What was the last movie you saw?

Oh I have Space Truckers on my watch list. I almost watched it a few weeks ago but something else won over.
 
PRINCE VALIANT 1954. It shocked me when I first watched this a few years ago because I quickly could see that Star Wars used this film as its template much more than it used Flash Gordon. And it is a FOX film.

A farm boy goes off on an adventure to find his destiny, he encounters an older warrior who takes him under his wing to train to be a knight, and he has to battle a mysterious figure garbed in black, using a magic sword that belonged to his father. Also, there's a rescue mission on a fortress controlled by the usurpers of the true government (more on that later).

Additionally, it is no secret that the music score for Star Wars was influenced by Franz Waxman among others but for some reason, the music for this film is not mentioned even though you hear a few Star Wars tune ideas in the score. You can hear the trumpet melody that starts the Star Wars fanfare piece, as well as a little snippet of the Imperial March at one point (7: 20 mark) in the suite.

I never read the comic strip-- Robert Wagner has a funny wig (black-haired vikings were the norm?) but he does a lot of athletic feats. It feels longer than 1: 40 minute due to how much is crammed into it. It's a bit awkward and distracting to have American accents but there's enough action scenes. Prince Val is no Luke--he does a lot of fighting and rescuing. The sword which is kind of the Force of the story (well, if we ignore the mentioning of Jesus) only comes into it towards the end.

It's weird how much Christian promotion is in here. The pagan Vikings are the bad guys. They really hit you over the head with the importance of Christianity in the time of King Arthur.
Anyway you can hear Star Wars tune inspiration in this piece:


 
hitmouse said:
These have dated badly, especially the later Sellers movies.
i have soft spt for the first film, but the next one A Shot in the Dark is the best.
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Yes A Shot in the Dark is a very funny film. The Pink Panther Strikes Again (where Dreyfus tries to assassinate Clouseau) is also less a movie and more a series of very funny set pieces.
 
The mitchells vs the machines (2021). A Sony animation about a family of four (five, counting the dog) saving the world from robot apocalypse. It's a very simple story, acessible to everyone, with a clear message. Reminded of Inside Out (2015) in that aspect. Many people like this movie because children understood that you sadness is necessary, that you can't leave with joy alone, etc. I see something similar here.

There's a lot of visual comedy (some will say that they overdid it) as opposed to scripted, spoken jokes--a problem I've seen on The Suicide Squad (2021).

In the third act, they get really strong very fast, and I read that some people didn't like that; but the story was kinda goofy all the time so I didn't see it as a problem. The screenplay is also very simple: it's a road movie that has a big fight at the end, basically.
 
Elektra (2005), --- This was a lot different than I expected. Advertised as "Assassin changes her ways" it turns out to be that, but much more a pseudo Eastern Mysticism/Kung Fu (if that isn't redundant) kind of movie. I found it very disjointed and I was always guessing what was real, what was a flash back, and what was a future vision. Added to That Jennifer Gardner sometimes saw as herself when she was a child, but also in another child. Sometimes Jennifer Gardner is confined by somewhat normal rules of physics and sometimes she's living in a world where magic is real.

If you like Jennifer Gardner, you might like this movie. --- If you want an interesting story or even one that makes any sense, you'll likely want to avoid this one.
 
THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES 1972 - A giallo featuring a somewhat spooky serial killer who dresses in a red robe. Barbara Bouchet, Sybil Danning, and a flooded room with rats in it. The soundtrack has a catchy melody. It's kind of a preposterous confusing story but it has enough surprises to keep it interesting.
 
Mission to Mars - I love the technical aspects of this film. Like most of De Palma's films I find the way he makes them much more interesting than the subject matter. I found myself watching the focus pulling a lot this time. There's some nice focus pulling during some dialogue sequences. But the story! Towards the end it was like wading through treacle it was so fecking syrupy.
 
Prospect has been on my "to Watch" list for a while and i finally saw it this evening and it was well worth the wait as one of the better Science Fiction movies i have seen in recent months. I liked the analogue aesthetic as everything looked to be on the verge of breaking down. Great costumes, too.

I also saw Altered Carbon: Resleeved. As an Anime movies, it's not something i'd usually watch, but i enjoyed both the books and the TV series, so i thought i'd give it a go. It doesn't do anything new, but i found it to be pretty entertaining. The ending was pretty open and if another is made, i'll watch it.
 
THE HIDDEN 1987 - I had not seen this (or thought of it) in a long time. I saw it on video and thought it was inspired by the Thing and the Terminator and a little of Lifeforce and it didn't strike me as having much in the way of memorable spfx or typical 80s comedy relief.
Now, those are its biggest strengths because it is refreshing that it treats it seriously and is more character driven than action or spfx (although the scene of the takeover in the beginning is very good spfx). Compared to other films--Alien Nation and They Live or I Come In Peace--it's entirely serious with no self-aware humor. That approach worked very well.

LOVE ME DEADLY - 1973 -- This was one I didn't need to see. It's about a woman who is into necrophilia (due to a fixation on her father) and her new husband (Lyle Wagoner) can't figure it out. It's professionally made--there's a scene where a male prostitute is hired for something he soon regrets and it is rather horrifying--the necrophilia stuff is nothing extreme in comparison. It sounded like they used some eerie Ligeti music from 2001 in it as well.
 
The Circle. This was surprisingly good. An interesting movie pit falling the intrusive nature of social media. Quite clever and well worth a watch.

Self/Less. I quite enjoyed this. A billionaire is dying and gets his consciousness moved to another, younger body. He thinks it's a lab grown body, but soon learns the truth. A pretty decent action movie with Ryan Reynolds.

Stowaway. I enjoyed it, but the action situation felt somewhat contrived, so it didn't work for me.
 
TCM showed a day's worth of William Powell films a few weeks ago; here are three:

THE EMPEROR'S CANDLESTICKS (1937) Tension between Poland & Tsarist Russia, gets girl-crazy Grand Duke Peter (Robert Young) and his companion Colonel Baron Suroff (Frank Morgan) kidnapped and held for the ransom of the release of a Polish guy, who is condemned to die.

The candlesticks have secret compartments in them, in which Baron Stephan Wolensky (William Powell), who is to deliver the letter to the Tsar, had placed it for safekeeping. But the guy who wanted him to deliver the sticks to their recipient, suddenly decided to have Countess Olga Mironova (Luise Rainer), take them instead. She places her documents, ordering the arrest of Wolensky in the other candlestick.

Light humor, good supporting cast. A fun film.


CROSSROADS (1942) French diplomat David Talbot (William Powell) had suffered amnesia a decade earlier, and had lost his identity because of a head injury. With the help of Dr. Andre Tessier (Felix Bressart) and the Captain of the ship on which he had just arrived, he was able to recover his identity. After his photo was in the newspaper announcing his wedding, a letter arrived demanding blackmail payments. The culprit, seeing a chance to profit from his potential uncertainty about his past, was soon jailed. But, a much more crafty blackmailer Henri Sarrou (Basil Rathbone), soon appeared. He had even paid an elderly woman to claim she was his mother, and that he was not whom he had thought himself to be.

Another very good supporting cast. Rathbone is wonderfully evil.
 
KGeo777 said:
THE HIDDEN 1987 - I had not seen this (or thought of it) in a long time. I saw it on video and thought it was inspired by the Thing and the Terminator and a little of Lifeforce and it didn't strike me as having much in the way of memorable spfx or typical 80s comedy relief.
Now, those are its biggest strengths because it is refreshing that it treats it seriously and is more character driven than action or spfx (although the scene of the takeover in the beginning is very good spfx). Compared to other films--Alien Nation and They Live or I Come In Peace--it's entirely serious with no self-aware humor. That approach worked very well.
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My wife and I saw that at the theater when it came out. Still one of my favorite sf movies from the late '80, early '90s because it was rather low-key and well acted. Also the feature movie debut of Claudia Christian.


The Crimson Cult (a.k.a. The Curse of the Crimson Altar; 1968); dir. Vernon Sewell; cast: Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Mark Eden; Barbara Steele
Thriller supposedly based on H. P. Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House" (unacknowledged in credits), you can see glimmers of the story in the movie, but they are sparse at best. Antique dealer Eden's brother goes missing in a small town. Eden goes to find him and ends up as an invited guest in Lee's home, where a very '60s hedonistic party is taking place, leading Eden to meet Lee's daughter; Eden conveniently forgets his girlfriend back home and starts an affair with the daughter. Eden also meets Karloff's expert in witchcraft and the history thereof, particularly the history of Lavinia Morley who was burned to death by the townspeople and cursed her killers and their offspring, some of whom seem to have died early of not natural causes. The movie is hokum, but hokum carried along nicely, in spite of it's '60s conventions (some nudity, the implication of hallucinogens, the main character's casual sexism) by good acting. No one is overly serious nor are they winking at the camera; Eden was an established actor by this time in his career and gave a good performance even when matched against Karloff and Lee; I remember him as quite good as Inspector Parker opposite Ian Carmichael's Lord Peter Wimsey. Karloff sounds appropriately ominous, Lee is a bit underused and Steele is most definitely underused, asked only to look haughty, vindictive and beautiful in blue body make-up as Lavinia.

Night Moves (1975); dir. Arthur Penn; cast: Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Susan Clarke, Edward Binns; first billed appearance of Melanie Griffith and an early role for James Woods
Downbeat movie with Hackman as Harry Moseby, a private eye on the down-slide, marriage to Clarke about to fail, cases few and far between, past clouded by family issues. A former movie star asks him to find her missing daughter (Griffith) and he does, only to trip over criminal activity. There's a crucial scene (as pointed out the the evening's hosts, Ben Mankiewicz and Eddie Mueller) where Moseby sets up a chess problem from a game, explaining to Paula (Warren) that black had three moves to mate and didn't see it, losing the match instead. It seems symbolic of Harry's life, and also maybe a tip of the hat to Raymond Chandler and his Philip Marlowe character who often set up chess match problems to brood over. Standout performances from Clarke and especially Warren, in a cast that also includes Harris Yulin, Kenneth Mars, and other familiar faces. If it's not Penn's best, it's still a pretty sharp, thoughtful movie.
 
REBerg said:
Malignant
Horror doesn't top my movie genre watch list, but this one was entertaining. It reminded me a bit of Basket Case.
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Just came back from the movie theater after watching this one, and I enjoyed it a lot! The plot twist really got me. J. Wan manipulates you to think something and then, BAM!

Without spoiling anything: the title actually tells a lot!
 
I'm a season and half into watching Downton Abby for the first time, and I have to say I'm wondrously surprised. The strengths of wonderful acting, interesting characters, and pretty solid historical fiction more than make up for it's glaring weakness. ---- Sigh! it's essentially a series of love stories (ill fated so far); which is why I never bothered, until now. That, and the fact that Prime lets me watch on my own schedule without a bunch of fussing around.
 
Just watched Riddick, which is really a movie of 2 halves. The first is a spare and quite stylish lone survival story, whilst the second is more conventional survival/horror/sf and is less interesting. A bit of a curate’s egg.

Prime has just flagged up The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism which looks like a ripe piece of 1960s Hammer with Vincent Price and a brilliant title. Might save that for the weekend.
 
!00 CRIES OF TERROR 1965 - Mexican horror film (two stories) dubbed by the notorious K Gordon Murray crew. The dialogue is amusingly incoherent, although this is not as fun as Doctor of Doom or the Brainiac.

COPLAN-FX-18 - 1965 A series of French spy agent movies--this one has a couple of interesting stunts--one involves a plane landing on the top of a moving truck before exploding---looked rather dangerous. And as happens with these things, they have to get in a cover shot of an Ian Fleming book to remind you what the inspiration was.
 
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