What was the last movie you watched?

[ScottotD]

Pac Rim (again)

[lassieface]

Insidious

I'll try to explain this, but I don't know how. I liked the mythology of it, so to speak. Like how the rules of the supernatural felt very intentional. It reminded me of Constantine in that sense. Other than that, it didn't stand out to me. Not particularly scary.

[losingmydignity]

Lilith

1964 Rossen (The Hustler) film that is deeply flawed, dated and somewhat heavy-handed (just look at the title--yes, she is that Lilith) but powerful nonetheless. I love how culpable the Warren Beatty character becomes--like so many men (cough, cough) deciding to become a white knight to the rescue and instead giving up his honor and integrity and getting destroyed by love. Great acting from the minor characters, including a young Gene Hackman.

[Johnny Unusual]

Sexy Beast

Rewatched this to prepare it for a movie night at a local bar (double billed with Duel for movies that take place in oppressively hot weather).  Ben Kingsley is amazing in this, playing a barely human character who seems like an animal who doesn't know how to act among humans.  Kingsley plays Don Logan like a living confrontation and that any sentence directed at him is a challenge.  The final heist goes on longer than I remember but it is very well filmed and works out differently than most movie heists.  And I still love the opening scene.  Never has overwhelming heat looked so inviting.

[Darth Geek]

Arena (1989) - Surprisingly good. For a low budget movie, there are quite a lot of creature effects, fights and pretty big sets. Yeah, it's essentially "Rocky in space", but the plot doesn't always take the most clichéd route (even if that might make more sense). Also, the main character is played by a guy who looks A LOT like Christopher Reeve. To the point where that was the first thing to pop up when I googled his name.

[The Lurker]

There's also a few DS9 and Babylon 5 actors in there as well.

[Darth Geek]

There's also a few DS9 and Babylon 5 actors in there as well.

Yeah, even under all the makeup, I recognized the guy who played Weezil in this is the same guy who plays Quark. Also when looking it up, apparently the main bad guy here played one of the Cardassians on Next Generations.

[Johnny Unusual]

Pootie Tang

For a movie so poorly reviewed, this was mostly good.  It's pretty flawed, clearly falling apart at the seems (the film was taken away from Louis CK in the editing process, which probably explains that it's really only a 70 minute movie with 10 minutes of credits) and barely holds together, but there are a lot of very solid laughs in it and a great sense of fun.  It's so idiosyncratic and intentionally silly that it's easy to see why people didn't get it or like it.  But I liked it.

Here's probably the best scene in the movie (unfortunately the title of the video gives away the gag).

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1vzce7vkrJs" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/1vzce7vkrJs</a>

[ScottotD]

The Evil Dead remake.

Loved it, I thought the male lead was pretty weak but the ending and the female lead made up for it.

[Tripe]

Watched a couple of films over the weekend with Ann, here's what she thought of them:

Saw two movies this weekend, including Fruitvale Station, which is based on the murder of an unarmed young man by a BART police officer (San Francisco) in 2009. To me, this is one of those films that everyone should see, due to its social importance (let alone the fact that it is brilliantly acted, and stunning work for a first-time director). It's a stark reminder of what should be obvious: (1) there is a human being, however imperfect, behind every crime statistic and (2) there's a very good reason why many people don't trust or respect law enforcement - too many of them are incompetents or brutes who should be kept miles away from firearms. It's a searing, devastating modern masterpiece.

And then there is Before Midnight, the third instalment in the life of Jesse and Celine. I really enjoyed the first two movies, but this one . . . not so much. And it seemed especially insipid, in retrospect, after the grim reality of Fruitvale Station. Ethan Hawke's Jesse is still such a lovely charmer, but Julie Delpy's Celine, her once-ethereal beauty replaced by dumpiness, is a total self-obsessed shrew. My slapping hand itched for 3/4 of this film. Yes, the film is extremely well-written, and the scenery is beautiful, but a wealthy white woman whining about her feminist principles, and creating imaginary slights and betrayals because her easygoing partner won't play along with her perimenopausal psychosis - well, Christ on a bike, as Nick is fond of saying. When Celine was moaning about staying in a luxury hotel room, paid for by friends as a gift, I wanted to rush the screen to tear it with my nails. "Grow the f**k up!" my brain was screaming. "You live in Paris with Ethan Hawke and adorable, bilingual twin moppets! They even have long blonde ringlets! And he hasn't even told you that your ass has gone massive since Before Sunset!" My eyes are still sore from rolling for two hours.

[The Lurker]

Arena (1989) - Surprisingly good. For a low budget movie, there are quite a lot of creature effects, fights and pretty big sets. Yeah, it's essentially "Rocky in space", but the plot doesn't always take the most clichéd route (even if that might make more sense). Also, the main character is played by a guy who looks A LOT like Christopher Reeve. To the point where that was the first thing to pop up when I googled his name.

I do find it interesting that he later went on to do soap operas.   One of my few complaints was that the singer they chose for the "cantina" scenes wasn't good, even by B-movie standards.

[Zombie Monty]

The Devil Inside

Clever premise that could have really worked as one of those "found-footage" style faux-documentaries.  Instead this one is just about laughable.  No scares, lousy performances, and no clear resolution.   This one opened big at the box office, then poor word of mouth killed it.  Still made a tidy profit and I am guessing there will be a follow-up at some point.  Hopefully they spend some of that extra money on better actors and screenwriters.

Watched this as part of my plan to watch as many films from 2012 (in order of release).  The Devil Inside was released on January 6th 2012.  I am using Box Office Mojo's weekly box office charts to determine what films were released each weekend.  I hope to find some gems that I might have never seen.

A Dog's Life

Early Chaplin short film.  Typical fluff with his Tramp character getting into various shenanigans.  Really funny bit where he knocks out a bad guy and uses his own arms to fool the bad guy's partner.

I watched this as part of my other plan to watch the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus (in order by year of original release).

[Nunyerbiz]

Frankenweenie

Tim Burton's stop motion tribute to Frankenstein and all things old timey horror starts off well enough.... Everything until shortly after the resurrection of the dog is interesting and pulls you in... and then it becomes suddenly and undeniably bland. Once Martin Landau's brilliantly voiced science teacher delivers his keynote speech and leaves the movie, it's all downhill.

Overall the voice work is very good, the animation is fine, the character design is boilerplate Burton quirky-grotesque, the black and white palette is a perfect fit for the 1950s seemingly utopian suburbia setting... but the script is just really dull for the final hour. Sure, horror fans might have fun picking out all of Burton's references to classic Hollywood horror... Burton fans might have fun picking out all the references to Burton's own "Ed Wood"... But past that, it's a surprisingly pedestrian effort.

[Darth Geek]

Arena (1989) - Surprisingly good. For a low budget movie, there are quite a lot of creature effects, fights and pretty big sets. Yeah, it's essentially "Rocky in space", but the plot doesn't always take the most clichéd route (even if that might make more sense). Also, the main character is played by a guy who looks A LOT like Christopher Reeve. To the point where that was the first thing to pop up when I googled his name.

I do find it interesting that he later went on to do soap operas.   One of my few complaints was that the singer they chose for the "cantina" scenes wasn't good, even by B-movie standards.

I liked that he didn't even try to get with the female promoter, who you would think would have been the love interest, but I didn't think the singer was any more attractive than the promoter lady. And yeah, her singing sucked, although the style of music itself was just aweful.

[The Lurker]

It's strange, though.  This is the kind of movie I'd expect to have catchy music, either in the montage sequence or over the end credits.