Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Discussion in 'Movies, TV and Music' started by Val1, May 4, 2012.

  1. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    The Last Tycoon (2017)

    [​IMG]

    A nine episode Amazon series based upon F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, it goes beyond the scope of his partial manuscript to include themes such as women's rights within the institutional sexism of 1930s Hollywood, unionization and the murmurs of what is happening in 1930s Europe. But the center of the story still revolves around the tension between Pat Brady, the owner of the fictional Brady American pictures studio and his protege and boy wonder Monroe Star, the man who is in charge of the day to day running of the creative side.

    I really enjoyed this, but after nine episodes, I have to be honest and conclude that the writing is so-and-so and I got most of my enjoyment out of the period setting (I'm a sucker for stories set during the golden and silver ages of Hollywood) and the quality cast (Matt Bomer and Kelsey Grammer in the lead roles but also the likes of Rosemary DeWitt, Lily Collins, Jennifer Beals, Enzo Cilenti and my countryman Koen De Bouw in supporting roles) as well as the sumptuous production design. The final episode ends with enough of an opening for a second season and it appears that the showrunners are hoping they will get one. So do I.
     
  2. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

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    #6402 riverplate, Aug 20, 2017
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2017
    [​IMG]

    The REAL Last Tycoon. Now available from the Warner Archive Collection.

    Starring Robert DeNiro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasence, Peter Strauss, Ingred Boulting, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews, Theresa Russell, John Carradine, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Corey, Lew Ayers.

    Directed by Elia Kazan -- his last feature. Screenplay by Harold Pinter. Music by Maurice Jarre. Released in 1976.

    Leonard Maltin claims "the best Fitzgerald yet put on the screen." Accept no substitutes!
     
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  3. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    Thanks for the recommendation, I was aware of the film, but haven't seen it yet.
     
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  4. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)
    Dir. James Gunn

    [​IMG]

    In the aftermath of a botched job, Starlord and the rest of the Guardians come upon a man who claims to be Peter's father. The team splits up, with one half accompanying Peter and his supposed dad back the man's home planet, whilst the other half stays behind to repair their damaged ship. Whilst on the planet called Ego, Gamora starts to suspect that Peter's dad is hiding a secret. Meanwhile, the rest of the Guardians run into some familiar old faces.

    I was honestly a bit underwhelmed by this sequel. It's not that it's a bad movie. It's not even that it's devoid of charm. But it feels more contrived than the first effort. The things that made the first one work (the music, the irreverent style, Groot) now all feel more calculated somehow, as if the writers and the director knew what the audience liked and then Poochie-fied it a little bit. It's not a horrifically bad sequel that completely misses what the audience liked about the original film (e.g. the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels), but it lacks the heart of the first movie. I also feel like the first movie had a more solid structure from start to finish.
     
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  5. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)
    Dir. Sam Liu

    [​IMG]

    After Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue abduct a scientist, Batman and Nightwing track down Harley Quinn (now supposedly a reformed former criminal) in the hope that she will be able to help them track down her former BFF Ivy. Once they manage to get Harley's reluctant participation, they piece together that the villains' plot revolves around weaponizing the compound that turned Dr. Alec Holland into Swamp Thing.

    A so-and-so installment of the D.C. Animated universe. I was surprised to see Bruce Timm & co include something like a superheroine themed breastaurant after they were already accused of sexism/misogyny for their adaptation of "A Killing Joke". The tone was a bit more silly than the baseline for these films, especially those centered around Batman. The voice cast was good. Kevin Conroy is the animated Batman and even though I will always hear Arleen Sorkin's voice in my mind when I think of the character of Harley Quinn, Melissa Rauch is alright as the voice actress for Harley in this movie.
     
  6. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
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    Once upon a time this was our go-to New Years Eve movie as a family, when the girls were old enough to stay awake but not so old they wanted to go off with friends. Both were home last night with friends who had never seen it, so we sat down with an old favorite: What About Bob?

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

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    Bob taught me everything I need to know about how to make sure I don't get Tourettes Syndrome.

    [​IMG]

    Northern Exposure Seasons One and Two. I'd forgotten that the first two seasons were basically summer replacements. Some pretty good writing and some inventive, humorous non-sequitur dream sequences.
     
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  8. Belgian guy

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    I remember how this show was deemed cutting edge in its day. With what is on TV nowadays, I'm guessing any revisit would look mild and simple in comparison.
     
  9. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

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    Yup. But it's one of the network TV shows we talked about that made current shows on cable and streaming services possible.
     
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  10. StiltonFC

    StiltonFC He said to only look up -- Guster

    Mar 18, 2007
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    plus Janine Turner

    [​IMG]
     
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  11. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
    Dir. Guy Ritchie

    [​IMG]

    Vortigern successfully uses Mordred to distract and then usurp his brother Uther's throne. The one small failure on his part is the escape of Uther's young son Arthur, who ends up in Londinum where he is raised by compassionate prostitutes in a brothel. Upon reaching adulthood, happenstance leads to him pulling his father's sword from the stone and thus becoming a threat to his uncle's rule.

    I really loved Guy Ritchie's previous movie "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.". This is a huge step down, which isn't a big surprise considering it was both a box office failure and critically panned. In terms of the latter problem, I do believe the critics savaged this film more than it deserved. Sure, the writing is not great, there are plot holes you could drive a doubledecker bus through, but there are also individual scenes which work (like the growing-up montage or the fight at George's dojo) and I really like some of the supporting cast, especially Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as the unnamed mage and Aiden Gillen as Bill. I do feel like Charlie Hunnam was slightly miscast, especially compared to Eric Bana's small role as Uther (which is a more natural fit). I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anyone but it's a better film than its 28% Rottentomatoes rating suggests.
     
  12. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

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    #6412 spejic, Aug 24, 2017
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2017
    [​IMG]

    Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

    After the events of the first Mechanic movie, which neither you nor I saw, the assumed-dead Bishop is hiding out in third world paradises on the infinite money being a hit-man-with-a-conscious gets you. His nemesis Crain gets Bishop to fall in love with a girl and then kidnaps and threatens her to have Bishop kill three people. All the kills have to look like accidents, for some unexplained reason, and only Bishop can do it, for some unexplained reason. Just go with it.

    This movie reminded me a lot of 1980's action movies. They looked cheap, they weren't well directed, they had silly plots and inhumanly successful protagonists, but they still had a certain charm in thier conscious stupidity. This movie has all those traits. Its failures in moviemaking were of the kind that, for some reason, make you laugh with the film instead of at it, and that joviality carries you through a lot of silliness. I will admit the high-rise scene is tense and well done. If you just want a 90 minute break from never ending regret that you wasted your life, this movie will work fine.
     
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  13. BlueBugEddy

    BlueBugEddy New Member

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    Yup, I agree with this. I guess the first one was better.
     
  14. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    Ozark (2017)

    [​IMG]

    After his business partner is found out to have stolen money from their employer, a Mexican drug cartel for whom they had been laundering money, a financial adviser from Chicago is given one last chance to save his own life and that of his family. He is given the task to launder 8 million dollars in the Missouri Ozarks, at his own request. Besides the sword of Damocles that is the cartel's wrath and impatience, he also has to deal with a family of local heroin dealers, another family of small time crook and opportunists who each perceive him as their meal ticket and an undercover FBI agent who has followed him there in the hope of turning him into a witness against the cartel bosses.

    A Netflix original drama series that isn't the most original in the world - it basically riffs on stuff like "Breaking Bad", "Narcos", "The Sopranos", ... but is mostly entertaining nevertheless and can boast a rather terrific cast. Besides the leads (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) we also have Julia Garner (who is equally terrific here to her turn on "The Americans"), Esai Morales, Peter Mulan and Harris Yulin. There is going to be a second season and I'm not sure if they have enough meat on this story for another compelling ten episodes, but I guess we'll find out.
     
  15. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

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    #6415 spejic, Aug 26, 2017
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2017
    [​IMG]

    Night Moves (1975)

    Moseby is a bit of a romantic, running an old fashioned single-man private detective office like he's in some sort of noir movie despite his wife's desire for him to quit and work for a large modern detective firm. Fortunately he gets a case to distract him from her latest pleas - he has to find the free spirited (ahem) daughter of a former B-movie actress. And he follows the links to her location and stumbles on her related mystery but each theory just muddies the water until the very end when - what the heck was that?

    A great movie for a rudderless time. There's no sense of morality in this thing, except as a distant irrelevancy. There aren't any great passions either. Everyone is just kind of stymied, especially Moseby who does nothing in his great moments to act (meeting his father, confronting his wife's lover, during the film's climax...). These are people that had something, but lost it - usually things they didn't even know they had until it was gone. It's a subtler theme version of the plot point of Arlene Iverson not even knowing her daughter left her until weeks later. And now they are in a world where they don't really know what's going on (I mean, Moseby is really, really wrong about almost everything). And the viewer is there too - it's really hard to figure out the criminal plot. But the unease that confusion puts in your gut - that's the point.
     
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  16. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    It is my theory that besides the obvious (many) references to "The Rockford Files", Shane Black's "The Nice Guys" was his very own (action comedy) version of this 1970s neo-noir.
     
  17. Belgian guy

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    Rough Night (2017)
    Dir. Lucia Aniello

    [​IMG]

    Ten years after having been best friends in college, four women meet up in Miami to have a bachelorette party for one of them. They are joined by an Australian woman whom the bride-to-be met and befriended during a semester abroad. Over the course of the weekend, in spite of their best efforts to have a no-holds-barred party, the fact that all of them have changed a lot since college cannot be concealed. When they decide to call a stripper back to their rented beach side villa, an accident causes the man to die. Instead of calling the police to report the accident, they instead try to get rid of the body.

    So guess what, if you gender-bend "Very Bad Things" and make it more of a straight comedy, it still doesn't work. A shame, because I did like this cast and you could certainly envision this same group being in a good comedy. A waste of a lot of comedic talent, especially in the case of Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer.
     
  18. BlueBugEddy

    BlueBugEddy New Member

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    Sad to know it wasn't that good. I was planning to see it. Well, I guess I'll skip it then.
     
  19. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    37°2 le matin (1986)
    Dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix

    [​IMG]

    A tow truck driver and occasional handyman starts a sexual relationship with an unemployed waitress. This relationship soon goes beyond the purely physical into an intense, deep love affair. She finds out about his aspirations to become an author and encourages him to pursue his dream, he is intrigued, enchanted, puzzled and horrified in equal measure by her behavior, which goes from weird little quirks over wild bouts of passion all the way to blind and needless violence. After a while, he figures out that her erratic behavior is not merely part of her personality, but the symptoms of untreated mental illness.

    A French erotic drama that belongs in the list of films that also includes "Turks Fruit", "9 1/2 weeks" and "Bitter Moon", among others. The tone is rather weird and some subplots (the hold-up!) seem to belong in a different film altogether. The feature is held together by the quality performances and genuine on-screen chemistry of the two leads. Beineix' camera is not shy about objectifying Béatrice Dalle, especially in the first act. At its core, this is a film about a man who finds the love of his life but then loses her just as quickly after realizing that his love is not enough to save her from her illness. Features one of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's favorite actors, Dominique Pinon, in a small cameo role that is one of his earlier screen credits. I watched the director's cut which is over three hours long and feels a tiny bit self-indulgent, though the feature never really drags. The two hour theatrical cut probably works just as well.
     
  20. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    The Mummy (2017)
    Dir. Alex Kurtzman

    [​IMG]

    A career soldier stationed in Iraq has made a lucrative side business out of stealing artifacts and antiques and selling them on the black market, together with a fellow soldier and friend. One day, they come upon a village that is said to hold an artifact of great importance and significance when they are forced to call in an airstrike after they are attacked by insurgents. The bombing reveals the entrance to an Egyptian tomb, over 1000 kilometers further East than they expect to find one. Together with the brass, who descend upon them for the ********-up and side-venture, they are confronted by a female archeologist who had been searching for this very site. It is revealed that the tomb holds a sarcophagus belonging to a supposedly cursed Egyptian princess. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse shortly thereafter.

    This was savaged by critics and I don't know if this movie just caught me in the right mood, but I thought it wasn't half as bad as they presented it. The first act is a decent set-up for a monster movie (including all the basic ingredients like a flashback scene to the curse's origins) and the first half of the second act is still passable. The wheels do come off in the second half of the movie. I'm guessing they had half a screenplay worth of material when they started shooting and they never bothered to write a satisfying third act, let alone one which makes sense. Cruise tries to make the most of this material, Annabelle Wallis makes a lovely foil for him, Sofia Boutella is great as the monster but Russell Crowe can't quite hide that some of the lines he has to utter are ludicrous.

    This is not quite the disaster it was made out to be, it is perhaps something far more boring, depending on your perspective: a middling attempt at a monster movie.
     
  21. mwulf67

    mwulf67 Member+

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    You are lot more forgiving than I…Just watch it last night and I thought it was every bit the train wreck…

    Very bad right from the start…all I could think of was Cruise and Johnson trying to channel McConaughey and Zahn in Sahara, and failing miserably ….no chemistry, no humor, and just silly, nonsensical over the top action…I am all for suspending a little belief, especially when it comes a what is supposed to be a big summer action movie….but this was worse than every Fast and Furious combined…

    And then at some point the whole movie starts overtly and distractedly channeling Ironman…as if this “origin” movie was supposed to spawn multiple squeals and a whole universe of tie-in movies…The Dark Universe??? I guess I am not cool or hip enough to even know this is a thing….
     
  22. Belgian guy

    Belgian guy Member+

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    The problems in the second and especially third act are very much linked to their need to tie this movie to the extended universe, yes.
     
  23. Val1

    Val1 Member+

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    JAWS_Movie_poster.jpg

    Jaws

    This movie just came on Netflix, and I'd never seen it, and it was a rainy day and my soccer practice was rained out, so I gave it a whirl.

    This movie came out the summer of 1975, and I think the movie itself has aged well enough. I liked it as a suspenseful piece. I am completely surprised that this movie would have terrorized legions of beach goers, though. I have no idea how I've been affected by seeing 30 years of Shark Week, plus dozens of other monster-from-the-deep movies, but Jaws wasn't scary to me. At all. And I don't think I would have been scared as a 12 year old. I was also completely surprised by how minimalistic the Jaws theme is throughout the movie. I really wasn't aware of it.
     
  24. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

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    [​IMG]

    Take Out (2004)

    Ming Ding is an illegal immigrant delivering Chinese take-out to the citizens of New York. He needs $800 by the end of the day just to remain current with his loan shark.

    There isn't much to the movie except its absolute sense of being in life. The direction is superb - I don't think there is a wasted second The film is largely slow and repetitive, but in a way that delineates the circumference of their lives, not in any way boring to the viewer.
     
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  25. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

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    John Wick: Chapter 2 ()

    Days after the events of the first movie, Wick is able to recover (more or less) the car that was the trigger to all the events in the first film. He is about to start on that retirement when the man who made that retirement possible calls in his marker. He wants Wick to do one more job, and it's a doozy. When Wick declines, he gives Wick a housewarming present as an inducement. Dude, didn't you see the first movie? Don't rile up the Wick. It will not end well.

    The gun-fu isn't as good as the first movie, and because there was so much killing (just so much) it got very repetitive. But in a weird way I liked this movie more than the first. The previous movie had the Continental and the Assassin Guild come out of nowhere, and it felt like the movie was coming unglued from reality. This movie is always firmly in the fantasy alternate reality, where it's possible to have high-class underworld hotels public worldwide, where the grand council of world organized crime can throw Iranian gypsy punk parties for hundreds, where the New York homeless are really an organized cabal of information gatherers and killers, where everyone - everyone - is an assassin, where anything from a customized rifle to a single drink costs one gold coin, and where vital communication work is done by tattooed 1940's switchboard operators and a single Commodore 64. I just got caught up in it. Except the Commodore 64. Clearly Atari 8-bits were superior.

    I counted, and there were 49 heavily armed counter-Wick attackers in the catacombs scene (45 of whom were killed and one wounded). How did they get there - a dozen SUV's? One of those big tourist buses? Henchmen logistics always fascinate me.
     
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