What was the last film you watched?

[Angela Channing]

The School For Good and Evil (2022)

I didn't have high expectations for this film as I thought it might be too heavily skewed towards children, however it's not really a children's film at all.

Two friends, Sophie and Agatha are outsiders in their home village causing Sophie to want to leave. After hearing about the School for Good and Evil, where fairytale heroes and villains are trained, Sophie makes a wish to go there and Agatha follows her there to get her to come back. At the school they get put into opposite sides. . Will their friendship survive the rivalry between their groups they are put in?

The film looks beautiful and it has elements of a thriller and horror and a light sprinkling for swear words so not really for children. It's not a film I would be in a hurry to watch a second time but I enjoyed my first viewing of it.

 

[Seaviewer]

Final Destination 2

Isn't that an oxymoron?

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Oh yes - well spotted.

I can't believe that hadn't occurred to me in all these years.

 

[darkshadows38]

i watched an old one with Doris Day called Tea For Two (1950) i'm a fan of hers i first saw her in "The Man who knew to Much' (1956) which is outside the norm of the things she usually did and i love that film as it's far better than the Original (1934) Hitch film. this one though was f... terrible it had a nice plot a young girl promises her rich uncle not to say yes for anything, today it would include sex but back than in (1950)... in the film Doris Day comes from Money who got hit with the crash of (1929)
and she needs $25,000 for a musical show that really makes me think of the Mickey Rooney did in the pictures he did back in the late 30's and early 40's. it was based off a play and they chanted some of it apparently. the film was really bad so far it's the worst of hers that i've seen thus far.

my favorite of hers is Please don't eat the Daises (1960)

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

Jurrasic Worldominio.

Not the best of the six, but curious in its writing. The first half looked like a James Bond movie.
The locusts - Biblical plague? The Birds? Them? Genetic Engineering gone berserk (Kind of the whole basis of the series)
Mad Scientist tropes, References to the first movie with casting, the Dilophosaurs, etc.

Colin Treverrow is a talented director. I think there were too many subplots.

 

[darkshadows38]

i haven't seen the last 2 so i can't show how good or bad they were to be fair. i watched a really damn good one called Young man with a Horn (1950) with a young Kirk Douglass and again Doris Day her part isn't that big she pops up here and there but she's not the star Douglass is. she gets 3rd Billing actually. it's well worth a watch my friends.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The Frighteners (1996)

I have fond memories of watching this with a friend some 25 years ago and thinking it was great fun, and I watched it a number of times in the few years that followed. As time's gone on, I've found myself not particularly wanting to rewatch it. Probably for the same reason I've no desire to rewatch Ghostbusters. There's something about the comedy-horror genre I can find a little off-putting. I also feared it might have dated horribly.

Recently I revisited Danny Elfman's film score and enjoyed it, but also realised I'd forgotten enough details of the film that I couldn't correlate a lot of the tracks with a specific scene. This must have planted the seed for my spontaneous rewatch last night which, as it turns out, really hit the spot.

It's good fun, genuinely funny at times (especially Jeffrey Combs's eccentric, obsessive-compulsive F.B.I. agent who is triggered by angry women), and the effects mostly still looked pretty good and with a nice cast blend of character actors, marginally familiar faces and likeable, refreshing leads (Michael J. Fox in between his Back To The Future prime and Spin City and Trini Alvarado - who I remember best as Bette Midler's daughter in the remake of Stella Dallas).

The creative team is very impressive: Executive Produced by Robert Zemeckis and written, produced and directed by the Lord Of The Rings team of Fran Walsh, Jamie Selkirk and Peter Jackson.​

 

[Angela Channing]

My Policeman (2022)

Harry Styles must have a pretty good agent because this is the second film I've seen him star in recently. This is about wasted time. A policeman falls into a relationship with a male museum curator. He marries a schoolteacher to maintain the secrecy of the relationship which has life changing ramifications for all 3 of them. It's a mature, humane and compelling piece of film-making that is brilliantly played by all the main leads.

 

[Seaviewer]

i watched an old one with Doris Day called Tea For Two (1950) i'm a fan of hers i first saw her in "The Man who knew to Much' (1956) which is outside the norm of the things she usually did and i love that film as it's far better than the Original (1934) Hitch film. this one though was f... terrible it had a nice plot a young girl promises her rich uncle not to say yes for anything, today it would include sex but back than in (1950)... in the film Doris Day comes from Money who got hit with the crash of (1929)
and she needs $25,000 for a musical show that really makes me think of the Mickey Rooney did in the pictures he did back in the late 30's and early 40's. it was based off a play and they chanted some of it apparently. the film was really bad so far it's the worst of hers that i've seen thus far.

my favorite of hers is Please don't eat the Daises (1960)

Tea For Two was based on No, No, Nanette. It's fairly typical of a certain type of light-weight musical.
Have you seen On Moonlight Bay and its sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon, also co-starring Gordon McRae?

 

[James from London]

Private Property (1960)





My new favourite film. It's a bit of shock to realise they made movies as sleazy as this in 1960, but at the same time, it feels like it could only have been made in 1960. I guess you could call it a low-budget suburban noir. It put me in mind of everything from Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf to Psycho, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Straw Dogs.

There are only a handful characters. The main three are a quick-witted young conman played by Corey Allen (looking like the middle brother of Mark Ruffalo and Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), his slower partner-in-crime (Warren Oates, the spit of a young John Huston) and their object of desire, a respectable young housewife played by the unknown (at least to me) Kate Manx. She's almost an archetypal Hitchcock blonde but not quite. She lacks the ice-cool unattainablity of a Grace Kelly or an Eva Marie Saint. There's a moment where she's by the pool, not realising she's been spied on by the two men, and she puts a sort of lounge suit on over her bikini, but does it in such a clumsily inelegant un-Hollywood way that it feels almost pornographic, yet at the same time makes her seem vulnerable and real. The whole film's a bit like that.

If you're in the UK and you've 79 minutes to spare, it's available to watch for free on the supercool Talking Pictures website (only be sure to skip Caroline Munro's intro as it contains a dirty big spoiler).

Encore

 

[Rove]

​

A pleasant surprise. Prime Video has been bugging me to watch this for a while and I'm so thankful I didn't ignore it. This movie was in capable hands with Ivan and Jason Reitman. They treat the young actors and the characters they play with sensibility but don't be fooled this is a child reboot. The adults play just as important parts and the ending really packed an emotional punch. I won't give anything away.

8/10

 

[darkshadows38]

no i haven't seen those yet i'm on a 50's movie watching kick to use an old saying lol. and some musicals i'm watching i've never seen some are really damn good like
Young man with a Horn (1950) than there's the Belles of New York (1952) which was awful if IMDB trivia is right that one flopped and i can really see why, it's not one of Fred Astire's best and sorry about my bad spelling i dunno how to spell his last name. the music in that one other that one song or two songs really are forgettable.
yes i know that Tea for Two (1950) was based off that play IMDB trivia again said that they took songs out and created one for the film.

that one did have some parts in it that were funny and were meant to be funny and i did laugh but still. i have never seen the play to be fair so i dunno how good or bad that is. some of these are movies i've seen on tv for years i've been in the musical mood i suppose right now i'm not really in the mood to watch one but i dunno what i'm gonna watch to be fair. "The Frightner's (1996) i saw that on the big screen there's a directors cut out there that's longer and darker than the theatrical cut, if i recall the studio had their hands it in if my memory is right and forced Peter Jackson to make it lighter tone than it Originally was. i haven't watched it yet either

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I've no desire to rewatch Ghostbusters.

Oh, I tempted fate by saying this.

Probably off the back of The Frighteners, my partner had a yen to watch Ghostbusters. And not the Ghostbusters, but the 2016 gender-reversed reboot (or reimagining, or re-whatever). Ah well, I'll try almost anything once.

​

Expectations were mercifully low. It raised a smile or two, but it mostly felt self-congratulatory and smug. Almost every line was delivered in tones that said "Aren't I cute?"/"Aren't I quirky?"/"Aren't I edgy?"/"Aren't I sassy?" And the answer is invariably a resounding "nope".

Only two of the four leads had any kind of character, but even those felt like stereotypes (the "Aren't I sassy" black woman and the "Aren't I quirky" large lady... and if you've seen one thing with Melissa McCarthy in, you've seen them all. She's exactly the same here as she was in Samantha Who?).

Meanwhile, the other two women were instantly forgettable. One had to be dressed in steampunk glasses to add a modicum of interest and the other... did some stuff and spoke with vocal fry.

Naturally, there was a pseudo-feminist undercurrent to the whole thing. Mostly, the women's lights shone brighter as a result of snuffing out those of men around them. If the males in this film aren't embittered authority figures they're evil world destroyers. Or complete wusses (let's laugh at the stiff concert organiser with the high pitched scream and the tour guide who soils himself upon seeing a ghost). Or they're completely stupid.

The last category is filled by Chris Hemsworth, whose character is beyond ridiculous in being shown to be thick (he covers his eyes to block out sound. And that's just the tip of the iceberg). He's there to be objectified and the script reminds us of this at every opportunity, but that's OK because he's a toxic male and misandry is fair play. It's pretty sickening.*

A "joke" about a fanny fart early in the film was probably the low point, barring the inevitable headache-inducing CGI fest at the end.

I'm glad I didn't know about the cameos from the original cast ahead of time, because their seal of approval would have suggested a better film than what we got. As it was, they were nicely spaced bright spots in an otherwise cringeworthy film.




* It's also ironic that Hemsworth is far more tolerable here than he is in his role as the increasingly dumb caricature comic relief Thor in the MCU.

 

[darkshadows38]

i refuse to watch that i just can't the film is utter shit when you shoot the big bad in the balls to defeat him that's not good writing at all. well i watched a good one a damn good one 'Panic in the City (1950) this has been on my list for years upon years and our Miss Ellie herself was in this one as well it wasn't a huge part even if she did get 3rd billing. though there was a scene where she stood up to Richard Widmark that made me think of when she went off on Jock though she went off on him pissed off in this film she wasn't mad but concerned. funny thing though the last scene in the film had an outfit that i think Miss Ellie would have worn 10/10 for the film.

 

[darkshadows38]

i just got done watching Mrs O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950) it was damn good with a young James Whitmore who was well i dunno how to describe this film only that it was put out by MGM in (1950) into their hope of having another hit like the "Thin Man' Movies but sadly it flopped and only one film was made. so it's a murder mystery and a comedy and you can tell they had fun making it.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I've no desire to rewatch Ghostbusters.

And the hypocrisy keeps on coming. Last night I attempted to cleanse the oestrogen-infused remake from my mind with the original...

Ghostbusters (1984)

This is one of those films that goes a long way on nostalgia. It's among the first films I remember recording and rewatching heavily, and I just think there's something particularly special about this era - and this year - on film.

It's a little shocking after all this time to see how vintage the film looks - the grainy picture has a certain retro charm. But New York is photographed beautifully here, the actors are charismatic and watchable (though Rick Moranis is a bit of an irritant). This was the first film in which I saw any of the featured actors, including Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver.

And the writing is just scientific enough and with a nice dollop of quirk. I've always been fond of the slightly bizarre early scene at Columbia University where it seriously feels as though Ghostbusters is secretly a musical, about to burst into its first showstopper, and the score cheekily plays along with the fake-out:

The first hour or so whizzed by far more quickly than the remake, but I'd forgotten how that last act reeeeeally drags. It feels around twenty minutes too long and I couldn't wait for it to be over.

 

[Seaviewer]

not the Ghostbusters, but the 2016 gender-reversed reboot

Well, as I posted earlier, I liked it. I can see why fans of the original objected, but taken as its own thing I found it very entertaining.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Please Turn Over (1959)

Watched as a tribute to Leslie Phillips, this film could be alternatively known as Carry On Up Peyton Place. Or perhaps Carry On Being Capricorn Crude.

The plot - dreamy young girl writes a salacious and controversial best-selling "tell-all" book blowing the lid off respectability using her friends and family as a basis - seems heavily "inspired" by Grace Metalious's Return To Peyton Place, published earlier the same year (and it pipped the book's official cinematic adaption to the post by some eighteen months). The difference here is that the young girl in question here has exaggerated everything to the Nth degree as only a teenager could.

It's as enjoyable as I remembered, with most of the cast playing dual roles showing them in "real life" and drastically different versions of themselves as seen in the pages of the book. And it was a treat to watch it in glorious high definition.​

 

[Angela Channing]

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

I don't normally like Daniel Radcliffe, I used to think he is a very average child actor who hung around for too long, however, I take that all back now. Here he stars as pop star Weird Al Yankovic and is surprisingly good. I thought the film was just another biopic and it starts conventionally and then the plot goes weird and tells of outlandish tales of events in Yankovic's life which was when I realised it wasn't meant to be a standard biopic but a parody of the genre, in the same way that Yankovic wrote parody songs. It's not a laugh a minute but it has funny moments.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I don't normally like Daniel Radcliffe, I used to think he is a very average child actor who hung around for too long

I do like Daniel Radcliffe but I thought Al Yankovic was that unfunny pop parodist that just wouldn't go away.

it wasn't meant to be a standard biopic but a parody of the genre

However, this may be the only genre I haven't seen being parodied and that makes it intriguing enough for me.