What was the last film you watched?

[Jakob]

"The Interview"
Was better than expected, although I'm pretty sure North Korea doesn't look like British Columbia...(Especially the sequence at the end...Howe Sound was very easily recognized)

[lisat]

Boyhood.
In a tiny cinema with only 19 seats, plus tea and cake served at non big screen prices.  Result.

[Pickled Onion]

A Field In England

(click to show/hide)

? ? ?

[Ruthie]

Marvellous.

What it says on the tin.

[Karla]

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Enjoyable steampunk schlock

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

What, the bit where he sorts out the low-life's in his local?  I think they should leave it in.

No, the literal bum note.

No sex please, we're British?

[tiermat]

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Enjoyable steampunk schlock

Really? I thought it was unredeemable pants. The guy who plays Hansel was out acted by the trees in the forest, the storyline was so thin you could see right through it and the direction just stunk.

[Karla]

Well yes, but then I wasn't expecting anything more from it.  The title hardly suggests high cinematographic art!

[tiermat]

Whilst ironing I watched Fantastic Four, the first one. A little later I will be watching the second one, whilst doing some more ironing.

[Mr Larrington]

What is this thing you Earth people call "ironing"?

[mrcharly-YHT]

Dallas Buyers Club

Unrelentingly unlikeable main character gradually transforms, surprisingly enjoyable film.

[redshift]

Kingsman. So many piss takes, I'm not sure I got them all.  Predictable, silly and above all hopelesly slapstick.  I enjoyed it immensely, even down to the gratuitous bumshot.

[Jaded]

Layer Cake.

Dialogue was difficult to catch 100%, and it was a busy movie to keep up with.

Didn't like the ending.

[Mr Larrington]

I think "Layer Cake" was a dry run for Daniel Craig's interpretation of Bond James Bond.

[Jakob]

Birdman. Very very good. It's competing with Grand Hotel Budapest as my favourite for the Oscars

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Jupiter Ascending in 2D 

In amongst the usual over exuberant use of CGI I've a sneaking suspicion there might have been quite a good film.  Good acting performances, considering what they were up against.   

..oh and yes, there was a bum.

[ian]

Jupiter Ascending in 3D (bees and a nice fall, otherwise it might as well have been 2D).

Was hoping for some good old school Flash Gordon-style sci-fi hokum on a Sunday afternoon but it wasn't a movie that was sure what it wanted to be when it grew up. The studio seemed to have a bit of a crisis of conviction, so it segued into the usual chase scenes and big bangs. If you're going to tear through a city (what they hell did Chicago do to deserve its current run of destruction?) peppering it with explosions, you've got to do it good, because it's been done so often now. Channing Potato looks glum (seriously, I have to wear these ears for the entire movie?) and Mila Kunis does the spunky heroine who you know from the beginning will get rescued a lot before someone realises that's not spunky heroine material so she'll kick the bad guy in the bollocks. That's not really a spoiler.

I dunno why it's so hard getting a decent script and dialogue these days. Seriously, people don't say 'holy crap.'

Oh, it wasn't bad bad, it was just one of those films that could have been a lot better and ended up just being a bit dull, identikit sci-fi.

The bum thing in Kingsmen. I'm not bothered by the bum. It's a very nice pair of buttocks, to be sure. It was just the crudely levered in arse sex 'joke' which wasn't all that funny and seemed to elicit more cringes than laughs, admittedly with the posho London IMAX crowd.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Some really decent laughs. More character development would have been good. It's a daft sci-fi action movie that plays for general laughs and avoids anything like fart or bum jokes.

[Kim]

Adaptation.

Clever once you work out what's happening, but fundamentally dull and with no likeable characters.

[spesh]

Jupiter Ascending in 3D (bees and a nice fall, otherwise it might as well have been 2D).

Was hoping for some good old school Flash Gordon-style sci-fi hokum on a Sunday afternoon but it wasn't a movie that was sure what it wanted to be when it grew up.

It's not just you:

Jupiter Ascending isn't just a mediocre film. It's also self-indulgent, and in love with its own excesses. It's like the sick love-child of Zardoz and Fifth Element. But what's really odd about Jupiter is that it wants to criticize opulence and selfishness, and yet it's a movie that thinks "more" is always "better."

I went into Jupiter Ascending with low expectations, and this movie somehow slid underneath them. My highest hope for this film would be that it would be "fun but dumb" — which is no bad thing, at all. A fun, dumb movie is a wonderful thing, and I'd always rather see a fun, dumb movie than a pretentious clunker.

Unfortunately, Jupiter Ascending gets too excited about its own flaky ideas, and is too intent on chasing the elusive whippoorwill of its plot, to settle down into being a fun ride. And if you need to care even a little about the characters or stakes in order to have fun watching a movie, then you're in for a disappointment here.

Honestly, a lot of this movie felt as though co-directors Andy and Lana Wachowski wrote a bunch of ideas on index cards, which they then threw up in the air. (And then half the index cards accidentally went out the window.)

Full review (contains spoilers): http://io9.com/jupiter-ascending-is-a-very-decadent-movie-about-why-de-1684167120

[ian]

Indeed, fairly spot on. Shame really, they had the budget to go splendidly high pulp, and there were great avenues for crashing that vision into the modern world of computers, the internet, and high tech jet fighters and in Mila Kunis they had a heroine who should have been doing the rescuing and saving the day rather than waiting for the inevitable late-film opportunity to knee the bad guy in the bollocks. Loads of potential to spin a futuristic, concept clash, fairy tale and instead they pinched off another anodyne paint-by-numbers sci-fi. Plenty of 'meh's were omitted by departing cinema goers.

(click to show/hide)

To be fair, it looked edited to within an inch of its life, and yet big chunks of the film could have been done away with (what purpose did Sean Bean serve?), why the entire ob-gyn egg harvest thing? The entire Russian family scenes? Clumsy exposition all over the place. Who cares about genes, just say she's been reincarnated, we've already suspended belief plenty high enough that reincarnation isn't a stretch. If they left that lot in, I'd hate to think what ended up on the cutting room floor. And given all that, the directorial style was quick, it's dragging let's toss Mila off a ledge and have Channing save her while everyone tries to shoot him. Again.

[Steph]

String of recent films, in summary

World's Fastest Indian: as described above. Pleased he didn't do the accint. at inny time.

Dallas Buyer's Club: superb character development.

Soldier's Girl: the title performance was absolutely wonderful.

Pride: yes. Not my scene, but I still wept.

Left Behind: step away from the DVD player. Utter shit.

Captain Phillips: storming performances on both 'sides'.

(click to show/hide)

When Hanks breaks down at the end is heart-rending

[Torslanda]

Layer Cake.

Dialogue was difficult to catch 100%, and it was a busy movie to keep up with.

Didn't like the ending.

One of my all time fave raves. The opening 2 minutes was enough to hook me completely. People have compared it to Snatch & Lock Stock but I found it fascinating. The plot twists keep coming and I'm told that several different endings were filmed but the director got the final say, leaving it open for an (as yet unfilmed) sequel. Would love to see that.

I think "Layer Cake" was a dry run for Daniel Craig's interpretation of Bond James Bond.

Possibly. Particularly the shot of him with the Luger  . (Although IIRC LC was filmed in 2003 and he didn't sign up until 2005)

Saturday evening consisted of Le Mans starring Steve McQueen the Porsche 917 & Ferrari 512. Oh! And some people . . . followed by Layer Cake accompanied by a rank takeaway and a glass or two.

[Kim]

Disconnect

iPlayer described it thus:

Technology causes several lives to intertwine with terrible consequences in this ensemble drama exploring the destructive potential of the internet.

But in reality it was just a film about dysfunctional people whose lives intertwined, which was set in 2012 and therefore featured the technology of the era, including (but not limited to) television, mobile phones, facebook, motor cars, electric light, guns, positive-pressure ventilators, skateboards and hockey sticks.  I can't tell if it was badly summarised by someone who missed the point, or what, but it certainly wasn't exploring the destructive potential of the internet (as opposed to the destructive potential of fraud, pornographers, pre-teens and third-rate journalists).

I synchro-watched this with some IRC friends.  Cue heartfelt discussion about how utterly brilliant the internet is, and how much of a positive influence it's been on our lives and those of so many people around us.  And also that in reality...

(click to show/hide)

The nerdy muso kid who was tormented by sadistic kids probably wouldn't have been as lonely as portrayed, because he'd likely have had some like-minded online friends with a common enthusiasm for making music, or something.

Bah!

[Andrew]

Birdman. Very very good.

Effing brilliant, top to bottom. I could write paragraphs.

It's appeal to film makers is immediately obvious. It's themes and crafts put it firmly in that camp, like The Player. BUT, unlike that film, there's an 'accessible to all' film. And it's a belter.

Very strong peformanes all around but Keaton doesn't get better.