What was the last film you watched?

[spindrift]

Anyone seen Soderbergh on Raiders? He shows an early scene in b&w to show the delicate, precise composition, it's when Marcus is talking to Jones in Jones' house, very shadowy and noirish.

[ian]

Hmm, on the subject of overbearing CGI replacing latex and imagination, I'm tempted to watch Alien and Prometheus back-to-back, but I'm not sure I can handle the crushing disappointment.

Actually, I didn't think the alien was that well done, it looked like a man in a monster suit, but it worked because the movie made it so.

[Wascally Weasel]

The drive to make the best of a low(ish) budget combined with good editing sometimes makes those films with otherwise crap monster effects the classics they are. 

Much of the success of Jaws is widely acknowledged as due to the great editing by Verna Fields.  The music is great too but ultimately it was Fields’ work which made a film with a truly dreadful special effect (the rubbish shark) the gripping & suspenseful classic it is.

Edited to add – I’m a huge fan of Ridley Scott, he’s always been a creator of strikingly good looking films which are usually also well written and well paced stories – but like many others I suffered the Prometheus disappointment.  I’ll watch it again one day with no expectations but I can guarantee at least two scenes will still bug me – the magic stomach stapling that seems to come and go as a physical impediment and the way someone is running away from a spaceship rolling towards them; run sideways FFS!

[ian]

Indeed. Everyone knows the drooling snappy jaw scene in Alien was a just a man with a stick and some gloop, and the chestbuster is obviously rubber, but the movie makes it work. After all, you know they're not real, so they just need to convince as part of the bigger picture. Prometheus has slick CGI (though they don't apparently have retina-holograms in the future, maybe Apple has the patent) but an entire absence of anything else that you might expect to find in a good film. Everything in that film bugs me. Big snoozing alien is woken up by an unanticipated delivery of human stupid. Well, who wouldn't be grumpy. Maybe Scott was having a bet with De Palma on whether it could indeed top the sheer awfulness of Mission to Mars by making a worse version. Scott won that one. How we, poor movie viewer, are at the cruel whim of such egos.

[mattc]

The drive to make the best of a low(ish) budget combined with good editing sometimes makes those films with otherwise crap monster effects the classics they are. 

Much of the success of Jaws is widely acknowledged as due to the great editing by Verna Fields.  The music is great too but ultimately it was Fields’ work which made a film with a truly dreadful special effect (the rubbish shark) the gripping & suspenseful classic it is.

But it's not about the shark! [/kermode]

[Jaded]

It is about jumping the shark.

[fuzzy]

The thing about the alien in Alien is the way you didn't really get to see a lot of the alien until the lifeboat scene at the end. Most of the alien scenes were snatched glimpses just before a poor victim screamed and gurgled. Once the alien unfurled itself from the plumbing in the lifeboat, for about half the film watching population, their attention was snagged by a barely dressed Ripley climbing into her space suit.

[Kim]

Once the alien unfurled itself from the plumbing in the lifeboat, for about half the film watching population, their attention was snagged by a barely dressed Ripley climbing into her space suit.

That's another thing, what is it with Hollywood astronauts and getting into spacesuits in just their pants?  Don't they read the checklists?   

(I'll let Ripley off, on account of having to flush an alien out of the airlock in a hurry.)

[fuzzy]

Once the alien unfurled itself from the plumbing in the lifeboat, for about half the film watching population, their attention was snagged by a barely dressed Ripley climbing into her space suit.

That's another thing, what is it with Hollywood astronauts and getting into spacesuits in just their pants?  Don't they read the checklists?   

(I'll let Ripley off, on account of having to flush an alien out of the airlock in a hurry.)

Having first drilled it in the chest with a handy harpoon.......

Probably standard space weenie toolkit in the future.

[fuzzy]

3000 miles to Graceland.

Kevin Costner does a grand Psycho Elvis impersonator

[L CC]

Total Recall. The Arnie version. Again.
Forget the science (it's not), revel in the OTT Verhoeven gore.

[Jakob]

Edge of Tomorrow.
Enjoyed that. One of the things that caught my eye was the lack of gore, despite a high level of violence, which is a more old-school way of doing things (And also keeps the film PG-13)

[Aidan]

What we did on our holiday.  I expected a big screen version of Outnumbered ,, and while there were similarities , particularly in children's dialogue , it was much less a comedy and quite sad in bits.
Really enjoyed it.

[Wascally Weasel]

Edge of Tomorrow.
Enjoyed that. One of the things that caught my eye was the lack of gore, despite a high level of violence, which is a more old-school way of doing things (And also keeps the film PG-13)

I thought it was a lot of fun - looking forwards to the release next week so I can see it again.

[essexian]

The Equalizer

You have seen this film before….many times…. Hell, Clint Eastwood has done it before, as did Edward Woodward. You know it, something nasty happens to someone our hero likes; he gets rather upset and goes on a killing spree. Blood, gore and general mayhem ensues. We leave the cinema not having learnt anything about the world and indeed, due to the really sweet ending, I need to take an extra metformin tablet to control my blood sugar when I got home.

This really isn’t a film I would normally spend my hard earned going to the cinema to see.

So, why did I spend over £12 each on a ticket to see a film I wasn’t looking forward to? Well the reason is quite straightforward…. My considerably better half wanted to return to the new cinema in Telford…despite going there to see the rather excellent Pride only last week.

Not really a good reason eh….well it seems the new cinema has a screen with a special type of seat called “D-box.” These are motion machine like seats which move with the action. So, if the actor is on a train, you feel the points, if a gun is fired, you feel the recoil etc. Now I am not a fan of motion machines but my considerably better half is. Indeed, we spent most of our Las Vegas honeymoon riding them. So much so, I came home with a bruised lower back and neck pain which I still have 16 years later.

Was it worth the extra £4.50 for the D-box seat….well sort for a one off but it’s not something that was really needed.

In conclusion therefore, from the above you would think I hated my evening out. Actually, you would be wrong. While the film was very, very, very formulaic, the cinematograph was really good, while Denzel Washington was excellent as our brooding hero. The film was well paced with long periods of reflection intermixed with blazing periods of action. The use of power tools as instruments of death was rather funny, if disturbing!  Overall, I actually really liked it, despite it not actually being my sort of film.

One last thing, I counted at least 20 deaths in this film, some of them being extremely bloody. How this film got a 15 is beyond me…..perhaps I am just getting old but it seemed to be much too violent for this rating.

[citoyen]

One last thing, I counted at least 20 deaths in this film, some of them being extremely bloody. How this film got a 15 is beyond me…..perhaps I am just getting old but it seemed to be much too violent for this rating.

See previous rants on this subject. It probably wasn't even the violence that made it a 15 rather than a 12A - it was probably the naughty words or something.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

The Equalizer

...
One last thing, I counted at least 20 deaths in this film, some of them being extremely bloody. How this film got a 15 is beyond me…..perhaps I am just getting old but it seemed to be much too violent for this rating.

It was quite justifiable violence as they were mostly bad Russians.  It's good to see films with bad Russians are coming back into vogue.  Also it was instructive as regards the consquences of improper use of power tools.  I am sure there were more than 20 deaths if you include the security guards.   It's possible there will be a sequel written by Richard (Dick?) Wank according to wiki

[mrcharly-YHT]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I enjoyed this. Yeah, it is a big shootemup action movie.

It has two major plus points. One, a kickass female role. Super smart, independent, not simple and not a sex object. Go Black Widow

Second, a not-very-veiled criticism of the 'shoot dem turrorists from de sky' USA policy.
To quote cap: "Freedom at the end of a gun barrel is not freedom. That's not what we were fighting for."

[Kim]

Downfall

It's currently on iPlayer, and given the number of parodies I've seen on Youtube, it seemed like a good idea to watch the original.

[LEE]

Downfall

It's currently on iPlayer, and given the number of parodies I've seen on Youtube, it seemed like a good idea to watch the original.

I enjoyed it but, to be honest, I was surprised how strongly Hitler felt about the new iPhone.

[tiermat]

Lucy.

An interesting concept, all star cast, Luc Besson directing.

I am still not sure what I think, though.

[Ruthie]

I always find Besson's films slightly opaque, as though they're being broadcast for people who live in another dimension or something.

[CAMRAMan]

The Manchurian Candidate: Rather predictable ending, I thought. Strange casting too. Lawrence Harvey had a plummy British accent, which was rather out of place given the topic. Also, I couldn't help but notice the deliberately out-of-focus close-ups of Sinatra. I imagine this was his ego determining that his wrinkles couldn't be seen. This was especially obvious towards the end when the scene shifted continually from Harvey to Sinatra. I expected better.

[Pickled Onion]

Margaret.

For some unknown reason, Lovefilm by Post sent the extended version at over three hours long. Even the shorter version at 145 minutes would have had too much unnecessary stuff. I reckon the makers thought it was really clever, but it comes over as a bit silly and overdone. Maybe I missed the big irony, but I'm not an opera lover and I'm guessing that was the connection.

[citoyen]

Dallas Buyers Club

Yeah, well made, well written, well acted and all that, but soooo predictable.