What was the last movie you saw?

[JunkMonkey]

Kung Fu Hustle with Number Two Daughter who really liked Shaolin Soccer but agrees that this one is better.

 

[AE35Unit]

Paranormal Activity 4
Still makes me jump at the end and I know its coming.
Love films that do that (Carrie is another with a jumpy ending)

 

[Dave Vicks]

EXCALIBUR. 1981

Up next URBAN COWBOY.

 

[hitmouse]

6 Underground (2019) despite some elegant action set-pieces, this film lacks any charm or coherence.

 

[KGeo777]

BEN (opened this week in 1972). I remember seeing this played often on tv but other than Lee Montgomery, I recalled no one else in the cast--which has many familiar faces.

Gene Siskel gave it 3 1/2 stars while Roger Ebert gave it 1 1/2. I don't think the latter understood that it was a drama--he felt it was supposed to be a exploitation film. Not with Bing Crosby Productions involved! I know someone who has rats as pets and she enjoys telling people that the song Ben was in fact a love song to a rat.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Man vs Bee

Is this a movie or a tv series? It's 9 'episodes' that follow on directly from each other to make a seamless 100 minute story. So that for me is a movie.

Anyway, it was very enjoyable, and Rowan Atkinson capturing the flavour of how funny Mr Bean was when it first came on our tv screens. It's perhaps about 20 minutes too long, and one or two missed opportunities to make it funnier, but there were plenty of laugh out loud moments to make it worth the while.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

I finally watched the new Dune on a flight last week. What a disappointment! Incredibly tedious. And can someone tell me why every action/drama movie these days must have those ridiculous choreographed martial-arts-style fight scenes? They destroy any gravitas that may have built up in the mean time. Honestly, I have no idea what people see in this stuff.

 

[PadreTX]

Top Gun: Maverick

Great movie. I'm pleasantly surprised a sequel could be made thirty-six years later, and is outright fun to watch.

 

[AE35Unit]

I must be the only one who didn't like the original Top Gun. Utter pants.

 

[Happy Joe]

...watched Hold That Ghost with Abbot and Costello last night; just for something different... not particularly good, but different.

Enjoy!

 

[REBerg]

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
CGI: As always, marvelous! Plot: not so much.

 

[Coops]

I Think We're Alone Now (2018)
Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning
A last man on Earth story with a twist ending. Slow at times, and the dialogue was very low volume, but not bad overall.

 

[Jeffbert]

The Tunnel (1934)
A British remake of a French/German movie from 1932.
An engineer’s dream of building a trans-Atlantic tunnel becomes an overwhelming obsession. Seemingly insurmountable obstacles and a devastating effect on his home life means the tunnel is his white whale and he is an ultimately redeemable Ahab.

It has Richard Dix in the lead role with a cameo from Walter Huston as the US President. British performances are with upper lips excessively stiff and dialogue done in that rigid BBC accent of the time.
Screenplay by Curt Siodmak.
Nothing startling.

I saw this several years ago; rather impressive for its depiction of the excavation, etc.

I saw that in a theater when it first came out. (That was a movie house that showed somewhat odder things than most.) It wasn't my first experience with a giallo (that would be Blood and Black Lace, seen when I was far too young for its violent content) but it was long before I knew the genre existed. I agree that it's not up to the level of Deep Red or The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. (somehow I've never managed to see The Cat O' Nine Tails, among his early giallo films.) Even at the time, I thought the plot gimmick of shining a laser through the murder victim's detached eyeball in order to view the last thing seen was silly.

The Invisible Ray had a similar thing that likewise somehow recovered the last thing the victim saw. A more likely idea is that a destroyed robot's memory would reveal the criminal, etc. which was an element in the ASTROBOY episode called SPACE AIRPORT R-45.

Stalker (1979)
Andrei Tarkovsky’s film based on the novel Roadside Picnic.

Set in an anonymous country, framed in a decrepit landscape, two men are led by a Stalker (a person able to navigate the awaiting dangers) into The Zone where their physical journey is paralleled by a metaphysical trek of self discovery and faith (or lack of).

A well shot movie I’d say is more interesting than outright entertaining.

I was very disappointed by this film, as I could find nothing even resembling science fiction in it! That, & it was rather long.




THE GUILTY (1947) I start with the most recently watched film, as it has been a while since I last posted here.

NOIR ALLEY. Identical twin sisters Estelle & Linda Mitchell (Bonita Granville) one of whom is murdered, it is assumed by a guy suffering from post-war terrors, Johnny Dixon (Wally Cassell) and who has times of memory blanked, recalls nothing, etc. Muller mentioned the unreliable narrator Mike Carr (Don Castle, whom Muller said was a poor man's Clark Gable) who was the Corporal under the other guy as lieutenant. Carr tries his best to convince Dixon to surrender to the police, but Dixon, assuming he killed the girl, and suffered a lapse of memory, wants to flee.

A really decent little noir film with a twist ending. Recommended!

Oh! I almost forgot that I knew two such "identical" twins when I was in my early 20s. They were members of the church I had recently joined, & it was several years before I saw the two side by side. I was continually confusing them. But, seeing them together, their differences were obvious. Paul was broad shouldered, at least compared to Mark, who was thin. Anyway, after two decades of life, those born identical twins might not actually be identical anymore, with different personalities, etc., one might be more physically active than the other, thus small but noticeable differences should develop. Just not in movies.

 

[hitmouse]

I finally watched the new Dune on a flight last week. What a disappointment! Incredibly tedious. And can someone tell me why every action/drama movie these days must have those ridiculous choreographed martial-arts-style fight scenes? They destroy any gravitas that may have built up in the mean time. Honestly, I have no idea what people see in this stuff.

I am not surprised this was disapoointimg as an in-flight movie. It really needs to be seen in a cinema.

 

[AstroZon]

The Martian Chronicles (1980) Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernie Casey

This was a made for TV mini-series based on the Ray Bradbury novel and consisting of 3, two hour segments. It's quite long and often dry, but it does have it's moments. It starts with a Martian woman having a vision of humans landing on Mars which prompts her husband to seek out the Earth astronauts and kill them. The best scene, IMO, is when Jeff Spender (Bernie Casey) finally gets to Mars and becomes totally entranced with ancient Martian philosophy - so much so that he is willing to kill those who don't share his vision. There is also a rather profound scene where Father Peregrine sees a vision of Jesus Christ in his church. However Jesus is actually a Martian who appears to humans in a form from the human's subconscious.

It's ok, but worth a watch if you have the time.

 

[AE35Unit]

Paranormal Activity, Next of Kin
Not your regular PA movie. A woman sets out with two male pals to make a documentary of a group of Amish people out in the sticks...

 

[paranoid marvin]

The Martian Chronicles (1980) Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernie Casey

This was a made for TV mini-series based on the Ray Bradbury novel and consisting of 3, two hour segments. It's quite long and often dry, but it does have it's moments. It starts with a Martian woman having a vision of humans landing on Mars which prompts her husband to seek out the Earth astronauts and kill them. The best scene, IMO, is when Jeff Spender (Bernie Casey) finally gets to Mars and becomes totally entranced with ancient Martian philosophy - so much so that he is willing to kill those who don't share his vision. There is also a rather profound scene where Father Peregrine sees a vision of Jesus Christ in his church. However Jesus is actually a Martian who appears to humans in a form from the human's subconscious.

It's ok, but worth a watch if you have the time.

And Mars with bright blue skies....

I agree, it really is a must watch for anyone who hasn't seen it. Plenty of memorable moments, the most memorable for me being the Martians in their 'sand ships' pursuing Parkhill.

Bit of a surprise that this hasn't been remade by Netflix or Amazon.

 

[hitmouse]

And Mars with bright blue skies....

I agree, it really is a must watch for anyone who hasn't seen it. Plenty of memorable moments, the most memorable for me being the Martians in their 'sand ships' pursuing Parkhill.

Bit of a surprise that this hasn't been remade by Netflix or Amazon.

This made a very big impression on me back in the day.

 

[Dave Vicks]

ELMER GANTRY 1960

 

[JunkMonkey]

Zombie Lake (Le lac des morts vivants) 1981 - dear mother of the gods that was dreadful. A very very long painful 83 minutes. co-written by Jess Franco and co-directed by Jean Rollin it managed to combine the worst elements of both and produce probably the woodenestly acted, least coherent , most boring zombie movie I think I have seen.

Just outside a small village in France a lake "Lake of the Dammed" is strangely attractive to nubile young women who have a seemingly irresistible urge to take all their clothes off and splash about in it. Then after an interminable time spent with the camera underwater, getting as many crotch shots as the market will bear, the Nazi Zombies living at the bottom of the lake eat them. The Nazi Zombies, the victims of a Maquis ambush, invade the village. Then they go back to the lake, Then they invade the village again, and then go back to the lake, and then they invade the village again... and by now everyone is very familiar with the same bits of footage used over and over again. Eventually the pre-teen daughter of one of the zombies (I kid you not) gets a bucket of blood and lures them all to the old mill where she was conceived - before her dad was machine gunned and zombified obviously. (Once she's safely out of the way the villagers wheel in their home made flame-thrower and incinerate the lot.) The end.

Highlights included:
Spotting the camera operator in a mirror - I think he had just reframed the hand held shot to avoid showing us any more of the lighting cables he'd just been showing us and didn't notice he'd managed to include himself in the picture .
A huge piece of blackout material suddenly appearing across another mirror in the same scene - presumably there to avoid showing us the lights the cables were attached to.
A background extra in one dramatic scene catching someone else's eye and having a fit of the giggles.
People leaving a building, rushing across the village, and arriving at exactly the same building which was now, supposedly, somewhere completely different.
And more shots of under-reheased people standing about uneasily being not quite sure what to do than I thought humanly possible.

Another one for the big book of 1001 Films No One Should Have to Watch Beyond the Opening Credits.