I ended up skipping through most of it. Don’t know the details but it looked like it ended as uneventfully as the most of what I saw was.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
- Thread starter Th3Ch33s3Cak3
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Absent
And twice is the only way to live.
- Jan 25, 2023
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I intend to. I hit a few stumbling blocks. First, it's not available on streaming. OK, no problem, I own the movie. Oh, wait, about half my Bond movies went missing, with that being among them. So, I got the full James Bond Collection on Blu-Ray. And then I didn't have a way to play Blu-Rays in my room with the computer I use to take notes, so I had to buy one. And I bought a cheap one...and it didn't come with a remote, so I had to wait for that to come in to even use the player.SO GET YOUR LAZY ARSE ON HMSS !!!
A ★★★★ review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Yeah, this film has some issues, which is why it's not a 5 star. But man... After You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery WAS...done with being James Bond, leaving the role. In order to replace him, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman looked at several actors. One of the more notable actors...
letterboxd.com
After putting off for two years, I finally saw Night Teeth. Think Collateral, but with vampires. Decent movie with a neat and unique premise. The movie starts a little slow, but doesn't take long build up, so it's properly done. I enjoyed all of the actors, and didn't expect Megan Fox to make a cameo in this. It's an hour and forty minutes, and as long as it needed to be. Thank God. Night Teeth is one of the better Netflix original movies.
Johnny English, 5/10
A James Bond spoof in the vein of films like Austin Powers and The Naked Gun starring Rowan Atkinson. Sadly it's not nearly as good as either of those I mentioned, but it's still okay. The plot is your typical secret agent fare: John Malkovich doing his most heinous hate crime of a french accent is trying to become king through criminal means, and the titular Johnny must stop him. Sadly he's an aggressively incompetent nitwit, and a massive narcissist to boot.
The films has some good laughs in it, mostly thanks to Rowan Atkinson. He plays the oblivious yet massively overconfident English very well, and there are some nice running gags that never run dry. Malkovich is obviously having fun as the french bad guy.
The problems with this film lie with the rating (it's basically an all ages film), the editing and the visuals. The rating this film has simply doesn't allow for too naughty or violent gags, so it feels like a lot of its potential bite is blunted. Going up even to PG-13 would allow it to be much raunchier and therefore cash in more on its potential. Visually it's really flat and uninteresting, looking more like a TV show than a movie. The editing is just...awkward in places. At times it feels like a gag is stretched just beyond the point where it stops being funny, with shots lingering just that tiny bit too much on someone's reaction and such. The great thing about The Naked Gun is its relentless pace at which it machine guns gags at you, and this feels like a revolver's pace at best. So yeah, doesn't really stand up to either of its closest comparison points, but it's not actively bad either.
A James Bond spoof in the vein of films like Austin Powers and The Naked Gun starring Rowan Atkinson. Sadly it's not nearly as good as either of those I mentioned, but it's still okay. The plot is your typical secret agent fare: John Malkovich doing his most heinous hate crime of a french accent is trying to become king through criminal means, and the titular Johnny must stop him. Sadly he's an aggressively incompetent nitwit, and a massive narcissist to boot.
The films has some good laughs in it, mostly thanks to Rowan Atkinson. He plays the oblivious yet massively overconfident English very well, and there are some nice running gags that never run dry. Malkovich is obviously having fun as the french bad guy.
The problems with this film lie with the rating (it's basically an all ages film), the editing and the visuals. The rating this film has simply doesn't allow for too naughty or violent gags, so it feels like a lot of its potential bite is blunted. Going up even to PG-13 would allow it to be much raunchier and therefore cash in more on its potential. Visually it's really flat and uninteresting, looking more like a TV show than a movie. The editing is just...awkward in places. At times it feels like a gag is stretched just beyond the point where it stops being funny, with shots lingering just that tiny bit too much on someone's reaction and such. The great thing about The Naked Gun is its relentless pace at which it machine guns gags at you, and this feels like a revolver's pace at best. So yeah, doesn't really stand up to either of its closest comparison points, but it's not actively bad either.
Pretty sure I watched this during a flight, which means I was probably in a state of sleep deprivation at the time and so can barely remember the slightest thing about it. Except the overall sense it just wasn't good.Been trying to watch The Snowman the last three nights, and haven’t even made it an hour in.
Out of curiosity, I looked it up -
Just how TF is this the number one movie on Netflix right now? It’s one of the most vapid husks of a movie billed as a “crime drama thriller” that I’ve tried to watch. I think last chance will be tonight.
Speak no Evil - (Shudder)
Danish family go visit newfound Dutch family, ominous music and hints of cultural friction commence as things seem to spiral. Many years ago I remember a Danish girl telling me about how the Dutch and Danish sometimes perceive each other culturally overlaps a bit with the way the British and Americans oft can see other: as in Americans being loud, outspoken, obnoxious, while British are repressed, overly polite church mice...with the Dutch being the former and Danish being the latter. So was interested in this film merely to see if that girl was just chatting shit to fool my young dumb ignorant ass. Also to see what James McAvoy might be wanting to do with his alleged future adaption, which could likely be no more than the obvious swap to American/English cultural friction between strangers.
Anyway, it's solidly put together, direction and audio hitting high quality, performances all meeting standards too. (The main husband/father guy has a couple of expressions where his eyes did remind me of McAvoy's, jarringly) Extracting tension from simple social paranoias with ease, at least for the first half. Then, as things start to get bleaker, a lingering question starts jingling louder - "but why tho?" - a question the film claims to ask and answer through one character responding to another, but that answer is plain bollocks as it doesn't address all the mystery background hijinks at all, in fact it kinda handwaves and kicks all potential motivations for that shit under a rug, turning the bleakness more into frustration. I do hope the adaptation attempts to elaborate on those questions, cause while this is a rather neatly crafted psychological horror, I left it feeling quite empty, still asking "seriously but why tho?"
Danish family go visit newfound Dutch family, ominous music and hints of cultural friction commence as things seem to spiral. Many years ago I remember a Danish girl telling me about how the Dutch and Danish sometimes perceive each other culturally overlaps a bit with the way the British and Americans oft can see other: as in Americans being loud, outspoken, obnoxious, while British are repressed, overly polite church mice...with the Dutch being the former and Danish being the latter. So was interested in this film merely to see if that girl was just chatting shit to fool my young dumb ignorant ass. Also to see what James McAvoy might be wanting to do with his alleged future adaption, which could likely be no more than the obvious swap to American/English cultural friction between strangers.
Anyway, it's solidly put together, direction and audio hitting high quality, performances all meeting standards too. (The main husband/father guy has a couple of expressions where his eyes did remind me of McAvoy's, jarringly) Extracting tension from simple social paranoias with ease, at least for the first half. Then, as things start to get bleaker, a lingering question starts jingling louder - "but why tho?" - a question the film claims to ask and answer through one character responding to another, but that answer is plain bollocks as it doesn't address all the mystery background hijinks at all, in fact it kinda handwaves and kicks all potential motivations for that shit under a rug, turning the bleakness more into frustration. I do hope the adaptation attempts to elaborate on those questions, cause while this is a rather neatly crafted psychological horror, I left it feeling quite empty, still asking "seriously but why tho?"
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Audition, 8/10
A horror/drama by Takashi Miike from 1999, this film follows a widowed single father who starts to seek love again after 7 years of loneliness. He does this by arranging a fake audition for a movie role, and picking his favorite from the lineup of attractive women who show up. He soon finds his candidate and falls in love, but not everything is as it seems.
Funnily enough for a director known for films like Koroshiya 1, this is surprisingly restrained and slow-paced. For the first 45 minutes it's just a drama with no horror elements whatsoever, slowly transitioning into a mystery, and going full horror only at the end. It's a very thoughtful film with themes of cycling trauma and abuse, sexism, love at any cost, and social isolation. It has a very purposeful presentation that serves the escalation of events as much as the events themselves. The performances are great, the characters interesting and nuanced, and the score is used extremely sparingly. When the film wants to make you squirm, it manages it with flying colours. It's just great all around. I guess it could be a bit slow paced, but I don't really know what I'd take out of the movie if prompted.
A horror/drama by Takashi Miike from 1999, this film follows a widowed single father who starts to seek love again after 7 years of loneliness. He does this by arranging a fake audition for a movie role, and picking his favorite from the lineup of attractive women who show up. He soon finds his candidate and falls in love, but not everything is as it seems.
Funnily enough for a director known for films like Koroshiya 1, this is surprisingly restrained and slow-paced. For the first 45 minutes it's just a drama with no horror elements whatsoever, slowly transitioning into a mystery, and going full horror only at the end. It's a very thoughtful film with themes of cycling trauma and abuse, sexism, love at any cost, and social isolation. It has a very purposeful presentation that serves the escalation of events as much as the events themselves. The performances are great, the characters interesting and nuanced, and the score is used extremely sparingly. When the film wants to make you squirm, it manages it with flying colours. It's just great all around. I guess it could be a bit slow paced, but I don't really know what I'd take out of the movie if prompted.
This is a great example of a movie that is fine on the surface, but becomes better when you look deeper...deeper...deeper...
- Super Mario Brothers - 6-7/10
It does exactly what it needs to do to be fun and enjoyable and absolutely nothing more. It moves along fast and doesn't overstay it's welcome. All the set-piece type scenes are just pure fun Mario stuff. Most of the voice acting is really solid, Chris Pratt I thought was surprisingly good as he doesn't sound just like Chris Pratt. I felt Charlie Day was a good Luigi but his standard Charlie voice (from It's Always Sunny) does come and go from time to time. I didn't care for either of the main Kong voices, I didn't care for Seth Rogan as DK and nor did I care for the Cranky Kong. I don't even recall if the games (that I played at least) have a voice for Cranky or that I just always imagined Cranky as having like a very old man voice, but Cranky's VA did not come off very old man-ish. Jack Black is like a perfect Bowser.
It does exactly what it needs to do to be fun and enjoyable and absolutely nothing more. It moves along fast and doesn't overstay it's welcome. All the set-piece type scenes are just pure fun Mario stuff. Most of the voice acting is really solid, Chris Pratt I thought was surprisingly good as he doesn't sound just like Chris Pratt. I felt Charlie Day was a good Luigi but his standard Charlie voice (from It's Always Sunny) does come and go from time to time. I didn't care for either of the main Kong voices, I didn't care for Seth Rogan as DK and nor did I care for the Cranky Kong. I don't even recall if the games (that I played at least) have a voice for Cranky or that I just always imagined Cranky as having like a very old man voice, but Cranky's VA did not come off very old man-ish. Jack Black is like a perfect Bowser.
That's a pretty low bar. I'd say Knock at the Cabin is better than Nope, not that it's' a good movie but it's at least is like a half hour shorter. The problem with Knock at the Cabin is that it has to ride a super fine line (maybe even impossible line) in showing the protags/audience how believable the premise/situation is or else the decision the characters are forced into making is pretty easy and the movie goes too far in one direction where there's a pretty obvious "right" decision to be made.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, 7/10
The recent fantasy comedy adventure about a misfit gang of adventurers coming together for a heist, with all sorts of twists and turns along the way.
Mouthful of a title aside, I enjoyed this very much. It perfectly captures the genuine essence of tabletop DnD, with all the hijinks and fuck-ups it involves. The cast is basically perfect, with Hugh Grant stealing the show as the deliciously charming yet slimy ruler. But that doesn't mean the rest are slouches either: Chris Pine gets to flex his comedic chops for once, and he's great. Michelle Rodriguez and Sophia Lillis provide a perfect deadpan counterbalance to the comedy. It's got a good sense of humor, good chemistry between the actors, great variety in locations and setpieces (at times bordering on overstuffed) and some nicely creative action scenes. And definitely plenty of inside jokes and references that tabletop aficionados like myself will pick up on.
My perspective is obviously biased being a DnD player, but there's not really a lot I'd criticize it on. The stuff I would is mostly inconsequential: the CG isn't the best in the world, but the animation's great and it captures the spirit of things. The wonky CG is used for one very funny gag which I won't spoil, but got one of the biggest laughs out of the audience in the screening I was at. The opening backstory is definitely too long, and was played fairly straight which I didn't feel jelled with the rest of the movie all that well. I'd heard some people criticize its length, but for me there was never a dull or stretched moment, the pacing felt pretty great to me.
It's ultimately a pretty straightforward and insubstantial movie. The music and cinematography are nothing to write home about, and the themes are your very typical gang of misfits, found family type stuff. It's not gonna change your world, but it's not aiming to. What it sets out to do it succeeds very well at, with clear setup for a possible franchise, which I pray gets off the ground for once. The last decent big fantasy movie franchise we had was probably Pirates of the Caribbean, and even that lost steam quickly after they made Jack Sparrow the main character. Here they've got a great core cast and dynamic, solid writing, and a literal universe of possibilities for future stories and character development.
The recent fantasy comedy adventure about a misfit gang of adventurers coming together for a heist, with all sorts of twists and turns along the way.
Mouthful of a title aside, I enjoyed this very much. It perfectly captures the genuine essence of tabletop DnD, with all the hijinks and fuck-ups it involves. The cast is basically perfect, with Hugh Grant stealing the show as the deliciously charming yet slimy ruler. But that doesn't mean the rest are slouches either: Chris Pine gets to flex his comedic chops for once, and he's great. Michelle Rodriguez and Sophia Lillis provide a perfect deadpan counterbalance to the comedy. It's got a good sense of humor, good chemistry between the actors, great variety in locations and setpieces (at times bordering on overstuffed) and some nicely creative action scenes. And definitely plenty of inside jokes and references that tabletop aficionados like myself will pick up on.
My perspective is obviously biased being a DnD player, but there's not really a lot I'd criticize it on. The stuff I would is mostly inconsequential: the CG isn't the best in the world, but the animation's great and it captures the spirit of things. The wonky CG is used for one very funny gag which I won't spoil, but got one of the biggest laughs out of the audience in the screening I was at. The opening backstory is definitely too long, and was played fairly straight which I didn't feel jelled with the rest of the movie all that well. I'd heard some people criticize its length, but for me there was never a dull or stretched moment, the pacing felt pretty great to me.
It's ultimately a pretty straightforward and insubstantial movie. The music and cinematography are nothing to write home about, and the themes are your very typical gang of misfits, found family type stuff. It's not gonna change your world, but it's not aiming to. What it sets out to do it succeeds very well at, with clear setup for a possible franchise, which I pray gets off the ground for once. The last decent big fantasy movie franchise we had was probably Pirates of the Caribbean, and even that lost steam quickly after they made Jack Sparrow the main character. Here they've got a great core cast and dynamic, solid writing, and a literal universe of possibilities for future stories and character development.
Absent
And twice is the only way to live.
- Jan 25, 2023
- 1,594
- 1,558
- 118
- Country
- Switzerland
- Gender
- The boring one
That's unexpected, but nice. I'm not fond of that film, but I usually like people to like stuff more than I do. The introduction is awkward but amusing (the only 4th wall breaching aside in the whole series, and also the weird drawer props musical flash backs), as it's quite fascinating to see them struggle with their first actor change and how to introduce a new face (thankfully they ditched their plastic surgery plotline). I also love the old school action - I often joke about how, nowadays, the bobsleight would explode after leaving the track. And I love the music, in particular the introduction of that piz gloria assault tune which will be reused in Diamonds. Barry. Thankfully, Lazenby didn't manage to impose other musicians.A ★★★★ review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Yeah, this film has some issues, which is why it's not a 5 star. But man... After You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery WAS...done with being James Bond, leaving the role. In order to replace him, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman looked at several actors. One of the more notable actors...
But there's something about the casting that doesn't really work for me. It's not just Lazenby, but it's also that. It may be a superficial, sexist thing of mine about the movie urging me to find charming a bunch of women I don't find charming (not sure where that particular feeling comes from, I sometimes have the weird impression that this film is anchored in one year's or one person's atrocious sense of fashion, and I can think of no other film that gives me that impression). It may be my bias against Lazenby, because I've only ever read horror stories about his attitude, mindset and behaviour (if I remember well, he admitted a few in hindsight), but also I don't remember having ever found him charismatic. And there's an odd visual feel about that movie, that I can't pinpoint - about its look, its tint, maybe just too many night-for-days, especially in the ski chases. It's like that movie is less polished, visually, than the others. Or maybe a tad more sober ? This, and the one time Bond, make me often forget that film, as if not really fitting in the series. Like a metal plaque between two series of wooden planks.
Yet, "on the paper", it should be one of my favorites. I keep telling myself that I should rewatch it again, and give it one more chance to 'click'. In the meantime, I'm just happy if others appreciate it more. I feel that film deserved to be better, and the idea that, after all, maybe it is, is heartwarming.
(And again I should rewatch it.)
I really didn't remember liking it that much in the past, so it could be just a matter of it not quite clicking for you on previous watches. Or, as I mentioned, perhaps the parts that I liked are the very issues with the movie to some people.
Not one of my favourites, i seems a bit disjointed, and never really works for me as a Bond film.
Though, I do like the film where Bond has all sorts of trouble escaping from Blofield's facility, and runs into Tracy just when things seem the most hopeless.
Though, I do like the film where Bond has all sorts of trouble escaping from Blofield's facility, and runs into Tracy just when things seem the most hopeless.
Lazenby is not a good actor, but he was the right Bond for that movie: bland, ineffective, sort of emasculated. The first half is standard Bond but beginning at the mountain hideout the whole movie starts feeling like a nightmare. It's Bond unable to take pleasure in a whole buffet of lascivious women, Bond unable to get one over Blofeld, him constantly being trapped, failing to escape, being trapped again, then being chased endlessly across every manner of scenario in what feels like a morphing nightmare. I believe it's also the first time we see Bond not just afraid but vulnerable and in desperate need of help. And then of course that ending.
It's also been speculated that Lazenby was the sacrificial Bond. Being the only Bond who wasn't Connery is a big deal, being the third actor to play Bond is less likely to annoy the fans.
Murder Mystery (2019)
5/10
I guess movies like this must be produced on regular basis to keep the universe spinning... What can I say, didn't expected much, didn't get much. Cliché after cliché after cliché...
5/10
I guess movies like this must be produced on regular basis to keep the universe spinning... What can I say, didn't expected much, didn't get much. Cliché after cliché after cliché...