What was the last movie you watched?

[mrbasehart]

I thought Sophie Scholl was going to be dry and boring, the sort of thing I was glad I was being paid to watch, but I ended up really liking it.  We were playing it for a bunch of school teenagers, God knows how that went over.

[Ortega]

Monty Python's Meaning of Life

  It seems one of my brother-in-law's little brother had never seen it, so it was a problem that had to immediately be rectified.

[RobtheBarbarian]

Chupacabra: Dark Seas, a typical (i.e. soul-rending) Sci-Fi Channel Original about... well, a chupacabra on a boat starring John Rhys Davies and no one else. Riffed it with my dad, but I'm still watching for any unexplained aches or pains that might be side effects of something the movie gave me.

[bettertomorrowamy]

Fourteen Hours

[BathTub]

Hitler: The Rise of Evil. Pretty interesting, heaps I hadn't really heard or seen before. Accents? What Accents?

Bottoms Up. OMG when it's selling points are it stars both Jason Mewes and Paris Hilton you know it's quality.

[mrbasehart]

Fourteen Hours

Did you like it?  The Fox Film Noir series has a great series of commentaries on them, which I'm a sucker for. 

I've got a few to add here:

Eastern Promises: Cronenberg's latest film isn't as good as his previous one, A History of Violence, but features another excellent performance from Viggo Mortensen - this time as a Russian gangster loyal to his wayward friend, played by Vincent Cassell.  While I liked a lot about the film, the attempt at fusing the two storylines is poor - that of Mortensen's rise through the gang's hierarchy and Naomi Watts' mid-wife trying to track down the family of an orphaned baby - and leaves both plots wanting.  The relationships within the Russian gang is never really explored, nor is any of the criminal underworld that they're involved in.

The Raven: A companion piece to another film I spoke about recently, The Black Cat, this also pits Bela Lugosi against Boris Karloff under the trappings of an Edgar Allen Poe story.  Both the leads are excellent, Lugosi as the brilliant, but insane surgeon and Karloff as damaged criminal.  Things come to a head when Lugosi employs a number of torture devices from Poe stories to "off"  his guests.

The Gore Gore Girls: Herschell Gordon Lewis' last film, and (according to the commentary) his goriest.  Lots of heads are crushed in this one folks, with eyeballs being crushed, buttocks being tenderised, and faces dipped into deep-fat fryers.  There's also a thin Holmes-like investigation to these murders, but it seems the director really only unleashes his meagre talent when there's entrails or breasts on screen.  I liked it.

The Abominable Snowman: It sounds bad, but it isn't.  This 1957 effort from Hammer adapts Nigel Kneale's tele-serial for the big screen, and does it rather well.  4 mountaineers travel deep into the himalayas to track the titular Yeti, but become caught up by the hardships of their own situation.  Peter Cushing is fine in a role he could probably do in his sleep, and the location work is quite convincingly moody.  A shame the actual Yeti's are laughably poor.

Carry On Nurse: One of the first Carry On movies, this one is pretty much like the others, in that they'll make you laugh and groan precisely at the same time.  This one has Shirley Eaton - the golden girl from Goldfinger - and the magnificent Leslie Phillips going for it.

Smokey & the Bandit: I saw this film as a kid, but never since.  It's light-hearted, daft fun, carried on Burt Reynolds' charm.  Sally Field does her chubby-cheeked thing and the whole movie passes along nicely.

[bettertomorrowamy]

Fourteen Hours

Did you like it?  The Fox Film Noir series has a great series of commentaries on them, which I'm a sucker for. 

I've got a few to add here:

Eastern Promises: Cronenberg's latest film isn't as good as his previous one, A History of Violence, but features another excellent performance from Viggo Mortensen - this time as a Russian gangster loyal to his wayward friend, played by Vincent Cassell.  While I liked a lot about the film, the attempt at fusing the two storylines is poor - that of Mortensen's rise through the gang's hierarchy and Naomi Watts' mid-wife trying to track down the family of an orphaned baby - and leaves both plots wanting.  The relationships within the Russian gang is never really explored, nor is any of the criminal underworld that they're involved in.

The Raven: A companion piece to another film I spoke about recently, The Black Cat, this also pits Bela Lugosi against Boris Karloff under the trappings of an Edgar Allen Poe story.  Both the leads are excellent, Lugosi as the brilliant, but insane surgeon and Karloff as damaged criminal.  Things come to a head when Lugosi employs a number of torture devices from Poe stories to "off"  his guests.

The Gore Gore Girls: Herschell Gordon Lewis' last film, and (according to the commentary) his goriest.  Lots of heads are crushed in this one folks, with eyeballs being crushed, buttocks being tenderised, and faces dipped into deep-fat fryers.  There's also a thin Holmes-like investigation to these murders, but it seems the director really only unleashes his meagre talent when there's entrails or breasts on screen.  I liked it.

The Abominable Snowman: It sounds bad, but it isn't.  This 1957 effort from Hammer adapts Nigel Kneale's tele-serial for the big screen, and does it rather well.  4 mountaineers travel deep into the himalayas to track the titular Yeti, but become caught up by the hardships of their own situation.  Peter Cushing is fine in a role he could probably do in his sleep, and the location work is quite convincingly moody.  A shame the actual Yeti's are laughably poor.

Carry On Nurse: One of the first Carry On movies, this one is pretty much like the others, in that they'll make you laugh and groan precisely at the same time.  This one has Shirley Eaton - the golden girl from Goldfinger - and the magnificent Leslie Phillips going for it.

Smokey & the Bandit: I saw this film as a kid, but never since.  It's light-hearted, daft fun, carried on Burt Reynolds' charm.  Sally Field does her chubby-cheeked thing and the whole movie passes along nicely.

I liked the history:  The architecture of New York, the dialects, the fashions, the cars, and the fact that you could just push your window open in a hotel and jump.  The story kinda reminded me of "I Accuse My Parents" in how everything was blamed on the parents being messed up.  The mother really sold the crazy; she was a good actress.  Yeah, it was good.

[RobtheBarbarian]

Hitler: The Rise of Evil. Pretty interesting, heaps I hadn't really heard or seen before. Accents? What Accents?

I remember watching that. Me and a friend actually riffed it...

[BathTub]

Bad Santa, haha that was funnier than I expected.

[BladesGirl]

Red Dragon.  I put it on in place of Hannibal that was showing on TNT this morning.  I hate Hannibal.  One of the stupidest, most inconsistent, absolutely ridiculous pieces of crap I'd ever seen.  *puke*

[Chaos]

Red Dragon.  I put it on in place of Hannibal that was showing on TNT this morning.  I hate Hannibal.  One of the stupidest, most inconsistent, absolutely ridiculous pieces of crap I'd ever seen.  *puke*

So you didn't see Hannibal Rising then?

The book of Hannibal was actually *decent*. Not great, but decent. Hannibal Rising was just 12 different kinds of crap mashed together, book and film.

...

I've got the house to myself for the weekend, so I'm gearing up for a real marathon... I'm going to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended edition, uninterrupted. I just finished lunch, I've got supper simmering on the stove, I've got a few snacks in the fridge for later (and a few tasty beverages, natch). In about 10 minutes, I'm going to hit play on the first film, so I should be done by around 2am. Fun!

[BathTub]

Sione's Wedding A NZ film about 4 Samoan guys who have to find dates or they are barred from their best friend Sione's Wedding. A little cliche, but still pretty funny.

[GregMcduck]

The Darjeeling Limited. There are things I would have done differently. I would have ended the film earlier, with the brothers getting on the plane back to the US before finding their mother. There was some symbolism that was down right corny. The story didn't seem as tight as Tenenbaums or Zissou. Still, it had a lot of fun and emotional moments, and visually it looks great. I'll most likely buy it.

[mrbasehart]

The Taste of Blood: Even worse drivel from Herschell Gordon Lewis, this is a modern take on the vampire story.  Failing to say anything new about the genre or even be entertaining, I derived a certain sadistic pleasure from torturing myself with it.  Completely inept in every way, it's also actually very funny and a perfect candidate for Rifftrax or the Film Crew.

The Haunted Palace: Corman took a break from his run of - excellent - Edgar Allen Poe films to make this equally good adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story (even though it was marketed as a Poe adaptation because of Corman's success with them).  This movie finds Vincent Price slowly possessed by his ancestor when he moves back to the ancestral home.  Price is very good (as usual), and Debra Paget is very lovely as his suffering wife.  Lon Chaney Jnr supports as the sinister butler, Simon.

The Face of Fu Manchu: Yes, it's the predecessor to the infamous MST3k episode.  While I actually haven't seen that one yet, this movie bored me to tears.  Featuring no thrills, suspense, and some insultingly stupid logic - Fu Manchu's henchmen wear coordinated uniforms, even when "undercover" - this is redeemed by Christopher Lee's creepy performace and a nice scene where an entire village is gassed to death.

Call of the Wild: This 1935 adventure features the jug-eared Clark Gable as a prospector who, with the help of a friend, set off in search of a bountiful gold mine only recorded in a dead man's letter.  Gable does his rough-hewn charm bit, but there's too much going on with dogs and wolves in the movie for me to find it consistently entertaining.

Giant of Marathon: I saw this with the Film Crew DVD, but I think a review of the movie seperately is worth me writing about.  The movie is handsomely mounted, with some excellent sets, and certainly looks a whole lot more professional than the Hercules movies.  Tourneur directed some great Hollywood horror movies in the 40s - The Cat People, The Leopard Man - but this is far below those efforts.  The action in the movie is poorly conceived, with the large battles betraying the low budgeted nature of the film, and Steve Reeves may look like a statue when he's standing still, it's unfortunate that he emotes like one too.  Blonde chick was hot, though.

Oh, and unfortunately (mercifully?) this will be my last update for a while, as I'm going to the London film festival until Wednesday.  I'm sure I'll have some more films added to the list by then. 

[Junkyard]

30 Days of Night- Okay film. Kinda dragged, a few odd contradictions, but otherwise pretty solid.