playback. It's like making the whole of World War Two disappear by reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich backwards.
  2. Return to Oz - And I have a new favourite Disney movie. It used to be Dragonslayer - the only Disney film in which the princess gets eaten - but now it's this very odd Oz sequel. There were dull moments but enough extraordinary imagery to keep me more than happy. The scene where Dorothy steals the powder and the princess's heads all start screaming gave me the genuine whim-whams. A lot scarier and unsettling than anything in the Fear Chamber.
 
Saw It Comes at Night. One of the darkest movies I've ever seen. It's not a horror movie, so don't be fooled. It's a tense thriller starring the bubonic plague.
 
POTC Dead Men Tell No Tales
9/10

The crew must have not watched the other movies because alterations to continuity, new things including a tribute to a Pirate Captain which were never shown or implied or foreshadowed from the previous movies.

Plus logical flaws as in the British Government has no problems with a witch that looks different not at all ordinary compared to humans she is working for the British Government, but has a problem with a woman they believe to be a witch Carina because of her knowledge astrology and horology she is sentenced to death for Witchcraft, and she looks ordinary.
It's common knowledge in this Universe that witches look unmistakably different compared to humans so this is a astounding flaw.

A show don't tell for why Captain Salazar and his crew want revenge by killing Captain Sparrow, along with why they're cursed as ghosts with damaged corpses some more than others.

Carina and Henry Turner are the 2 new characters neither of which are contrived both are likable, and have plausible motives for wantingto find Poseidon's Trident which can solve problems specifically remove curses.
Also Captain Sparrow, Captain Salazar and his crew are also chasing to get the Trident and use it.

Chemistry with Carina and Henry so pretty obvious what will happen, and while it gets said who they are related to clues shown before that which is terrific.

It's mostly a race to get The trident along with Captain Salazar and his crew wanting to find Captain Sparrow and kill him.
It has a exciting amazing climax, plus a loophole for how Captain Sparrow can avoid Captain Salazar and his crew.

It's obvious this can't be called objectively a great movie or a great sequel with the multiple avoidable glaring cardinal sins.

So why I am still giving it a high score and calling it a great movie because it is exciting with high stakes, entertaining, and a great ending which shows what will occupy Will's life plus others so no cliffhangers so if it's the final chapter as advertised then a great finale.

That's a primary purpose of a final sequel a great ending with no cliffhangers.

Wonder Woman
9/10

Finally a feature female super hero feature movie that isn't bad or terrible because this is a great action fantasy war movie.
It is faithful to the source material including how Diana was created.

A brilliant comic book style show don't tell scene for why Ares wants to destroy all humans. He seems very similar to Lucifer of Supernatural including his goal to destroy all humans to recreate original Paradise, a awful belief about humans that they are violent, cruel, unjust, etc along with believing he's not a bad guy, and that Wonder Woman is misunderstanding his actions and him so not surprising he attempts to persuade her he's right and help him accomplish his goal.
The same as Batman Begins we see Diana Prince as a child growing up including her doing hard physical work to become a Amazon Warrior, and her motive why she wants to fight in the war to end all wars.
Also showed dreadful things during the War showing why War is Hell as a result if persons had a misleading understanding of the nature of war because pf other Hollywood movies that sanatize or alter stuff of war movies they won't after seeing this movie.

Wonder Woman has character development with she is naive which is expected since she's lived most of her life on a Island without her optimistic simple view of humans tested at all.

She is learning from Steve Trevor a British spy that has seen the dark side of humans plus others which is why her view of humans and the world changes. She does find out that humans are not simple good or evil, humans can be destructive and hurtful without Ares even with him no longer controlling humans, and that the world mainly morality not everything is simple black and white.
The style is extremely similar to Doctor Strange and mcu movies it is a serious movie but still has funny lines and scenes.

She is a pure of heart idealist hero that does change including that humans have both dark and light which is another way of saying good traits and bad traits so no more utter simple view of humans and morality or utter rose colored glasses.
The same as Superman it's a hero for both men and women, plus with guys defeating foes not just Wonder Woman hard to be unhappy with that.

It has intentional homages to Superman the movie.
Amazing effects including for the lasso of truth when being used to compel the person to tell the truth or as a weapon, terrific action scenes including Wonder Woman shown shown as a badass, great music that fits the scenes, a terrific twist that really is not obvious and related to the climax, and a Amazing climax with Wonderful Woman fighting Ares in his typical armor Gladiator style suit plus Steve having to get rid of the destructive biochemical weapon.
 
theonefirestorm said:
Plus logical flaws as in the British Government has no problems with a witch that looks different not at all ordinary compared to humans she is working for the British Government, but has a problem with a woman they believe to be a witch Carina because of her knowledge astrology and horology she is sentenced to death for Witchcraft, and she looks ordinary.
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I don't see why is this a problem - you really need to understand the British government (like most governments but the British government has had more practice than most) can, at any one time, hold three mutually contradictory policy positions on any situation and be working (in secret) on a fourth.
 
Most governments bear more than a passing resemblance to the "Yes Minister" and Yes Prime Minister tv series.... but on reflection do we really want efficient government? they can do far more harm if they are efficient I shudder to think if the US government was able to run the way Trump seems to think it should.

I just watched a hilarious film called the Loved One The Loved One I highly recommend it. it is from the book of the same name The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), whom Time called "one of the century's great masters of English prose,"
 
JunkMonkey said:
I don't see why is this a problem - you really need to understand the British government (like most governments but the British government has had more practice than most) can, at any one time, hold three mutually contradictory policy positions on any situation and be working (in secret) on a fourth.
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That doesn't change that they're aware witches don't look ordinary so the whole sentence to death Carina is asinine.
 
theonefirestorm said:
That doesn't change that they're aware witches don't look ordinary so the whole sentence to death Carina is asinine.
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Not having seen the movie (or ever likely to) I'll take your word for it. But this is a Pirates of the Caribbean film we're talking about, isn't it? Asinine is their middle name.
 
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