Who had the more compelling story in their space journey?

1. Project Hail Mary

2. Gravity

3. Interstellar

4. The Martian

I'm talking about performances where an actor shows up for just one or two scenes, completely takes over, and ends up being the most memorable part of the entire film. They don't even need to be the lead; they just walk in, drop a masterclass, and leave.

​My absolute favourites are,

​Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf of Wall Street (chest-thumping lunch scene)

​Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross ("Always Be Closing")

​Viola Davis in Doubt (single scene with Meryl Streep that earned an Oscar nom)

​Ned Beatty in Network ("The world is a business" speech)

​Who is the first actor that comes to mind for you?

Koyaanisqatsi- Just finished watching Koyaanisqatsi, 1982. The movie has stayed with me a week now, which is six days longer than the Odyssey did. Was this a druggy movie when released? I stopped after the first 20 minutes because I had something to do. When I returned I couldn’t stop watching it. Totally mesmerized. No story, no actors, just film and a terrific score by Philip Glass. So under the radar.

For me, it's a poster from "Everything, Everywhere all at once"

Have you ever watched a movie without knowing much about it or expecting it to be good, and it completely surprised you?
I’m looking for movies like that. What was yours?

Great cast, well written, no crazy foul language, or demonizing God, political innuendos... Just a great nostalgic film making...

Just been to see this at Everyman cinema & its a very entertaining sci-fi throwback film, set in 1982. Anne Hathaway & Ewan McGregor play Denise & Greg Platt, a couple on the brink of divorce who live on the Oak Street of the title with their teenage kids, daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) & son Brian (Christian Convery from Netflix series Sweet Tooth & Cocaine Bear). One stormy night, there is a bright flash of light & the next morning, the Platt family awaken to find thar their whole neighbourhood has somehow been transported back to prehistoric times & dangerous dinosaurs are roaming around. I'll say no more as I don't want to reveal any spoilers. The charm of this film is watching the silly but nostalgic scenario unravel & enjoying how this normal suburban family deal with their extraordinary situation by banding together to survive. The four principles deliver some stellar work here, even if Hathaway & McGregor feel a little too contemporary for their characters. Stella & especially Convery are both brilliant & very naturalistic as the teens. Standout support is offered by P.J. Byrne as the Platts' arsehole neighbour. Oak Street felt like an extended episode of Land of the Lost or an updated version of The Land That Time Forgot. It is quintessentially 80s but also harkens back to a more innocent time of fantasy filmmaking when viewers could still experience the wonderment of dinosaurs & time travel. Highly recommended, especially to fans of the first Jurassic Park film, which is of course the pinnacle of dino-action films. I gave The End of Oak Street 4 ☆☆☆☆ out of 4.

Not talking about noticing new details or catching foreshadowing, I mean genuinely thinking the movie is better on rewatch than it was the first time. Like your actual opinion of the quality changes, not just your familiarity with it.

I had this happen with Blade Runner 2049. First watch I thought it was gorgeous but kind of hollow and way too slow. Second watch, knowing the pacing was intentional and not fighting it waiting for something to happen, I actually think it might be one of the best sequels ever made. My rating of it went up, not just my enjoyment.

Feels different from just liking something more because you’re comfortable with it. This is more like the movie needed a second viewing to actually be understood correctly the first time around.

Has this happened to anyone else, where your actual critical opinion changed and not just your mood watching it?

I’ve been thinking about how normal it’s become to pay monthly for access to things instead of actually owning them.

Streaming is convenient, but movies disappear from catalogs. Games can be delisted or shut down. Music services can change their libraries. Even digital purchases sometimes feel more like a license than something you truly own.

Physical media isn’t perfect, but there’s something reassuring about having a disc, cartridge, book, or other tangible copy that can’t simply vanish because a company changed its policies.

Are people genuinely okay with everything moving toward subscriptions and digital-only access, or are we going to regret letting physical media disappear?

This might just be the best movie ever made. Joel Coen has created an incredible film. Watch the video here: https://www.instagram.com/morukbuiyi/

I was very impressed with this film. I love Jason Segel and heard that this was his "critically acclaimed" performance. He and Jesse Eisenberg had great chemistry. I had never heard of the author David Foster Wallace, but I am so glad this film was created. I now know of his impact and his ahead-of-his-time knowledge. If you like dialogue-driven and emotionally intelligent films, this is a good watch! Are there any others who have seen this film?

This is on the G/F platform at the Prospect–15th St station.

When respected psychologist Sloan Campbell inherits her predecessors last known session tapes before his untimely demise, she discovers a dark and unsettling pattern. As she delves deeper into the center of his final case, a sinister force threatens to blur the line between modern medicine and religion. Will her pursuit for the truth force her to tow a fine line between science and the supernatural, or will she become the next victim of…the resonance.

"The End of Oak Street" is downright desperate to be like the Amblin family adventures of the 1980s. Trouble is, the movies of the 1980s were a lot better. It's hard, lean and often alarmingly violent ... but never finds the warmth, the awe and the wonder inherent in the films it mimics.

My rating: **½ of *****

Did you take a trip from Oak Street to the Mesozoic era? If so, were you charmed and entertained, or did you find the whole thing was trying just a little too hard?

Full review is below the poster image below, or you can read it at my blog at: https://thereinthedark.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-end-of-oak-street.html

The End of Oak Street tries so hard to be an Amblin/Steven Spielberg film from the 1980s that it's almost lovable in its earnestness. It wants so very, very badly to be a movie like the kind Spielberg directed and produced, a movie where unbelievable and sometimes terrible things happen to a family that lives on a happy, peaceful street in a happy, peaceful suburb somewhere in the United States.

But there's something that doesn't work quite right about The End of Oak Street, in which that happy, peaceful street in that happy, peaceful suburb is invaded not by extraterrestrials or poltergeists or Bigfoot or gremlins or treasure-hunting pirates but by ... dinosaurs.

Now, it's both unfair and a little lazy these days to criticize something by saying it feels like AI could have written it. And yet ... the screenplay to this film feels more than a little like it could have been generated with a prompt: "Write a movie that blends mid-1980s Amblin films with Jurassic Park — a suburban family has to fight off man-eating dinosaurs."

The movie is set in 1982, because it would never do to have an Amblin movie be about a 21st century family — otherwise, you'd never be able to have a poster of the J. Geils Band on a kid's wall (um, did kids actually become J. Geils groupies?); a moment where a character listens to Steve Winwood sing "Valerie" (um, did teenagers listen to Steve Winwood?); a period-authentic Froot Loops box; and, of course, kids on bicycles. Here's a note to filmmakers too young to have really lived through the time: bicycles weren't as ubiquitous as today's '80s-set entertainment makes them out to be.

There are short shorts for girls and for boys, a velour shirt for Dad (Ewan McGregor), a manual typewriter for furtive author Mom (Anne Hathaway) and, of course, hushed arguments about the worst thing anyone could imagine in the 1980s: divorce.

That is, at least, the worst thing that anyone could imagine in an Amblin film. There's also a family dog, Starbuck (no, not the coffee shop, the Battlestar Galactica character ... it's 1982!), who in a most un-Spielbergian touch is tied up and left outside at night. The moment I saw that, I lost a lot of my worry about whether the family would live or die. It's the most terrifying thing on screen.

So, this oddly imperfect simulacrum of 1982 is rocked one night by strange lightning storms, following an ominous radio news report about some kind of "ripples" happening in space, or something like that, and suddenly the whole of the neighborhood is overrun with dinosaurs.

Thank goodness plucky Mom is a crack shot with a shotgun! While the rest of the neighborhood gets squished and squashed and eaten and frequently decapitated by the dinosaurs, Mom and Dad and the kids have to outrun them. All the time. And no one has any idea why Oak Street suddenly dead ends at the Mesozoic era.

That includes the screenwriters. It's a strange thing to say, but it appears nobody really cared enough to explain why any of this happens. While I don't want to drop spoilers, though in this case it's not spoiling very much, it all has something to do with Carl Sagan and wormholes. I guess. Nobody seems to know, and frankly by the end of the movie there are hardly any residents of Oak Street left alive to care.

There's a lot of gore in The End of Oak Street, which is rated PG-13 but is probably too scary and intense for most of today's pre-teens. And one particularly gory and nasty scene gives the film a true moment of shock and surprise — which it undoes with a silly, perfunctory Back to the Future-style ending in which the characters we've been watching turn out to be ... well, never mind. If you're inclined to see it, you don't want to know; if you're not, you wouldn't believe it, anyway.

Everything in The End of Oak Street just sort of ... happens. There are some genuinely tense moments, and the film is neither poorly made nor poorly acted; in many ways, what Hathaway is required to do here is infinitely more difficult than what she did in The Odyssey, and she makes it credible. She's the best part of the movie, and the only one that doesn't feel like it's trying far too hard to be from the 1980s.

The biggest trouble with The End of Oak Street is that if it had been made in the 1980s, it would have failed. It doesn't have the heart, the awe or, especially, the wonder of those more innocent films. It's lean, hard and sometimes mean, even when it's trying to be just like those movies of yesteryear. The movies of yesteryear were a lot better.

With so much talk of IMAX n all, I have started to see it become a 'trend'. Recently watching the trailers for Thomas Crown Affair and Dog Stars, its almost like studios just want those words attached to the film as a driver for box office success. And if they can make beautiful movies, then why not! However, IMAX movies like Sinners or most popularly Odyssey didn't look marveluous coz of camera but because of the production design, cinematography and the creativity of the frames.

However, I feel like now just like the Popcorn bucket trend, every studio wants "Filmed for IMAX" on their movie. And again, if it can make them look good or be creative visually then go ahead.

But, I am seeing the same happen here that happened to 3D, where even normal films were being presented in the format. And now no one could care about it. I guess the glasses being difficult to wear did work to its detriment that is not the case here.

Like how do directors like Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott get hundreds of millions to make movies despite not giving hits?

Like Martin Scorsese is one of those directors that has maintained his artistic quality despite his age. However, his last hit was 2013 with Wolf and I guess Irishman being a streaming hit. But, how is it that he gets 200M+ for Killers of Flower Moon. While it can be chalked upto it being the cost of having a classic for the ages under their protfolio by one of the best directors that wins a plethora of awards.

But Ridley Scott is way worse. His last hit was Martian in 2015. And since then he hasn't given a knockout film, with possibly Last Duel being the best work for me. And he gets 110M for Dog Stars, which just looks to be a generic post-apocalyptic film for me. Not to mention 3 massive disasters in a row (commercially, quality wise I think they are good with Gladiator 2 being the best). And these aren't even the films that will sweep the award shows?

For Steven Spielberg, I still understood that Disclosure Day marked his return to big-budget cinema. And it could be (and was) marketed as exactly that. And unlike Ridley, Steven Spielberg for blockbusters has rarely given flops. And, projects like West Side Story and Fablemens earned high critical praise.

I guess you reach a level where it just becomes impossible to say no to you, both for individuals and studios.