Last film you watched

[Mississippi Hippie]

Littler Mermaid a second time.. those songs get in my head probably gonna watch it again.. my husband loves it so does my neighbor

 

[Marc]

I rewatched the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently. Called 'Once More with Feeling' Some of the songs stuck with me for days.

"I touch the fire and it freezes me.
I look into it and it's black.
Why can't I feel?
My Skin should crack and peel.
I want the fire back."

Only seen the thing twice but I can remember half the words. Weird.

 

[Mississippi Hippie]

lyrics get stuck in my head super easily! and I don’t really wanna be a grown man with “scuttle butt” in his head all day.. or maybe I do?

 

[Marc]

Wife's choice. James Bond, Live and Let Die.

A brave start for the producers with the new actor Roger Moore. His first scene isn't in some black Opps action but a small French farce with Bond waking up in bed with a beautiful foreign diplomat and his boss arriving for his next mission. Asking as an aside if he knows where a diplomat is? ("She's behind you! hiding in the wardrobe!") His bedroom a raised split-level floor with I think a double door entry. The effect is comically like a throne room.

Like the previously made Bond film this is also set in America (and the Americas) but on the east coast and in winter. A back internal courtyard in Halem is very horror film, everything is absolutely colourless grey. It's exactly as though the characters are walking through a black-n-white photograph.

There's a small plot hole in the middle. Someone sends James a card revealing a traitor, but it's never revealed who it was. Solitaire is still working for Mr Big and is so tightly controlled in movement to make it practically impossible to do so. Baron Samedi perhaps as an agent of chaos?

A small comedic misstep later. When the frustrated Sheriff J. W. Pepper is pulled to one side to explain who James Bond is, it would have been better to not hear the explaining officer, but just hear Pepper's shouting response; "A secret Agent??...On Who's side?!!!"

The film dates better than you would reasonably expect.

 

[ZenDruid]

Guardians of the Galaxy, part 2. Not as good as the original, way overdone in the last 45 minutes. Like a lot of experimental films (we still say that) Guardians of the Galaxy was produced, directed and edited into a tight movie because they didn't know how it would be received.

 

[brianvds]

Last Days (2005), Gus van Sant's account of the last days of a pop star before he commits suicide, loosely based on the case of Kurt Cobain.

I battled, not entirely successfully, to stay awake through it.

As usual, good documentaries tend to be more watchable- slowly meandering my way through two long ones - The Golden Age of Horror Comics, parts 1 and 2 - on, you guessed it, the history of horror comics. They're a bit too good, really - too much information and detail, coming at you so fast you can't keep up, but nice to watch in half hour chunks.

 

[Artyczar]

Watched Boy Erased with Nicole Kidman the other day and it was a difficult one. It's about a conversion therapy facility, based on a true story. Pretty grueling and would make anyone cry no matter their beliefs.

 

[Marc]

American Psycho. Finally got around to watching this one. A good film though naturally ever increasingly unpleasant. Mostly a black comedy in the first half, the protagonist Patrick Bateman becomes ever more out of control and also an ever more unreliable narrator.

I looked this film up on Wikipedia and it mentions the character Patrick Bateman being used in popular memes and clips as a Sigma male (High testosterone male, doesn't care what people think, often a lone wolf.) Which is ironic as he's clearly not sigma. What people think of him is perhaps his highest priority. He even has a panic attack when someone's business card is better than his. Bateman's internal monologue, "Oh my god. It even has a watermark!"

 

[ZenDruid]

"Infinite", a brainless and senseless action-sci-fi film. A shoot-em-up to save the planet, of course. The flawed plot is a complete mess, without character development, imitating real life. Starring Marc Wahlberg, co-starring a samurai sword and a hot blonde. Thoroughly satisfying.

 

[Artyczar]

Just watched the whole Murdaugh Murders saga on Netflix. What a piece of work.

Before that, I watched Savior Complex on HBO. It covers missionary work in Uganda, one young woman in particular who wound up with a higher death rate of children in her "clinic" than usual for practicing medicine when she had no training. She was just a home-schooled teen, really. She took on extreme cases of malnourished children that the hospitals couldn't treat, gave them blood transfusions, diagnosed them, ordered medical treatment against trained doctors' advice, and even sought out new patients in nearby towns and brought them into her nonprofit for treatment (to die). Unbelievable.

 

[brianvds]

Watched Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro, and just for once, found myself not completely blown away by a Ghibli film. Not really sure why - it is visually as spectacular as any by the same producer, but somehow the story never quite grabbed me as much as, say, Spirited Away. It was perhaps just a little too sweet, and largely devoid of the often considerable darkness which infuses many other Ghibli films. Would still recommend it above pretty much any Disney film, with the possible exception of Fantasia.

 

[Mississippi Hippie]

Saw 6 - to scary for husband so couldn’t watch a lot
Strays - funny movie
My Art - watched alone it’s good it’s about an artist making art over a summer

 

[Marc]

American Psycho. ..... and also an ever more unreliable narrator.

There's a scene where Bateman goes to collect his clean bed sheets from the Chinese laundry and is having an augment because they can't get the very large blood stains out. I just found out that worker is shouting at him (in Chinese) "the sheets are white! I can't get them any whiter!" Was Bateman having a lady Macbeth moment? Or did he not kill anyone at all?

Interesting when the director puts in more details than the average viewer will read.

 

[brianvds]

John Berger's (apparently quite famous) series on BBC, Ways of Seeing. It is on YouTube in its entirety:

He makes some interesting and provocative points, but what I found particularly interesting was simply watching something made in 1972 - what a different world it was, and it already feels very much like history, even though I lived through it. E.g. John Berger smoking while interviewing some ladies for the film: such a thing would now be inconceivable.

The series is perhaps also more "brutal" than what we have become used to: lots of blatant nudity, not just in the art, but also in the form of a short sequence involving a nude model, and even some real footage of people getting executed in some or other African country. Once again not the the kind of thing you expect in today's slick documentaries, in which "disturbing" or "offensive" footage is often either omitted or blurred out, and one often gets the impression that producers are dancing around issues rather than confronting them.

Anyway, once again I am struck by how even a very old documentary can be more entertaining than most of the movies made nowadays. I have been watching the new Avatar movie (Avatar: The Way of Water). No way I can sit through the whole interminable thing in one session, probably not even with the help of copious amounts of wine and snacks. The visuals are beautiful, but what a load of wokester horse manure (of course, being an artsy type, I'm a sucker for beautiful visuals!)

Now I don't know if it's just me. I used to be a very enthusiastic cinephile, enjoying everything from the latest action blockbuster to weird artsy films. My brother, on the other hand, is somewhat infamous for mostly detesting film, and can probably count on one hand the number of films he really enjoyed or thought were very good. It was the same with my father: he probably watched three movies in his whole life after being dragged to them by my mom, and no matter what the film, his biggest challenge would be to stay awake through it.

So maybe it's my genes finally coming out? Or maybe I'm just getting old or something? But there have been very few films made over the past decade or so which have managed to hold my attention or linger with me like they used to do.

Maybe I have outgrown film, or maybe modern movies just suck. I don't know which it is.

And speaking of things that suck. I give weekly art lessons to a bunch of kids at a local school, and struggling a bit to hold their attention, I tried something new: I had them tell me what they want to draw. Turned out almost all of them want to draw manga/anime stuff. So I had to go look into it a bit so I can teach myself the basics of how to go about drawing some of their favorite anime characters.

First up, a character called Goku, apparently wildly popular with kids. I tried to get hold of some footage; there seems to be a lot on YouTube. And I couldn't believe this stuff gets produced in the same country that produced Studio Ghibli. Sheesh! I'm going to have my work cut out for me: it is utterly unwatchable, and I'm beginning to understand why kids today are so completely messed up!

 

[Artyczar]

Wow. I totally understand what you mean about the Goku thing. I feel like I'm 100 years old since I can hardly see the appeal. And I've tried.

 

[brianvds]

Wow. I totally understand what you mean about the Goku thing. I feel like I'm 100 years old since I can hardly see the appeal. And I've tried.

It seems to be a thing with children: at least at pre-school age, they're suckers for bright, flashing lights, hectic sound effects and slapstick action. And if they're allowed to indulge it, they seem never to grow out of it. Presumably, by the time they're forty, they'll still be glued to that sort of thing.

In the meantime, some pretty good anime seems to be freely available on YouTube - I have downloaded some to watch and see, but at least on the face of it, many of those films are a far cry from Goku and friends.

And then there is Studio Ghibli, which produced some of the greatest animation films in history, but they tend to be kind of dark and slow moving, so kids with a thirty-second attention span are not going to enjoy them much.

 

[Artyczar]

I remember practicing drawing Snoopy over and over as a kid. ...and just last night, I was looking to buy some Peanuts stamps for the rare times I mail letters. And I'm well over 40!

 

[joe1It]

when everyone started watching Goku I stopped watching the anime I used to love, but all the ones I liked were made before the second part of the 90s. Then I was almost annoyed even graphically by all the anime series and even the story while Ken the warrior, tiger man gigi la trottola, devilman I found them fantastic and some were very absurd and often censored, in Italy, many animated series I saw were cut I discovered.
Regarding cinema, I often loved everything and waited for various films, now the new ones from recent years I'm seeing few of them but brianvds as long as we have directors like Scorsese I believe that amazing films will be released again, Scorsese's latest film is now in cinemas, I have to see it , having only seen the trailer but I don't think it disappoints,
also Licorace Pizza, the director Anderson,
NOlan's latest, I think the future between algorithms and artificial intelligence will give us much worse, so now I only follow directors I loved

 

[joe1It]

even if there is less and less desire to see a new film.
how many cinecomics have they made in recent years and yet the first 2 Batman films, those by Burton or the second by Nolan...
or Raimi's 3 Spiderman films, having seen many of the new ones up to the latest Avengers, they have therefore turned to these very expensive films where the frame is everything, now money is a problem for them too and they even save money on the big films with all effects specials, or they have shot various films in recent years and then decided for economic reasons that it was cheaper not to broadcast them, either in cinemas or on their streaming services...
films like Batgirl or others were shot and then not distributed.
Disney has removed new series from its streaming channel. including the series inspired by the 80's film Willow that just came out, I remember the film as good, a good fantasy, who knows about the series.
That is, it's as if now they would take certain risks with the cabbage and I know that at all times those who invested in cinema did not do so to lose money but to make it,
but now we are a thousand years behind. many films were born for different reasons, the story, they wrote in an incredible way, they experimented,
with little or a lot of money they made incredible films, many ideas,
now they have remade a new film about mercenaries but without the mercenaries (they were Stallone films with a nostalgia effect with the action heroes of the 80s, now they have made a new film starring the only actor who was not part of that group, but it fits it's an action film and there are actors of the moment capable of making incredible action films but they haven't chosen a director who knows how to direct action and they haven't valorised this, made it a story), they focus on brands or algorithms. history of ideas and mastery, I believe that technology for the arts has become a regression

 

[brianvds]

Finally got around to seeing Oppenheimer - and battled to stay awake. I don't know what the heck it is, but new films somehow mostly fail to hold my attention.

But I have tumbled further down the anime rabbit hole, watched a bunch of Miyazaki films and some others, and mostly enjoyed them, so it seems it's not that I don't enjoy movies. It's mostly the NEW ones that somehow don't do a thing for me.