Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[thebobmaster]

It's also the movie that spawned the industry term 'bump the lamp', which refers to making a special effect way harder to achieve than it needs to just so you can show off how hard it was to achieve. In Roger Rabbit it was the scene in the back room of the bar where Eddie hits his head on the lamp causing it to swing, making the shading on Roger kinda a nightmare for the animators. And there was no reason for them to hit that lamp, but they did it anyway.

Also, at the time Disney was pretty much at a low point with animation, so the animation director for this movie was actually a british guy who I think had no affiliation with Disney.

Canadian-British, actually. Richard Williams, who was also well-known for being the animator for the credits of The Pink Panther movies and, most notoriously, the decades-long, screwed by the studio should-have-been magnum opus of his career The Thief and the Cobbler.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Polar

Loved it. Billed as The Professional plus John Wick, but definitely has its own identity beyond that. The kind that had me laughing, grinning, wincing, sympathizing, and anticipating more than either of them. There is some dark shit in this movie but it’s usually offset by an eccentric edit-porn styling enough to keep it from getting *too* heavy.

Speaking of heavy, I’d like to know how they got Dolly Parton’s permission to use “Islands in the Stream” for probably the most overkill kind of gun porn kill in its two hour run time.

 

[bluegate]

Dungeons and Dragons Honour among Thieves

Fun and light fantasy adventure movie. I liked seeing the characters from the 1990's cartoon make a cameo appearance.

And I might have a thing for bald ladies. But I think it's mostly the makeup around the eyes.

 

[BrawlMan]

Fun and light fantasy adventure movie. I liked seeing the characters from the 1990's cartoon make a cameo appearance.

1980s, but thank you.

 

[Hawki]

And I might have a thing for bald ladies. But I think it's mostly the makeup around the eyes.

Peh! Doric is my waifu!

 

[Bartholen]

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King extended edition in theaters, 10/10

The finale of what I now consider the greatest movies of all time. While Fellowship is overall more consistently good and remains my favorite of the three, there's no denying that this has the highest highs of the trilogy. There are so many iconic moments packed into this movie: the charge of the Rohirrim, the lighting of the beacons, "For Frodo", "You bow to no one", "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you" and so on. Still brings a tear to my eye 20 years later. It's also easily the best looking of the trilogy, both in effects (duh) and the cinematography. John Noble as Denethor is a show-stealing performance, and further reinforces that mythical, Shakespearean quality of the story. The battle of Minas Tirith does to me beat out Helm's Deep because of its sheer scale, and there being less of the tactical stupidity I mentioned with Two Towers. Jackson's horror roots also get to shine the most in this movie, since it's easily the bleakest and most oppressive of the three. The Shelob sequence goes so goddamn hard. And Theoden has become probably the most interesting character in the trilogy for me. He seems both straight up suicidal, yet also has his eyes firmly set on the future.

Because everyone already knows why this movie is great, it's easier to name what doesn't work. Gimli gets the short stick even harder in terms of characterization, and his comic relief almost ruins the Paths of the Dead scene. Alongside the Shelob segment it could easily have been a highlight of the trilogy if it didn't have the random humor inserts from Gimli. I paid extra attention to it, and you could achieve that with just simple editing. In the first third Frodo and Sam's storyline is rather repetitive, with the "Sam's distrust of Gollum causes tension and conflict" beat repeated like three times quite similarly. Past the Shelob scene it gets much better. The timescale of things can also be really confusing. For example, Faramir says he saw Frodo and Sam "not two days ago" when he meets Gandalf and Pippin, but Gandalf says Minas Tirith is a three-day ride away from Edoras. Meaning that the events in Osgiliath in Two Towers actually take place during the events in Edoras in Return of the King. It just highlights the problems of adapting this story into a movie format.

 

[gorfias]

G.I. Joe Retaliation on Netflix

This movie is a piece of junk that is, really fun junk to watch. 1/2 way through the movie is a bunch of ninjas zipplining through some mountains. If you don't watch anything else in this movie, skip to this scene.

Filmed a dozen years ago, the Rock shows that he has aged some as, he looks very different in this than in more recent films. A formidable B.A. And Bruce Willis is in it too!

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Just Like Heaven (2005) on Netflix. A young female doctor has no time for love. Literally, because she gets into a car accident. A grieving widower ends up renting her apartment, she astral projects herself in front of him, hilarity and romance ensue.

I'm not entirely sure why the movie is called Just Like Heaven. Obviously, the idea is that the time she spends with the widower can be seen as her "afterlife". But they don't particularly spend a lot of romantic time with each other, in fact they spend most of the movie fighting or quipping with each other.

I enjoy watching these old rom coms because I feel like these really silly and corny ideas would never be made these days. Or maybe I just don't watch modern rom coms in general? Not western ones at least. Anyway, the movie fits the mold perfectly. Not sure I could call it good, but I had fun and it made me laugh. Can't ask for much more than that.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★½ review of Moonraker (1979)

This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.

letterboxd.com

 

[SilentPony]

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy 3 last night. Its good, maybe even great. It hits a lot of notes it needed to hit, even if the constant, uncomfortable bickering got really old really fast.
Also its the cheapest of cheap, the laziest of lazy, the weakest of weak, to set up the main villain by just having him torture little baby animals. Like its almost comical - which comics, sure - levels of cruelty the High Evolutionary reaches. Like its not enough to mutilate and torture baby animals - he has to be a bi-polar jokester who laughs at the pain and calls his creations "abominations" and "failures" etc...
He does have one really great line "There is no God! That's why I stepped in". Great line, truly - just wish it wasn't one of his last lines in the movie, and that they had shown something, anything, of that personality in the rest of the movie. He's mostly just space Josef Mengele. At one point Starlord goes "the perfect society doesn't have heroine dealers" and HE goes "Yeah you're right. Blow up the world"
And its like wow, the laziness in this villain.
Everything else is pretty good. Cosmo is the best girl, Nebula is still great, Drax thankfully has next to nothing to do, Mantis is Mantis, Starlord is still fun. Gamora is the sticking point for me - she's intensely unlikable in this, and they play her acceptance and new life with the Ravagers as wholesome and a nice ending to her. Even have her laughing and dancing with her new family - totally forgetting the Ravagers are murders, kidnappers, cannibals, rapists, and pirates. Like she's basically joined a Space Cartel and everyone is like "aww, the serial rapists are telling jokes with the child murdering assassin. How sweet!"

Rocket is the heart of this movie and boy howdy does this get dark fast and really doesn't let up. Its dark. Very dark. This aint no kids movie.
Also the first use of "fuck" in a Marvel movie.

8/10 stars, this is not a date night movie.

 

[Thaluikhain]

A ★½ review of Moonraker (1979)

This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.

letterboxd.com

Supposedly the beginning bit with the parachuting (which was sorta cool until the comedy bit with Jaws) took weeks and dozens of jumps to film.

But yeah, this movie jsut doesn't gel, and they moved to a totally different feel to the next because of it. The incidental music, as usual, is pretty good, but the rest...eh.

 

[Absent]

A ★½ review of Moonraker (1979)

This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.

letterboxd.com

Tee hee hee.

I love that movie for all the wrong reasons (and one good : Lonsdale is always wonderful). Main wrong reason : spaaaaaace. And what a space. The boringest space battle ever (great music though) and the cheesiest zero grav sequence (slow motion tiptoeing and trampoline). It's one of the kiddiest Bond.

And most Bond movies are "go to setpiece for some reason and have and action scene and then go to another". Few of them have actual plots and investigations beyond "find the name of the next country". Everything is a pretext. Yes, the more pronounced it gets, the more tedious. Makes you appreciate the occasional plotline all the better.

And I wonder if I would have liked the pigeon double take if it had been done well (instead of that weird video backwards forwards). We'll never know.

BUT I would never say to anyone "don't watch Moonraker, you won't have fun".

 

[thebobmaster]

Supposedly the beginning bit with the parachuting (which was sorta cool until the comedy bit with Jaws) took weeks and dozens of jumps to film.

But yeah, this movie jsut doesn't gel, and they moved to a totally different feel to the next because of it. The incidental music, as usual, is pretty good, but the rest...eh.

The way you described the parachuting stuff is how I felt throughout the whole movie. Truly, I felt like I was watching two different movies at times, because you have the broad comedy moments and glorious sci-fi cheese...and then you have pretty much every moment Michael Lonsdale is on screen.

Tee hee hee.

I love that movie for all the wrong reasons (and one good : Lonsdale is always wonderful). Main wrong reason : spaaaaaace. And what a space. The boringest space battle ever (great music though) and the cheesiest zero grav sequence (slow motion tiptoeing and trampoline). It's one of the kiddiest Bond.

And most Bond movies are "go to setpiece for some reason and have and action scene and then go to another". Few of them have actual plots and investigations beyond "find the name of the next country". Everything is a pretext. Yes, the more pronounced it gets, the more tedious. Makes you appreciate the occasional plotline all the better.

And I wonder if I would have liked the pigeon double take if it had been done well (instead of that weird video backwards forwards). We'll never know.

BUT I would never say to anyone "don't watch Moonraker, you won't have fun".

That's fair enough. I think I mostly just found it tedious because I'd seen everything in this movie done better in The Spy Who Loved Me. Other than Michael Lonsdale's Drax, who was the superior villain of the two. The space battle at the end was glorious cheese, but too little, too late for me.

 

[Absent]

I think I mostly just found it tedious because I'd seen everything in this movie done better in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Moonraker is way more silly, narratively. Its defining moment, for me, is the

(sorry, i need a little massage between my eyes. there a bit of cringe to deal with, in that movie. besides moore in a poncho with the magnificent seven theme, i mean.)

its defining moment, I was saying, is the skeet shooting scene. Where Drax has put a sniper in a tree (because it's clearly the best time to deal with Bond), and Bond deliberately misses the clay pigeons to shoot him instead. "Missed." "You think so?" Sniper drops from tree. Everybody has a good laugh and resume their day.

It's the double take pigeon universe. That is, pure Chuck Jones. It's Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. Drax and Bond punch their card in the time clock, Drax tries to kill Bond a couple of times, he fails, and at the end of the day they greet each other goodbye until the next morning.

Roger Moore and Michael Lonsdale in Moonraker (1979)

And really, that's pretty much how Moore envisionned Bond. He adored the franchise and adored playing Bond but he detested James Bond and just considered the premise absolutely ridiculous - to him these films were cartoonish comedies, and taking them seriously would be absurd (maybe even a bit creepy). Depending on your perspective, you could say he did his best to sabotage or to salvage the franchise. Consider yourself lucky Jaws didn't simply crawl out of a Kiel-shaped hole in the ground, because I'm pretty sure Moore must have petitioned hard for that.

Still, I love the contrast with Drax's tone, I find it to work well in its own over-the-top way in a Bond movie. I find Lonsdale a bit cartoonish himself. His Abbot in The Name of the Rose, for instance, is surreal - and actually, Lonsdale himself, in real life, was quite a character, with his religious fervor (I have a book of prayers written by him, at work) and his ever eerie way to speak.

Also,

How the hell do you make a song with the word "Moonraker" in the lyrics not sound contrived

- WE DID IT, WE DID IT !! It was tough, they said it was impossible, but we DID IT.
- James Bond will return in : Octopussy.
- Fuck that.

 

[thebobmaster]

See, if there were more moments like that skeet shooting scene, I would like Moonraker a fair bit more. That was just the right level of camp...and then it was immediately followed up by Drax siccing his hounds on his former secretary. That's what I mean when I say it's like watching two different movies at times, and the tonal whiplash did not settle with me at all.

 

[thebobmaster]

Got back from Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Might do a full review tomorrow, but in the meantime, all I'll say is that it is probably my favorite GOTG movie, and a great send-off to the series.

 

[SilentPony]

Got back from Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Might do a full review tomorrow, but in the meantime, all I'll say is that it is probably my favorite GOTG movie, and a great send-off to the series.

Its a very solid movie. Hit a lot of the notes it needed to, even if Gamora and the bickering in general got real old, real fast.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

@1:12:00 Darren goes through in detail how Guardians 3 is basically an allegory for Gunn's "incident" with Disney. I'm pretty surprised how I haven't seen any other reviews/critiques talking about that considering how obvious it is. I pretty much alluded to that in my review when I said it was a very personal film for Gunn with some very biting and target dialogue. There's a few very specific lines where I was like "Oh damn!!! I know exactly who that line of dialogue was for."

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

And I might have a thing for bald ladies. But I think it's mostly the makeup around the eyes.

I hear G.I. Jane's getting a sequel.

 

[thebobmaster]

I hear G.I. Jane's getting a sequel.

Don't let Will Smith know.