What films have you watched recently?

axisus

ICBM said:

axisus said:

er ... can't quite think what you are referring to there? Care to add a spoiler?

When Dennis Hopper's oil tanker sinks at the end...

Ahh yes. Meant nothing to my wife!

axisus

So, I was really keen to watch The Thursday night murder club, but then I got a bit put off by the negativity here. I finally saw it over the weekend. I ... liked it. OK, that's my overall opinion, however - the plot is fairly lightweight, and their 'resolving' the mystery cold case was utterly ridiculous. Also the ending was all a bit twee and annoying. What I did like though - the whole cast was wonderful and I liked the characters. The 'look and feel' was pleasing as well. I can't help thinking that it would have been much better as a mini series rather than a film though.

An amazing roll call of acting talent. the main 4 were great (Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley. I also really like Daniel Mays in everything he does (although this role was similar to his one in Magpie Murders). Others were good, but special mention to the always excellent Richard E Grant who was astonishingly menacing!

I think I can stretch to 6.5/10

axisus

Not a film, but it was 1.5hrs long so I think I can drop it in. I generally avoid Black Mirror as they freak me out, but I knew about the episode 'Hated in the Nation' and it's one I've wanted to watch for some time. It has the excellent Kelly Macdonald in it, and it is a fascinating if somewhat scary story (aren't they all!). The whole thing is superb and most engaging, another tech gone wrong/misused story - mysterious deaths with a sinister link to social media. The only negative for me is I think they could have done a bit better with the very ending. However, I think it's worth it's 8.4/10 rating on IMDB.

littlegreenman

Alien Rubicon (Prime)
Not a spin off of the series of movies. Stupid script, naff c-movie actors and just gaarrggh!
Possibly the worst steaming pile of shite I've ever seen. 100% do not watch...
-1million/10

Winny_Pooh

One battle after another

Gripping, chaotic. In a way I think male parents might find more to identify with, my dad-friend found it way more compelling than me. 

8/10

axisus

littlegreenman said:

Alien Rubicon (Prime)
Not a spin off of the series of movies. Stupid script, naff c-movie actors and just gaarrggh!
Possibly the worst steaming pile of shite I've ever seen. 100% do not watch...
-1million/10

Now I'm intrigued .....

breakstuff

axisus said:

littlegreenman said:

Alien Rubicon (Prime)
Not a spin off of the series of movies. Stupid script, naff c-movie actors and just gaarrggh!
Possibly the worst steaming pile of shite I've ever seen. 100% do not watch...
-1million/10

Now I'm intrigued .....

Please don't watch, it really is as bad as @littlegreenman says. I fell into the 'maybe it's so bad it's good' trap. It's not only bad, it's a bloody travesty.

The look of disgust my wife gave me after watching is forever burnt into my memory. I don't think she'll ever forgive me for suggesting we watch it together. I'd have been better off sleeping with her sister.

west

Last night i watched  Rabbit trap , a nice slice of folk horror . i was really in the mood for this, very reminiscent of the film  The Shout ( one of my faves )  if you like atmosheric slow paced eerie stuff it might be for you , i loved it ...  also if you havnt seen the shout give that a go alan bates , susan york , john hurt and music by tony banks and mike rutherford both set in the 70s ...  

axisus

I felt like a bit of 80s brainless entertainment last night, and opted for Hudson Hawk, a biggish budget film that was hoping to scale the heights based on Bruce Willis' fame, but tanked spectacularly. Bruce himself does a fine job of being his usual cheeky chappie, and Andie MacDowall was lovely as always, but they couldn't help the dire script and strange directoral choices. They fit a couple of singing numbers in! Which for me were total misfires. In the right film they might have worked, but this was not the right film. 

OK, so lots of plain silly stuff, dubious casting and OTT sets pieces. It was quite fun in some ways but it could have been a lot better. Sandra Bernhard as a baddie was just painful to watch every time she was on screen. Richard E Grant hammed it up seriously as the other baddie, and although I love him dearly this was not one of his better performances. The film is also a waste of James Coburn's talent. He was never a 'great' actor but he was certainly an iconic one.

So .... I 'was' entertained, to a degree, so I'll stretch to 5.5/10

axisus

Friday night is usually takeaway/film night for me. Last night I opted for Safety not guaranteed (Amazon P). It's a low budget/independent film that cost less than £1 million to make, and it has bags of charm and a heartfelt story. It won 6 awards and was nominated for 5 others. Basically the story is a magazine reporter and two interns going to investigate an unusual advert in a local paper. Well worth a look if you haven't seen it. I've seen it before, and although it's best watching it for a first time, it is still very enjoyable. I found it quite heartwarming.

ICBM

The Roses

Black comedy with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in a loose remake of the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner 1980s The War Of The Roses. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know how close either of them are to it.

The plot overall is a bit too extreme to be entirely convincing, but that’s part of the point really. MrsICBM didn’t really like it because both of them are playing unlikeable characters, but I thought they were both brilliant, Colman especially. It takes a while to really get going, but if you like this sort of thing then I think it’s better than what I remember of the earlier version.

8/10

(Local cinema)

axisus

Watched Hocus Pocus last night. 80s Halloween comedy with Bette Midler. It was a bit of fun. Not much else I can say about it really. I'll probably take a look at that second one they made a couple of years ago. I'd basically call it an average comedy.

Haych

Goldeneye 

It’s 30 years since I saw this at the cinema and it’s back in the cinema so thought I go relive my yoof. 

As Bond stories go it’s pretty solid, it has everything one has come to expect. Brosnan, in my opinion, was the best Bond - he kept the cheese but added an edge that meant the humour was still there and the action didn’t suffer one bit. He’s also a very handsome man, bastard!

So we have bad actors in the Soviet regime paired with megalomaniac baddies, henchmen in the hundreds and a secret underground lair where all the plotting against the British Empire happens. 

Then there’s pretty girls and cool gadgets. 

It’s Bond 101. 

Sean Bean isn’t the most convincing baddie but does an ok job. Some of the action sequences are still solid 30 years on and the fight scene at the end still has me wincing, gritting my teeth and saying ouch. 

I came away with a smile on my face, there were a few moments where Brosnan, Llewelyn and Isabella Scorupco broke character ever so slightly. The latter Bond films have been a bit too serious so rewatching this was a bit of fresh air. 

Overall a really good effort as Brosnan’s first outing as Bond. 

7.8/10

rze99

The Banshees of Inisherin
Been travelling and not watching movies, but this was on is on my recordings and I was supposed to be watching it with my son but he bailed on me, so I was on my Todd with a whisky or three.

Reviewed many times on these pages, it's a wonderful, bleak, beautifully acted and filmed allegorical very black comedy with multiple layers, but essentially, set in 1923 against the backdrop of Irish Civil War, on a barely inhabited island off Ireland, an older guy suddenly rejects his baffled and hurt happy-go-lucky younger drinking buddy as he grapples with the despair of the emptiness of his simple useless life and so attempts to create a great fiddle tune to leave a lasting mark. The two men descend into bloody-minded self-mutilation, and self-destructive behaviours, pulling apart others and resulting in deadly destruction.

The scenery is incredible and so gorgeously photographed. I want to see it again just to enjoy the cinematography.

And, Having toured Southern Western Ireland, what is not credible is that it doesn't rain once! 

Philly_Q

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

This was inspired by @axisus' recent thread about long-running movie franchises.  I'd seen most of the Mission: Impossible films (or so I thought) but over a long period of time and in a fairly random order, so I decided to watch them all in a week.  Most of them are on multiple streaming channels, but for convenience the first six are all on Paramount+, part 7's on Netflix and part 8's on Amazon (I had to pay £4.99 for that one).

The M:I films all have basically the same plot.  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force team (generally including Ving Rhames and/or Simon Pegg, plus someone female and glamorous) have to steal or recover a file, code, key, weapon or... thing which some bad hat wants in order to control and/or destroy civilisation as we know it.  Their mission invariably (well, almost invariably) involves breaking into (or out of) a tall building in some exotic part of the world, and sometimes (in a nod to the original TV series) this requires our heroes to disguise themselves with improbably realistic rubber masks.  In several - in fact most - of the films, the IMF is shut down by the US government or the CIA so they go rogue, without any support.  Occasionally a member of Ethan's team turns out to be a traitor (especially if they're not Ving Rhames or Simon Pegg).  Rhames and Pegg do the tech stuff, Cruise does the action... guns are fired, things explode, Ethan does some very dramatic Tom-Cruise-Running (TM), there's a car or motorbike chase, he gets beaten up, but he always saves the day.  The End.

One thing that's interesting watching all the films back-to-back is seeing Tom Cruise age.  He looks like a college boy in the first film, then he's at his handsome, dazzling-smile Hollywood leading man peak for the next few films, but from part 5 to part 6 he suddenly looks a lot older.  This does not hold him back from doing all sorts of spectacular stunts and fight scenes, the guy's energy and commitment are frankly amazing.  But there's a definite shift from dashing romantic lead to looking like the oldest guy in the room (Ving Rhames excepted)... in part 6 especially, he looks a bit clapped-out next to that film's co-star Henry Cavill, and there's a distinct vibe of Roger Moore in his last few Bond films...  To be fair, this is acknowledged in the last two films - in part 8 we see Hunt's ID, showing his date of birth as 1964, and frequent reference is made to his 30+ years of service.  He's now portrayed as something of an ageing, weary throwback to a different world, which actually makes him the ideal person to take on the high tech villain of those two films.

The first five films were all made by different directors, which means they're all subtly (or not so subtly) different in style.  This helps the films to feel fresh each time, despite the formulaic plots.  Part 1 is more spy film than action movie and now feels a bit stodgy.  Part 2 goes for a totally different style, with a fairly weak story and some dodgy acting, but with top-notch action courtesy of director John Woo.  It's from part 3 onwards that the signature style of the franchise is really established, and that peaks in parts 4 and 5, which are probably the best of the lot, with a nice mix of action, spectacle and humour. 

Part 5 is directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who remains at the helm as director, writer and eventually co-producer for the remainder of the series. This begins well but it does start to feel as if he's losing his way whilst trying to outdo himself... each of these four films is longer than the one before, with more storylines continuing from one film to the next, and they get a little meandering and bloated, whilst still delivering on the action set pieces.  The humour starts to dissipate and part 8 in particular is deadly serious, with Hunt trying to prevent a genuine end-of-the-world scenario (based on an AI threat which seems quite topical)... it's nearly three hours long and the first two thirds of that is very hard work, although the ending's suitably spectacular.  Cruise has said it will be the final film and it feels like it's probably the right time to bow out.

But I don't want to end on a downer.  Tom Cruise is the kind of Hollywood star we might not see again, and Mission: Impossible is a thoroughly entertaining series.  Highly recommended.

Offset

^^ Superb synopsis and review Phil.

SteveRobinson

The Heretic (2024) Amazon Prime

Two young female Mormon missionaries call at guy's house and wish they hadn't. 

Didn't really enjoy this at all. Acting was great, especially the women, but premise and storyline poor I thought and clumsy close-ups on items that would have relevance later on were all too obvious. 3/10

axisus

@Philly_Q great write up!

axisus

Saw Hocus Pocus 2 tonight. Similar fare to the last one of course, but for me it had two problems. First off the lead ‘hero’ characters lacked charisma, not as good as the three in the first film. Secondly, far and away the best part of the film was the first 20 mins or so, which explored the three witches as kids. That would have made a much better film if they’d have just stuck with that. A film falls rather flat once you realise that you’ve seen the best of it. Anyway, it was a bit of Halloween fun. 

Philly_Q

@Offset @axisus thank you!