What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Lean'n'mean]

I watched 'Das finistere Tal' (the dark vally) a few days ago, I wasn't expecting much but it gripped me from start to finish.

 

[Big J]

The English patient, but only for the clothes and props, I promise.

 

[dh66]

Veering back towards the main topic for a moment, last night I watched The Night Walker (1964). Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck, in her last theatrical movie) is having romantic dreams about a mysterious stranger (Lloyd Bochner). After her husband Howard (Hayden Rorke) is killed in a mysterious fire, Irene turns to his attorney (Robert Taylor) for help when her dreams begin to take a sinister turn. Produced and directed by the legendary William Castle, this mystery thriller is fairly restrained by comparison to Castle's other gimmick-laden movies...for the most part, anyway. The prologue by Paul Frees and musical score by Vic Mizzy help to establish an atmosphere for this movie, and I think it's one of Castle's better efforts.

I saw that as well, and agree. The creepiness factor was turned up to 11 in some of the dream sequences, and the plot twist at the end certainly made for better than average Saturday night horror fare. I think, also, that the black and white made this movie more effective, and the music....Man!! it was something else entirely. Like a cross between the Munsters and the Manson family. It really established a sense of uneasiness.

 

[Fading Fast]

The English patient, but only for the clothes and props, I promise.

And those and the sets, etc. are beautiful.

 

[AmateisGal]

Last night I watched Red. I love, love, love this movie. Seeing Helen Mirren wield a Browning M2? Yes, please!

Red 2 is equally as good. I really hope they make a third one.

 

[Touchofevil]

Dr. No

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Hundred Foot Journey" with Helen Mirren as the owner of a French one Michelin Star rated restaurant initially trying to undermine the newly opened Indian restaurant across the street being run by an immigrant Indian family trying to make a fresh start in France. This is a slick, Hollywood production that you know is manipulating your emotions with its too-beautiful-for-reality cinematography and its too-easily-resolved conflicts, but...you don't care.

It's fun escapism where the formula works. You know the cute boy and girl will get together in the end, but you enjoy watching it happen. You know the restaurant rivals will become friends, but it is still uplifting as you see their relationship transform. You watch Helen Mirren too-quickly evolve from not-nice to nice with an outsized gesture of (the symbolism isn't subtle in this movie) scrubbing off graffiti from the Indian restaurant's wall and you applaud anyway.

Nothing new, nothing deep, nothing very real, but I enjoyed it anyway. A good fun escapism movie.

 

[Fading Fast]

Dr. No

Didn't you just watch this several pages ago in this thread? Are we going to have to arrange a James Bond intervention for you?

 

[Touchofevil]

Craig is by far my first. The more I watch and re-watch the Connery Bond films, the more I come to the conclusion he wasn't playing Bond, he was playing Connery.

Also, I'm finding it harder to get past the cliches, and the cheesiness which I realize is often the result of the limited budgets and technology of the times. I had to force myself to watch the last half of Dr. No, so I can at least say I've watched it.

If they'd all been like From Russia With Love, I'd still place Connery only as high as a tie with Craig.

Tom Hardy I could see, Idris Elba as well. Jackman? Never.

The cheese and cliches, for me, are part of the appeal. Craig is a better actor, the scripts, the directing, and the acting are all better/more true to life than Connery's Bond and still I choose Connery. It is most likely the period in which his movies take place and were filmed that causes me to lean his way and that is a magic that would be difficult to achieve nowadays.

 

[Touchofevil]

Didn't you just watch this several pages ago in this thread? Are we going to have to arrange a James Bond intervention for you?

Yes, I did. And now it's Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only. Intervention? It's looking that way.

 

[skydog757]

Last night I watched Red. I love, love, love this movie. Seeing Helen Mirren wield a Browning M2? Yes, please!

Red 2 is equally as good. I really hope they make a third one.

The scene where Mirren changes from heels to combat boots (while still wearing her evening dress) in order to better fire said Browning is one of my favorites in that film.

 

[Worf]

I saw that as well, and agree. The creepiness factor was turned up to 11 in some of the dream sequences, and the plot twist at the end certainly made for better than average Saturday night horror fare. I think, also, that the black and white made this movie more effective, and the music....Man!! it was something else entirely. Like a cross between the Munsters and the Manson family. It really established a sense of uneasiness.

I saw this last night as well. I missed the opening 5 minutes or so.... I thought the film was a terrible waste of an otherwise excellent cast. I was ready to turn the whole thing off but like the ice cream at the bottom of the pint, I just HAD to finish it! I think the twists were GREAT and enjoyed it by the end. I wish they'd have shown Ms. Stanwyck trying to explain 3 dead people to the police.... one in her beauty salon and two in her house surrounded by wax figures... THAT would've been interesting. I too thought the soundtrack was awful. It sounded like a the stuff they used in Serling's "Night Gallery" only on steroids! Still we were talking about it this morning so it was definitely a better movie than I originally thought.

Worf

 

[cm289]

And? I enjoyed it although it was panned. Not nearly as good as Chinatown, but still not bad.

I agree. I liked it, but I loved Chinatown. Chinatown was just so gritty, it's in another league, IMO.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Touchofevil]

I agree. I liked it, but I loved Chinatown. Chinatown was just so gritty, it's in another league, IMO.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Despite its failings, it would have been nice to see Gittes vs. Gittes, the third installment, come to fruition.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just finished previewing "Amy," the current documentary about yet another talented young performer destroying herself with drugs and liquor. Tragic and depressing, and every college kid out there needs to be tied to a chair and forced to watch it.

 

[Denton]

I knew that I would like No Man of Her Own (1950), since I first read about it in an interview with Guy Maddin, where he was asked to name some older movies that he wished he had made. The plot is based on a Cornell Woolrich story, so it's a chain of improbable actions and even more improbable coincidences (Barbara Stanwyck's character unintentionally assumes the identity of a woman who dies next to her in a train crash, and then the heel who threw her over in the big city somehow winds up in the same small town and recognizes her and tries to blackmail her), but the flimsy contrivances work beautifully through movie magic and because Stanwyck is carrying the whole movie on her shoulders. But I don't mean to underestimate the director Mitchell Leisen, whose movies are pretty reliably great.

 

[AmateisGal]

The scene where Mirren changes from heels to combat boots (while still wearing her evening dress) in order to better fire said Browning is one of my favorites in that film.

Agreed!

 

[AmateisGal]

Yes, I did. And now it's Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only. Intervention? It's looking that way.

No intervention is needed when watching Bond! (Though to be fair, I can only watch Connery, Craig, and Dalton - can't stand Moore).

 

[Touchofevil]

No intervention is needed when watching Bond! (Though to be fair, I can only watch Connery, Craig, and Dalton - can't stand Moore).

Dalton was underrated or under appreciated or both. Moore's Bond is bad, but then so are most things from the seventies. The last Bond for the day was Goldfinger.

 

[AmateisGal]

Dalton was underrated or under appreciated or both. Moore's Bond is bad, but then so are most things from the seventies. The last Bond for the day was Goldfinger.

I totally agree about Dalton. I don't understand why people don't like him. I loved the two Bond movies he did. (Maybe we need to start a James Bond discussion thread! LOL).