Movie What's the last movie you saw? (7)

[UnitedWarrior93]

Pompeii (2014)

Watched this sunday night, and tbh wasn't to bad for something to wind down to to end the weekend. A bit of Gladiator meets disaster movie, acting was ok, story was basic, visuals were good and so was the music, 6/10.

 

[Forward Press]

Asteroid City (2023)

It's Wes Anderson, you know what you're getting in terms of cinematography and use of colour (or lack of). Intriguing setting and fourth wall breaks and mostly deftly constructed with a nice cameo at the end (viewers will know which scene I'm talking about) which probably stole the show.

As a side note, I'd struggle to think of another recent movie with so many recognisable faces (Steve Carell, Scarlett Johannson, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, the list goes on...) it is a true ensemble cast but possibly the least famous of them (Jason Schwartzmann) is the most compelling and interesting one in it.

8/10

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

Nosferatu - Liked it but still prefer Werner Herzog’s 1979 version with Klaus Kinski in lead role. 6.5/10

 

[JackOutback]

Wolf Man… effective horror/thriller without adding anything new to the idea. Tight at just over 90 minutes, moody, with an emotional centre that gets the job done. A man takes his wife an daughter to the remote Oregon woods to clear out his survivalist’s father’s house only to be attacked by a mysterious beast. The dad begins to transform into something else and becomes the threat to the family he’s supposed to protect. 7/10

 

[checkraiseulite]

A Real Pain

I've always liked Jesse Eisenberg - he reminds me of a more serious Michael Cera.

Tightly written and directed little dramedy about two cousins on a holocaust tour in Poland. Felt like a very personal story to Eisenberg - at times cringe-inducing and at times poignant. A brisk 85 minutes til the credits roll 7.5/10



Culkin's character (Benji) was insufferable no doubt, but we are seeing the movie through Jesse's POV and he was really struggling with the obnoxiousness of his cousin, which made it more palatable/relatable for me. I don't think Benji was celebrated because it was made clear he was a pretty flawed human.


Again I think this was well done because it was Benji, paradoxically, who addressed the fact they hadn't been engaging with any Polish people on the tour.

Totally understand your response and I was thinking about it while watching it. Basically I thought everyone's flaws and behaviours were sufficiently criticised within the film haha.

agree with both of your points of view.

thought it was still a good movie and one that’s easy to empathise with.

culkin was really well cast and played his character perfectly.

 

[Chief]

Wolf Man… effective horror/thriller without adding anything new to the idea. Tight at just over 90 minutes, moody, with an emotional centre that gets the job done. A man takes his wife a daughter to the remote Oregon woods to clear out his survivalist’s father’s house only to be attacked by a mysterious beast. The dad begins to transform into something else and becomes the threat to the family he’s supposed to protect. 7/10

I remember seeing American Werewolf in London as a kid. That was not the right age to see that movie

 

[Jarman3]

Den of Thieves 2 got released in the cinemas in the US last week.

It came out here on 9th Jan, and it has pretty much disappeared already.

 

[Jarman3]

Asteroid City (2023)

It's Wes Anderson, you know what you're getting in terms of cinematography and use of colour (or lack of). Intriguing setting and fourth wall breaks and mostly deftly constructed with a nice cameo at the end (viewers will know which scene I'm talking about) which probably stole the show.

As a side note, I'd struggle to think of another recent movie with so many recognisable faces (Steve Carell, Scarlett Johannson, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, the list goes on...) it is a true ensemble cast but possibly the least famous of them (Jason Schwartzmann) is the most compelling and interesting one in it.

8/10

Wes Anderson always pulls a good cast together these days - everyone is lining up to get into one of his movies. I have been a huge fan since I saw Rushmore back in 1999 or whenever it was. I do feel like he probably peaked with The Grand Budapest Hotel. Since then it feels like he's been leaning more and more into the Wes Anderson-ness at the expense of interesting stories and characters. The French Dispatch was starting to go that way (although I liked it better on repeat viewings), and Asteroid City just leaned into it even further. Like The French Dispatch, I enjoyed it more when I watched it again, but I'm a long, long way from loving it.

I'm hoping on his next one he'll get back to the basics of interesting characters and stories then layer the Wes-ness on top of that, like his early movies. Just being a "Wes Anderson" movie isn't really enough if the foundation isn't good enough.

 

[Ry009]

I love ad astra, magnificent film that got absolutely no love

My man. I love it as well.

I'll try and watch it at least once a year now.

I wonder if people went in thinking it was going to be Interstellar (which I really like) or something else?

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

My man. I love it as well.

I'll try and watch it at least once a year now.

I wonder if people went in thinking it was going to be Interstellar (which I really like) or something else?

Liked it but I thought it borrowed a little too much from Apocalypse Now/ Heart of Darkness. Pitt /Sheen, Brando / Tommy Lee ie a brilliant man who goes off grid. Even the narration from Pitt is similar. “What made he go this way” or something very similar. Even hitching a ride with other ship/boat

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

Wes Anderson always pulls a good cast together these days - everyone is lining up to get into one of his movies. I have been a huge fan since I saw Rushmore back in 1999 or whenever it was. I do feel like he probably peaked with The Grand Budapest Hotel. Since then it feels like he's been leaning more and more into the Wes Anderson-ness at the expense of interesting stories and characters. The French Dispatch was starting to go that way (although I liked it better on repeat viewings), and Asteroid City just leaned into it even further. Like The French Dispatch, I enjoyed it more when I watched it again, but I'm a long, long way from loving it.

I'm hoping on his next one he'll get back to the basics of interesting characters and stories then layer the Wes-ness on top of that, like his early movies. Just being a "Wes Anderson" movie isn't really enough if the foundation isn't good enough.

Spot on reflects my thoughts on Anderson.

 

[phantom13]

[

My man. I love it as well.

I'll try and watch it at least once a year now.

I wonder if people went in thinking it was going to be Interstellar (which I really like) or something else?

I suspect it’s a little too “slow” and a little too thematically specific for a lot of people to connect with. There’s a lot of silence in it.

Liked it but I thought it borrowed a little too much from Apocalypse Now/ Heart of Darkness. Pitt /Sheen, Brando / Tommy Lee ie a brilliant man who goes off grid. Even the narration from Pitt is similar. “What made he go this way” or something very similar. Even hitching a ride with other ship/boat

I just don’t see how this is a bad thing. Every movie made is borrowing from something, if you’re doing it well I don’t see why you mark it down for that.

 

[crafty_bernardo]

My man. I love it as well.

I'll try and watch it at least once a year now.

I wonder if people went in thinking it was going to be Interstellar (which I really like) or something else?

Ad Astra and First Man belong to severely underrated space films

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

I just don’t see how this is a bad thing. Every movie made is borrowing from something, if you’re doing it well I don’t see why you mark it down for that.

Not to that extent …imo.

 

[joey_jo_jo]

Liked it but I thought it borrowed a little too much from Apocalypse Now/ Heart of Darkness. Pitt /Sheen, Brando / Tommy Lee ie a brilliant man who goes off grid. Even the narration from Pitt is similar. “What made he go this way” or something very similar. Even hitching a ride with other ship/boat

I still havent gotten around to watching this but I thought it was marketed as an adaptation of the original Heart of Darkness novella (but in space). Or maybe critics just described it as that and I am misremembering it

 

[Alberto_Magnifico]

Smile 2

Heard it was a good sequel, some even said better than the first. I must be missing something because I hated almost every second of it.
The main character annoyed me, all the song and dance routines were lame and I just wanted her to hurry up and die.
1/5

 

[Beerfish]

Smile 2

Heard it was a good sequel, some even said better than the first. I must be missing something because I hated almost every second of it.
The main character annoyed me, all the song and dance routines were lame and I just wanted her to hurry up and die.
1/5

Sounds dire. What would you rate the first one?

 

[Alberto_Magnifico]

Sounds dire. What would you rate the first one?

From memory It was about 3/5 - like a more than passable pizza and beer session with mates type of horror

 

[Frank Bunn]

Den of Thieves (2018)

It's a heist movie in the style of Heat. Pablo Schreiber leads a gang of ex-special forces to rob a Federal Reserve building. O'Shea Jackson is the driver. Gerrard Butler plays Big Nick who is in charge of an outlaw LA Sheriff's team.

The plot moves along nicely with only a couple of nonsense moments like

Spoiler

why did the security guards risk their lives for an empty truck? The fake robbery of the small bank was pointless.

It doesn't quite have the star quality of Pacino and De Niro but the action scenes are just as good as Heat.

7/10



Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (2025)

Gerrard Butler and O'Shea Jackson reprise their roles but in more of a buddy relationship.

It's mostly set in exotic parts of Europe and the heist is very technical, so it feels more like Mission Impossible than Heat. It all looks fantastic.

The plot is implausible but not jarringly so. More problematic are the unnecessary scenes that drag the runtime out to 2 hours 20. There's one set of generic crims too many to keep track of.

It's flawed but it's a watchable follow-up and they have set it up for a 3rd movie.

6/10

 

[Jarman3]

It doesn't quite have the star quality of Pacino and De Niro but the action scenes are just as good as Heat.

There is nothing in Den Of Thieves that comes even remotely close to the bank robbery shootout in Heat.

 

[spinynorman]

Nosferatu - the new version. The least interesting version too. It was fine, and I did initially really enjoy its setting of mood and atmosphere, but it really did drag for a while. I feel like Eggers is suffering a little from diminishing returns and is getting a bit repetitive.

Conclave - if this sounded a bit stuffy on paper (director of the All Quiet on the Western Front remake, about the death of a pope and the conclave to elect a new one), this surprised me by how enjoyable it was. Ralph Fiennes is the Dean of the College of Cardinals who’s facilitating the conclave and one by one finding issues with each of the major candidates. It’s twisty and silly and a lot of fun, to be honest.

 

[Chief]

Civil War - They missed a trick by promoting this with the emphasis on the crazy Trump fans and forgetting to include the main story in the trailers.

 

[Sketi]

My mate and I did our tradition of binging some of the big horror movies we missed from the year.

MadS - crazy French "one shot" horror film. Surprisingly scary and stressful 7.5/10

The Substance - two punishing French directed movies in a row. The fact this got 5 Oscar nominations is WILD - big for the genre 9/10

Alien: Romulus - flawed and annoying at times (Ian Holm deepfake wtf?), but visually pretty undeniable and some great gore 6/10

Longlegs - typically atmospheric entry from Osgood Perkins, nice cinematography. I think it suffered from the hype and being a bit more subdued than people were expecting, but I enjoyed it for what it was 7/10

 

[emuboy]

Last year was notorious for movie flops, but has anyone else found no appeal with any mainstream movies released in December 2024 and January 2025? Normally some blockbuster movies are released this time of year, but not this summer and none of the recent films in any genre look interesting or worth seeing. They look like streaming release movies.

Do we really need yet another biopic about Bob Dylan? Another musical biopic about an English singer/musician who for reasons nobody seems able to explain is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee? A depressing melodrama about a young wife/mother who is dying of cancer but the scenes in the movie are out of sequence? A werewolf movie that looks from trailer alone flat out boring? Or a crime-action film that again looks like a Netflix movie?

At least with most of the movies last year they looked to have some appeal to their audiences before it became apparent they were no good (e.g. Madam Web, Argyle, Borderlands) or were perfectly good movies that simply failed to find an audience (The Fall Guy, Fly Me to the Moon). But this year so far ...

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

A Different Man (Prime) - quirky black comedy about a lonely guy with cranial facial condition who undergoes radical transformation. Yeah sounds similar to Substance but it’s not. Can see why Sebastian Stan has getting accolades.. terrific as is Adam Person, a guy who actually has real life condition. Enjoyed it - 7.5/10