What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Otaku4Life wrote:

"The Starving Games" on Netflix.

Oh dear....you have my sympathies....

How to train your Dragon 2

This is an excellent movie. A simple story, but told well! Top-notch work, Dreamworks.

10/10

The movies I watched in the last days:

Princess Mononoke

Truly a beautifully animated movie with great designs and atmosphere. Plus: The story is good, too and doesn't serve you typical stereotypes (except for maybe Mononoke slowly turning into a damsel in distress which bothered me a little bit).

Paradise

An animated short from 1984. It already got my attention in 2001 in an animation special on TV but only could see a small scene. "Paradise" is really pretty to look at, to listen to and serves a nice fable about the worth of freedom and golden cages.

The Barbarians

Oh god, I laughed so hard (also because I watched this with friends).
I've watched a couple of movies about barbarians and this one is one of the most entertaining ones, starring two twin brothers full of muscles and stupidity. The rest of the cast is entertaining as well and the story is dumb. I can recommend this, also as a review suggestion for Brad.

The External World

An animated short from 2010. Disturbing, mindf*cking and creative, I must say. I enjoyed it.

Don't let him in

This British horror movie is, again, entertaining with its stupidity. The plot is dumb, the characters are extremely unlikeable and brainless. The effects are okay and the few death scenes are a bit creative, okay. But else: A bad horror movie that is more to enjoy with friends than alone.

you know i hope they create their own universe in the new planet of the apes series, i never did like the ending with the missle destorying everything.

i watched 'the italian job (1969) the original version that is, and you know what ? it was a pretty good film. not great by any means. it started out slow as fuck, and it took awhile for it to build. when they actually get to pulling the job off. it's great. and one thing i find really cool, is i dunno if this happend for the remake of it. but in the original the plan was to create a traffic jam to steal 4 million bucks. that no doubt may be in the remake. but just a higher amount of money.

what i was referring to is according to IMDB trivia if this is correct. when the filmmakers wanted to create a traffic jam. the law or whoever they had to talk to said no you can't do that. so apparently the real life mafia
got wind of it and i dunno how they found them or heard about it. but they created a real life traffic jam for the film makers! so the reaction from the people was REAL!! they weren't actors or extra's. but real people.

oh i'm sure extra's.was used no doubt you but you get my point. makes it more realistic. i'd say 7.5.

and Michael caine was the star of it. and he was fantastic in it. the only acting that i'd count as WTF is the chick that played the love interest she was fucking terrrible. hot as hell but couldn't act at all. but to be fair she was fine in some scenes. has anyone see the original?

wildhoney66 wrote:

you know i hope they create their own universe in the new planet of the apes series, i never did like the ending with the missle destorying everything.

Yeah, it's interesting because these new movies are kind of their own thing (the Caesar/Koba arcs are different, for one) but there's nods to the original too. I don't know for sure if it's accurate to call them prequels. Since the old sequels did so many weird things with continuity there's different directions the narrative could go -- at least they're not bothering to try to fit the Tim Burton/Marky Mark trainwreck into the canon.   

The Odessa File (1974)

So I randomly came across this after searching info about Jews hunting nazis post-WWII. Odessa was allegedly a real secret organisation formed by former members of the SS, but that's where the historical accuracies pretty much end.

I think this is the only film I've seen so far with John Voight as the leading man. He does an ok job, you can see he is a talented actor. BUT the fake german accent is REALLY distracting and I could've done without it. Either go full on english/american accent or make the movie in German, this is just stupid. There are some really long action scenes with lots of sneaking around which go on for far too long imo. Could be really intense thriller if it was more tightly put together, but it's ok as it is. I'd probably give it 3/5

You haven't seen MIDNIGHT COWBOY or DELIVERANCE? You should get on that! Voight does great work in both of those movies

I seen a bunch of them since last but I can't remember what they were. Shit.

Wait, I remember watching Bad Lieutenant and Vampire's Kiss. Went on a short Nick Cage spree and my gawd is Vampire's Kiss hilarious.

i've never seen Midnight Cowboy. either but deliverance i thought was fucking terrible.

i watched in TCM a few years back and i wished i had that time back.

i don't get why people love it so much. THAT one i'd love to see snobbed

"Antichrist" starring Williem Dafoe.
A very bizarre looking art film.

That's the one where Willem Defoe gets castrated with a cement block, right?

Yesterday I was watching "Cry, Onion!", a 1970's spaghetti western comedy from Italy.

Oh god and I thought "Shanghai Joe" was insane. THIS was even better. This looks like a so-bad-it's-good-movie with actual effort. The hero is funny, his horse is funny, the villains are funny and I guess the German dubbing went all out to make the movie even more insane (like in "Hot Shots" ).

Yes, I had a lot of fun and won't be able to cook onion dishes withouth thinking of this movie from now on.
Oh and it even successfully distracted me from my recent depression for a while. Now this is an accomplishment for a movie.

TAKING LIVES (2004) - rather tedious, painfully predictable thriller about an FBI profiler (Angelina Jolie) who gets more personally invested in a serial killer case than she ought. This movie wants to be another SEVEN in the worst way, but it's your typical Lifetime Channel nonsense. Jolie turns in a good performance but the character is such a nonentity that it could've easily been Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson or any starlet-of-the-week and it wouldn't have made any difference. The only highlight is the effectively creepy opening (featuring a then-unknown Paul Dano). 3/10

TOMBSTONE (1993) - One of the last old-school westerns, this centers around the story of Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) battling a ruthless band of outlaws - the movie describes them as the "first organized crime" unit in America - led by Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn). There's the gunfight at the OK Corall, of course, but the movie also depicts Earp's unlikely friendship with Doc Holliday (a wonderfully oily performance by Val Kilmer) and his tentative affair with the stage actress Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany), whom he eventually married. It romanticizes the story quite a bit, but it doesn't shy away from its heroes' flaws.
I'd forgotten what an insane cast list this flick boasts: you've also got Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Thomas Haden Church, Paula Malcolmson, Michael Rooker, Billy Zane, Billy Bob Thornton, Terry O'Quinn, Frank Stallone, Jason Priestly, John Corbett, and Charlton Heston -- oh, and it's narrated by Robert Mitchum.   8/10

LUCY- sigh, well that was the dumbest art film I've ever seen in a theater. Great fun, thanks to my exasperated intellectual chinese scholars beside me whose brains melted once the film started boasting of the wonders of the human brain. We're hoping to start the United church of Lucy soon enough. Yay, Besson!

The movies I've seen in the last few days:

A Coffee in Berlin (original title: Oh Boy), seen as an open air event

I enjoyed this movie a lot. It serves dry humour and an interesting cast of strange characters including the protagonist called Niko, wonderfully played by Tom Schilling. It's about Niko having quite a bad day in Berlin: He tumbles from one awkward situation to the next (girlfriend dumping him, father scolding him, meeting a female ex-school mate again who he mobbed once, visiting the film set of a shitty nazi romance flick...) but all he wants is peace and a cup of coffee (which turns into a real quest all day long).

Fack Ju Göhte, seen as an open air event

Another German movie which even became one of the most popular movies in Germany in 2013, leaving behind the second Hobbit movie. One of my aunts who has worked as a teacher for a couple of centuries recommended me this school comedy.
It's about a rude guy leaving prison and searching for his money he once robbed but has to dig for it beneath a school building. In order to get access to all school parts he auditions for a small teacher job and treats the respectless, careless and dumb students like crap while digging for his money at night.
Yeah, I had to laugh quite often but overall it's only "okay". It makes fun of cliches but uses them itself, serves a lot of flat toilet humour jokes (like people swearing all the time, talking about sex...) and the story seems to fall apart sometimes.
But okay, I enjoyed parts of it and don't regret watching it.

Speaking of regret...

Pumuckl und sein Zirkusabenteuer ("Pumuckl and his circus adventure")

Little back story: I grew up with the 1980's TV show (and audio book series) "Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl", about a carpenter and his goblin he's forced to take care of. But only he can see Pumuckl and talk to him. It's like a father-son relationship where Meister Eder is the caring, honest and strict caretaker while Pumuckl is the rude, fun-seeking troublemaker who likes to irritate people and has to learn things about the human world. I loved it and even enjoy it today.
But the last movie they did in 2003 is sad. Just sad and unnecessary.
It's hard to explain every good and bad element to people not knowing the material but let's say: The charm, entertainment value and even one of the former main actors are gone here. It's a circus adventure I can't care about and I didn't enjoy it. But at least I know now what this movie is like. But this is only for little kids.

Monty Python live (mostly)

Another back story: I WANTED to buy a ticket for one of Monty Python's live shows but didn't dare to do it (possible financial issues due to travelling, hotel etc.). Since then I could bite myself in the ass for that decision.
But the broadcast of this live show was still so much fun. Yes, the Pythons still got it and did a great job in entertaining their audience again.
The only things I didn't like were the short and senseless cameo of Mike Myers and that the show could have been longer.
Plus when it comes to Python live shows I enjoy "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" more.
But who cares, I had a lot to laugh and a good time watching this.

I watched "The Resurrected" (1992), an adaptation of H.P.Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". It's a very good adaptation, and has practical effects which I appreciated muchly (this being 1992, CGI wasn't really in its prime yet). Solid 8/10.

I turned on TV and Sharknado was on. So I watched it. Again.

A 9:20pm Thursday screening of the new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie.
I got to see it before Brad's midnight screening.
Can't wait to hear what he thinks about it.

My movies (and shorts) seen in the last seven days:

Adaptation.

A movie from 2002 directed by Spike Jonze. I was curious and I wasn't disappointed. Jonze managed to give fascination to a plot that doesn't sound that much entertaining in the first place (at least to me). The best part of "Adaptation." is Nicolas Cage as the lead character and his twin brother.
But when it comes to Jonze's works I still adore his music videos and "Her" more. So far.

Camel Spiders

Another godawful cheap CGI monster movie, this time is bigger spiders attacking stupid people in the desert of Arizona. If you watch this alone this is way too boring.

The Demented Cartoon Movie!

A short that my best friend recommended me to watch.
Well...it's obviously an old short out of the early Adobe Flash days that gained some attention (and even a Letterboxd entry later) when it got published at Albinoblacksheep. It has very silly, funny scenes but they're to rare and the rest is random, redundant crap, I'm sorry. I would have liked this much more, though, if I would have knew this 13 years earlier, I guess.

Brutal Relax

Another short that my best friend recommended me to watch.
Well, it has a funny plot and main character, some goofy villains (some kind of aggressive sea people) and awesome violence...and then the main character grabs a little child's corpse to use it as a weapon. This pretty much ruins the fun for me, I'm sorry. But everything else is okay.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Oh yes, I had a lot of fun watching this
Any movie that has a long running time but rarely has a dead second and manages to entertain me through and through deserves my respect. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is such a movie.
I love the craziness and how well made the movie seems to be. And dat acting!

Rodan and it was fucking awful. great FX though. and 'the house of a thousand cats. which was even worse. by the way the film had no thousand cats more like 75 or so

"I Spit On Your Grave" (2010 Remake)
Was nothing like the original version or as disturbing.
It's more like "torture porn" than a "rape revenge" film.
Brad was right by saying,
"That remake is a fucking piece of shit."

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Has to be my favorite comic book movie since Dredd.

Every Which Way But Loose - 5/10: It was okay. I laughed a couple times and I did enjoy the movie. It just didn't do a whole lot for me.

City of the Living Dead - 6.5/10: Gore effects are great, but its story is lackluster. Aside from that, the title seems to imply it's a zombie film when really zombies are barely in the movie (but the make-up for the zombies is really good). I still recommend it to fans of gory supernatural horror films, but The House by the Cemetery is way better than this movie.

We Need to Talk About Kevin - 7.5/10: Great psychological thriller that gets under your skin. Only real issue for me is how the characters aren't really developed enough for a movie that focuses on the characters.

I recently spent a one-week summer vacation with my family and also watched some stuff.
But I also had the idea to watch as many (animated) shorts as possible during the nights. I wanna list them first, rated in one sentence maximum, and then get to the regular movies and TV stuff:

Barefootin' (1987)
It was not more than okay, not even great animation for Aardman standards.

Stage Fright (1998)
Better Aardman animation in the famous "Wallace & Gromit" style and an okay plot involving some kind of theater crime.

Genre (1996)
Don Hertzfeldt demonstrates various genres and sub genres on a cartoon bunny - not bad!

Ah, L'Amour (1995)
Aaaaw, in what ways can a man be rejected by women?

Lily and Jim (1997)
One of the better Don Hertzfeldt cartoons containing a lot of talking and a blind date couple just not finding to each other on any level.

Billy's Balloon (1998)
Not my cup of tea (I don't enjoy babies or little kids getting hurt generally and in films) but the animation is good again.

The House of Small Cubes (2008)
Visually and in story a very pretty animated short which reminds me of Pixar's "Up".

Alma (2009)
Nice little creepy cartoon about a little girl and a doll shop.

Everything will be OK (2006)
Don Hertzfeldts probably most mindf*cking cartoon about a man and his mental problems.

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
It's said to be the first proberly animated cartoon but I also like the live action prolog. It's a fine cartoon as the beginning of animation, however, it also contains a lot of repeated animation.

Mourir auprès de toi (2011)
A little pretty stop motion, something like "Toy Story" with book covers (co-created by Spike Jonze).

25 Ways to quit Smoking (1989)
Bill Plymptons creative ideas on how to stop smoking, pretty good!

A is for Autism (1992)
Drawings of autistic British kids get transformed into animation and illustrate their stories, a nice idea (its music is a classical piece I personally enjoy very much).

Crac (1981)
In animation it's pretty good and colourful but there isn't much happening here.

Adam and Dog (2012)
Not only it's a great idea (the story of Adam and Eve as seen by a dog) but it's also technically wonderful.

Screen Play (1992)
A wonderfully animated theater play in Japanese style, created by Barry Purves (who also created "Next" for Aardman).

Mr Hublot (2013)
Unfortunately the oscar winning short of 2014 couldn't win my heart as the animation (which is alright, I guess but without much soul and personality) can't carry the thin plot and the weak characters.

The Monk and the Fish (1994)
The animation is nice but the concept is a bit too silly for me. Animator Michael Dudok de Wit has created far much better and appealing with "Father and Daughter".

The Aroma of Tea (2006)
Also done by Michael Dudok de Wit. Very abstract and you have to connect the visuals with the tea topic in your fantasy.

Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase (1992)
A famous painting turns into another and that one also in another and so on...quite a nice idea even though there's hardly a plot.

The following animated shorts are from David O'Reilly, the creator of "External World", another short from 2010 I learned to know about one month ago and I still love it (O'Reilly btw also created the video game sequences in the movie "Her" ).
I allow myself to just list these here as some of them are only one or two minutes long and it's hard to rate these shorts as they're also often too abstract or mindf*cking. But I recommend watching "External World" as well as longer shorts like "Please say something", "Octocat Adventures" and "RGB XYZ".

Please say something (2009)
Octocat Adventures (2008)
I am alone and my Head is on Fire (2013)
Ident
WOFL 2106 (2009)
RGB XYZ (2007)
Unlucky Little Man (2013)
HELL/????? (2009)
When you're smiling (2009)


Now to the feature films and shows...

The Naked Gun 33 1/3
I already have seen this movie but my father didn't know this until then.
For a second sequel it is pretty funny but it's no comedic masterpiece or something. Also Anna Nicole Smith didn't do a thing for me.

The Giant Claw (1957)
Oh sweet Lord...as hillarious this bird monster looks (even audiences back then thought it was hillarious), so boring is this movie. Most of it is dull dialogue and characters. If I ever did a rewatch then only with a friend or more friends so I wouldn't suffer alone.

Cry Onion! (1975)
I already have seen this movie but my father didn't know this until then (who was quite confused).
It's still a goofy, funny spaghetti western but as I watched it for the second time I realized more that the slapstick sequences could be shorter and/or fewer.

Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014)
I already have seen this movie but my father didn't know this until then.
And it is still a (mostly) satisfying, entertaining experience

...and I also watched five episodes of "Kottan ermittelt" (an Austrian crime/comedy series from the 1970s and 1980s), episode 3 of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", bits of the European Athletics Championships (which took place in the same stadium where I watched Roger Water's "The Wall" concert last year...awesome!) and some German soccer.