What was the last movie you saw?

[paranoid marvin]

Watched LOGAN'S RUN 1976 & THE SHINING 1980 both good films.

Have you seen Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining? As far as sequels go, it's links to the original are tenuous at best.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Atragon - bloody awful 1963 Japanese 'science fiction' film in which civilization is saved from the evil (underwater) Mu Empire by a Captain Nemo-like Japanese naval officer (who refuses to believe WW2 has ended) and his giant flying earth-boring submarine. As horrendously crap as that sounds there was monster in it too.

During the watching of this film I developed another of my inviolable rules of cinema. In any film directed by Ishirô Honda, if anything happens off-screen, someone will point at it. Most of the time they will shout "LOOK!" when they do.

 

[hitmouse]

Starter for 10. Soppy but amusing 2006 romantic comedy starring James Macavoy, Benedict Cumberbatch and seemingly every British actor who has made it over the last 15 years. About a boy from Southend who goes to Bristol University, gets on the University Challenge team, has romantic misadventures etc. Recommended if this is your sort of thing.

As far as I can see there are only a couple if Bristol locations actually used, but that is a minor quibble.

 

[Vince W]

Starter for 10. Soppy but amusing 2006 romantic comedy starring James Macavoy, Benedict Cumberbatch and seemingly every British actor who has made it over the last 15 years. About a boy from Southend who goes to Bristol University, gets on the University Challenge team, has romantic misadventures etc. Recommended if this is your sort of thing.I

As far as I can see there are only a couple if Bristol locations actually used, but that is a minor quibble.

I remember that one. I was hoping for more UC and less of the semi-romantic guff. Still, it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen.

 

[hitmouse]

I remember that one. I was hoping for more UC and less of the semi-romantic guff. Still, it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen.

Yeah, this one was picked by Mrs HM and daughter. I just went along with it.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Chinatown at Midnight (1949)

Documentary-style police procedural. Woman who runs an interior decorating business has a scheme with her boyfriend where he robs valuable items and she sells them to her customers. While stealing a jade vase worth nineteen hundred bucks, he shoots a man and a woman. The woman had just called the operator to report the crime, so the killer continues the call, speaking in Cantonese although he's not Chinese-American. The point is to make the cops think a Chinese-American is the killer. One interesting plot point is that the killer suffers from attacks of malaria. When the cops find a wire recording of the guy practicing his Cantonese, they have hundred of records made from it, so they can find out if anybody recognizes his voice. Notable also is the fact that he picks up a woman with great ease at the aquarium (lots of nice location filming in San Francisco.) Just a little over an hour long, so it moves briskly. Not bad at all.

 

[KGeo777]

It's the 50th anniversary of IMO Hammer's most brilliant idea and their best film of the 70s. DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE. I think it goes beyond a very clever reworking of the classic tale (with matching genius title) but actually surpasses the original for a profoundly defined clash of dual natures. Since there's some debate whether a dual nature in an individual exists, good vs evil or civilized vs the primitive, using gender instead places it in reality and every day experience--it's more elemental.
I don't think the good girl/bad girl subplot of famous film versions of the story is as emotionally gripping or amusing as the Howard and Susan scenes. The casting is so perfect--that was Fate--and also the musical score is hauntingly epic--it works so well to augment the conflict, which feels much more meaningful than just having the same actor playing two roles.

NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS 1971. I had not seen it before. In fact, I didn't even know how many from the series or the first movie returned. Having not paid attention to the opening credits--most of the cast came as a surprise (never saw the series but I knew they did multiple parts). Lara Parker was a welcome surprise to see because she indicated in the commentary for Race With The Devil that she had not done a feature film before but I guess she meant not a major role. I noticed how much the plot echoes the Haunted Palace and the later Curtis film Burnt Offerings (NEVER go back into the house to get something)--but that also made me realize how much The Shining follows the same idea.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Green Knight (2021)

Firstly, if you want high adventure and swordfights, do not watch this film. It's essentially an arthouse road movie, in which Gawain (Dev Patel) stumbles across a mystical Britain in order to fulfil his vow to swap blows with the mysterious Green Knight.

Extremely well-shot and very beautiful, this is definitely at the more mystical end of Arthurian films. In fact, it reminded me strongly of the surreal sequences in Excalibur where Percival searches for the grail. Almost everything in it is slightly weird: Dev Patel may seem an odd choice to play an aspiring knight, but he portrays Gawain well, as a layabout forced to assume responsibility. Sean Harris and Kate Dickie are convincing as an older, wiser Arthur and Guinevere. A lot of the episodes in Gawain's journey have a weird charm. A later scene happens in an anachronistic-looking mansion. A scene involving eerie giants reminds me of the statues of Anthony Gormley.

I think the last third becomes very slightly too odd (Alicia Vikander has a strange, long speech about the colours green and red, and Gawain has an overlong vision), and the way the story is told misses what I remember as being a couple of important details, namely that:

Spoiler

the lord and lady are working with or are part of the Green Knight, and seek tempt Gawain to act dishonourably; and the Green Knight only makes a small cut in Gawain's neck, before letting him go.

It's slow and mysterious, but I think it captures the odd mixture of Christian and pagan mysticism around the Arthur stories. Although nobody casts a spell, it feels cryptic and magical. Arty, but well worth a look.

 

[Oochillyo]

hey Toby Frost

how are you

I haven't heard of this film before but your description of it is very interesting and Dev Patel is one of my fav actors and always seems to be very good in films so if I see it on T.V. some time I will check it out

Thank you

Regards - Declan Sargent

 

[hitmouse]

hey Toby Frost

how are you

I haven't heard of this film before but your description of it is very interesting and Dev Patel is one of my fav actors and always seems to be very good in films so if I see it on T.V. some time I will check it out

Thank you

Regards - Declan Sargent

Its on Amazon Prime

 

[Oochillyo]

hey HitMouse

How are you

Thank you

Regards - Declan Sargent

 

[dask]

Sleazebag journalist uses down time party jumping and falling for every woman he sees other than his live in girlfriend. Everything that can be said about this film has been endlessly and tirelessly (if not tiresomely) communicated over the last half century leaving nothing noteworthy to add. Almost: the energetic legion of paparazzi swirling around like a superhero group searching for a villain to snare and Anita Ekberg howling in response to a pack of wild dogs in the dead of night are vistas not to be missed.

 

[JunkMonkey]

View attachment 83037

Sleazebag journalist uses down time party jumping and falling for every woman he sees other than his live in girlfriend. Everything that can be said about this film has been endlessly and tirelessly (if not tiresomely) communicated over the last half century leaving nothing noteworthy to add. Almost: the energetic legion of paparazzi swirling around like a superhero group searching for a villain to snare and Anita Ekberg howling in response to a pack of wild dogs in the dead of night are vistas not to be missed.

One of my favourite films - last seen in a wonderfully restored print in a cinema in Inverness.

 

[Jeffbert]

Two, count them (2) NOIR ALLEY films, from last week & the week before last.

THE GLASS WALL (1953) has a stowaway from WWII Europe who escapes from the authorities and runs around NY searching for the U.S. Army guy whom he had hidden from the bad guys. He knows only that the guy's name is Tom & he plays the clarinet. So, if the ship on which he had stowed-away leaves port before they can catch him, he will be charged with other crimes, & never be allowed to enter the U.S.

Definitely not the typical noir; & best of all, its the 1st time I have seen it.


BRIGHTON ROCK (1948) Young punk gang leader Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) is a total jerk, and in the end expects his new bride to commit suicide with him; though he also expects to survive it. It seems he had married her, believing that a wife could not testify against her husband (which, as I understand it, cannot be compelled to testify), & as she had witnessed him being at the scene of a crime, & could break his alibi, etc. she had to go.

Also my 1st time seeing it. Very dramatic.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Lucky Break - a pleasing little entry in the long tradition of British prison break comedies. A little far fetched in places (they all are). Hardly 'Hilarious' as the cut and paste quote from Empire magazine on the front claimed but amusing enough.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Black Angels (1970)

Another blaxploitation/motorcycle gang hybrid. It should be noted here that the only character called a "black angel" in this film is a white police officer. In addition to that, one of the many songs on the soundtrack has the repeated lyric "I saw a black angel laughing," sung in a way that sounds like a Bob Dylan imitator trying to perform heavy metal.

Starts off with randomly edited scenes of a young African-American man driving around on his motorcycle, intercut with him and his naked girlfriend on the beach. He tells her how he's going to get the leader of the rival (white) motorcycle gang. Continuing this film's frequent use of confusing flashbacks and flashforwards, we then get an extended motorcycle chase scene of the young man following his intended target, a guy called Chainer, intercut with scenes of the fellow busting through Chainer's window while he's with his girlfriend. (By the way, in parallel fashion, the leader of the black motorcycle gang is called Knifer.) Their anticlimactic fight ends up with the young man utterly defeated. More chase scenes follow, and the defeated fellow drives himself off a cliff. So much for who I thought was going to be a major character!

Most of the rest of the film deals with the white motorcycle gang driving around, making out with girlfriends, fighting amongst themselves, drinking beer, getting into bar fights, etc. In what passes for a plot, the white cop who is called "black angel" by the white motorcycle gang tells the black motorcycle gang leader that Chainer and his crew are after them. It's sort of like a nutty version of the Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars theme, where the two gangs are set up to destroy each other.

Eventually a new guy shows up, a stereotyped white Southerner who calls himself Johnny Reb and who is one of the only openly racist characters in the film. (There's an offensive and unnecessary subplot, told in flashback fashion again, in which a racist white woman teases a couple of black men who then rape her at knifepoint.) Surprise! He's actually a secret agent working for the black motorcycle gang. He gives them "uppers" that are actually "downers" so they'll be at a disadvantage during the big fight that ends the film. It hardly matters, because it looks as if all the members of both gangs get killed, including death by rattlesnake (a non-rattlesnake with rattling on the soundtrack) and cougar. Then there's the baby of one of the gang members, who winds up orphaned when his mother also gets killed in the melee. It ends with the "black angel" looking at the carnage in triumph, then a close-up of his bumper sticker that says "Support Your Local Police."

An absolutely wretched film that held me fascinated in dropped-jaw amazement all the way through.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Prudence and the Pill (1968)

Bedroom farce about contraception. Deborah Kerr and David Niven star as a filthy rich married couple, pretty much leading separate lives. He has a French mistress, she has a lover. His brother and sister-in-law find their twenty-ish daughter in bed with her boyfriend. She's been taking her mother's supply of the fictional birth control pill Thenol and exchanging them for aspirin, leading to our film's first unexpected pregnancy. (The mother's.)

Meanwhile, the rich folk's maid and chauffer are having an affair. He gets an illegal supply of the prescription-only Thenol from his buddy at the chemist's shop, telling her they're vitamins. Niven finds Kerr's own supply of Thenol, and exchanges it for aspirin, inspired by the example of his niece. (The motivation is a little murky here. She tells him she wants a child, but not by him. He wants her to get pregnant so he can get a divorce, I think.) The maid has been stealing Kerr's supply of Thenol for herself, so she gets the aspirin, leading to our unexpected pregnancy number two.

Without going into too much more detail, let's just say that Kerr becomes pregnant by her lover (#3), the niece gets pregnant by her boyfriend (#4), and Niven's mistress gets pregnant by him (#5). This is supposed to be a happy ending.

The main problem is that a farce has to have a story that moves like clockwork, all the intricate misunderstandings and plot twists treated with rigid logic. This film fails completely at this. It seems to make no difference at all whether a woman is taking real Thenol, fake Thenol, or nothing at all; she gets pregnant. Although Kerr and Niven are in a loveless marriage, and should not be surprised that each has a lover, when they get proof of this, they both become enraged.

The great Dame Edith Evans shows up as the aunt of the niece's boyfriend. In a weirdly random joke, she crosses a race track while cars are zooming by in order to talk to him.

The opening titles and song are, well, bizarre. See for yourself.

Prudence and the Pill

<p>Upon its release in 1968, Prudence and the Pill gained a reputation as the first film comedy centered on birth control and the new contraceptive pill.<br />Its animated title sequence takes conservative notions and flips them about, sending Cupid into fits of fury as he vainly attempts to go...

www.artofthetitle.com

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

In the tradition of Blacula, although not as good, and Blackenstein, although not anywhere near as bad, this blaxsploitation/horror hybrid offers us yet another twist on a classic theme. The symbolically named Dr. Pride is a brilliant and noble physician working on a treatment for liver disease. Injecting it into a brown rat turns it into an aggressive white rat that kills all the other rats. You can see where this is going. Yes, he tests it on himself, turning him into a super-strong, gray-skinned, gray-haired, pale-eyed killer. The fact that he still looks like an African-American, albeit with some strange form of albinism, weakens the theme and ruins the promise of the title. Anyway, the big climax takes place at the famous Watts Towers of Los Angeles. It's an OK timewaster.

 

[hitmouse]

View attachment 83037

Sleazebag journalist uses down time party jumping and falling for every woman he sees other than his live in girlfriend. Everything that can be said about this film has been endlessly and tirelessly (if not tiresomely) communicated over the last half century leaving nothing noteworthy to add. Almost: the energetic legion of paparazzi swirling around like a superhero group searching for a villain to snare and Anita Ekberg howling in response to a pack of wild dogs in the dead of night are vistas not to be missed.

Brilliant film.

 

[AE35Unit]

Cloverfield
I forgot how much I enjoyed this film