What was the last movie you saw?

[Guttersnipe]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). I was expecting to love this film, but I have mixed feelings having watched it. I really only cared about one of the main characters, as her personality was actually explored. I wish they had done something without Gozer. Not enough ghosts. I did think it was well-shot and liked the look of it. The pacing bothered me. There were still some nice touches, but I wouldn't want to further spoil it.

 

[MidnightInAurora]

Made in Abyss - Dawn of the Deep Soul

Kids in cans. Who in the h... thought that up? The series seems to get darker as time goes on. Hopefully the second TV series in 2022 won't be quite so gruesome.

 

[Droflet]

Sounds like my kind of anime. It's on my list to get. Thanks, Midnight.

 

[dask]

 

[Droflet]

I loved Hugo, Unknown was okay, the others aren't my cup of java.

 

[KGeo777]

THE BLACK PIRATE 1976 - Came out the same year as Swashbuckler which was a pretty dreadful pirate film. This is a totally serious pirate tale with Kabir Bedi as a mystical buccaneer seeking revenge for his dead brothers. Not much joking around in this although I watched the shorter English version.

 

[Toby Frost]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Less of a film than a set of sketches linked by a quest, this is generally quite entertaining and occasionally really funny. It's also very well shot, and gains a lot from looking very good. Unfortunately I watched it just after the much funnier (but not a film) Blackadder's Christmas Carol, which was going to be hard to beat in the comedy stakes. Still, the Holy Grail is very good, and the rabbit is super. The animations are particularly amusing, including a weary, irritable God who just seems to find humans annoying.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Less of a film than a set of sketches linked by a quest, this is generally quite entertaining and occasionally really funny. It's also very well shot, and gains a lot from looking very good. Unfortunately I watched it just after the much funnier (but not a film) Blackadder's Christmas Carol, which was going to be hard to beat in the comedy stakes. Still, the Holy Grail is very good, and the rabbit is super. The animations are particularly amusing, including a weary, irritable God who just seems to find humans annoying.

Blackadder's Christmas Carol is one of the funniest episodes of the show. If you haven't already checked it out then The Cavalier Years is also very good; sadly Back & Forth released some years later had by that stage lost it's spark somewhat.

Spamalot is a brilliant transition of Holy Grail to the stage, and apparently there is a movie on it's way for anyone not able to see it at a theatre.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've only seen Back and Forth once, but I remember thinking it was a bit weak. IIRC, it was made for a show at the Millenium Dome and had to be a bit more family-friendly. The Cavalier Years is really decent too. Stephen Fry's King Charles is very good.

I'd like to see Spamalot, but a movie would be more my kind of thing than a stage musical, especially at the moment. Thanks for the info, I'll keep an eye out for that!

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard (1950)

Espionage B movie that seems more like a police procedural. Guy at a guided missile testing site in the California desert reports to Washington that he's uncovered a ring of enemy spies. The bad guys kill him and make it look like suicide by overdose. The American good guys decide to check it out by performing an autopsy, but there's already somebody at the grave digging around. After a fistfight, they find out this is actually a British good guy working on the same case. He's our actual hero, played by an Australian actor. Picture a low budget James Bond of the time. We quickly find out that the dead man's secretary is supposedly being treated for her traumatic memories of being in a concentration camp during the war, but the doctor is actually one of the bad guys, giving her a drug that makes her spill everything she knows about the missile project. The recording of her information is transferred via the stoppers of bottles of drinking water. Meanwhile, the good guys track down an unidentified man at the dead man's funeral, who is one of the bad guys working at the bottled water company. (Don't ask me why he was at the funeral.) The bad guys kill this leak, and almost kill our hero, who pretends to be in a coma so the secretary can be used as bait for the bad guys. (She doesn't know anything about this, which seems to be an unpleasant thing to do to her.) Our hero puts on a pretty good old man disguise to infiltrate the doctor's office, leading to fights and chase scenes. It's not a bad little film.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Hong Kong Confidential (1958)

Another low budget B spy movie. The son of the ruler of a fictional Middle Eastern nation is kidnapped by the Commies, in an attempt to force the monarch to sign a treaty with the East instead of the West. Our hero is played by Gene Barry. He's a secret agent whose cover story is that of a nightclub singer in Hong Kong, and as a guy who will get involved in any profitable deal, legal or illegal. (Barry tries to sing twice. As a singer, he's a great spy.) Some guy tries to sell information to him for five hundred bucks, so he can get out of Hong Kong fast. He's killed by the bad guys before he can spill the beans, but a background check reveals that he was in the fictional Middle Eastern nation for a while. This leads our hero to Macao, where the dead man's girlfriend (b movie favorite Allison Hayes) is part of a gold smuggling ring that is also involved in the kidnapping. Barry's innocent girlfriend doesn't know anything about his real job, and is threatened by the bad guys when things get out of hand. As usual, the Good Girl is much less memorable than the Bad Girl. It's a so-so bit of modest entertainment.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Flying Saucer (1950)

Said to be the first movie about the flying saucer phenomenon. Starts with headlines about saucers appearing above various places in the USA with people looking up at something we don't see. One woman looks up and then screams wildly, which is pretty funny. Some Washington guy sends our hero, apparently just a playboy, up to Alaska to check things out, only because he grew up there. He's supposed to pretend that he had a nervous breakdown, and is accompanied by a nurse who is actually an American agent. They arrive at his old cabin, where there's a new caretaker, who is so obviously an enemy spy that it's laughable. Not much relevant to the plot happens for a while, as the two leads fall in love, look at the scenery, and so forth. (Nice footage of Alaska, anyway.) Eventually the Commies show up, trying to find the saucer. It's not from outer space, it's the invention of a guy who wants to sell it. We get maybe a minute of actual flying saucer footage, and it's not very impressive. A really dreary example of minimal film making.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

Extremely silly British science fiction film. Starts with two cops in Las Vegas getting a report of a "listening disturbance." This turns out to be a guy with his ear on the sidewalk, muttering about how "they sound like ants." His rantings have somehow managed to draw a crowd, so the cops disperse it and take the guy to the hospital. He demands that our film's hero gets in contact with him.

Our hero is a Naval officer who has been reassigned from an underwater habitat project, because it was destroyed by a tremor, to lab work. He gets the message from the listening guy from a lab assistant, who just happens to be his sister. Our hero flies to the hospital, which, incidentally, has slot machines for their patients who are compulsive gamblers.

The guy isn't really crazy, although he sure acts that way; he's discovered that a renegade Chinese general has a private army, and he's dug all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean, and has no less than three tunnels dug across the USA filled with atomic bombs. This nutty premise leads to a few US soldiers fighting a few Chinese soldiers underground.

With the exception of minor characters, the Chinese characters are played by Occidental actors, which is really embarrassing. Not to mention that the atomic bombs have dragon symbols on them, the general's hideout is full of stereotypical Chinese décor, and so forth. He also has a pet hawk that plays no part in the plot, and is just there to tell us he's an evil megalomaniac.

The whole thing is like a grade school student's idea of a James Bond movie. There's a Bad Girl, who uses what is obviously an ordinary handheld battery-operated fan to hypnotize the hero, repeating over and over the little poem "Red is green and green is red. The East is sunrise, the West is dead." There's a Good Girl, a science type, who doesn't do much. Since this G-rated movie seems to have been made by children, they both remain fully clothed and the hero doesn't smooch on either one. The bombastic jazz soundtrack is another source of mirth.

 

[CupofJoe]

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

Extremely silly British science fiction film. Starts with two cops in Las Vegas getting a report of a "listening disturbance." This turns out to be a guy with his ear on the sidewalk, muttering about how "they sound like ants." His rantings have somehow managed to draw a crowd, so the cops disperse it and take the guy to the hospital. He demands that our film's hero gets in contact with him.

Our hero is a Naval officer who has been reassigned from an underwater habitat project, because it was destroyed by a tremor, to lab work. He gets the message from the listening guy from a lab assistant, who just happens to be his sister. Our hero flies to the hospital, which, incidentally, has slot machines for their patients who are compulsive gamblers.

The guy isn't really crazy, although he sure acts that way; he's discovered that a renegade Chinese general has a private army, and he's dug all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean, and has no less than three tunnels dug across the USA filled with atomic bombs. This nutty premise leads to a few US soldiers fighting a few Chinese soldiers underground.

With the exception of minor characters, the Chinese characters are played by Occidental actors, which is really embarrassing. Not to mention that the atomic bombs have dragon symbols on them, the general's hideout is full of stereotypical Chinese décor, and so forth. He also has a pet hawk that plays no part in the plot, and is just there to tell us he's an evil megalomaniac.

The whole thing is like a grade school student's idea of a James Bond movie. There's a Bad Girl, who uses what is obviously an ordinary handheld battery-operated fan to hypnotize the hero, repeating over and over the little poem "Red is green and green is red. The East is sunrise, the West is dead." There's a Good Girl, a science type, who doesn't do much. Since this G-rated movie seems to have been made by children, they both remain fully clothed and the hero doesn't smooch on either one. The bombastic jazz soundtrack is another source of mirth.

When it came on TV, this film scared the crap out of me as a young child [I was about 5 or 6]. With a friend, I was planning to spend most of the summer digging a tunnel down to stop or met the Chinese [I can't remember which]. I think we got to about three feet in before my father stepped in and made us fill the hole in.

 

[AE35Unit]

The Haunting of Margham Castle
British set American production (?) about a bunch of american paranormal investigators who travel to Wales to investigate an old haunted castle.
It was...ok, but there was only one person with a Welsh accent, and he was off camera! The barmaid in the pub serving the American guests was a cockney and when asked what Welsh rarebit is obviously had no interest in Welsh traditions!
I wish people would do their research. A good idea wasted

 

[CupofJoe]

Christmas in Dollywood [2019]
Cute young widow and her daughter leaves New York to come back to her home town, family and Dollywood. She meets a nice guy and together the discover the true meaning of the season, to follow their passions and create a great event for Dollywood's 30th anniversary. But will he leave Dollywood for another job and will she go back to New York for her career? Or will they find true love and put family first at Dollywood? When the tense dramatic climax of the film is whether or not the Dollywood LED Xmas tree will work, you know you are not in social realist cinema. Dolly Parton is great as Dolly Parton and Dollywood looks like a lot of fun.
I won't spoil the utterly not a surprise ending. but it is heart-warming as you knew it was going to be.
Maybe it is slightly better than the average Xmas movies...
Did I mention it was set in Dollywood? The film certainly does

 

[Jeffbert]

The Flying Saucer (1950)

Said to be the first movie about the flying saucer phenomenon. Starts with headlines about saucers appearing above various places in the USA with people looking up at something we don't see. One woman looks up and then screams wildly, which is pretty funny. Some Washington guy sends our hero, apparently just a playboy, up to Alaska to check things out, only because he grew up there. He's supposed to pretend that he had a nervous breakdown, and is accompanied by a nurse who is actually an American agent. They arrive at his old cabin, where there's a new caretaker, who is so obviously an enemy spy that it's laughable. Not much relevant to the plot happens for a while, as the two leads fall in love, look at the scenery, and so forth. (Nice footage of Alaska, anyway.) Eventually the Commies show up, trying to find the saucer. It's not from outer space, it's the invention of a guy who wants to sell it. We get maybe a minute of actual flying saucer footage, and it's not very impressive. A really dreary example of minimal film making.

I saw this years ago; recall a scene of woman screaming, assumed it was the saucer, but was a bear. Perhaps that was the trailer. Like a joke without a punchline.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

Extremely silly British science fiction film. Starts with two cops in Las Vegas getting a report of a "listening disturbance." This turns out to be a guy with his ear on the sidewalk, muttering about how "they sound like ants." His rantings have somehow managed to draw a crowd, so the cops disperse it and take the guy to the hospital. He demands that our film's hero gets in contact with him.

Our hero is a Naval officer who has been reassigned from an underwater habitat project, because it was destroyed by a tremor, to lab work. He gets the message from the listening guy from a lab assistant, who just happens to be his sister. Our hero flies to the hospital, which, incidentally, has slot machines for their patients who are compulsive gamblers.

The guy isn't really crazy, although he sure acts that way; he's discovered that a renegade Chinese general has a private army, and he's dug all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean, and has no less than three tunnels dug across the USA filled with atomic bombs. This nutty premise leads to a few US soldiers fighting a few Chinese soldiers underground.

With the exception of minor characters, the Chinese characters are played by Occidental actors, which is really embarrassing. Not to mention that the atomic bombs have dragon symbols on them, the general's hideout is full of stereotypical Chinese décor, and so forth. He also has a pet hawk that plays no part in the plot, and is just there to tell us he's an evil megalomaniac.

The whole thing is like a grade school student's idea of a James Bond movie. There's a Bad Girl, who uses what is obviously an ordinary handheld battery-operated fan to hypnotize the hero, repeating over and over the little poem "Red is green and green is red. The East is sunrise, the West is dead." There's a Good Girl, a science type, who doesn't do much. Since this G-rated movie seems to have been made by children, they both remain fully clothed and the hero doesn't smooch on either one. The bombastic jazz soundtrack is another source of mirth.

This movie always seemed to be showing on tv when I was a kid. I'm not sure it'll ever see the light of day again tbh.

 

[PenumbriaPress]

In the vein of "What Music are you listening to Right now?", I bring you this thread - I am kinda interested to know what you guys all like or hate... or at least what you are watching, so basically, the idea is, write the name of the movie then tell us whether you liked it or not!

I just watched Dogma - and I enjoyed it very much.

Melancholia (2011) -- When most of us think of Science Fiction, we think of fantastical technology – such as the faster-than-light warp drive technology we’ve been shown in Star Trek. But what about a story such as Melancholia, written and directed by Lars von Trier? This one’s less a science fiction story about technology, and much more a story about the human condition, and it’s one of my favorites. I just re-watched it a few days ago. It examines the human spirit very closely and stars the lovely and very talented Kirsten Dunst. The main character, Justine, suffers from a very deep melancholia and her sister, Claire, suffers with nervousness. Although Claire is generally much higher functioning in society than Justine, they switch roles completely when an enormous errant planet the scientists have named Melancholia, is about to strike the Earth and wipe out our planet and all life on it. And what a star lineup: Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgaard, etc. Love this film.

 

[JunkMonkey]

La Vampire Nue (The Naked Vampire) 1970 - Jean Rollin's first colour film and what a bizarre little weirdo it is too. Lots of slow-paced wandering around with sudden bursts of badly-staged action and clumsy dialogue that made you think there might be some sort of story going on. As it was I suspect Rollin and his crew broke into an interesting looking, unoccupied châteaux and spent a couple of nights filming each other wandering around it semi-naked and very slowly while they tried to come up with a plot. It almost became dreamlike... but didn't quite make it. I spent a lot of this film wondering what it would be like if I played some Angelo Badalamenti music underneath because it was reminding me so much of David Lynch's much more successful attempts to do the same sort of thing.