What was the last movie you saw?

Rewatched Rush (2013)
A pretty decent movie about the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt that should please any fan of Formula 1 with its great driving sequences.

Good but not quite the best. I think the crown still belongs to Grand Prix (1966).
 
OK, so, I just watched IO... OK, and...what? Reminds me of Cemetary Man... OK, going along fine, yes and...What?!
Back to pre 2000 classics, all genres...Still... what?! I will never get it...???
 
Avalanche (1978)

Lousy little disaster movie. Our two big name stars, Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow, are a divorced couple, although he doesn't seem to accept that fact. She shows up at the ski resort he runs. Also present is Hudson's fun-loving Mom (veteran character actress Jeanette Nolan.) There are also skiers, snowmobilers, skaters, etc. For about an hour, we get some stuff about Hudson being in legal trouble for some vague reason, as well as a couple of love quadrangles. (Love quadrangle one: Hudson, Farrow, Nature Guy who warns Hudson that there's gonna be an avalanche, and Hudson's secretary. Love quadrangle two: TV sports announcer, his wife, hot shot skier, and figure skater.) In addition to all this soap opera stuff, we've got lots of scenes of skiing, skating, snowmobiling, etc.

Finally we get the avalanche, which is played by animation and foam blocks. It's caused when a plane flying through bad weather, carrying some guy involved with Hudson's vague legal problems, crashes into a mountain. Some decent stunt work here, I'll admit. Some folks live, some folks die, you won't care which ones. None of the legal or romantic subplots are resolved.

Not a good movie. Some footage from it was used in another bad disaster movie, Meteor.
 
Home Alone - I've never sat and watched it from beginning to end before. Of course, I've caught parts of it, clips shown on TV, and it's been on in the background, but never watched in full. They were discussing it on the radio earlier today - whether the tricks would work or not - whether the burglars would be toast after the first few minutes of trying to get in. I'm unsure whether it deserves its iconic status as one of the best Christmas films ever. It's dated now, and it's of it's time. I think a younger generation than mine hold it with great sentimentality. It's a Wonderful Life is dated too, but I think that holds up better. Anyway, I can say that I've seen it now. Just, what is it? ...Only four more sequels to go!
 
Dave said:
Home Alone - I've never sat and watched it from beginning to end before. Of course, I've caught parts of it, clips shown on TV, and it's been on in the background, but never watched in full. They were discussing it on the radio earlier today - whether the tricks would work or not - whether the burglars would be toast after the first few minutes of trying to get in. I'm unsure whether it deserves its iconic status as one of the best Christmas films ever. It's dated now, and it's of it's time. I think a younger generation than mine hold it with great sentimentality. It's a Wonderful Life is dated too, but I think that holds up better. Anyway, I can say that I've seen it now. Just, what is it? ...Only four more sequels to go!
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I personally can't stand the film. Its a Wonderful Life on the other hand is an absolute gem
 
AE35Unit said:
I personally can't stand the film. Its a Wonderful Life on the other hand is an absolute gem
Click to expand...

It wasn't a hit when it originally came out but its stature grew in the year afterwards. It's a terrific film. Red Dwarf did a homage to it in one of the books .:cool:
 
Dave said:
That's going a little far. Let's say that it works! And I just remembered that the first sequel has a cameo that doesn't seem quite right anymore.
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They did a remake of tin the 1970s with Marlos Thomas and Orson Wells.
 
BAYLOR said:
They did a remake of tin the 1970s with Marlos Thomas and Orson Wells.
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Home Alone has a remake with Orson Welles? In the 1970's? :confused: You're talking about It's Wonderful Life, aren't you?. I think I need to turn in for the night. I agree that that is a terrific film. I think I almost said as much already. I feel like I'm in some time loop. Make it end!
 
Dave said:
Home Alone has a remake with Orson Welles? In the 1970's? :confused: You're talking about It's Wonderful Life, aren't you?. I think I need to turn in for the night. I agree that that is a terrific film. I think I almost said as much already. I feel like I'm in some time loop. Make it end!
Click to expand...

ops sorry yes, I was.:)
 
Demon of Paradise (1987)

Cheesy, old-fashioned monster movie. Set in Hawaii (played by the Philippines), it starts with some idiots doing illegal dynamite fishing. Their boat gets attacked by the Creature From the Black Lagoon the Demon of Paradise, somebody drops a stick of dynamite into the boat, and BOOM, the first of many explosions. All this happens before the opening titles.

We go on to meet our protagonists, Law Guy and Science Girl. (Forgettable minor characters include some dynamite and cocaine smuggling crooks; a resort owner who, having seen Jaws, refuses to shut down the place because of the monster; the hippie-type writer who acts as her PR man; a photographer; and his swimsuit model, who provides our brief nudity. That, a fair amount of profanity, and a little blood, provide the evidence that this wasn't made in the 1950's.)

The locals know about the legendary monster, called Akua (or some such.) Science Girl tells us there were humanoid reptilian carnivores in the Jurassic Period and that they served as the link between reptiles and primates. Somehow I missed that in biology class.

Stuff blows up. The monster attacks people and, in an impressive show of skill, knocks down a helicopter causing it to (you guessed it) blow up.

Oddly, we are told the resort is on a lake. Not on the ocean, in Hawaii? The dynamite guys were fishing in a river, too, not the sea. I guess Akua is a fresh water creature.

Very silly stuff, and enjoyable in that way.
 
The Mermaids of Tiburon (1962; additional footage 1964?)

Aquatic fantasy adventure that evolved into a nudie cutie with the added footage. Marine Biologist Hero is approached by an older fellow to explore the fictional Mexican island mentioned in the title, where gigantic pearls can be found. Unbeknownst to MBH, Bad Guy (cult actor Timothy Carey) and his reluctant assistant (ubiquitous Mexican actor Jose Gonzales Gonzales) are after the same treasure. BG has already killed the older fellow and will stop at nothing to get his hands on the pearls.

MBH soon finds out there are honest-to-gosh mermaids swimming around the island, fish tails and all. In the additional footage, there are also women wearing only what seem to be bikini bottoms made out of seaweed swimming around, too. Some wear swimming fins on their feet as well, presumably those who were willing to appear topless but were not strong swimmers. A humanoid subspecies of mermaid or human women who are hanging around for some reason? (The fishtail mermaids wear the traditional bikini tops made out of shells or some such.)

Some action sequences follow, but it's mostly very nice underwater photography and a whole bunch of seminude women. A little of this goes a long way.
 
Solomon King (1974)

Blaxploitation flick produced by, written by, directed by, and starring a businessman (along with other folks.) This vanity project is amateurish, as you'd expect, but it's not the worst example of the genre I've ever seen. (That would be The Guy From Harlem.)

Some white guy badly overacting with an odd accent pretends to be the prince of an unnamed fictional oil-producing Middle Eastern nation. He tells a flunky to kill the king and the princess. Cut to what is obviously a California oil field, with king, princess, and our hero's brother. Gunfire follows, king escapes somewhere in the unnamed nation, princess and brother escape to the USA.

Solomon King, our hero, is an ex-CIA agent and a former member of the Special Forces. His old CIA boss contacts him about the whole Middle East mess. Too bad there's a guy in the CIA working with the bad guy.

Princess gets assassinated by the bad guy's agents pretty quickly, so our hero sets out for revenge. Fistfights, gunfights, etc. It all leads up to a military-style assault on the bad guy by our hero and his military buddies.

Cheap and something of a mess, but not as bad it it might have been. You can dig the funky music, at least.
 
Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad (Simbad e il califfo di Bagdad, 1973)


Italian Arabian Knights adventure starts with the insane caliph killing a dancing girl with a crossbow that shoots what looks like a bullet. He then has an epileptic fit and has to be carried away on a stretcher. It seems he's killed sixty-two dancing girls this way.

After this wild opening, we cut to Sinbad sailing home to Baghdad, only to find out that his foster mother's property has been seized to pay back taxes and he's penniless. His only possession is a mysterious parchment torn in half, stating that the other half is in a "big safe" somewhere. Two comedy relief guys get him drugged and shanghaied, but they get shanghaied too.

The ship meets with a boat carrying a bunch of slave girls as well as our heroine, princess Scheherazade. (By the way, Rimsky-Korsakov's famous composition of the same name is used in the dancing girl scene.) She's pretty much a slave herself, doomed to become part the caliph's harem.

With one thing and another, Sinbad and the two goofballs wind up adrift in a small boat. With incredible good luck, they wind up on an island full of wrecked ships, where they find treasure and a hot air balloon (!) that allows them to reach Baghdad.

Oh, did I mention that Sinbad looks exactly like the caliph? (Same actor.) That really starts the plot going.

As you can see, a lot goes on. Too much comedy relief, maybe, but otherwise it keeps one's attention. Worthwhile escapist entertainment.
 
Two, count 'em, 2 Japanese horror films:

Cure (1997) What appear to be murders perpetrated by the same person, actually have nothing in common. All the killers are normal people who apparently were hypnotized into doing things none would ever do. A psychiatrist assures us that hypnosis cannot force people to act out of character.

But here are the exceptions. The carrier of the 'disease' is a college drop-out who had been studying hypnosis. He does not murder anyone, at least not directly. When the police interrogate him, he answers their questions by asking them questions. He claims to have lost his memory; and his behavior causes the cops to physically attack him.


KURONEKO / BLACK CAT(1968); though the full title is black cat in a bamboo grove. So, 2 women, a mother and her daughter are raped and murdered by samurai. Their spirits seek revenge against ALL Samurai. But the son/husband is also a Samurai, who had been recruited against his will, and had since won acclaim by killing a prominent enemy general. The two ghost women seduce Samurai, and rip out their throats. What happens when sun/husband returns to his home?


Both films are very entertaining!
 
Macabre (Macabro, 1980)

Italian psychological horror film starts with a married woman going off to an assignation to meet her lover in an apartment she rents from a blind man and his mother. She tells her daughter (in her early teens, at most) that she's going to a business meeting and to keep an eye on her younger brother. Daughter is no fool; she telephones her mother at the love nest, sarcastically asking how the meeting is going. We get our first shock scene when daughter deliberately drowns her brother in a bathtub. She then calls back to report the death, but without saying she murdered him.

Mother understandably panics and has lover drive her back home. We get our second shock scene when they get in a bloody car wreck and he is killed.

Cut to a year later. Mother goes back to the rented apartment, which has been kept up for her by the blind man. (His mother has passed away in the mean time.) She keeps a sort of shrine to her dead lover in the room, with a photograph and some of his possessions, even cigarette butts. In front of this she writhes on the bed in seductive lingerie. Obviously not too mentally stable, as we'll find out in our later shock moments. Let's just say it has something to do with a freezer kept locked. The very last scene is questionable, but otherwise it's an engaging shocker.
 
Black Swan (2010)

Short review: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Repulsion.

Physical and psychological torture. Cutthroat competition. Sexual harassment. Sadism in the name of art. Suicide attempts. Welcome to the world of ballet. This film will convince little girls that they don't really want to grow up to be ballerinas.

That's just the "normal" part of the movie, before we add hallucinations and a complete psychotic breakdown.

Natalie Portman, as the ballerina who wins the coveted roles of the White and Black Swans* in Swan Lake after she bites the director** when he forces a kiss on her, thus revealing her dark side, which is needed to play the evil swan, starts off neurotic enough. She scratches her back obsessively, to the point of bleeding and leaving scars. As the pressure to be perfect builds, along with the way her best friend/worst enemy introduces her to booze, drugs, mindless partying, and anonymous sex, she progresses into full blown schizophrenia. The audience doesn't always know what really happens and what doesn't. Don't expect a happy ending.

Fine acting and striking visuals abound. I'm not sure that the film needed to go all the way into body horror special effects -- the real living hell of ballet is terrifying enough -- but that's a quibble. Highly recommended.

* I'm no balletomane, so I didn't know that both roles are traditionally played by the same dancer.

** Or whatever the proper term would be for the sadistic, sexually harassing guy in charge.
 
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