What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[steviedresses]

Cocaine Bear! Loved it!

[Stavros]

Proxima (Alice Winocour, 2019)

This film (aired on Film 4 last night) about a French astronaut and her daughter in advance of mum going to the International Space Station, is a sensitive chamber work that loses its way at the end with a scene so preposterous it almost destroys the film. The credits celebrate women who have gone to space who also had children at the time, and that's about it. Matt Dillon sleepwalks through a role of the 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt' astronaut, but the child does a great job.

[Stavros]

Mr Jones (Agnieszka Holland, 2019)

Welshman Gareth Jones once worked for ex-PM David Lloyd-Jones in the 1930s and was one of the first people to report on the famine in the Ukraine (the other was English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge whose reports in the Manchester Guardian were anonymous at the time). The true story claims New York Times journalist Walter Duranty gave some help to Jones when he was in Moscow but denied Jones stories about the famine were true. Though thrown out of the country, Jones made his way to Mongolia where it is alleged he was abducted and murdered by the KGB. The film is at times quite disturbing, with a fine performance from James Norton, whose reputation has only been rising since his roles in Happy Valley, War and Peace, and a drama revolving around Russian oligarchs called McMafia, also based in part on a true story. Not sure why George Orwell makes an appearance while writing Animal Farm which happened around 10 years after the events in the film. Nevertheless, recommended.

[Nikka]

next month going to see the whale

[Mirgofino]

'Hellbender' from 2021. A fine horror movie.

[rodinuk]

I watched it too and fully agree about the ludicrous antics in that scene. In mitigation it is a film about space which is not sci-fi, mostly about European space efforts and showing real world facilities for a change. It did add value but was really a character study, not every film about space requires a battle or an accident to be entertaining...

Proxima (Alice Winocour, 2019)

This film (aired on Film 4 last night) about a French astronaut and her daughter in advance of mum going to the International Space Station, is a sensitive chamber work that loses its way at the end with a scene so preposterous it almost destroys the film. The credits celebrate women who have gone to space who also had children at the time, and that's about it. Matt Dillon sleepwalks through a role of the 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt' astronaut, but the child does a great job.

[Stavros]

I watched it too and fully agree about the ludicrous antics in that scene. In mitigation it is a film about space which is not sci-fi, mostly about European space efforts and showing real world facilities for a change. It did add value but was really a character study, not every film about space requires a battle or an accident to be entertaining...

All fair points, with which I agree. I get the impression 'sci-fi' is a genre you like, so I would appreciate some recommendations of films mostly those I have probably not seen or heard of.

[Stavros]

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola 1972)
The Godfather II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

I watched the first two Godfather films when they were screened on Channel 4 last week, though I have them on DVD and have seen them multiple times. They contain some of the finest moments in film, but also have flaws. The primary flaw in both is with the abysmal 'acting' of the two lead women, Diane Keaton and Talia Shire. The women in the Godfather films are weak to the point of being almost irrelevant, while the moment in Sicily when Michael's first wife disrobes on their wedding night is gratuitous nudity, I doubt it would be done today.

In the second Godfather, the Senator from Nevada does play an important role in establishing links between the Mafia and elected members of Congress, but the scene in which he is discovered with a dead prostitute is completely unnecessary.

A few peccadilloes to make the point that Coppola achieved something special in both films which he never repeated, but which remain problematic at times. One could also question the historical basis of the early years, the absence of the links between the Italian gangs, and the Irish and Jewish gangs though Hyman Roth does provide some angle on this in II. There is no sense of how the Mafia captured the docks and transport as a key part of their 'business', and the Mafia was involved in drugs from an early stage in the 1920s contrary to the scepticism of Don Corleone.

But some of the visuals are superb, and the opening wedding scene of Godfather 1 must be as close to cinema perfection as one can get.

[HbgDon]

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

[Ben]

John Wick.
I enjoyed it... albeit there's a lot of bloodshed. But entertaining.
Kind of like a grittier version of James Bond, I guess.
I liked the female antagonist in the film played by Adrianne Palicki.