What was the last film you watched?

[Willie Oleson]

HAPPINESS (1998)



I had previously seen some clips on youtube but the full film has never been accessible online to me.
So, yet again, I had to fix it with a DVD purchase, but if I had seen the film online I may have done that anyway.

Brutal, cringe and laugh-out-loud funny, but always with (enough) sympathy for the characters.
Total commitment from the entire cast, and I didn't remember that Lara Flynn Boyle had such a sexy voice.
Some parts look like an updated version of Mike Leigh's brilliant Bleak Moments and I'd say this film is the better "American Beauty".
From the sadistically funny and somewhat poignant opening scene to the sadistically funny and very poignant final scene between father son - and everything in between is also great.


TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985)



By William Friedkin, sooo....

The story itself is nothing special, something you can get from an average TV cop show, but that shouldn't prevent it from being a great cinematic experience.
It's just that everything in this film is boring: the casting, the wooden performances, the banal dialogue spoken in a monotone voice by all the actors, the scenery, and let's not forget the horrible soundtrack which is like the worst the eighties had to offer.

There's a feeble and laughable attempt at philosophy when the D-list actress mentions "the stars are God's eyes", she mentions it twice just in case we missed it the first time.
It's a line that comes out of nowhere and also isn't going anywhere. We're not in David Lynch Land, that's for sure.
The physical fights are adequate and the story becomes slightly more exciting in the final act, or maybe it was the joyful prospect that the film was about to end soon.

The painful display of lameness and non-artistry didn't annoy me - no, it frightened me.
I also find it quite scary that a lot of people consider this film a masterpiece.
IMDB lists it as conspiracy thriller, some reviewers call it a neo-noir. Personally, I didn't see any of that in this story.
Lastly, if you manage to make an actor like Willem Dafoe look bland then you know something went teddibly wrong.

A smiley-face rating for the nudity. It wasn't much but it was there.

My suggestion: watch REPO MAN instead.

 

[James from London]

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.

Weirdly, I once met Kim Cattrall off of Sex and the City and confidently told her how great she was in To Live and Die in LA. "I wasn't in To Live and Die in LA," she replied. "Yes, you were," I said. "No, I wasn't," she insisted gently.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I get the second-hand impression that it didn't matter to her if she was in the film or not, as long as no one would bring it up. Ever.

And so you decided to make that your opening line. Talk about bravery!

 

[James from London]

And so you decided to make that your opening line. Talk about bravery!

Generally speaking, I find actors tend to respond well if you can compliment them on something they've done that's not very well-remembered, but not if the reason it's not well-remembered is because they weren't actually it in the first place. (That said, I genuinely did think Kim Cattrall was very good in 2L&DILA, even though it was someone else entirely, and she was very gracious about the whole thing.)

 

[Willie Oleson]

Generally speaking, I find actors tend to respond well if you can compliment them on something they've done that's not very well-remembered

I think that's understandable and besides, there's something awkwardly cliché about complimenting an artist on his/her "signature" song, as it were.
Unless, of course, there isn't much work to choose from.

But if I'm thinking ahead and consider the idea that many people think the way I do (??) then it's possible that they also have avoided that signature song compliment, and therefore it may sound surprisingly re-honest and re-fresh to compliment the artist on that very best-remembered thing.

Not that every move needs to be carefully plotted or anything.

That said, I genuinely did think Kim Cattrall was very good in 2L&DILA, even though it was someone else

Well I did mention "D-list actress" but I wouldn't say that it was her performance that brought the film down. There's also nothing unexpectedly good about it (imo) and that's very much what this film needed.
A crazy thing about the main character is that he constantly jumps over objects, even when he doesn't need to, as if he were training for the Olympics or drank too much Red Bull.

TLADinLA is supposed to be sort of a renegade/vigilante cop avenging the death of his last-day-on-duty partner.
That partner hopes to catch and arrest a bunch of crooks but it's going to be a solo operation because "this is on me, I need to do it by myself" because hm-hm something.
Apart from being utterly stupid (one man against a group) I don't think it would be allowed to operate that way unless it's a matter of improvisation that cannot be avoided.
To be fair, a story is a story and if it needs to happen this way then so be it.
Predictable spoiler: he's outnumbered by the crooks with guns and he gets shot and DIES!
Oh my god, how could this have happened - how? How?

The criminal antagonists don't do drugs, they counterfeit money. OK, it was the mid-eighties after all but there's hardly anything sinister about it.
I think this film is completely devoid of darkness and atmosphere to the extent that even an Angelo Badalamenti score couldn't save it. But that still was no excuse to give us the worst soundtrack/score instead.

Everything about this film is almost fascinatingly sucky.
It's the kind of film that one pretends not to have watched so any comments thereupon can be safely avoided in case someone should have the nitwitsy ignorance to bring it up in conversation.
Kim Cattrall (oh it's double "t", never noticed that before) survived and apparently didn't even lose face, and as of today she has massively risen in my esteem. Which, incidentally, would be a great opening line.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Identity (2003)

It's a nice feeling to start watching a film with low-key hopes, having them met immediately, then discovering there's a whole lot more to the film that I couldn't have envisaged from the description. And that's exactly what happened here.

While the poster is familiar enough that I'm sure I was aware of the film (though admittedly it does look almost generically like any number of other horror/thriller posters of the era... not least the glossy House On Haunted Hill remake). Still, I knew nothing about it at the time. The Prime image and description helpfully showed me that John Cusack and Ray Liotta are present and correct, which was good enough.

Ahead of watching I'd somehow picked up that the premise was "inspired by Agatha Christie's 1939 whodunnit And Then There Were None" (to give it its post-1985, politically correct title). This lowered any expectations considerably since the idea of an American horror trying to out Christie Christie is borderline offensive. Fortunately, this film is smart enough to take its own direction (I almost wrote "its own identity") without an air of pretence. It does get meta about its inspiration, however, in a scene where someone explicitly references "that old movie where ten people are trapped on an island", and uses that story to propel this one forwards. One of the producers of the original Scream trilogy is involved here, so perhaps this self awareness isn't surprising.

And Then They Were None (with elements of Scream postmodernism) isn't the film's only inspiration, I think. It has to be said that showing all the characters arriving at the location where they were to be stranded reminded me a little of Clue (even if Identity's cleverness was showing even at this point, though, with events leading up to their arrival shown in a non-time-linear way but with slick crossovers between them). And the motel setting is always going to bring Psycho to mind. Are motels still a thing in the States? I tend to think of them as belonging to a certain era, but that too could be Psycho influencing me.

The film certainly looks very slick and glossy. Right out of the gate, the atmosphere is one of the "it was a dark and stormy night" variety, with thunder, lightning and biblical rain. Subtle this isn't but I had no objections because I have a particular fondness for this atmosphere in any medium of fiction. Also adding to the ambience is Alan Silvestri's evocative score, which I'll probably seek out.

The cast is fairly top-notch. John Cusack alone would have made it compelling. As seen in this very thread, I'm a fairly recent convert to his talent and I'm slowly discovering his body of work. I've yet to watch him in a role where he isn't brilliant. Ray Liotta does his Ray Liotta thing, which is predictable but adds plenty of intensity. It was a lovely surprise to see Alfred Molina as I've chanced upon (or in some cases sought out) a number of his projects recently. He, too, is as reliable as ever. Rebecca DeMornay is also present as a pampered and narcissistic actress. Less impressive but somehow reassuringly familiar is Jake Busey playing a convicted murderer, as he does in pretty much everything (most familiar to me is The Frighteners, a film of which I'm very fond).

Within half an hour, I had a gut feeling about the identity of the killer, in which I stayed resolute even after it seemed they'd been ruled out. This meant that when the reveal came and it was who I thought it was, I had the rare satisfaction of saying (out loud) "I knew it!".

What I hadn't expected, though, was the rug being pulled out from under before that point with a certain reveal that I could never have seen coming, and that changed everything. Usually, I would feel a little cheated by this, but it was so effective and so brilliantly played that I was completely invested. What's more, it dovetails perfectly with a similar reveal in a film I've watched very recently (I now view the other film as slightly less brilliant because it came a good number of years after Identity).

I would hope this film may hold up well to a second or third viewing, with the knowledge of what's really going on. And I'd certainly be up for giving it another spin.​

 

[Claude Dallas]

Yesterday i watched The Naked Gun (2025) It's not that bad but Liam Neeson is not Leslie Nielsen. There's a very short appereance by Priscilla Presley (very very short)

 

[Willie Oleson]

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR (2016)



This was a surprisingly unpleasant film, and I don't mean unpleasant as in "video nasty" or because it's badly made, it's just a very unfriendly film.
I don't know how old the young men are supposed to be, but as a rule in film: if they look young they are teenagers.
They're making a video project to prove a theory that intentional outside interference can change the way people think. Does that need to be proven at all, I wonder, but anyway it's all going to be very sensational and their video will get a million likes and they'll become youtube celebrities.

It's clear that one of the boys is the leader and the other one follows, which could have been a story of itself.
Their "lab rat" is a anti-social and grumpy old neighboUr and the story from the boy's point of view suggests that he has something to hide. In other words, the old man is a bad person and you'll probably think that everything will unfold as you have seen before.
They break into his house and cram the place with cameras and special effects equipment in order to orchestrate a "haunted house", and all this stuff is manipulated and recorded from the boy's bedroom.

The motivation for the project changes after a while, especially when they're not getting the sensational stuff they were hoping for.
Cue the obligatory American Gothic basement with a big fat lock on the door. Ah, that must be it.
Tragedy strikes and, to be fair, in a rather unexpected way.
The courtroom scene explains in flashback style who the real person behind the grumpy old man was.
I'm not a big fan of this "telling" cinema. It's good enough for a MATLOCK episode but here it feels a bit tacked on. Furthermore, it's completely unrelated to the teenage boys.
I guess the final scene conveys the principle of "there's no such thing as bad publicity" but overall it's too lukewarm for my taste.

Unpleasant and somewhat unsatisfying, but it has plenty of effective red herrings.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Right out of the gate, the atmosphere is one of the "it was a dark and stormy night" variety

I love that, it feels so cosy and there's the confusion of all the characters walking in and out of their rooms.

I'm also reminded of the first episode of the fan-tas-tic TV series THE AFFAIR in which the female protagonist describes the big event to a police officer "I remember it was a dark and stormy night".
I think the interviewer asks something like "exactly when was that?" and then she replies without a whiff of comedy "oh no, I just made that up, please don't write it down".
I was SOLD, and it only got better and better and it never stopped being great (except for the season 3 ghost character for the sake of self-reflection, they also did it in Damages, Dexter and most recently The Boys. Even if these episodes are well made it usually looks like a lot of filler once the character is revealed as a therapy-ghost).

What I hadn't expected, though, was the rug being pulled out from under before that point with a certain reveal that I could never have seen coming

I had mixed feelings about it. It's very well done but at the same time it felt like they "stole" my story and then "recast" John Cusack on top of that.
I think it's great that the finale returns to the original story but I didn't feel much connection with the real criminal.
Perhaps it's one of those twists that you have to accept wholeheartedly otherwise it doesn't work.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

This was a surprisingly unpleasant film, and I don't mean unpleasant as in "video nasty" or because it's badly made, it's just a very unfriendly film.

When I watched last year, I summarised its players this way:

characters who are frequently brash and unlikeable making bad choices.

It's clear that one of the boys is the leader and the other one follows, which could have been a story of itself.

And this reminded me of the two killers in Rope:

the Hitchcock parallels are many. The one that leapt out at me was the conspiratorial relationship between the two leads echoing that in Rope, with one being more timid and sympathetic while the other is shown as overconfident and willing to go much further (the latter element is explored and explained more here than in Rope, though isn't necessarily any better for doing so).

Cue the obligatory American Gothic basement with a big fat lock on the door. Ah, that must be it.

And the secret in the cellar - because I was looking everywhere for Hitchcockian elements - put me in mind of Psycho.

Unpleasant and somewhat unsatisfying, but it has plenty of effective red herrings.

I think the red herrings got me as well. I summarised the film this way:

It's a decent enough little film - especially, as mentioned, with expectations kept low - and has enough turns to keep the viewer invested. The suspense was also very well done: my heart was racing during a couple of scenes.

I had mixed feelings about it. It's very well done but at the same time it felt like they "stole" my story and then "recast" John Cusack on top of that.

I can understand this. Of course, feeling cheated is probably deliberate to put the audience on the same page as the character, who was also invested in the other story.

 

[Willie Oleson]

And this reminded me of the two killers in Rope:

Gosh, indeed. My mind was somewhere but had not reached that point yet.

I commented on Identity some years ago, thinking Netflix was giving me something completely new, and how late-90s it looked and the actors hadn't aged at all.

As if it wasn't confusing enough.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I commented on Identity some years ago, thinking Netflix was giving me something completely new, and how late-90s it looked and the actors hadn't aged at all.

As if it wasn't confusing enough.

A couple of years ago, Prime got me the same way with what I thought was a new Jodie Foster film that turned out to be an old Jodie Foster film.

This came up in my Prime suggestions, with a contemporary-looking image (the top half of the one above) and was listed as being made in 2022. Excited at the thought of watching a new Jodie Foster film, I dived straight in and spent ten or fifteen minutes marvelling at how authentically vintage it looked (my partner and I actually discussed what cinematographers might have done to make it look less sharp and the use of coloured filters, etc. Then a very youthful Jodie Foster appeared on screen and the penny finally dropped that "2022" was a listing error.

 

[Sapphire]

I recently watched Snowbound, starring Neil Patrick Harris. A young married couple and their baby son are traveling in the snow to see their family and attend a funeral, but they get stuck in the middle of nowhere and have to fight for survival against freezing weather and hunger.
It's a true story with a happy ending and the kind of film I can watch again.

 

[Willie Oleson]

PAPERHOUSE (1988)



I had been aware of this film for quite some time but somehow it dropped off of the to-watch-list. I have no idea how it came back to the forefront let alone why I bought the DVD, but you know how it goes with the internet: via via via via.
The film's fantastical production design takes centre stage and the story moves it along sufficiently to its feature-length presentation, including some very dark moments.
As it happens in many stories and films told from a child's point of view, the parents or any character with enough authority to un-do the story are the antagonists.
The mischievous grandparent as the partner in crime could definitely be considered a trope, but that character is not in this film.

The score is beautiful and essential to the feel of the story, even if it goes a little bit over the top here and there.
The world of schoolgirl Anna (Charlotte Burke, who joins the club of one-off child actors) is devoid of pop culture but everything else looks very eighties.
Ben Cross as Anna's father looks particularly attractive, his tanned skin made me think he had just walked off the set of The Far Pavilions (the mini-series that brown-faced Amy Irving into an Indian princess).
The father's bogeyman alter ego - the result of Anna's passive-aggressive resentment - reminded me of Mirrormask (2005), an equally stylish film with magical drawings and a parent representing an evil entity in the fantasy world.
Gemma Jones is the only other Paperhouse actor whom I had seen in other roles (I correctly guessed it was an Adam Dalgliesh story but she was also in Ken Russell's The Devils).

Overall, the film fulfilled all my expectations and that can be just as good as a pleasant surprise.

 

[Willie Oleson]

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)



I can easily binge-watch an X number of TV episodes or a complete mini-series, but when it comes to lengthy films (usually the so-called epics) then I always feel a bit intimidated. It's not the "oh, let's check this out" kind of film, you need to sit down and make the commitment.
Undoubtedly, this has been the main reason to safely dismiss it as a "probably not for me" film. See how I dodged that bullet, so smart and foreseeing.

However, this is 2025 and I'm going to say NO to the NO's because it is possible that I've missed out on something great.
I ordered the DVD and when I opened the package it turned out to be a 4-disc boxset edition. Dammit, intimidated all over again.
I was a little tempted to shelve it but then I remembered the promise I made when I promised myself to watch it.

The first part is all about big scenery and cultural showcase and it's all fantastic to look at but at the same time it looked like a history lesson without much character drama.
The addition of Peter O'Toole's character made it look more personal but despite the film's lenghty running time there were lots of unnatural cuts that looked like deliberate editing. I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what it was, to prevent the film from becoming a 5 hour saga.
Either way, I struggled to connect with the characters and it was only the wonderful cinematography and handsome cast that encouraged me to watch the film in one sitting.
The story really comes to life when Emperor Pu Yi goes into exile, the problems with his wives and of course the Japanese scheme. About that, it seems to me that the only reason they were successful is because the political climate in China was a shambles.
From this point on I actually felt the story was a little too short and I could have easily watched an additional hour of those goings-on.
The riches-to-rags story ends in a very elegant way and it's also here where the pomp and circumstance of the film's first part began to resonate.
Maybe you think it's cheesy but I really wanted one vocal flashback when gardener Pu Yi enters the castle of the Forbidden City. I would have liked to hear the voice of the grand dowager empress asking again "Are you afraid?".

Dialogue is all in English language and I guess that helped to make it more accessible (if only for the filmmaker himself) but also an eetsie-peetsie teeny-weeny lowbrow Hollywood.
I'm glad I've watched it and I enjoyed it more with each passing hour (ha) but it's not quite the masterpiece I thought it would be.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)

View attachment 57070

I can easily binge-watch an X number of TV episodes or a complete mini-series, but when it comes to lengthy films (usually the so-called epics) then I always feel a bit intimidated. It's not the "oh, let's check this out" kind of film, you need to sit down and make the commitment.
Undoubtedly, this has been the main reason to safely dismiss it as a "probably not for me" film. See how I dodged that bullet, so smart and foreseeing.

However, this is 2025 and I'm going to say NO to the NO's because it is possible that I've missed out on something great.
I ordered the DVD and when I opened the package it turned out to be a 4-disc boxset edition. Dammit, intimidated all over again.
I was a little tempted to shelve it but then I remembered the promise I made when I promised myself to watch it.

The first part is all about big scenery and cultural showcase and it's all fantastic to look at but at the same time it looked like a history lesson without much character drama.
The addition of Peter O'Toole's character made it look more personal but despite the film's lenghty running time there were lots of unnatural cuts that looked like deliberate editing. I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what it was, to prevent the film from becoming a 5 hour saga.
Either way, I struggled to connect with the characters and it was only the wonderful cinematography and handsome cast that encouraged me to watch the film in one sitting.
The story really comes to life when Emperor Pu Yi goes into exile, the problems with his wives and of course the Japanese scheme. About that, it seems to me that the only reason they were successful is because the political climate in China was a shambles.
From this point on I actually felt the story was a little too short and I could have easily watched an additional hour of those goings-on.
The riches-to-rags story ends in a very elegant way and it's also here where the pomp and circumstance of the film's first part began to resonate.
Maybe you think it's cheesy but I really wanted one vocal flashback when gardener Pu Yi enters the castle of the Forbidden City. I would have liked to hear the voice of the grand dowager empress asking again "Are you afraid?".

Dialogue is all in English language and I guess that helped to make it more accessible (if only for the filmmaker himself) but also an eetsie-peetsie teeny-weeny lowbrow Hollywood.
I'm glad I've watched it and I enjoyed it more with each passing hour (ha) but it's not quite the masterpiece I thought it would be.

I liked theatrical cut better than the director's cut.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I liked theatrical cut better than the director's cut.

And what is what on what disc? (the print on the DVD cover is unreadable).

 

[Willie Oleson]

And another thing, the prestigious Criterion hi-def restored releases are not always the best versions.
The film looks just a little better than Standard Definition and the colours are washed out, which is unforgiveable for a film like this.

 

[Sea - Boo! - Er]

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)
For years I've read about how Richard Lester ruined the Superman franchise, but based on this just don't see it.
It's interesting seeing the restored Marlon Brando footage and some other variations but a lot of it is identical, presumably being the Donner footage that was left in the original release, plus I believe some Lester footage that couldn't be replaced. Maybe it's just because I'm used to it but I can't help feeling that wherever there are changes, Lester has improved it.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

when it comes to lengthy films (usually the so-called epics) then I always feel a bit intimidated. It's not the "oh, let's check this out" kind of film, you need to sit down and make the commitment.

I can relate. With films I invariably want to give it my full attention by watching it mindfully (i.e. doing nothing else but giving the film my full attention, without distractions such as eating food, pottering about, looking at a phone or computer screen, ironing or any other "multitasking"). This really adds to the time pressure. As I've got older I also can't do late evening viewings without getting sleepy, so to watch a film of The Last Emperor length I'd probably have to begin watching no later than 6pm, which is very limiting .

For years I've read about how Richard Lester ruined the Superman franchise, but based on this just don't see it.

Maybe it's just because I'm used to it but I can't help feeling that wherever there are changes, Lester has improved it.

Like you, I've grown up watching the Lester Cut, so I don't come down too harshly on it. When I was young and less discerning, this film was up there with the original for me.

I feel Lester's ill-fitting quirk is tempered a little in his Superman II by fitting around the other material. And it has the advantage of being fully realised rather than than patched together many years later which means the Donner Cut we can watch today isn't always as polished or "finished" as Lester's (such as the rough screen test footage of Lois firing a gun at Clark which appears in the Donner Cut).

There is the odd scene of Lester's that I feel is an improvement. Lois jumping out of The Daily Planet window is a little too extreme, compared with her dive into the waters of Niagara Falls which plays better.

Overall, though I feel Donner's vision of the film was better, and there are a number of films that just make more sense . An example of this is the Kryptonian criminals being released by the blast set off by Luthor in the first film, which is a nice touch of continuity and makes things feel more expansive (I do feel the Eiffel Tower sequence is some of Lester's best work in the film, so I'm glad we have that too, but it's a shame it comes at the expense of the flow between the first film and this one).

Watching as an adult, there are just some Lester moments that I find distracting because of the forced "quirky" tone. The taxi running into Clark and ending up dented is one. Or that man continuing to take his call after the phone box is blown onto its side by the Kryptonians. The worst offender for me is Clark tripping over the rug, which gives away his identity. Clark's bumbling awkwardness is an act, and not even the allusion to his fall happening because he deep down "wanted" it to happen doesn't hold water. Clark should be above such Freudian errors. It's literally in his superhero name.

As far as Lester ruining the franchise.. he may not have done it here, but the seeds were sown. And then he was given free comic rein on Superman III.

a lot of it is identical, presumably being the Donner footage that was left in the original release

I believe Gene Hackman didn't shoot anything with Lester, so all of Lex's shots would be Donner.