Last Movie You Watched (2017)

Edward M. Grant said:
Remember, about an Auschwitz survivor with dementia who sets out to kill the man who killed his family there. Pretty good movie, but the ending was somewhat predictable.
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I saw that a while back, quite enjoyed it.

Last night I saw The Tenant by Polanski. It's the first Polanski movie I think I've ever seen, though I may have seen Rosemary's Baby when I was younger. The Tenant is a slippery-slope movie, from ennui into paranoid madness, nestled somewhere between Hitchcock and Fellini. Although the melodrama is high and the acting bullish (not helped by the fact that almost everyone except Polanski himself, who's playing the main character, seems to have been badly dubbed in) it's an effective piece of work.

The day before I saw Wolf Creek which was - and I'm not normally a fan of gory films - pretty exciting. The ending was all over the place, though.

Just remembered - I also saw The Age of Adaline, which I thought was a stylish but ultimately fairly dull take on time-travel romance.
 
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watched a fine print of The Train (1964) - IMDb last night at the local art house theatre; one of the best Burt Lancaster films set near the end of WW2 in France... the best train wreck sequence I have ever seen and just a very good film 5/5 for me
 
Windshadow said:
watched a fine print of The Train (1964)... ,<snip> the best train wreck sequence I have ever seen and just a very good film 5/5 for me
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Probably because they wrecked real trains to do it. The Train is a great film and Burt Lancaster gives a wonderful performance.

Last film I saw was Le Dernier Combat, Luc Besson's first. A masterclass in low budget feature making. Black and white and with only two words of dialogue in the whole thing. (Though, it has to be said, the score - Eric Serra's first - threatened to sink the show from time to time. He got better.)
 
Last one in a theater was Anabelle: the Creation. About what we expected. The two young actresses ( is 'actor-esses' now more PC?:rolleyes:) were noticeably talented. This Saturday, we're up for It.
At home, we watch a horror movie each night leading up to Halloween. Recently:
Carnival of Souls( the old one);
Hammer's Taste the Blood of Dracula and Dracula, A.D. 1972;
Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie and Isle of the Dead.
For the Day of the Dead proper: Under the Volcano. I could not get into this novel, but the John Huston film---wowsers!!
 
The Mummy. I was expecting it to be bad, but not that bad.

Didn't really care about the characters, and, frankly, it was just boring. The previous Mummy movie was a hundred times better, even if the sequels went downhill fast.
 
On Halloween we watched The Shunned House, a weird mishmash of three HPL tales( The Music of Erich Zahn, Dreams in the Witch House and The Shunned House), well worth watching, and The Eclipse.
Last night, The Weight of Water: a masterpiece with sensational performances. That Katherine Bigelow is a talented director..
 
Saw Thor Ragnarok today. USA Today critic said it was the first "pure comedy" for Marvel which is mostly nonsense given that humor/approach wise its roughly similar to Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool, all of which are humor heavy, and all of which try very hard in spots (especially Deadpool and Thor Ragnarok). I didn't find it as funny as Deadpool (not that close really) or as charming as GotG I, but the overall mix is still pretty good, and vastly better than the prior Thor movies, which I thought were pretty much stinking piles. The plot here is simple enough that there are not a lot of plot holes, and the plot never feels as silly as GotG2. That said, the plot/mythos holes/problems that are present are definitely major ones, and they may trouble you if you are the type to fuss about such things. Anyway, reasonably strong entry overall, although not a must-see if your on the fence about following the Marvel Universe. The current rating at IMDB is 8.2, which will surely fall pretty significantly over time (almost always happens with Marvel movies), though perhaps ending up a bit above Spider Man Homecoming's 7.6, and certainly will stay well above the prior Thor movies (7.0 ratings).
 
It seems to polarize views rather - some really like it, others who take their Marvel more seriously perhaps so. Seems rather Guardians of the Galaxy like to me, as you've said, Art.
 
Hobbit said:
It seems to polarize views rather - some really like it, others who take their Marvel more seriously perhaps so. Seems rather Guardians of the Galaxy like to me, as you've said, Art.
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I could see not liking it if I took the Marvel Universe seriously...some stuff happens that doesn't really belong in something this comedy heavy. And some plot points that are rather important in terms of the overall universe don't get enough attention or are inconsistent. Indeed, the movie has two of the most glaring inconsistencies/problems I've seen in any of these movies:

It is just pathetic that the main villain is repeatedly said to draw strength from Asgard and noted that she will grow strong the longer "she remains in Asgard" and then at the very end they suddenly shift to "Asgard is not a place, its where the people are" which makes no sense whatsoever given the overall plot - including the villain not caring about killing the Asgardians. Even worse is the population of a world fitting in a tiny freighter when Asgard is evacuated.

Still, its reasonably funny and has a certain charm. Nothing overly special but I enjoyed it.
 
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That does sound like a weak plot-point. Not sure if that would be a deal-breaker for me, but it would certainly elicit a groan.

Mind you, the Guardians of the Galaxy's Planet Ego comes nearly as close for me...
 
I had few friends over to watch a pair of crackerjack Walter Matthau films
A New Leaf a Rom Com of the period with an edge to it
and
Charley Varrick a caper film from when the studios got to show the bad guys getting away with their crime
both from the early 70s and both recommended even though they represent Genre of film not chatter about here
what an accomplished character actor he was... but I don't recall him ever doing SF&F films
 
The 2005 Fantastic Four which looks a hell of a lot better than it used to do when held up along side the 2015 version. But that's still not saying a lot.
 
Daughter Number One and I took advantage of the rest of the family buggering off to do social things and spent the entire day watching movies. It was brilliant! We watched Being John Malcovich, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Broadcast News, and The Man Who Fell to Earth (In that order.) She surprised me (a lot) by liking the The Man Who Fell to Earth far more than I did, and I think we're both in love with Holly Hunter after Broadcast News.

A good day.
 
Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo. I heard that Allen lists it amongst his favourites of his own movies, and it is pretty good, but I was surprised just how close to SF it gets. The plot is basically that an on-screen character in a movie theatre in the 1930s walks out of the screen into reality and runs off with a girl in the audience (who he has noticed at every screening). OK, I thought -- what would happen if the actor who played the part met the character he played from the movie?? And Allen actually shows us just that, and what all the other actors are thinking whilst they wait for the escaped character to return. It's not entirely satisfying as a piece of SF of course, because it isn't SF, but it comes really close and is at the very least deeply post modern (although that's not necessarily a good thing these days). I enjoyed it though, and the ending is heart-rending :(
 
Allen made so many good movies in the eighties. Broadway Danny Rose and Crimes and Misdemeanors are among his very best. I would really like to see 1997's Deconstructing Harry in HD. So many of his films have seen blu-ray releases. Why not Deconstructing Harry?

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I re-watched Lethal Weapon 2 the other night. Complete shite, unlike the original.
 
Av Demeisen said:
Allen made so many good movies in the eighties. Broadway Danny Rose and Crimes and Misdemeanors are among his very best. I would really like to see 1997's Deconstructing Harry in HD. So many of his films have seen blu-ray releases. Why not Deconstructing Harry?
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Sleeper has a spot in my top 100 list... but in my top ten list is
The Man Who Would Be King (1975) - IMDb both of the stars list it in their favorite films they have done as did the director. it is also an amazing example of how a short story can be a fine choice for adaption into a film with out butchering the content of the original work as so often happens when a novel is made into a movie
 
I REALLY don't get Woody Allen. I want to. I've tried. But I just don't get him at all. I once spent a day in a movie house and watched a double bill of Bergman films - Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal and a Woody Allen double bill: Bullets over Broadway and something else that made such an impression on me that I can't remember the title. (Or anything else about it.) It may have been Hannah and her Sisters. Whatever it was, I remember sitting totally bemused by what the hell the audience (who were obviously fans to a man) were laughing at.
I thought the Seventh Seal was funnier than either of them.
 
Thor: Ragnorak (spell check wants the subtitle to be 'anorak') struck us as total crap. We were just up for a night out and did not have high expectations to begin. The main problem ( save for the almost non-existent characters and plot) was the fact that the 'comedy' was not funny.
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Last evening we watched Magnolia for the ump-teenth time. A genuine classic, with the single best screenplay into which I have run and sterling cast and performances. If you ain't seen this film, I recommend it. Also, check out The Master, another by PTA.
 
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