What film did you watch last night?

Memoir of a snail is absolutely brilliant.

I did a search before my post and I saw you were the only person on the forum to have previously mentioned it! Seems to be really under the radar.

Aside from the core story, I absolutely love the attention to detail and focus on life’s little ‘irrelevant’ moments.

I just checked it out and it's the same writer/director that did Mary & Max, which is also excellent and gets a slightly higher score than MoaS on imdb.
 
Memoir of a Snail - a stop motion ‘memoir’ of someone doing their best to get by in life. I won’t say anything further as I went in pretty blind and that worked well.

This is excellent. Heartfelt, tragic, funny, beautiful… a must watch IMO, one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.

10/10
When I first saw the title I thought I'd seen it. But after a search, it turns out I was thinking of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021). Which is definitely worth a watch from what I remember.
 
So after finishing Andor and Rogue One, the next step was to watch the original trilogy! Been a while since I've seen these, maybe 5 years or so? I did briefly consider trying to find the original originals or watch one of the fan upgrades of them but decided to just go with the 'current ones' While not every change is popular (and rightly so) I still like a lot of the changes, little added city shots and space shots in particular.

Some thoughts I had while watching them:

Luke is so damn whiny in the first one. I don't really remember this bothering me before, but literally 80%+ of his lines are whining about something.
The first one is surprisingly dark in places, the arm cutting in Mos Eisley is much bloodier than I remember and I forgot how much they showed of Luke's crispy aunt and uncle. I think in my head Star Wars is always very clean and blood free so that surprised me.
The first one feels pretty rushed in general, everything happens very quickly. Luke meets Obi Wan and he instantly gives him the lightsaber and wants to train him, the final battle scene feels very fast etc.
A lot of things which in my head were part of the whole original trilogy weren't until later (in my head for example Mothma and Ackbar had smaller roles in the first film. In reality they're nowhere to be seen and instead we have some random old guy who I don't think even gets named in the film and never turns up again!) I think one of the drawbacks of it being written as it went without much plan, there are a few other instances where this rears its head, most notably the damn awkward love triangle between Han, Leia and Luke which will never stop being weird.
The lightsaber fight is god awful, suffers from Lucas changing his mind about how he wanted them to look and unfortunately it stands out pretty badly compared to later ones.
Overall I'd give the first maybe 8/10 as a film

Empire Strikes Back is just great, such an improvement in every way. Luke is actually a character, Leia gets a much stronger role. Overall it feels much less of a 'by the numbers' story than parts of the first one does. There isn't really any scene I dislike in Empire. Everything on Hoth, Yoda on Dagobah, the fight with Vader, the twist, it's all brilliant. 9 or 9.5/10 probably the best of all Star Wars films.

RoJ is a bit of a mess. Starts quite well, though the plan to rescue Han makes absolutely no sense (they also did Boba Fett dirty with how atrocious his 'death' is) Feels like Luke got a lot more competent between the end of Empire and the start of RoJ too.
The Dagobah scene kind of sucks, Obi Wan basically says "lol yeah I lied about your father but from my perspective maybe you're the liar lol" Maybe he got that logic from Anakin's famous 'Jedi are evil' speech in the past.
We get a little (such a little, she deserved more) Mon Mothma then more of everyone's catchphrase/meme extraordinaire Admiral Ackbar. Despite his lines being so infamous in recent years somehow it doesn't detract from his character at all. More Lando is great and he gets to redeem himself more after Empire.
Unfortunately we then get to Endor and the film divides neatly in two. Half of it becomes a joke with the ewoks and ohmygodwhatwashethinking. The space battles and everything on the death star with the Emperor is great but occasionally we just cut to this dumb slapstick stupidity on Endor with teddybears to break the tension.
Then to top it all off we have the worlds worst hippy music dance party across the galaxy to close off the trilogy in a rather pathetic manner. It doesn't make sense, it never made sense because of course the emperor dying doesn't suddenly make the whole Empire surrender. I think this was a later change rather than in the originals (some of it definitely is because it shows Naboo) but I'm not 100% sure. The ewok party was bad enough by itself though. RoJ gets maybe 7 or 7.5/10
 
Last Breath (2025)

Having watched the original documentary years ago, it definitely took away a lot of the drama and tension from the film. But even if you watched it blind, the acting from the supporting cast is weak. There's too much B roll and insert shots, which is basically the only way they could get the runtime up to film length. The script also has the characters giving exposition, rather than talking naturally, which in the documentary would've come from interviews. It got a thumbs up from my wife, who hasn't seen the documentary beforehand.


6/10 (take a point or two off if you've seen the documentary)
 
The Net.

When I notice them on the multitude of bloody streaming services I seem to have subbed to, I like to rewatch films from decades ago to see if I still like them. A lot of the time I don't, for example a film called House (1985) which I remembered liking in the 80s but rewatching recently I thought it was *****.

The Net (1995) however is still a good watchable film with pseudo realistic computer hacking featuring the ever lovely Sandra Bullock.
 
RoJ contains my favourite shots of the entire trilogy though. The fleet exiting hyperspace and the Falcon swooping between carriers. The original trilogy continue to remain my favourite SciFi films, seen through the lens of watching them as a kid.
Yeah the space scenes are still great in Jedi, just a shame about other stuff
 
F1 - was really looking forward to this one and overall it did not disappoint. The production was good and can see the same similarities in the direction as Top Gun Maverick. The acting was on point. Brad Pitt plays a rugged under achieved tin cup champion that missed his shot who is thrusted into a position chasing past glories. With a great cast it was a compelling experience with notable performance from Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon. There was a few instances that didn't quite work for me and a cliche final act that you can't help feel is coming. However it doesn't detract from the thrill and excitement of the cars and the speed which at times captivates the audience in moments of exhilaration and euphoria. Good support from the usual F1 commentary team that helps drive the racing scenes, maximising the thrill and experience from a real life race. It's far from perfect and those hardcore F1 fans might not appreciate the cheese and predictably appealing but it still gives most I would think a good time at the movies. Solid 8/10.
 
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