What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[Stavros]

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

Around halfway through this film the police chief says to K 'We are all looking for something real'.
Her name is Joshi; K when he is given a male name is Joe, and his virtual girlfriend is called Joi, I am not sure if this is coincidental or just another aspect of the lame script that lets this film down. Joe K (not in any way related to Kafka's Joseph K, surely not) is part of the Wallace generation of androids (and in no way related to the Wallace Collection in London, surely not) and spends most of the film in a kind of Odyssey though an assumption we are led to belief around half-way turns out to be a clever plot twist and the last image in this film does have an oddly touching effect. For the most this is a fabulous production, with outstanding photography and editing but cannot elevate a trivial study of family love (there is a glimpse at one point of Michelangelo's painting, The Holy Family) into something deep and meaningful though it tries very hard.

In his review of the film in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, who I assume saw the same film as me, wrote of a scene in which [K] is brought down over a gigantic rubbish dump in San Diego by a low-tech harpoon gun is one of the most exciting action-movie scenes imaginable -a remark I would find extraordinary if I thought Bradshaw was good at his job, but he isn't and the scene is not that awe-inspiring.

Seeing this so soon after the massacre in Las Vegas gave the film an added and welcome addition of nostalgia. The problem is that films about our dystopian future ask more questions than they answer, but as the film is set in 2049 I was inclined to ponder the long-term impact of the politics of 2017 and ask 'we were really that bad at government?' -but when you listen to what Colt .45 says about North Korea, you wonder if Blade Runner 2049 is fiction or documentary. The film can also be seen in 3D and is wrapped in heavyweight 'sound-music' to divert you from the thin script and wooden acting.

[Stavros]

Miss Sloane (John Madden, 2016)

Is it possible to make a film about the political lobby in Washington DC that is interesting, dramatic, funny, informative -something, anything to retain the attention of the audience? On the basis of this film, the answer is no. I would go as far as to say this is one of the worst films I have seen in recent years. There is nothing to recommend and I honestly wish I had never laid eyes on this garbage and wasted over an hour of my life on it.

[bryanferryfan2]

Scooby Doo

[hamdasl]

Some Like It Hot.
But because it was on an airplane, they cut out the pseudo-lesbian scene with Marilyn and Tony Curtis.

[Stavros]

Some Like It Hot.
But because it was on an airplane, they cut out the pseudo-lesbian scene with Marilyn and Tony Curtis.

Doesn't matter where you see it, the film is an embarrassment, it is barely worth a concrete slab in a graveyard.

[Stavros]

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)

Some people think films that satirize dictators are tasteless, but it may be a powerful way of stripping them of their legitimacy. Iannucci succeeds with Stalin because he has a sparkling script and an ensemble of brilliant actors who convey both the pitfalls of loyalty to a dead man and his party, and their own naked ambition. Put together in 2014 so long before President Obama was replaced with a foul-mouthed con-man, the film speaks to us because it suggests that for the remnants of Stalin's politburo politics was as much a vanity project as it was about hard political choices facing the USSR at the time. The German sociologist Max Weber developed a theory of the 'charismatic' leader as one example of political rule, but these days we have two examples of a vanity project gone badly wrong -the ten year catastrophe that fell upon Italy when Silvio Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister, and the unfolding mess in the USA where another billionaire businessman thinks he can reform the political system.
To some extent, Nikita Khrushchev (another priceless performance from Steve Buscemi) did reform the USSR, but reforms that did not guarantee his own survival, and the film does tend to underline the callous attitude to life, and the paranoia that circulated at the time, and these days may have returned with so many people afraid that public criticism of Putin will result in them covered in a blanket on the sidewalk, very dead. Although there are many factual errors in the film, it conveys well the paranoia of the times, expertly presented at the beginning of the film, and in a cameo of effervescent delight by Andrea Riseborough as Stalin's daughter.
Highly recommended.

[youngblood61]

WonderWomen. It was pretty good too.

[slave2u]

maze runner: scorch trails - not all that good, but to be fair not really aimed at me,

[MDinMD]

Into The Wild.

I read the book years ago and liked it; the movie was very, very good. The cinematography alone was worth the two-and-a-half-hour length.

[BatMasterson]

Darling. A horror film on one of the streaming services presently.