The Last Film You Watched

[intoanewlife]

We don't have one of these as they're generally in different threads, so I thought I'd start things off.

Maybe you can copy your reviews from the other threads here as well so they're all in one place?


Talk to Me

4.5/5

Excellent Aussie low budget horror film. 

Great premise, very well shot, directed and edited.

The performances are great from mostly fresh faces, the lead in particular is excellent and really carries the film.

Probably my 2nd fave film of the year juuuust behind Infinity Pool.

[Deal J]

Great idea for a thread! Should we cover any films we've watched, or just relatively recent releases?

Last night I watched The Boogeyman (2023), an adaptation of the Stephen King short story. I went in with low expectations and found it to be quite enjoyable - it's a simple horror story playing on our basic fears of things that hide in the dark, and it makes a decent attempt to elevate into Badabook territory with its treatment of grief. Nicely shot, decent performances, a few silly jump scares but tempered by a fair few proper scares too.

3.5/5

I'm looking forward to seeing Talk to Me, glad you enjoyed it so much.

[Marwood]

Saw Big Shark tonight at the Prince Charles Cinema, with Tommy Wiseau in attendance there for the first time since before Covid: I think it needs its own thread in an attempt to define its sh*teness, but everyone in the cinema seemed to be enjoying it, and I got to meet him and although I don’t know what dimension he has come from, he seems a decent person so I’m going to be super generous and give it 5 out of 10 (I think alcohol helped tbh)

[intoanewlife]

Saw Barbie last night, I lasted an hour and turned it off. Dire...1/5

Watched The Boogeyman too, it was fairly generic Blumhouse fare... 2.5/5.

[Deal J]

Now Barbie & The Boogeyman would be quite the movie!

[juicy_but_terribly_drab]

Saw Tokyo Story for the first time a few days ago and my first by Ozu. Very interesting to see his technique of filming actors head on, looking directly into the camera, which obviously breaks usual modern, western conventions of cinema but was very effective in allowing you to feel included in the conversation and also really notice all the nuance in the performances since so often characters' real feelings and motivations are hidden behind layers and layers of niceties/etiquette/formalities.

The film follows an elderly couple who go to visit their children in Tokyo. Their children, however, find that they cannot make time for their parents due to their busy lives and so pawn them off on other people at every opportunity. Despite piling up a number of reasons for you to find certain characters selfish/unlikeable etc. the film also seems unexpectedly understanding of those children's perspectives seeing it more as an unfortunate reality of modern society rather than a personal failing. Noriko, the angelic daughter-in-law of the elderly couple's dead son, is the one pure-hearted, loving, selfless character who makes time for her elderly relatives and seems to genuinely love them and appreciate their company. Yet she too admits to being a disappointment in some ways and believes that she too will end up like their more self-concerned children. She understands them and finds their callous and cruel behaviour to be a sort of inevitability of their station in modern life. Whether this is supposed to be understood as true by the audience or just another example of the perfect Noriko's incredible humility and capacity for seeing the best in everyone is up to the audience but I think the film seems to take a similarly non-judgemental view on the whole thing. The elderly couple even encourage her to live a more fulfilling life and find a new partner, even if it means not being as available to spend time with them.

It seems to me more a comment on the state of modern society rather than a didactic admonishment of a certain kind of people or behaviour. I think the fact there isn't a whiff of melodrama to the film - and indeed it seemingly goes out of its way to skip past any moments which might lend themselves to wallowing in sadness and instead moves straight to the immediate aftermath - supports what I interpreted as a very neutral view on the proceedings. It was refreshingly humane if emotionally unsatisfying but again I took that to be the point. I don't think it's totally hopeless and nihilistic though. I do think it's supposed to inspire change and a new perspective on how to live your life. It just does so without passing judgement on those who maybe share certain qualities with the various children.

[showgirl]

Brother: certainly not the near-masterpiece reviews had suggested.

[danb]

I think ‘Barbie’ was my last cinema trip. Ghastly girls but loved the Kens.

Or ‘Theatre Camp’ 90 mins of not much leading to a beautiful finale.

[Marwood]

Saw a 50th anniversary screening of The Exorcist last night, introduced by Mark Kermode. In his opinion it is ‘the greatest film ever made’ and he claimed to have seen it over 100 times (although I noticed he didn’t stick around to watch it last night): this was maybe the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen it since the late 90s, it’s good (although maybe people expecting something like Halloween or Friday the 13th will be bored by it) but seeing it once every ten years or so is enough for me. I can’t understand anyone watching anything 100 times, life’s too short and there’s far too many other things to see.

[jek]

Like @pixelhysteria I went to see Tokyo Story for the first time. It is doing the rounds as part of the Sight and Sound top ten. I hadn't seen it before but it really is beautiful. Seventy years on its themes of negotiating new relationships with adult children hasn't got old (I have three children in their 20s and so know the territory!) Only about a dozen people in the screening I attended - I always wonder if the Picturehouse even covers the cost of the electricity bill with the cinema so empty. My daughter went to see The Lesson at the same cinema on Friday night and there were eight people there.

[Marwood]

Saw a screening of the remastered Stop Making Sense upstairs at the Prince Charles Cinema earlier tonight: it’s been at least 20 years since I last saw it (probably on VHS) but the quality of the sound and picture are now top notch.

As anyone who has sat upstairs at the PCC and seen a film can attest, it is cosy to say the least up there and tonight’s crowd was boisterous to say the least, plenty of people clapping and shouting at the end of each song like it was an actual concert: five or six people decided to go down the front and dance in front of the screen when Once In A Lifetime was playing (very poorly), unfortunately one gentleman had been over imbibing and tripped up trying to shake his ass and was lucky not to split his head open (making me think how does one go out of their way to get so drunk at something starting at quarter past six?), which caused the others to return sheepishly to their seats (I had refrained from applauding a film where no one even remotely connected to the film was anywhere the cinema but I had someone sat next to me who gave me a filthy look when I sat down with a beverage and sat there like he was at a funeral so I joined in the party spirit after an hour or so)

Not sure I’d say it’s the best concert film ever made but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[alece10]

Watched 2 gooduns over the weekend.

A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks. Very sweet and sad in a nice way.

Bros (not the boyband). Some very funny lines.

[Marwood]

Saw Sexy Beast for the first time in twenty years or so yesterday at BFI Southbank: not sure why they felt the need to put up signs outside the screening with ‘Trigger Warning! Please note that these screenings contain scenes of strong violence’ on them (the screening was preceded by The Bull Mastiffs which was a diabolically bad load of old cobblers that put together the worst of Sleaford Mods and The Streets videos (a Daily Mail readers wet dream)): there’s not actually that much violence in the film, it was the weapons grade swearing (particularly from Sir Ben Kingsley) that should have carried the warning 😝

[alicesprings]

I watched The Bicycle Theives from 1948 last weekend. One of imdbs top 240 films. Brilliant and sad film. The two leads were excellent. And the crowd scenes around Rome were very well done.

The last film I saw at the cinema was Ant Man; Quantum mania 🙈

[showgirl]

Frustrated that still-new films I want to see have had so limited a release and are already disappearing from cinemas, as even though it would have been difficult to fit them in, what with the 5 days of rail overtime ban & 2 of outright strikes over the last week, I've only travelled to London once and even that involved far more complicated and slower journeys than usual and having to abandon my evening theatre booking as I might have been unable to get home that late. So I've probably missed Ballywalter and Flora and Son and am running out of time to see Dumb Money, but I did manage to catch The Old Oak yesterday and found it worth seeing and enjoyable insofar as you can say that about a film depicting people who are living through the challenging or dire situations faced by thousands in real life. So, the usual strange Ken Loach/Paul Laverty mixture of social realism and sentiment but although there were some unpleasant scenes at times (of course), I found it far less harrowing than I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

[mkb]

I enjoyed The Old Oak too, but it doesn't really wrap up quite satisfactorily. Other four-star fare were Dumb Money and Fair Play, simply because they are good yarns, engagingly told.

Best new film for me last week was The Creator, which has a very similar vibe to Blade Runner. If you can overlook some plot contrivances, it's excellent with stunning cinematography.

[jaqs]

Haunting in Venice, lots of scenery chewing and jump scares but beautifully shot and I enjoyed it very much.

[alece10]

Started to watch 63 last night but only got about 30 mins into it. Not my kind of film.
So I then tried 80 for Brady on the basis of the cast. It was really rubbish and very cheesy but it was fun so sat through it and at the end quite enjoyed it.

[Marwood]

I flew to Las Vegas on Friday, and watched two films on the flight: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off which I’m sure I don’t have to go into any details about, but the other one was Paint starring Owen Wilson: I’d never heard of it before and it was only seeing the picture they used to advertise it that piqued my interest (Wilson with a giant perm smoking a pipe 🤣) it’s had terrible reviews and I doubt it will get a cinema release here as it’s just so…odd: Wilson plays a painter on a local tv station who seems more than a little bit to have been inspired by Bob Ross and faces a mid life crisis when he gets competition from another painter of crap pictures (to put it kindly). Lots of it doesn’t really work but it seemed so uninterested in being box office friendly and it is likeable enough so I’ll give it 7 out of 10

[Marwood]

Saw Postcard From Earth at Sphere in Las Vegas yesterday:the images are outstanding - the first five minutes or so are IMAX sized but then the camera zooms in on Earth and keeps going until it fills the whole screen (the biggest on the planet) but there is no storyline, basically it’s 50 minutes of babble about what lives on this planet and what we’ve done the world. David Attenborough has been doing the same thing much better for the last 60 years or so and on a far smaller budget. The two ‘actors’ don’t get any lines and gormlessly grin like they’re auditioning for a chewing gum advert: if Sphere bankrolls any future films to be out on here they need to find someone who will at least try to use a storyline that utilises the visual specs of the venue (I liked Pi, Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan but I’m not sure Darren Aronofsky was a great choice for director)

[mkb]

I seem to be out of kilter with popular opinion on many things lately. I thought the original The Exorcist one of the most overrated horror films. It's decidedly mediocre and unscary, and Mark Kermode declaring it the best film ever is hilarious.

The Exorcist: Believer, conversely, has been savaged on imdb, with a current rating of 5.1 (and loads of 1/10 written reviews, albeit many of them from people who struggle to string together a sentence, so probably just kids). And yet, I enjoyed this latest sequel more than the original.

It's properly character-driven, well acted, the tension builds nicely, and you care about what is happening. The few jump scares are effective, and the script even has interesting points to make about whether "belief" in good/evil forces is what is at issue. It's only in the final third that the film loses track, principally because it reverts to the religious-nonsense formula of the previous movies. The ride is great fun though if you don't engage your brain.

Four stars.

[mkb]

I first saw Mean Streets in a double bill with Taxi Driver in the early 80s, and thought both movies considerably over-rated even though they were instrumental in launching the illustrious careers of director Martin Scorsese and star Robert de Niro.

A chance to reappraise Taxi Driver on the big screen in 2021 found me far more appreciative of its merits with the benefit of 40 more years of life experience.

I had hoped to say the same of Mean Streets on its 50th anniversary outing this week, but sadly left the cinema as disappointed as on my previous viewing.

The problem is that scenes feel like standalone vignettes with no driving narrative arc to hold them together. Each scene seems to have the cast improvise at length, and Scorsese self-indulgently saddles the viewer with the lot. At this stage in his career, he has not discovered the power of judicious editing.

What should be a fascinating peek into mafia/hoodlum life in Little Italy in the early 60s fails because you don't care enough about the characters to be interested in what happens next. The only exception is in watching Harvey Keitel as Charlie Cappa, simply because Keitel's performance is masterly, arguably one of his best.

Mean Streets is worth seeing, but only for its historical significance in shaping the careers of those involved and the style of mafia movies that followed.

Two stars.

[mkb]

Imagine if the Hallmark Channel tried to cash in on the success of Philomena, the result would probably be something like The Miracle Club. This is a sweet but formulaic tale of Catholic women from 1967 Dublin seeking cures and solutions on a coach-trip to Lourdes.

Ordinarily, this story would be two-star dross with no life outside of daytime tv screenings on a lesser channel. What elevates and sets apart The Miracle Club, is deft direction from Thaddeus O'Sullivan, sumptuous cinematography from John Conroy, and a very watchable stellar cast.

Maggie Smith is worth the admission price alone. At 88, she has more fire in her eyes than many a youngster, and such screen presence still. Kathy Bates, Laura Linney and Steven Rea round out the big names, and all turn in performances that showcase their excellent acting abilities.

The Miracle Club is twee and undemanding entertainment, but it's a joy to watch these masters at work.

Four stars.

[jek]

I too saw The Miracle Club. I didn't love it (I see the director has directed some episodes of Call The Midwife and it very much had that feel, only longer). But I did think it very much captured the complications of Irish Catholic family life. At 60 I have Irish Catholic aunties who cut off their own children for transgressions against church moral teaching. The priest was written well, I thought. The screening I went to only had five customers but I would think there should be an audience for this.

[showgirl]

I'm still trying to catch up with lots of films released during the train strikes/overtime bans so have probably already missed out on Ballywalter and Flora and Son and am running out of time to see Dumb Money, but I did manage at last to see Blackberry yesterday and thought it was an absolute hoot. I had no idea it would be so hilarious and the 2 hours shot by in no time. I loved the characters and flashbacks to music and clothing I recall, too.