Last Movie Watched

[Lord Tesla]

Hell, yes! It's not got a lot to do with Bram Stoker's novel, few Dracula adaptations do, aside from some names (and the Vampire Count named Dracula), but it's a Good Flick.

A movie getting designated Good Flick by you is a pretty rare and well-earned thing... color me excited.

I hope I didn't raise expectations too high. Of course, in this one, as in many of the other Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Hammer films, Peter Cushing actually steals the show. As Van Helsing, as Victor Frankenstein, he is a lot more interesting than the creatures in the features. The only film I know of where it's close is Hammer's The Mummy: Kharis on the one hand, John Banning on the other... Lee, getting to play his character bandaged and unbandaged, seems to give him an advantage in that one. Still a favorite film of mine, that Mummy: I watched it again last week, for what must be the hundredth time (or at least the fortieth), on the treadmill.

The last film I watched was John Ford's classic, The Searchers, from 1956. I watched it over a few days of daily treadmills on an iPad. Absolutely beautiful film, and just about as fine a Western as you're ever likely to see. Stars John Wayne, of course, and Jeffrey Hunter about ten years before he made the first Star Trek pilot playing Christopher Pike. A double-vision of lost worlds, post-Civil War Texas and 1950s America...

I'm trying to remember if I've seen this... which probably means I haven't. I'll have to remedy that.

By all means, do it. It really is a deserving classic. The cinematography alone is worth it. But it also manages to do a damn fine job of combining the epic scale and scope, with moving humanity. And, be sure to pay careful attention to "Grandma's" grave-marker. Read every letter that's visible. It gives a very important insight into Ethan Edwards' attitude toward the Comanches.

(One additional bit of info which you might want to consider a spoiler, but which also adds dimensions to the story that might otherwise go unnoticed: It's never been explicitly spelled out that I know of, but it is possible and plausible that Debbie is Ethan's daughter.)

Let's see, my last film was... Oh, right, the "Tomb Raider" from a couple years ago. Obviously not great, but needed something harmless, non-offensive, and fast-paced enough to watch with my parents when I visited them over the weekend. It got the job done. I might have liked it better this time than the first time I saw it, but that's probably due to my expectations being lowered.

I haven't had a chance at that one yet. I've stumbled on it in progress on cable, but I don't like to start unseen things that way if I can help it, and I never got around to DVRing it. I wonder if it's still on any of the movie channels...

The last film I watched was...I suppose I'd have to say it was Midsomer Murders, 5.1, "Tainted Fruit," which was feature-length. Can't say too much about it, though, because a most irritating need for sleep kept interrupting, but what I saw was interesting.

[Jjm3233]

Bill & Ted Face the Music - B-

Nice, sweet film. Watched it with my family, and we all enjoyed it. But it made us talk about the first two films more. But not sure I will watch it again.

I haven't seen it yet, but watching the trailer, I was worried Keanu Reeves hadn't settled into the character well or successfully captured Ted from the first two movies. How was his performance?

Keanu is going for a more mature Ted here - one that was changed a bit by his experience. As far as channeling classic Ted - sometimes.

[borgmatrix]

Keanu is going for a more mature Ted here - one that was changed a bit by his experience. As far as channeling classic Ted - sometimes.

Does that come across just from the movie itself, or has Keanu spoken about it in interviews? I still have to see this.

[Lord Tesla]

Jane Eyre 1943, B&W, 97, 20th Century Fox, directed by Roger Stevenson. Starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.

Weird bit of soapy Gothic, from the Charlotte Brontë novel, which I have not read but assume is likewise Goth-y.

Not my usual sort of thing, but it was the least objectionable alternative when some background TV was needed.

Got caught up in it enough catch large swaths of it anyway. Not bad at all, really, apart from one glaring fault. There's a happy ending of sorts, but after the long, miserable slog through Jane's early life, it comes on rather wham-bang, a seeming after thought, not even an epilogue, but more like a hastily scribbled post-it-note, a few frames stuck on the end.

[Master Magnus]

Jane Eyre 1943, B&W, 97, 20th Century Fox, directed by Roger Stevenson. Starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.

Weird bit of soapy Gothic, from the Charlotte Brontë novel, which I have not read but assume is likewise Goth-y.

Not my usual sort of thing, but it was the least objectionable alternative when some background TV was needed.

Got caught up in it enough catch large swaths of it anyway. Not bad at all, really, apart from one glaring fault. There's a happy ending of sorts, but after the long, miserable slog through Jane's early life, it comes on rather wham-bang, a seeming after thought, not even an epilogue, but more like a hastily scribbled post-it-note, a few frames stuck on the end.

You don't read Charlotte Brontë in junior- and senior high in the U.S.? It's part of the Swedish curriculum as part of classic literature and we had to read Jane Eyre in 8th grade (IIRC).

Anywau, the last movie I watched was Lucas's last remastered version of The Empire Strikes Back. While not perfect, the color grading is so much better than it was on the rather awful 2004 DVD and 2011 Blu-Ray releases (which both used the same masters).

[Lord Tesla]

You don't read Charlotte Brontë in junior- and senior high in the U.S.? It's part of the Swedish curriculum as part of classic literature and we had to read Jane Eyre in 8th grade (IIRC).

Perhaps it was so once; I doubt that it is so any longer. American education is long on ideology and indoctrination these days. Reading classics is...frowned upon. In my own case, I never read them; but, then, my education was somewhat eccentric.

It's high time I rectified that, I deem.

The last film I saw was...

Geez, I think it was a dinner-time rewatch of the Kenneth Branagh version of Murder on the Orient Express.

A strange piece of cinema, that. And a very strange interpretation of Hercule Poirot.

[borgmatrix]

Last movie watched was ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE!!!!!!!!

I've been waiting for this one for a quite a while. I'll have to get some detailed thoughts in when I have a chance.

[Coyote]

You don't read Charlotte Brontë in junior- and senior high in the U.S.? It's part of the Swedish curriculum as part of classic literature and we had to read Jane Eyre in 8th grade (IIRC).

Perhaps it was so once; I doubt that it is so any longer. American education is long on ideology and indoctrination these days. Reading classics is...frowned upon. In my own case, I never read them; but, then, my education was somewhat eccentric.

It's high time I rectified that, I deem.

The last film I saw was...

Geez, I think it was a dinner-time rewatch of the Kenneth Branagh version of Murder on the Orient Express.

A strange piece of cinema, that. And a very strange interpretation of Hercule Poirot.

Lord Tesla my old friend, please PM me when you see this. Its kinda important.

[Coyote]

Lord Tesla yes it is Biggs. I can't PM do to lack of posts. You guessed correctly about the reason for getting ahold of you. All is well with myself.

[toVor]

The Eternals
Not fantastic but I enjoyed it. I'm a little bit tired of the same repeat tropes that we see so often: The higher power the heroes are serving turn out to be the bad guys after all. Legends of Tomorrow, The Winter Soldier, Green Lantern (not seen in the film but hinted at the end), etc. Enough already. But still, despite that, it was a good movie. Not fantastic, not great, but good.

Dune.
I enjoyed it a lot. I've never read the book(s) nor did I sit through all of the 1984 movie version as it bored me from the start, but I enjoyed the new version a lot.

Black Widow
Pretty good. Not great. Not my favorite Marvel and I was disappointed by the lack of Avenger cameos, but it was a pretty good flick on its own.

[Solo]

The Unforgivable - Sandra Bullock
The movie is in a gray and gloomy atmosphere. It is rather slow and I almost felt I would switch to something else, if I wasn't watching it with my wife. (A word from the wise; Don't say a movie is boring if you wife selected it.)

Still it had a surprising ending and worth watching.

[Master Magnus]

"Flashdance" (1983). I've never actually seen it and as it appeared on one of my streaming apps...

[Marbleman]

I rewatched Brotherhood of the Wolf. Great movie, the cg is also not as bad as I thought it would be and its used sparingly anyway.

[Momin327]

Last movie that I watched was "The Bourne Identity". Great film.

[Solo]

Last movie I watched was Top Gun : Maverick

I watched the first Top Gun movie in a cinema back in 1986. I was very excited to see F14's performing crazy maneuvers, listening to Danger Zone and wishing I could be a pilot.

After so many years, I was excited as I was a kid and the movie took me back to those days. I really liked it, not because of the movie, but beacuse how I felt when I was watching it.

[Master Magnus]

"The Rookie" (1990) starring Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen. Clintans (as he's affectionately known in Sweden) last cop movie should've been a Dirty Harry movie. It wouldn't have been to hard turning it into one and would've been a better last entry in the series than "The Dead Pool" (1988).

[Lord Tesla]

The Two Towers

The Second of Peter Jackson's Franken-films assembled from the remains of Tolkien's desecrated and dismembered novel, The Lord of the Rings.

Or, poetically:

Pete's Second film,
Worse than the first.
Watch it too long,
And your head'll burst.

Now watching, in short doses, the Third Unholy Creation of Pete's Tri-wrecta, The Return of the King.

Good Grief. I was watching it on the treadmill, the version being streamed on Amazon Prime, and after forty minutes I checked the time remaining: 2 hrs. 40 min.--That's a whole nother movie still to go...

And it's worse that either of the previous two.

It's worse even than I remember it being the first time I saw it--all three have been.

[Lord Tesla]

Still working on The Return of the King, almost done, but still about another two or three thousand years left, or so it seems...

Which brings to mind one of the worst faults of the Jackson films: their shallowness, and their smallness: History began, these films seem to say, five minutes ago, and there's no future past noon tomorrow--and Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, and Barad-Dûr are all on the same block, Orodruin is on the frikkin' corner!

How they could have made so many hours of film when they discarded so many hundreds of pages of novel (or, grief! did they reuse them for some unholy, unclean, Orc-like purpose...?) is beyond me.

Actually, no it's not: two words: ignorance and incompetence. And another: boorishness.

But the last film I sorta watched was Dirty Harry, the original, 1971, color, Warner Bros.,directed by Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood. It's not a great film, but nothing in Jackson's Tri-Wrecta Rings Folly can begin to touch it. And Dirty Harry at least has entertainment value. Alas, I had to cut it short with about an hour to go (TV showing, with commercials, but, I think, uncut).

[Lord Tesla]

I finally finished The Return of the King.

Geez, what a mess. What was the point of it? It has virtually nothing to do with the source material. Names, superficial likenesses (few of those and not very good at that), I suppose, and a few nonsensical image streams--you can't really call these scenes or shots, they're not that developed.

And I'll be dipped if they didn't steal dialog from Return of the Jedi:

Watch Éowyn and Théoden's final words to each other on the Pelennor--that's not in the novel--and hear...Vader and Luke: Éowyn says, "I am going to save you," to her fallen uncle; Théoden replies, "You already did."

Not exactly the ROTJ lines? Okay. But it's not anything like any of the lines in the novel, and neither one of these two-by-fours says much of anything that sounds as much like their novel namesakes' lines as these sound like Luke's and Vader's, ever.

Never mind the mess they made of the death of the Witch-king before that, or the whole film before that, or--you get the idea.