What was the last movie you saw?

[Vaz]

After Earth

Awful!!

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Maze Runner - which I really quite enjoyed... right up until the end when the 'explanation' made me wonder why I had bothered.

Ditto. It was one of the better teen dystopian movies up to that point, despite various things that made little sense (I gather some of them were story changes made between the book and movie). But it's the kind of story where you really can't come up with a better ending than the one in Cube... any kind of explanation was going to be a letdown.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I watched... Mall Cop 2!! It was lighthearted yknow... and the special FX near the end were funny... when the putzy security gaurds take on the heavies and destroy them, largely by accident. Then Box Trolls, and it was fun too.

By coincidence I saw The Boxtrolls tonight - what a great film!

 

[J Riff]

I AM a BoxTroll! I just came from scrounging thru some boxes, and came up with: DVDs, a bunch new movies I'd never see otherwise;
collectible enamel pins, some LPs, pair of blue jeans (Levis) and some watches. All this while taking a 5 min. smoke break at the java hut.
Beats TV. Watched 'The Italian Spiderman' an Aussie sendup, and you can imagine. It was okay, heh, heh, Oi!

 

[Vince W]

I decided to skip it after looking at the poster.

A Uran Utang in India? and if that is Ka wrapped around the arch he is one VERY big snake or maybe Bagheera is just teeny weeny -there's something really wrong with the perspective and scale in the poster.

Vince, could you help satisfy my curiosity as to why the Costume Designer gets a credit on the poster (other than contractual reasons) - are there any costumes, other than the red rag wrapped round Mowgli's boy bits? Because if there ain't, getting your name on a movie poster just for designing a loincloth seems a bit rich.

Aside from Mowgli, there are a couple of scenes with people that happen to be clothed. So, I guess somebody had to say 'wear this'.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

You might not think that a movie which begins with a bunch of Cambodian zombies fighting in the Great War would be the most boring thing you've ever seen. Of the film's many faults -- poor dialogue, poor acting, poor direction, poor special effects -- the worse may be the way in which the only character with any life, a Snidely Whiplash type who does everything but twirl his mustache, is completely wasted. He's not even the film's chief Bad Guy. A few minutes of decent scenes here and there, but almost all of it is dull talk.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

Ultra-low budget pseudodocumentary about a Bigfoot-type critter in Arkansas. No plot at all; interviews with various folks alternate with scenes in which folks get spooked by the thing. Sounds like it should be a waste of time, but darned if the authentic locales and accents, the decision to film almost everything at sunset or in the dark, and the wise decision to make the creature barely visible don't add up to a modest amount of entertainment. Nice nature photography, too. Try to ignore a couple of really lousy songs.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I haven't seen the first one Victoria but I would advise everyone to avoid the sequel if they can. (The MST3K version is bearable). My review from a while back:

The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part II (1985) - a Charles B. Pierce pictures inc. production written by Charles B. Pierce, produced by Charles B. Pierce, directed by Charles B. Pierce and starring Charles B. Pierce - and his son Chuck. Filmed in Fouke, Arkansas (which is the way I felt when I had finished watching it) The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part II (aka Boggy Creek ll: and the Legend Continues) treads a fine line between boredom and tedium. Nothing happens. And then it happens again. Sometimes nothing happens in flashback with a stocking tied over the lens to make it all misty and, you know, flashbacky. In short we spend 90 minutes watching Charles B. Pierce being a pompous prick telling people to 'be quiet' and 'get back' a lot - as nothing happens. And then it ends. Highlights include his co-star son (who plays one of his students) calling him 'Pop' on screen. And Charles B. Pierce running around in too short shorts and a tight moob-hugging shirt holding a handgun - jumping over a small bush! Charles B. Pierce also provided the endless soporific voice-over. Fans of Charles B. Pierce may like it.​

 

[ratsy]

I watched The Final Girls on the weekend. It's a horror spoof about a girl who travels through a movie screen during a showing of Camp Bloodbath (a blatant spoof of Friday the 13th's Camp Crystal Lake) only to end up in the plot of the movie. Her mother (Malin Akerman) was one of the movie's stars in the 80's and has since passed away in a car crash. The daughter gets to fight the bad guy, with her teenage mother at her side. It made for a great movie, with a cool cast, and a very original, sometimes touching, plot. I highly recommend this one!

 

[J Riff]

Gog 1954 ... lots of kooky 50s sound FX abound. Robots, giant brain machine. The robots go out of control, of course, but they only can go about 3 MPH and wave their arms, so a flamethrower is sufficient to dispatch them.

 

[svalbard]

The Survialist. Literally just finished watching this. Best movie I have seen this year. Words like incredible, visceral, bloody brilliant come to mind. Hats off to everyone involved in this.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Gog 1954 ... lots of kooky 50s sound FX abound. Robots, giant brain machine. The robots go out of control, of course, but they only can go about 3 MPH and wave their arms, so a flamethrower is sufficient to dispatch them.

Every nuclear power plant should have at least two flame throwers like the one in Gog.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Black Camel (1931)

Early Charlie Chan mystery, with third-billed Bela Lugosi as a psychic (or is he?) and an unbilled Dwight Frye as a butler. Nice use is made of Hawaiian filming locations. Notable for being one of the few surviving films directly adapted from one of the original Chan novels by Earl Derr Biggers. The plot involves an actress making a film in Hawaii who is murdered. It all has something to do with the unsolved murder of an actor three years ago. It's pretty enjoyable on its own terms as an old-fashioned whodunit, even if the final revelation of all the secrets strains credibility. The most interesting character is a penniless artist, living in a shack with a "native" woman (pre-Code!), who seems to have stepped right out of the pages of The Moon and Sixpence.

 

[Foxbat]

Ran Akira Kurosawa's take on King Lear is probably my favourite of all Kurosawa's work. The cinematography and acting are superb and, allied to the Shakesperan intrigue and set in wonderful Japanese landscapes, it makes for rivetting viewing.

Many movies are lauded with the title 'masterpiece' but few actually deserve that accolade. Ran is one of the few.

Leni Reifenstahl once said that the more elements a movie has, the less artistic it becomes. An example of what she means can be seen in Ran where two of Hidetora Ichimonji's sons take his castle from him in an act of treachery. The battle is viewed with only a melancholy musical score for accompaniment. Every sound of the battle itself is stripped away. There is no clash of steel, screams of the dying or thunder of gunpowder. This forces the viewer to concentrate on the agony in Hidetora's face as he watches his many loyal men put to sword, arrow and gun against the burning backdrop of his keep. It is haunting, memorable and mesmerising. Ran is a movie that approaches perfection in my opinion.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Ran Akira Kurosawa's take on King Lear is probably my favourite of all Kurosawa's work.

Mine too. My movie diary entry for the first time I saw it just reads, "WOW!"

 

[JunkMonkey]

Captain America: Civil War - not having seen Captain America, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Iron Man (1, 2, or 3), The Avengers, Avengers Assemble, Avengers: Age of Ultron, or Ant Man and not having read any Avengers or Captain America comics since the 1980s, not surprisingly I was a little lost as to what the f*ck was going on for the first hour or so. (Though I do pride myself on knowing who The Black Panther was well before the script told us.) So what did I think? - It was ok. Another huge slab of American pop culture with sh*tloads of fist fights. At the end of it I felt like I had watched a whole TV series in one sitting. Daughter Number One thought it was "Awesome" but slightly annoyed that her favourite character from the first Two Captain America movies (Cap's boyfriend Bucky) had been reduced to a mere MacGuffin.

And Please, Mr Hollywood, get over your obsession with parental loss. The whole plot (three major characters) in this show where motivated by revenge for the loss of their murdered parents - four if you count Spiderman. One Hamlet at a time please!

Stan Lee popped up near the end. I'm convinced the man thinks he's the missing Chuckle Brother.

He's about as funny.

 

[J-Sun]

Saw Ex Machina (2015), which is a small-scale psychological drama about the early stages of AI robots. More detailed discussion in its dedicated thread, which seems to still be a spoiler-protected thread. Maybe the most pertinent part of my blather:

I still like The Martian as an award-winning-type movie - a sort of happy medium between the exhilarating but lightweight The Force Awakens and the somewhat demanding Ex Machina, but they all have their strong virtues and the first and last are the veritable Good Science Fiction Films.

 

[Starbeast]

The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Zombies on Mars? I gave it a chance. It started off interesting at the beginning, then it became typical throughout the movie until the end. 90% of the dialogue was cliched, as well as the plot, and the (supposedly) highly educated astronauts, seemed like people you'd find in a bar that swear a lot. Production for special effects was thee only high point in the film, but don't waste your time with this one.


The Hallow (2015)

AWESOME movie!!! I was infatuated by this horror flick. Dark, creepy and suspenseful (hard to find one this good). If you enjoy horror films that deal with folklore, I highly recommend this gem. I want to see it again.

 

[Randy M.]

The Uninvited (1944, dir. Lewis Allen; starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell)

A re-watch of an old fashioned ghost story about a haunted house and the young girl whose grandfather tries to keep her our of it; the question arises, whose ghost is it?

Nicely done atmosphere, in the pre-showing on Turner Cable Movies the host, Ben Mankiewicz, suggests Allen was influenced by the success of RKO's Val Lewton movies which sounds right to me, though they did include a couple of visuals of the ghost that really they could and probably should have avoided. What makes the movie is the acting, including Donald Crisp at his crustiest and Milland using his best Cary Grant-ish charm. Notable for 1960s TV viewers in that trusty Alfred from Batman was actually young once and Alan Napier was every bit as charming as Milland. (Based on the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle, which I've never seen but would like to.)


5,000,000 Million Years to Earth (1967, dir. Roy Ward Baker; starring James Donald, Andrew Kier, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover)

Another re-watch. Film adaptation of Nigel Kneale's TV teleplay, Quatermass and the Pit. Still one of my favorite sf/horror movies. When excavation in Hobb's End unearths oddly shaped skulls of prehistoric men and what appears to be an un-exploded German rocket, both scientists and bomb diffusion experts are called in. Fancy their reaction when the German rocket fully uncovered looks more like a space craft; and then it seems to activate.

This may have a feel closer to Lovecraft than any film based on Lovecraft's fiction. A bit talky by today's standards, considering when it was made the effects are mostly good, but the acting and crisp direction really carry it.


Randy M.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Zombies on Mars? I gave it a chance. It started off interesting at the beginning, then it became typical throughout the movie until the end. 90% of the dialogue was cliched, as well as the plot, and the (supposedly) highly educated astronauts, seemed like people you'd find in a bar that swear a lot. Production for special effects was thee only high point in the film, but don't waste your time with this one.

Seconded. I watched it with high hopes - I like Liev Schreiber, he's a vastly under appreciated actor - the hardware and set design was really good but the plot....? hoiy!