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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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14 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

6 1/2 years, Sweep.

Yeah, the title song to NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN isn't very good, but is it worse than the other Bond song, from '83?

The problem with NSNA the film, is that no-one takes it seriously...and it shows. They even recycle jokes from '70s British sitcoms, for cryin' out loud. Don't believe me? Watch PORRIDGE. 

As for THE EXPERIENCE OF LOVE; granted, it isn't the showstopper that the brilliant, and brilliantly sung, SURRENDER is, but it gets the job done. Seeing as they wrote the title song, perhaps Bono and the lads could have adapted the chorus of I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR, to fit the lines "You're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur"? Try it: it fits :lol:


Ah well, seeing as they wrote it in the first place I guess it's OK that Clement and Le Frenais recycled it for the NSNA screenplay. And at least it's a good one. 

I may never hear I Still Haven't Found ... in the same way again, Richard :lol:

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Titanic

 

Screenshot_20200102-190925.png

 

My doomed voyages have gotten fewer and fewer in recent years. This movie is a big investment, after all, and spare time that isn't spent sleeping has been as hard to come by as the Heart of the Ocean diamond. I was determined to get in a viewing, however and busted out my HD copy of the theatrical version.

 

Of course it holds up. It's easy to see why audiences loved this one. It's as instantly accessible and engrossing as any James Cameron movie. Likeable entertaining characters, epic production design recreating the vessel and time period and an incredibly effective second half where the ship gradually sinks.

 

Despite its excessive length, it never feels as long as other long movies. I do think the pre-icebergian voyage scenes begin to drag a bit by Jack's declaration in the gymnasium, but Cameron immediately puts the flick back in gear. Regarding those voyage scenes, the movie is loaded with awkward dialogue and performances in those bits. It certainly adds to the movie's charm and I wouldn't change any of it, but Cameron feels slightly out of his element between the exploration of the wreck and the collision. The stuff before and after feels exactly like the movie Cameron wanted to make.

 

When the shit eventually does hit the fan, the movie really comes into its own and reveals itself as the greatest disaster epic there could ever be. Despite the lavish sets, state-of-the-art visual effects and chemistry between the leads, the romance section feels rather ordinary. When the hull is breached, the stakes are raised and the panic sets in, suddenly the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

 

I don't exactly view the movie in the same way I used to. Sure, I cried the first time during the critical death at the end of the picture, but these days I start to tear up a lot earlier than that, such as when the woman with a baby asks the Captain where to go. Despite the excellent suspense and action in these scenes, you know it's accurate to the events and that 1500 people perished horribly. Then the lifeboat comes back to a grisly scene of floating bodies and I really don't want to play anymore.

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Finding neverland.

 

Pretty good. Johnny Depp’s versatility continues to amaze me, but Kate Winslet didn’t make much of an impression. Also, some parts are historically inaccurate.

The score is a fine effort. Of course, Powell or Williams would have done a better job, but it’s certainly not bad.

 

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Body of Lies

 

Largely run-of-the-mill terrorism espionage thriller. Leo's usually entertaining but the script is so zzzzzzzz.

 

 

Blood Diamond

 

This was much better. Leo's Sewth Ifflikan accent was hilarious.

 

 

In Darkness

 

Pee-yew! What the hell happened here? This piece of shit starts off with a promising premise with Hitchcock inspiration, and Natalie Dormer is lovely, but the movie rapidly plummets into far-fetched convoluted absurdity.

 

 

The Two Popes

 

Charming movie. Thumbs up!

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5 minutes ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

Body of Lies is very ordinary ...

 

It's why I could not take more than 10 minutes of it.

 

I hated Blood Diamond too and can't believe I saw that one in theaters.

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Solo: A Star Wars Story. Re-watched it last night. Is it just me or is this movie better than I remember? It's above average summer tentpole and quite solid all around. While I'm not quite fully convinced by Alden Ehrenreich's take on the titular character, the rest of the cast is really good. The only thing I really hate about it is that the picture is so dark that you can literally hurt your eyes watching it. And yes, I know the film is ultimately completely pointless, adding very little to the character that we don't already know. But almost every blockbuster released in cinemas these days is like that so what else is new..

 

Karol

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1 hour ago, Quintus said:

Completed my fifth rewatch in a month of the first half of Fellowship of the Ring, before going to bed. I might try for a sixth tonight. 

 

What about trying to do the second half? Radical thought, I know.

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1 hour ago, crocodile said:

 Is it just me or is this movie better than I remember? And yes, I know the film is ultimately completely pointless, adding very little to the character that we don't already know. But almost every blockbuster released in cinemas these days is like that so what else is new..

 

That shouldn't be a reason to lower the bar. 

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I'm introducing my wife to one of the formative movies of my youth, the Disney version of The Swiss Family Robinson. 

 

It must be an extended cut, or else all versions that I saw before on network TV were abridged. There are a lot of extended scenes, and we're only on the second day with the first pirate attack so far. Some are good situational development, but others are just talking. 

 

Yeah, I don't remember there being sharks. Or the men shooting at sharks. 

 

This is good music. I need to find if they released an album of William Alwyn's score. 

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Watched the live action Aladdin with my girlfriend last night. We tried watching it a few days ago, but she fell asleep less than 10 minutes into the movie, while I watched until about 1h10 before sleeping as well. So, she insisted that we tried again from the beginning, which means that I had to watch the entire first hour for a second time... :( :( :( But she slept after the Prince Ali number anyway, while I somehow managed to get to the end of it.

 

It's not a completly awful movie. I love Will Smith, and I thought he was the perfect casting for the Genie. Despite the horrible CGI that made him blue, he still manages to give a fun and cartoonish performance, a relief after years of horrible movies that didn't used his natural charisma (After Earth, Focus, Suicide Squad).

 

The newcomers that played Aladdin and Jasmine were great as well - one could say, diamonds in the rough, lol. He gives a charismatic performance and shows a lot of physicality (like parkour on the streets of Agrabah and dancing), while she sings extremely well.

 

However, it still has the same problems of these Disney live action remakes, which is expanding a story that works perfectly fine on 90 minutes to a 2 hour running time. So we get some Game of Thrones-like politics between Agrabah and other kingdoms (with the mandatory references to the real world, because apparently you can't watch a fantasy movie without being reminded of the shitty events on real life), a completly unnecessary romance between the Genie and Jasmine's hadmaiden...

 

The CGI is very poor for a $180m movie financed by the biggest entertainment corporation on the world. Not only the blue Will Smith is still a nightmare fuel CGI monstrosity, but also the monkey and the tiger were pretty fake. The Agrabah backgrounds looked like they could've been on an early 2000s movie or videogame. Maybe the best technicians were too busy with The Lion King?

 

I didn't mind the new version of the classic songs, but Menken's new score is dull and cliched, and could've been written for a generic TV show set on the Middle East. This man is much more talented than that.

 

Anyway, it's not totally awful, but not great, either. Still, it's at the very least better than the utterly horrendous Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the worst of these remakes by far.

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Nebraska.

 

Pretty good. It could have been sentimental, but it wasn’t. Bruce Dern was impressive and Will Forte did not annoy me, unlike in The Last Man on Earth.

The score was short and a little repetitive, but had very touching and appropriate cues.

 

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Glass

 

I really don't have patience for Shyamalan movies anymore. Years of people clamoring for a Unbreakable sequel, and he delivers this piece of shit?

 

The great characters from Unbreakable and Split spend most of the movie on an utterly dull mental hospital, with some generic cientist or whatever trying to convice them they aren't supers? Is there a LESS compelling way of bringing them back and putting David Dunn, Mr Glass and Kevin Wendell Crumb together? Maybe putting them to watch the paint dry while listening to The Carpenters?

 

It takes a whole new level of incompetence to make a boring movie like this with such interesting characters and great actors (although Bruce Willis seemed to be sleepwalking during the whole movie).

 

The dialogues are cringe-worthy, and delivered like the characters are saying something profound and grandiose, but it's just rubbish about superheroes. It actually feels like a bad Shyamalan movie from his post-Lady in the Water era.

 

Only JNH could've saved this mess, the score from that West guy is as generic as the score from some cop show on TV.

 

And the ending is pathetic:

 

Spoiler

Some viral YouTube videos of people performing superhuman feats are going to change the world and inspire a revolution? REALLY?!?

 

And I thought he had hit rock bottom with that movie on which Mark Wahlberg talks to plants and tries outrun the wind...

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5 hours ago, Edmilson said:

And I thought he had hit rock bottom with that movie on which Mark Wahlberg talks to plants and tries outrun the wind...

 

That one might be even less worse than Glass. It's a totally redundant movie. The Mark Wahlberg one is a failed B movie experiment, but at least he was kinda trying.

 

8 minutes ago, Þekþiþm said:

Raising Arizona

 

They're clever these Coen blokes. Need to see more of their stuff. Very funny and bonkers movie.

 

Probably the Coen's funniest movie.

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The Cowboys

Once John Wayne dies, the narrative kind of falls apart.  He is the main character, but it becomes the kids' story after this.

The only way it could have been remedied would have been if the boys were introduced in the first scene, or at almost the same time as Wayne.

Pretty good anyway.

3/4

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The Tree of Life

 

Although I love Malick (especially The Thin Red line), I cannot "get into" this or feel it, still on my 3rd viewing.

But, it's very beautiful to look at (perhaps his most beautiful film).

I have purchased the Criterion edition which includes an extended cut (50 more minutes). Perhaps I should watch that one too, in case it doesn't feel so disjointed.

 

edit: By the way, I don't think I heard one single note of the Desplat score in the film.

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I watched the movie years ago, but I remember the only piece by Desplat on the movie was the OST track Clouds. Not sure if there was anything else, though.

 

Horner whined about collaborating with Malick, but Desplat is by far the composer who was more trolled by Malick.

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More than the composers, Malick probably makes the studio bosses mad.

 

I mean, people like Morricone, Zimmer, Horner, Desplat and JNH are not exactly cheap (although I imagine they accepted taking a smaller fee just for the "privilege" of working on a Terrence Malick movie), and then there's expenses with orchestras, musicians, booking the recording stage, etc. It's not cheap to record these scores, just for them to be tossed out in favor of classical music (which probably cost a ton of money to license too).

 

That's probably why he was working exclusively with Hannah Townsend after The Tree of Life, lol.

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Miller's Crossing

 

This was a bit hard to follow at first, but I eventually got on its track and understood what was happening. Very suspenseful film and full of twists. Why was 1990 stacked with so many gangster films including this, Dick Tracy, The Godfather Part III and Goodfellas?

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3 hours ago, Edmilson said:

It's not cheap to record these scores, just for them to be tossed out in favor of classical music (which probably cost a ton of money to license too).

 

 

It's not so expensive when the composer is dead for umpteen years. Then Malick only has to pay for the recording rights.

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4 hours ago, Þekþiþm said:

Miller's Crossing

 

This was a bit hard to follow at first, but I eventually got on its track and understood what was happening. Very suspenseful film and full of twists. Why was 1990 stacked with so many gangster films including this, Dick Tracy, The Godfather Part III and Goodfellas?

 

The most memorable thing about Miller's Crossing though was its score. Carter Burwell is a great composer. 

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I had seen it already but for some reason I couldn't switch it off. Very dialogue driven yet it's pretty good.

 

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'The Cube' by Steve Jobs.

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

 

The more I see this, the more I hate it. If you're going to treat the inspiration as a real story, it needs to feel like one with genuine actions and consequences for the main characters (Mildred seems immune to a lot of the consequences). I still love Frances McDormand here, but her character doesn't suffer consequences as she would in real life -- like not being charged with arson after flinging a Molotov cocktail at the police station or charged with battery after kicking several teens in the crotch. Maybe that was done on purpose, but that still bothers me. 

 

The critical love for this mystifies me. A hugely flawed movie at best and tone-deaf at worse.

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10 minutes ago, Matt C said:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

 

The more I see this, the more I hate it. If you're going to treat the inspiration as a real story, it needs to feel like one with genuine actions and consequences for the main characters (Mildred seems immune to a lot of the consequences). I still love Frances McDormand here, but her character doesn't suffer consequences as she would in real life -- like not being charged with arson after flinging a Molotov cocktail at the police station or charged with battery after kicking several teens in the crotch. Maybe that was done on purpose, but that still bothers me. 

 

The critical love for this mystifies me. A hugely flawed movie at best and tone-deaf at worse.

 

It's the best Coen Brothers movie that the Coen Brothers didn't make!

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I watched Marriage Story over the weekend.  I'm honestly bowled over by how great it is.  It's incredible how honest, understanding, and perceptive that movie is.  Far and away the best movie Baumbach's made, and the best 2019 film I've seen thus far.

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