What films have you watched recently?

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Watched Top Gun: Maverick last week. It helped that I watched the original the night before because the new film refers to it a lot. Well made with a good cast and great fighter jet action. Pretty much on par with the original. Tom Cruise is a crazy guy doing his own flying. 

DrCornelius

Went to see the 1922 silent version of nosferatu the vampire on Saturday night . Outdoor cinema in deepest darkest Dorset with bats flying above our heads , a bar and music provided by a couple of hipster types with analogue synths , drum machines , flutes etc 

For a silent film it was really gripping , it must have scared the crap out of people a hundred years ago. The ending was weak and felt rushed but I’d had quite a few beers by then so I wasn’t too bothered . The music was awesome too.

I think this might be part of a National tour so if you like this stuff give it a go if you see it near you - you won’t regret it I’m sure.

Haych

This weekends films have been:

Firstly, All the Old Knives, a slow burning spy thriller with Chris Pine in the leads Thandiwe Newton and Jonathan Pryce and Lawrence Fishburne making the other biggest roles.

All the above work for the same intelligence agency, Pine and Newton are also lovers and very involved with one another.  The get chatter that a hijacking is about to happen but don't know where and when, until it happens and 120-odd people are taken hostage aboard a Turkish Airlines jet on a runway somewhere.

After the incident Newton splits from Pine abruptly and they go their separate ways.  Fast forward eight years and new intelligence comes to light that the hijackers had a mole on the inside.  Pine's jobs is to interview his old lover, Newton, and his old boss, Pryce, to find out who the traitor is.

It has all the glossy production of a really good film, the mood is quite cleverly set, it's almost film noir in some ways.  But that's about where the good stuff ends.  The performances aren't bad, certainly nothing to criticise and Thandiwe Newton doesn't look bad in the buff either.

It's a bit of a slow burner, though.  There's no real action to speak of, most of the dialogue takes place over a dinner setting between Pine and Newton and less so between Pine and Pryce in a London pub, as he probes for information about the bungled hijacking.  Flashbacks to eight years previous fill in the holes where the dialogue can't explain what's going on in sufficient detail.

The twist, when it comes, is hardly surprising and not even that clever.  It's not a bad film, but if you're looking for a high action spy drama then this isn't the one to watch.

6/10

Lastly, last night we watched Tomorrow Never Dies.

Controversial, I know, but Pierce Brosnan was the best Bond, before Daniel Craig came along and made the franchise far too serious for its own good.

Brosnan is not only a very handsome man (Tom Selleck is the only other man I think I can say that about) but manages to find the perfect balance between the cheesy one liners and decent action required of his role.  He was also the best dressed Bond.

Yes, it's a ridiculous plot with a megalomaniac super villain hellbent on changing the world.  There are ludicrous action sequences, idiotic chases, and evil henchmen armed to the teeth with machine guns but who couldn't shoot a barn door at six feet.  

The fight sequences are completely daft and Bond manages to get through at least 3 different women during the film.

It's everything a Bond film should be, and it's brilliant!

I'm going to dock one point just because Jonathan Pryce doesn't really pull off the super-villain as convincingly as the role really needed.  He's not bad, he's just not excellent.

9/10

Both on Prime at the moment.

ICBM

Ammonite

Historical romantic/emotional drama with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as early Victorian fossil expert Mary Anning and the young woman she reluctantly befriends. If that sounds a bit dry, it is - it's almost awkwardly stilted in some ways, but beautifully filmed and acted. The affair between Winslet and Ronan may be fictional, but they manage to make it fairly convincing... although the best role in some ways is Fiona Shaw's cameo as Anning's former lover.

8/10

(Netflix)

Also discovered reading some more about Mary Anning, that Saoirse Ronan’s character Charlotte Murchison was actually 11 years *older* than Anning, rather than about 20 years younger…

Brio

Everything Everywhere All at Once I agree with @Rabs & @Grangousier above that this is a wonderful film, well worth seeing. The cast were all good so it seems unfair to single people out but it has to be said that Michelle Yeoh is superb  and Jamie Lee Curtis is just wonderful - the scenes between them are hilarious.
 I also have to mention the wonderful callbacks & homages to famous films or types of film. One of them is very obvious, but the ones that pleased me most were the homages to late 1970s Jackie `Chan films. In those early films in his career Chan did lots of intricate prop fighting with things like traditional Chinese wooden inn stools, clay pipes, etc - whatever happened to be lying around in the scene where the fight was taking place. Michelle Yeoh of course knows all that stull and they incorporate it hilariously into the fight scenes, along with numerous kung-fu tropes from the classic Shaw Brothers period. It's very funny stuff.

I finally saw it last night.

Big +1 for Michelle Yeoh. Loved her for years.

I agree about the callbacks and homages (Ratatouille for me was the standout) but I found the basis of the plot - parallel universes - to be a simple SciFi feature and although a visual delight the story boiled down to the key relationship between two people.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it and will probably watch it again for the details I missed but it felt visually stunning but ultimately not the greatest film ever.

Hmmm. SciFi based? Visual delight? Good effects? Plot is basically how two peoples relationship can change the world? Lots of callbacks to previous films? A bit shallow on reflection?

Oh right - Matrix Resurrections.

guitars4you

Just watched Free State of Jones - True story from USA Civil war  about freedom and Confederate deserters - excellent in so many ways 

Offset

The Silencing (2020)
An ex-hunter turned conservationist (Nikolaj William Coster-Waldau) and a female sheriff (Annabelle Wallis) attempt to track down a killer who the hunter believes is responsible for abducting his daughter some years earlier.  Quite tense with a few twists and surprises along the way.  Nothing especially new here however and Mrs O guessed the identity of the killer well before the end.  However: it is well-acted, nicely shot in Canada and keeps your attention.  A solid 6.5/10.

munckee

@Haych pierce brosnan (also Roger Moore) always looked too much like a school teacher to take seriously taking out bad guys for me.  Daniel Craig and Sean Connery you could believe beating bad guys to a pulp.

Haych

munckee said:

@Haych pierce brosnan (also Roger Moore) always looked too much like a school teacher to take seriously taking out bad guys for me.  Daniel Craig and Sean Connery you could believe beating bad guys to a pulp.

I think that was part of the appeal, Bond was unassuming to look at and beating people to a pulp not really his style unless he really had to.

Anyway, we watched The World is Not Enough last night, just to keep the Bond rollercoaster going.  Not a bad effort, a decent story worthy of a Bond film with some ridiculous details thrown in just for good measure.

No super-villains with masses of evil henchmen this time round, which worked rather well, I thought.

Not sure how nuclear submarines work but pretty sure all that stuff in the end sequence was taking artistic license to a whole new level!  And when I did my lifesaver training at school I was told that under no circumstances do you jump headfirst into an unknown body of water!  Feet first, arms spread wide, Bond!

Still, a decent Bond movie all the same.

Stratavarious

The Andromeda Strain (1969)

A great and believable science-fi classic. Well paced plot and interesting 60’s edits and electronic soundtrack.  

Seen it numerous times. Still a solid watch.  Skip the remake.

8/10

fretmeister

The Courier

Based on the true events of Greville Wynne becoming a spy to get Soviet info out of the USSR.

I thought it was very good. The performances from Benedict Cabbagepatch and Mereb Ninidze were top class.
The only thing that was a bit too "hollywood" was the text ending saying that Wynne died peacefully in 1990.

He actually died of throat cancer and he suffered from terrible mental health problems after being locked up in a soviet labour camp for a couple of years. 

Even though after the events Wynne claimed that he had done other work for Mi5 in some books and that those accounts were generally not believed, there's no doubt that what he did actually do, and get caught by the KGB for, was remarkably brave.

I also have to say, the set design / locations / clothing etc got the 1960s dead right. Very atmospheric and really helped with the immersion in the film.

8/10

rze99

Toscana (Netflix 2022)
In Danish/English/Italian

Celebrated obsessive Danish chef travels to Tuscany to sell his father's business he unexpectedly inherits.
He needs to sell it to invest in a grand reinvention-of-cuisine statement type place he has planned in Denmark. 
He has very, very bad anger management and...quelle surprise, Daddy hate/worship/no love/ issues. 

Unsurprisingly, in Tuscany, he meets a local woman who inspires him to rethink his approach to life, love and food.

There's a lot about this film that's not surprising, but the most surprising thing is how they took all the ingredients available and still messed it up. Inconsistent and unbelievable in almost all respects, except the food. The acting was mostly ok.
I watched this with my wife because we both want to go back to Italy for holidays and we just fancied a flavour of it.

Do watch it for:
Fabulous Tuscan scenery;
Gorgeous looking food.

Don't watch it for: 
everything else.
And definitely don't watch it if you're hungry - it'll do your head in.

Food representation 9/10
Tuscan scenery ....hey, you can't mess that up.
everything else 4/10

Haych

The Way, Way Back

Saw this on Prime and it looked pretty good so thought we'd give it a go.  It was pretty good, if not quite what I was expecting from the trailer.

The story centres on a 14 year old lad who is struggling to come to terms with his father's rejection and his mother's boyfriend and boyfriend's daughter, as well as just feeling awkward in his own skin as many young lads do at that age.

Steve Carell plays the boyfriend, and surprisingly his character is an absolute douchebag.  The lad's mother is played by Toni Collette.  The lad himself is played by Liam James - yeah, never heard of him either.

Anyway, they go away to The Hamptons for summer break where the lad, Duncan, just doesn't seem to fit in anywhere, until he starts hanging out at a local water park where he's taken in by a low level employee, Owen (Sam Rockwell), who clearly has no ambition and is just happy with life as it is. 

Duncan bonds with Owen, makes new friends, and gradually he comes out of his shell and gains a bit of confidence.

The ending is different to what you'd expect, especially given some of the events that unfold during the movie, but it isn't any worse for that and is probably a reflection that movies can sometimes be a bit more realistic to how life is.

It's a pretty decent feel good/coming of age type film.  Sam Rockwell is excellent and Steve Carrell does a really good job of making the viewer feel uncomfortable about his character.

7.5/10

Philly_Q

The Silencing (Netflix)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Rayburn, an alcoholic recluse scarred by the disappearance of his teenage daughter some years ago, who finds himself entangled in the investigation of a series of murders.  This might be a tolerable 90-minute thriller, if you can put up with all the extremely unlikely coincidences and ludicrous plot twists.  Or it may just be total rubbish.  I can't decide.

Brio

The Silencing (2020)

I enjoyed it. Must admit I only watched it initially because of Amanda Wallis (the only decent thing about The Mummy but the film did grow on me.

Reggaebass

Watched 1408 on Netflix, a very odd film I thought, not really horror, more creepy and strange, I wouldn’t watch it again 

skullfunkerry

Yesterday we watched A Haunting at the Rectory. It was dreadful: we were expecting a creepy horror film, but we got a super-low budget drama about an affair, with a couple of ghost sightings. Utter lack of drama, a ridiculous accent from the gardener, and the worst, most stilted, school drama club dialogue I’ve ever heard. Avoid! 1/10.

hollywoodrox

Once upon a time in Hollywood . Got to be the best Tarantino film ever, don’t/care for any of the others  but enjoyed this immensely ,a great story I would’ve really love to see the supposedly 20 hour cut that exists ,must be some great extra  stories in it 

merlin

hollywoodrox said:

Once upon a time in Hollywood . Got to be the best Tarantino film ever, don’t/care for any of the others  but enjoyed this immensely ,a great story I would’ve really love to see the supposedly 20 hour cut that exists ,must be some great extra  stories in it 

+1 on not being a Tarantino fan. I did like "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" though. I still think that Jackie Brown was his best and least smug film. 

Philly_Q

skullfunkerry said:

Yesterday we watched A Haunting at the Rectory. It was dreadful: we were expecting a creepy horror film, but we got a super-low budget drama about an affair, with a couple of ghost sightings. Utter lack of drama, a ridiculous accent from the gardener, and the worst, most stilted, school drama club dialogue I’ve ever heard. Avoid! 1/10.

Ah, you've discovered the work of Andrew Jones, Swansea's answer to Edward D Wood Jr!