What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Benzadmiral]

Tom Hanks is the late 20th-early 21st century answer to Jack Lemmon. Both began their careers on TV and shifted to movies, both began with light comedy and grew into dramatic roles. Imagine Tom playing Bud in The Apartment. Picture the young Jack in You've Got Mail or Sleepless in Seattle, and the older Jack in Bridge of Spies or Catch Me If You Can.

And of course we have the parallel of Jack crossdressing in Some Like It Hot, and Tom doing the same in TV's Bosom Buddies.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Color of Money," the '86 sequel to '61's "The Hustler"

I remember being excited in '86 to see "The Color Of Money" and being disappointed by it. Having just watched it again for the first time since, I was right - it is a poor, poor sequel to a classic movie.

"The Hustler" benefits from a seedy version of the cool Rat Pack style of the '60s that has aged well; whereas, "The Color Of Money" has a cheesy '80s style that age has not helped. But superficials aside and to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there is no there, there in "The Color Of Money." You have the same Tom Cruise "talented cocky kid gets knocked down a peg, learns his lesson and comes back stronger and humbler" story - yawn and, with Newman's character, the "aging 'athlete' trying a comeback well past his prime" story - yawn again.

"The Hustler" had mob intrigue as it controlled the pool players in '61 - the players were like race horses and treated no better. In it, you felt the grit of the pool hall and the grasping for money. The intensity of the mano-a-mano battles between Gleason and Newman was exhilarating and exhausting. Newman's love life, his arrogance toward women, his insecurities with women, his physical and emotional need for them were all visceral and real.

But in "The Color Of Money" it's all surface and forced. The intrigue around Newman's character - Fast Eddie Felson - putatively banned from pool by the mob back in '61 is all but ignored as the focus is on nothing more than Felson addressing aging and one last chance (all done better, if quixotically, in "The Natural"). Cruise's insecurity in his relationship with his girlfriend is by the numbers. The booze and drugs are glossed over; the pool games fly by fast without much meaning and the life of the pool hall is ignored. Basically, everything that made '61 a classic is taken out to make this a by-the-numbers Cruise vehicle with Newman there for gravitas.

And to be fair, Newman is the only thing - the absolute only thing - that adds any quality to this big ball of glossed-up cheese. But he can't rescue a movie without a real story, a new story or an interesting take on an old one.

The only good thing to come out of it is the pretty decent Clapton song, "It's in the Way that You Use It." Even his average work, like this song, is pretty good. And it was fun to see a young John Turturro - recently seen killing it as the down-and-out lawyer in "The Night Of -" as a hack pool shark.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Sausage Party. Nowhere near as clever as the reviews indicated. A one- or two-joke idea beaten into the ground, overflowing with embarrassingly outdated stereotypes. I laughed occasionally, but its religion-blinds-people-from-seeing-the-horror-of-it-all-and-keeps-them-in-line allegory, while a gutsy thing for an animated film to say, just isn't enough to sustain a feature-length film... no matter how many oh-how-naughty-for-a-cartoon! sex and drug jokes are appended.

Oh, and guys, I've also been solidly in the "Forrest Gump is shallow, manipulative, and inexplicably-considered-a-great-film" club from my first viewing.

 

[MisterCairo]

Last night was movie night. For the girls, the Jungle Book live action film. So good I fell asleep at one point. Idris Elba's voice was great though.

After bed-ee bye time for them, the wife and I saw RocknRolla again. We hadn't seen it in ages, and it never fails to entertain!

Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy (unrecognizable compared to his Delaney in Taboo) and Tom Wilkinson. Brilliant work from Guy Ritchie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032755/?ref_=nv_sr_2

 

[Bushman]

Crimson Peak - a bit clichéd and predictable story wise, but I loved the blending of paranormal and slasher genres alongside the use of color.

 

[Doctor Strange]

X-Men Apocalypse. Terrible, a new low for the series (though X-Men Origins: Wolverine is still the worst). Wastes Oscar Isaac as the titular villain, yet another I-must-destroy-the-world-to-improve-it monster buried under tons of prosthetic makeup whose powers and origin are entirely under-explained. Formerly interesting stars Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and James McAvoy walk through listlessly, trapped in multi-picture deals. (Even Rose Byrne, who's been something of an MVP in a lot of recent films, is completely wasted reprising Moira MacTaggert.) Some of the younger actors do okay (I really liked Sophie Turner as the much-younger-than-Famke-Janssen-in-2000 Jean Grey) and there are some clever moments, but this series is now tired and overextended.

And I had to keep reminding myself that the timeline was reset in the previous film, so introducing characters like Nightcrawler and Woleverine far in advance of their intros in the early X-films wasn't really a continuity error... And that made my head hurt even more.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Free World

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Hell or High Water

Awesome.

Scenes for that film were shot in my little town of Estancia, NM. The "What don't you want?" diner scene was shot in the old Blue Ribbon Bar and Grill (now closed) literally right around the corner from my house. The bank catty-corner to the diner was demolished right after filming. A pity, it was more than 100 years old but too dilapidated to restore.

 

[Touchofevil]

X-Men: Apocalypse

 

[Benzadmiral]

Scenes for that film were shot in my little town of Estancia, NM. The "What don't you want?" diner scene was shot in the old Blue Ribbon Bar and Grill (now closed) literally right around the corner from my house. The bank catty-corner to the diner was demolished right after filming. A pity, it was more than 100 years old but too dilapidated to restore.

I was just about to comment on Hell or High Water. It's an enjoyable sort-of-noir crime movie, even though there is not much literal darkness anywhere in it. Grand performances from Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, and the actor who plays Pine's ex-con brother. There's some welcome humor (not comedy as one of the reviews at IMDb.com has it).

The waitress at the "What don't you want" diner says she's hot, and at first I wondered, "Don't these people have air conditioning?" But then I remembered my visit in 2014 to Archer City, Texas, and my uncomfortably warm lunch at the local small eatery. Even Larry McMurtry's bookshops weren't cooled, and I threw up my hands and escaped back to my car.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Papa Hemmingway in Cuba"

The true (supposedly, probably based-on would have been better) story of a Miami-based journalist who is befriended by Hemingway in the late '50s and has regular sojourns at Hemingway's house in Cuba as he becomes part of "Hem's" inner circle.

The surface story is how the journalist - orphaned at an early age and unable to commit to his girlfriend - learned about life from Hemingway's books and, now, from "Papa" himself. Hinted at and partly revealed is the story of the FBI investigation - playing out a Hemingway-Hoover feud - into Hemingway and his possible gun-running (taken as fact here) for, I guess, the Cuba rebels (another revolution by the people where the people ended up worse off than before - see ditto USSR 1917).

Hemingway's fame, writer's block, "black" moods, infidelity and (seemingly at odds with said infidelity) impotence (I don't even like typing that word) are on display here in the modern way of laying it all bare. With only a thin reed of a story and the already well-known Hemingway disfunctions to work with, the movie is left with acting and visuals to distinguish itself.

The acting is adequate but not impressive with Adrian Sparks turning in a stilted Hemingway and Minka Kelly, who seemed to have disappeared after "Friday Night Lights," showing some decent acting chops as the journalist's suffering girlfriend. Giovanni Ribisi, as the journalist, carries the story along competently, but either the material or his limitations keeps the story from every really lifting off.

But the visuals do not disappoint as the clothes, cars, sets, homes (partly filmed in Cuba at Hemingway's old house) are all impressive, but the lights are turned up too brightly in every scene as, apparently, the usual tonal softness that creates a time-period feel was mistakenly tossed aside. There's nothing really new here, but it is, basically, a decent little film for fans of Hemingway and / or the time period.

 

[AmateisGal]

National Treasure. I still love this movie and how it sparks people to learn about American history.

 

[Worf]

"Get Out" - Wow... who knew Peel had it in em! To me the mark of a good/great movie is how much it makes you think about it, talk about it, write about it afterwards. Some movies are so shallow you can't remember you saw them mere days later. Not this one. Smart, well acted, well written and chilling to the bone. What's best about it is the dialogue. Too often some movies revolving around African American characters don't get the speech or idioms right. They neither know how we speak nor more importantly, how we THINK when faced with hinkty situations. This movie get's it 100% RIGHT. The film is tense, funny at points as well as poignant. Can't recommend it any more highly.

Worf

 

[green papaya]

DILLINGER [theatrical release 1945]

Former Indiana farmboy John Dillinger also knew where the money was. And his string of early-1930s heists, murders and daring jailbreaks were so bold and notorious he became Public Enemy #1. Dillinger, Oscar-nominated* for its screenplay, is the bullet-paced story of the man whose crimes captivated and terrified the nation.

 

[sinGN]

Lady Eve

 

[Bushman]

Logan. A fitting and to Jackmans era as Wolverine.

 

[Stearmen]

The Cockeyed Miracle. (1946)

 

[green papaya]

The BLACK STALLION 1979 starring Kelly Reno & Mickey Rooney

 

[MisterCairo]

The BLACK STALLION 1979 starring Kelly Reno & Mickey Rooney

View attachment 69417 View attachment 69418

We saw this on its release, at the Toronto Eaton Centre's Cineplex (21 screens - TWENTY ONE!!!). We were blown away...

We bought it recently and our girls loved it too.

 

[MisterCairo]

Movie night with the girls - Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.