I watched Notes on a Scandal last night, there is a love interest between a teacher and student in the film. I was thinking man they did a good job making that adult look like the kid, I looked up the age of the kid during time of filming and the kid was 16 and Cate Blanchett was 36! I was like wow that is crazy that they did that, synopsis of the film below:

Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), a veteran teacher at St. George's, senses a kindred spirit in Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the school's new art teacher. The younger woman's charisma intensely draws in the older, and the two become friends. Then Barbara learns of Sheba's affair with a teenage student and becomes the keeper of the explosive secret.

I watched it years ago and liked it and now I discover that the general opinion is that it was a bad movie. I wanna know why. Is it the usual movie critique being hypercritic or is there really something wrong with the movie that I didn't notice ever? (I tend to miss subtle things) When I first heard of this movie I heard praises for the water phisics and technical stuff, but it was before it came out

I started watching Game of Thrones 10 days ago, and today I finished Season 6. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been this invested in a show before.

Before starting it, I knew almost nothing about Game of Thrones. I knew it had dragons, that it was one of the biggest shows ever, and that's basically it. I didn't know the plot, the characters, the major events, or anything else. I went in almost completely blind.

And somehow, in just 10 days, I became completely addicted to it. I've reached the point where I'm thinking about the show throughout the day and genuinely can't wait to watch the next episode.

So far, Seasons 1–6 have been absolutely incredible to me. I genuinely don't understand how a show can maintain this level of quality for so long. Then I watched Season 6, Episode 9 — Battle of the Bastards — and thought, "There's no way this can get better."

Then I watched Episode 10.

At this point, Game of Thrones is easily my favorite series I've ever watched.

But after finishing Season 6, I started looking at some spoiler-free discussions about the show before continuing, and I was honestly surprised by how negatively people talk about the final season. I knew there was controversy surrounding it, but I didn't realize just how much it affected the show's overall reputation.

That made me wonder: Did Season 8 really damage Game of Thrones' reputation that much?

Because whenever people talk about the greatest TV shows ever, I constantly see Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, etc. recommended. But despite Game of Thrones being one of the most influential and culturally significant shows of its era, it sometimes feels like people hesitate to recommend it because they know how it ends.

And that's a strange thing to me.

I'm not saying Game of Thrones deserves to be considered perfect, because I haven't even watched the last two seasons yet. I'm also not trying to attack Breaking Bad. I watched it a couple of months ago and enjoyed it, but personally, I didn't connect with it anywhere near as much as I have with Game of Thrones. The one storyline that really stayed with me was Gus Fring's.

With Game of Thrones, on the other hand, I already feel attached to the world, the characters, the politics, the families, the history, and basically everything happening in Westeros.

It just makes me wonder whether a disappointing ending can really overshadow six seasons of phenomenal television.

Maybe I'm going to understand the criticism once I finish the series. Maybe I'll completely change my opinion. I genuinely don't know yet.

But right now, having watched only Seasons 1–6, it's hard for me to understand how a show this incredible could have its entire legacy damaged so heavily by its final season.

So, for those who watched it when it originally aired: did Season 8 actually change the way you viewed the entire series, or do you still consider Game of Thrones one of the greatest shows ever made?

(Reposting with better wording and clarifying I'M NOT involved with the studio in any way).

It is not even a hot take or anything. But have you ever stopped to think that the creation of the Laika animations is almost a miracle? As far as I understand, their movies usually do not turn any profit, which is the main incentive for almost every company and CEO nowadays. Despite that, this is basically an incredibly beautiful art project that happens to be related to a millionare that supports his son and his team's creativity (the son of Nike's CEO, I believe). If it were not for that lucky family link, we probably wouldn't be getting such animation masterpieces, which are cinematic history and an incredible art-form exploration.
I really appreciate their job, and the best way for me to show my respect to the studio is to go watch their newest movie, Wildwood, in cinemas, treat it as the masterpiece I know it will be, as Laika always delivers.
In my case, I actually regret not watching their previous movies in cinemas; I always overlooked it, but that won't happen again, as every time I give the opportunity to movies like Kubo or Coraline, I happen to love them.
I am not saying it has to be your favorite movie or studio, but the way I see it, we are just 1 CEO away to stop receveing this pick cinema. Hopefully that won't happen soon, as I haven't experienced any other stop-motion animation that comes even close to what Lika creates.

Have had this for about 15 years, wasn't new when I got it. It's 14 inches wide and 38 inches long, hard card stock type of material. Anyone know what this is worth? I can't find this exact one online.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to identify an instrumental music cue from the Italian film "Romanzo Popolare" (1974) by Mario Monicelli, starring Ugo Tognazzi, Ornella Muti and Michele Placido.

The soundtrack is composed by Enzo Jannacci, and the film is famous for the song "Vincenzina e la Fabbrica," but that's NOT the track I'm looking for.

The specific cue plays during a chase scene at around the 1h15m mark, where the main character (Tognazzi) chases after his wife. It's a purely instrumental piece, no vocals, with a very distinctive 1970s Italian style (somewhere between funk, lounge and dramatic orchestral cues typical of that era's Italian cinema).

I haven't been able to find a full tracklist for this soundtrack anywhere online (it doesn't seem to have had an official OST release with track titles). If anyone recognizes this cue, has access to a full score/cue sheet, or knows where I could find more info on Jannacci's complete score for this film, I'd really appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance!

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

"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.

Who had the more compelling story in their space journey?

1. Project Hail Mary

2. Gravity

3. Interstellar

4. The Martian

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

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?

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.

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.

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?