What films have you watched recently?

fretmeister

breakstuff said:

Venom on Netflix.

It's pants. Don't bother. 

I loved it. A great antidote to the increasingly far too serious MCU.

cant wait for the sequel.

SteveRobinson

Blinded by the Light. It's rekindled my appreciation of Broooooooooce

Game Night. Better than I expected.

Blueingreen

The Witches of Eastwick

Fantasy/Comedy with Jack Nicholson.  Just about entertaining enough to justify the time it takes to watch but it's a close-run thing.  The basic premise (from John Updike's book), the quality of the cast and the money spent should have led to a better movie.  Some of the set-pieces work very well but others are self-indulgent, too silly or just fall flat. 6/10

andyp

SteveRobinson said:

Blinded by the Light. It's rekindled my appreciation of Broooooooooce

Game Night. Better than I expected.

I thought Game Night was absolutely brilliant. I wasn’t expecting much but gave it a whirl, and loved it.

Rachel McAdam is hilarious and cool.

merlin

Zoolooter said:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpPIcwIV46U

This is so unspeakably wrong. The song was sung by Tenpole Tudor NOT Lydon. Both in the film and the soundtrack. 

Sorry but when the person who made that film put Lydon singing "Who Killed Bambi" I wanted to throw up and down at the same time. 

Here;

SteveRobinson

andyp said:

SteveRobinson said:

Blinded by the Light. It's rekindled my appreciation of Broooooooooce

Game Night. Better than I expected.

I thought Game Night was absolutely brilliant. I wasn’t expecting much but gave it a whirl, and loved it.

Rachel McAdam is hilarious and cool.

Yes she's lovely. Sorry Jennifer Lawrence, you're history.

EricTheWeary

Molly’s Game.

On t’iPlayer. Biopic of Molly Bloom who ran high stakes poker games. I suspect if you know something about poker it would make it more interesting in places but essentially it’s Molly’s life from her teens to 35. A lot of it is told in voice over so it’s almost an audio book with pictures. 

A bit of violence, drug references, handful of swear words. Probably works as a sort of feminist movie in that it’s a strong central female character and ( most) men are jerks. 

I found it quite interesting rather than essential viewing. 

SteveRobinson

andyp said:

I thought Game Night was absolutely brilliant. 

Rachel McAdam is hilarious and cool.

Have you seen Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga? She's brilliant in that too.

andyp

I haven’t but it really doesn’t look like my thing.

I think I’ve only seen her once before - in True Detective years ago.

guitars4you

EricTheWeary said:

Molly’s Game.

On t’iPlayer. Biopic of Molly Bloom who ran high stakes poker games. I suspect if you know something about poker it would make it more interesting in places but essentially it’s Molly’s life from her teens to 35. A lot of it is told in voice over so it’s almost an audio book with pictures. 

A bit of violence, drug references, handful of swear words. Probably works as a sort of feminist movie in that it’s a strong central female character and ( most) men are jerks. 

I found it quite interesting rather than essential viewing. 

put it on record so will watch later

Same with The Accountant that BBC showed this weekend 

GoldenEraGuitars

About to finish the Godfather trilogy.. again. Awesome films 

ICBM

GoldenEraGuitars said:

About to finish the Godfather trilogy.. again. Awesome films 

The third one is better than its reputation, in my opinion. I think many people are so put off it by Sofia Coppola that they missed how brilliant Andy Garcia is, and that the plot is pretty good too. It's not as great as the first two... but it would be truly remarkable if it was.

Haych

Safe House

Netflix, I think. 

Umm, mediocre espionage thriller with Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington. 

Not a badly made movie but Reynolds wasn’t convincing, Washington was just the same character he plays in every film and the plot was regurgitated hash that’s all been done before, but better. 

Beyond that it’s just one big chase really. 

5/10

EricTheWeary

Spanish Fly

On Talking Pictures ( if you’re really interested they do repeat stuff a lot). 1975 British comedy set in Menorca. 

Definitely sexist, arguably racist ( or at least playing with racial stereotypes), passing homophobia and a surprising amount of random boobage ( probably the main reason anyone ever bought a cinema ticket for this 45 years ago). 

According to Wikipedia Barry Norman described this as the least funny British funny film ever made.

The footage of a quiet bit of Menorca is oddly delightful and there is an easy going charm to it. If bloody preposterous and not completely unfunny. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

According to Wikipedia Barry Norman described this as the least funny British funny film ever made.

That reminds me of a (probably apocryphal) Barry Norman story.  When reviewing Phantasm II he said "presumably that means there was a Phantasm One, although I certainly never saw it".  Someone pointed out that he had not only seen it, but reviewed it - and said it was the worst film he'd ever seen.

JezWynd

goldtop said:

Valerian and the thousand something or other - the Luc Besson daftness. I sort of liked it, although I think I heard that it was a bit 'marmite' for some sci-fi fans. What's to like - a sci-fi with as much imagination as there is CGI effort, plus lots of Besson whimsy and it was unpredictable (except for feeling a bit Avatary). Lead actor was miscast, and Clive Owen was non-stop annoying. 8/10

Have to disagree re casting, I thought Dane DeHaan was a perfect foil for Cara Delevingne. Sort of agree re Clive Owen, though having seen it a couple of times now, his bewildered pissed off-ness is a fun watch. It’s a very entertaining movie.

I’ve been watching WW2 propaganda movies recently including The Adventures of Tartu, starring Robert Donat and Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, both are very good films. Donat is a hoot as Tartu, Seig Heiling all over the place and generally making the Nazis look ridiculous (but also vicious and cruel). Lifeboat is brilliant - all the action is in the small boat and the pace never flags. Hitchcock makes the Germans more nuanced (though always underhand) and the good guys are not short of flaws. Both free to watch on You Tube if you don’t mind some dodgy compression..

Moominpapa

Finally got round to seeing A History of Violence (2005). I came to this having many times watched the 2011 film Dragon / Wǔ xiá, directed by Peter Chan with Donnie Yen & Takeshi Kaneshiro, which takes the same base plot but gives it a different treatment. Got to be honest: as much as I like David Cronenberg as a director and enjoy watching Viggo Mortensen, I was disappointed by A History of Violence. It had a couple of decent action sequences but overall I thought it was clichéd and leaden-footed. If you haven't seen either film, do yourself a solid and watch Wǔ xiá. It is one of my favourite Donnie Yen films and is vastly more entertaining than A History of Violence. The character dynamics going on between the two main protagonists in the former are far, far more interesting than the dreary family dynamics of the latter. Sorry David & Viggo - love Eastern Promises and it's on my regular rewatch list, but I won't be watching A History of Violence again.

boogieman

Never say never again. The ill-advised return of Sean Connery as Bond. He was 53 when he made this, wears a laughably bad wig and although he’s still in very good nick for his age at this point he just comes across as a sad old letch. To make it even worse this wasn’t a Broccoli production and it looks really cheaply made with truly awful special FX. .  

Philly_Q

boogieman said:

Never say never again. The ill-advised return of Sean Connery as Bond. He was 53 when he made this, wears a laughably bad wig and although he’s still in very good nick for his age at this point he just comes across as a sad old letch. 

He'd already done that once before, in Diamonds are Forever (he was only 40 or 41 then but already looked ancient).

Funny to think Roger Moore went on making them until he was 57, although he was well past it by then.  And Daniel Craig's 52, but actors today are generally in way better shape than their predecessors.

fretmeister

ICBM said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

About to finish the Godfather trilogy.. again. Awesome films 

The third one is better than its reputation, in my opinion. I think many people are so put off it by Sofia Coppola that they missed how brilliant Andy Garcia is, and that the plot is pretty good too. It's not as great as the first two... but it would be truly remarkable if it was.

Agreed.

As the 3rd in a trilogy isn't not like the went through the bottom of the barrel and put ewoks in it.

Garcia is superb in it.