What movies have you seen recently?

[aukevin]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

The Gift!


Go watch it, don't even read or watch a trailer on it, just go. SERIOUSLY! Went with the wife to watch it (her choice for this week) and I could not have been more impressed. It's a thriller with really good acting and unexpected twists, but nothing over the top. You leave the movie in anticipation of wanting to talk about it.

I'm going to go see it this weekend. Was trying to decide between Fantastic 4 and Vacation, but I keep hearing good reviews on The Gift. So I want to go see it before anything spoils it for me.

[JayBee74]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

The Gift!


Go watch it, don't even read or watch a trailer on it, just go. SERIOUSLY! Went with the wife to watch it (her choice for this week) and I could not have been more impressed. It's a thriller with really good acting and unexpected twists, but nothing over the top. You leave the movie in anticipation of wanting to talk about it.

Really good psychological thriller. Did you know that "Gordo" (Joel Edgerton) directed this film, in his directorial debut?

[redsrule]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

I watched War with Jason Statham and Jet Li earlier. Even though I saw the "twist" coming I enjoyed it. Although I wasn't a big fan of

Spoiler

the first actor that Jet Li was before he "died". Li was clearly smaller than him.

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[kalabasi]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

WHAT A PLESANT SURPRISE PEOPLE, I ALSO WATCHED Talladega..

[Bmore Irish]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Finally watched Nightcrawler and definitely liked it. Gylenhall was great, he sold that character so well.

[elgreazy1]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Really good psychological thriller. Did you know that "Gordo" (Joel Edgerton) directed this film, in his directorial debut?

Yeah, found that out afterwards on IMDB. Dude was solid! Didn't know he was foreign, which explains and IMO adds to) a lot of the character's overall awkwardness.

[SPTO]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Watched a couple movies last night


Dr. Cyclops (1940)

A mad scientist working in the South American jungle miniaturizes his colleagues when he feels his megalomania is threatened.

Pretty much what you'd expect based on that little blurb however there are a couple things worth noting. This was filmed in Technicolor which is a bit of an odd choice for a "mad scientist" movie but really brings out the scenery and the interaction between the miniaturized people and their environment.

Albert Dekker plays the mad scientist with gusto and you really get the feeling that he was holed up in the jungles for so long that he's lost all sanity. This is pretty much tipped off at the beginning of the movie when he kills his partner before summoning other experts to come and help him fix the errors in his experiment.

The shrunken down people and their interactions with the larger world was done pretty well especially for that time period however that's where the movie kind of loses steam as much of that time is punctuated with the music score (which isn't bad at all really) and dialogue is eschewed in favor the special effects of seeing miniaturized people.

Overall, not a bad film but could've been a little better.



California (1947)

"Wicked" Lily Bishop (Barbara Stanwyck) joins a wagon train to California, led by Michael Fabian (Barry Fitzgerald) and Johnnny Trumbo, (Ray Milland) but news of the Gold Rush scatters the train. When Johnny and Michael finally arrive, Lily is rich from her saloon and storekeeper (former slaver) Pharaoh Coffin (George Coulouris) is bleeding the miners dry. But worse troubles are ahead: California is inching toward statehood, and certain people want to make it their private empire.

This Western tried to be a sprawling epic however its let down by an extremely hokey opening credits (where a rousing, overdramatic song is being sung showing the majesty of California) and a rough 20ish minutes with the wagon train heading to California. That being said, once all the players are there it picks up and turns into a pretty good flick.

I'm a huge fan of Barbara Stanwyck and she was AWESOME in this movie playing a strong woman with a past. I love the fact that she grew up in the gambling milieu as there are a couple bookending gambling scenes. The first of which where she beats Milland utterly at poker and then later when they're in California and she owns a gambling house/saloon and Milland gets his revenge winning everything including the house.

Barry Fitzgerald is also pretty good in this one and I enjoy anything he's in as he usually plays the kind hearted, wise Irishman. Here, he gets roped into the statehood battle and enlisted to speak at the state convention. Even when Milland finds out that Fitzgerald is going to be assassinated the old guy still goes through with it because he believed in the people wanting to be part of the union.

All in all, a pretty good film that really gets going 20 minutes into it. The Pharaoh Coffin character is a little more nuanced than some of the greedy "I want to make California my fiefdom" villains in other films of this type. The slave trader aspect is also played up pretty well with him being haunted by the evil that he's done.

If you do check out this film look out for a young Anthony Quinn as a reluctant member of the camp that wants to make California an independent empire.

[DonkeyJote]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Watched the movie Copenhagen. I thought it was amazing. Pretty much the perfect level of uncomfortable for the subject matter.

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[daflyboys]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Little Boy. Not exactly as the trailer played it out. You would be led to believe that it's one of those packaged Christian movies that tend to have poor acting and storyline. I will say I thought the editing was a bit fragmented, but overall there are some good performances. If anyone was miscast it was Kevin James, though it wasn't a deal breaker. Depending on your mood, you may need a kleenex or two.

[Blzer]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

V/H/S/2

I could probably quote my impressions from the first film, and all would be about the same.

V/H/S

Ran into it based on what someone said about it in the Netflix Movie Club thread. It was trippy awesome, freaky, and sporadic all at once. I was into it, and thought it was pretty well done for what seemed pretty low budget. I can see why people rated it low in some respects, but in others I thought it creeped me out in ways horror films are least able to do so these days.

The sequel has one or two less segments, though. Made for the segments to be more stretched out, though sadly there were two of them that didn't do the viewer a favor by stretching them out more. I thought three of the four tapes were pretty good though, all the same.

This one goes for more gore shock value than the original one, and no handheld cameras are featured through the four segments, which was probably better to explain how it is people are filming things while running and such (hidden cameras on their person or GoPro cameras were the main features here).

I think there is a third one also available on Netflix, so I'll be checking it out as soon as possible. One thing I like about these films is they are so wacky and out there, and yet we can accept literally every single thing we see without it needing to explain itself. As I use the same adjective to describe the first one, this is the trippiest kind of horror in the genre that I can really accept (although 2 is not nearly as trippy as 1).

[SPTO]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Watched a couple noirs over the last few days. One is a classic of the genre and the other is an interesting B flick mainly for the locale:

Cry of the City (1948)

I'm not going to say too much about this movie because this is an absolute classic and a masterful film. It basically takes the old 1930s "two friends who go opposite ways" formula that Pat O'Brien and James Cagney made popular and adds significant heft to it. Victor Mature plays the cop while Richard Conte is the friend from the neighborhood who's become nothing more than a crook.

Here's a good plot summary:

Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, (Conte) in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella (Mature) must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?

Great direction by Robert Siodmak who ratchets up the tension. There's a great sequence where Conte has one of his many lady friends driving him around as he's bleeding out and she gets a doctor to work on him in the car without a proper medical license. The tension of getting caught or Conte dying is palpable throughout. The dynamics between Mature and Conte's family is also explored and looked at in depth as Conte's younger brother looks up to him and wants to be just like his idol. Mature not only has to stop Conte but also look out for his kid brother and try to steer him down the right path.

I urge anyone interesting in crime or noir flicks to check this out. You won't regret it.


The other flick is called Cry Vengeance (1954) and is notable for being set in Alaska. This is pretty unusual for that time as Alaska wasn't even a state yet and it's pretty unusual to have a revenge flick set there.

Veteran B movie actor Mark Stevens plays the hero in this one and he's a pretty grim and forboding figure throughout as he seeks revenge on the guy who planted a bomb in his car which killed his wife and kid. Just like future revenge films that would come down through the years stevens will do just about anything to get his revenge but in the end he just can't put himself to do it as he forms a bond with the guy's young daughter. In the end though, it turns out the guy he was hunting down wasn't the killer but rather someone else and it all comes to a head in the end.

Not a bad little time waster though I believe it isn't commercially available as I saw a VHSrip of it.

[Majingir]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

[Blzer]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Is that another Wolverine movie in 2017 I'm looking at?

[BlueNGold]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Is that another Wolverine movie in 2017 I'm looking at?

Yep. The final one with Hugh Jackman, apparently.

Also, you can proooobably take Fantastic 4 2 out of there. Just a guess.

[redsox4evur]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Just watched the Amazing Spider-Man 1. I liked it, I thought Garfield was pretty good as SpiderMan. And I liked that they chose a different villain than Green Goblin. The action scenes were good but not the best I have seen.