What films have you watched recently?

munckee

Have been watching the roger water's The Wall film incorporating the O2 showswhile cooking n the kitchen.  My 13 year old daughter walked in and I was stood by the tv chanting "tear down the wall" with the crowd.  She of course thought I was nuts/a twat.

EricTheWeary

Dr Strange on Netflix. 
As he is a surgeon shouldn’t it be Mister Strange? 
The CGI is quite cool and there is some nice humour. When I was into Marvel as a teenager Dr Strange was there although not a character I paid attention to so I’ve little idea about how faithful it is to the comics. 
The need for the Marvel films to raise everything to a world saving, epic scale seems unnecessary to me so I’d cheerfully watch it again with the last 20 minutes edited out. 

ICBM

Philly_Q said:

My philosophy with remakes is that - although they're lazy and I wish people would do something original - they should be judged on their own merits.  It's only 90 minutes or two hours of my time.

The studios definitely like them because they think it's easy to cash in on a recognised title, but they're often given to young writers and directors who might - if they can get past too much studio interference - do something interesting.

But yes, most of them are rubbish....

Very occasionally you get one that’s better than the original - the Donald Sutherland version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is the one I always think of. The original is a good film too, but the remake is outstanding. I haven’t seen the re-remake or the re-re-remake though!

I’ve also just seen Bohemian Rhapsody, which is brilliant. You probably need to be at least a bit of a Queen fan, but the performances are really excellent and it won’t grate or spoil anything if you are.

Philly_Q

ICBM said:

Very occasionally you get one that’s better than the original - the Donald Sutherland version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is the one I always think of. The original is a good film too, but the remake is outstanding. I haven’t seen the re-remake or the re-re-remake though!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is interesting because each version reflects its times.  I like the first three versions but The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig is pretty weak (perhaps due to the studio interference to add more "action").  There's another version in the pipeline, apparently....

There was also a similarly-themed film, also with Donald Sutherland, called The Puppet Masters (based on a Robert Heinlein novel).  I thought it was pretty good in 1994 but apparently it's not well-regarded.  It's coming out on Blu-ray soon so I might pick it up.

boogieman

Outlander, basically Alien versus Vikings. Utter tosh but ok for a Sunday afternoon. 

bingefeller

I watched Indonesian martial arts film The Night Comes For Us and it is brilliant!   Some of the acting was a little dodgy but the action scenes were some of the best I've seen in the last 10 years. The CGI effects were great too.  If you like martial arts then I would highly recommend this, although the gore is completely crazy over the top.  

Philly_Q

bingefeller said:

I watched Indonesian martial arts film The Night Comes For Us and it is brilliant!   Some of the acting was a little dodgy but the action scenes were some of the best I've seen in the last 10 years. The CGI effects were great too.  If you like martial arts then I would highly recommend this, although the gore is completely crazy over the top.  

The director, Timo Tjahjanto, has also just made a really good horror movie called May The Devil Take You.  It's a bit like an Indonesian Evil Dead.

DiscoStu

Bohemian Rhapsody. I loved every second of it and it gave me goosebumps on many occasions. It's a bit cheesy at times but I didn't go in expecting a documentary and I left feeling thoroughly satisfied.
9/10

schrodinger1612

Saw Halloween recently. I think at any other time of the year, and on a lesser medium like Netflix, television or DVD I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, but seeing it on a big screen on Halloween night just gave it an awesome vibe, even though it is as dumb as a bag of hammers. It helped that I went in with no expectations.7/10 Good fun and great soundtrack.

TimmyO

Mile 22 - some pretty impressive shootouts/special forces style raids if you like that sort of thing 

TimmyO

TimmyO said:

Mile 22 - some pretty impressive shootouts/special forces style raids if you like that sort of thing 

oh, and Maggie from The Walking Dead is in it 

Fazer

I watched/rewatched all the James Bond films up to License To Kill.
The best ones are: You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, and ..... Moonraker!
Best women: Jane Seymour and Tanya Roberts. Also Daniela Bianchi & Barbara Carrera.
Best villain: Michael Lonsdale / Drax
Best henchmen: Robert Shaw, Oddjob, Mr Kidd & Mr Wint, creepy Voodoo guy in Live And Let Die, Jaws
Best car: white & copper coloured Lotus
Best theme song: Diamonds Are Forever
Best scenes: underwater scuba battle in Thunderball, Drax speech about master race in Moonraker

Well, that's how I remember it now after watching over the past few weeks. Some of them blur together a bit.

They're all too long at over 2 hours each, get a bit samey and then increasingly formulaic/cliched, and some of them I skipped ahead at times, particularly the last two (Dalton). They were just ordinary action films, really.
It's interesting to see how they change culturally/socially over 26 years, as well as how film making changed.
I hadn't intended to watch any beyond the last Roger Moore in 1985, but by the time I got there I was interested to see how the culture/worldview continued changing.

Philly_Q

Fazer said:

I watched/rewatched all the James Bond films up to License To Kill.
The best ones are: You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, and ..... Moonraker!

Wow, I think they're some of the worst!  Apart from Live And Let Die.

EricTheWeary

Fazer said:

I watched/rewatched all the James Bond films up to License To Kill.
The best ones are: You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, and ..... Moonraker!
Best women: Jane Seymour and Tanya Roberts. Also Daniela Bianchi & Barbara Carrera.
Best villain: Michael Lonsdale / Drax
Best henchmen: Robert Shaw, Oddjob, Mr Kidd & Mr Wint, creepy Voodoo guy in Live And Let Die, Jaws
Best car: white & copper coloured Lotus
Best theme song: Diamonds Are Forever
Best scenes: underwater scuba battle in Thunderball, Drax speech about master race in Moonraker

Well, that's how I remember it now after watching over the past few weeks. Some of them blur together a bit.

They're all too long at over 2 hours each, get a bit samey and then increasingly formulaic/cliched, and some of them I skipped ahead at times, particularly the last two (Dalton). They were just ordinary action films, really.
It's interesting to see how they change culturally/socially over 26 years, as well as how film making changed.
I hadn't intended to watch any beyond the last Roger Moore in 1985, but by the time I got there I was interested to see how the culture/worldview continued changing.

Moonraker?!? You might be in a small minority there. 

I think part of the Bond charm was that they were filmed in interesting places like New Orleans or Jamaica that many people couldn't get to and hadn't seen in vivid colour even if they'd seen them on TV. So that travelog aspect became less important to some extent or at least you had to ramp it up a bit ( no good going to Mexico City you have to go to Mexico City for the day of the dead celebration).  

dbphoto

Outlaw King

I was close to giving up half an hour in but it turned out not bad actually.

not_the_dj

JFK (The Oliver Stone one). 

Been mentioned on here a few times over the years so as I spotted it on amazon prime I thought I’d spend almost three and a half hours of my life watching it (over two nights). 

BigBearKris

not_the_dj said:

JFK (The Oliver Stone one). 

Been mentioned on here a few times over the years so as I spotted it on amazon prime I thought I’d spend almost three and a half hours of my life watching it (over two nights). 

And what's the verdict?

not_the_dj

BigBearKris said:

not_the_dj said:

JFK (The Oliver Stone one). 

Been mentioned on here a few times over the years so as I spotted it on amazon prime I thought I’d spend almost three and a half hours of my life watching it (over two nights). 

And what's the verdict?

To be honest i’m not sure. As a film it’s pace is relentless, but there are some great acting performances. 

As for the content I really don’t know, but I understand some of the arguments put forward in the film are flawed (@ICBM has posted on this a few times here, and that was in the back of my mind when watching). 

ICBM

not_the_dj said:

As for the content I really don’t know, but I understand some of the arguments put forward in the film are flawed (@ICBM has posted on this a few times here, and that was in the back of my mind when watching).

The funny thing is that when I saw it, I went into the cinema believing there was a conspiracy and that there was more than one gunman. When I came out I was sure that whatever else might have happened, there was only one and that he was above and behind the car. The Zapruder film in slow motion was really a ‘WTF did I just see?’ moment, like a subtle reveal put there on purpose... but I don’t think that was Stone’s intention at all. After that I became interested in learning a lot more about it, and came to the conclusion I now have - which is the exact opposite.

We probably shouldn’t divert this thread too much though .

Philly_Q

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I always seem to see films either before they're released or long after everyone else has already seen them.  This is one of the late ones.  Of course it did very well in awards season but a few people had muttered about elements of the plot and the ending, so I wasn't sure what I'd make of it.  It's brilliant.