What Was the Last Movie You Watched?

I watched Feast of the Seven Fishes on Amazon Prime last night. A very cute movie that will resonate for anyone who grew up in a traditional Italian family (like me) or in an Italian neighborhood.

My husband isn't Italian but after 45 years of marriage to me, plus his love for The Sopranos, The Godfather, etc., he's fully embraced the culture and likewise loves this movie. Highly recommended!
 

Last Saturday on YouTube for free (but age restricted) watched the 2014 SciFi movie Lucy, with Scarlett Johansson. Somewhat similar to the Limitless movie I also watched on YouTube last week and reviewed herein, with some kind of pill giving super mental powers. Entertaining, but Lucy did so to a ridiculous degree like Q in Star Trek, so was more like a nonsense fantasy.
 
David777 said:
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.
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I notice you didn't include the bit about what happens to Caleb or Nathan at the end.
 

BJintheUK said:
I notice you didn't include the bit about what happens to Caleb or Nathan at the end.
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Well, Nathan was knifed in the back by one of his confined abused AI women that Ava had whispered to, as Nathan attacked Ava. Caleb was trapped inside Nathan's building at the end, but since he now had access to the phone and computers, probably would be able to call authorities.
 
Last night I watched the 'Final Cut' of Apocolypse Now, that I'd recorded the night before off the TV. It was 3hrs and 10 mins long, but we missed the first 20 mins or so.

Having seen the cinematic version many years ago in the cinema I was interested to see what the differences were. There was quite a bit more of the film in this version than in the cinematic version.

For instance, Col Killgore (Robert Duvall) is seen sending a sick child and its mother off in his own helicopter to the nearest hospital at the end of the segment that had the Ride of the Valkyries battle. So although he was a monster, he did have some redeeming qualities.

They also showed the scene with the French family in the jungle, who had their own plantation, and the discussion around the dinner table with Capt Willard (Martin Sheen). They also included a very edited bit about him getting off with one of the French women after the dinner.

Somehow the bit at the end seemed different as well. The build up to Kurtz's demise and the death of the sacrificed beast didn't seem anywhere near as intense as in the original. Furthermore, I felt that the intensity of the Ride of the Valkyries initial approach to the village was less than in the original.

One last thing I noticed. I've got on DVD a copy of the Director's Cut of this film, and in that there's a very sad scene where the bunny girls from the show on the floating stage, are somewhere up in the jungle, freezing cold, and still in the helicopter they travelled around in. The scene was a bleak interlude in the otherwise constant insanity of the rest of the film, and this wasn't part of the Final Cut. So I guess the editors of the Final Cut wanted to tone down various bits of it for some reason, but cut out the bleakness of the situation the bunny girls ended up in as it didn't affect Willard or his mission.
 
Avatar: Fire and Ash. Spectacular visuals as usual, but a very boring and pointless plot. At two hours I was squirming in my seat wanting to leave, and there was still over an hour left to the movie. I left before the end. Professional critics were collectively cool about the film, but movie goers give it high marks.
 
The Shootist (John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard) was on TV last night. It was a better movie than I remember. It showed me where Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven got all its inspiration. But it was better than an Eastwood movie because, well, John Wayne. He was a screen presence like no other.
 
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Frankenstein (2025)

The film began like gang busters in a dramatic “Prelude”, which turned out to be the beginning of the ending of the famous Frankenstein saga, here written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, which he mostly based on the original novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which she followed with a revised edition in 1823-- both by Mary Shelley.

The thing that we soon notice is that del Toro’s screenplay differs fairly starkly from the version of the Frankenstein tale many of us are familiar with, namely from the famous 1931 film, Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, and starring Colin Clive and Boris Karloff. Taken aback, I researched the original Shelley novel, and it turns out that del Toro did in fact fashion his screenplay much more faithfully to the original than did Whale in his looser version. Surprisingly in her novel it is never explained how Frankenstein animates his pieced-together creature; whereas in most all film versions of the story the creature is brought to life by galvanic electric shock, usually by focusing lightning.

Having seen preview trailers and photos, we anticipate the Gothic settings, scenery, castles, and moodiness, and those are featured in spades. In fact the production design and costuming are some of the chief assets of this picture.

Most of the performances, including Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein, are over wrought, but this is tolerable, if not expected in a Gothic SciFi horror story. Jacob Elordi as the Creature turns in a surprisingly nuanced performance, portraying Shelley’s specimen as a sapient being with feelings and longing. Christoph Waltz does a journeyman’s job as Frankenstein’s financial backer. And Mia Goth as Victor’s brother’s fiancee Elizabeth provides the feminine touch. The photography by Dan Laustsen (Nightmare Alley) is first rate, which is especially important in a Gothic film. And the music by Alexandre Desplat is refreshingly time period accurate, sometimes a rarity in modern films.

There are detractions. The story meanders, and is a bit scattered. There are uneven uses of the creature’s superhuman strength and also his ability to heal, and he develops intellectual and emotional muance quicker than the process is shown. At times he seemed as much like T-1000 in the Terminator film as he did a being pieced together from cadavers. Elizabeth is given too much importance in the story to its detriment. Her part was important but its use is over burdening.

I would recommend the movie for its production values, most of the acting, and for its fealty to Shelley’s original novel (which on it’s own is refreshing).

Doc’s rating: 6/10
 
JeeperDon said:
Just got back from the cinema, saw Avatar 3. a bit over 3 hrs. Started slowly, but had an exciting end. If you liked the first two, you'll like this one also.
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Same here. I actually slept on and off during the first hour because I was tired that day. The visuals were stunning, of course, but you're right... it was the last hour that made the movie. The one wish I had was that they had started with some sort of recap of the first 2 movies because even though I saw them they were long ago so I felt lost in the beginning.
 
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