What was the last movie you saw?

[HareBrain]

Far From the madding Crowd (1967).

 

[KGeo777]

DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER - 1972 - Weird dreamy gothic film that seems like it could be a remake of some Bava -Steele film with lesbianism and gore thrown in. Ewa Aulin is too cute to be sinister though. Would have been better for Barbara Steele lookalike Patty Shepard.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Tire pas sur mon collant (Don't Pull on my Tights - 1978) - I guess you have to be a connoisseur of French Eurosleeze cinema to appreciate the finer points of this piece of fluff (if there are any) but if you're not a connoisseur of the genre, and are coming to this looking for any kind of eroticism, intrigue, comedy, character development, entertainment skilful editing, or even continuity (I counted a triple action at one point) then this isn't the film for you.
Two annoying perky, irresponsible young women accidentally blag a trip to Morocco when one of them is fired after being caught stripping off in the Boss's office. The girls hang around the pool a lot and have 'comedy moments' - we know they are comedy moments because everyone laughs. Everyone laughs at everything in this film. All the time. My French is not perfect but even I could tell they weren't laughing at the witty dialogue. Every line is delivered through a wide smile or a sullen sulk which can be switched on and off like a light bulb. The girls take their tops off a lot. They have nice tits. There is a lot of bad 70s dancing. There's a pointless driving around on motorbikes sequence which just goes on forever. (Because they'd hired the bikes for the day and wanted to get as much production value out of a major chunk of the budget?) The most fun to be had here is watching passing pedestrians standing around, watching the filming - some of them torn between looking at the girls' boobs and looking into the camera.

Avoidable. Very Avoidable.

 

[Steve Harrison]

Just watched UNDER PARIS, a Netflix thriller about a giant shark terrorising the city of the title. It's cliched, silly, predictable and pretty much what you would expect of a JAWS variation, but it's beautifully filmed with great special effects and I loved every minute of it. Oh, and I thought the soundtrack music was also terrific.

 

[Randy M.]

Blood and Black Lace (1964) dir. Mario Bava; starring Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok

Nasty little movie, which I don't entirely mean as an insult. Begins with the killing of a model as she approaches the fashion house she works for, her murder stemming from earlier nefarious events like murder and blackmail. There's a diary that leads to more murders, and finally the revelation of who's behind it all. My take away is that Bava or his cinematographer must have loved his color palette. Scenes are drenched in colors, mostly red, green, purple, some white and some brown. The killer appears wearing a black hat and coat (though late in the movie they look more of a dark blue) with a white mask, which makes the other colors pop more. Note that scenes with the police are more sedately colored, Bava apparently contrasting the mundane with the more Baroque and Gothic.

Oh, and at least three male voices in the movie sound like they were dubbed by Paul Frees ... and IMDB confirms it. Oddly, they don't include Mitchell's character, but Mitchell's voice didn't sound like I remember it from his days on the tv show, The High Chaparral.

Watched this again over the weekend. I'll stick by what I said above, though I'm now certain Paul Frees dubbed Cameron Mitchell as well as some of the other males, so that occasionally it sounds like Frees is talking to himself.

 

[Karapace]

Asteroid City (Wes Ansderson)
I loved every minute of it, though if you are not a fan of Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Moonrise Kingdom amongst them) you probably won't. The deliveries are dry almost emotionless but that's the intent. It's deconstruction and homage to 1950's cinema which weirdly put me in mind of A field in England. It's not giving anything away to say it starts with a black and white documentry of a play, then switches to the play (acted out as "real" life in a hyper-coloured desert). However this play within a documentry, goes further by having dialogue from other plays being rehearsed within the play. Tom Hanks and Scarlet Johansson come off the best in my view, adding depth to what could be a wooden delivery. It's bonks, its dryly funny and the sort of film I would have to watch again to catch the bits I missed first time

 

[Foxbat]

The Lighthouse (2019)
An unsettling psychological horror dealing with the main theme of isolation. Two men, cut off from the rest of the world by a huge storm…add to the mix alcohol addled visions and the natural superstition many seafaring men carry and you have a fairly volatile combination.

Was that really turpentine and honey they were drinking?….no wonder they went so crazy!

Filming in black and white really added to the atmosphere, enhancing the effect of the dreich and unforgiving lump of rock that was their home.

It’s a very good movie but I found it somewhat exhausting to watch.

One final thought: it would make a fine stage play.

 

[Karapace]

The Lighthouse (2019)
An unsettling psychological horror dealing with the main theme of isolation. Two men, cut off from the rest of the world by a huge storm…add to the mix alcohol addled visions and the natural superstition many seafaring men carry and you have a fairly volatile combination.

This is a film I am going to have to watch again at some point. we streamed it a few years back (in COVID) but the streaming service froze up so often it was unwatchable.