What was the last film you watched?

[Angela Channing]

Spoiler Alert (2022)

Michael and Kit are a couple and, spoiler alert, Kit dies. The film then tells the story of how they met, how they changed each other, how kit came out to his parents and how the relationship went through ups and downs. It was good to see a film about a gay people and their relationship that didn't fall into the usual stereotypes. It was ultimately a film about love and how people can still love and support when their relationship is getting into difficulties. The film has a lot of humour and yes, I did cry but then I cry at a lot of film.

 

[supermanfan]

Karate kid 3

 

[darkshadows38]

WOW i haven't seen The Karate Kid Part 3 (1989) in years! anyways i just got done watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) i had never seen it before and yeah i loved it and for me though it was Jane Russell who shined in the film more so i think she stole the film from Marylin lol. it's always going to make me laugh how some guys want a really good looking woman yet when my dog is smarter than her i say no thanks. i'd love to be married to a beautiful woman don't get me wrong but if she was dumber than a fence post i could not think of another way to put it, than she's not for me and sadly we all know women and some men too that are that dumb

i was Reading IMDB trivia board and according to Jane Russell she had a ball making the film and honestly it shows she did by her performance. the both of them look like they had a lot of fun making it & as i've always said when you have a cast of a film or a tv show have fun making it you can easily tell in their performance cause it i think enhances the performance. & can make a really bad tv show or a really bad film a lot better than if they were just reading the lines. 10/10 i still don't get why Marylin Monroe is loved like she is though.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

New Year's Eve (2011)

I'm not quite sure why I've ended up watching so many of these saccharine "significant day" romcoms in the latter part of the year, but at least I can now recognise a Love Actually knockoff when I see one. Like Christmas Eve, this attempts to create an interwoven story with a heavier hand than Richard Curtis, but I'd say NYE is a more successful film than Christmas Eve since it at least feels cinematic rather than made-for-TV.

Even though it's rather uninspired and far from a great film, NYE remains watchable due to its impressive cast of familiar faces. There's Michelle Pfeiffer doing her mousey "pre-transformation Selena Kyle" bit as a woman whose near death experience pushes her to complete her bucket list by the stroke of midnight with Zac Efron's help. Robert De Niro plays the dying man (nursed by Halle Berry) determined to see the ball drop in Times Square for the final time. Sarah Jessica Parker is the film's romantic lead (and hubby Matthew Broderick has a small role as a gruff mogul). Jon Bon Jovi is surprisingly watchable as an actor while the inevitable "rapper in an acting role" - less surprisingly - isn't. Cast, supporting players and cameos range from the sublime to the ridiculous. There's Penny Marshall (her brother did direct). Ryan Seacrest as himself. And Alyssa Milano as a nurse.

It may be going for Love Actually territory, but the loosely-connnected story with many of the characters all trying to gain entry to an exclusive club night instead reminded me of a rather different film: Thank God It's Friday. With Lea Michele in the Donna Summer role, as the aspiring singer wanting to get her break, who ends up performing before the crowd. My main reason for watching in the first place was to see Lea's performance of Auld Lang Syne in context.

With expectations low, I can say this one at least met them. In fact it was quite an enjoyable way to round off my cinematic year.​

 

[Crimson]

For New Year's Eve: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972).

It's odd to me that this is so often considered a "bad movie" or even a "so bad it's good" movie. I think it's straight up good, certainly better than any of the other 70s disaster films. The plot is efficient, with a sense of urgency; in comparison, THE TOWERING INFERNO felt downright lacksidasical. The special effects are topnotch and hold up surprisingly well for a 50 year old movie. The actors are mostly excellent, although I'm a little iffy about Red Buttons' performance. The disparate characters are likable or relatable and, for the most part, behave as one might expect in such a dire situation: stressed, desperate, squabbling but occasionally noble.

I have no idea why Roger Ebert and other film critics were so snobby about this. What else would one expect from a movie about an upside down boat?

 

[Seaviewer]

The Post (2017)
"Based on true events", the story of how neophyte publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham, decided to publish what became known as the Pentagon Papers.
Meryl Streep is known for the way she buries herself in her roles, and Tom Hanks matches her here as editor Bill Bradlee. I had no idea it was him until the cast was revealed at the end.
It occurred to me part way through that this amounted to a sort of prequel to All the President's Men (in which Jason Robards played Bradlee) and Steven Spielberg must have thought the same because he ends this film with an enactment of the discovery of the Watergate break-in.
All in all, a gripping newspaper drama but not the best of the genre.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The Duke (2020)

Every word of hyperbole on the poster above is true.

A terrific film that had me chortling a lot with its cheeky charm but still brought a lump to my throat more than once. The cinematography is wonderful, bringing the period detail vividly to live in high definition. The direction is subtle most of the time with the occasional eye-catching flourish that feels appropriate for the Sixties setting. At times it really feels like cast and crew used a time machine to get some of these shots.

It's all very British. Very Northern. Very human.






​

The Guardian's film review sums up the appeal much better than I would:

Michell does well in capturing a 60s north-east of belching chimney-stacks and rag-and-bone men; a limbo-land Britain, caught between the end of rationing and the birth of the Beatles. Kempton, one suspects, has both boots in the old world - but he can still dream of tomorrow.

What a lovely, rousing, finally moving film this is. The Duke is unashamedly sentimental and resolutely old-fashioned in the best sense of the term: a design classic built along the same lines as That Sinking Feeling, A Private Function or 50s Ealing comedies. In an earlier era, the role of Kempton would have been played by Denholm Elliott or Alastair Sim.

 

[Angela Channing]

It's odd to me that this is so often considered a "bad movie" or even a "so bad it's good" movie. I think it's straight up good

I completely agree with you. It's an excellent film in so many respects. It has great action scenes, scene of real tension and drama and the scene when Mrs Rosen dies is as emotional as any death I've seen in a film. I absolutely love this film and seen it many times.

 

[Angela Channing]

The Menu (2022)

I'm not sure I completely understood everything that was happening in this film but it is an entertaining ride.

Ralph Fiennes plays a renowned chef who invites a group of people to a special dinner that he is cooking at his restaurant which is located on an island. The dinner comprises several courses which he introduces with a short speech and they get progressively more cryptic as time goes on. All is not what it seems and unknown to the guests, they have been specially selected as part of a plan motivated by vengeance. I can't really say much more without giving away spoilers but as the chef's plans begin to unfold, the film get progressively intense, weird, thrilling and suspenseful.

 

[Toni]

Tick Tick... Boom! (2021)

I like film musicals and prior to this, the last new one that I saw was also directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, In The Heights (2021), but I didn't like that one too much, nor did I like his filmed stage production of Hamilton (2021) so I went into this with low expectations. How wrong was I? This is a superb stage to screen adaptation of Jonathan Larson's semi-autobiographical novel and Steven Levenson surely must get nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his work on this film. Andrew Garfield, an actor who I'm normally indifferent about, gives a performance so intense and believable that I found it totally captivating. This film even changed my opinion of Lin Manuel Miranda as his direction was brisk and visually engaging. The film felt modern and current even though the original play was first performed in the 1990s and it was set in that era too and that mainly due to Lin-Manuel Miranda's direction.

The plot is about a playwright who is determined to write his first Broadway play before he is 30 and we see how his single-mindedness impacts on his relationships with those around him. The songs were ok, not particularly memorable but they worked within the context of the film. I think overall it's a great piece of cinema that will do will in awards season.

I watched this last week. I also was surprised by how engaging it was. But first, my biggest surprise was knowing that Mr. Larson was NOT gay. The author of the musical "Rent", which has more gay and bisexual characters than any other film in history? So yes, he wasn´t but was gay-friendly.

Knowing the ending, it was a sad viewing but a good example of a musical work itself. About Mr. Miranda, I can´t say anything good about him so I won´t say anything at all. Yet to see "In the Heights" or "Hamilton". I think he´s been over-exposed in the media and that never is a good thing.

All the songs reminded me of others from "Rent", but they actually used material composed by Larson so it´s logical. Garfield (not the cat!) is great in this and deserved the Oscar nod (for a change, because these awards are stinking badly lately...). Here is a documentary about Larson if you want to know more about him:

 

[Seaviewer]

The Girl on the Train (2016)
I had expected this to be something like Rear Window - the girl notices strange goings-on in a house she passes in the train - but it's so much more convoluted.
What with the non-linear format, the interlocking unreliable narratives and multiple lookalike characters, I was totally bamboozled until about ten minutes from the end when it finally started to become clear.

 

[Angela Channing]

Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022)

I've not read the novel nor have I seen and previous adaptations of the book so I came to this entirely new and it's a cracking story and even though it's almost 100 years since it was first published it doesn't feel old fashioned.

Emma Corrin is so good as Lady Chatterley, she does vulnerability so well. At time she did seem like she was still playing Princess Diana in The Crown: both characters are vulnerable toffs married to someone they are not really compatible with and find happiness in an affair with someone else. The costumes, the locations, the acting, the writing, the directing were all superb. I don't know how it compares with the book, and people who are familiar with the novel might have a different view, but I thought it was very well done and really entertaining.

 

[Angela Channing]

As a kid I watched the Pinocchio animated TV series (Japanese, probably) but apart from the Disney version I had never watched a full length Pinocchio movie.
I was a little disappointed to find out that Prime only offered the dubbed version but luckily it didn't have a negative impact on the viewing experience. It was very well done, actually.
Visually it looks a little unusual for a children's movie and it's a pity that they've opted for that fashionable "doesn't it look realistic?" bleak colour palette.
It appears that this version is closer to the original story and the Pinocchio world looks much more Alice In Wonderland. The only human/animal characters in the Disney movie are Jiminy, Honest John and Gideon (ironically, in this movie Mr. Fox and Mr. Cat aren't the human/animal hybrid).
Despite the eerie make-up I found the wooden boy surprisingly adorable, also because he's very nasty and selfish, which makes the character development all the more satisfying.
There's one minor character who acts annoyingly contemporary (e.g. using hands to emphasize speech) and the Stromboli plot drags a little bit - he isn't even a villain - but overall I think this is an entertaining movie. And also very funny, that was the biggest surprise.

I've finally gotten around to watch Pinocchio (2022) and this version pees all over the Disney live action version released last year. It a darker version of the story with Nazis, death and grief all a prominent part of the story. I disagree with @Willie Oleson regarding the muted colour palette used throughout the film because I think was a good choice as it added to the more sombre and serious tone that the film has. However, for the same reason I didn't like the songs. Why were they even there? There weren't enough of them for it to feel like a proper musical but the few it had distracted from the darker feel the film otherwise had. The songs however were reasonably good.

The characters weren't as likeable as in the Disney version which made them more believable. Geppetto and Pinocchio were both more selfish and the characters that were new to me, like Candlewick (a Nazi Youth colleague of Pinocchio) and his bullying dad ,were great additions to the story.

Overall, of the 3 film versions of this story that I've seen, this is the best by a long way.

 

[Seaviewer]

Overall, of the 3 film versions of this story that I've seen, this is the best by a long way.

Have you read Collodi's original book? I've read it in English translation, and it's also somewhat darker than the Disney animated version (which is the only one I've seen).

 

[Angela Channing]

Have you read Collodi's original book? I've read it in English translation, and it's also somewhat darker than the Disney animated version (which is the only one I've seen).

No, I've not read it. As I said in a previous post, I recently watched Lady Chatterley's Lover and I plan to read that book sometime this year. I have a long backlog of books to read but I hope to get around to reading the original Pinocchio eventually as watching the film has made me curious about it.

 

[Angela Channing]

Tar (2022)

I first saw this film at a special preview towards the end of last year and I was so blown away by Cate Blanchett's performance, I wanted to see it again now it's on general release. Second time around, the film seems even better than when I first watched it. I was able to appreciate some details in the film that I missed the first time around such as the moments of humour and how brilliant the direction and supporting cast were.

Cate Blanchett is Lydia Tar, a world renowned composter and conductor who is a lesbian and is accused by one of her students of making unwanted sexual advances towards her. The film then chronicles the decline of the career of the maestro following the allegation.

The film feels like a biopic of a real person but Tar is a fictional character. The film opens with her being interviewed in what looks a bit like a Ted Talk scenario and it feels so real that it looks like a recreation of a real life interview. It's astonishing that Cate Blanchette created that performance from words in a script and not by mimicking a authentic filmed interview.

Cate Blanchett is mesmerising in this tragic character study. The film draws the viewer into the story of the downfall of the title character; a woman totally absorbed by her brilliance, madness and narcissism. One of my favourite films of 2022.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

San Ferry Ann (1965)

On the strength of its cast alone, this has been on my radar for decades so I'm glad to have finally watched it. And in glorious HD no less.

Like A Home Of Your Own, which I watched back in October, this is a wordless short British comedy film with an array of familiar faces of the era. With its madcap characters in their different "bubbles" going mad on their holiday before finally ending up at the same place, it feels very much like it fills the gap between 1962's Carry On Cruising and 1969's Carry On Camping. Indeed, this sees the characters on an actual ferry (Free Enterprise II, in case you wondered) before sleeping under canvas. And there are lots of familiar Carry On faces from Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor to David Lodge and Ronnie Stevens. There's also Wilfred "Steptoe" Brambell; Ron "You've got to pick a pocket or two" Moody; Hugh "Bona to vada your dolly old eke" Paddick; Warren "Bloody marvellous, innit?" Mitchell; Rodney "Likely Lads" Bewes.

It's even the film debut of Lynne Carole, her first work since Corrie's Martha Longhurst was killed off the previous year (I recognised her instantly. Her look here is identical, right down to the glasses). She has a memorable scene stuffing her face with cream cakes. I swear if you listen closely you can hear Ena Sharples drawing breath and tut tutting into her stout:

I don't particularly recall it being shown on TV when I was young. Considering the stellar cast and the timeless value of "silent" comedies such as Mr. Bean, I'm really surprised this little gem isn't more widely remembered than it seems to be.​

 

[Seaviewer]

Frequency (2000)
I'd call this more a fantasy with techno-trappings than true science fiction.
A man finds that he can communicate with his long-dead father via an old shortwave radio. It then morphs into a crime thriller as they work together to solve a serial murder mystery that spans the generations.
Dennis Quaid, always a likeable presence, is the father, with Jim Caviezel, who I can't not associate with Jesus even though I've never seen the controversial film in which he played that role, as the son. Andre Braugher, seen here immediately after Homicide: Life on the Street. is excellent in another tough cop role, but Elizabeth Mitchell (of Lost) is wasted as Quaid's wife.

 

[Angela Channing]

Till (2020)

This film is a hard watch but that shouldn't put anyone off because it's a riveting piece of cinema.

Emmett Till was a 14 year old black boy who was brutally beaten and shot dead by white supremacists in 1955 Mississippi because he whistled at a white woman. The film doesn't show the murder, just the events leading up to it and the aftermath. Emmett's mother starts a crusade to get justice for he son leading her to become a significant figure in the USA civil rights movement. The acting is superb especially from Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett's mother, Mamie Till.

 

[Seaviewer]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife
This is the film that the fans wanted. Not being one of the diehards, I thought it a little slow but I can see how the various homages to the original would be appealing, along with the appearances by the original characters.
I also thought it interesting that, after all the shade thrown on the all-female reboot, the new lead character here was a girl, albeit a somewhat androgenous one.