Last movie watched...

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Ethel & Ernest

Ethel & Ernest was one of my favourite books growing up, I remember getting it out of the school library and being transfixed by its warmth and simple beauty.

I was worried and unnerved by the film adaptation when it was announced and the trailer spooked me into thinking they'd add a load of subplots and shy away from the book's bleak ending.

I sat down to watch it on Christmas telly with my own parents and from the live-action Ray introduction I knew it was going to be alright. It sticks rigidly to the book - adding little and removing even less. It was heartbreaking to see it in beautiful motion, replicating his style perfectly and expanding it for HD - stretching scenes out to shimmering horizons and filling them with gorgeous colour. There are some vaguely jarring uses of 3D mixed in but usually the intricate models fit in seamlessly. As we watched my parents reminisced about their own childhoods with eachother, laughing at the funny bits and falling utterly silent at the deftly morbid notes which increase as the story reaches its unflinching end. "You have all this to come" said my dad with a characteristically morbid tone.

Afterwards they both agreed to have been moved by it and Ethel & Ernest was trending country-wide on Twitter. One tweet reading "house of adults ranging between 39 and 73 all in tears here". Knowing that the famously grouchy Briggs had himself wept upon seeing his parents in motion again adds another tinge of unprecedented emotion to all of this - one of my favourite ever book somehow brought respectfully to life and touching generations of people up and down the country. Evoking in all of them what it had done for me all those decades ago as I sat crying on my bed after school at the loss of a couple I'd never known.

[Professor Bear]

Fan-O-Rama, a live-action Futurama fan movie that has a script better than some episodes of the show.  Where it falls down is in the delivery and the sense of eeriness that comes from seeing things in live-action that were never meant to live outside animation - Prof Farnsworth is borderline nightmare-inducing, while Zoidberg is just straight-up a Lovecraftian horror that will haunt your dreams.
Nerd that I am, I thought the best gag was [spoiler]the genius casting of Vic Mignogna - the guy who plays Captain Kirk on Star Trek Continues - as Zap Brannigan.[/spoiler]

[ming]

I watched The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) with the boys (six and nearly eight) yesterday and a fine time was had by all.  I've not seen it in years but thought it about time to introduce them to some Ray Harryhausen creature effects and thought this would be as good a place to start as any.  It seemed to be a big hit (how could it not be?) so I'll wheel out Jason and the Argonauts and The Valley of Gwangi next - good times lie ahead!

I really need to make a list of essential viewing at some point...

[Mattofthespurs]

Watched 84 Charing Cross Road this afternoon on BBC 2. Seen it before and tears prick my eyes so many times during the movie.
Anyone with a love of books, real antiquarian books, will adore this.
Such a lovely, beautiful story.

[Mattofthespurs]

Jason and the Argonauts

Known as Jason and the Golden Fleas in this household. Taught that to my boy when he was 4 and he still calls it that now at nearly 13.

Cracking film.

[Colin YNWA]

Well since the Christmas break rumbles on pleasently we took the opportunity to go to the cinema... with the kids of course, so that meant the latest animated offering and in this case that means Moana. And no real surprises it sticks firmly to form. Which is to say while having pretty predictable story and plot it was emmense fun, had plenty of good belly laughs and so fun if a little trite songs. All in all another animated success, if nothing to make it stand out from the crowd.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I watched The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) with the boys (six and nearly eight) yesterday and a fine time was had by all.  I've not seen it in years but thought it about time to introduce them to some Ray Harryhausen creature effects and thought this would be as good a place to start as any.  It seemed to be a big hit (how could it not be?) so I'll wheel out Jason and the Argonauts and The Valley of Gwangi next - good times lie ahead!

I really need to make a list of essential viewing at some point...

Well you may add Clash of the Titans to that list, along with the Golden Voyage of Sinbad

[Hawkmumbler]

What? No love for Beast from 20,000 Fathoms?

[TordelBack]

What? No love for Beast from 20,000 Fathoms?

A personal fave.

We watched Close Encounters (Director's Cut) tonight - shorter than the original Special Edition, but much better for it. That Spielberg can make a movie, lemme tell ya.

[sheridan]

I watched The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) with the boys (six and nearly eight) yesterday and a fine time was had by all.  I've not seen it in years but thought it about time to introduce them to some Ray Harryhausen creature effects and thought this would be as good a place to start as any.  It seemed to be a big hit (how could it not be?) so I'll wheel out Jason and the Argonauts and The Valley of Gwangi next - good times lie ahead!

Jason was on TV at christmas - I found that out by switching the TV on half-way through, at the exact point that the bad guy got his men to collect the teeth of the hydra (which is almost immediately followed by sowing the teeth and then one of Harryhausen's most famous scenes).

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

My first ever proper encounter with Reubens unnerving man-child character. He's an odd sort of a beast and it didn't help when halfway through I realised it was essentially a neutered variation on the superlatively mad The Jerk. That being said It's not done without thought and the tonal shifts are quite smartly managed. It definitely knew what it was and as a consequence it didn't exhaust or overstay its welcome. HUR HUR

[Frank]

.
HYDRA MEANS HYDRA

 


If there's anything sexier than Scarlett Johansson disguised as Jenny Agutter, it's Theresa May.

I watched A League Of Their Own, because it was on telly when I got bored of the radio. I've started to get really nostalgic about early nineties cinema, lately. In these polarised times, there's something very safe and reassuring about a socially liberal agenda articulated via a formally conservative medium.

Everything works out exactly as you'd expect, but - thanks to the script polish from comedy fiends Ganz and Mandel - everybody has really funny lines. Even Madonna does a decent turn, thanks to her double act with Rosie O'Donnell, and I'd forgotten how hilarious John Lovitz's sardonic character is*. Harry Shearer gives good news reel.

I've always loved Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but after years of diminishingly unfunny and obvious cinema comedies, it now seems as sophisticated as Pinter and as gut-funny as Airplane. It's got the structural perfection of Back To The Future or Raiders Of The Lost Ark, where every scene pays off by itself while also forming a satisfying whole.

Frank Oz and Ian McDiarmid must have got on during Return Of The Jedi, because director Oz gives his fellow Jedi the funniest line in the movie - "may I take your trident, Your Highness?" The internet says Eddie Murphy and John Cleese were considered for the leads, but Caine and Martin are perfect - I had no idea the film was a remake.


* I'd also forgotten Penny Marshall and Tom Hanks pioneered the very long and loud piss gag a few years before Jay Roach and Mike Myers repurposed it for Austin Powers

[Spikes]

Passengers.

Overlong, and a piece of fluff overall, but it got me out the house during the 'Christmas day is over-New year is yet to come-what actual day is it today?' limbo period.

[Mattofthespurs]

Passengers.

Overlong, and a piece of fluff overall, but it got me out the house during the 'Christmas day is over-New year is yet to come-what actual day is it today?' limbo period.

Seeing this tomorrow. Not expecting much.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

I've been ruined for anime by years of opulent and characterful Ghibli films - this cold, flat and desaturated melodrama is only interesting for the quirky japes in the first half an hour and then it falls into a mess of confused mechanics and overwrought romance.