"Have you seen a good movie recently? Let us know!" says the category blurb.

I know there's a similar thread on the other chat boards but perhaps it would be nice to have one here too?

What's the last film you watched?

And more importantly -- without giving anything away! -- was it any good?


No spoilers.



The last film I watched was "Insomnia" directed by Christoper Nolan and starring Al Pacino. (2002)

It wasn't perfect but it was very good, very enjoyable, and slightly unusual as thrillers go. I see that the New York Times described it as a "Noir Thriller" and certainly that fits it. It has more in common with the noir genre than today's modern thriller anyway. It's more about storyline and character than car chases. Watch it if you like a good story.

4 stars!

The last one I watched was "War Horse." There are so many movies about WWll, and not nearly as many on "The Great War." To view the horrors of war primarily through the experience of a horse was an inspired concept (I don't remember the name of the book's author) and I thought it was well done and enlightening. The several horses the filmakers used to portray the war horse of the title were absolutely amazing!

I'm so glad you mentioned that one, I had forgotten about it and need to put it back on my "to watch" list.

I watched a documentary about turning it from book into stageplay for the National Theatre in London, and the puppet horse they made was astounding.

"The Kids are Alright" with Juliane Moore and Annette Bening. I thought it was pretty good - I liked that all the characters were likable people who each did something wrong. Everyone behaved badly to some extent, but nobody was really the bad guy.

My daughter didn't like it much, for much the same reason. Moral ambiguity is more appealing, I think, at 50 than at 20.

I just watched 'Abraham Lincoln', Vampire Hunter, in 3D, no less, and you know what?, i loved it.
I know the premise is, to say the least off kilter and to some, sacrilegious, but it works.
It takes the known history of Lincoln himself and the civil war and weaves vampires into the story in such a way
as to make it in it's own way, interesting.
It was directed by Tim Burton too, so take that into consideration as well.
The sight of Abe wielding an axe like he was born to it was alone worth the price of admission.

I watched The Burning Plain the other day ... Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger, Jennifer Lawrence (from The Hunger Games).

I really liked it, and was surprised to find it was a box-office bummer with generally lousy reviews. What most reviewers didn't like was precisely what kept me interested the most ... the way scenes from the film jolt forward and backwards in time without explanation, and the fact there are separate 'threads' of characters/plot that look unconnected.

Anyone else see it? Like? Hate?

Never heard of it, dsimpy. Considering the huge marketing exercise that the film industry is, it's a pity that films that don't buzz immediately at the Box Office can fall into obscurity quite easily while some duff ones go on to be household names. I fell for the buzz around the Blair Witch Project at the time and still wish I had asked for my money back.

George, I would never have thought of watching 'Abraham Lincoln', Vampire Hunter, but you have me curious now.

Agony, I really liked "The Kids are Alright" too. I thought Juliane Moore and Annette Bening were great in it. It's in the Woody-Allen-esque genre, I think. Is that a genre? It is now.

dsimpy The Burning Plain was good movie i never heard of it til a couple months when it was on Pay TV,Charlize Theron was very good

Just turned off my portable DVD player after watching "Where the Heart Is". Saw this thread and decided to weigh in. A good flick demonstrating Natalie Portmen's abilities to portray emotions. Great supporting cast with Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing, Sally Field, Joan Cusack, James Frain and Dylan Bruno.
The tale is built around a woman who gives birth to a baby in a WalMart she has been clandestinely living in since her sperm donor abandoned her outside it. Slowly her life comes back together. Though not in Kansas, there is a nice tornado scene where this Dorothy seems to grow from teen mom to Emerald City citizen. The movie shows that into each life a little rain must fall, sometimes it feels like a hurricane. A definite feel good, pick me up film to watch.

Edit: Not to be confused with the Dabney Coleman/Uma Thurman "Where the Heart Is"

Put myself through the agony of watching "My Cousin Rachel" (1952) starring Olivia de Havilland & Richard Burton, from the book by Daphne Du Maurier.

A very good story spoiled.

Full of actorry melodrama.

Ripe for a re-make.

And exactly the same goes for.... "The Tenth Man", starring Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi and Kristin Scott Thomas, based on the novel by Graham Greene.

(But replace melodrama with hammy acting).

Bring on the re-make quick!

"Jesus Christ Superstar" was remarkable for the music and the unique way Norman Jewison chose to present the tale of the Passion in a mixed then and now art. Also of note is that there is not one scene shot on a sound stage (good dubbing or lip-synching as it's come to be known).

I thought watching this out of season (summer vs Easter) might impact my take on it. It turned out to be much like Christmas in July for I had never seen the film before and thoroughly enjoyed it. Actually, with the warm summer weather, I could identify more with the setting of the story and movie.

Chavs, just watched "Rebecca" (another Du Maurier) and remember why I dislike this story so much. To my eyes it's not a romance but the story of an abusive man with almost pedophiliac tendencies - obviously not the way it was seen at the time the film was made.

Yes, I agree with you, it was pretty disturbing! They pulled off the melodrama in Rebecca, though - well, more than My Cousin Rachel did anyway. ( imho, natch!)

Never seen Jesus Christ Superstar, must give it a go!

"K 19 - The Widowmaker"

Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford - need I say more?

(Only thing that could have improved it would have been adding Pierce Brosnan and Michael Douglas!)

"The Scout" with Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser. A pretty good movie, I've always thought, that didn't have the success it deserved. I think it was probably marketed wrong - the trailers and packaging make it look like a madcap comedy and while it's funny, it's not funny in that madcap way. Kinda touching, in fact.

Brooks is a baseball scout who finds the worlds greatest player (Fraser) All would be well, except he's got some serious emotional issues. Great performances.

Just back from the new Batman movie. Action scenes good, dialogue scenes a bit long...and Michael Caine was cringingly woeful.
(Also Movie a bit long at 2.5 hours, and that is after the commercials and trailers)

i watched The Reunion with John Cena,Amy Smart & Ethan Embry this wasn't a good movie and WWE should stop making movies cause they have only made 2 good movies in The Condemned with Stone Cold and 12 Rounds with John Cena can't believe they are making a sequel to 12 Rounds called 12 Rounds:Reloaded with Randy Orton

in all wouldn't bother watching this movie again

I watched "the Guard" and it was hilarious .. in a dark kind of way.
It's an Irish movie with a bit of humour, bit of mystery and a bit of a twist at the end.

My daughter wants me to watch "The Avengers" with her, and insists we watch all the superhero movies that lead up to it. So far we've seen "Ironman", "The Hulk" and "Captain America". I'm not a fan of action movies, but found the first two at least watchable; "Captain America" was, I'm sorry, just dreadful. Barely coherent, and with no redeeming qualities that I could see.

To add the a run of disappointments, I watched "London River", a story set in London in the days after the 7/7 bombs.

It should and could have been a film of real genius. Instead it kept tripping itself up by trying to be too clever. The mixture of French & English only served to interrupt some of the most emotional scenes, with sudden subtitles shattering the moments.

One virtually wordless scene in particular was beautifully acted but the emotional climax got totally destroyed when subtitles suddenly appeared on the bottom of the screen to translate the most basic French phrase (Bon Voyage).

I concluded that it must have been written as a showcase for the male lead, Sotigui Kouyaté, who speaks French & whose acting prowess cannot be ignored. But that's a travesty because Brenda Blethyn's undeniable greatness was compromised by the interruptions, and - worse than that - all this faffing about distracted from the film's best point which was that it captured (superbly) the backstreets of ordinary London with ordinary people going through the banal, hideous, and lonely process of finding missing people after the bombings.

It's a film worth watching for all its genius, really it is, but watch it with a strong coffee and all your wits about you because you will have to work as hard as the film crew to get the most out of it.




Good to hear, will stick that on my "to watch list"!

Interesting to hear this viewpoint. I'm hard of hearing, and watch all movies with closed captioning on, just to make sure I catch everything. My kids, who have normal hearing, have gotten into the habit through watching with me, and now also always use it. The result of this is that we don't find subtitles distracting at all, we're so used to them. Probably someone like me would have a completely different reaction to this film.

That's a very good point but I find that using closed captions or subtitles stops being distracting after a short while and have watched some great films where the subtitles didn't bother me in the least - Das Boot, Pan's Labyrinth & Life is Beautiful are 3 of my favourite films and I loved Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon too. The subtitles make no difference to my rating because they didn't detract.

I just found the switching from one language to another distracting in this one. There seemed to be no need. In some war films they have used both German and English (and therefore some subtitling) but it seemed to me to be pertinent and didn't interfere with emotional moments. In this film, emotion was everything and I thought choices about which language to use and when to use the captions just served to remind me that I was watching a film rather than let me be drawn into it.

But I am very interested to know if I am the only one who felt that. It could just have been my mood even! & Maybe if I had been forewarned it wouldn't have thrown me.

Watched Three Fugitives with Martin Short & Nick Nolte it's my favourite Martin Short ever this movie is so funny one of my favourite moments in the movie is when Ned Martin Short's character shoots Lucas in the leg and he takes him to Dr Horvath who is a vet but Dr Horvath is so out of it that he thinks Lucas is a dog he treats him like that

one of the funniest movies ever

Last American movie I watched was BOTTLE SHOCK with Chris Pine and Alan Rickman. A cute little movie about Napa Valley in 1976 and how their wines got to be world renown.

The last Bollywood film I watched was DOSTANA, the remake, not the original, which I admit, I have never seen. Abishek Bachchan did a lovely job with this fun comedy, following in his father's footsteps. Now I just have to track down the original so I can see his dad's performance.

I just enjoyed "Summer Lovers" (1982) with Daryl Hannah, Peter Gallagher and Valerie Quennessen as the characters involved in a successful love triangle on the island of Santorini. I was taken with Valerie's beauty and tried to find out more about her. She'd played the princess Conan saves in "Conan the Barbarian". She left movies after "SL" to raise a family in France. After about 5 years she was making a comeback but was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.
You know how they say things come in threes. Well, years before "Splash" in "SL", Daryl H said she often fantasized about being a mermaid as a teen. In SL on a scene intended to show the bonding that was developing between the three characters, Valerie's gets into a moped accident when she is run off the road by a tourist bus. One prophecy remains to be garnered from this film. If I were Peter Gallagher, I'd know this film by heart.

Following on the superhero theme, we watched "Thor" the other night. Appealing and kinda cute, with about as much coherence as you can expect from a comic book movie.

Thor was my favourite comic superhero when I was a kid, ('cause he was so goodlooking, natch) and I thought they did a good job of capturing the feeling of Asgard from the comics - or at least it matches my forty-plus year old memories.

Never heard of it but that sounds my type of movie, thanks for the tip off.

We Need To Talk About Kevin.


5 stars plus! Sublime. Best film I've seen in years. Just... watch it.

Edited to clarify: Sublime film-making (not a second of film wasted, from story to cinematography every detail was thought out, every scene compelling) but it's a dark film and horrific story.

The Manchurian Candidate, the Denzel Washington version. Very decent but it really made me want to see the original again - a much better film.