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

[Quintus 5,399]

13 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

WAR HORSE.

Is it me, or is this film major boring shit?

It seems as if it was designed to do two things: 1/ to show off Devon (which it did), and 2/ to make Jeremy Irvine a star (which it didn't - oh, bugger!).

It looks pretty, and all that, but it just doesn't make me care about anybody, including the horse. The score (and I know that I'm going to get massacred, for this) is forgettable, and, largely on the twee side, with lots of English-isms, but rarely finding its own voice. I know that it's been trumpeted as a major film in Spielberg's canon, but, really, it's just another late-flowering technical exercise.

My opinion of this film has not changed, in nine years: 

 

It had its moments but the film fails to make any impact, it's strangely lacking in the necessary grand sweep and spiritual throughput one would expect of an epic journey story. It's just sort of scenes they filmed, put together in chronological order. Williams was brought in (and heavily relied upon as always) to stitch it all together, but he completely fails on this occasion. I agree that War Horse is a pretty rubbish score by his standards. The sickly sweet Last of the Summer Wine tone through the prism of a major American composer is the worst thing about the music. 

[A24 4,346]

13 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Always funny to see 2K projects get released in UHD...

 

Filmed in 2.8K and mastered in 4K!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The Godfather Part IV

[Chen G. 3,950]

4 hours ago, AC1 said:

Filmed in 2.8K and mastered in 4K!

If the camera is shooting 2.8K it would be generous to suggest the shots actually resolve more than 2K at best.

 

Digital footage needs to be demosaiced and go through a low-pass filter to reduce aliasing, all at the cost of resolution.

 

It takes an Alexa XT shooting 3.2K raw to really get footage in excess of 2K, making a UHD release even somewhat worthwhile (HDR notwithstanding). If you really want to a full, true 4K, you need a 5K camera like the Dragon.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Aye say, is the cahstle fahr?

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

I know where that barstard lies.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Anyone else get all the AIDS subtext in this movie?

[publicist 4,643]

1 hour ago, The Big Man said:

Anyone else get all the AIDS subtext in this movie?

 

Only the drag show subtext.

[Sweeping Strings 2,363]

The Quiller Memorandum - 60s spy thriller, with George Segal's agent sent by British Intelligence to Berlin (beating Harry Palmer to the city by a whole year) continuing an investigation into a neo-Nazi organisation which has led to the death of 2 previous agents.

Alec Guinness and Max Von Sydow add class, Senta Berger some glamour and it all trundles along reasonably enough but the trouble with these 'anti-Bond' type films is that in comparison they can be ... well, a bit dull really. And so it proves here.

Scored by John Barry ... the spy genre really kept him busy in the 60s.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The Young Lions

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

2 hours ago, Sweeping Strings said:

The Quiller Memorandum - 60s spy thriller, with George Segal's agent sent by British Intelligence to Berlin (beating Harry Palmer to the city by a whole year) continuing an investigation into a neo-Nazi organisation which has led to the death of 2 previous agents.
Alec Guinness and Max Von Sydow add class, Senta Berger some glamour and it all trundles along reasonably enough but the trouble with these 'anti-Bond' type films is that in comparison they can be ... well, a bit dull really. And so it proves here. Scored by John Barry ... the spy genre really kept him busy in the 60s.

Frackin' brilliant film! The scene where Pol ("My name's Pol. P-O-L. Pol") is explaining to Quiller his position, using currants, is priceless. "That's where you are, Quiller, in the gap".

Sweep, don't forget to mention great support from the laconic Helpman, and Sanders 

[Bellosh 3,419]

Sometimes Youtube has some decent free movies to watch (if you can stomach the ads)

 

Recently watched Contact (1997)

 

I always welcome another viewing of this.  The discovery of the signal scene is still so much fun.  I also gained a new appreciation of the score.  Some really nice bits in it.  All the Hadden scenes are fantastic as well.

 

and Stargate (1994).  Always loved James Spader in this.

[Edmilson 7,473]

Contact is one of my favorite Zemeckis movies, and actually one of my favorites overall. I think I even prefer it to the likes of Forrest Gump and Cast Away.

[Bellosh 3,419]

I still really need to read the book.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

47 minutes ago, Bellosh said:

I still really need to read the book.

No. You don't.

Sagan is a phony.

 

[Bellosh 3,419]

17 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

No. You don't.

Sagan is a phony.

 

I've never really done any research on him and I don't care to. All I know is that I've always enjoyed the movie, story and concept, and I figured the book might be worth a shot.

[GerateWohl 4,373]

Watched yesterday "Horns" from Alexandre Aja.

Great fun! I really enjoy these fantasy B-movies. I love the humor. 

 

And even though  I didn't like Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter at all, meanwhile I really appreciate his comedy talent. That guy is terribly funny.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

7 hours ago, Bellosh said:

Recently watched Contact (1997)

I always welcome another viewing of this.  The discovery of the signal scene is still so much fun.  I also gained a new appreciation of the score.  Some really nice bits in it.  All the Hadden scenes are fantastic as well.

It's a good scene. Does anyone know how the sound of the signal, was made? I've always liked that sound.

 

7 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Contact is one of my favorite Zemeckis movies, and actually one of my favorites overall. I think I even prefer it to the likes of Forrest Gump and Cast Away.

It's easily superior to both of them, and it has Jodie Foster in a "really great dress" 

 

 

7 hours ago, Bellosh said:

I still really need to read the book.

No, you don't. The novel is alright, but the film does a much better job of distilling the book's ideas.

 

 

6 hours ago, bruce marshall said:

Sagan is a phony.

Tru, dat.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

1 hour ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

It's easily superior to both of them, and it has Jodie Foster in a "really great dress" 

I was about to say that I find the three as good but I think you just have convinced me of Contact's superiority!

and I would add that the best to own is Contact because of the Isolated Score

 

Now on a more serious tone I think that the three can't really be compared, they are so different and so great for different reason. I would say that it just a matter of taste.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

Agreed, and since my taste is uniformly excellent, I'm going with CONTACT .

 

 

Since I bought my car, I tell my friends (and in a very passable John Hurt voice, I might add): "I find it convenient to keep my interests...mobile". They have a good laugh, at that.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The Score

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

Indeed. It's my second favourite Silvestri.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

It's my favourite Howard Shore

[Naïve Old Fart 9,553]

Are we talking cross purposes?

It's your favourite foreign movie.

[Sweeping Strings 2,363]

21 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Frackin' brilliant film! The scene where Pol ("My name's Pol. P-O-L. Pol") is explaining to Quiller his position, using currants, is priceless. "That's where you are, Quiller, in the gap".

Sweep, don't forget to mention great support from the laconic Helpman, and Sanders 

Must admit the scenes with the 'bossmen' put me in mind of the 'Control and Tony' Fry and Laurie sketches - 

 

 

[Quintus 5,399]

I was onboard with Contact all the way up until that flowery attempt at spiritual meaning during the film's (anti)climax, which was also just really rubbishly visualised. It was enormously disappointing, after the decent little human advances drama of its earlier hours. 

[Jay 37,373]

I read the Contact novel after seeing and loving the film

 

The book is interesting, it's way more detailed an in depth than the film.  The film only adapts like a quarter of it, and McConaughey's character is basically a film creation.  It's definitely worth reading

[Holko 9,531]

Got around to watching Fiddler on the Roof, after years of knowing some of the songs but never actually seeing the whole thing in any form. And after the short period of getting adjusted to the sometimes very stage-ey dialogue and acting, I really enjoyed it! I was happy to get to know and spend time with these characters, see them grow, open up slowly, seemingly close back up again. Great songs and great music! Especially when I checked on the 30th anniversary release afterwards a bit - very impressive sound quality difference,  too bad about some very clunky performance edits(?) that jerk the stereo field around violently. Is there maybe hope for a 50th anniversary MM redo from scratch, maybe with some instrumentals or the better film takes of some parts?

[Marian Schedenig 8,210]

17 hours ago, Bellosh said:

I've never really done any research on him and I don't care to. All I know is that I've always enjoyed the movie, story and concept, and I figured the book might be worth a shot.

 

I remember the book being a rather tedious read. It has much more hardcore science stuff than the film, and in comparison you notice how Hollywoodised the film is after all - more than you'd guess from just viewing it. It's certainly worth it if you're interested, but it took me a while to get through it. I guess Sagan wasn't necessarily a great novelist - though as one of the most important and effective science promoters of our time, he was far from being a "phony". A must view is his classic TV series Cosmos - A Personal Voyage. A documentary, but packed with at least ten times the excitement and wonder that Contact can offer (and I *am* a fan of the film, and Jodie Foster is brilliant in it).

[Bellosh 3,419]

11 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

It's a good scene. Does anyone know how the sound of the signal, was made? I've always liked that sound.

 

Yeah that'd be pretty neat to learn.  The sound design was done at Skywalker Sound.  So definitely some brilliant minds behind it.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

" none of your business"

[Sweeping Strings 2,363]

High Plains Drifter - Western in which an enigmatic, nameless stranger pitches up in the small mining town of Lago and rallies the cowardly townsfolk into standing up to the wrong 'uns who are coming back to terrorise them after their release from prison.

A bit of classic Clint, who both stars and directs here.

[Jay 37,373]

 

Coming to America

 

Meh.  I didn't see this as a kid, just saw it for the first time now.  The first half-hour or so is genuinely funny and interesting, with everything in Eddie Murphy's home country and all the fish out of water stuff as they begin life in Brooklyn.  Then once he meets the girl he wants to pursue, it ends up being pretty standard rom-com fair for like an hour and a half, just much less funny, more cliched and tropey, and way too long.  Cut 30 minutes out of this flick and you'd have a much better movie.

Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall were really great throughout, as their main characters and the other characters they also play; I had only known Arsenio Hall as the talk show cost, it was interesting to see he has genuine acting chops here!  James Earl Jones was great too.  Not much else to recommend other than the truly good first 30 minutes or so

[A24 4,346]

Trading Places > Coming To America

[Jay 37,373]

I've never seen that one

 

But I enjoyed reading Eddie Murphy's comments about John Landis concerning the two:

 

Quote

We had a tussling confrontation… We didn't come to blows. Personalities didn't mesh. ... He directed me in Trading Places when I was just starting out as a kid, but he was still treating me like a kid five years later during Coming to America. And I hired him to direct the movie! I was gonna direct Coming to America myself, but I knew that Landis had just done three fucked-up pictures in a row and that his career was hanging by a thread after the Twilight Zone trial. I figured the guy was nice to me when I did Trading Places, so I'd give him a shot… I was going out of my way to help this guy, and he fucked me over. Now he's got a hit picture on his resumé, a movie that made over $200 million, as opposed to him coming off a couple of fucked-up movies – which is where I'd rather see him be right now.

 

 

I actually met John Landis (and Max Landis) at the movie theater I worked at in Worcester, Massachusetts 20 years ago, in the summer of 2001.  They were visiting colleges he might go to in town (Worcester has 10 of them), and decided to catch a flick.  He asked me for my recommendation of what was playing that they hadn't seen yet, and I suggested John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.  I saw them afterward, and they said they liked it.

[Quintus 5,399]

Trading Places blows Coming to America Away, it's one of the most quintessential American comedies of the 80s.

 

I am still partial to a bit of CtA tho, even if it never really was all that good. Rose tints have been very kind to that movie in the eyes of the 80s generation. 

[GerateWohl 4,373]

I had to switch off Coming2America after 20 minutes. It was unbearable.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

Wow!

The last film I did that was DUMB and DUMBERER!

 

 

TRADING PLACES starts off funny with Murphy's character.

Then the two antagonists- total caricatures.

The worst thing - and the reason I despise this film- the hypocrisy.

After two hours of putting down the upper class and wealth, the finale ends up CELEBRATING wealth and luxury.

Typical Landis. Also typical- gratuitous female nudity. What a perv he is.

a

[Jay 37,373]

 

The Eiger Sanction

 

Well, this movie hasn't aged well!  It really is a film of its time I suppose.

 

I went in knowing nothing about it, so was amused by the sort of James Bond / Indiana Jones ish ideas at the beginning like him being this sort of former assassin / adventurer, who is now a college professor that has female students throwing themselves at him.  Turns out this is just the start of literally every female character in the movie throwing themselves at him, something that has no resolution or payoff and just seems to randomly be thrown in there.  I dunno if this is due to Clint's ego, or if it was an element of the novel...

 

The story overall was OK.  All the beginning setup and exposition is painfully slow; You could tell from watching that things were cut down here, too, and maybe they should have cut more... Once he gets to Utah and George Kennedy things improve dramatically, but really the best part of the film is easily the final act in Switzerland at the Eiger mountain.  It still wasn't great, but it at least looked nice and paced fine.

 

Overall, a pretty dopey and inconsequential movie that doesn't over too much of value, though maybe at the time the twists and general machinations of the assassin plot weren't so cliched (we both guessed who the assassin was very early on).

 

The only reason I would have ever bothered to watch this was because John Williams scored it, and the score is great!  Starts off moody and a bit jazzy, has some nice tension around an early gruesome murder, back to light jazz for a while as everything is set up, then we get a big showcase orchestral cue for some rock climbing in Utah.  Once we get to Switzerland there's more orchestral stuff, more tension, and it all ends with a return to the jazz.  A shame the OST album is only 35 minutes!

[bollemanneke 3,352]

Superbad. I wanted to keep it super short and super sweet and write that everyone and everything was great, but I don’t really like the ending. It would have been nice if they hadn’t walked off with those girls, but with each other. I feel like someone involved in the making of the movie got cold feet at the last moment.

[Quintus 5,399]

Nah, I think the point is that the straight dude suddenly had the realisation that his bezzie is probably gay, but the chap himself doesn't fully understand it yet. Rites of passage type shit. 

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

I hope you're not using the toilet. It's broken.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

One of the funniest scenes ever#

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Come on, flush you bastard!

[bruce marshall 1,315]

I love when he starts fanning the air trying to get the smell out!

KINGPIN is also great.

The coffee scene is genius!

[GerateWohl 4,373]

L’Homme de Rio - Philippe de Broca

With Jean-Paul Belmondo. One of my favourite adventure comedies of my childhood. Hadn't seen it for decades. Still great movie. Spielberg admitted that this was one of the movies that inspired him for Raiders of the Lost Ark. And when you watch it, you know why. A lot of parallels that I did not recognize At the time.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,433]

Hunt for the Wilderpeople by Taiki Waititi

Another great movie from Waititi! Really beautiful, funny and touchy. Too bad this movie doesn't have more recognition, it deserves more.

[Sweeping Strings 2,363]

17 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I had to switch off Coming2America after 20 minutes. It was unbearable.

Same thought occurs to me every time I see the ad for it ... 'Even allowing for suspension of disbelief, how come all those old bastards in the barber shop are still alive 33 years on?'