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


Mr. Breathmask

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STAR TREK INSURRECTION is a favourite of mine.

 

 

8 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

y does all his output sound so lively and echoey and vibrant while most of JW’s LA scores sound much too dry?

 

 

6 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Bruce Botnick.

Yep, pretty much :)

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13 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Star trek: insurrection.

 

To answer the question that nobody asked me once and for all: Which one is better, Star Trek or Star Wars? STAR TREK. I need to rewatch this one to fully grasp all the action sequences and to get a little more comfortable in the mechanics of this universe, but it’s so much more engaging than bad actors being directed badly or haphazardly planned stories with sentimental and pointless endings (yes, TROS, looking at you.) Patrick Stewart is still great and how I wish he could have stayed with Donna Murphy. Yet another reminder of an Irish acquaintance who invited me for dinner last month.

The score is really very good and I loved the gentle Ba’ku cues. Goldsmith really should have got together with Williams’ people some time to explain how you record scores. Why does all his output sound so lively and echoey and vibrant while most of JW’s LA scores sound much too dry?

 

It wasn't until I got to hear the end credits of Insurrection live that I really appreciated how wonderful the Ba'ku opening is. My first thought was "Insurrection? Why not First Contact? I mean, if you're not going to do The Motion Picture." By the end of the middle section I was in tears.

 

I always loved that in each of his TNG scores he did something a little different with his "crew" theme that he introduced in Star Trek V. It's just a little 4 note motif. It's in God is a Busy Man. It's played in the middle of the Courage fanfare at the very beginning of First Contact. And here he builds it into the love theme!

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The Rundown (2003)

 

The first in a long series of movies about The Rock having wacky adventures in the jungle.

 

This one has atrocious dialogue, stupid MTV-style editing that has not aged well at all, unlikeable characters, cringey early 2000s "we're not your father's heroes" badass attitude, American actors with horrible Portuguese...

 

But despite all of that, the movie is very watchable thanks to The Rock and some truly impressive stunts, fights and action scenes. If an Academy Award for Best Stuntmen existed back in 2003, this one would've been easily nominated. Really, all the practical fights and stunts are insane. I miss when action movies actually had these crazy life-threatening stunts instead of just CGI all the time.

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81f73UYMbDL._SL1500_.jpg

 

A proto-slasher from 1974 (even before Halloween) that I love.

Love the Christmas-y atmosphere and the - I assume for its time- original concept of the obscene phone calls and the many voices of "Billy".

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Black Rain - late-80s Ridley Scott number in which NYPD cops Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia escort a Yakuza member back to Japan, only for him to give them the slip. Douglas and Garcia must then collaborate with the Japanese police in order to track him down. Decent enough thriller.

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6 hours ago, AC1 said:

It was an extremely ordinary movie lacking the intelligence found in Blade Runner or Alien. A movie for the mullet people. ;)


Michael Douglas did indeed sport a fine one back in the day. Its peak was probably Romancing The Stone/Jewel Of the Nile. 

Agree that it was certainly a more run-of-the-mill way for Scott to end the 80s than how he'd started them. But the action ain't bad at all, Garcia is good value and there's a Zimmer score from before he discovered that thing that sounds more like an evacuation alarm than something that should be soundtracking a movie.  

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So that was Alien. Hmm. Well, I definitely enjoyed the first half, but the final act was drawn-out and predictable to the minute. And part of me wants to watch Aliens now, can you believe it? Must… resist.

 

The score is… interesting. For some reason I thought Horner had done this one as I heard about some alien-related interview in which he’s supposedly very arrogant. Goldsmith certainly does what he can. I really liked the flute thing and the final cue, though it felt hopelessly optimistic. The sound effects are what they are. Also, can we talk about the bonus situation? Yeah, I wanna talk about the bonus situation. No? YOU… BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

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Goldsmith scored Alien in 1979, Horner scored Aliens in 1986

 

Horner had barely started his professional scoring career in 1979, he didn't score a major Hollywood film until 1982

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55 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Well, I definitely enjoyed the first half, but the final act was drawn-out and predictable to the minute. And part of me wants to watch Aliens now, can you believe it? Must… resist.

 

It's probably predictable after 40 years of all of the movies that came after it.

 

You should watch Aliens. Completely different movie. After that you can be done.

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That movie is a guilty pleasure for me.

 

I found it recently on the web in a list of the most racist movies. WTF?

 

It's a cult movie!!!

 

20221216_174403.jpg

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3 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

So that was Alien. Hmm. Well, I definitely enjoyed the first half, but the final act was drawn-out and predictable to the minute.

 

Odd. Because I think (and I imagine most agree) that it's the first part that very much takes its time to set the mood, before the real tension kicks in during the second half. As for the predictability - as @Tallguy already mentioned, we live in a post-Alien world. Much of it is predictable because everybody copied it from Alien to make it a trope.

 

On a related note, I used to think that it was Alien that first introduced the final girl trope, but of course Halloween was one year earlier. All comments about Alien's pacing and predictability can probably be applied 1:1 to Halloween.

 

3 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

The score is… interesting. […] Goldsmith certainly does what he can.

 

Very much of what Goldsmith could and did never ended up in the film.

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9 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

 The sound effects are what they are.

Can you explain this?

 

 

8 hours ago, Bespin said:

I found it recently on the web in a list of the most racist movies. WTF?

20221216_174403.jpg

Is that? ... Is that BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA?

What's racist about that?

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19 minutes ago, Holko said:

Finally someone else!

 

A friend of mine thinks Aliens is the worst of the series because it destroys everything that was good and intelligent (the characters, the tone, the alien mystique, ...) about Alien. He likes Alien3 though ... :folder:  Yes, while Alien3 goes back to the roots (some say it's basically copying Alien), the tone and direction are pretty bad, IMO. If I was the director, I would have disowned this movie.

 

59 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

 

What's racist about that?

 

The bad guys are all Chinese. ;)

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I just don't get why people even think of elevating Aliens on a level with Alien. Aliens is a great action film, yes, it is ... but Alien is a cinematic and dramaturical benchmark, a masterpiece. Same goes for the score: Goldsmith's score is one of the most creative, refined and effective works I've ever heard in any genre. Horner's score is a solid two-week job.

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2 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Can you explain this?

 

 

Is that? ... Is that BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA?

What's racist about that?

I meant that they are typically outdated and ridiculous. Obviously understandable, but detracting for me all the same.

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A list of the most racist movies sounds like something put together by an extremely tiresomely earnest Buzzfeed intern.

For those of us not obsessed with judging past movies by present day standards, Big Trouble In Little China is a hugely enjoyable action-adventure-fantasy romp ... basically, John Carpenter thought 'I'll have some of that Indiana Jones box-office action, thanks very much ... but in the present day, with martial arts stuff in there too'. 

It's vastly preferable to the likes of Cannon's cheapjack King Solomon's Mines from around the same time.  



 

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On 12/12/2022 at 12:29 PM, Tallguy said:

I always loved that in each of his TNG scores he did something a little different with his "crew" theme that he introduced in Star Trek V. It's just a little 4 note motif. It's in God is a Busy Man. It's played in the middle of the Courage fanfare at the very beginning of First Contact. And here he builds it into the love theme!

 

It's not a crew but a quest motif.

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In it's own ways Aliens was as groundbreaking as Alien was. And the genius of Aliens is that it's ways were DIFFERENT ways.

 

Alien3 has many terrific qualities.

 

Big Trouble in Little China is racist because... Well, it just is. :sarcasm:

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2 hours ago, Tallguy said:

Alien3 has many terrific qualities.

 

 

Such as bad CGI.

 

Seriously, like Prometheus, it's in my top 10 worst movies ever. And that's saying something!

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2 hours ago, Tallguy said:

Alien3 has many terrific qualities.

The design, cinematography, sound, and score are all top notch.

There's a haunting quality to ALIEN³, and a deep sadness, at its heart. It's the most "human" of all the Alien films.

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15 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

as @Tallguy already mentioned, we live in a post-Alien world. Much of it is predictable because everybody copied it from Alien to make it a trope..

 

Read Pauline Kael's 1979 review of 'Alien' and realize that the post-Alien world really wasn't much different from the pre-Alien world.

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For me Alienhas just three flaws.

1. The CGI alien (alien doesn't work as CGI)

2. It would have made more sense, If they had explained that the alien is now more like an animal than before because it came out of a dog, so like it is rather some kind of parasite adapting the DNA of its host.

3. It is not really terrifying.

 

But I really like the movie. Great finale to the series, that should have never been continued afterwards.. Everything that followed was rubbish.

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Fight club. Really glad I kept watching it. HBC has some accent problems and they sort of lost me a bit the moment they started inviting all the men into the house. But now that it’s over, I obviously want a second viewing. I do think the final scene ended too quickly. It would have been fun to see them roll up the gang. Analyses will be read tomorrow.

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13 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

If memory serves, there is no CGI alien, in ALIEN³. The closest we get to CGI is the skull crack at the climax of the film.

 

Whatever it is that was running (possibly in the longer cut), it looked really bad. Not that this is the very reason why I hate Alien3 but it did stick out like a sore thumb. 

 

But you're right, I don't think CGI Aliens were yet available in 1992. :lol:

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On Her Majesty's Secret Service - annual festive rewatch. The ending never fails to move me, whereas NTTD's attempted reworking/subversion of it just left me feeling deflated and pissed off.

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Watched Knives Out again tonight, just to jave it fresh in my mind for Glass Onion tomorrow.

It was just as good as I remembered seeing it in theatres 3 years ago. Everything just works. Script, directing, acting, music, editing & cinematography. Terrific film.

Very excited about Glass Onion tomorrow!!

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