What was the last film you watched?

[drossall]

We've just watched Eurovision on the strength of the BBC review. Good fun

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53217853

[T42]

My son has a habit of digging up kiddie flicks we watched together when he was small and sending them to us in the belief that we'll enjoy them now that he's pushing 50.  He then checks up a week later to make sure we've watched them.  He's quite intelligent otherwise, and a decent mathematician with it (maybe that explains it).

Anyway, this time it was a remake of Krabat, a rather nasty tale of sorcery set in eastern Germany.  To be fair, while I wouldn't have sought it out it wasn't bad, although the cartoon version we saw in the 70s was a good effort too.

[drossall]

We do enjoy watching films we used to watch with our (now very adult) children. Happily, we now have a grandson who will soon want to watch that kind of thing, so we'll have an excuse.

[CAMRAMan]

Not films, but I loved watching Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine with my kids.

[fimm]

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
Entertaining and undemanding enough for my tastes. Interesting to see what special effects they could do (big stationary stuff works) as opposed to things that look amusingly clunky now (anything moving). Much more slow-moving than a 21st Century equivalent would be, though I didn't mind that, and the Wikipedia article seems to suggest that it was criticised for that at the time.

[T42]

Pure coincidence, but in the last few days we've watched the two Mesrine films, then last night Highwaymen on Netflux.  MrsT remarked that the police who more or less murdered Mesrine must have been inspired by the end of Bonnie & Clyde.

[sg37409]

Giant Little Ones.  Another film with gay themes and bikes. Not as good as Dating Amber but still quite good.

[ian]

Meteor Storm. I'm becoming addicted to these low-budget SyFy tv movies.

Basically, through some mechanism that involves some spendidly hokey science, meteor(ites) became attracted to San Francisco (come on, you know the bridge gets it, always take the Oakland). I can put aside that, the big mystery was how the lead's excellent hair consistently survived his motorcycle helmet unscathed. Or for that matter, how the head of the Disaster Management Agency spent most of the calamity he was supposed to be managing cruising around the city on a big motorbike looking cool. Hold that catastrophe, I'm going on a bike ride.

[Mr Larrington]

MBMR^* is the new MBWA^**.

* Management by motorcycle riding
** Management by walking around

[T42]

Meteor Storm. I'm becoming addicted to these low-budget SyFy tv movies.

Have you tried Without Warning? Rather good 1994 first-contact (FCVO contact) sort of thing in glorious NTSC: https://youtu.be/EmIWcQBv9eQ 

[fuzzy]

American Assasin. Quite a good film until about the last 15 minutes when the thing went over board into the water.

[Kim]

Get Real (1998)

An authentic 90s version of Dating Amber, this one hasn't aged well.  The shock factor of a film about middle-class gay schoolboys isn't what it once was, and when you aren't busy spotting 90s artifacts, the plot seems rather shallow.  While the lack of any sense of wider LGBT community is a key element of the story, it's an assumption so unstated that it leaves you wondering what people young enough not to have grown up in the shadow of Section 28 would make of it.

Linda's character is uncomfortably 2-dimensional, though about halfway through I realised that - as with the weirdo on the bus - if you didn't have a Linda, you probably were the Linda.

If it were written today, John wouldn't have been a conventionally attractive sporty type^[1] for the benefit of the mainstream 90s audience.  This feels distinctly off-brand for 90s nostalgia, where school sports would be synonymous with systemic homophobia and bullying, and is arguably the second^[2] most authentically 90s thing about the film.

It's also lacking in realism:  Where's the dodgy gay maths teacher?  Why was Steven allowed to finish his speech?  Why wasn't anyone maliciously outed?  Or mercilessly bullied for being gay when they weren't?


_{[1] In real life I was fortunate that the Steven to my Linda had the sense to be pining for an art person rather than a sportsist.  And none of us lived in Basingstoke.
[2] At one point the subtitles refer to a 3.5" floppy as a 'diskette'}

[rafletcher]

A police thriller, set in post-Franco Andulucia, Marshland. Very good.

[TimO]

Alien Hunter aka Welcome to Willits



I don't know why this film has the two completely different titles. It was "Alien Hunter" on my box, but Wikipedia has it under the "Welcome to Willits" title, which is probably more accurate, but less likely to sell copies.

Wikipedia describes it as a "science fiction horror comedy film", but I'm not sure where the comedy was (and very black if there was any), and there was really little science fiction either, it's pretty much a horror film, with a little bit of action film.

One review on IMDB (where it's under "Alien Hunter (2016)") says "wry, intellectual humor and wit", which I damned if I saw. Maybe you have to be from the USA or North California (where it's apparently set) to understand that element.

As slightly gory horror films go, it's fairly well done, and does take an original approach, but I can't say I'm overly impressed with it. I was actually trying to buy a different film, but this eBay seller was clearly too stupid to tell the difference between utterly different covers. Never spend much on buying films from small sellers on eBay, there are way too many idiots out there!

The large image of Dolph Lundgren on the cover is very misleading, as is the flying saucer. Dolph and any aliens only appear in the psychosis (probably) of one of the main characters. It's never entirely clear if he is actually seeing aliens, or whether it's entirely in his head, but I think it's likely the latter, so as a study of how hallucinogenic drugs could cause a redneck to utterly lose contact with reality, and psychotically rationalise reasons to kill anyone he met, it's not the worst example. Weirdly, quite a few reviews love it, and the remainder dislike it. I think some elements must really resonate with some people, so that they think it's wonderful, but I can't say I saw any of that. The film is mostly well enough made for a relatively low budget film, but the pacing is odd, and the acting mediocre.

If you spend a couple of quid on it, you'll probably get your money's worth, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it!

[Peter]

Hitchcock's 39 Steps, for the nth time.  I always smile merrily when the Flying Scotsman goes into the tunnel hauled by an A3 Pacific and exits behind a Great Western locomotive.   Further to the inconsistency, the A3s hadn't been built  at the time the film was set.  A favourite film, which features John Laurie  trialling Private Fraser 40 years early.

[TimO]

Terminator Dark Fate



Far better than some of the more recent Terminators, which it basically ignores and just continues on from T2. Lots of splodey fun, all the best sorts of things from the first two films. There are no dramatically original concepts, really just more of the same, but that is what silly escapism is all about.

Recommended, if you just want to see a bad assed 60-year old Sarah Connor and 'Carl' blowing things up.

[Jakob]

"Greyhound"
Perfect for a hungover afternoon, but highly implausible.

[ian]

Apocalypse Tomorrow. Some weird mismatch between astrological signs predicting disaster and disaster. I'm not actually sure where the two connected but it's best not to think too hard on such matters. Have another beer ian, why don't you? It featured that bloke you know from some other tv show, but you can't remember where, the standard-issue annoying and profoundly stupid child (son in this case), and a woman with frankly terrifying eyebrows. Oh and the old fella from Back to the Future. It's definitely in the awful but compelling territory, but somehow I felt it could have been worse. A few notches down and it would have been really good.

Megafault. This was worse but better. Admittedly, no one involved seem to know what earthquakes are. Better helicopter. Satisfyingly stupid. Basically, the US starts to split in two after some miners blow up a mountain range in the bit of West Virginia that looks like car park outside of Vancouver, but oh no, Yellowstone! Disappointingly, it didn't make San Francisco, so the Golden Gate could breathe a sigh of relief. Next weekend, next weekend, my little bridgey friend.

I have no idea why people go online and review these things: terrible CGI! Bad script! Really, and you were expecting? It's like going camping and complaining about the room service.

There's about a million of these Syfy movies on Amazon. I'm going deep.

[ElyDave]

Rocket Man, overall left me wanting. Whilst Taron Egerton was bloody good as an impressionist, the plot/timeline was somewhat lacking of the formative years, Long John Baldry, Leon Russell, John Mayall etc just jumped from Pinner to the Troubadour

[Jakob]

Old Guard. Heard an interesting interview with the director, who said she was inspired by Ong Bak, Man on Fire, etc and figured it was worth checking out..and it wasn't.
I don't know why Charlize Theron keeps getting action movies....she...can't...move...It's not Judy Dench in 007-bad, but it's pretty poor. The poor story/editing/directing didn't help either.

[T42]

Old Guard. Heard an interesting interview with the director, who said she was inspired by Ong Bak, Man on Fire, etc and figured it was worth checking out..and it wasn't.
I don't know why Charlize Theron keeps getting action movies....she...can't...move...It's not Judy Dench in 007-bad, but it's pretty poor. The poor story/editing/directing didn't help either.

Maybe they could get Andy Serkis to do the moves in motion capture and just CGI her in after.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Old Guard. Heard an interesting interview with the director, who said she was inspired by Ong Bak, Man on Fire, etc and figured it was worth checking out..and it wasn't.
I don't know why Charlize Theron keeps getting action movies....she...can't...move...It's not Judy Dench in 007-bad, but it's pretty poor. The poor story/editing/directing didn't help either.

My son raved about this, so I started watching it.

All the stupid tropes . . .  Swords and axes in back holsters, etc etc etc

Really bad.

Shame, done well it could have been interesting.

[T42]

It was probably Mythbusters who did in the back-scabbard thing: unless the sword is about the length of a decent carving-knife you can't draw it. But IIRC there's a very long Thai(?) sword so flexible that you can carry it wrapped around your waist and cut yourself in half if you flub drawing it.

[Andrij]

It was probably Mythbusters who did in the back-scabbard thing: unless the sword is about the length of a decent carving-knife you can't draw it. But IIRC there's a very long Thai(?) sword so flexible that you can carry it wrapped around your waist and cut yourself in half if you flub drawing it.

Wasn't aware of MythBusters tackling that, but plenty of others have as well.

[T42]

But still they do it.