What is The Last Movie You Watched?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018 )

I went to a VIP dinner in the Raffles Hotel ten or so years ago, sharing a table with three people from Singapore -two lawyers (female) and a banker (of Indian descent), an elderly Australian who made a fortune cleaning office buildings, and the beauty queen I was with who flunked out after the fish course much to my annoyance. What struck me that evening was just how dull Singapore Chinese seemed to be. You can see some svelte, well-heeled Chinese 20-somethings at Clarke Quay most nights, but my guess is that the super-rich would never go to places like that when they can buy private spaces -rather like the people in this film, which is unoriginal, and though reasonably well acted is, with a bland script, like 'Jane Austen with Chinese characteristics'.

Much as I admire Raffles, and their Singapore Sling is worth trying, next time I go I shall probably head in the opposite direction of the awful people in this film, and try those 'four floors of whores' in Orchard Towers. If we learned anything from 2020, it is that time is short, and not be wasted on dramas featuring pearl earrings, perfectly made dumplings, and a Singapore stripped of its Filipino maids, its forests of tower blocks where most people live.

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Couldn't agree more. Completely jacked Coming to America without having the decency to pay homage.

Why would anyone want to pay homage to rubbish like Coming to America? And is Prince/King Akeem a Muslim? He dresses like one, and has a Muslim name, but the trailer pans from a Mosque like building to the shot of men ringing a large bell, which is not Islamic. U know we don't need to overthink this, but then I wonder what thought went into this vehicle from the start.

havent seen the second one but the first is a classic. regardless of what your personal opinion is, its common courtesy in hollywood to pay homage to movies that you rip off.

You may be right on the homage thing, I just don't get the kind of satire Eddie Murphy went into. I think his 'breakout' role was Walter Hill's 48 Hours, and it suggested Murphy could do comedy and drama, but to me his career went, either downhill or into graveyard films. But that's because there is a vein of light American comedy that I cannot stand, it doesn't make me laugh, it has gags that were old in 1920, and over the top acting that is embarrassing to watch. The most obvious casualties are Melissa McCarthy -she cannot act, and the voice alone is an abomination, not even the divine Sandra Bullock can rescue their films; the two woeful Seths: Rogan and Macfarlane, and Adam Sandler. I know they make films a lot of people like, fine, but not for me.

Eddie Murphy lamented recently his string of bad movies. Made it sound like it wasn't entirely in his control. I suppose the scripts for some of the hits look indistinguishable from the flops so it becomes hard to tell in pre production what a movie will finally look like. I too think he possessed a talent for both comedy and drama but like the late great Robin Williams, found it hard to consistently strike the balance. You would think that such a job could be managed by their people e.g managers, production team, talent agency as it is their literal job to figure out a way to best mine the raw talent these individuals possess. But after all these years the best Hollywood can come up with as a vehicle for their talents is the light American comedy genre you mentioned.

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Originally Posted by decastro

havent seen the second one but the first is a classic. regardless of what your personal opinion is, its common courtesy in hollywood to pay homage to movies that you rip off.

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I saw it in the theater as a kid and probably a dozen times total. Every time I watch football I think about that scene where Akeem is telling Mr. McDowell about the Packers of Green Bay kicking an oblong pigskin ball through an h. Certain lines just stuck with me like, freeze you diseased rhinocerous. And most goat herders don't go around quoting Nietzsche. As a kid I remember when they were deciding whether to go to NYC or LA I was always disappointed they didn't do a west coast version just because I was from LA.

I'm not going to watch the second one because I heard it was put together haphazardly but the first one was one of the most quotable movies ever and a favorite for me.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I saw it in the theater as a kid and probably a dozen times total. Every time I watch football I think about that scene where Akeem is telling Mr. McDowell about the Packers of Green Bay kicking an oblong pigskin ball through an h. Certain lines just stuck with me like, freeze you diseased rhinocerous. And most goat herders don't go around quoting Nietzsche. As a kid I remember when they were deciding whether to go to NYC or LA I was always disappointed they didn't do a west coast version just because I was from LA.

I'm not going to watch the second one because I heard it was put together haphazardly but the first one was one of the most quotable movies ever and a favorite for me.

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Lol it was a favorite of mine as well growing up. I still bust out laughing when I watch that dude sing she's your queeeen tooo beeeeee. I'm leaning towards not seeing the 2nd either because I don't want it to ruin my memories from the first. But I guess we'll see. Boredom often dictates what I watch. More so than reason.

Before I Go to Sleep (Rowan Joffe, 2014)

If you can't sleep, this nonsense mght help, though it is more likely to bore you. It aired on Channel 4 from 1.35am to around 3, when most of the country is asleep, except in Casualty Departments. The timing may not be coincidental.

The plot, taken from a novel that apparently is more believable or believably written than the film, is shaped by amnesia but begs so many questions as each day provides one reveal after the other that by the end of the film you either don't care, or wonder if even the people in the film do. A man who declares his love for a woman every day is also violent, why is never explained. So many things are left unexplained, other than the appearance at the end of a film of a man who, unlike 'Ben' actually does look like a wife-beating thug. So who knows? And who cares?

Salo, 120 Days of Sodom. Pier Palo Pasolini. Based on the unfinished De Sade novel he sketched out in prison. Four aristocratic libertines sexually abuse innocent virginal boys and girls before murdering them.

Set in the last days of Mussolini’s Italy when the Germans rescued him and put him in charge of a doomed Northern Italy rump state.

Last 10 minutes was perhaps the most disturbing scene I have ever seen in a movie. Horrific bc it is believable such sexual atrocities could have happened at the end of World War II when the Fascists knew their time was short.

Pasolini was horribly murdered, run over several times with his own car, trying to ransom stolen footage of the movie

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)

I hated this film when it came out, and decided I did not like David Mamet either, though I did like House of Games (1987). Seeing this again has not completely flipped my view, but it is a 'tour de force' with a superb cast, and I can appreciate Mamet's craft, and also see how he influenced Tarantino, for one. The film differs from the play as he included a new scene featuring the speech the Alec Baldwin character (Blake) makes near the beginning. Rather like the films of Takashi Miike in which crime families fall apart through greed, the film is about a cohort of men, none of whom are likeable, turn on each other in an attempt to score more contracts, rather than co-operate with each other to achieve the same ends. The language is, to put it mildly, 'robust', but serves as weapons rather than the dealers choosing swords or guns. Al Pacino is particularly fine, and while this is a grim story about ruthless competition in which there are, in the end, no winners, it is a gripping film of the play to watch, and there are some alternatives on YouTube though they fail to match this version.

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I have watched that Baldwin monologue many times. Don’t know who won the Best Supporting Acting Oscar that year, bc Baldwin deserved to win hands down.

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Originally Posted by Torris

I have watched that Baldwin monologue many times. Don’t know who won the Best Supporting Acting Oscar that year, bc Baldwin deserved to win hands down.

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Must be the 60th Academy Awards in 1988, when Sean Connery won the Best Supporting Actor for The Untouchables, in the year that saw Michael Douglas get Best Actor for Wall St, Cher the Actress award for Moonstruck, and The Last Emperor the film. Mamet has only had two Oscar nominations, for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

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Originally Posted by Torris

Salo, 120 Days of Sodom. Pier Palo Pasolini. Based on the unfinished De Sade novel he sketched out in prison. Four aristocratic libertines sexually abuse innocent virginal boys and girls before murdering them.

Set in the last days of Mussolini’s Italy when the Germans rescued him and put him in charge of a doomed Northern Italy rump state.

Last 10 minutes was perhaps the most disturbing scene I have ever seen in a movie. Horrific bc it is believable such sexual atrocities could have happened at the end of World War II when the Fascists knew their time was short.

Pasolini was horribly murdered, run over several times with his own car, trying to ransom stolen footage of the movie

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I had to join a film club to see this when it was first shown in the UK as the censors would not give it a certificate for public viewing. These days it is available on DVD, an uncut version released in 2000. They used an awful lot of chocolate in that film...

"Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull"

Mulan (Nikki Caro, 2020)

Predictable and Bland, if beautifully shot, and inadvertenty perhaps a glossy advert for the Communist Party of China, founded 100 years ago on a steamy night in Shanghai in July, the day after a man was murdered in the Oriental Hotel next to the building where the first meeting was held. Spooked, the delegates shfted the next meeting to a boat on South Lake..I was disappointed because Caro diected the wonderful film Whale Rider (2002), a far superior film to Mulan. But hey, its Disney.

Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019)

A former nurse involved in a traumatic incident has become a care worker for Amanda, a flamboyant dancer and choreographer now bedridden and dying from cancer. It may be that Maud is seeking some form of redemption by caring for others, but from the outset it is clear she is no ordinary care worker. She converses with Almighty God. Indeed, at one point, shortly after 'Nancy' (the name given in the credits to a cockroach) slips under the dresser on which Maud stores her religious paraphernia, Almighty God speaks to her -in Welsh, so its just as well the actor playing the role is herself Welsh. There are dramatic moments, moments when identities and behaviour are challenged, and a climax that some reviewers have hated, but utimately this to me is a film about a lonely person who cares for others but has noone to care for her. It is an impressive first feature from Rose Glass but I can see why some people might find it uninteresting. It has echoes, in some parts of John Huston's Wise Blood (1979) and a levitation reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975). There are also some clever re-workings of William Blake's ecstatic images, from a book given to Maud by Amanda.

Assassin's Creed (Justin Kurzel, 2016)

The Australian director Kurzel created a fascinating visual landscape for his version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, but the two of them in this video-game-movie must have wondered why they were there and what they were doing. I was confused for most of the film, which aired on Channel 4 last night, as I had never thought of the Knight's Templar as a body dedicated to world domination, though they were a militant branch of the Catholic Church before being disbanded in 1314, and there is a successor organization claiming the occasional title of 'Knight's Templar' but formally the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem which has NGO and Special Consultative status with the UN. To complicate it further, there was also a group in history known as the 'Assasins', though Bernard Lewis in his study suggests they were at one time called 'Hashashin' as they got doped up on weed between murder gigs in Persia and Syria between the 11th and 13th centuries. If you are also confused by this, do watch the film, if only to see the climax filmed in the headquarters of the Freemasons in London where the Apple that Eve plucked from the tree is reveaed to be both inedible, and magical, which is not what God had in mind -or was it?

Confusion all round, with startling visuals, and computing power that is probably -one hopes- impossible.

Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971)
Shaft (Tim Story, 2019)

The 1971 film is a model of bad acting, a bad script, and shoddy camera work, it bears a visual resemblance to the New York also seen in its contemporary The French Connection, but the comparison ends there. The re-make with Samuel J Jackson and Richard Roundtree has a better script and is obviousy better filmed, but retaiins the predictable and by now done-to-death story of turf wars among drug dealers and organized crime. The third generation Shaft is a weak actor whose outsize role in the film renders it an also-ran in terms of durability. I think someone has been shafted with this film -the audience.

The Mule (Clint Eastwood, 2018 )

IMDB estimates the budget for this film at $50m, most of which must have gone on the salaries for the cast, as I doubt Eastwood spent much on the script. Ordinary Americans, 'badass' Mexicans, drugs, lovely ladies in underwear who don't mind a threesome with an 80-something when someone else is paying - so there may be hope for those of us closer to 80 than 20. It may be a true story, but this is a 'chamber work' that is filming by numbers, with the Polka band the highlight. In the end, it's more ass than mule.

Dark Encounter (Carl Strathie, 2019)

The mystery of the abduction of an 8-year old girl is solved by Close Encouners of the Third Kind, with obliging aliens who have seen and admired Interstellar. The script is as poor as the acting, but when it's late and there is nothing else to do, it fills a gap where sleep does not. And it was broadcast on terrestrial tv.

Self/Less (Tarsem Singh, 2015)

Senseless might be a better title for this rubbish.

The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright, 2021)

My advice: mind your own business. Draw the curtains, get laid, read a book, write a book, go for a walk, feed the cat. Or watch Hitchcock’s superior version, or a film with the same name directed by Fritz Lang in 1944. But for a woman of 60, Julianne Moore looks good in tight jeans. Saw it via friend’s Netflix account so it cost me nothing.

The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock 1963

The Judge (David Dobkin, 2014)

Father. Son. Conflict. Resolution. Justice.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright, 2021)

My advice: mind your own business. Draw the curtains, get laid, read a book, write a book, go for a walk, feed the cat. Or watch Hitchcock’s superior version, or a film with the same name directed by Fritz Lang in 1944. But for a woman of 60, Julianne Moore looks good in tight jeans. Saw it via friend’s Netflix account so it cost me nothing.

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The author of the book this was based on is a fabulist of amazing proportions. There's a New Yorker article on it and he basically became a literary agent through carefully concocted autobiographical lies and then cobbled together a book based on every well worn trope of the suspense/psychological thriller genre. The value of the movie took a major hit when this was revealed. On that basis I have trouble motivating myself to watch it.

I am happy with myself that I read his book on a recommendation and I'm pretty sure I recognized it as crap before he was exposed as a charlatan.

Edit: It's an incredibly long read and I know it involves an author so it could be in the book thread, but anyhow everyone I recommended this article do found it amusing and kind of scary. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-deceptions

Thanks Broncofan, for sparing me the ordeal of the book of the film...

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Originally Posted by broncofan

The author of the book this was based on is a fabulist of amazing proportions. There's a New Yorker article on it and he basically became a literary agent through carefully concocted autobiographical lies and then cobbled together a book based on every well worn trope of the suspense/psychological thriller genre. The value of the movie took a major hit when this was revealed. On that basis I have trouble motivating myself to watch it.

I am happy with myself that I read his book on a recommendation and I'm pretty sure I recognized it as crap before he was exposed as a charlatan.

Edit: It's an incredibly long read and I know it involves an author so it could be in the book thread, but anyhow everyone I recommended this article do found it amusing and kind of scary. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-deceptions

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Wow! Interesting article

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Originally Posted by Stavros

The Mule (Clint Eastwood, 2018 )

IMDB estimates the budget for this film at $50m, most of which must have gone on the salaries for the cast, as I doubt Eastwood spent much on the script. Ordinary Americans, 'badass' Mexicans, drugs, lovely ladies in underwear who don't mind a threesome with an 80-something when someone else is paying - so there may be hope for those of us closer to 80 than 20. It may be a true story, but this is a 'chamber work' that is filming by numbers, with the Polka band the highlight. In the end, it's more ass than mule.

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Hey Stavros ,I love your kick ass little reviews! However I'm in such dire straits to find something to watch recently that I think I'll try "The Mule" because I'm an Eastwood fan and I'm closer to 80 than 20,LOL.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Hey Stavros ,I love your kick ass little reviews! However I'm in such dire straits to find something to watch recently that I think I'll try "The Mule" because I'm an Eastwood fan and I'm closer to 80 than 20,LOL.

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Oh God! That was awful ,what a slog, I couldn't even finish watching it.
Makes me wonder how and why usually dependable actors and directors get involved in projects like this!?

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Oh God! That was awful ,what a slog, I couldn't even finish watching it.
Makes me wonder how and why usually dependable actors and directors get involved in projects like this!?

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I hope it didn't cost much to see it!

Ryan's Daughter (David Lean, 1970)

I had never seen this before. It is one of Lean's most beautiful films, as his painter's eye relishes the landscape of the Dingle peninsula in Kerry, South-West Ireland. A frankly rather boring love story is set against the tensions created by the Easter Rising, and a shipment of arms -presumably to the Irish Republican Broherhood. A local girl -Rosy, daughter of Ryan, owner of the local pub- seeks excitement and sexual liberation with a shell-shocked British officer. A German suppy of weapons, rescued during a terrific storm sequence (actually filmed outside Cape Town because there were no effective storms in Dingle) is intercepted the next day following a tip-off. Rosy 'comes a cropper' and with her husband, a passive, almost poetic Robert Mitchum (who did not get on well with tyrant Lean and became famous for his exploration of booze, broads and pot) leave for Dublin.

It is a tepid film, but the photography is superb, but strictly for lovers of Lean.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...%29_poster.jpg

Not a "movie" but the latest season(season 10) of "Death in Paradise". Streaming on Amazon. I'm a fan.

The House at the End of the Street (Mark Tonderai, 2012)

Even with a plot twist, Jennifer Lawrence cannot save this film, burdened as it is with tired tropes -the 'house of horror' and its neighbour surrounded by a 'dark forest'; the nubile young girls who have problematic relations with their single moms; the sexual frustrations of 'college kids' -who seem immune to the enticements of dope- and the various references to Hitchcock as if we were supposed to be impressed. The only amazing thing about this, is that I didn't fall asleep while watching it.

:banana:

Official Secrets (Gavin Hood, 2019)

Based on a true story the film is well-made, well-acted, but lacking any surprises comes across as a cross-between a documentary and a drama. That Tony Blair after the war stated in a powerful documentary on Iraq "I took the view that we needed to remake the Middle East", exposes what a liar he was when justifying it as something different. The film is thus both accurate and out of date.

Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963).

I had not seen the whole of this film before, and learning that someone is threatening to release the 6-hour 'Director's cut' would cause concern, but I really don't care. Daryl F. Zanuck butchered this film n release, but whichever version you see it cannot pump any interest into the tediously long first half when Julius Caesar pretends to love Cleopatra and she him. The equally tedious second half has Richard Burton in a succession of mini-skirts seducing or being seduced by Hollywood's most effective screaming queen, Elizabeth Taylor, with the most memorable exchange being the first meeting when Tony arrives in a fetching mini-skirt -
"I find what you're wearing most becoming," Cleopatra purrs. "Greek, isn't it?" He replies: "I have a fondness for almost all Greek things."

Not sure what else to say, hours of my life wasted on a film with no dramatic depth, no visual intelligence, just show, just a bit too Hollywood. Music intrusive, loud and ugly. That said, the film is surprisingly perhaps, historically accurate except for the make-up and costumes which won awards; the entry of Cleopatra into Rome is spectacular indeed, but as someone remarked, it could as well have been Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas as Rome. Some of the acting is beyond hope, not just Taylor and Burton, but Roddy McDowall as Octavian. He might as well have been in yet another episode of Colombo.

:dancing:

The Negotiator (Brad Anderson, 2018 )

I bought this along with Cleopatra and David Lean's Oliver Twist as a £10 deal, and it's not a bad film. Based mosty in Beirut prior to Israel's invasion in 1982, the plot hinges on the kidnap of an American who is traded for money by an old 'Beirut hand' (the American) and a rogue Palestinian outfit -hence the assistance at the end of the PLO (more properly Arafat's Fateh). Although a fair amount is historically accurate, and the woe that is Beirut seems well done, the film never takes off, as the acting is, I think, too low key. The film is too intelligent for its own good, and probably needed some Hollywood crash bang, wallop to help it, as wood on its own just makes tables and chairs, and paper. Recommended if you have nothing better to do.

Free Guy, just today I loved it.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Oh God! That was awful ,what a slog, I couldn't even finish watching it.
Makes me wonder how and why usually dependable actors and directors get involved in projects like this!?

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If you didn't like The Mule, I can't recommend another film of an old man robbing banks, apparently also based on a true story.

The Old Man and the Gun (David Lowery, 2018 ) has been showing on UK tv more than once, and is a tedious succession of polite exchanges between Robert Redford and some unfortunate bank teller or manager, with the inevitable gun somewhere in his grasp. The film has the charm of cat shit on the carpet, as the memory of its 'banter' with horse-loving Sissy Spacek lingers unwanted, for at least 24 hours. That said, Ms Spacek - who made some genuinely memorable films in the 1980s- looks to be in better condition than Mr Redford- maybe we should all take up horse riding as we get older. Got to be safer and healthier than robbing banks.