What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Last movie was Batman VS Superman. First time I ever saw it, I wrote it off as just a conglomerate mess of too much story and not enough time to tell it. Watching it now, I've warmed up to it, but it still definitely has its problems. Characters and their motivations are clearer now, such as Diana/Wonder Woman, and exactly why Batman has turned so cruel. I still feel like the movie has a lot of problems, though.

Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor (Jr, I guess?) was a terrible miscast. Eisenberg is clearly out of his element here, and although he plays a wonderfully psychotic dweeb, this is basically everything that Lex Luthor, criminal mastermind, is not. Batman's utter apathy for human life seems to go against everything I understand about his character. Angsty Superman, again, not what Superman is meant to be. The film's drab color scheme and desaturated color timing only adds to the feeling of despair, and felt like Warner Bros was trying to make this more of a Batman movie than a Batman+Superman+Wonder Woman movie. I think the only good that came from this is that we got more colorful and interesting costumes and color timing in the subsequent sequels such as Wonder Woman and the recent Aquaman, both of which are actually quite entertaining and genuinely fun movies unlike Batman VS Superman.

As far as the aforementioned pacing problems, this movie is way over packed. With this movie, I felt like Warner Bros tried to run before they could crawl, introducing us to several new key characters all while trying to pull off multiple plot lines. They wanted to introduce us to the Justice League to bring us that movie as quickly as possible, and thus brought in Wonder Woman, who ends up being superfluous for all reasons except to introduce the Justice League. The Batman VS Superman plot that should have been the main focus of the movie instead feels like it gets brushed aside in the final act for the fight with Doomsday, which could have and should have been a movie all on its own. The Death of Superman itself was another comic book arc that could have and should have been its own movie. In the end, we just get this mess of a film that fell apart like like a soggy cardboard box left out in the snow on December 26th.

rocketeer said:

The Boat that Rocked...

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Here in the U.S. this movie was released under the title "Pirate Radio". I can't argue your point that it might be too long, but I like it a lot so I don't mind. Goofy fun with a great soundtrack.

Doctor Strange said:

Solo: A Star Wars Story on Netflix...As Han, Alden Ehrenreich is good - there are times when he really nails Harrison Ford's expressions and line delivery - but he looks to be about a foot shorter than Ford...

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Ehrenreich is reported to be a little over 5'9" tall, compared to Ford's reported height of 6'1". I haven't seen the movie yet, but when I saw the trailers I did think Ehrenreich looked rather short.

Thank you for letting us...okay, me...know it's on Netflix. I didn't make the effort to see it when it was in theaters because of the mostly unfavorable reviews, and by the time I decided to give it a chance it was gone. No one else seemed to like it, so I probably will.

Last night my wife and I watched the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy on the Sundance channel simply because there wasn't anything better on. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she watched the trilogy; I watched most of it. If you like mindless car chase movies Smokey and the Bandit is worth seeing, but this franchise is an example of the law of diminishing returns. Smokey and the Bandit II pales by comparison and seems to be nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the popularity and success of the first movie, and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 is nearly unwatchable. I've never been able get through it, and last night was no exception so I chose to take the opportunity to catch up on some sleep.

I agree with your assessment of Smokey and the Bandit. I was the age of their target audience when the movies came out and I did enjoy the first one. The second was kind of a stinker and I walked out of volume 3.
I saw most of the first one again a while back and from this time and distance from 1979 I don't care if it is a long time before I see it again.

Solo. What a fun film! Not quite up to the caliber of all the other Star Wars films, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Baby Driver. I'd seen it in the theatre last year, we saw it having PVR'd it. One we need to get on blu-ray!

Wild at Heart. David Lynch before he descended into catastrophic surrealism and narcissism. I like this film. Stylish, haunting, camp without being arch. Solid performances and striking visuals you remember long afterwards.

WAtched Black PLague on Prime recently - one of those also-rans that have sprung up in the wake of Game of Thrones (it even stars Lena Hadley). Entertaining enough, if ultimately forgettable. Watch the Indy films when the Beeb showed them over Christmas, one a day over four days, and I stand by my original analysis: Raiders is the best, followed closely by Crusade. They never disappoint. Temple always surprises me by being significantly better than I somehow remember it to be, and I still like Crystal Skull (to my mind, whining about a spaceship in that while totally swallowing everything in the other films is a bit like a Bowie fan claiming to love Labyrinth while seething about the awfulness of the Laughing Gnome).

belfastboy said:

We attempted a viewing as we are fans of Tom Hardy BUT have a dislike of Leonardo as an actor. Watched 15 minutes of it and Leonardo won out and we switched it off. The opening scene we found not credible.....experienced voyageurs trapping in Native territory would likely not have been caught out as they were by the attack.

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I like both actors, but the film didn't do it for me. Entertaining enough as a one-of watch, some lovely scenery, but ultimately nowhere near the milestone the buzz would have had it (as is almost inevitably the case with 90% of what gets talked up for or goes on to win Oscars).

HanauMan said:

I'm still catching up on the Christmas taped movie backlog.

I watched two RomComs from the early 2000s; Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Love Actually (2003). Renee Zellweger is always fun to watch as Bridget and I have always enjoyed the impossibly cool actors Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, who feature in both films. Just flim-flam movies, I know, but great feel good fun for dark and cold winter evening viewings.

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Zellweger was an excellent choice for Bridget and created the character well, though for me so much of the humour in the original was down to the medium that it never fully worked on screen.

Love Actually is quite possibly the single worst film in the history of cinema. I'd actually rather sit through whatever George Lucas rubbish than see that again.

belfastboy said:

My wife joined an Ulster Accordian Marching Band. She was close to retirement age and was welcomed with open arms because even at her advanced age she lowered the average age of the band. The second season heralded the dawn of a terrible decision....they abandoned the marching aspect and had a "float" built on the deck of a truck. The Ulster Marching Band became a non marching, marching band. It was either that or disband as most of them struggled to walk. They still played a mean accordion though.

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If only all such Marching bands had that level of decorum....

Doctor Strange said:

Solo: A Star Wars Story on Netflix.

Ersatz Star Wars flick with some exciting moments, but its invented backstory for Han Solo doesn't really add much that we especially needed to know. There's some fun in seeing how Han met Chewbacca and Lando, and how he got his hands on the Millennium Falcon. There are some details that explain where some of the expertise he displays in the set-later films comes from (he'd been an Imperial pilot and infantry soldier and thus knows Imperial military procedures; his father had worked at the Corellian shipyards where Falcon-class ships were built and Han became intimately familiar with every aspect of them). Less successful are his exploits with a childhood girlfriend turned criminal operative (Emilia Clarke, minus Khaleesi's blonde wig), and a gang of thieves led by Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton that plays like outtakes from Firefly. (There's even a spaceship-run train robbery!)

As Han, Alden Ehrenreich is good - there are times when he really nails Harrison Ford's expressions and line delivery - but he looks to be about a foot shorter than Ford.

It's a typically professional Lucasfilm production, but was this trip really necessary? (Audiences thought not: this is the first-ever SW film to have "underperformed" at the box office.) Anyway, it's enjoyable enough in a Star Wars-lite way if you keep your expectations low.

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Of all the Star Wars spin offs, this is the one I found the most self-indulgent. An unnecessary story, starring an actor wholly lacking in charisma, a love interest wholly lacking in chemistry, and nothing truly resembling or foreshadowing the character we know from the 'original' films. The story would have been better served by sticking a pin in a list of fanfic and churning out a screenplay based on that. Harrleson is great, and the guy who plays Lando totally steals the scene. But it's a poor film indeed where the only good bits are the bit-players rather than the star. It's a shame; I wanted to like it, but it was just awful. Not quite on the level of 'two hours of my life stolen' like Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, but if I ever see it again it'll be too soon. After enjoying Force Awakens well enough, and really liking Rogue One and Last Jedi (finally - a Luke Skywalker with some depth and interest!), Solo's main effect was as a forcible reminder why I have classified myself as an ex-Star Wars fan since 1999. I have since gathered that the jarring nature of Han at the conclusion being a wholly different character than we see in Star Wars (NOT "A new Hope". There is no such film. It's proper name is simply Star Wars, and all else is George Lucas nonsensical revisionism with which I will have no truck) is because it was meant to be the beginning of a trilogy of Solo films, now highly unlikely to be made. Another bullet dodged is that I had long believed that if it had been a roaring success, Disney would have boxed the same guy in to play Harrison Ford in a new run of Indy films (there's no way the Mouse spent big on that property without intending to redux it). Glad that won't happen with this guy. He'd be awful.

In terms of the "underperformance", the incel fanboy element who couldn't accept Daisy Ridley or John Boyega, and who objected to Luke being made interesting in The Last Jedi have been claiming a 'victory' in their supposed 'boycott' of the film as some sort of revenge strike over Last Jedi. I hope Disney treat that with the contempt it deserves - while I have no wish to see more of Ehrenreich in anything, I would be disappointed if Disney gave up on the interesting things they've been doing with the continuing story and in stead just churned out whatever half-baked nonsense they thought the fanbase wanted.

MisterCairo said:

Baby Driver. I'd seen it in the theatre last year, we saw it having PVR'd it. One we need to get on blu-ray!

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Still not caught it, one of the films I meant to see but missed in the cinema. Need to watch out for it on the streaming.

"Hang em high"

Just last week before I got rid of netflix.

Sent from my LG-M210 using Tapatalk

Edward, I'm with you on nearly everything, except that I think Ehrenreich is a good actor (have you seen him in the Coens' Hail Caesar! ?), and really, anyone who'd be playing young Han is stuck in a terrible, nigh-impossible position. And like you, I will NEVER call the original Star Wars that revisionist bushwa Episode IV: A New Hope. I recall all too well when it was single film that Fox had no faith in, not a grand saga that's the de facto modern mythology of most folks a few years younger than me.

Baby Driver is yet another one of those recent films that have been praised to the sky... but when I saw it, I found it just a typical dumb action movie, admittedly done with a lot of style. Too much, actually, it's another case of style over substance. As the regulars here know, that approach never works for me.

I watched a strange and disturbing recent flick last night, Wakefield, with Bryan Cranston.

It's based on an E.L. Doctorow short story of the same title… itself based on a much older Nathanial Hawthorne story of the same title (but I had never heard of or read either of them). He plays a hotshot NYC lawyer who lives in the burbs – in the opening titles, he moves through Grand Central and takes a Metro-North train home – in a very nice house with his wife (Jennifer Garner) and two pre-teen daughters. Anyway, he goes kind of nuts and doesn’t go home: he goes up to the attic over their separate garage and observes what happens in the house through the windows. The next day, he goes into the house when nobody’s there to shower and get some stuff… but quickly realizes he can’t do this if he wants to stay hidden, and ends up going out at night and jumping in a pond/lake to bathe, and dumpster diving for food along with his friends the raccoons and homeless folks.

Rather unbelievably, nobody finds him, not even the cops when his wife files a missing person report. Months go by, he grows a big-ass beard, has close calls with being discovered, and debates revealing himself. Will his wife and kids be happy or furious? That question is left open at the end. Anyway, the film has a lot to say about routine, responsibility, appearances, modern life in the burbs, how one defines oneself, and such: is this guy just nuts, or is there something to be gained by dropping out of the rat race and just existing? Interesting story, and a bit depressing.

Alice Adams 1935 staring Katherine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray

Katherine Hepburn, in the title role, plays a young woman from a middle-class background (it's the Depression, they have a nice house and her father and brother have jobs - not bad) who wants to socialize with her small town's upperclass that sees her as not-quite-one-of-them. That's it, that's the plot and that's the problem - it's hard to feel bad for her, "oh poor Alice, she can't go to the dance at the country club because her father doesn't make enough money -" come on, people are on relief.

And equally bad, her mother blames her father for not making enough money to elevate Alice's status and, almost as bad, he accepts this blame versus telling his well-intentioned-but-misguided daughter and shrew wife to get a grip and be thankful for what they have. Throw in a gambling, stupid son and you'd understand if this put-upon, nice-guy father up and left the whole lot of them.

Also, we are supposed to swallow that strikingly pretty Hepburn can't get a date to social events as if young, upper-class men won't date supper-attractive middle class girls - please. But if you stay with the plot and just when all hope seems lost, the "catch" of the social scene - rich, handsome, polished Fred MacMurray - sets his sights on Hepburn who is thrilled to death even though he's, informally, one of her friend's boyfriend (as noted, Alice is no heroine). Also not reflecting well on Alice, she insultingly is embarrassed in front of her new beau by her family and its station.

With that setup, the plot goes into a dour version of screwball comedy as a meet-the-young-suitor dinner at Alice's home, where Alice and mom try to put on the dog, is befell by one we-are-not-rich revealing contretemps after another. There's also a morally ambiguous subplot about the father either being disloyal to his kind employer or the employer having not followed through on an old promise to the father - it's poorly handled and nothing but a distraction.

In the end, other than MacMurray not caring about all the social stuff twisting everyone else into knots, no one comes off looking good and you don't really care if it works out for Hepburn and her family or not. That said, it's an okay movie as the acting is top notch and the bumpy story moves along; it's just hard to get engaged in a story held together by a silly plot with characters that you wouldn't want to spend time with.

Conversely, I watched 1932's The Rich are Always With Us again, which I've written about before, so I'll only add this - it's an outstanding movie about the upper class in the Depression as it accepts that these people have money and still have problems. Fair enough - we all know that's true and within that construct, the movie has smart pre-code dialogue, first-rate acting and believable conflicts that all speeds by in seventy-one tightly-directed minutes.

I finally watched Solo: A Star Wars Story last night. I liked it well enough, but really can't say I liked it much more or less than any of the other Star Wars movies made since Disney took over the franchise. I thought Alden Ehrenreich did a decent job as Han Solo--he captured just enough of Solo's "swagger" without doing an outright impersonation of Harrison Ford. But I do agree with Edward about the lack of chemistry between Ehrenreich and Emilia Clarke as Qi'ra; believable as long-time friends, but not for the "love interest" aspect presented in the story. And I think Joonas Suotamo has finally made Chewbacca his own because I didn't once find myself thinking "That's not Peter Mayhew." Otherwise, we're introduced to yet another group of new characters that aren't particularly interesting, villains that don't seem to pose much of a threat, and a story we've seen in any number of previous movies.

Doctor Strange said:

Edward, I'm with you on nearly everything, except that I think Ehrenreich is a good actor (have you seen him in the Coens' Hail Caesar! ?), and really, anyone who'd be playing young Han is stuck in a terrible, nigh-impossible position...

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I'm not sure I'd point to Hail, Caesar! as proof that Ehrenreich can act because in that movie he's playing a character that can't act. So he's either good at pretending he can't act, or he actually can't. I've only seen him in that and Solo, so I'm not qualified to determine which is true. But I do agree that any actor taking over the role of a beloved character previously performed by a beloved and respected actor is in an extremely difficult position. I'm not sure I'd care to see Ehrenreich play Han Solo again or see him play Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. if Disney chooses to go down that road, but at this point I wouldn't be dismissive either.

Forty minutes into You Can't Take It With You and it is very, very clear that it's a thinly veiled parable for socialism versus capitalism and the system of capitalism isn't being looked upon favorably.

Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur have fantastic chemistry.

That's the Robert Riskin script for you -- Riskin, who escaped blacklisting by the skin of his teeth, was the voice of social conscience in most of the early Capra films. Despite his importance to the "Capra Legend," when Riskin was sick and dying in 1955, Capra was conspicuously absent from the groups of friends and collaborators who came to his bedside to pay respects, and refused to attend his funeral.

LizzieMaine said:

That's the Robert Riskin script for you -- Riskin, who escaped blacklisting by the skin of his teeth, was the voice of social conscience in most of the early Capra films. Despite his importance to the "Capra Legend," when Riskin was sick and dying in 1955, Capra was conspicuously absent from the groups of friends and collaborators who came to his bedside to pay respects, and refused to attend his funeral.

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Again, only 40 minutes in (I saw it a long time ago too), but it's not very subtle in its sympathies. I image this one came up at the HUAC hearings.

While RIskin wasn't one of the Hollywood Ten, and so far as anybody knows he never carried a card, he probably would have ended up before the political inquisitors if he hadn't been completely incapacitated by a stroke in 1950. There are those who feel that Capra was only put on the hot seat because they couldn't get at Riskin. Capra himself seemed to be one of these -- although the Capra film that got J. Edgar Hoover in a froth more than any other was "It's A Wonderful Life," and Riskin had nothing to do with that.

Riskin and Capara dissolved their partnership and their friendship after "Meet John Doe," not so much over its political content as over Riskin getting sick of Capra hogging all the credit for the success of their films. At one point he threw a ream of blank paper in Capra's face and yelled "Let's see your Capra Touch on that!"

The original Kaufman-Hart stage version of "Wonderful Life" tends a bit left, but Riskin really did ramp that up in the movie. The whole subplot about Kirby the Banker buying up all the houses on the block is pure Riskin -- it's not in the play at all. The bit about Ed printing up Communist tracts and sticking them in the candy boxes is, however, part of the Kaufman original.

Z for Zachariah - 2015 post-apocalyptic story where three people who miraculously escaped dying struggle to set themselves up as the new Adam and Eve, plus one... which of course doesn't work out. Though based on an allegedly "original" 70s novel, it's a virtual remake of The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959), right down to characters surviving by being deep down in mines, and the sexual and racial identity of the three survivors: Margot Robbie (Inger Stevens), Chris Pine (Mel Ferrar), and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Harry Belafonte). Of course, the story plays out somewhat differently now than it did in 1959.

It was okay, but the 1959 film is a lot gutsier, and all three performances in this one are underplayed and underwhelming. Margot Robbie has her charisma/gorgeousness so tamped down that I thought she was a different actress!

Doctor Strange said:

Edward, I'm with you on nearly everything, except that I think Ehrenreich is a good actor (have you seen him in the Coens' Hail Caesar! ?), and really, anyone who'd be playing young Han is stuck in a terrible, nigh-impossible position.

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I'ts always going to be difficult to replace an established actor in a role - for every Bogart Sam Spade, you'll get a dozen or more Lazenby Bonds (not that he was the worst - it wasn't til Craig that they found a credible replacement for Connery). It must be harder when you have to play a younger version of a specific actor. Even for all that, this guy just didn't convince me in the way that I was completely able to accept Euan Magregor as a young Alec Guinness. It may be that he's not that bad when he isn't trying to play a real person, though, and that the rumoured halt in making Solo so he could have acting lessons was just gossip, wouldn't surprise me. The lack of charisma was very real and very apparent, though. It could have been done, I'm sure: they did it perfectly for Lando.

I watched a strange and disturbing recent flick last night, Wakefield, with Bryan Cranston.

It's based on an E.L. Doctorow short story of the same title… itself based on a much older Nathanial Hawthorne story of the same title (but I had never heard of or read either of them). He plays a hotshot NYC lawyer who lives in the burbs – in the opening titles, he moves through Grand Central and takes a Metro-North train home – in a very nice house with his wife (Jennifer Garner) and two pre-teen daughters. Anyway, he goes kind of nuts and doesn’t go home: he goes up to the attic over their separate garage and observes what happens in the house through the windows. The next day, he goes into the house when nobody’s there to shower and get some stuff… but quickly realizes he can’t do this if he wants to stay hidden, and ends up going out at night and jumping in a pond/lake to bathe, and dumpster diving for food along with his friends the raccoons and homeless folks.

Rather unbelievably, nobody finds him, not even the cops when his wife files a missing person report. Months go by, he grows a big-ass beard, has close calls with being discovered, and debates revealing himself. Will his wife and kids be happy or furious? That question is left open at the end. Anyway, the film has a lot to say about routine, responsibility, appearances, modern life in the burbs, how one defines oneself, and such: is this guy just nuts, or is there something to be gained by dropping out of the rat race and just existing? Interesting story, and a bit depressing.

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Is he dead all along and hasn't realised it yet? Sounds interesting. I don't care for pretension in cinema much, but all the same I enjoy a film that leaves some things up to the viewer rather than over-exposition. I like the premise of this.

Zombie_61 said:

I'm not sure I'd point to Hail, Caesar! as proof that Ehrenreich can act because in that movie he's playing a character that can't act. So he's either good at pretending he can't act, or he actually can't. I've only seen him in that and Solo, so I'm not qualified to determine which is true. But I do agree that any actor taking over the role of a beloved character previously performed by a beloved and respected actor is in an extremely difficult position. I'm not sure I'd care to see Ehrenreich play Han Solo again or see him play Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. if Disney chooses to go down that road, but at this point I wouldn't be dismissive either.

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I'd much rather see the fella from Jurassic World in the role. Of course, a lot may depend on how they choose to do it: will they, as with Star Wars, treat the originals as cannon and dance around them, or will they simply reboot the whole thing, in which case the new guy could play Indiana Jones, not Indiana Jones via Harrison Ford. All the rumours so far indicate the latter; wouldn't surprise me if Lucas had shoe-horned in the same sort of ego-clauses to the Jones material as was supposedly done with Star Wars.

Edward - Nope, Cranston's seemingly not dead in Wakefield, just going through, um, SOMETHING.

Agreed that Ewan McGregor in the SW prequels was an outstanding choice to play young Alec Guinness (he's also pretty believable as the younger Albert Finney in Big Fish). But in a way, he's a character actor playing another character actor, whereas Harrison Ford is a lead actor with less obvious "business"... and thus trickier to replicate.

You're right that Chris Pratt actually does have some of the same self-deprecating-star qualities as Ford, but at 39 he's already too old to play a "young" Indy. His being middle-aged Indy with Ford doing framing flashbacks is a possibility... though not one I'd want to watch personally.

Alex - Re Ehrenreich, I'd seen him in a couple of other things (notably Beautiful Creatures, which is delightfully over the top and wackily entertaining in a way most of those self-important YA supernatural romance films aren't), and he's seemingly got reasonable acting chops. Sure, he's playing a bad actor in Hail Caesar!... but his timing/delivery in the "Would that it were so simple" scene alone is pure gold.

LizzieMaine said:

...The original Kaufman-Hart stage version of "Wonderful Life" tends a bit left, but Riskin really did ramp that up in the movie. The whole subplot about Kirby the Banker buying up all the houses on the block is pure Riskin -- it's not in the play at all...

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Proving that all ideas are recycled forever and in service to the same ideology, the plot of most recent episode of the TV show "God Friended Me" is about a large NYC rental apartment building where the tenants are all nice and supportive of each other and where most have lived there for generations (a stand in for a utopian commune or the neighborhood in You Can't Take it With You) that was sold to a "large corporation" (like the one in YCTIWY) that announces it is evicting everyone in 30 days to make (horrors) money by tearing it down and putting up a luxury hi-rise.

"God Friended Me" is a 2019 version of a 1970's do-gooder show like "Highway to Heaven," so it all works out as the do-gooders defeat the horrible real-estate developer. Whatever, it makes the writers, directors and producers feel good about themselves, but the really irritating thing here is how completely wrong all the real-estate facts are.

One, the pre-war rental would have been full of rent-controlled and stabilize apartments whose tenants can't be evicted. Two, even if there are some market-rate (not rent-controlled and stabilized) tenants, they couldn't be evicted until their leases ended.

I know this as I lived in a rental building bought by a large corporation who was converting the building to condos and they honored every single market-rate lease as they had to by law. And they didn't want to, but as oppose to on TV, most real estate companies do follow the law - to wit, the rent controlled and stabilized tenants from that building are all still living there twelve years later.

Also, even if there is no lease, it takes many months (even years) to evict a person in NYC. But again, whatever, it was all about creating a fantasy world with a cardboard evil capitalist and making the "good guy" socialists win. Amazing that, essentially, the same plot, in support of the same ideology, used in 1932 was reused in 2019.

Bird Box
Entertaining and interesting enough. Not great, but better than a lot of what I have paid to see in recent years.