Last Movie You Watched? the 8th

vastly opposing films:

INLAND EMPIRE

haven't seen it since the cinema viewing and similarly perplexed...I guess I don't have the acumen to understand. I recall at the cinema (way back when) waiting with friends and this girl who worked at the cinema came out of it. She said she'd seen Inland Empire, and the other chap asked her about it and she said: "I don't know what it was about but I loved it. I'd see it again."

The Sea Chase

typical scthick. When I first saw this I asked my dad why Wayne wasn't doing a German accent. "He never did accents" was the response. Indeed this German crew was the most American German crew ever. Wunderbar.

I don't dislike Lynch, but INLAND EMPIRE was not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. The ugly digital look didn't help.

Did seem to present it as a daytime soap rather than a motion picture. If it's Lynch's last movie it's not the best way to go out on.

Lynch loves that aesthetic, so I doubt he'll move away from it.

Lynch also did a short film/Dior commercial not long after INLAND EMPIRE, entitled LADY BLUE SHANGHAI. It stars Marion Cotillard. It maintains the flat digital look of INLAND EMPIRE.

Harmsway wrote:

I don't dislike Lynch, but INLAND EMPIRE was not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. The ugly digital look didn't help.

I'm a huge fan of Lynch but I've never been able to sit through Inland Empire more than once, it's the only film I can say I find too exhausting to re-watch.

SPEED (1994, directed by Jan De Bont). An endearingly goofy yet also extremely gripping action thriller that's like a cross between DIE HARD and POINT BREAK (indeed, with only a couple of tweaks to the script this could have been a sequel to Kathryn Bigelow's masterpiece - here, Keanu Reeves' cop is essentially Johnny Utah with a crewcut, while Gary Busey would have filled the Jeff Daniels role nicely). Unlike DIE HARD or POINT BREAK, though, SPEED never really seems much more than an it-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin action flick (albeit a very good one). There's no sense of subtext, nor any especially engaging characters. Dennis Hopper's hammy but rather dull bad guy is not a charismatic, compelling villain like Bodhi or Hans Gruber - at no point do we find ourselves almost rooting for him.

The only thing that ever bothered me was this: How the hell did Dennis Hopper survive that explosion in the beginning? That always bugged me. Other than that, it's a very enjoyable 90s action flick. Sadly it all went downhill for Jan De Bont after that, kinda makes me wish he'd just get back to work as a DP, like Stuart Baird returned to editing.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

I was working on some stuff, including a big puzzle to break up the pace, and I had assorted 70's movies playing.  There's nothing like having AIRPORT movies play in the background to create a jovial working atmosphere.

I only hope I live to quote Heston here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v13Hxz0TLvM#t=3m30s

they blocked the link; was the quote, "they're down, just hope they're locked!' or "do your thing, baby.'

I saw '75 three times the first month it was out (saw EARTHQUAKE the other week, then went back on saw QUAKE again the fifth week ... those movies somehow ruined me for TOWERING INFERNO.)

At the time I thought writer Don Ingalls was a pseudonym for Gene L. Coon, so for years I defended it as his work, not realizing Coon had died a few years earlier.

Oh, and on the subject of Mr. Coon, his ACTUAL final credit ... while I was away a couple months back I broke down and bought the dvd of THE QUESTOR TAPES, just because I hadn't seen it in so long (at least 25 years, but I remembered it almost scene for scene) and wanted to show my wife an antagonist whose very deliberately aware actions at the climax make him into the hero of the piece.

Have watched the ending three times already and choke up every time. John Vernon was TheMan. And clearly Roddenberry without Coon in the 70s (see PLANET EARTH, GENESIS II and TMP, to say nothing of his rejected trekflick stories THE CATTLEMEN and THE GOD THING) was worth only slightly more than squat.

And the effects at the end don't look awful either (kind of like an animated blacklight poster, but in a good way.)

Python wrote:

The only thing that ever bothered me was this: How the hell did Dennis Hopper survive that explosion in the beginning? That always bugged me. Other than that, it's a very enjoyable 90s action flick. Sadly it all went downhill for Jan De Bont after that, kinda makes me wish he'd just get back to work as a DP, like Stuart Baird returned to editing.

Speed 2, The Haunting remake, the Tomb Raider sequel ... yeah, it didn't go well :| .

Python wrote:

The only thing that ever bothered me was this: How the hell did Dennis Hopper survive that explosion in the beginning? That always bugged me.

Yeah. And why, in the absence of body parts, would the police assume him to be dead?

Another thing that didn't ring true to me is the question of why Sandra Bullock would be so chummy with the bus driver if she usually drove to work and this was maybe her first or second or third trip on the bus - why would they even know each other's names?

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Python wrote:

The only thing that ever bothered me was this: How the hell did Dennis Hopper survive that explosion in the beginning? That always bugged me. Other than that, it's a very enjoyable 90s action flick. Sadly it all went downhill for Jan De Bont after that, kinda makes me wish he'd just get back to work as a DP, like Stuart Baird returned to editing.

Speed 2, The Haunting remake, the Tomb Raider sequel ... yeah, it didn't go well :| .

You'd think after working under guys like John McTiernan and Richard Donner that he might have made a decent run as an action/thriller director. Oh well.

Loomis wrote:

Python wrote:

The only thing that ever bothered me was this: How the hell did Dennis Hopper survive that explosion in the beginning? That always bugged me.

Yeah. And why, in the absence of body parts, would the police assume him to be dead?

Another thing that didn't ring true to me is the question of why Sandra Bullock would be so chummy with the bus driver if she usually drove to work and this was maybe her first or second or third trip on the bus - why would they even know each other's names?

Been awhile since I saw it, but I always assumed Bullock had already made her bus trips a routine by that point. I suppose they were rewriting on the set.

Watched LAWRENCE OF ARABIA at the theater last night. Unbelievable experience.

PACIFIC RIM (2013)

Goddamn. I don't think I've ever had a better time at the movies.

Man of Steel

I think they did the best they could with Superman. It was still kinda tedious. The character is innately boring. And the ending dragged forever. Zod should've been killed at the same point that they destroyed the terraformers, dragging it out for another interminable action sequence just added another climax to a film that had already had two or three. I thought the cast were uniformly good though, Russell Crowe particuarly.

Chicago

Rob Marshall is a pretty good choreographer. He is probably a good stage director. He is a horrible film director.

The musical numbers are generally well done and beautifully shot (though they're ridiculously over-edited. And I could've done without Mr Cellophane) and the performances in them are good. The "real world" scenes though? Awful. Dead awful. Tedious even. Queen Latifah and Renee Zellwegger especially. The only time Zellweger shows any kind of spark in this film when she's singing or dancing. Gere is good, though, and Zeta-Jones is great.

Argo

Really enjoyed it. Solid, smart enough, entertaining, accessible. It wasn't life-changing by any means but I don't really have any complaints.

Hot Fuzz

not seen it since it came out and thus an overdue rewatch. It's not bad, enjoyable and silly fun though my downpoints come in the form of Simon Pegg as the hardman cop, rapidcut editing (the snap/snap/snap stuff that accompanies most actions) and David Arnold's score which has its moments but often feels like alternate takes on "Come in 007, Your Time is Up". The last segment is good, the right tonic.
The best damn thing about the movie is Timothy Dalton sliming it up. Nobody does it better.

Oh, and Olivia Colman in a copper's uniform.

(3rd attempt to post....)

I love that film. In the DVD extras, Pegg says he got all fan-boy squee at pop prospect of meeting the others

Hilly wrote:

Hot Fuzz

not seen it since it came out and thus an overdue rewatch. It's not bad, enjoyable and silly fun though my downpoints come in the form of Simon Pegg as the hardman cop, rapidcut editing (the snap/snap/snap stuff that accompanies most actions) and David Arnold's score which has its moments but often feels like alternate takes on "Come in 007, Your Time is Up". The last segment is good, the right tonic.
The best damn thing about the movie is Timothy Dalton sliming it up. Nobody does it better.

Oh, and Olivia Colman in a copper's uniform.

It's huge fun ... I like how as well as the 'buddy-buddy cops action movie' parody stuff, there's 'sinisterly close-knit community' horror movie stuff in there too (plus some out-and-out icky gore ... what happen to Adam Buxton's journo is genuinely horrible). And parody and all as it is, the action sequences are up there with anything from a big-budget Hollywood action flick.

Looking forward muchly to seeing 'The World's End'.

Wished Dylan Moran was in Hot Fuzz, somewhere.

World's End I'll try to see, work-permitting.

Thankyou For Smoking

Hadn't seen it for some time. The start is entertaining, as is the end. It just gets boring as hell in the middle.

Skyfall (2012)

I still really dig it for it's intensity and craft.  Though I wonder why MI6 can't shut down a YouTube channel.

Is that some of the new Blu-Ray art?

Louis Armstrong wrote:

Is that some of the new Blu-Ray art?

QFT.

Is Brosnan in a straitjacket?

I think Dalton consumed Dom DeLuise.