What was the last movie you saw?

Seven Times Seven 1968 - 7 convicts plus 1 break out of prison during a finals cup match to steal paper and then break into the Royal Mint so they can print money and then break into prison to complete their alibi.
It produced a catchy 60s song:

 
Gods and Monsters (1998)

Fictional version of the last days in the life of the director James Whale, particularly his relationship with a (completely fictional) gardener. Much of the discussion of this film centers around the fact that Whale was openly gay, but I think other themes are more important, particularly his despair over the deterioration of his mind after a stroke. This is depicted as visions/hallucinations/memories of his past, from the extreme poverty of his youth to the horrors of the Great War to the filming of The Bride of Frankenstein (wonderfully recreated.) There's also a remarkable nightmare sequence in which the gardener is depicted as Frankenstein and Whale as the Monster. Ian McKellen is brilliant as Whale, Lynn Redgrave is equally good as his housekeeper, and Brendan Fraser is, well, very natural as the gardener. (There are lots of other characters, but it's almost a three-person show.) I would compare it to Ed Wood, and I mean that as a compliment to both films.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Gods and Monsters (1998)

Fictional version of the last days in the life of the director James Whale, particularly his relationship with a (completely fictional) gardener. Much of the discussion of this film centers around the fact that Whale was openly gay, but I think other themes are more important, particularly his despair over the deterioration of his mind after a stroke. This is depicted as visions/hallucinations/memories of his past, from the extreme poverty of his youth to the horrors of the Great War to the filming of The Bride of Frankenstein (wonderfully recreated.) There's also a remarkable nightmare sequence in which the gardener is depicted as Frankenstein and Whale as the Monster. Ian McKellen is brilliant as Whale, Lynn Redgrave is equally good as his housekeeper, and Brendan Fraser is, well, very natural as the gardener. (There are lots of other characters, but it's almost a three-person show.) I would compare it to Ed Wood, and I mean that as a compliment to both films.
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If you want to have a real sense of deja vu experience try Mr Holmes - which also stars McKellen, is also directed by Bill Condon, and also features a once famous (but totally fictional) talent living in isolated retirement with an older female housekeeper played by an actress assuming an accent for the role - In this case Laura Linney. Sadly it doesn't have anything like the beefcake factor of Brenda Fraser at his buffest that Gods and Monsters does. Gods and Monsters is far better. I love that final moment when the gardener leaves the bar and starts to imitate Karloff's creature walk.
 
I just rewatched the movie adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

It did make me laugh out loud on a couple of occasions. I felt it was a bit rushed though and after recently rewatching the BBC TV series, i don't think its anywhere near as good, but it was still good fun.

I did come to the conclusion that THHGTHG is just quintessentially British.
 
Honestly, I would love to watch The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I just need to get around to doing it.

I haven't watched anything recently, but after seeing some YouTube videos I do have a morbid desire to watch the Artemis Fowl adaption.
 
Zach777 said:
Honestly, I would love to watch The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I just need to get around to doing it.

I haven't watched anything recently, but after seeing some YouTube videos I do have a morbid desire to watch the Artemis Fowl adaption.
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Hhgttg the film is much better than Artemis Fowl, which is lacking in some departments.
Agree the ols tv seriea of HHGTTG is better than the film. The original radio show is best of all.
 
Pin (1988)

Canadian psychological shocker. Brother (Leon) and sister (Ursula) grow up with a mother obsessed with cleaning and a physician father who uses ventriloquism to make an anatomical dummy "speak" to his young patients. He also makes his children think that the dummy (named Pin) really speaks. He even teaches them the "facts of life" (in a very clinical fashion) through Pin. Leon grows up believing that Pin is alive. Things start to get out of hand when the parents die in a car accident, and Leon brings the dummy home to live with him and Ursula, dressing it up, putting makeup on it to make it look more real, giving it a wig, and putting in in a wheelchair. Don't expect things to go well for the aunt that moves in to look after them, or for Ursula's boyfriend. It's a genuinely creepy film, despite being nearly bloodless. The characters are relatable, even poor paranoid schizophrenic Leon. I'm glad they didn't throw in a supernatural twist at the end; Pin never comes to life or anything like that. The conclusion manages to deliver quite a blow without going that route. Recommended.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Pin (1988)
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How I loathed this one.

I wrote about it some years ago:

I heard of this film when it was released but it didn't get much word of mouth, as often happens with Canadian films. Pin is too restrained to be a true horror film and not deep enough to be a good psychological drama as often happens with Canadian films. The opening makes one speculate how the story might go--and a supernatural explanation seems possible--but the film ultimately goes with the mundane option as often happens with Canadian films.

It has competent performances by the main leads--and has an interesting/weird first act that might compel or repulse viewers, but as it goes on, it starts to show strains and the ending felt bland to me. The ho-hum aspects of the film may be explained by the fact that it is funded by the Canadian government, and in the 1980s, following a decade where it had an anything goes policy--which launched the career of David Cronenberg and allowed for the funding of just about anything-even a porno film, they radically cut back in what they would give money to. Among the restrictions was that serious criminal activity and homicidal violence could not be shown. The movie follows that rule closely. We see some beatings, and there is a few deaths, but they do not happen in violation of the government rules. Even a scene near the end involving an axe is ambiguous. One might notice that in one scene the boyfriend is shown studying french for a foreign trip--this is likely to follow rules on bilingual content! In the end the film is really about dysfunction and illness--which is once again a feature of Canadian filmmaking. The real question--and the most disturbing aspect of the film, is how anyone could think it would be commercially viable, even with the attempt at an Anywhere USA setting. There are elements in it that reminded me of the UK films Peeping Tom and the Psychopath but unlike this film, they did not face such restrictions in content thus they could go deeper into psychological and horror elements and leave a stronger viewing impression.

**a couple of other things---I remember one of the characters talked about hunting. It was so obviously inserted into the story as if they had to check off a list of acceptable Canadian culture elements--as if most Canadians hunt. But, even more surprising, considering the current topic about the sexualization of children--wasn't the girl who was eager to experience sexual activity a little young?
Yes--I just checked it--she was supposed to be age 11.

Canada culture was the canary in the coal mine or experimental lab for the weird stuff that Hollywood eventually became bolder about.
 
Very interesting analysis! It seems that some of the factors about this film that attracted me to it were those you did not care for. I also failed to mention the weird psychosexual vibe to the film, from the boy witnessing a nurse in an intimate encounter with Pin (which may make this very minor character the most disturbed person in the movie) to the doctor performing an abortion on his fifteen-year-old daughter (and inviting his son to watch, so he'll learn something -- fortunately, he chooses not to) to the young man writing poetry, supposedly about a Beowulf-like mythic figure who wants to impregnate as many women as possible and who contemplates raping his sister! (With the suggested incest theme, it's interesting to note that the movie is based on a novel by Andrew Neiderman, who went on to write a bunch of novels using V. C. Andrews' name long after she died.)
 
JunkMonkey said:
I love reading the end credits of movies. You discover all sorts of odd connections.
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I just rediscovered one of one of my favourite weird end credits in my movie diary while looking for something else (It Came From Outer Space 2 if you really must know.):

Galaxy Invader
www.imdb.com

The Galaxy Invader (Video 1985) - IMDb

The Galaxy Invader: Directed by Don Dohler. With Richard Ruxton, Faye Tilles, George Stover, Greg Dohler. An alien is hunted by a gang of drunken hillbillies who saw him crash-land his spaceship.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

"- had an end title credit that read, "Hat by Don Zeifert". Hat singular. Now as the only person in the film who was wearing a hat was played by an actor called Don Zeifert, we possibly have here the only instance of someone getting a title credit for wearing his own hat in a movie. Movie history. I feel somewhat privileged to have seen it."
 
Bruce Almighty (2003) - I felt compelled to see it again (for the up-teenth time). A wonderful comedic tale about a man who meets God.

The Birds (1963) - One of my favorite horror dramas by Alfred Hitchcock.
 
TCM was running a series of stunt-intensive films & having a discussion before & after each one. The expert Scott McGee had written a book called DANGER ON THE SILVER SCREEN, in which he covers many films's best stunts, etc.


SAFETY LAST! (1923) was one of those films. Who'd a thought Harold Lloyd just saw this guy, Bill Strother climbing up the side of a building, & hired him on the spot. Moreover, that HL had lost both his right hand's thumb & index finger, but still did his share of the stunts? I had heard that HL actually did climb the building, without any safety measures. After hearing the intro, I took some print screens & noticed, what certainly appears to be changing background buildings, etc, as HL ascends. :ROFLMAO:

So, anyway, the boy as Loyd's character was called moves from the small town to the big city, and in letters to his girlfriend still in the small town, he lies about his progress. he tells her he is the manger, etc., & sends her gifts, which take his entire weekly pay. So, she gets the idea that, with ALL THAT MONEY, he might be tempted by some big city girls. So, she goes to visit him unannounced. Now, he must find a way to show her he is the manger, all while avoiding the real manager, and thus keeping his job at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

This, a silent film, is still wonderful, even against Dolby, surround sound, etc!
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Very interesting analysis! It seems that some of the factors about this film that attracted me to it were those you did not care for. I also failed to mention the weird psychosexual vibe to the film, from the boy witnessing a nurse in an intimate encounter with Pin (which may make this very minor character the most disturbed person in the movie) to the doctor performing an abortion on his fifteen-year-old daughter (and inviting his son to watch, so he'll learn something -- fortunately, he chooses not to) to the young man writing poetry, supposedly about a Beowulf-like mythic figure who wants to impregnate as many women as possible and who contemplates raping his sister!
Click to expand...
The thing is--as a Canadian I am more sensitive and frustrated to see money thrown away--taxpayer money actually--on things that have no chance to get audiences. This was a regular theme in media here--why were Canadian films doing so poorly at home?
Why do they think they did so poorly? One reason was because these stories have zero appeal to most people!
It is like a little club where you only get funding and distribution if you adhere to government appointed rules. Bureaucrats who have no interest in art or anything at all made the decisions.

When weirdness became more common in Hollywood film and tv in recent times--I immediately thought of Canadian films since it set the trend for that.
On a site called Bad Movie Planet, the author said the average Canadian movie is about "a depressed suicidal Saskatchewan farmer having gay sex with a dead moose."

There are Canadian films that come close to that kind of plot. Especially after 1985. Night Zoo has the plot of an ex-con who escapes rape in prison to reconcile with his father--and so, as a gesture of affection, he takes his wheelchair-bound father to go moose-hunting like they used to--but not finding a moose at the zoo to shoot, he shoots an elephant instead (not really, the elephant lays down on cue). The disconnect with audiences is just astounding to me. And I saw that film in a classroom where it was supposed to demonstrate that Canada could make a US-style crime film.
Not even the Hayes Code was so restrictive on creative content--you don't have to do murders but it is so lame how devoid of real dramatic tension Canadian movies can be. The US and UK and other European countries seem to be in creative shackles but Canada had them first, if we can boast about something.
 
Encounters in the Deep -(1979) - hypnoticly dull Italian Spanish co-production set in the Bermuda Triangle in which nothing happens, then nothing happens again, and then again and then, in case you missed it the first couple of times, the whole cast diligently do nothing again - again, sometimes underwater, and then the film just stops after an extremely boring sequence of nothing happening which may (or may not) be the climax. Probably the least interesting film I have ever watched twice.

Bulldog Drummond's Bride (1939) - slick, fast paced B-feature with not a single wasted second. Everything clips along merrily at a breathless pace. Another piece of Hollywood production-line film making. A churned out simple adventure yarn with familiar characters (there had been eight Bulldog Drummond films in the preceding two years) but somehow it's wonderfully fresh and lively. It looked like they were having fun.
 
I never knew that there was an adaptation of Needful Things,

“No Men Beyond This Point”

A mockumentory style movie. Women are able to impregnate themselves and men are dying out. Turned out to be a very sweet love story. I liked it.
 
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