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

[JoeinAR 1,953]

I'd say Gravity will get nominations for Best Picture, should win, Best Actress, should win, Best Director, should win, Best Original Screen Play, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, and there should be no nomination category for Best Visual Effects, there should simply be an award given to the film for Special Achievement in Visual Effects.

I gotta say most of my fellow movie goers tonight were in the 35 and up range. Attention deficit younger folks were very few and far between.

[crocodile 8,520]

That bad, huh?

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

Young people would fall asleep after the first slow-ass shot of earth....

[A24 4,565]

Cowboys & Aliens: What the heck was Harrison Ford doing here? His part (constantly running behind superstar Craig) felt like it should've been played by a lesser known actor. That it should be Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Rick Deckard, et cetera) made it very distractive. It's a silly movie anyway. There is absolutely no chemistry between any of the actors and, of course, the aliens, who can create spaceships and have mastered interstellar travel were just stupid, unintelligent monsters. 4/10

[crocodile 8,520]

Yup this film just didn't work on any level. At all.

Karol

[Quintus 5,449]

A pitch which would seem all but impossible to fuck up, but the Iron Man guy managed it. Iron Man 2 makes a lot of sense in a way.

[Brónach 1,306]

A pitch which would seem all but impossible to fuck up

To me, it seems the opposite.

[Koray Savas 2,254]

It was quite awful, but I thought they picked out a great cast, only to waste it. How do you mess up a movie with Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and Paul Dano?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

A pitch which would seem all but impossible to fuck up

To me, it seems the opposite.

It's a pitch that could have worked as a B-movie. Maybe with a similar tone as Tremors.

[Koray Savas 2,254]

Love Tremors, just got all 4 movies on blu yesterday.

[Quintus 5,449]

A pitch which would seem all but impossible to fuck up

To me, it seems the opposite.

Naturally.

[Jay 39,428]

Yea Cowboys and Aliens was pretty bad. Can't remember anything worthwhile about it.

[Delorean90 47]

The sequence of Craig entering the town, with the character introductions (especially Rockwell), had me wishing that the whole thing would be a straight Western.

[Koray Savas 2,254]

Yeah.

[Quintus 5,449]

Isn't that where they went wrong? They played it too straight. It was a strangely earnest movie with a silly title. Everyone went in expecting a Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones vibe.

[A24 4,565]

Even without the aliens (which are nothing but a metaphor for the white pioneers of the Wild West) , the film would stink.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

Isn't that where they went wrong? They played it too straight. It was a strangely earnest movie with a silly title. Everyone went in expecting a Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones vibe.

Based on the title I figured this was a comedy. How could it not be?

[Quintus 5,449]

It was more Unforgiven than MiB.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

That's just silly!

[Marian Schedenig 9,042]

Lucky you, it's still a whole month away for us.

You could catch it in Vienna, if you still have time. Artis and Haydn are showing the undubbed original.

[Richard P 4,189]

Wyatt Earp

Having seem Tombstone a few months ago (which was rather good), and with JNH's score released, I thought I'd give the less well received one (i.e., it bombed) a chance.

Frankly, I don't know what the critics are complaining about. Granted, it's too long, and it falls apart a bit after the train scene, but I was never bored, the performances were all excellent, a good script, beautiful cinematography, and of course, pretty much the best score it could hope for.

I feel this story would work better as a TV series though. It's a bit too episodic, and spans too long a timespan for a truly great film adaptation.

[crocodile 8,520]

Lucky you, it's still a whole month away for us.

You could catch it in Vienna, if you still have time. Artis and Haydn are showing the undubbed original.

Dammit. I'm leaving tomorrow around noon.

Ah well, I'll see it in IMAX next month.

Karol

[Jay 39,428]

Hell Baby

Sadly not worth recommending. This is a new horror comedy by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, 2 members of The State who created and starred in Reno 911!, plus wrote the Night at the Smithsonian movies. The plot is about an expectant couple who movies into a demonic house, and the wife gets possessed by a demon herself, and other random things happen too. It had a bit of a "any ideas we can think of" feel more than a cohesive movie, I'm sure there was a lot of improv. But entire scenes happen, unconnected to anything else, and it's just... odd.

The cast is the only strong point - besides Garant and Lennon as a pair of Vatican priests, there are Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel as cops, Keegan Michael Key as a weird drifter who secretly lives in the house, Michael Ian Black and David Wain as therapists, Leslie Bibb and Rod Corddry (the only guy I don't really like) as the couple, Ricki Lindhome (Garfunkel!) as Bibb's sister (who has a 5+ minute long scene completely naked, and showing everything). Just an odd mixed bag that I can't recommend.

[Wojo 2,456]

Parker

I still don't know why J Lo was in this, and Nick Nolte is wasted doing his best to talk like Batman. Jason Statham doesn't disappoint as the wronged criminal bent on revenge because it's the 37th time in his career playing such a character. He's getting pretty good at it. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

[Jay 39,428]

Manos: The Hands of Fate

Ok technically we watched the MST3K episode that featured this movie. Damn, what an awful movie! Easily one of the worst ever made.

[filmmusic 2,195]

Hehe. it's number 3 in imdb's bottom 100! WOW!

Why did you watch it since you had a hunch (I assume), that it wouldn't be good?

[Jay 39,428]

Don't you know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is?

If not, it's a show where a man and 2 robots make fun a movie the entire time

[filmmusic 2,195]

Don't you know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is?

If not, it's a show where a man and 2 robots make fun a movie the entire time

Yes, I know. I have the Daddy-O episode.

But i repeat again, why did you watch it?

As a comic series or something?

(like I am watching Friends eg.)

[Jay 39,428]

......

We didn't watch the movie. We watched an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where they make fun of the movie.

Do you understand?

[filmmusic 2,195]

......

We didn't watch the movie. We watched an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where they make fun of the movie.

Do you understand?

I understand perfectly.

So, you watched it as a comic series (of these people making fun of this movie), and not because you wanted to see the movie itself.

i get it..

(I thought maybe you wanted to watch the movie, and it was not anywhere available by itself, except for that MST episode)

[Jay 39,428]

Right.

[Code 000. Destruct. 0. 4,260]

Have you seen Prince of Space? Or Space Mutiny? I have such great memories of watching that show after school.

[Jay 39,428]

As a kid I watched many episodes of MST3K, but I unfortunately don't remember many details of any of them now. This is the first one I've seen in 15+ years

[BloodBoal 7,541]

[filmmusic 2,195]

2001: A Space Odyssey

I think this is the first time I've seen it complete from start to end.

I remember I had started watching it more than 15 years ago, and after a while i was bored and started fast forwarding!

Well, it seems you must be a bit more mature to watch some certain films.

I can understand how in awe the audience of the late 60s must have been in front of such a creation!

This deserves to be in anyone's Bluray collection, even if it is not among his favourite films.

masterful images and sequences like no other...

The thing that moved me most and I almost cried was when

HAL was repeating "I am afraid". I felt sympathy and pity for a computer!! How's that?

Does the book offer an explanation of the ending? anyway, I'm sure there are many discussions about it, but I think I'm not in a position right now to read about them..

[Code 000. Destruct. 0. 4,260]

The book differs from the movie in a lot of ways. Kubrick and Clarke worked on the screenplay and novelization together, with each of them spearheading their own medium, basing it on a previous Clarke short story called The Sentinel. The book and its three sequels constitute their own universe, and if you read all of them, you'll have a fuller appreciation of what exactly happens in the film. But I think it's worth it to let the film sink in and watch it a few more times. It stands on its own as Kubrick's own vision of the story, rather than being a perfect mirror image of Clarke's novel version.

[Matt C 468]

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

I have to admit, this is the first time I've seen the remake in full. It's not a bad feature film debut for Zack Snyder... but the movie takes its cue from 28 Days Later, is short on characterization, and that shoot-out scene between Mehki Phifer and the nurse is more hilarious than sad. And as blood-soaked this film is, it's mostly brains being splashed and zombies being splattered. None of the grisly Savini gore that was a drawing point of the original.

It's a toss-up. It gets points for giving the story more urgency, but it short-shrifts its characters, and Snyder's direction is crude at times. But that twist ending is a wonderful homage to Fulci's Zombie.

[Quintus 5,449]

I like the added dynamic of the lonely bloke on the other roof.

[A24 4,565]

I like the humor and the film's self-consciousness of it being a zombie movie (without being a caricature like Shaun Of The Dead).

Alex

[Quintus 5,449]

Watched the first half of Blue Caprice, based on the two man team sniper killing spree in the US years ago. I'd heard it was getting rave reviews, but all I thought at the halfway point was how rubbishly dull and unengaging it was. An extremely sparse script and even thinner characterisation left me bored before the killing even begun, which possibly might have woken me up a bit once it finally got going, but I was already beyond sleepy at that point and turned it off. I may or may not bother to continue it later.

[Matt C 468]

The Little Mermaid

Brings back a lot of fond childhood memories. The songs are still great and toe-tappingly hummable, and it passes by relatively quickly. It's not without its problems, but the movie still has that potent cinematic magic. Truly one of the Disney's finest animated films.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

It's the first sign of the rise in quality after the low rent 80's.

It wasn't until Beauty and the Beast that they really became great again though.

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

Meh. I prefer THE FOX AND THE HOUND over both. More charm and character. With the 'renaissance' Disney lost some of its soul.

[Matt C 468]

It's the first sign of the rise in quality after the low rent 80's.

It wasn't until Beauty and the Beast that they really became great again though.

Beauty and the Beast is great, but The Little Mermaid was my first Disney movie ever as a kid. You never forget your first.

[Koray Savas 2,254]

The Nightmare Before Christmas was mine, though that's not really Disney.

[Quintus 5,449]

The Conjuring.

For about an hour I was thinking, damn; and I thought they just didn't make scary movies like this any more... and then modern Hollywood showed up, as per usual. Bugger. And I was really enjoying that as well.

A sequence of events so maddeningly predictable they have become the proverbial bad penny of the genre.

Even from the start it felt jarringly fresh - as eye-rolling clichés such as the family dog which sensed the usual 'presence' and wouldn't enter the new family home; was unceremoniously garotted only minutes later, and it felt great to see director James Wan playing with expectation in that way. Even the eldest daughter's first line upon moving in was a typical spoilt brat teenager whiny complaint; which for the first time ever in the history of movies actually didn't spell her impending doom, no; she was actually an okay kid immediately after as it happens. Wan was very cleverly reeling me in at this point, playing with my cynical expectations as if he were savvy to them. The swine.

And the seventies setting worked uncannily uncomfortable wonders in a way which one would never really think about until seeing this scary movie here dress the girls in long blue nighties, who wear their hair long and vigorously brushed in an era before Loreal products - the people felt authentic, like Amityville Horror characters from thirty years ago. As did the eventual bumps in the night and the malevolent mind games which followed. Oh they were very well done indeed.

For the first forty minutes of this movie I was increasingly creeped out: I'm talking shivers down the spine and tingles up the arms. One scene (the film's best) involved a naturally dark empty space behind an open door as two terrified sisterly siblings stared into its blackness trying to make out whatever might be behind it. I zoned into its empty, blacker than shadow dark space and truly searched for shapes and movement with the two of them, pretty damn concerned that I might actually see "it" at any moment. It, as it happens, turned out to be old school movie making at its best: the power of suggestion. Yeah, this was a proper haunted house movie, at last.

But then modern Hollywood came.

You can tell when a movie like this is slave to its committee of investors when you can almost see the immersion-breaking steep staircase that is the ramping up of "tension" to eleven steadily climbing right in front of you in the final twenty minutes. With the classy bits out of the way, each new scene feels like another ascending step toward all-out action fireworks and terror on a focus group scale. The music gets more urgent and obvious, the effects more elaborate and undoing, the lighting more flickery. Yes: the End Game had arrived in all its MTV glory.

And with that the latest stab at a great horror movie was lost again. In the end is was about as scary as showy chaos can be. What a f**ker it is to genuinely disappointed yet again.

2.5/5

[chuck 155]

Modern Hollywood: the crappiest place since Old Hollywood.

[Quintus 5,449]

My beauty endures.

[chuck 155]

They say beauty is never tarnished.

I guess Hollywood didn't get the memo.

[crocodile 8,520]

Deleted (wrong thread)

Why bother? Don't we always do that anyway? Discuss things in the wrong threads?

Karol