What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Julian Shellhammer]

Watched Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", starring Boris Karloff. I've seen it so many times I knew the lines by heart!


And?

Liked it a lot. Without being pejorative, the film was made by a fanboy, meant in the best sense. Several tips of the hat to the earlier movies. A noticeable focus on gripping visuals (Snoke's throne room, trails of crimson dust during the battle scene). It is consistent within the Lucas universe, but Rian Johnson brings his own style in an agreeable way.

 

[AmateisGal]

Both fun with "Remember the Night" being underrated as you almost never hear about it, but it is, IMHO - as a movie / story - the better of these two movies.

There's a depth to the characters and an underlying grit to "Remember the Night" that tops "Christmas in Connecticut's" fun seasonal vibe and, overall, silliness.

Agreed. It's a much better story and has much more depth and warmth to it - and character growth - than Christmas in Connecticut.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Went & saw, "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve in a theatre. Reduced ticket prices. Even my dear wife- who loathes watching it on the TV, loved it... although I did get elbowed in the ribs for reciting dialogue with Sheldon Leonard/ Nick the Bartender ("THAT does it! OUT you two pixies go, through the door or out the window!").

 

[Edward]

"Logan" - The best "non-superhero movie" about a superhero ever made. Real acting, real drama and a ripping story. No happy endings here. I felt gut shot when it was all over. It truly moved me. It's a "hard R" and not for children. But unlike "Deadpool", the only other R rated superhero movie of note, this one ain't played for laughs.

Worf

It all kicks in when Charles X first uses the eff word: this ain't your mother's XMen. Tge lack of end credits sequence is beautifully pointed, and that Cash number....

I KNOW that! My point is the franchise lost me then and I'm NEVER going BACK!!!!!! I watched 20 minutes of "Rogue One" on Netflix and never even bothered to finish it. I'm done!

Worf

For me, Star Wars died the day Greedo shot first. Rogue One is still the best of the franchise, though.

Interesting you like "Logan" so much. I would honestly consider "Rogue One" to be the "Logan" of SW, just without the gratuitous blood.
I've been interested in seeing this film for a while now. I've seen "The Gathering Storm," and am interested in what you thought of Oldman's portrayal of Churchill compared to Gleeson's.

Gleeson was wonderful, not only for his own, outstanding skills, but for being gifted the opportunity to play a more honest, warts and all Churchill. I'm sick of the myth: let's see the real Churchill who achieved what he did despite being an alcoholic racist.

Oh yes, somehow, despite not really being a Christmas movie and having Nazis in it, it does - in some crazy way - feel right for the season.

I consider it a wicked, corrupt film.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm watching "On a clear day", right now. A british working-class tragiccomedy.

 

[AmateisGal]

On Christmas Day, I took my mom and my daughter to see Jumanji in the theater. It was SO GOOD. I really enjoyed it!

Last night I watched North by Northwest on TCM to round out the Christmas holiday.

 

[HanauMan]

Just finished watching the 2015 movie Jurassic World. Not my usual type of fare but it is still fun to watch humans running away from hungry dinosaurs every now and again.

The end of this film, where all the dinosaurs fought the big enhanced critter with the tree frog DNA(!!!), reminded me of the good old Japanese monster films that I watched as a kid, especially Destroy All Monsters and War of the Gargantuas which were my two favorites back in the day.

 

[3fingers]

The end of this film, where all the dinosaurs fought the big enhanced critter with the tree frog DNA(!!!), reminded me of the good old Japanese monster films that I watched as a kid, especially Destroy All Monsters and War of the Gargantuas which were my two favorites back in the day.

In the late sixties well into the seventies one of our local stations had a weekly monster movie late on Saturday night. The program was called "Creature Feature" and was sponsored by a siding company. The owner of the company did his own commercials and some of them were as entertaining as the movie was. Thanks for the memory.

 

[Bushman]

Krampus, the 2015 Michael Dougherty horror-comedy based on the legend of the famous German Christmas demon. It's actually become one of my Christmas favorites.

 

[HanauMan]

Reliving the fantastic 1980s again on TV: Back To The Future and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Dopey, yeah, but I never tire of watching them.

 

[Touchofevil]

On Christmas Day, I took my mom and my daughter to see Jumanji in the theater. It was SO GOOD. I really enjoyed it!

Last night I watched North by Northwest on TCM to round out the Christmas holiday.

Missed North by Northwest, but did see Rear Window and The Trouble with Harry (yesterday) each for the hundredth time.

 

[scottyrocks]

Crazy Stupid Love (2011) with the family (women). Good cast. It's a 'chick flick' but it was cute and often clever and intelligent.

 

[Worf]

Krampus, the 2015 Michael Dougherty horror-comedy based on the legend of the famous German Christmas demon. It's actually become one of my Christmas favorites.

We LOVED that movie. Almost Tim Burton like in its twisted depiction of the anti-Christmas tale. Scared the crap outta me and the ending? Wowsers! Heard they've made a sequel but I've avoided it. Dickens is spinnin' in his grave!

Worf

 

[MondoFW]

On Christmas Day, I took my mom and my daughter to see Jumanji in the theater. It was SO GOOD. I really enjoyed it!

Last night I watched North by Northwest on TCM to round out the Christmas holiday.

Funny, I tuned into that too. Saw that they were having a Hitchcock marathon. To be honest, people consider North by Northwest to be a cinematic epic, but I couldn't help but find it to be lackluster in terms of Cary Grant's performance in the film. Not to mention the incredibly awkward and flimsy crop duster scene, oh boy.

I believe they played Vertigo after this one, which was the last movie I've watched. This one is my second favorite Hitchcock so far, next to Strangers on a Train.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I happened to watch Some Like It Hot a second time the other night, and I'm yearning for more Golden Age comedies of the sort. If anyone has any recommendations, that would be great. I've already looked into most of the Marx Brothers classics, but above all I'm not fully knowledgeable on the most witty comedies of the time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

An excellent picture for newcomers to classic talkie-era comedy is "It Happened One Night," which was an early prototype of the 1930s romantic/screwball comedy genre. This genre isn't cartoony comedy like the Marx Brothers, but rather it revolves around slight exaggeration of class-based social mores. "My Man Godfrey," "Bringing Up Baby," and "The Awful Truth" are other films in this style that are worth seeing. "Some Like It Hot" was a late-era pastiche of a style of comedy that had been very very popular twenty-five years before it was made, and you'll find a lot of this type of film in the mid 1930s.

For later developments in the screwball style you should look at the 1940s works of Preston Sturges: "The Great McGinty," "The Lady Eve," "Sullivan's Travels," "The Palm Beach Story," and "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" are all hilarious films if you get what Sturges is doing -- if you see one, and like it, you're sure to like all the others. "Morgan's Creek," in particular, is my choice for the flat-out-funniest picture of the entire 1940s.

There were a few screwball-style comedies lingering into the 1950s -- a Judy Holliday picture called "It Should Happen To You" is a good example of the late style -- but generally The Fifties took themselves too seriously for this type of comedy. When Wilder revived the style with SLIH, he was making a specific effort to reach back to a looser type of comic approach.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lizzie, gives, as always, a great list. While I come at it from a slightly different angle than her "class-based social mores " view, I see what she means. For me - when recommending these type of movies to "newcomers -" the key it that a modern movie goer has to be open to a different and somewhat - on the surface - silly style.

You need to be open to seeing that, at different times, movies were made differently as cultural norms change over time. I was first put off by some of this - and to this day, screwball can still turn me off - but if you go in open minded and try just to "go with it," you might not "get it" on the first movie or first viewing of a movie, but probably will after a few.

I can love "Bringing up Baby" on one viewing and then be a bit turned off by its screwball elements on another (but still enjoy it). To be fair, part of this "screwball" stuff was the movie industry trying to work around a morality code that made directly showing normal life - sex, affairs, crooks succeeding, etc. - not allowed. This led to creating "screwball" situation that allowed the industry to show some "unacceptable" things in an acceptable way. Hence, you have a lot of silly "misunderstandings" between couples where they "think" cheating has happened, but it hasn't, but all or most respond as if it did.

Maybe I'm making this sound worse than it is. My one (small) point is that the movies have a very particular style that can be off-putting if you aren't open to it and willing to go along for the ride. I bet you'll come to like them and, if so, I'm jealous as you have a lot of great first-time viewings to enjoy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Morgan's Creek" is the "screwball comedy getting away with stuff" idea taken to its ultimate level -- the plot revolves around a patriotically promiscuous young woman named Trudy Kockenlocker, who gets pregnant by one of several soldier boyfriends, and isn't sure which one it was, only that he had a name like "Ratzkywatzky or something." To get around the Breen Office, Sturges is careful to emphasize that Trudy and Private Ratzkywatzky Or Something "got married" before the deed was committed, but audiences of the time smirked knowingly at each other about what they knew was really going on. Brother Breen must've been unusually full of Irish cheer the day that script came across his desk, because there's no way around the basic ingredients of the plot, and Sturges knows it. The whole picture, pretty much every single minute of it, is one long, wet razzberry at the Production Code.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Morgan's Creek" is the "screwball comedy getting away with stuff" idea taken to its ultimate level -- the plot revolves around a patriotically promiscuous young woman named Trudy Kockenlocker, who gets pregnant by one of several soldier boyfriends, and isn't sure which one it was, only that he had a name like "Ratzkywatzky or something." To get around the Breen Office, Sturges is careful to emphasize that Trudy and Private Ratzkywatzky Or Something "got married" before the deed was committed, but audiences of the time smirked knowingly at each other about what they knew was really going on. Brother Breen must've been unusually full of Irish cheer the day that script came across his desk, because there's no way around the basic ingredients of the plot, and Sturges knows it. The whole picture, pretty much every single minute of it, is one long, wet razzberry at the Production Code.

It's funny / odd but a few movies got made during the production code that seem not in compliance with the code, but were approved anyway.

"In Name Only -" 1939 when the code was seriously enforced - has Cary Grant married to a lying, gold-digging Kay Francis when he meets a single, and genuinely nice Carol Lombard whom he proceeds to have an affair with (the sex isn't shown, but is all but implied). His frustration and anger at Francis not giving him a divorce leads him to drinking and an accidental / maybe suicide near death. The end (spoiler alert) has Francis outed as the conniving person that she is and it's clear Grant will leave her for Lombard.

How did this one get made in the code - bad wife, good mistress, understandable affair, (maybe) attempted suicide and divorce being the right answer.

 

[scottyrocks]

"Morgan's Creek" is the "screwball comedy getting away with stuff" idea taken to its ultimate level -- the plot revolves around a patriotically promiscuous young woman named Trudy Kockenlocker, who gets pregnant by one of several soldier boyfriends, and isn't sure which one it was, only that he had a name like "Ratzkywatzky or something." To get around the Breen Office, Sturges is careful to emphasize that Trudy and Private Ratzkywatzky Or Something "got married" before the deed was committed, but audiences of the time smirked knowingly at each other about what they knew was really going on. Brother Breen must've been unusually full of Irish cheer the day that script came across his desk, because there's no way around the basic ingredients of the plot, and Sturges knows it. The whole picture, pretty much every single minute of it, is one long, wet razzberry at the Production Code.

Here is what I would consider a good mini-documentary on the movie:

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Shape of Water.

Michael Shannon played the role that he seems to be best capable of pulling off well: a fourteen carat S.O.B. whose skull you'd love to see get cracked open with a pipe wrench by film's end (Plot spoiler here: it isn't.). But I found the the lady protagonist (played by Sally Hawkins) to be one of the most memorable characters I've seen in a while. Her somewhat isolated existence but almost childlike sweetness reminded me of Audrey Tautou's character in Amélie.