What was the last movie you saw?

[BAYLOR]

I have not seen the film, but the book is terrific.

Yes , The book was great.

The movie not so great.

 

[Vince W]

Tetris. A film of half-truths and outright lies about how Tetris came to be such a hit, but it’s a fairly entertaining film of half-truths and outright lies. Ron Howard has a remarkable ability to make ‘true-life’ stories gripping.

 

[KGeo777]

ACE ELI AND RODGER OF THE SKIES - 1973 Was curious about this mainly due to Pamela Franklin although it was also a story by Steven Spielberg. Disappointing as I expected it to be given how little it gets mentioned. A 1920s pilot (Cliff Robertson) who takes his son out of their rural homestead to tour around the countryside, revealing that both of them are too dysfunctional to make it in the big town after Franklin takes a liking to them. I figured she had a pretty boring part until the end when she goes into a reliable freak mode and scares the two back to their rural roots. Coincidentally, it premiered on April Fool's Day and the ending kind of fits into that--given what happens to them and the greater realization that the audience is the fool for having watched it.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Damaged Lives (1933)

Cult director Edgar G. Ulmer helmed this American/Canadian pre-Code exploitation drama. Young man gets invited to a "business meeting" by older guy that turns out to be a night of drinking and carrying on. OIder guy ditches his girlfriend for another woman, young guy gets together with her, they have an implied one-night stand. The result is that she gives him syphilis and he gives it to his wife, whom he married soon after the one-night stand. Suicide attempts, successful and not, follow, along with visit to a quack who claims to cure "blood diseases." Eventually the young married couple get the real facts from a genuine MD and start treatment. (Not really accurate information; during a tour of other patients with the problem -- no medical privacy here! -- the doc claims one guy got syphilis from a pipe.) Cheap, talky, and melodramatic, but there's one scene that is quite effective. Without dialogue and with only very quiet music on the soundtrack, the wife slowly goes around drawing the drapes across the windows, intent on killing herself and her sleeping husband by turning on the gas.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Duel

Not as good a movie as I remember it being. Although it's effectively a 90 minute car chase, it does keep your interest, but I just think that the ending is just a little unsatisfactory. It's almost a great movie, but perhaps they may have been better sticking to the original 75 minute running time.

The Hitcher, which I consider to be in the same universe as Duel, is for me the better movie.

 

[BAYLOR]

Duel

Not as good a movie as I remember it being. Although it's effectively a 90 minute car chase, it does keep your interest, but I just think that the ending is just a little unsatisfactory. It's almost a great movie, but perhaps they may have been better sticking to the original 75 minute running time.

The Hitcher, which I consider to be in the same universe as Duel, is for me the better movie.

Some of the footage from Duel was actually reused in an episode of The Incredible Hulk.

 

[Foxbat]

Jaws (1975)
This is one that Spielberg has expressed regret in misrepresenting the Great White and the subsequent rush to hunt sharks. Of course, the decline in shark population is due to many complex causes and, although the movie may not have helped, overfishing and, in particular, the demand for shark fins (acquired by a brutal and utterly cruel method…..so much so that if cute little kittens or puppies were treated in this way, there would be a world wide outcry).

As a movie, I still think it’s a powerful piece of cinema and still one of Spielberg’s best.

For anybody interested

Facts about Shark Finning — Shark Research Institute

Facts about the practice of shark finning and how it is destroying shark populations globally and putting our oceanic ecosystems at grave risk. Shark Research Institute (SRI) conducts and sponsors rigorous field research about sharks and uses science-based information to educate and advocate for sha

www.sharks.org

 

[paranoid marvin]

Harry Brown

Far more violent than I remember it first time around, and much more graphic than the first Death Wish movie which it clearly takes its ideas from. Michael Caine is pretty chilling as the ageing ex-Royal Marine who gets pushed too far. Thanks to the numerous WW2 movies he's been in, it's an easy transition to imagine him as one of the characters from those stories.

 

[Yozh]

Noseferatu— special showing at local theater with accompanist on electric organ. Very glad I saw this. I now realize that I have been seeing homages to this film—particularly Max Schreck—all my life.

It’s hard to watch such a historic movie in modern times though. The audience (myself included) would just burst out laughing at scenes and effects that 1920s viewers would not have found funny.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Legacy of Satan (1974)

Rotten little supernatural shocker written and directed by Gerard Damiano, much better known for pornographic films. Ordinary-looking guy is the leader of a blood-drinking cult. He sets his sights on a young married woman as his next "queen." (This supposedly happens once every 1000 years, so I suppose the guy's supposed to be an immortal vampire or some such.) Tedious dream sequences and hallucinations later, it works. Husband, who happens to be dressed in this goofy-looking satin suit for a costume party, attacks the leader with what is clearly a glowing plastic toy sword. This does the trick, but wife, now fully converted to the dark side, gets him killed. She also kills another cult member so her blood can be used to revive the badly injured (translation: wearing goopy makeup on his face) leader. Film just ends, with no resolution as to whether the leader will be healed or not. Barely worth a soft PG,. with a tiny bit of blood. There's an abysmal electronic soundtrack that will make you yearn for the calming sound of fingernails on a chalk board.

 

[Bick]

A re-watch of Silent Running. I love this 1972 film. I’d forgotten the Joan Baez infused soundtrack.

 

[AE35Unit]

K-Pax (2001)
Kevin Spacey as a psych patient who believes he is an alien from the planet in the title.
Pretty good actually

 

[AE35Unit]

A re-watch of Silent Running. I love this 1972 film. I’d forgotten the Joan Baez infused soundtrack.

Love that film so much

 

[CupofJoe]

Noseferatu— special showing at local theater with accompanist on electric organ. Very glad I saw this. I now realize that I have been seeing homages to this film—particularly Max Schreck—all my life.

It’s hard to watch such a historic movie in modern times though. The audience (myself included) would just burst out laughing at scenes and effects that 1920s viewers would not have found funny.

About 10 years ago I was passing through Berlin to a wedding in Poland. On the night of the wedding there was a full restored showing of Nosferatu with a live orchestra [and I think a talk about it before hand] at a theatre in Berlin.
I really thought and debated about skipping the wedding to see it. I wish I had now. The marriage lasted a few years, but the memories of that event would have lasted for ever...

 

[Jeffbert]

PHANTOMS, INC (?) One of those short filler films that TCM runs after the feature film. The guy who would be best known for the role of the newspaper editor in The Adventures of Superman, here is a cop investigating those who defraud the bereaved with fake seances, etc.



Quo Vadis (1951) nearly 3, count 'em, three hours long. For such a film, there were only, three, count 'em, 3 actors whose names I recognized!

Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor) is the general leading a triumphant Legion home to Rome. The Hero.
Lygia (Deborah Kerr) is one of the many Christians, living in the shadows, fearful of discovery. The hero eventually falls in love with her.
Emperor Nero (Peter Ustinov) The villain, who lives in luxury, decides he wants to remodel Rome, but how to dispose of the current Rome? Burn it down, and blame it on the Christians.

How much was history? Some, no doubt.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Black Phone

This felt like a combination of a Stephen King short story and the tv show Stranger Things. Very well written and produced, and the child actors are absolutely outstanding in their performances.

 

[Jeffbert]

ADVENTURES OF A ROOKIE (1943) in ripping-off Abbott & Costello, RKO's Carney and Brown duo was short lived. One was tall, thin, and intelligent, the other was short, fat, and dim. Not bad, but not really memorable, either.

So, this nightclub entertainer is singing about everything we do in support of our troops, and while singing, he is handed a letter from Uncle Sam. Reminds me of a certain Daffy Duck cartoon, as Daffy is doing his best to evade the little man from the draft board.

Anyway three, not two guys are frequently together, one other, who is taller than the tall guy already mentioned, and is burdened with the other two. I enjoyed it, but once is enough.

Again, the guy (John Hamilton) who would be the editor of the Daily Planet in The Adventures of Superman, is here; but this time, he is Colonel Wilson, the C.O. of the camp.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Violent and the Damned (1962)

Schlockmeister Jerry Warren took the 1954 Brazilian film Maos Sangrentas ("Bloody Hands"), chopped it up, and added pointless new scenes of American actors talking in an office. It's impossible to judge the original fairly, since everything but action scenes appears to have been taken out. What's left is an intense, violent film of prisoners in a Devil's Island kind of place staging a huge riot, busting out, and trying to survive in the jungle and desert as the authorities track them down. Impressive filming, which makes the new footage look even blander than it is.

 

[AstroZon]

Noseferatu— special showing at local theater with accompanist on electric organ. Very glad I saw this. I now realize that I have been seeing homages to this film—particularly Max Schreck—all my life.

It’s hard to watch such a historic movie in modern times though. The audience (myself included) would just burst out laughing at scenes and effects that 1920s viewers would not have found funny.

You're right about the homages. They're everywhere. Nightmare Before Christmas comes to mind. And besides the direct references to Max Schreck, German Expressionism led directly to American Film Noir.

 

[paranoid marvin]

You're right about the homages. They're everywhere. Nightmare Before Christmas comes to mind. And besides the direct references to Max Schreck, German Expressionism led directly to American Film Noir.

I vaguely remember watching a movie quite a few years ago, which was about the making of Nosferatu. 'Shadow of the Vampire' - produced by Nicolas Cage of all people! I think I need to try to watch it again, as I remember it being quite interesting.