What was the last movie you saw?

"T2:Trainspotting" (2017) Ewan McGregor. Directed by Danny Boyle

It's been 20 years since Boyle gave us Irvine Welsh's remarkable adaptation "Trainspotting": an era commonly (and fondly) associated with BritPop, of Oasis, of Blur, of Pulp and of course Underworld. "Trainspotting" was, and still is a cult film amongst the Gen-Xs and perhaps even the Baby Boomers trying desperately to cling on to their <my> yoof! So it was with some reservation that I decided to give T2 a swing, knowing full well that our favourite 4 Scottish hedonistic drug addicts would be in their 40s this time round, and therefore no longer relevant in this context.

And true enough only one of the four "chose life" - our very own Mark Renton (McGregor), and went for the straight, safe and boring world of marriage, proper jobs and a mortgage. While "Sick Boy", Begbie and Spud are still stuck in a 90s rut with crime, prison and of course drugs still high on their "to do" list.

Like most sequels of this nature, they all meet up (save for the imprisoned Begbie), and reflect over old times, along with serious misgivings, anger, betrayals and a quaint nostalgia of being very young and very stupid back in the day, and how things have/have not changed for some of them.

It's okay I guess, but I can't help feel Boyle could have been a bit more adventurous rather than relying on flash-backs and 90s music anthems to offer any kind of depth to T2. This isn't boundary-pushing new-wave, but more recycled ripples. Millennials will probably fall asleep with the tedium of it all, while the Gen-Xs might also feel a little short-changed - nice flashbacks and standing at iconic train station platforms and all that, but where the hell is the story!?

2/5
 
Deepwater Horizon. This should be a study of how not to film a true life story. There is zero story or character development. The little dialogue there is consists of mumbled jargon and grunted monosyllabic words. It quickly devolves into running and screaming from loud explosiony type events punctuated with 'real coward' and 'real hero' moments.

In the end the photos of the real life victims was drawn out to nearly 5 minutes of the 1h47m run time and left about as much imprint on you as feathers falling on concrete. Dull is about the most positive thing I can say about it.
 
"A Man Escaped" (1957)

To my mind this is director, Robert Bresson's finest film: a simple premise of a French Lieutenant's valiant attempt to escape from a prison in German-occupied Lyon, France during WW2.

This is no "Great Escape". It is painstakingly slow, patient, meticulous in its development over the 102 minutes running time. You can sometimes feel the claustrophobia envelope you as much as our heroic soldier and his methodical means of escape or face a firing squad for being a resistance fighter/conspirator.

Based on a true story, coupled with Bresson's own experiences in an internment prison camp in France during the War, this is a truly breathtaking film from start to finish.

5/5

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
 
Actually, skateboard fans would enjoy the one scene in Return of Zander Cage, it's pretty funny.
I watched Terry Jones of Python fame - his series on ancient Egypt, a few larfs as one may expect. )
 
Okay.... 'Life' is dangerous; it's a dangerous, cute little thing that can get loose in your space sation, and...*
The Great Wall, anyone?
 
"Anatomy of Monsters" (2014)

Andrew, a psychotic serial killer, is out looking for his next victim. Step forward, Sarah, whom he meets in some seedy bar. They invariably end up in a motel room, but only then do we eventually discover that Sarah herself is serial killer wanting very much to murder Andrew just for the "fun of it!" But instead of the film launching into an easy more familiar "hunt or be hunted" thriller/horror, both characters actually spend a large portion of their time discussing their motivations to kill complete strangers, and the complete lack of empathy for doing what they do.

The film is very dialogue-driven, fleshing out the characters into something more than just your one-dimensional Jason-types. Even though Andrew has managed to hand-cuff Sarah to the motel-room bed purely for his own safety rather than anything sexual, he quickly realises that she is far more dangerous than he could ever have imagined despite having all the control to hand. She opens her mind to him in moments of self-loathing and hate for herself and her actions, and he becomes ever more unsettled - as if he has finally met his mentor in the act of killing!

With so much dialogue, you can be forgiven to wonder how the final act will unravel. But unravel it does, to quite a fine tuned conclusion. The "action" is measured, and very much on the back-burner for most of the time;instead this is a character study of two killers in a seedy room, both with their own motivations. The viewer feels like some kind of intrusive psychiatrist listening in to the minds of these deranged, yet seemingly ordinary-looking individuals.

Disturbing!

3/5
 
Amelia Faulkner said:
That sounds amazing, @HanaBi! I might have to find that!
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It's one of this films you will either love or loathe.

Very character-driven with little or no "action". And the production values are not exactly Steve Spielberg standard. But for all its faults, it is very engaging, in a disturbing kind of way.
 
Last I saw was HBO's TV movie "Wizard of Lies" about the biggest fraud in history by Bernie Madoff. I thought it was terrible. I think you could watch the whole thing and still be unsure as to exactly what a Ponzi scheme is. Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer were awful. Pfeiffer had a ridiculous "New Yaaawwk" accent fail.

I had seen the earlier 2-part TV mini-series "Madoff" last year, starring Richard Dreyfuss. It was much better.
 
J Riff said:
Okay.... 'Life' is dangerous; it's a dangerous, cute little thing that can get loose in your space sation, and...*
The Great Wall, anyone?
Click to expand...
All right, since you're pushing The Great Wall, I'll admit I saw it, some time ago! (Unless, of course, you're referring to the Twin Cities restaurant by that name, which seems unlikely...):
On reflection, I'd say the movie was pretty -- exquisite costuming and sets, and very good fx.
But after a couple of decades of the occasional high-end Chinese martial arts movie (the ones where the adepts can stride from tree-top to tree-top, etc.), I found myself bored...
This thing was set in the same sort of bleak desert that so many of those movies have been. And it featured the tremendously exaggerated stunts, as people, having apparently learned a lot in their oriental mart.arts classes, prove able to make tremendous leaps, etc. But I am so, so tired of the overly-dramatic delivery of the lines of the Chinese fighters...
Turns out that the eponymous Wall was actually created not to stop Mongols and such, but to stop monsters, who invade cyclically over generations. And they're getting smarter about it, so it's getting harder to stop them -- good thing the Chinese are so good at creating new weapons, such as that black powdery stuff...
Enter a wandering group of scuzzy Europeans, looking for something they can steal and run away with...

And yes, that was Matt Damon, with a man-bun.

I left the movie thinking that it had been worth seeing once, but that would be it...but with the passage of several months, I'm starting to think that I'd watch it again, if only to try to catch details I missed the first time through -- after all, a lot of the scenes were pretty active, pretty busy; so who knows what I might have missed?
 
I'm just back from seeing King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I'm tempted to tell you that it was an awful movie -- it was -- but I won't, because, against expectations, I came away with a few good impressions...I had to fight myself to get to that point, though.
(I spoke of my expectations because this think has gotten some really bad press...)
My impression is that the major name to associate with this movie is that of Guy Ritchie, who was not only the director, but one of the co-writers (and I suspect he was the guiding light of the project...). Mostly I have avoided his movies, but in fact I much enjoyed the two Sherlock Holmes movies he did (that starred Robert Downey, Jr.). So I had hopes that maybe this movie would tap into that vein, somehow...

This movie was clearly intended to present a new version of the "back story" of the King Arthur legend, i.e., how Arthur came to be and began his rise to power. I guess it made sense to devote this film to that terminus of the legend, since I've heard that the original plan was that there would be a series of six movies, telling the entire Arthurian story. (My hunch is that this project is dead in the water, given the critical and audience reactions...)

To begin with, I had a real problem with the fact that the "back story" developed for this movie bears almost no resemblance to other versions of the legend that I've heard before (I grew up on The Once and Future King; this movie bears no resemblance to that).

To avoid spoilers, I'll try to not give away much of the plot...what plot there was, that is...
Let me put it this way: this movie is almost incoherent -- the dialogue is just stupid, and does not communicate much of what's supposed to be going on...
It has some fine scenery (shot, I've learned, partly in north Wales and partly in the Highlands). It has some interesting ideas.
But it is burdened by what appears to have been a conscious effort to avoid anything like a chronological telling, a straight-line exposition of the plot. Rather, it jumps back and forth in time, using flashbacks (dozens and dozens of them, some as short as two seconds) to show incidents and/or explanations that were skipped over the first time through -- and, most freakishly, on a couple of occasions the flashback was different than the scene previously shown....
I guess Ritchie felt it had to be done this way, because the movie was mostly spent rushing from action scene to action scene, leaving little time for exposition... And even with the flashbacks, a lot of this thing went without explanation.

The lead was Charlie Hunnam, who was in Pacific Rim. He looked as if he was a character out of the "Vikings" television series (and that was confusing, since there were Vikings as characters in this film...he kept looking as if he fit right in with them.)
Other than Djimon Hounsou and Jude Law (evidently Ritchie liked his work in the Holmes movies!), there were few people I knew in this thing. The bright spot for me was Astrid Berges-Frisbey, who played a mage (The "mages" seem to have been a separate species from the humans, although was not made very clear...) -- apparently some sort of assistant for Merlin, who has almost no presence in this film; she is never named, but is only "the mage" -- and there are times when her face dominates the screen...

Most of the characters we're familiar with from the legend as previously told do not make it into this film.

And we're familiar with the sword Excalibur -- but the sword of this story is a whole different kind of, er, weapon (see my reference to Moorcock, below...).

I didn't much like the story -- it seemed undeveloped, inconsistent, unappealing. But I kept finding images that pulled at me...do you recall a fantasy artist of the 70-s-80's, named Jeff Jones? Someone in this movie remembers him...
There is Michael Moorcock influence here, and Tolkien (specifically, the towers...), and the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest.
(Also here, strangely, is what appears to be a sort of oriental martial arts school, led by a Chinese-appearing person named George...)

I'm glad I saw it, I guess; but someone needs to take Guy Ritchie aside and talk earnestly to him about the need to not have total contempt for his audience...
 
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Just got back from seeing Wonder Woman. I'm so glad to see my superwomen finally getting to the big screen so I made sure to book in advance and see it as soon as I could.

It laboured a little under being an origin story, and was very expositiony to begin with and then choppy when getting Diana to the war. But the Amazons were awesome so that made up for it (especially the General and Hippolyta). Would've been nice to see more of the paradise side of things and not make it seem like they only spend their time kicking the crap out of each other, but I understand the restraints!

Once we reached No Man's Land and she 'became' Wonder Woman (to a degree) it was wow. I like that there was no holding back on what she can do and how strong she is. Some really excellent fight scenes throughout, including a nifty bit in an alleyway that was especially cool.

It's probably fair to say that it's more the Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor film but Chris Pine does a grand job and the ending was really rather moving (or hit me in a squashy spot).

What I was hoping most for in this film was not just Wonder Woman the fighter but Wonder Woman the ambassador of peace. I think it was Gail Simone who said (paraphrasing) that Diana extends the hand of peace before she will turn it into a fist. And I feel like the ending did show that, so I'm pleased about that.

It's not a groundbreaking film or anything particularly unique, but it's entertaining, moving and does a good job with her origins; not just her history, but the forging of the Wonder Woman character.
 
The not-so-great-wall? But, great blue costumes, giant swords, reptilian monsters with a bit of fur and telepathic powers, and the stupidest trick arrow shot ever. Watch that trick shot - it's impossible the way it's shown. The arrows are shot from the ground, yet they end up sticking in that column straight. A bit more thought and they could have had them at an angle, and the bowl would slide down and stop at the feathers. It's still better than Life or Alien:Convenience. AND most other rubbish SFF I've sat through lately.
 
J Riff said:
The not-so-great-wall? But, great blue costumes, giant swords, reptilian monsters with a bit of fur and telepathic powers, and the stupidest trick arrow shot ever. Watch that trick shot - it's impossible the way it's shown. The arrows are shot from the ground, yet they end up sticking in that column straight. A bit more thought and they could have had them at an angle, and the bowl would slide down and stop at the feathers. It's still better than Life or Alien:Convenience. AND most other rubbish SFF I've sat through lately.
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Now that you've mentioned (sort of...) the new Alien movie, I might as well mention that I saw it a couple of days ago.
It was awful!
I should have realized, going in, that it was a sequel to Prometheus (from a few years back) -- which I also disliked greatly.
This one was so boring that I walked out before it was over.
Someone, somewhere, must have a vision for this series; but I can't see it continuing.
Another feature carried forward from Prometheus: grayness. Almost everything in this movie is great, literally gray in color, shot gray, gray of mood...

Ugly film!
 
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