Last movie watched...

[dweezil2]

Philomena!

Yes, really.

Really surprised myself with this.

Very affecting story and excellent performances from Judie Dench and Steve Coogan.

[pictsy]

Flight of the Navigator

This was actually a disappointment to watch.  I remember it being a lot better.

I remembered another 80's children's film that I enjoyed in my youth.  Return to Oz.  I have recently seen this film.  It wasn't entirely like I remembered it from my childhood, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. 

[HdE]

The Fifth Element - which I treated myself to on blu-ray a while ago.

Love this movie! It's the very pinnacle of 'daft fun'. It also conjures up some fun memories of snuggling up on a bean bag with a young lady to watch it at home, back in the day. Ahh, nostalgia!

[CrazyFoxMachine]

I luuurrrve the Fifth Element. It's probably the closest mainstream cinema has ever got to portraying the wild inventiveness French comics - Moebiustastic.

[Colin Zeal]

It's 90s (just) rather than 80s and like the Harry Potter films a British-made production though bankrolled by Warners, but I still love Nic Roeg's The Witches (I recently blew a friend's mind by telling him that the guy who directed Performance and The Man Who Fell To Earth also made The Witches!). Still my favourite Dahl adaptation, and shares the Jim Henson Connection with Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. The Grand High Witch is one of the most fantastic and effective bits of makeup and prosthetics I've ever seen in a movie. A film that rides the line of being 'scary but not too scary for kids' incredibly well and holds up really well 20+ years later.

Yes, The Witches is a great film. The only shame about it was the cop out at the end of not going with the original version from the book.

[Mabs]

I luuurrrve the Fifth Element. It's probably the closest mainstream cinema has ever got to portraying the wild inventiveness French comics - Moebiustastic.

^This.

[Hawkmumbler]

It's 90s (just) rather than 80s and like the Harry Potter films a British-made production though bankrolled by Warners, but I still love Nic Roeg's The Witches (I recently blew a friend's mind by telling him that the guy who directed Performance and The Man Who Fell To Earth also made The Witches!). Still my favourite Dahl adaptation, and shares the Jim Henson Connection with Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. The Grand High Witch is one of the most fantastic and effective bits of makeup and prosthetics I've ever seen in a movie. A film that rides the line of being 'scary but not too scary for kids' incredibly well and holds up really well 20+ years later.

Yes, The Witches is a great film. The only shame about it was the cop out at the end of not going with the original version from the book.

I was just about to say that. It's a near perfect little film, but that ending takes away all the heart of the final scene.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I luuurrrve the Fifth Element. It's probably the closest mainstream cinema has ever got to portraying the wild inventiveness French comics - Moebiustastic.

We can close the book on this one. The Fantastic Mister Fox has said all that needs be.

[GrinningChimera]

The Rocketeer


The Disney classic that never really had the success it deserved. If you have kids be sure to pick this one up. Just as good as I remember it being when I first saw it on VHS. The special effects have aged quite well, and it has one of the best scores I have heard in recent memory.

[JamesC]

The Rocker who?

[The Legendary Shark]

Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard. An unmitigated stream of burning, bullet-riddled drivel from start to finish. A Good Day to Call it a Die, I think...

[TordelBack]

Walking With Dinosaurs 3D.  Never felt quite so much like I'd taken a trip to the late Cretaceous, visually and even thematically speaking, with a decent range of gorgeously animated dinos on a series of herd migrations and leadership contests forming the plot insofar as it has one.  Gorgo makes a long-awaited return to cinema screens as some lean, lightning-fast hunters, and feathered Troodons look convincing for the first time.

I did however have to switch off my ears to achieve this immersion. 

I'm not quite sure why anyone decided that annoying High School kids bickering was the way to go for a photo-real Plaeozoic adventure, as a modern-day framing device had already  provided us with a mystical narrator who could have explained the action, and the Pachyrhinosaurs had plenty of characterful animation that would have easily carried a third-party voiceover.  But no, we get the characters making references to Ninjas and crushes and lions, joking about the pronunciation of dinosaur names and being 'blown forward to the Stone Age' etc. 

Look, this is unashamedly a little kids' film in the Disney Nature tradition, with completely bloodless violence (even when getting savaged by multiple Gorgosaurs) and unless you count insects I think there's only one on-screen death, in the form of a passing pterosaur.  But I do wonder why they felt the need to add to the understandable anthropomorphism by giving it a voice-track straight out of the poorer Ice Age movies.  I found it particularly annoying when the tension of most of the dramatic scenes is completely undercut, and the sound effects drowned out, by sarcastic bro-banter - and this includes some pretty amazing set-pieces, such as Patchy's doomed Dad fighting multiple Gorgos in a burning forest, and a neat river-rapids sequence.  This certainly mutes any sense of peril for the smaller kids, and my 4-year old didn't get scared once - which may be the aim, but is also sort of sad.

If we're going to embrace anachronisms, then I also have issues with the very modern sexism here.  The female lead is a pale dino with a pink tinge to her skin and big blue eyes, and has no other role but to get injured, lag behind, and be the completely submissive love interest of rival brothers.  The only other female character is Patchy's mother who just gets lost during a forest fire and is never mentioned again.  Yes, these are dinosaurs not people, but if you think people can suspend belief to accommodate a magical dino-tooth, a friendship between an apparently immortal and omniscient Alexornis and a Pachyrhinosaur, and a group of dinosaurs admiring the Aurora Borealis (and what I think was the Larger Megallanic Cloud in the Alaskan sky), then you can probably get away with at least one developed female character.

All that said, my kids really enjoyed it, which was the point, and if I'm honest so did I.  The Cretaceous visuals are the best I've ever seen, the 3D works well and the story is satisfying.  I just think the voice-track could have been a little less full-on, and at least tried not to be so pointedly anachronistic as to make it feel like you're watching two separate films.

Also: bonus Karl Urban looking all rugged and outdoorsy as he presumably gets ready for Cursed Earth adventures in Dredd 2.

I should probably mention the real highlight of the cinema trip: a breathtaking trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was literally nothing but minutes-long sequence of everyone's favourite bonded cyborgs Toothless and Hiccup swooping through the clouds, an advert as confident of the raw charm of what it is selling as anything I've ever seen.  And boy did it work.

[JamesC]

Saw two films yesterday.

American Hot Babes and Blade Runner.

American Hot Babes was a silly comedy about two guys that get transported to another dimension which is like a real life porno movie. It had some message about real love being better than porn but it felt a bit half hearted. It was silly fun to watch with a mate over a couple of beers.

Blade Runner was as good as ever. I really like this films but one thing I never really understand is why the Blade Runner at the beginning is doing Voight Kampff tests on all of the employees at the Tyrell corporation when they have photographs of all the replicants they're actually looking for. I think this could be explained with a bit of creative thinking but I don't think there's anything in the film to tell us why.

[Hawkmumbler]

I can't bring myself to watch that Walking with Dinosaurs film. How can one of the best paleoecology shows of all time be treated with such disrespect!

[GrinningChimera]

Eyes Wide Shut

I've been a huge Kubrick fan for a long time but because of the subject matter (Tom Cruise being in it probably didn't help) I've never bothered watching it until now. Turns out I've been missing out this whole time. This film is amazing. Both in story and from a technical standpoint. The way that suspense is built, particularly in the party scene is incredible. The musical score is perfect for the film. And the way the two main leads play off each others emotions is wonderful. For whatever reason, having at the time a big name couple like Tom and Nicole put me off watching the film, and yet after seeing it I don't think it would have worked as well without the real life chemistry between them.

If you are a fan of Kubrick films and have yet to see this, I do encourage you to give it a try. Especially when it can be picked up for such a cheap price. The only thing I will say is wait 'til the kids are in bed before you watch this. While it's not what you would call pornographic there is A LOT of nudity and a couple of sex scenes.