What was the last movie you saw?

Rubber (2010).
A tyre comes to life and sets out on a homicidal binge. Even the film makers slyly admit that this is a odd film (Why does this happen? No reason). Even so, I was so intrigued I couldn't stop watching. You could look at this B grade classic and think 'what the ****' or perhaps like me you could just go along for a very bizarre ride.

I finally got around to watching the Guardians of the Galaxy and loved it.

This movie, this movie, is nuts, it’s too much. Imagine writing some of this (verbatim I swear it) and putting it up for critique.
It had other titles.... do not watch the mystery science version of this, it can't be as good/bad.
ZAAT 1971
What’s Zaat you said?
Weird sound FX. Narrator (with weird Germanic accent):
Sargassom. The weed of deceit.
We see what looks like a lionfish lurking in some weeds.
Sargassom fish – mighty hunter of the deeps. What an inspiration you have been, in my plot.
Close ups of lionfish breathing, probably in an aquarium.
Your life of hiding, waiting, stalking your prey. At just the right moment – attack!
We see lionfish grab a smaller fish.
Hah, hah,hah... I love you ...I hope I’ll be a good imitator.
Lionfish swallows gourami, now we see a shark.
And my friend, the shark. Cunning, swift... wretched humans, they are afraid of you. I – admire you. Soon, I’ll swim with you. They’ll be afraid, huh,huh, heh,hah...
Now we see some kind of Rockfish.
Oh mighty scorpion! dangerous beast of the ocean, with your powerful daggers and your camouflage. You have little to fear from other fish.
More shots of rockfish, other reef fish, coral, shrimp,
Hn, Hn, Hnn Hhn, heh, ha, haaa... they think I’m insane. They’re the ones who are insane.
We see shrimp, hermit crab, puffer fish.
Oh my friends of the deep. This day, this very day, I’ll become one of you.
Shot of puffer fish swimming away.
My family.
Cut to guy on beach, looking out to sea. Narrator voice continues:
And together, we’ll conquer the universe.
Guy stands there then starts walking along beach. Guitar and flute music plays over titles. Guy walks into a place, sort of a junkyard, as moody hippie music continues.
credit Marineland of Florida, Ok that’s the fish shots then... Hippie folkrock plays on, wailing about WW2 and love and fighters and Sargassom, as our guy walks around doing nothing in particular.
Finally he enters a dark basement. Lots of pipes and machinery, he walks, slowwwly, up a flight of stairs. He plugs a little cable into a red pipe on the wall, and machinery whirs to life. Big computers and tricked-up boxes, oscillators, he has gadgets galore. His crazy narrator voice starts up again as he does something on a table, looks like he’s filling a ketchup bottle with a hose.
The formula they all laughed at... Z sub A... and A sub T. My little gem. Zaat! Very powerful. They’ll have fish the size they’ve never seen before! Walking fish - Hn, hn, ha, haa... who like human flesh.
We see guy finicking with some ropes attached to a small swimming pool in the room. Then he walks into the next room, a lab, where he opens the lid of a jar and fondles an octopus for a while. He opens a notebook and starts to read to himself.
Secure the electrodes to the denticulated portions of the pectoral spine. Tape an extra lead from the cathode to a twelve megaohm potentiometer to a point precisely above the posterior tip of the occipital process. With extreme caution, turn the dial for a current of ten to the minus six-millionthpheres..? If the formula proves correct the transformation should be perfect even to the opervescent shape of the accessory breathing organs.
He talks on to himself about the Walking Catfish, as he catches one from an aquarium. He informs us that this fish is visciously aggressive and poses a threat to all freshwater ecology. He dumps it on a table and watches the slithering and thrashing tail, whisker-barbs equipped with taste buds and so on. The largest one collected in Florida is 18 inches. The guy putters around the lab looking at a stingray and other fish in tanks.
We’re going to do something about your size. You can’t battle people being just two feet long. You must be tired. So am I. It’s been a long twenty years. But today a new life will start for me. Oh, but you know that. Your freshwater friends will be the first to experience Zaat. They’’ll outgrow you rather rapidly, mutate, then attack! One final check to be sure there’s been no change in your acidity... uh-huh.
That’s the first ten minutes. The guy turns himself into an Octo-guy. There’s a Southern sheriff and a black scientist and a bunch of hippie musicians in this one, but it is hard to watch without drifting or twitching. Good luck. Zaat’s all for now.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) directed by Hitchcock, starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. It's often said it's Hitchcock's favorite and it's probably in the ballpark of my second favorite. There's a little more discussion of it (and a whole thread on Hitchcock) elsewhere in the film forum.

Destroy All Planets (1968) Gamera (turtle extraordinaire -with jets and fire breathe) takes on evil aliens who want the Earth for themselves. The monster gets a child-friendly makeover for this movie and whilst the target audience is obviously young boys, it can't hide or excuse the limitations here. With a good sprinkling of old footage from previous films to pad it out, this fails to be anything other than plodding, mediocre and just plain bad (not good bad but boring, bad bad).

Note 1) Why do I always find myself hoping that the annoying genius kid in these kinds of flicks gets killed? (he never does - unfortunately).

Note 2) No planets were destroyed or even slightly harmed in the making of this movie - so much for the title

I just watched "The Day The Earth Stood Still" of 1951 for the first time. It's an interesting anti-war film. I was surprised at the level of hostility from Earth people in the movie. The people panicked, the military showed a "shoot first ask questions later" attitude during the entire story. Despite the fact that the aliens never harmed anyone, few people were even open to the idea that he may have come in peace. Granted, this was post-WW2 and I am probably in the wrong generation to truly appreciate this film.

I like Klaatu as a person. When with individuals, Klaatu seemed kind, curious, intelligent, and with a genuine desire to help people. But the general message he gave at the end was basically "Be at peace or we will destroy you". His reason for why Earth would be destroyed wasn't at all out of consideration for the people of Earth, but for the sake of other peaceful planets. It's a bit of a mixed message, considering his personality as shown to the individuals he met.

I think the book "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke handled a similar theme in a much better way.

The Public Enemy (1931) James Cagney and Jean Harlow get together in what is (as far as I'm concerned) still one of the best gangster movies ever made. Filled with great performances, great lines (my favourite: Hey, Stoop, that's got gears. It ain't no Ford) and the grapefruit scene. If you've never seen this one and you like gangster movies, do yourself a favour and watch it ASAP.
Superb

J-Sun said:

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) directed by Hitchcock, starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. It's often said it's Hitchcock's favorite and it's probably in the ballpark of my second favorite. There's a little more discussion of it (and a whole thread on Hitchcock) elsewhere in the film forum.

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Just watched Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) on TCM. Joel McCrea was much better than in most of the pot-boiler westerns he used to do (not counting Ride The High Country, which was great). Edmund Gwenn was riveting as the chubby assassin, Rowley; a far cry from Miracle on 34th Street. But the star of the film was Hitch. His masterful use of banal settings to evoke suspense (the shooting in a sea of umbrellas, the cat & mouse game in a Dutch windmill) is amazing. A little over the top in the ending, but captivating nonetheless. Worth a viewing if you get the chance.

Sounds pretty good. I haven't seen many westerns but McCrea's pretty good in Preston Sturges movies. Interesting you mention a slight problem with the ending since I often find that in Hitchcock films.

Moontrap. I remember reading about this years ago and thought that it sounded interesting but never actually got around to watching it. Well, it was on TV last night and it was truly awful.

Someone on Tumblr recently posted about "good old cyberpunk" movies and one of the movies recommended was a French movie called Crysalis. I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be quite decent.

Moontrap. I remember reading about this years ago and thought that it sounded interesting but never actually got around to watching it. Well, it was on TV last night and it was truly awful.

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The inflatable tent was OK but you are right the rest of it is utter sh*te.

Last night, in my effort to reduce the huge backlog of old VHS tapes I own and can't throw out till I have watched them at least once, I suffered Sucker the Vampire. I should have turned off after spotting Lloyd Kaufman's name as a producer on the opening credits. Afterwards (according to the IMDb) I find it had a staggering budget of $55,000. I don't know what they spent the money on but it didn't show on the screen.

JunkMonkey said:

The inflatable tent was OK but you are right the rest of it is utter sh*te.

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The one with Ensign Chekov (Walter Koenig). I'd totally forgotten about it. Not one for the time capsule. So much for his leading man film career.

The Great Dictator (1940). Hard to believe I'd never seen this Charlie Chaplin vehicle. We've all seen clips of his juggling the globe of the world, but to see this movie in its entirety is to witness a barely cobbled together string of almost unrelated scenes. From the orchestrated shave that barber Chaplin gives a customer to the "hide the coin" farce of potential martyrs trying to conceal their short straw, it barely hung together. Considering its early WW II vintage, I suppose I should give it quite a bit of slack for its heavy handed castigation of the villains, the erstwhile Nazis disguised as "Tomanians". But in the end the film seemed to simply serve as a build-up to Chaplin's closing speech of freedom and world unity. Billed as a satire, much of what was intended to be funny fell flat for me. Jewish persecution just isn't amusing. I believe Chaplin understood this later.

Last night I watched the first Scream film - hilarious! I'm sure it wasn't meant to be, but I couldn't stop myself laughing whenever the killer was chasing after people and being shown up as obviously a person, complete with "ooof!"s whenever they were hit with something.

Night before I watched Stake Land - a recent-ish film in which a vampire plague has swept across America. Predictable, but it wasn't bad. Kinda like a grimmer, bloodier, less humourous Zombieland, with vampires in place of zombies.

Ghosts of Hanley House (1968)

Written and directed by Louise Sherrill.

This obscure, ultra-low budget, old-fashioned ghost story is the only old horror movie I can remember which was written and directed by a woman. (I'm sure some smart person will provide me with other examples.) Most reviewers dismiss it as a snoozer, while a few find it to be of interest. Let's see if we can figure out why.

We begin with an effectively surreal opening sequence. As the soundtrack is filled with a woman's screams, we see quick scenes in an empty house. Doors open and close by themselves, clocks run quickly backwards and forwards. The only evidence of a human being is a pair of hands reaching for an axe. Without a word of dialogue, we know that something Very Bad has happened at Hanley House.

The simple credits follow. (Did you ever notice that extremely cheap movies usually list every single person in the cast during the opening credits, no matter how small a part each one plays? This movie lists something like twenty or thirty actors, although there are fewer than ten characters that I can recall having a speaking part, and about half a dozen with a role of real importance.) Under the credits we see Hanley House, which looks like a pretty ordinary place.

The real story begins with two young guys discussing ghosts in a diner. One offers to buy the other a new Ferrari if he'll spend the night in Hanley House. (I presume the guy making the offer must be filthy rich, although there is no other evidence of this.) After talking to an elderly woman who fills him in on the legend of Hanley House -- the couple who lived there disappeared a couple of years ago, anyone who tried to stay there went insane and/or committed suicide -- the young man decides to take the bet.

Along for the fun are the young man's buddy (I think the guy who made the bet, although I may be wrong), an older man who may be the young man's employer (again, I could be mistaken), the older man's pretty young cousin, and another woman who is the local psychic/medium. It's all very much like The Haunting with no stars and no budget.

The movie slows down quite a bit during this middle sequence, which no doubt accounts for the attitude of its detractors. The intrepid five investigators spend some time drinking beer, playing cards, and dancing. Although I can agree that this seems pretty silly when we're expecting a scary story, it also seems pretty realistic.

The strange stuff starts with odd happenings such as a black widow spider (unseen by the viewer) showing up then vanishing. Weird marks appear on the wall. The clocks act up again. A small locked box appears from nowhere. An portrait of the woman who used to live there moves by itself. (And it's a weird portrait, too. She's shown with a halo, as if she were a saint, but she is also discretely covering up what appear to be her bare breasts.) The young cousin feels herself being strangled by a pair of hands that disappear.

In these sequences of spooky events, the movie shows both its lack of resources and a trace of imagination. The special effects are very cheaply done, but sometimes create a genuinely eerie mood. There are a few scenes from the outside (presumably not seen by the folks inside) of the silhouette of a man, which suddenly changes from black to white. Later, when the five go outside, we seen a couple of shots of a huge glowing sphere.

The psychic decides to hold a seance to communicate with the spirits doing all this stuff. It was interesting to note that this ceremony involves a cross. Later, when directly talking to a ghost, she uses the phrase "In the name of the Lord" when demanding to know what it wants. Making the psychic a practitioner of Christian white magic made this a little more interesting. I wonder if the writer/director was influenced by the Christian Spiritualist movement which was popular in the 19th and early 20th century, and which still survives in some churches today.

The seance is done cheaply. We see no manifestations. Instead, the medium speaks to various spirits (not the ones haunting the house) calmly and directly, rather like an adult talking to lonely children, promising them that she will speak to them later. This was an interesting touch.

Ghosts of Hanley House treats its haunting seriously. The ghosts are real, and have motives. If you suspect that one of the five investigators has a Dark Secret which is connected with the haunting, go to the head of the screenwriting class.

I may have made this movie sound better than it is. The tiny budget shows through in every scene. The acting ranges from adequate to poor. Although some scenes are visually interesting, many others are dull or so dark that you can't see what's going on. The director has an odd habit of having an actor, who is supposedly talking to another character, speak directly to the camera. The sound quality is terrible, and some dialogue is impossible to understand. And yet I found it interesting enough to stick with it.

Hanley House is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Upstream Color

One of the most serene and engrossing films I've seen for a long time. Nothing is explained, and you never get into the characters heads -- throughout the film, you are just an observer, and it sucks you in, making you figure out what's going on.

It's a film that's an experience, and it's amazing.

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UC is the second film by Shane Carruth, whose first, Primer, I'm watching now, just for kicks.

EDIT: Well, I'm improving! First time I watched Primer, I was lost after about half an hour or so. Made it nearly to the hour mark on this second viewing. A few more and I'll get it entirely!

Guardians of the Galaxy . My favorite sumer film and now my favorite Marvel film.

The November Man. Pierce Brosnan is a retired CIA operative brought back for one last job. Things go pear shaped quickly and chaos ensues.

If Brosnan had been allowed to play Bond the way he acts in this film, he'd still be playing Bond. This film was a very pleasant surprise. It's not without it's flaws, but overall it's a very enjoyable film if you like spy stories.

It's crazy what you can talk yourself into watching whilst idly browsing Netflix.

John Carter

What's crazier, is that I didn't think this was that bad a film. In fact, it was a fairly good film! Bit long, but hey, fantastical romps on Mars don't get filmed every year.