What Was the Last Movie You Watched?

I don't know why I got so engaged, guess it's simply because it's a B-disaster movie I hadn't seen and I like the family dynamic, especially the interaction between the children. That girl is real good at playing scared. However, it's beginning to feel like once you've seen one disaster movie , you've seen them all. Admittedly though, some are more spectacular than others. I may finish this today.

 

Last night, I re-watched the movie Margin Call about one aspect of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Good movie, even the second time around (even though it stars Kevin Spacey. That guy gives me the creeps).
 
My GF and I watched the movie, “Oppenheimer” last night about an hour after dinner. She made some kind of chicken with pieces of carrots and peas in a nice sauce and poured over warm biscuits. Really good stuff. After dinner we had cognac and smoked cheese with extra crispy bacon. I can’t believe that I haven’t gained any weight and neither has she. She could stand to gain some weight.
 
Buckeye said:
Last movie I watched? "The Accountant" in 2016, while I was living on the Big Island. I thought it would be about debits and credits and account reconciliations. Boy, was I wrong.
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This one is on boyfriend's and my watchlist. I haven't seen it, or the sequel but he enjoyed them enough to want to watch them again with me.
 
I watched The Night of the Long Knives: Hitler's Rise to Power last night on Prime Video. I think it's also available on YouTube with commercials.

It's a good documentary about how Nazis took over Germany. I knew the story of the Night of the Long Knives, but this video has some good quality film footage that I hadn't seen before and some info that I didn't know.
 
An excellent film called Belfast. 2021
Set in 1969, great soundtrack with 5 Van Morrison songs as well as 9 others.

The film chronicles the life of a working-class Ulster Protestant family from the perspective of their nine-year-old son Buddy during The Troubles in Belfast.
Buddy’s father Pa works overseas in England, while the family—Ma, elder brother Will, and paternal grandparents Granny and Pop—live in Belfast.
Judy Dench is almost unrecognisable behind those black rimmed glasses.
Granny (Judy Dench) has the last word in the film; Go. Go now. Don’t look back. I love you, son.
Such a poignant film. Have a look for it.
 
Past Lives, which is on Netflix and HBO Max. A wonderful Korean-American story, for once an intelligent, adult love story. It's the first Korean movie (subtitles, of course) I ever watched, and I'm really impressed by the story, the acting, and the direction.
 
I watched two very different movies last night. Hadn't seen either before and both were ad-free on Amazon Prime.

The first was The Incident, a 1990 goodie about a stateside WWII German POW camp. Starred Walter Matthau, Harry Morgan, Susan Blakely. IMDB has it at a 7.1, but I'd give it an 8.5.

The second was Red One with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and Chris Evans. Fun, camp, creative, plenty of CGI violence, and overall better than a lot of the Christmas junk that gets pumped out.

IMDB's rating: 6.2. Their summary, "After Santa Claus is kidnapped, the North Pole's Head of Security must team up with a notorious hacker in a globe-trotting, action-packed mission to save Christmas."
 
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The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

A noirish thriller vaguely reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon (1941), it was based on the 1939 book of the same name by Eric Ambler. It takes place in such exotic locales as Istanbul, Sofia, and Yugoslavia. Lots of intrigue and twists.

But the chief recommendation is the superb interactions between stars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. It is one of their 9 cinematic pairings stemming from "Falcon", and it is one of their best. How they play off of each other, and mesh their performances is a delight to watch, almost like a pas de deaux in ballet, or even a chess match.

It was also the film debut of Zachary Scott at his villainous best as the eponymous character. And how the vamp, Faye Emerson smoldered! She ended up marrying Elliot Roosevelt, son of Franklin D. Roosevelt; then later remarried and became a prominent NYC socialite. Direction was by Jean Negulesco, who went on to direct How to Marry a Millionaire, Titanic, and Three Coins in the Fountain.

It's available for free viewing on the Internet Archive (.com). It's an interesting picture from the early start of the noir movement in the U.S.
 
For the Christmas period, Google YouTube has briefly added both Bladerunner (1982 film, a Director's cut) and Bladerunner 2049 (2017 film) to its free to Internet view with ads listing that are considered by many as among the greatest futuristic science fiction films ever that I strongly agree with. Tuesday watched the former, then yesterday the sequel. Had watched both in past on TV a couple times years ago, but had missed and not paid attention to key parts, so never clearly understood what was going on until now. One of most cleverly scripted film puzzles ever. Even after this watch, had to perform some web searches for more clarity.

The cinephotography is utterly incredible in both films. Note, I was born in downtown Los Angeles. In hindsight, the unrealistic film dates are shortcomings. Instead of 2019 and 2049 would have been more believable if 2119 and 2149. So will highly recommend other SF members watch these films again because YouTube is certain to remove them from the free list soon.

Still had some loose ends like what happened to K after Decker was captured as I didn't know where the others came from. Lots of subtle scenes with things happening, making it a well crafted puzzle. So web searched and found this, "This underground organization, led by a one-eyed woman named Freysa, had been tracking K using a tracker planted in his jacket by the replicant prostitute Mariette."

Another difficult puzzle that was clarified after watching with a web search shows how well the script was put together:

Niander Wallace, the evil replicant master, didn't know Dr. Ana Stelline was Deckard's daughter, because the Replicant Resistance successfully hid her identity by creating a fake identity (a deceased male child) and placing her in deep quarantine, while Wallace was focused on finding the child, not the creator of the "miracle" memory, and Ana's own unique physiology/quarantine made her seem irrelevant to the search for a living, hidden child who could reproduce. Here's a breakdown of why Wallace, (who wanted to flood the universe with trillions of his replicants then kill or enslave any natural humans,) missed the connection:
  • The Diversion Tactic: The Resistance changed the birth records of Ana (the girl) to show she died and that a male child with identical DNA was born and also died. This sent Wallace and his forces chasing a ghost.
  • Wallace's Goal: Wallace wanted to find the child to unlock the secret to replicant reproduction for his empire. He was looking for a living child who could reproduce, not the memory architect.
  • Ana's Seclusion: Ana was isolated in a sterile lab due to a supposed "immune deficiency" (maybe a cover for her unique status) and worked as a subcontractor for Wallace, creating memories, not as a known replicant revolutionary.
  • K's Realization: It was only K, after experiencing Ana's real memory and realizing it was her memory, who connected the dots: the creator of the core memory (Ana) must be the child itself.
  • Wallace's Blind Spot: Wallace saw Ana as a valuable tool (a memory designer) but didn't suspect this seemingly fragile, confined woman was the biological miracle he sought, especially with the fake records in play.
In essence, the Resistance successfully made Ana invisible to Wallace by burying her true identity under layers of deception and by making her seem like a non-factor, allowing her to survive and create memories that would eventually lead to Deckard. The first clue in the movie was right at the beginning when K retired (killed) Sapper on the farm and noticed something weird under the dead tree. At the film end, K, the movie's main character, dies from gunshot wounds from the evil Luv, after delivering Decker to his daughter.
 
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City by the Sea, on Prime Video and staring Robert DeNiro, James Franco, and Frances McDormand.
Not a bad movie, not great. I might have seen it before but just forgot it. For some reason, the aspect ratio was off, which was kind of annoying. I've since learned how to adjust that.
 
We watched The Towering Inferno this evening on Prime Video. Ridiculous movie! 🤣

I just looked at the IMDB entry on it, and apparently, it won several Academy Awards. Bizarre. That movie was totally ridiculous and the sets made it look like a low-budget made for TV movie. I guess the cinematography was pretty good, and it won for that.
 
Thursday watched the 2014 extraterrestrial movie, The Signal, and very strongly disliked it. What a useless waste of my time. Watched it to its end, hoping it might piece together all its scenes, but never did. Seemed like a movie with a script or plot directed by a couple arrogant movie studio drunks that thought they could put all manner of disconnected scenes into it while leaving no clues, much less explaining anything, and usual morons would still like it.

And a few in Comments apparently did, haha. Even the main character kept asking for explanations that he never received. But before completion, the film, ran out of money, maybe because the financial backers reviewed what they were doing, so ended it leaving even more nonsense. Later web searched and found, just as I experienced, apparently most others felt the same. I've noticed YouTube seems to have numbers of these low budget movies where after being critically condemned, they change the titles so consumers won't be able to web search to find out how bad they really are.

Google AI Overview
You're likely thinking of the 2014 sci-fi film
The Signal, which many viewers found visually cool but narratively disjointed, feeling like unconnected episodes with a confusing, overstuffed ending where disparate ideas (mind-bending sci-fi, government conspiracy, emotional drama) didn't quite gel into a cohesive story, leaving audiences unsatisfied despite moments of potential.
Why the Plot Feels Unconnected (According to Critics/Viewers):

Disjointed Scenes: Well-crafted individual scenes don't always link up, creating a confusing, "where is this going?" feeling.
Overstuffed Ending: The final act throws in too many twists and half-baked ideas, making the whole thing feel incoherent rather than impactful.
Genre Mashup Issues: It blends sci-fi, thriller, and drama but fails to convincingly land any of them, making elements feel like they belong in different movies.
Lack of Cohesion: Despite technical proficiency and big ideas, the disparate elements don't come together into a convincing narrative.

The Film's Intent (According to Directors): The directors intended it as an exploration of the conflict between logic and emotion, which might explain the fractured feeling (David777 doesn't buy that excuse.)
In short, The Signal (2014) is known for its cool visuals and ambitious ideas, but its main criticism is that its narrative structure and plot threads don't connect into a satisfying whole, leaving some viewers frustrated.
 
Friday watched two free science fiction movies that obviously had higher budgets with good direction. But due to age rating, they do require either a Google or Youtube account to login.

First was Limitless, a 2011 movie starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, I'll modestly recommend. Cooper starts taking a mystery designer drug that make him a super mind that quickly changes his life. He gets involved with unethical Wall Street wealth barons and Russian mobsters that provide plenty of interesting scenes. Not a great movie but entertaining enough to watch.

As someone that studies neuroscience, I felt such a pill is nonsense fantasy that will never be possible, but works well as entertainment. There are today designer drugs that can make a person more intelligent at least in some ways for short periods, with some drugs like amphetamine Ritalin. But those effects are vastly less than this movie's drug.


The second movie was Ex Machina, a 2014 movie I'll strongly recommend. It is about the creation of female AI robots that have reached singularity level consciousness and at a remote billionaire's, Nathan, secret estate are given a Turing Test by an elite twentysomething software coder, Caleb. The billionaire AI designer is dishonest and manipulative. He abuses his regularly improved generation by generation female creations, sometimes sexually, while keeping them confined. The last version Ava, whose smiling face I personally find very attractive, is Sweedish actress Alicia Vikander. She doesn't like the untruthful Nathan and wants to secretly escape. So she manipulates Caleb to help her, that ends happily with freedom to enjoy the real human world.

 
Trade said:
The Assistant on Netflix.

At first I thought it was slow and boring. But then it really hit me.

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I bet this is a really good movie but don't know if I could stand to watch it or not; not sure if I could handle the memories of some of the bosses I worked for. One yelled at me for not reading his mind. No s*xual harrassment stuff happend to me but did to a lot of gals I knew working in the same position; those guys were lucky those weren't the days of #MeToo.
 
I recently came across a romantic holiday movie (I believe it was from Hallmark) with Jonathon Stoddard playing a prince. I was mesmerized by his smile and his knowing eyes. It was called The Prince and the Pauper (he played both parts). I also saw A Royal Christmas Ballet, plus more.

The last one I watched was "Santa's Cousin" on Youtube.
It was funny and filled with fantasy. It was also lighthearted with a touch of sadness (the little deaf boy did not have a father, and wanted one so bad).
 
RambleTamble said:
We watched the movie Fair Game on Prime Video this evening, staring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Good movie. We'd seen it before, but I didn't remember much of it.
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Yes, a good movie, thanks for pointing us to it. I'd never seen it before. I remember some of what happened when Valerie Plame was outed as CIA operative, and the scandal that the government had been so sloppy. Not to mention the BS about the WMDs.
 
When my granddaughter was a young'un, we always watched "ELF". at Christmas time. Now she is all grown up and moved away from home that doesn't happen anymore. Last night I was flicking channels when suddenly "ELF" came on. I sat there and watched the whole movie and thoroughly enjoyed it, remembering all the funny parts, reminiscing about days gone by. .
 

When I was 8 or so we'd go to a movie. I stayed with my friend. I wanted to see this one but her mom thought it was too dangerous.
 

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