What was the last movie you saw?

The Union (2024) Netflix movie. Mark Wahlberg is Mike, a construction worker, good with heights, who has never been far from New Jersey. Halle Berry is his high school sweetheart, Roxanne, who is actually a spy, and recruits him to join yet another secret organisation, this time with a headquarters in the BT Tower, London, which is blown up. The film does what it says on the tin but is nothing special.
 
China Doll (1958) Cliff Brandon (Victor Mature) ia a pilot of a plane bringing supplies to Allied troops in WWII China. & wouldn't you know it, he falls in love with a Chinese girl, Shu-Jen (Li Li Hua). ...
...
They marry, and have a daughter, but there is a war, so things do not go smoothly.

A very unexpected ending.

7/10
 
Having recently finished reading Doctor Sleep (very good novel), I decided to watch the movie of the same name.

I found it oddly structured. The first half of the movie is a streamlined rendition of the plot of the novel up to a certain point. Then, it switches and extrapolates from the movie version of The Shining (including score and certain camera shots). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing - it just took me by surprise a little. It has the advantage that, if you’ve already read the book, the ending this time around is quite a bit different.

Overall, a pretty good movie that I’d recommend to any Stephen King fan:)
 
Escapade in Japan (1957) When a passenger plane crashes, a little boy is rescued by a Japanese fisherman. The man's son, overhears papa talking about summoning the police, & fears that the rescued boy will be arrested. So, he takes him away, hoping to evade the police (who are looking to take him to his parents).

Richard Saunders (Cameron Mitchell) the boy's father, Mary Saunders (Teresa Wright) his mother, are worried, receiving news that the police had just missed the kids; nobody knows why they ran away. So, they end-up at historical sites, etc., until finally reuniting young Tony (Jon Provost) with his parents. The family that took him in: Kei Tanaka (Susumu Fujita), Michiko Tanaka (Kuniko Miyake), & son, Asahiko Tanaka (Roger Nakagawa).

Interesting, if only because the various sites; but the drama faced by the parents was rather intense.

7/10
 
Bridge to the Sun (1961) A Japanese diplomat in Washington DC
Hidenari Terasaki (James Shigeta), just a few years before WWII, meets an American woman, Gwen (Carroll Baker) who falls for him. They marry & start a family, and then --- Pearl Harbor is attacked, etc. Suddenly, they are suffering verbal abuse from the Caucasian Americans, because of the father and daughter, so, they move to Japan, & there, they suffer discrimination because of the Caucasian wife.

Sad, intense, 8/10
 
The Scapegoat (1959) A British French-language teacher, John Barratt (Alec Guinness), while on vacation in France, meets his double Jacques De Gué (Alec Guinness) at a bar. They talk for a while, & drink too much. Next morning, The English guy finds himself identified as the Frenchman, & expected to go along with the fraud. The only one who does not recognize him as De Gué, is the daughter's dog, that snarls at him. Nobody but he, and the daughter witness the incident, & it seems to me, he should have used that as evidence that he was not who they insisted he was.

Yet, there is much more to it, than that! Countess De Gué (Bette Davis), is elderly and apparently bedridden, & addicted to morphine, which she expects Jacques to bring her. Moreover, there being no male born to Jacques, clause 14, paragraph 2, of a will, specifies that the inheritance will be divided in such a way that Countess De Gué finds very displeasing.

Already wrote too much! Hitchcock could have made this film, & been proud of it!

9/10
 
MURDERER'S CLUB OF BROOKLYN - 1967 - Jerry Cotton film series entry involving kidnappings in New York. They have a unique method of inserting people into filmed backgrounds. A sequence involving a truck chase is rather hi-tech in action because of the method they use. Similar to what they did in Mission Impossible 1996 with the helicopter and train scene.
 

Deadpool & Wolverine​

2024 Marvel Studios film by Shawn Levy

Even more Ryan Reynolds winking at the camera. This film is the a very intentional and "over-the-top" compilation of everything wrong with Marvel Movies. The film is an endless stream of familiar places, cameos, montages, "easter eggs," over-the-top fight scenes between characters who know that neither of them can die, and on and on. And look at all the random props in the background that you missed on the first viewing. They really opened up the storeroom to scatter props around the background. I guess I'll have to go back and see it again to find out how many random props and sight gags I missed...

And the producers, including Ryan Reynolds, decided that movie goers will celebrate this celebration of everything wrong with Marvel Movies because Ryan Reynolds (and other characters) repeatedly tell you how clever they are for creating a movie that is a celebration of Marvel Movie tropes. Yes, the actors speak directly to the camera to tell you how clever and meta this film is.

This is my last Marvel film, and I wish that the Marvel film I watched 8 or so years ago (that I can't remember) had been.
 
I haven't watched the Deadpool films but I suppose they are a type of spoof or parody, to an extent at least. Is it funny at all?
 
All-American Chump (1936) Elmer Lamb (Stuart Erwin) has a knack for numbers, & when three carnival owners meet him, they decide to use his talent & their management to earn big bucks. Bill Hogan (Robert Armstrong), Jeffrey Crane (Edmund Gwenn), & Kitty Crane (Betty Furness) 1st try pitting him against an adding machine, but cannot draw a big enough crowd. While on a train (choo-choo), Pudgy Murphy (Edward Brophy), is searching for a 4th at Bridge, & grabs Lamb. J. Montgomery Brantley (E. E. Clive), an expert at the game, whose book is a best-seller, is one of the players, whom Lamb crushes.

Now the three carnies have a winner! But he is just not interested in playing Bridge for money or any other reason. All he wants is to buy a certain dairy farm, because he loves cows.

Rather amusing when Bill Hogan (Robert Armstrong), calls Lamb "The eighth wonder of the world" the same term his earlier character said about King Kong!

A thoroughly entertaining b-grade comedy!

8/10
 
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A Thief In The Night (1973) No way to describe this film, without religion, but I will try.

The big event of the one particular religion occurs one day, & poor Patty Myers (Patty Dunning) was left behind. Finding the situation very much not to her liking, she can only wish she had been prepared. Too late for regrets!

the 1st of 4 films made to frighten certain people into converting.

5/10; not really worth watching, unless you are a fan of this genre.
 
36 Hours of Hell - 1969 --starring the Ryan Reynolds of the B movie, Richard Harrison. Actually though RH gets dubbed a lot which helps him. RR would benefit from a voice dubbing too I think. Or at least this audience member would benefit. This is a macaroni war movie but unusual in that it is set in the Pacific and involves an American unit going to an island after allies bombed it to see if there are any survivors. A Swedish doctor woman is a captive of the Japanese-although she is content to help them since all the islanders were killed by the allied bombing. And they show all the bombs that they dropped at the beginning with endless archive footage. A lot of bombs. The most interesting character is the Japanese commander who is determined to fight to the last man without any unnecessary reflection or cartoonish behavior. Let's talk about the historical lecture part. We learn from the voice over at the start that the Australians launched their big offensive in November 1945. And there's a couple of soldiers (one of whom has a topless photo of Lena Horne in his helmet) killed 3 times. War is hell and also very confusing.
 
Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (1965)

Only half an hour long, this was originally shown as part of a live spook show in movie theaters. At one point, folks dressed up as monsters enter the theater and grab a young woman as if they were going in and out of the film. Other than that, what we have is an ultra-cheap parody of monster movies. A guy wearing a coat with the words MAD DOCTOR on it rants at the audience a while, then the opening credits are spoken while a guy in a gorilla suit messes around. The actual film has some young women staying in a spooky house for a sorority initiation. The Mad Doctor and his vampiric assistant Draculina and a guy in a gorilla suit capture one of the women and turn her into a gorilla. The boyfriends of the women show up, as does a werewolf. It's all played for broad comedy. The werewolf's pants fall down to reveal his boxer shorts etc. Very silly stuff.
 
The Empire Strikes Back was at the Prince Charles last night. It looked absolutely stunning in 4k. Wonderful viewing and very emotional for me. Made me remember why i love Star Wars.

They have Return of the Jedi showing on the 19th. Gonna try and book that as well.
 
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The Terminal Man (1974)

From the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. Brilliant computer scientist suffers from episodes of violence, apparently caused by brain damage during a car accident. Surgeons put devices in his brain to stop the episodes. It doesn't work out well.

Sounds like a thriller, but instead this is mostly a very cold film, much more interested in visuals (white on white, black on white, etc.) than plot. A murder is shown almost entirely as bright red blood filling up the cracks between white floor tiles.

It moves as slowly as a Kubrick film. The operation is shown in detail, lasting several minutes. The violence doesn't start until well over an hour into the film.

Not for all tastes, indeed, but interesting to look at.
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Dracula and Son (Dracula père et fils, 1976)

French comedy. Christopher Lee stars as a vampire aristocrat (never actually called Dracula) who has a son by one of his "brides" in the late 18th century. Father and son have to leave Transylvania in modern times. Son winds up as a laborer in Paris (some social commentary here on immigration) and Dad becomes a movie star in London, appearing in vampire films. The two eventually get together, but conflict breaks out when they both become interested in the same woman.

It's not a farce or a spoof -- many scenes could have been taken from a serious vampire movie -- but a gentle, witty comedy. Smiles rather than belly laughs. Apparently an early English language version was severely cut and dubbed with "wacky" jokes, but what I saw was the original version dubbed into English (Lee providing his own voice.) I liked it.
 
MR. NO LEGS -1978 - -take John Agar, Lloyd Bochner, Richard Jaeckel, Ron Howard's dad, a charisma-challenged actor in his first role and the leading man, and a double amputee martial artist hitman who uses a wheelchair with shotguns and ninja throwing stars built into it as the title character, put it under the direction of the Creature From the Black Lagoon, and you get a kind of interesting mess. The fight scenes with Mr. No Legs are quite impressive--the rest of it is not. Apparently the paycheck Agar got from the producer bounced.
 
Jeffbert said:
A Thief In The Night (1973) No way to describe this film, without religion, but I will try.

The big event of the one particular religion occurs one day, & poor Patty Myers (Patty Dunning) was left behind. Finding the situation very much not to her liking, she can only wish she had been prepared. Too late for regrets!

the 1st of 4 films made to frighten certain people into converting.

5/10; not really worth watching, unless you are a fan of this genre.
Click to expand...
I have watched several films in this sub-genre and they all had one thing in common: they were awful. Technically competent but with lousy scripts that made no sense unless you already believed in what they were trying to sell. They preach to the converted.

Taliking of lousy scripts and technical competency I watched Attack of the Killer Tomatoes last night which barely scrapes by in either department but is so infectiously stupid I love it because of it's shortcomings. I suspect if it had been any better in either dept it wouldn't have worked.
 
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