Last Movie You Watched.

Tomb Raider - for me, a more successful depiction of Lara Croft than the Jolie efforts. Alicia Vikander copes ably with the Indy-flecked thrills and spills, and there's solid support from Dominic West as Daddy Croft and Walton Goggins as a suitably hissable baddie. There's also 'high-end' cameos from Derek Jacobi and Kristin Scott-Thomas and fun ones from Nick Frost and Jaime Winstone.

I was really impressed how well the rebooted games turned out. The new characterization and gameplay is great in the first game-story not so much. The movie tried to take this and do it but it doesn't work as well. In the game you feel terrible for this poor English girl and the traumas she goes through repeatedly.
In the sequel you get to go guns blazing which is far more my playstyle. I haven't played the third and final game yet. Admittedly it still doesn't feel like the original Lara yet but this new characterization I care more about though again the story doesn't really do much.

To be honest, the scenes in the first reboot game where Lara gets skewered on a broken tree branch if you don't take the necessary evasive action quickly enough and where she gets stabbed to death by an assailant if you fail to perform the necessary button presses quickly enough made me feel sort of uncomfortable and I don't think I ever completed it or bothered with the other two.

A Seanery double last night -

The Man Who Would Be King - God's holy trousers! My first time watching this highly amusing Rudyard Kipling adventure yarn, with Connery and Caine on fine form throughout.

The Hunt For Red October - the first big-screen adap of a Tom Clancy novel makes for a nicely suspenseful Cold War thriller, with Connery heading up a stellar cast as the Russian submarine commander who either wants to defect or start World War 3.

Those scenes were brutal. The whole game I found myself saying over and over "you poor dear"!

Man Who Would Be King is absolutely a work of art. For something akin to it's flavor in Sean's other films there's Wind and the Lion and Great Train Robbery I suppose. When I did my Connery livestream I remarked on how insane it was that he did two such commanding performances in Lion and King IN THE SAME YEAR!

Red October is one of the best blockbusters ever made and one of the best films of the 90's period. One of the last big budget films for grown ups really.

The way the Jack Ryan movies panned out was sort of weird ... instead of continuing with Baldwin, they cast Harrison Ford for the next 2 which aged the character 20 years but the world around him was still that of the early-to-mid-90s. Then the Affleck one, which was Ryan back to the sort of age Baldwin was but in the world of the early Noughties.

Then nothing until the Chris Pine reboot attempt, followed by the Krasinski TV show.

Scrooged - 'tis the season, and all that. Festive funtimes aplenty as Bill Murray's heartless TV channel CEO is shown the error of his ways by various spooks.

Creepier and more caustic than the Muppet version of A Christmas Carol, and therefore preferable. IMHO.

The Exorcist, Well,tis the season! ....still pant pissingly scary and still my favourite horror film ever.
Also watched the "making of" documentary...my god what Linda blair was put through by Friedkin was horrendous and i don't expect any director would get away with it these days

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Scrooged - 'tis the season, and all that. Festive funtimes aplenty as Bill Murray's heartless TV channel CEO is shown the error of his ways by various spooks.

Creepier and more caustic than the Muppet version of A Christmas Carol, and therefore preferable. IMHO.

Murray says that it could've been better, had some trouble with Donner but it's not a bad little film. The Ghost of Christmas Past is always a riot. And Karen Allen is a fine woman.

I like the Ghost Of Christmas Present the most, 'Ballbreaker Suite' sign and all. Like the fairy from the top of the tree climbed down, grew to lifesize and wanted violent revenge for all the times she's had a pine branch shoved up her fundament.

Pegg 'n' Frost sci-fi comedy double-bill last night ... Paul followed by The World's End, accompanied by some Menabrea and Krombacher.

A blast of a way to spend an evening .

World's End filmed at one of my local train stations. Best High Wycombe's ever looked.

Well, I watched Scrooged myself part of the festive filmfest.

What I'll say and forgot above, is I'd have paid to see Night the Reindeer Died as its own film.

Pegg's middle-aged character aching for things to be just as they were in his youth carries a lot of resonance ... the film pulls this off whilst also having all the fun 'replicant invasion' action stuff you'd want. Plus there's Brozza's chucklesome supporting part.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The way the Jack Ryan movies panned out was sort of weird ... instead of continuing with Baldwin, they cast Harrison Ford for the next 2 which aged the character 20 years but the world around him was still that of the early-to-mid-90s. Then the Affleck one, which was Ryan back to the sort of age Baldwin was but in the world of the early Noughties.

Then nothing until the Chris Pine reboot attempt, followed by the Krasinski TV show.  

They screwed it up and did a sort of power play scenario to drop Baldwin and managed to snag Ford. I think the constant switcheroos and meandering around was due to the producer. Such a shame as the first film is truly great but the next two are passable. I think they're made by Noyce's direction and Ford's performance.
Noyce then got to do the 1997 Saint film which I still really like even though it had many issues, studio interference, a reshot final act and the like-but it is a good little film that deserved better.
Then he did the 2002 Quiet American which got buried by Miramax but is a great film, fixes the atrocious damage done by the 50's film version, made me realize Brendan Frasier could actually act, and was yet another time Michael Caine richly deserved the Oscar.

Being a Belfast man, it's interesting to me that Patriot Games on screen pits Ryan against the IRA as opposed to the fictional ULA (Ulster Liberation Army) from the novel.

Keen Jack Ryan fan that I am, it is a curious thing as you say Blunty. They took a few liberties in the film plot-wise (I do wish that they had done the busting out of Miller as in the novel, in the middle of the Solent, would've been something to see). Maybe the film-makers thought no one would figure things out with the ULA. I think in the book they were some far left off-shoot of the IRA, split off from it.

I'm no expert but thought Messrs Harris and Bean did well with their roles accent wise. I've heard worse.

I have some of the Clancy books but haven't read all of them yet. Need to finally do that.

The Hill....On TV saturday, one of Seans finest films with a great supporting cast which includes Veruca salts dad

Hilly wrote:

Keen Jack Ryan fan that I am, it is a curious thing as you say Blunty. They took a few liberties in the film plot-wise (I do wish that they had done the busting out of Miller as in the novel, in the middle of the Solent, would've been something to see). Maybe the film-makers thought no one would figure things out with the ULA. I think in the book they were some far left off-shoot of the IRA, split off from it.

I'm no expert but thought Messrs Harris and Bean did well with their roles accent wise. I've heard worse.

Helped that Harris was Limerick-born, of course.

Gold (but not all of it) - as admittedly interesting as it was to see Moore playing something with a little more grit than his Bond persona ... well, this was billed as an action-adventure but after the excitement of the opening mine cave-in there had been very little else in that department by the time I finally tired of it no longer holding my attention (the flight with Susannah York, for those who've seen it) and 'bailed'.

The Girl On The Train - this was more like it. A dark, twisty 'unreliable narrator' thriller adap of the bestselling novel with Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson and Allison Janney.

hegottheboot wrote:

I have some of the Clancy books but haven't read all of them yet. Need to finally do that.

I personally think the Ryanverse now stops with Executive Orders. The post-Clancy written books don't feel right, Jack certainly doesn't feel right and the Jack Jr books don't thrill me too much. Executive Orders threw everything at the canvas -Jack becoming president, a pandemic (Ebola), a Gulf War and in between a plot against Ryan inside the States.

--

The Poseidon Adventure

countless viewings by now, ever since that wide-eyed first one as a seven year-old. I rewatched Towering Inferno other day and it goes, if you see one, you see the other. Mark Kermode paired them together in a program and it seems right (considering what followed was worsening- Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out).

The film differs markedly from the book of course (there are more survivors at the end from the bow, there's a rape and the Reverend is different in character) but what always is potent, is the capsizing. The effects might be a little tame compared to what can be done today (re: Poseidon, whose perk was showing other parts of the ship during the capsizing) but it somehow still whacks a punch. That first sighting of the wall of water, Leslie Nielsen's whispered "oh my God" then how it overwhelms the ship and that brief shot of her struggling side on.

Sure, everyone flying past the camera is cheesy today but hell with it.

Plus, Stella Stevens was a knockout.

Thor : Ragnarok - Taika Waititi's intention with this Marvel flick was apparently to make a comedy that just happens to star superheroes ... that certainly comes across. A fun couple of hours.

Off the ITVplayer, I watched Carry On's Camping and Henry, in lieu of a tribute to Dame Barbara.

As a kid I didn't mind the 'later' films but older, firmly entrenched with the Norman Hudis scripted films (Sergeant to Cruising) where the theme was the same, a bunch of misfits who came together in the end to help someone out. The Talbot Rothwell ones, Spying on leant heavily on the innuendo.

And so, Camping is of course what Dame Barbara will forever be remembered for. The bikini top scene in particular. Amidst the cast though there is Jeremy Holloway (son of the great Stanley) as the leery bus driver ("I'm going all the way"). It's a bit of fun I suppose, I'm not bashing them as such. But I don't envy the cast. I read that they filmed in the autumn/winter and the grass had to be painted green sometimes (you see in most shots, like the top-flying moment) the mud everywhere and yet 'summer' as far as the film goes.

Got effectively remade blow for blow as Behind with Elke Sommer (the joint highest paid Carry On actor).

Henry is a little different, two years after Camping but somehow feeling early sixties in terms of how it looks and feels. As far as a Carry On goes, a fair bit of location filming (Windsor). Babs features little in the film but in both films she embodied all that she became known for. That golden bunch of actors and actresses of the 1950s-1970s are thinning out and it's wrenching. Without looking, main cast wise there's Jim Dale, Leslie Philips and there's a few of the secondary actors but few, so few.

Love the carry ons...British humour at its best,and filmed at Pinewood of course.

My top 3...

Screaming
Up the jungle
camping

Hilly wrote:

Got effectively remade blow for blow

In the spirit of the films ... f'narr f'narr.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Got effectively remade blow for blow

In the spirit of the films ... f'narr f'narr.

"Stop messin' about!"

Die Hard + Die Hard 2 ... my annual festive season rewatch, on BluRay for the first time (thought it was about time for an upgrade, boxset of 1 - 4 was £12.95 inc. postage from eBay so not too bad).

Because sometimes Xmas movies are better with gunfights, explosions and copious swearing.