What was the last film you watched?

[Seaviewer]

Jim falls for Diane and a romance begins

I don't see it that way. The romance is between Herbie and Diane's car. Jim and Diane are like the squabbling in-laws. And Jim has a certain sadness about him which could be interpreted as being in mourning for Carol.
And, jumping ahead, he meets a new wife in the short-lived TV series -still without acknowledging the first one.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The romance is between Herbie and Diane's car. Jim and Diane are like the squabbling in-laws.

I wouldn't have thought of this, but I really like this way of looking at it. It's far better than the film my initial interpretation gave me.

And Jim has a certain sadness about him which could be interpreted as being in mourning for Carol.

Interesting. Again, I kind of wish I'd read this before watching as it would have added some new layers.

 

[Angela Channing]

There's a Disney made for TV remake of The Love Bug which I hope to watch one day to see how it compares with the original. Dean Jones reprises his role as Jim Douglas but he isn't the lead in the film.

 

[DallasFanForever]

Top Gun: Maverick

Just saw this actually and I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn’t put it near the 1986 original but I have to say they did a great job with this. There were a lot of winks and nods to the original film but it also had a fresh modern feel to it.

 

[darkshadows38]

uncharted (2022) it as a pretty decent movie i bought it on Monday i think it was? i watched it with my dad the following day and he liked it and i thought it was decent.

now if you love the games and anyone who is a gamer on here who's got a PS4 or a PS5 or they are all all both consoles to play since you can play your PS4 games on the PS5. anyways there are certain scenes in it where it looked like they were taken from the 4th game even some of the storyline as well such as Nate being at an i think Orphanage and his brother Sam when they were kids goes there and visits him and they in the game break into an old lady's house who ends up having known their parents. she calls the cops not knowing who they were and they had to run like hell so not to get caught, that's not in the game they do get busted in the film.
than you have the end of the film where you see a shot of a ship and it looks like it was taken from the game! some things were changed and that's fine but i'd say about 90% of it is from the game. the rest they changed and that's not a big deal to me at least not this time around i'd say 7/10

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Candleshoe (1977)

I have faint memories of very happy times watching this over the Christmas holidays as a kid and I looked forward to revisiting it. I wasn't sure about watching it during the summer as I remember it being a gothic, wintry film, but actually it's pretty neutral in terms of seasonal tone so it was fine (it's based on a book called Christmas At Candleshoe, which I suppose may not work as well in June).

It's edgier than I remember it being, a lot of that coming from Jodie Foster whose character Casey is well and truly established in the opening titles as a delinquent, as shown by she and her friends giving cheek to people, stealing, spilling oil drums across a garage workshop, sabotaging sports games, knocking stuff over and generally wreaking havoc. If it were anyone else she'd be unlikeable, but it's Jodie Foster. Something that occurred to me in this film is how much she resembles early Eighties Michael J. Fox (well, techically I suppose he resembles her), right down to the voice, looks and mannerisms. They could be one and the same with a different haircut. She's as terrific here as always, and balances the light and dark perfectly. There's a sequence at the beginning of the film where she's wrenched from her foster parents (money is thrown their way) by a sinister-looking man who accompanies her on a silent car journey to a hotel where she's taken to a room and ordered to bath, before another man appears to inspect her, still wearing a towel. It feels so sinister and creepy it's almost a relief when the worst thing that happens is him giving her a slap in the face for talking back. It's to 15 year old Foster's credit that Casey feels so switched on and streetwise that she holds her own and quickly turns the tables by setting up her own demands. All the same, I can't imagine this sequence playing today.

The rest of the cast is great. Leo McKern gives a great turn as a greedy, crooked Artful Dodger type. The ever-reliable David Niven plays the butler Priory who also has to dress up as the gardener and chauffeur to convince Lady Gwendolyne they're solvent when in fact he's had to let them go (he also dresses up as an upper crust neighbour to help maintain the appearance that she's still viewed as a social equal). And of course there's Helen Hayes in her final film, playing Lady Gwendolyne. She's just wonderful and one really feels a sense of history with her, as well as the thrill of believing she's found her long-lost granddaughter.

The chemistry is great all round - even the other kids are endearing enough - and there are some winning scenes, particularly as Foster's outlook changes from someone out to con this wealthy woman to someone who feels she's found a family and wants to help. And in between she's torn, since she still has Bundage on her case. Helen Hayes gives a terrific performance with lovely scenes between she and Foster. Possibly my favourite scene in the entire film is a small moment between Hayes and Niven, where Lady Gwendolyne quietly admits to Priory that she's knew it was him pretending to be various other characters and appreciates it. "We've been playing games with time, you and I", she reflects. Just lovely.

Being made in 1977 it's quite the period piece now, of course. It probably was when I first watched it in the Eighties. But the writing and performances are timeless.

 

[Angela Channing]

The Outfit (2022)

Mark Rylance plays Leonard, an English tailor (or cutter, as he prefers to describe himself) who has relocated to Chicago where he own his own shop. His main customers seem to be gangsters and one night, a group of mobsters come to his shop with suspicious package and briefcase. As the night progresses, one of the mobsters gets shot and Leonard becomes embroiled in the chaos and must outwit the mobsters.

All of the action takes place in the same location, the front and back rooms of the shop, so it has the feel of a play at times and I did wonder if it was adapted from a stage play but Wikipedia suggests it was originally written for the big screen. It's a good thriller with lots of twists in the storyline and not everything is as it first appears.

 

[Angela Channing]

Fresh (2022)

What initially attracted me to watch this film was that it stars Daisy Edgar-Jones who I loved in the TV series Normal People so I was interested to see her in something else. In this film she plays Noa, an American who is not having much luck with online dating when she meets Steve in a supermarket and he chats her up. Before long they go on a date and shortly afterwards he suggests they go away together for a weekend. They drive over to his place for the night before their trip and drugs her wine and when she wakes she finds herself chained to the floor. It turns out Steve has been kidnapping young women to cannibalise their flesh and to sell it to others who also enjoy eating human meet. So the film which starts off feeling like a bit of a romantic drama ends up as a thriller/horror. It's not a bad little film.

 

[Seaviewer]

There's a Disney made for TV remake of The Love Bug which I hope to watch one day to see how it compares with the original. Dean Jones reprises his role as Jim Douglas but he isn't the lead in the film.

I've seen that. Jim appears only briefly and does mention "my wife" without naming her. The TV series may or may not be in continuity so it's not clear which wife he means.
The film tries to tread a line between being a remake and a sequel. Bruce Campbell stars as Herbie's new owner; the plot is the same but somehow the previous film also happened.
Mild spoiler:

Spoiler

="When Herbie wins, he splits from front to back instead of side to side. Either way, can he be truly said to have crossed the finish line until all of him has crossed?]

 

[Angela Channing]

Deep Water (2022)

I'll cut to the chase, I hated this film. It's hard to fully describe the plot because it's confusing and I'm trying to erase this dross from my memory.

Vic (played by Ben Affleck) is married to Melinda (Ana de Armas) and appears to tolerate her affairs with a succession of young men and until the lovers are found dead. All the characters in this film aren't particularly likeable so I didn't really care what happened to them and I thought the story was slow and ponderous.

This film was meant to be a thriller but it had very few thrills. The mystery is whether or not Vic is the killer of his wife's lovers but this is revealed mid way through the film and the film became a case of whether the killer would be found out and brought to justice. The only part of the film that I really like was the scene in the middle of the closing credits in which their young daughter sings along to Leo Sayer's You Make Me Feel Like Dancing while strapped in a seat belt in the back of a car driving down the street.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The French Connection (1971)

This has been on my bucket list for a while now. I knew very little about it other than it's widely respected and stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider.

It's a wonderfully made film, and it looks absolutely stunning, with a gritty tone that I suspect documents the era and the locations in which it's set very well. As I watched, I marvelled at details like the litter covering the New York streets. Something about the film felt a little like a proto Cagney & Lacey, which didn't hurt how I viewed it.

While I usually try to avoid reading up on films ahead of time - as is the case here - I actually wish I'd read up on the film's plot and background ahead of time, as it felt for a long time that there was no real plot. Perhaps I missed some key dialogue or was simply too tired or slow to get it. Or perhaps I was too drawn in by the gorgeous scenery in Marseilles to follow the plot. Whatever the case, I spent much time trying to work out who these characters were (were they cops? Thugs? Private investigators) and what they were doing.

A lot of time was spent watching them going about the minutiae of their day to day business. Shakedowns in seedy bars. Scheider finding Hackman's character the worse for wear, attached to the bedpost by his ankle with his own cuffs by the girl with whom he'd crashed. It was all to be appreciated, but also felt a little aimless and meandering. In the latter part of the film it felt like we spent about twenty minutes watching a car being taken apart in real time.

The other aspect I didn't care for was Don Ellis's score which was very unpleasant on the ears. No doubt this was deliberate, to add to the unsettling nature of the film, but let's just say I won't be seeking this soundtrack out.

That said, even from my somewhat handicapped position, I found myself invested. The scenes of Popeye tailing Charnier were gripping. I especially loved the humorous little moment where they were each repeatedly getting on and off the train from neighbouring carriages, with Charnier trying to false step Popeye (successfully in the end). And the car chases were really something. They're possibly the most subjective I've ever seen and I felt almost nauseated as the speed built up and obstacles came into view and were (usually) narrowly missed. And of course, Roy Scheider is always worth his weight in gold. I like to think when Buddy Russo was forcibly transferred away from the narcotics team it was to a little island in Massachusetts, complete with a new identity: Martin Brody.

Despite reservations about the film, the gorgeous, gritty look of the film has increased my curiosity to see director William Friedkin's other films of the era. Most notably Sorcerer (which also stars Scheider), but possibly also The Exorcist.

I'm less enthused about the idea of French Connection II, but it is sitting there in my watchlist, so we'll see.

 

[Angela Channing]

Emergency (2022)

I liked this film way more than I expected to because the premise of the film does seem a little daft at first. Two black college students return home to find a white girl unconscious on the floor in their house. Their Latino flatmate has no idea how she got there because he was wearing headphones and engrossed in a computer game. One of the friends wants to call 911 but another is against the idea because he fears the authorities won't believe a group of young black and Latino men would innocently find a white girl passed out in their home without them being responsible in some way. So they decide to take her to the hospital and a encounter a series of mishaps along the way.

The film is part comedy, part drama and part thriller. It's emotionally charged and quite moving in places. It explores the thought processes that many black people go through in an emergency, particularly how will the situation be perceived by the police and other members of the public. A simple decision is not so simple when your good intentions could result in being held at gunpoint, beaten and/or shot by the police.

It's a fascinating, intelligent and thought-provoking film that is well worth watching.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)

If I had any expectations about what a mid-Noughties Herbie film might look like, this would be it. The tone is very much Herbie Meets Clueless, neither of which is a bad thing. Lindsay Lohan certainly has an Alicia Silverstone thing going on, and her brother is even played by Breckin Meyer. It's actually hard to believe this is a full decade after Clueless. Perhaps that shows how influential the earlier film was.

The film feels more youthful in tone than earlier Herbie jaunts. I was trying to work out if that's because of the styles of the Sixties and Seventies versus the Noughties, but nope: Lohan here is the best part of a decade younger than Michele Lee was in The Love Bug, and almost a decade and a half younger than Stefanie Powers was in Herbie Rides Again. It seems to reflect the changing times, as well as audience tastes.

Herbie himself is more anthropomorphic than in previous films. Now he looks sad by making the visors over his headlights droop. He "smiles" with his animated bumper. The sun visors move to appear from outside the car as furrowed eyebrows. At one point he even goes all out by standing up to pull a face at a villain. Presumably new technology made some of this possible (I dare say CGI was involved), but it's not really a change for the better as it leaves no real mystery about whether or not Herbie is "alive" and so it lacks nuance and food for thought. Mind you, I did quite like the new Herbie-eye view, shown using a special lens as he looks from his headlights.

There's a good cast, not a bad story and a great soundtrack with lots of familiar tracks. There's nothing really groundbreaking, but it's pleasant enough, and mostly feels like a natural evolution of the Herbie films.

 

[Seaviewer]

Yeah, I liked Herbie: Fully Loaded. Possibly the best of the films without Dean Jones. Certainly an improvement over Herbie Goes Bananas.

Herbie himself is more anthropomorphic than in previous films.

I liked his flirtation with the New Bug - and Lohan's warning that she was too young for him.

 

[Biggie]

The Time Machine 2002.

The well heeled gentleman invented a contraption that will travel through time, so determined is our man here to stop the love of his life from getting her cap twisted backwards he will travel backwards in time and tell her to duck one assumes, as he ain't gonna take the bullet. Not never!

Turns out that our man goes way way way into the future and big surprises it's a dystopian hell and the ignorant savages ain't living right because our man here from 1899 knows how to fix society in the year of our Lord 654378 or whatever.

Thankfully the pretty lady learned to speak his tongue by reading a few stones meaning that she would be able to bring the man from 1899 up to speed with the failed society as he understands it. But the surface folk have been living in their way for umpteen years and year's.

Our man only gone and banished the the 10ft monsters that were simply going about business as evolution determined. Not stopping to consider if or who was the bad hombre. But yeah the pretty lady pointed her finger and.... soon the dead girlfriend is staying dead.

The whole thing is late night candle light...the man from 1899 wouldn't go toe to toe with the 10ft chap out looking for lunch. He'd soil his trousers. The broken moon was the star of the show.

 

[Angela Channing]

The Time Machine 2002.

The well heeled gentleman invented a contraption that will travel through time, so determined is our man here to stop the love of his life from getting her cap twisted backwards he will travel backwards in time and tell her to duck one assumes, as he ain't gonna take the bullet. Not never!

Turns out that our man goes way way way into the future and big surprises it's a dystopian hell and the ignorant savages ain't living right because our man here from 1899 knows how to fix society in the year of our Lord 654378 or whatever.

Thankfully the pretty lady learned to speak his tongue by reading a few stones meaning that she would be able to bring the man from 1899 up to speed with the failed society as he understands it. But the surface folk have been living in their way for umpteen years and year's.

Our man only gone and banished the the 10ft monsters that were simply going about business as evolution determined. Not stopping to consider if or who was the bad hombre. But yeah the pretty lady pointed her finger and.... soon the dead girlfriend is staying dead.

The whole thing is late night candle light...the man from 1899 wouldn't go toe to toe with the 10ft chap out looking for lunch. He'd soil his trousers. The broken moon was the star of the show.

Have you seen the 1960s version of this film? I think it's a far superior film even though the special effects were less impressive.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Entertaining over-the-top pulp that gets a little too "A-Team" in its final act.

 

[Biggie]

Have you seen the 1960s version of this film? I think it's a far superior film even though the special effects were less impressive.

Yes I have watched the 1960s version and it is very good. The remake is truly awful and makes little if any sense. The whole time travelling cyborg failing to kill Sarah Connor because the murder robot is sent to a time after the previous attempts.... makes more sense.

 

[Angela Channing]

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)

Emma Thompson has been relentlessly promoting this film recently so I thought I'd give it a watch to see if it is as interesting as she claimed it is. It's not my favourite film of hers (that would be Saving Mr Banks) but it is a good film but a bit too theatrical I think it probably would work better as a two-hander stage production.

Emma plays a retired school teacher called Nancy who is widowed and in all the time she was married never achieved an orgasm and her sex life was generally unsatisfying. So she hires a male escort to help her fulfil her sexual desires and he is the titular Leo Grande. Except for a short scene at the start of the film and another one near the end, the rest of the film (around 98% of it) takes place in the hotel room that Nancy booked for the location to spend time Leo. Around 99% of the dialogue is spoken by Nancy and Leo so this film has a strong feel of being a stage play even though it was written directly for the big screen. The writing is good though and the dialog is clever and witty and I laughed out loud on a few occasions.

Most of the film is about Nancy's reluctance to be intimate with Leo and though a series of conversations we find out more about the backgrounds and motivations of both characters. In many ways, Leo is too perfect: he is incredibly handsome, has a beautifully toned body and is charming, sympathetic, understanding, supportive and always seems to say the right thing at the appropriate time. He's like a middle-aged woman's fantasy of what an ideal sex worker would be like rather than being a totally believable character and that's not meant to be a criticism of Daryl MacCormack who is excellent in the role of Leo.

 

[Crimson]

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) -- honestly, the best movie I've watched in years. The film blends genres and tones in a way that is both chaotic and masterful, swirling between being serious, absurd, nihilistic, exciting, silly, romantic, raunchy and heartfelt. The movie exhibits some questionable notions about evolution and cheats at its own rules a bit; normally a major bugbear of mine, but the film was so relentlessly entertaining I just didn't care. (Unlike the other multiversal film of 2022, which collapsed under the weight of its own flaws.)

The biggest drawback to a film this bold is it makes one realize that most of the movies pumped out of Hollywood are formulaic corporate drivel.