What films have you watched recently?

breakstuff

Philly_Q said:

Frankenstein (2025)

I'm not going to give a plot synopsis... suffice to say that Guillermo del Toro's take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is no more faithful to the book than any other film version.

The film is not without its flaws.  Oscar Isaac, as Victor Frankenstein, hams it up and does a dodgy accent not unlike Robert Downey Jr.'s in Sherlock Holmes.  Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz aren't really given much to do.  But oh my goodness, the production design is fantastic (although there is some iffy CGI), the story's told so well that two-and-a-half hours fly by and Jacob Elordi provides the best-ever, and most fully realised, incarnation of the Creature.  I loved it.

Coming to Netflix on November 7.

Thanks for the heads up, will definitely be watching this. Mia Goth staring in it is an extra bonus, though a shame to hear she hasn't much to do in it. 

Philly_Q

breakstuff said:

Thanks for the heads up, will definitely be watching this. Mia Goth staring in it is an extra bonus, though a shame to hear she hasn't much to do in it. 

Whilst I said she hasn't much to do, she gives her typically otherworldly, slightly disconnected type of performance, so you'll get some Mia Goth value if you're a fan.    Her role's an important one, but the emphasis is very much on the two principal characters.

axisus

Saw Bunny and the bull tonight. A very strange, low budget film - basically a surreal 'flashback' recreation of a road trip by an agoraphobic living in his apartment. The ever excellent Simon Farnaby is one of the main two protagonists, and playing a very different role from his usual kiddie-friendly stuff - dropping F bombs, shagging women, shagging a dog (!) and appearing completely starkers, nothing left to the imagination!

The director has previously worked on British television comedies The Mighty Boosh and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and you can see that influence here. A roadtrip where everything is shot in the studio, and surrounded by bits of animation. Noel Fielding, Julian Barrett and Richard Ayoade all show up for a bit.

For me it's an 8.5 out of 10, a film I return to a fair bit, hence me owning the DVD. I'll have to try the commentary next time. The thing I forgot about DVDs though - all those bloody adverts at the start! You can't skip them but you can speed through them. Incredibly annoying though. I used to splice them off of some of my old VHS tapes!

Winny_Pooh

@axisus Palm Springs is great, worth a second try

Philly_Q

Last Shift (2014)
Malum (2023)

Rookie police officer Jessica Loren spends her very first night on duty at an old station which is just about to be closed (yes, there's a distinct Assault on Precinct 13 influence here).  It's not long before she starts hearing and seeing very strange things in the supposedly empty building...

Director Anthony DiBlasi and his co-writer Scott Poiley made Last Shift on a very low budget in 2014.  Nearly a decade later, for reasons best known to themselves, they decided to remake it with a new cast and a bigger budget.

I saw Last Shift on its release in 2014 - in fact it was the World Premiere, at the FrightFest Halloween event that year - and I thought it was terrific.  I saw Malum earlier this week and felt I had to re-watch Last Shift for comparison.

The basic plot is the same, and the first third of each film is pretty much identical.  Malum clearly has a much bigger special effects budget and devotes a lot more time to the back-story of the Manson-like "family" which is the cause of the mysterious events at the police station.  However, it loses all of the tension and unnerving atmosphere of the original film, which remains far more effective.  I really don't know what they thought they were doing.

ICBM

Heretic

Psychological horror with Hugh Grant as a religious obsessive who lures two young Mormon missionary girls into his house. Then things turn nasty.

Grant is amazing, alternately charming and sinister in the space of a few seconds - and even at the same time - and the set-up is pretty well done, although some have said a bit implausible towards the end, which is probably the only criticism. The dark lighting makes it really quite creepy, and although there's a bit of blood it's not a shock horror, but very unsettling.

9/10

(Amazon Prime, MrsICBM needed it for something else so we signed up for a month - and the bastards still put an advert in the middle when it's supposed to be ad-free.)

Brio

Winny_Pooh said:

@axisus Palm Springs is great, worth a second try

I agree!

FarleyUK

The Naked Gun (2025)

Firstly - yes, it's not as funny as the originals. However, it had a couple of amusing moments which made it an easy watch. I've no doubt there's were many more background gags I missed.

Also, while I was pissed they didn't include an homage to the original intro music and sequence, I was glad to see it happen in the end credits!

6/10

fretmeister

a really intriguing idea that was ultimately hampered by a dull script.

Nothing wrong with the performances, it was just that not enough happened.

4/10

Haych

^ thought that was a pile of shit. 

EricTheWeary

Highlander 

iPlayer 

Big favourite of MrsTheWeary but I don't have the same emotional attachment to it. Sort of brilliant, sort of very silly. It's certainly of it's time. 

Brio

Lucky Number Slevin.
I go back to it every few years as I love the way the story lines interweave and resolve.
9.5/10

zepp76

"Downsizing"

 I've just finished watching it. What a brilliantly quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes sad and fully thought provoking film. Loved it, especially the sealing of the tunnel at the end. 

axisus

EricTheWeary said:

Highlander 

iPlayer 

Big favourite of MrsTheWeary but I don't have the same emotional attachment to it. Sort of brilliant, sort of very silly. It's certainly of its time. 

Saw it on release and it was brilliant. Saw it many years later and it hadn’t aged so well. Saw it again a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. It has reached cult status so is generally thought well of again now. I’m really looking forward to the remake with Cavill, although I think it would be better suited to a tv series

EricTheWeary

axisus said:

EricTheWeary said:

Highlander 

iPlayer 

Big favourite of MrsTheWeary but I don't have the same emotional attachment to it. Sort of brilliant, sort of very silly. It's certainly of its time. 

Saw it on release and it was brilliant. Saw it many years later and it hadn’t aged so well. Saw it again a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. It has reached cult status so is generally thought well of again now. I’m really looking forward to the remake with Cavill, although I think it would be better suited to a tv series

It has quite a complex world and leaps about quite a bit without much explanation so I could imagine it expanded and explained in a TV series. 

axisus

Volcano. I wanted a film that wasn't too taxing on the brain as I was about to embark on t'interweb faffery on the iPad at the same time. I like a good disaster movie - my fave being Dante's Peak, which I have seen many times. Another cool one - Stallone's Daylight.

Well, Volcano was not a good disaster movie, it was daft and rather poor. It would have been a disaster (ho ho!) of a movie if not for the ever excellent Tommy Lee Jones, who is an absolute go-to actor for this sort of film. The female lead was the comely Anne Heche, an attractive woman who sadly had a strange death in real life, having three consecutive driving accidents, hitting a garage, a car, and then a house. She did not survive the third one.

I got less and less interested in the film as I became more engrossed in a simple game of tile removing, but did look up to see the incredibly silly closing segment where [Spoiler alert!] They are blowing up skyscrapers (yeah, to beat lava!), and somehow Tommy LJ's teen daughter has got herself mixed up in the danger zone whilst rescuing a toddler. Good old Tommy is in the scene, and for some reason running away from multiple skyscrapers that are crashing down. He shouts his daughter's name, she is standing like a lemon shielding the kid from certain death but somehow Tommy saves them by .... rugby tackling her to the ground!?! If that was all it took to survive that moment then surely she could have lied down and saved herself possible sporting injuries. 

Anyway, a naff film. 5/10

Stratavarious

^^^ you reminded me how decent a flick ‘Dante’s Peak’ was.

Might watch it again soon. 

Stratavarious

2010.. the 2001 sequel..

Weak follow up to a sci-fi masterpiece.  OK enough action and fx and nice to see/hear Hal. 

6/10

Stratavarious

Risking IT! The Terror From Beyond Space (1959)… the inspiration for ‘Alien’.

rze99

The Woman in Cabin 10
Netflix thriller

A worthy human rights Journo played by pouty Keira Knightly is strangely invited onto a luxury yacht by a billionaire and his dying wife to cover its inaugural voyage and throw an intimate charity party. 

Things turn strange and creepy (it says here) when Keira is a woken by muffled arguing and a passenger that she later finds doesn't exist seems to be thrown overboard. Her ex boyfriend and photographer investigate, but she meets blank looks and dead ends and, clearly, they are "all in on it" as they gradually declare her a bit bonkers.

Bit of a switch yer brain off glam thriller with too many stars and cliches to be any good., and it's a bit silly.

6/10