What was the last movie you saw?

[Rodders]

A couple of movies on T.V. Last night.

Independence Day. Enjoyable enough, but I forgot how trite and cliche it is.
Men In Black International. I’m embarrassed to say that I rather enjoyed this one.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Edge of Tomorrow This is one of my favorite science fiction films and Is one of Tom Cruise's best films .

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Edge of Tomorrow This is one of my favorite science fiction films and Is one of Tom Cruise's best films .

Is this the one where the nasty general keeps the MacGuffin of Certain Redemption in a safe in his office safe because... that's where failed experimental equipment should be stored? It was going great guns until that particular "we have to generate conflict in this plot" moment hove into view. After which .... meh.

 

[BAYLOR]

Is this the one where the nasty general keeps the MacGuffin of Certain Redemption in a safe in his office safe because... that's where failed experimental equipment should be stored? It was going great guns until that particular "we have to generate conflict in this plot" moment hove into view. After which .... meh.

I rather enjoyed the The Groundhogs Day set up. He kept dying and starting all over again. Some do overs were hilariously funny .

 

[KGeo777]

SPASMO 1974 - A man encounters a woman unconscious on the beach--which triggers a weird series of events leading to murder and mental illness and a room full of mannequins.

 

[alexvss]

The Green Knight (2021). Great adaptation of the poem by the director of A Ghost Story (2018). The second act is kinda boring, but it's a good movie overall, and it conveys a great message.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

SPASMO 1974 - A man encounters a woman unconscious on the beach--which triggers a weird series of events leading to murder and mental illness and a room full of mannequins.

I liked this one. One of the more interesting giallo films. The mannequins are really creepy.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

HIPPIE MURDER CULT FILMS FEATURING ACTORS PAST THEIR PRIME TRIPLE FEATURE:

Angel, Angel, Down We Go AKA Cult of the Damned (1969)

The alternate title was added during rerelease in an attempt to convince audiences that this bizarre, arty, pretentious, psychedelic, incoherent psychodrama was a horror movie. The main character is a "fat" (translation: slightly chubby) eighteen-year-old girl, the daughter of ultra-wealthy parents. Dad enjoys dalliances with young men, Mom (honest-to-gosh Oscar-winning movie star Jennifer Jones) used to appear in stag movies. At the coming out party for this poor little rich girl, she falls for a Jim Morrison style rock star. Eventually she returns home, with the new boyfriend and his gang (Roddy McDowell, singer Lou Rawls, and a pregnant blonde.) The rock star seduces Mom. (I can't blame him; at age fifty, Jones is still strikingly beautiful and has a slim figure a twenty-year-old would envy.) The murders happen at the very end of the film. This synopsis is a lot more linear than the movie, which features flashbacks, voiceover narration from the daughter which contradicts what we see on the screen, fantasies and hallucinations (the daughter imagines herself lying on the ceiling) and a lot of scenes of collages combining photographs and drawings that comment on the happenings in obscure ways. There are also a bunch of songs. It's a real mess, but weird enough to be fascinating. Lots of dialogue that it's difficult to imagine any human being saying.

Sweet Savior AKA The Love-Thrill Murders (1971)

Former teen heartthrob Troy Donahue is unrecognizable as a Manson-like cult leader in this cheap and sleazy shocker. The plot is as simple as can be. Some rich folks use Troy and his "freaks" as a source of drugs and extra bodies for their orgy. They don't know he plans to kill the "pigs" after the fun and games. Along the way, we get scenes that look like home movies of the "freaks" and "pigs." During the orgy, the movie becomes soft porn. Straight and gay couplings ensue. The lesbian scene is played for eroticism, the gay male scene for comedy. (The outrageously effeminate gay man dresses in full drag, and tells his reluctant partner that he's a woman who had a sex change.) Then the killings start. The matter-of-fact way that Troy orders his minions to slaughter the "pigs" and the way they obey him is genuinely chilling, but it would have been better without the "scary" music. (The rest of the soundtrack is inappropriate soft rock, including the title song, except for the psychedelic music during one woman's nude dance scene.) The fact that the supposedly rich people live in a very ordinary middle class home is amusing.

The Night God Screamed (1971)

Academy Award nominee Jeanne Crain stars as the wife of a preacher. Before we meet her, we see the leader of a nutty religious cult order a figure completely hidden in a monk's robe and hood to "baptize" a woman, which means to drown her. Later, they crucify the preacher on his own large wooden cross. Crain testifies against them, sending the leader and a couple of his minions to death row, but not the hooded figure. The leader's minions swear revenge. Quite some time later, Crain acts as the "babysitter" for some teenagers when their parents leave for the weekend. They're ordered not to leave the house, which they resent. The movie then turns into a slasher flick, as the lights go out, the phone goes dead, and a couple of the teens are killed by unseen invaders. We then get our Shocking Twist Ending.

Spoiler

The teenagers were just faking all this stuff in an attempt to scare Crain away so they could get out of the house. This stupid prank results in Crain's accidental death. Then they get a call telling them that they have been judged, and will be executed that night. The lights go out, one of the teens screams, the end.

Other than the crucifixion scene, it's pretty bloodless, and creates some decent tension. Not a great film, but not terrible, either.

 

[dask]

SPASMO 1974 - A man encounters a woman unconscious on the beach--which triggers a weird series of events leading to murder and mental illness and a room full of mannequins.

Been wanting to see this ever since I saw the strange poster art. Any good?

 

[Toby Frost]

John Wick 2: In a world apparently populated entirely by assassins in suits, apart from three assassins disguised as vagrants, master assassin John Wick is called out of retirement and kills many assassins.

I don't really get these films: there's much action but no dramatic tension, and they're ridiculous but completely without humour. Are they supposed to be comical? Does the director know that they're completely absurd? It's insanely violent but weirdly numbing. For a moment at the end the film goes into full Prisoner surrealism. The ending implies (unintentionally) that John Wick is actually mad and hallucinating that everyone else is an assassin trying to kill him, which I find just as entertaining.

So an okay way to pass two hours, but not a scratch on the Bourne films. I enjoyed Netflix's Kate more.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Been wanting to see this ever since I saw the strange poster art. Any good?

If you like the giallo genre at all, I recommend it. My review from some years ago:

Spasmo (1974)

Intriguing Italian psychological thriller with a complex plot full of twists and turns. The opening scene features the first of many very realistic female mannequins who are found hung from trees or stabbed, as if they have been murdered. This macabre theme isn't explained until the very end. Meanwhile, a man meets a woman who is willing to go to bed with him if he shaves off his beard. While he's in the bathroom shaving, a man bursts in on him, holds a gun on him, and beats him up. During the struggle the newly beardless man gets the gun and shoots the attacker in the belly. He and the woman run off, but he has to go back because he left a gold chain at the scene of the killing. There's no sign of the man who got shot. All of this is just the start of a complicated mystery which only starts to unravel two-thirds of the way through, and which saves its double twist ending for the last few minutes. The movie is beautifully filmed and always held my attention.

 

[Jeffbert]

John Wick 2: In a world apparently populated entirely by assassins in suits, apart from three assassins disguised as vagrants, master assassin John Wick is called out of retirement and kills many assassins.

I don't really get these films: there's much action but no dramatic tension, and they're ridiculous but completely without humour. Are they supposed to be comical? Does the director know that they're completely absurd? It's insanely violent but weirdly numbing. For a moment at the end the film goes into full Prisoner surrealism. The ending implies (unintentionally) that John Wick is actually mad and hallucinating that everyone else is an assassin trying to kill him, which I find just as entertaining.

So an okay way to pass two hours, but not a scratch on the Bourne films. I enjoyed Netflix's Kate more.

I recall sitting in the theater during an afternoon showing of XXX. I was laughing myself red in the face, at the fact that it seemed that, for the guys who made this film, nothing was more important than having a better chase scene, gunfight scene, martial arts scene, etc., than the last 'action' film. Every scene was just too much to believe! No way all those impossible stunts could plausibly occur in one film!

It seems to me, that plot, character development, etc. are not even considered in the action genre these days.




ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON (1942) Patrick O'Toole (Cary Grant) is a reporter in Europe during the late 1930s & finds himself attracted to Katherine Butt-Smith (Ginger Rogers) who is about to marry Baron Franz Von Luber (Walter Slezak, is this guy always a villain?). O'toole knows a bit about the Baron, & tries to dissuade Butt-Smith from marrying him. He also knows a bit about her, namely her past profession, as a stripper.

So, anyway, everywhere the newlywed couple goes on their honeymoon, German invasions soon follow. A mix of drama and humor, not to mention romance.

 

[Toby Frost]

It seems to me, that plot, character development, etc. are not even considered in the action genre these days.

I totally agree. I could forgive John Wick 2 if it had any idea how silly it is, but it really doesn't seem to realise. It's like sitting through someone else's idea of what's cool. And there's something quite boring about the gunfights. John Wick trips man up, sits on man, shoots three men, then shoots man he's sitting on. And repeat.

As I say, the Bourne films are far more intense and engrossing: partly because Bourne is much more likeable, and partly because the action feels far more convincing. And don't get me started on Marathon Man, which might be one of the most intense films I've ever seen (even though I'm still not sure what the plot was).

 

[KGeo777]

Been wanting to see this ever since I saw the strange poster art. Any good?

It keeps your attention.
It is so weird and confusing at the start that you want to know where it is going.
Umberto Lenzi did so many genres--I watch a number of his 1960s films--he did pirates movies etc.

 

[Mouse]

Ghostbusters Afterlife. It wasn't amazing or anything but I enjoyed it.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Cell - apart from the costumes by Eiko Ishioka (which was the main reason I watched it) meh!

 

[Jeffbert]

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (1950) A very large family has interesting incidents. The father is Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr. (Clifton Webb? never heard of him before!) an efficiency expert, who runs his family likewise. Mama (Myrna Loy) pretty much goes along with whatever he wants, this being set in the 1920s. Among other things, papa decides that all the kids' tonsils must come out, and they might as well do it on the same day, at home, and filmed so that he can analyze where improvements in the procedure could be made.

Dr. Burton (Edgar Buchanan, have I seen this guy on some TV program? Perhaps Green Acres?) goes along with it. Not really my type of film, but, interesting to hear about M. Loy's decision to go against other leading ladies as they enter middle age. I forgot which TCM host did the intro, etc. but that was interesting.

 

[Droflet]

For a number of years, Clifton Webb appeared in a number of films, usually playing the same stuffed shirt type. He could be quite funny at times.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Matchless AKA Mission Top Secret (1967)

Italian spy comedy that is more amusing than most. Patrick O'Neal is a reporter inside Red China, being tortured as a spy. He's imprisoned with real spy Henry Silva and an elderly man who gives him a magic ring that can make him invisible for twenty minutes, once every ten hours. He escapes a firing squad by using the ring and gets out of China with the help of a woman who's actually an American spy. In the movie's sharpest bit of satire, the Americans torture him with the same device the Chinese used. Despite this, they enlist him to get his hands on vials of liquid in the possession of our movie's Bond Villain. (Donald Pleasance, who has a mansion full of robot servants and who puts on dark glasses whenever he's upset.) The usual spy stuff follows, with car chases, fights, and beautiful women. Although it's a spoof, the comedy is usually on the witty side than just slapstick. Maybe too long for its own good, but generally entertaining.

 

[KGeo777]

ZORRO IN THE COURT OF SPAIN - 1962 George Ardisson is pretty good as a foppish marquis who turns into Zorro although his blonde hair should be a giveaway to his identity.