What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

Last night I watched "Hocus Pocus", the 90's Disney TV movie classic tale of witches and black cats. Still as fun as the first time I watched it, and considering it's as old as I am, I find it interesting how well the movie has aged. It's not an effects driven movie, so there's not a lot to date in the first place, but nor is it technologically prevalent so there's no VCRs, Walkmans, audio cassettes, or blocky TVs or computers that forces the age of the movie. The fact that much of the movie was filmed in Salem, Mass, which is where it takes place, also adds to the theatricality and the old, Colonial style archetecture ensures there's no "look how 80s/90s that building is!"In fact, I would say that the cheap production values and on location filming lends to a form of realism in the movie that is often overlooked in these LA-filmed Halloween movies. You notice the characters breath condensing in the air, and real autumn trees that you wouldn't have gotten if the movie was filmed in any place other than New England. The only thing that really dates the movie is the clothing worn by the teenagers, which is unequivocally 90s. The movie remains a fun, enjoyable movie for all ages, and the liberal usage of adult humor ensures that the adults have as much fun as the children.

Then I watched Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow" with Johnny Depp as the skittish, but brave Ichabod Crane. The directing is definitely Burton's, with actors hamming it up for the camera and the general workable cliches that one would expect of the tale of Sleepy Hollow. Regardless, the movie still manages to be creepy enough to leave you with a chill up your spine as cold as the late Autumn air. The movie's prevalent usage of fog effects, twisted dark forests, and crooked Colonial archetecture creates this old time All's Hallow Eve feeling that makes you jump at every creepy jackolantern topped scarecrow standing in the middle of an unharvested corn field.

We've watched Hocus Pocus this season and have Sleepy Hollow on for this coming weekend. Got it in a double feature DVD set with Dark Shadows.

 

[Bushman]

We've watched Hocus Pocus this season and have Sleepy Hollow on for this coming weekend. Got it in a double feature DVD set with Dark Shadows.

Dark Shadows is also set on my DVR to be watched.

 

[AmateisGal]

The new Beauty and the Beast. Quite a sumptuous film with gorgeous costumes and sets. It was quite well done, though I still prefer the animated Disney version from the 1990s.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I was very disappointed in the new Beauty and the Beast. I didn't think it added anything worthwhile to the 1991 animated classic, which is by far my favorite of the latter-day Disney animated films. Sure, it's longer... and loaded with uncanny valley characters and CGI overkill. It adds some new weak songs and questionable plot points (e.g., does it change Belle's character in any significant way to have her learn that her mother died of plague?!?) The cast labors mightily to live up to the cartoon, and here and there I found it, um, okay. But compared to the masterpiece it's replicating so closely...

OTOH, it made over a billion dollars, so what do I know?

 

[MisterCairo]

Dark Shadows is also set on my DVR to be watched.

I had never seen the tv show, so I had no preconceived ideas about it. I really enjoy it, and my wife who just saw it with me really liked it too!


Error alert - I have lived in Victoria BC, and there is no skiing there...

 

[Jaxenro]

I had never seen the tv show, so I had no preconceived ideas about it. I really enjoy it, and my wife who just saw it with me really liked it too!

The original show was a classic of bad TV. Actors who forgot lines, sets that fell apart

 

[green papaya]

HOT RODS TO HELL (1966) starring Dana Andrews , Jeanne Crain

Dana Andrews stars as a father who brings his wife and daughter to California to start a new life, but finds a gang of delinquent teens who are racing their Hot Rods to Hell.

 

[Benzadmiral]

The original show was a classic of bad TV. Actors who forgot lines, sets that fell apart

It was the hot show when I was in junior high and high school. The show aired at 3 pm locally, and I didn't get out of school and get home until nearly 4 -- and this was pre-VCR and way pre-DVR. So I never caught the bug.

There are a couple of references to it in David McDaniel's last published U.N.C.L.E. novel, The Hollow Crown Affair. I didn't get the joke until my first wife, who had seen DS, explained it to me.

 

[Doctor Strange]

In the NYC market, Dark Shadows aired at 4pm, and therefore was nearly daily afterschool viewing for many of us. Sure, it was done cheap and fast and was loaded with missed cues and mistakes - not to mention endlessly stupid absurd plots - but when I was 12, 13, 14, it was my beloved "spook opera". And boy, did I have a crush on Lara Parker as the witch Angelique!



And count me as one of the original Dark Shadows fans who like the Tim Burton film a lot. Sure, it's a broad comedy... but DS richly deserves that treatment, and it's obviously done with affection. (And Eva Green is a worthy Angelique!)

Also worth noting is that Dark Shadows was immediately followed by ABC's 4:30 Movie, which introduced me/us to many great movies... though they were typically SEVERELY edited to fit into its 70 or so minutes of airtime minus commercials. So my later viewings of many of those same films revealed surprising plot additions and less jerky, better storytelling!

 

[LizzieMaine]

My cousin was an obsessive fan of that show, and forced me to play endless rounds of the "Dark Shadows" board game. Me, I preferred "The EDGE... of NIGHT!"

 

[Trenchfriend]

"The land before time", on my VHS-cassette.

Littlefood...

 

[TimeWarpWife]

Last night I watched "Hocus Pocus", the 90's Disney TV movie classic tale of witches and black cats. Still as fun as the first time I watched it, and considering it's as old as I am, I find it interesting how well the movie has aged. It's not an effects driven movie, so there's not a lot to date in the first place, but nor is it technologically prevalent so there's no VCRs, Walkmans, audio cassettes, or blocky TVs or computers that forces the age of the movie. The fact that much of the movie was filmed in Salem, Mass, which is where it takes place, also adds to the theatricality and the old, Colonial style archetecture ensures there's no "look how 80s/90s that building is!"In fact, I would say that the cheap production values and on location filming lends to a form of realism in the movie that is often overlooked in these LA-filmed Halloween movies. You notice the characters breath condensing in the air, and real autumn trees that you wouldn't have gotten if the movie was filmed in any place other than New England. The only thing that really dates the movie is the clothing worn by the teenagers, which is unequivocally 90s. The movie remains a fun, enjoyable movie for all ages, and the liberal usage of adult humor ensures that the adults have as much fun as the children.

Then I watched Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow" with Johnny Depp as the skittish, but brave Ichabod Crane. The directing is definitely Burton's, with actors hamming it up for the camera and the general workable cliches that one would expect of the tale of Sleepy Hollow. Regardless, the movie still manages to be creepy enough to leave you with a chill up your spine as cold as the late Autumn air. The movie's prevalent usage of fog effects, twisted dark forests, and crooked Colonial archetecture creates this old time All's Hallow Eve feeling that makes you jump at every creepy jackolantern topped scarecrow standing in the middle of an unharvested corn field.

For any fans of NCIS, a then 16 year old Sean Murray (Special Agent Tim McGee) played the character of Thackery Binx in the movie Hocus Pocus.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Land of Mine" 2015, Denmark

• Just after WWII, the Danish Gov't forces young German POWs to clear the mines the Germans had put on the Danish beaches to defend against an Allied invasion

• Established early: Danish sergeant in charge hates the POWs (mainly late-draftee teenage boys) / the boys just want to go home and are promised just that once they remove the kazillion mines on the beach (they might have well just asked them to count all the sand grains on the beach, as that would almost have been easier)

• Live isolated with other humans working on a dangerous and highly stressful joint task and preconceptions falter as humanity takes over

• This movie is life in a crucible with morality twisted hard and often
  • Are the boys responsible for decisions other senior German's made during the war?
  • The mines have to be cleared / this is an at-the-moment poor country / is it wrong to use the POWs?
  • When there's not enough food for everyone, how much should go to your former enemy that is responsible for the lack of food?
  • Defusing mines is a life-and-death gamble many times a day - the mental pressure is unbearable
  • People get blown up / impressions change / right and wrong break apart and reassemble only to break apart again
  • Acts of kindness and bravery rise above / petty retribution looks, well, petty

• But through it all - as your "what's right" meter locks up time and again - you go back to the one big question that tries to answers it all: are these young boys, who fought for Germany, responsible for what "Germany" did?
  • Easy for us, today, well removed and relatively comfortable, to say no, but our country wasn't just pillaged, plundered and occupied / our countrymen weren't just subjugated and, some, brutalized for years / and our country isn't now abjectly poor and unable to feed its own people - how would you or I answer the question then?

• The morality issues come hard and fast and right up to the end, but this is a test without the answers which makes it a thought proving and challenging movie that also happens to be beautifully filmed and outstandingly acted

 

[Bushman]

I had never seen the tv show, so I had no preconceived ideas about it. I really enjoy it, and my wife who just saw it with me really liked it too!

I've never watched the show either. I love the tone of light-heartedness mixed with stark horror. Apparently the show had none of the former. I feel like the movie would have felt like it was taking itself far too seriously had it not had moments of levity.

 

[Jaxenro]

I've never watched the show either. I love the tone of light-heartedness mixed with stark horror. Apparently the show had none of the former. I feel like the movie would have felt like it was taking itself far too seriously had it not had moments of levity.

The most horror the TV show had was Frid's acting. Plenty of unintended humor though

 

[Zombie_61]

I never watched Dark Shadows because I'd heard it was a "soap opera", and having seen moments of General Hospital and One Life to Live because those were "Mom's shows" I wanted nothing to do with it. It was only after it had been cancelled that I found out it had a horror theme, and by then it was too late. As such, when I saw Burton's movie the only frame of reference I had was what little I'd read about the series in "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine, and I still found it seriously lacking in both humor and horror.

 

[AmateisGal]

I was very disappointed in the new Beauty and the Beast. I didn't think it added anything worthwhile to the 1991 animated classic, which is by far my favorite of the latter-day Disney animated films. Sure, it's longer... and loaded with uncanny valley characters and CGI overkill. It adds some new weak songs and questionable plot points (e.g., does it change Belle's character in any significant way to have her learn that her mother died of plague?!?) The cast labors mightily to live up to the cartoon, and here and there I found it, um, okay. But compared to the masterpiece it's replicating so closely...

OTOH, it made over a billion dollars, so what do I know?

I agree with you. The animated version is much, much better.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We're screening "Menashe," the story of a Hasidic fellow in Brooklyn and his triumphs and tragedies. He's a widower with a young son, under strong pressure from his rabbi to get married so that his son can have two parents, but he's not so sure whether he's ready for that, and from that simple setup a moving bit of drama is made. The cast is made up of non-professional actors drawn entirely from the Hasidic community, and if you want "authenticity," this would be it. It's also the first feature length film made in Yiddish since the 1930s, which makes it something of a cultural landmark.

 

[Fading Fast]

We're screening "Menashe," the story of a Hasidic fellow in Brooklyn and his triumphs and tragedies. He's a widower with a young son, under strong pressure from his rabbi to get married so that his son can have two parents, but he's not so sure whether he's ready for that, and from that simple setup a moving bit of drama is made. The cast is made up of non-professional actors drawn entirely from the Hasidic community, and if you want "authenticity," this would be it. It's also the first feature length film made in Yiddish since the 1930s, which makes it something of a cultural landmark.

I didn't see it, but it played in a theater near me for a long time in the second half of the summer (I think) - no shock as that movie would do well in very culturally Jewish NYC. Plus, while not in the immediate neighborhood, not too far away are several small Hasidic neighborhoods that I'm sure came in to see it. Usually, at this theater, movies move in and out in a period of two or three weeks, that one hung around for (memory guesstimate) almost two months.

Lizzie, did your theater get "Land of Mine" (I posted about it a page back)? While not what you've said plays well in your theater, I could see this one doing well with your theater crowd.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We didn't which kind of surprises me -- we usually do get European WWII pictures, and they usually do reasonably well. I still haven't gotten over "Black Book," and that was ten years ago.