What was the last movie you saw?

HELL BOUND (1957) NOIR ALLEY's last week. My 1st time seeing it, & though it was far from an 'A' film, it did satisfy, esp. with the way the villain was dispatched! :eek: Jordan (John Russell; never heard of him before, though he has a distinctive face) has an elaborate plan to steal drugs off an incoming cargo ship that involves a diabetic health inspector, a supposedly rescued guy in a raft, & a nurse; three who know the plan. Also an ambulance driver (Stuart Whitman) who is ignorant of it, but is just as essential. After the film, Muller noted that the nurse (June Blair) had been January 1957 PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH, & that the film's maker made use of that fact. I would have thought that might have been scandalous in 1957, but what do I know? He also noted that this was Stuart Whitman's 1st credited role.


TCM's short about Michael Curtiz' horror films. Dr. X, Mystery of the Wax Museum, & The Walking Dead. Lionel Atwill was in the 1st 2, while Karloff was the title character of the 3rd. Faye Wray was the heroine of the 1st 2, both of which were 2 strip color. Other Interesting details.
 
Infinite - derivative by-the-numbers actioner featuring Mark Wahlberg. It's a bit Inception, a bit Bond, a bit Matrix, a bit MCU. Instead of the matrix, reincarnation is the magical plot device. You've seen it all done better before elsewhere. As a way to pass 2 hours, it's perfectly acceptable. Switch your brain off, don't think about it too much and don't expect any of it to make any sense and you'll be golden.
 
Mon0Zer0 said:
Infinite - derivative by-the-numbers actioner featuring Mark Wahlberg. It's a bit Inception, a bit Bond, a bit Matrix, a bit MCU. Instead of the matrix, reincarnation is the magical plot device. You've seen it all done better before elsewhere. As a way to pass 2 hours, it's perfectly acceptable. Switch your brain off, don't think about it too much and don't expect any of it to make any sense and you'll be golden.
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Yeah this was pretty generic and rather forgettable.
 
Marjorie Prime (2017): What a beautiful film! Well-acted, well-written, well-shot. A sci-fi drama in which "Primes," holograms that portray deceased loved ones, act as a mirror to compare and contrast between humans and their identities, obvious and latent--what they know and don't know about themselves. Very moving. I didn't mind the fact that little "action" took place. In fact, I reminds me a bit of The Man from Earth in its combination of quiet dialogue and poignant philosophical themes. Strongly recommended for both sci-fi and drama afficionadoes.
 
Cause For Alarm! (1951)

Loretta Young stars and narrates as a housewife whose sickly husband has paranoid fantasies that she and his doctor are plotting to kill him. He writes a letter to the District Attorney outlining his suspicions and has her mail it without knowing its contents. He goes way over the top, threatening her with a gun and revealing what he wrote in the letter. Before he can kill her, he drops dead. She panics, trying to get the letter back and concealing his death. There's a twist ending. It's an OK suburban melodrama. Barry Sullivan is good as the crazy husband.
 
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

A girl in a fantastical kingdom is cursed with old age and sets out to find the wizard Howl, who lives in a magical walking castle. In the meantime, a war has broken out with a rival kingdom, threatening great destruction.

While it's very well made, and full of exciting ideas (the castle itself and the steampunk "Austrian" setting are very well realised), it felt like a bit of a jumble of concepts and events. I think this is because I found it very hard to work out what needed to happen for the story to end: whether it was Sophie becoming young again, Howl repairing his castle, Howl and Sophie getting together or the whole war ending. Slightly oddly, Sophie has an English accent when young and an American one when old.

That said, it's charming and has a lot of good characters. I particularly like the way that heroes and villains are less clearly defined in the Ghibli films than in Disney/Pixar animations. It's a bit of a mess, but a very interesting one.
 
From up on Poppy Hill (2011)
Haven't seen this in years, until tonight. What a charmer. A real treat. Whatever happened to Ghilbi?
 
Droflet said:
From up on Poppy Hill (2011)
Haven't seen this in years, until tonight. What a charmer. A real treat. Whatever happened to Ghilbi?
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They're still around. Miyazaki was a new one out in 2023.
 
Just saw the new Bond. Excellent.
try to avoid any spoilers before you go to see it.
 
Toby Frost said:
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

A girl in a fantastical kingdom is cursed with old age and sets out to find the wizard Howl, who lives in a magical walking castle. In the meantime, a war has broken out with a rival kingdom, threatening great destruction.

While it's very well made, and full of exciting ideas (the castle itself and the steampunk "Austrian" setting are very well realised), it felt like a bit of a jumble of concepts and events. I think this is because I found it very hard to work out what needed to happen for the story to end: whether it was Sophie becoming young again, Howl repairing his castle, Howl and Sophie getting together or the whole war ending. Slightly oddly, Sophie has an English accent when young and an American one when old.

That said, it's charming and has a lot of good characters. I particularly like the way that heroes and villains are less clearly defined in the Ghibli films than in Disney/Pixar animations. It's a bit of a mess, but a very interesting one.
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I really like this. It is worth comparing it with the original novel by Diana Wynn Jones, in which Howl is Welsh, wakes up from a night out at the rugby club with a bad hangover etc, and the evil witch is trying to take over Wales.

The sequels with Howl and Sophie are also very charming.
 
PIT AND THE PENDULUM 1961 - I heard the other day that Robert Bloch recommended that people who wanted to be writers study Richard Matheson's work. His screenplays were so well constructed. The story for this Corman film is an ingenious amalgamation of Poe ideas. Hereditary madness, forced confinement, homicide. The only distracting element is the ubiquitous red candles. Every candle is red.
 
Ingrid Goes West (2017): A black comedy about a mentally unstable woman prone to obsession. Funny and cringy in all the right places. The ending almost brought me to tears of joy.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016): a sci-fi psychological thriller starring John Goodman in a role that seems made for him. Has something catastrophic truly happened or is he genuinely insane? Or both? The female lead was also impressive.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016): Based on the young adult novel of the same name. I didn't read much of the book. It is quite unique. This one wasn't for me, and I usually don't have a problem watching kids' movies. Perhaps if someone besides Tim Burton directed it?
 
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) D: Steven Soderbergh, S: Andie MacDowell, James Spader

I rented this movie on VHS way back in 1992, but I didn't remember it. So today I'm at my local library, and there it was, so I checked it out.

The film starts with a lawyer, John, his in-therapy wife, Ann, and his wife's uninhibited sister, Cynthia (who John is having an affair with.) Then along comes John's college friend, Graham, who no one has seen for 8 or 9 years. Graham's unusual personality and personal interest disrupts the whole unhappy love triangle and inadvertently puts into motion a lot of introspection and intimate dialogue. There aren't too many American films that get this far into inner sexual desires and relationships without being sappy or cliché ridden. And the film is mostly dialogue - although there are a few hot moments. And though all the sexual tension, there's a bit of comic relief in the form of a barfly where Cynthia tends bar. Excellent film.

Watching the end credits I see Cliff Martinez's name for the musical score (although it's barely present.) He did the excellent soundtrack for Soderbergh's remake of Solaris.
 
Cell 2455, Death Row (1955)

Adapted from the book of the same name by Caryl Chessman, who wrote this autobiographical account, as well as a few other books, while fighting a years-long legal battle to avoid execution. The book became a bestseller. The movie changes the name of the main character, although the first thing we see on the screen is the cover of the book with the author's name prominent. William Campbell, of Star Trek fame, stars as the fictional version of Chessman. Growing up with a badly crippled mother and a suicidal father, he turns into a teenage punk (played by Campbell's real-life little brother) who gets thrown into reform school for stealing cars and such. Once out, (now played by the elder brother) he becomes a professional criminal. He winds up in prison, deliberately becomes a model prisoner so he can be transferred to a minimum security facility and then escape, gets caught and is paroled, goes back to a life of crime, even robbing mob bosses. He's convicted for being the "red light bandit," a notorious criminal who preyed on couples in lovers' lanes, beating up the men and sexually assaulting the women. (The movie has to be coy about the latter, but newspaper headlines do call him a sex fiend. Chessman denied he was responsible for these crimes, but he was sentenced to death under California's so-called Little Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping resulting in physical harm a capital crime.) Because Chessman wasn't executed until 1960, the movie has to have an open-ended conclusion. Overall, it's a pretty good B crime movie, with an intense performance from Campbell.
 
I haven't sat down and watched a movie from start to finish in (probably) a decade. As a kid I used to love going to the theaters, after which I would commonly felt heroic and motivated; especially after watching a science fiction movie, like The Fifth Element. But these days, I am not motivated to watch a movie in its entirety much at all. The new Dune movie seems rather bland compared to my media preferences. My attention span is quite healthy, but there is no interactivity (generally speaking) between an audience and the film being enjoyed. There is, however, much more interaction and inherent participation.
 
bretbernhoft said:
My attention span is quite healthy, but there is no interactivity (generally speaking) between an audience and the film being enjoyed. There is, however, much more interaction and inherent participation.
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Nowt wrong with communal passive experience. There's a joy being in a theatre with people all of its own.
 
Parents (1989) - A black comedy horror / satire of the 50's and nuclear families. A young kid suspects his parents of cannibalism.

It's a very strange movie that on the surface compares to Johnny Scissor hands in its garish presentation of suburbia. The kid is oddly without personality, which I'm guessing is a stylistic choice. There's a constant menacing undertone, and shots emphasise knives and disgusting, bloody meat. The father tends to be shot from a child's eye view, emphasising his power. Cinematography and sound design is excellent, and the ADR'd voices give another layer of strangeness.

Overall, the story needs more humour to balance the bleak tone, as it can be a hard watch.
 
Donnie Darko: 2001
I saw this years ago and thought I'd take it for another spin. Not quite as weird as I remembered. Still, a joy to watch. Impossible to understand, though.
 
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