What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

[Cartagia]

Before Sunset - I liked Before Sunrise, but I loved Before Sunset. The wistful nostalgia of what could have been hit me so much more than the magic of a single night. More tightly constructed, even more realistic feeling conversations. Just a real sucker-punch of a film.

Ghost - Too many different movies rolled into one.  All of them are solid, but they are fighting against each other.  Whoopi is a powerhouse, though, and deserved that Oscar.

What We Do in the Shadows - Maybe the funniest movie of the '10s.  Every line is perfectly calibrated to make me smile.

More plane movies!

Women Talking - Just an absolute powerhouse of a film where the only qualms I have with it are the color grading and what is perhaps an unnecessary voiceover narration.

Good Will Hunting - First full watch in probably 25 years, and it hit me like a ton of bricks this time.  Robin and Matt are incredible of course, but the scene that really stuck out to me this time was the fight between Will and Skylar.  Minnie Driver just annihilated it.

Broken Arrow - Remarkably progressive for 1950, but still hamstrung by the fact the most noble of Apaches are just some white dudes.

The Good Dinosaur - Extremely pretty to look at, but not a ton going on for it otherwise, except for maybe those pterodactyls.

Marathon Man - Loved the slow build (and unexpectedly) espionage heavy front half, and once it hits the halfway point it really does just pickup and go like a marathon.  Great performances all around, with Scheider and Devane being my stand-outs.  It get a bit messy in the climax - like why does Hoffman choose that specific punishment, but it doesn't really hurt the overall package.

Gladiator - Top tier dad-fernoon fare.  Over-dramatic, bombastic, and decadent in all the right ways.  All-timer of Zimmer soundtrack as well.

[kamikazekeeg]

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom - You know, if you just ignore Shazam 2, Black Adam, and Flash, and look at Blue Beetle and this movie, these were good fun movies to go out on for the DCEU lol This is much like the first one, it's fun, colorful, fantasy adventure movie, does all the things right. 

I have no real complaints, like maybe they leaned a tad goofy in spots, especially the interactions between Arthur and his brother, Arthur feeling abit more..."Thor Ragnarok" levels of goofy, not that he was super serious in the last one, but tonally it starts to come across between him and Orm as that like Thor and Loki dynamic.  Might be a smidge unfair to say if it's a superhero brother combo where one is good and the other is bad/contentious, it must be compared to those two, but these movies don't exist in a vacuum and studios like to utilizes successful things from other movies.

Good watch though, I'd recommend it.  With me finished with the DCEU (Other than abandoning Shazam 2 part way in, I think this, the first Aquaman, The Suicide Squad (2021), and Blue Beetle are my favorite movies of the era.  Parts of Wonder Woman, Man of Steel, and Shazam were fine.  Everything else was either awful, or just middling to me.  Really hopeful this next era of DC is alot better.

[Cartagia]

Gladiator II - It was never going to be the original, but this mostly hits even though it is as shameless a legacy sequel retread as The Force Awakens.  Its bigger, broader, more bombastic, but thats what makes it inferior to the first film.  Where that one is an intimate story with big implications on the back burner, this sequel is all about the big implications, and the more intimate moments don't land as hard.  Paul Mescal is fine, but he is not the same magnetic beating heart that Russell Crowe portrays in the previous film.  Denzel is the perfect spice in the stew, though, bringing the exact right amount of Denzel to the picture, and keeps it from getting too self-serious or bogged down in its convoluted machinations.