Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

"For a Few Dollars More", the second in Leone's Dollars Trilogy. It worked quite well, with Clint Eastwood returning as the iconic Man with No Name (okay, he has three names in the series, but that doesn't sound as cool). Lee Van Cleef was also good as the more polished Col. Mortimer, who, on reflection, is sort of a test run for his later Sabata characterization. And Gian Maria Volonte delivered a good performance as the dangerously crazy (or crazily dangerous) El Indio. Plus another fine Morricone score.
Saw this as a revival showing, in 35 mm, at the Mahoning Drive-in. They showed "Fistful of Dollars" last month, and have scheduled "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in August.

 

The New Mutants

...pffff , well - I don't know what to make of this , it certainly didn't do anything for me.

there's about an hour of teen angst in some asylum, which is all very drab and then suddenly the last 15 minutes monsters turn up and a giant (literal) smokey bear and they fight and crash about and then it just ends .

 

"The Lost Missile", a 1958 sci-fi movie starring Robert Loggia. A mysterious rocket from space enters close orbit of Earth. It moves at incredible speed, with the heat generated by its passage burning up anyone and anything below it. It fries parts of Russia, then Alaska, then Canada, and it's for New York City, so now it's a problem.
It's a generally OK, if rather dark, movie. It's also padded out (even though it only runs about 70 minutes) and fairly low budget. It was this month's "The Mads are Back" feature, with Trace & Frank riffing via Zoom.
Oh, and @Sarge , Trace remarked, regarding the the abundance of stock footage, that if you're into vintage aircraft of the period, the movie is practically porn. Here's the unriffed version:

 

@Kenneth Morgan
Wow, I've never been so bored while watching the end of the world. They're right about the planes, though. Lots of footage of aircraft that are long gone: EC-121 Warning Star version of the Lockheed Constellation, F-89 Scorpion, F-90 Starfire, Lockheed T-33, USAF F-86D and E models and RCAF F-86F, Hawker Hunter, Republic F-84G Thunderjet and F-84F Thunderstreak, F-100 Super Saber, F-102 Delta Dagger, Bell 47 (MASH helicopter), V-2 rockets, B-36 Peacemaker, B-47 Stratojet, old D model B-52s, even the long-forgotten Canadian-built CF-100 all-weather interceptor (I've never seen any footage of that one before). I'll never watch that one again, but I'm glad I sat through it once.

 

Seconded. It's a very bad film.

***
A Quiet Place Part II
Very well done. I really like the story and the pacing.

 

Humanoids From the Deep (1980)

It was pretty awful but good for a campy laugh. Rubber suit fish people who are both murderous AND rapey.

Vic Morrow typecast as a nincompoop and plenty of gratuitous boobie shots.

 

‘Batman Forever’, it’s one of my go to comfort background noise flicks. I’m a Schumacher Stan and don’t care

 

It's so rare to get a Van Cleef in a sympathetic role. I really like this performance too.

 

If you want good Lee Van Cleef then check out The Big Gundown. One of the best non Leone spaghettis ever. There are several versions available but the Italian version is the best. It was directed by Sergio Sollima, Van Cleef stars with Tomas Milian, and an Ennio Morricone score. It’s a fantastic film.

 

My Man Godfrey 1936

it's amazing how modern some of these films feel , I mean this is 85 years old and yet the dialogue is so sharp and sparkling and full of pin-point comic timing.

 

Tried watching Snakes On A Plane and shut it off after about an hour.

At least some bad movies can be entertaining in a way or are quirky or weird enough to be endearing, but this movie is just freaking awful and extremely annoying. It makes some 1980s slasher sequels like Part 5 this or that or the other look like epic masterpieces.

 

The key to watching that movie is to assume that every character is, to one extent or another, stupid. And that includes Samuel L. Jackson's character. Once you accept that, you can just go with the flow and await the catchphrase.
For a counterpoint, watch the 1974 TV-movie "Fer De Lance". It's pretty much "Snakes on a Sub", but the characters pretty quickly come up with an intelligent way to deal with the snakes that absolutely no one in "Snakes on a Plane" even considers.

 

The key to watching Snakes On a Plane is to never, under any circumstances, watch it.

 

Girl on a Train.
Not a sequel to Snakes on a Plane, but based on a book. I did not read the book. It's in the same genre as Gone Girl. Emily Blunt is good, if a bit miscast as a shell of a woman who drinks all day on a train to NYC and sees some things at a house on the block where she used to live. She's drunk and in a speeding train, but we will forget that for now. She's clearly dealing with trauma, and the mystery slowly unfolds. It's a bit Hitchcock like, interesting but never as good as you hope it will be. Blunt is far too beautiful for a girl who has been drinking for a year straight. It is a good performance though. Okay but could have been better with a director like Fincher.

 

I liked Snakes on a Plane. I went into the cinema expecting nothing special and I got some laughs out of it. Job done..

 

well your expectations were certainly met. I like B movies and found it near unwatchable.

 

Helps that I like Samuel L Jackson. (And I enjoyed the 'getting the snakes off the plane' scene even though I can't quote the tag line here).

 

I lol'd.

 

My Octopus Teacher (2020)
The Academy Award winning documentary about a man's journey to understanding the ocean from the perspective of a creature that has so much to teach us. I remember several years ago watching this documentary on the future of the world, where it predicted octopus creatures would one day take over the Earth; basically because of their high intelligence. You really have to see it to believe it. I can't picture most humans being so highly adaptive to their surroundings on a moment's notice. It was certainly enlightening.

 

Blush 2019

suburban mum/housewife suspects her hubby is having an affair , and she can't connect with her teenage daughter anymore , every time she tries to help people it goes wrong or people take advantage of her .
it's got some similarities with American Beauty , kind've a black comedy at times , seemingly ordinary suburbanites have their secrets etc.

there's no-one in it I'd heard of but its well acted and I quite liked it

 

Minari (2020)
A young Korean family moves to rural Arkansas in the hopes of finding the American dream. It's a sweet film with no vulgar language, risqué scenes, or violence. There's nothing overly special about the family; but I guess that's what makes the movie so natural.

 

The Gift Horse aka Glory at Sea (1952)
Trevor Howard and Richard Attenbourough star in a movie about an old American destroyer transferred to the Royal Navy early in WW2, loosely based on true history. It's mostly a slow-paced drama with typically understated but excellent acting by Howard. VFX leave a lot to be desired, but I could overlook that in favor of the characters and their stories. I thought it was a solidly entertaining and moving film, though not as good as 1953's The Cruel Sea, which is the gold standard of the genre.

 

Burn After Reading. This is, perhaps, the ultimate spy-movie parody because it's a spy movie with no real spies, no secrets, no stakes. Its sprawling cast is full of people who convince themselves they're in some kind of desperate conspiracy, and their bizarrely interconnected lives take on the look of conspiracy, but it's all much ado about a low-level functionary's inane and wholly unthreatening memoirs, enabled by the fact that they're all shallow, shortsighted, and dim. It's nitwits all the way down.

The whole thing is wickedly funny, full of great lines and ridiculous antics, with the sort of bizarre flair only the Coens can manage. The cast is stellar; Brad Pitt's meathead antics drew the most attention, but Frances McDormand gives an even better, subtler obliviously dim performance, while John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton are both hilarious as a deeply unpleasant couple. The MVP might be George Clooney, though, playing beautifully and hilariously against type as a sad-sack lothario. And that's not even getting into great supporting performances by Richard Jenkins, J.K. Simmons, and David Rasche. A brilliant Coens satire, one of their great comedies.

 

Mother (2020)
A young single Japanese mother with more than a few screws loose has been living off of her child's welfare and gets by through convincing her family to loan her money (which she never pays back) and sleeping around. There's no explanation as to why she wound up with her son and not the father, but whatever he did must've been pretty terrible since she's just about the worst mother you can ask for. And then of course one of her flings results in another child, and things go from already bad to worse. All of the actors do a fine job in their roles; especially the lead who plays the mother.

Edit: I just researched the trailer (the movie is on Netflix) and realized this was based on a true story; where a teenager was driven to kill his grandparents by his mother.