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I don't know why, every month, when I post one of these, I judge the quality of my life by how many movies I watched. Why do I do that? Does it make sense? Do I need therapy?
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
I don't remember exactly how I became convinced I MUST see this movie even though it couldn't've been more than three weeks ago. Anyway, now I've seen it and holy connoli what in the world.
The main story is about a cowboy who rides into town and becomes the protector of a poor widder women and her young son. Western themes will continue throughout. But there is also a gangster subplot (mostly involving him and his moll engaged in some kinky food stuff) and a number of other vignettes (all food-related) that we happen to pass through en route. Among other events, we'll see an old woman abusing a peach, a man's life saved with a vacuum cleaner, over-the-top food foley, an orgasmic egg yolk (raw), how to eat spaghettic, a woman die, some sort of commentary on contemporaneous Japanese misogyny, and so much more.
I laughed quite a lot. More often out of amazement than sheer hilarity, but I did laugh.
And it ends with the Magnificent Seven breaking up and our hero driving off into a metaphorical sunset.
Side note: Did not expect to learn that the young Ken Watanabe in comic mode is the spitting image of James Acaster. If you doubt me, all I can say is: Do your own research. It's uncanny.
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| THEATER Cinemark Century Hilltop 16 |
Okay, friends. THIS is the movie of the summer. Or maybe "was". Did you see it? This is my original review: Thutopia; Thubstack.
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| HOME our bluray |
Forced the kids to watch this with me on my birthday. It's not quite the masterpiece I remember but I still quite like it. I mean—Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburns and a zillion twists and turns. What's not to like?
The teenagers were underwhelmed and the 8yrold enjoyed it a lot but didn't really understand it.
I'm 100% confident, however, that my fondness of it will remain intact. There's really nothing not to like and so much to like. Maybe I'm just sad you can only see it once for the first time.
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
I'm on record saying that the usefulness and relevance of Dr. Strangelove has diminished with time to the point where it hardly matters now. I might be wrong. I certainly would be if I said the same of its doppelganger Fail Safe.
Strangelove was necessary in 1964 to break the tension. The great problem today is we've lost the tension. The Cold War ended when I was a kid and anyone younger much than me has no memory of it all. Which means we need stories that create the tension. This one does it and how.
Basic Cold War hijinks lead to one set of bombers out to bomb Moscow. All the stuff set up to prevent accidents also end up preventing the abortion of an accident. It's awful. Will it be possible to save the world? And if so, what will the cost be?
Funny to see Walter Matthau again less than twenty-four hours after Charade. Crazy to see a young Larry Hagman. I never noticed before that Henry Fonda and David Lynch kinda have the same accent.
In short, though, this is an excellent film. And it's shouting a message we still need in a language 2025 can understand.
Additional shoutouts to the lighting crew, the animators, the credits team, the astonishing countdown sequence, the unsettling opening dream, the execution of quieter moments, and the blocking.
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| HOME our dvd |
I saw this film at my cousin's house, as we spent the night with him halfway through our move from Utah to California. We hadn't even been parents a year at that point and I think that might be part of the reason the film hits differently now. I still think it's quite good (not as good as, say, Babe, but what is?) though I feel I remember being completely gaga over it back then.
Anyway, lots more magic than I remembered though once I got over its actual existence I appreciated its restraint.
Anyway. Isn't Emma Thompson the best?
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
This is about as far from us as it is from Date Night, a movie we think we remember liking. Anyway, we like Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams about as much as Steve Carrell and Tina Fey (you know: more or less) and the mad escalation in this film is a lot of fun. The cast is great, the characters are good, and we even get a taste of Jeffrey Wright.
This is the sort of movie the everything-that's-wrong-with crowd could nitpick to death (that blood loss!) but that's not the point. Do you like the people we're hanging out with? Are they in madcap situations? Are the jokes landing? Okay then. Let's have fun.
And so we did.
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| HOME Tubi |
I'm sure you know the gist of this film—two teenage girls befriend Richard Nixon and then become Deep Throat. I don't remember what the reviews of the time were, but as time goes on, the small mentions of it all trend positive. Not sure why I finally decided to watch it, but I did and I'll tell you: No regrets.
Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams (who I still, even now that the movie's over, have a hard time recognizing) play the girls who get waylaid in a school trip to the White House, hear something they shouldn't, and get made official dogwalkers. The girls are played way over the top but it's prett delightful regardless. The contrasts in their personalities gives them balance and makes their friendship feel true and thus realistic, even if they aren't quite as individuals. They end up touching many pieces of history while their going to the White House, but eventually they learn Dick isn't who they thought—and they have to act. Though not quite for the reasons America assumes of Deep Throat.
Woodward and Bernstein and played by SNL and Kids in the Hall alums (as is much of the cast), and their scenes play more like an SNL sketch than the rest of the movie. They actually open the film and set a tone that lets the following highjinks seem grounded by comparison.
Even though the film is consistently funny, at times it is paced and shot like a Seventies paranoia thriller, and the Woodward and Bernstein scenes can look straight out of All the President's Men. Related to that, I don't know how funny this film would be to Gen Z without, say, watching All the President's Men first. And even watching that won't tell them who Kissinger is. I think it's a real open question, how funny it is when you don't know the stuff being lampooned.
My guess is still fun and funny but half the jokes'll go whooshing over your head. I imagine some did mine. Let me know, young people!
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
Remarkable how these earlier movies have all the DNA of the later films but smack a bit harder (or more straightforwardly?) of metaphor and are more freewheeling with slapstick silliness.
Pretty sure I last watched this movie in 2005, so it's been a long time; I have no real memory of what I thought then. But certain images (the floating girl, that robot) linger.
It's a pure atomic-warfare parallel
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| HOME our dvd |
Most of the missionary movies we've seen, says Lady Steed, are kinda silly. Humor-forward, shall we say. Which is part of why she likes this one more. ALthough it's also worth adding that this one doesn't need crises of faith or violence or anything to make what happens matters. It is, in other words, just the sort of stuff that happens. And that can only work when your lead can be compelling even without those oversized beats. Erin Chambers is up to the task. I've already written about my long admiration of her craft so I won't repeat this here except to say maybe I should seek out more of her work. Maybe the X-Files episode she starred in (In a season that for some reason is not on Hulu?)
Anyway, not a perfect movie but aesthetically compelling and so dang real. This is a good view of what serving a mission is really like.
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| HOME YouTube |
There are things I don't like about this movie, for instance the nondiegetic songs, most of which make little sense in context, but man alive do I find it effective. I cry at movies all the time but usually by that I mean that my eyes got wet enough I needed to blot them, but this "mere" confection left my entire face and my eyes raw.
No, it'll never make the Sight & Sound 100, and rightly so, but by no means can this movie be dismissed as lesser. It's wonderful.
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| HOME YouTube |
The weakest parts of this movie are the fan-service bits of sequelitis. Overall, it's very smart—it makes a different girl the VO protagonist, it doesn't retroactively convert the previous lead, etc. It does move the girls to Utah for some reason (I would have assumed movie one was in Utah if I hadn't just rewatched it), but my only real complaint is . . . all the other first-movie girls. It doesn't overuse them, which is smart, but by not giving them lots of screentime, they're basically charicatures of their former selves. Which is to say they haven't grown at all in the last—I think two-and-a-half years?
Anyway, other than that, the film is pretty great. (It does a better job with the music than the first movie, for one thing.) WHat's most impressive is that it keeps us on the hook all the way to the end. Our protagonist has a choice in front of her but it's really unclear how things are going to actually work out. I have more to say and I can see there's not way to say it without diving into spoiler territory, so here we go. You've been warned.
This is a comedy. And the first rule of comedy is it provides a happy ending. The corrollary to this (cf Shakespeare) is comedies end in marriage. But it is deeply unclear whether the marriage is a happy ending or not. He's a good guy who will become a good man—but he's not a good man yet. He's rich but also he has all the negative side effects that growing up rich can bestow. (These two sentences are related.) And he's clearly not over his ex. And he's still more attached to his parents than his fiancee, with little evidence that he even recognizes that as any sort of problem.
Meanwhile, she's sacrificing dreams for him right and left. And because the movie is so conservative in most ways, we're just not sure what lesson the movie is thinking to convey. Not until it's all over.
It's a good example though—everyone should know you can break off your wedding, even hours before. People told me this several times during my own engagement—and I believed them—obviously, painful/awkward/embarrassing/problemcausing as it may be, a broken engagement is still better than a divorce—but I don't know that I would have had the courage had it been the right thing to do.
But this movie and its protagonist did have the courage. And I'm so glad they did.
No doubt, a rewatch of this movie would be a completely different experience. Even though I saw all the breadcrumbs during first watch, I didn't know which way I was walking through the woods. Next time, it'll be easier to settle in and just walk the path.
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| HOME someone else's Link+ dvd |
It arrives a decade after Brassed Off and Full Monty, and half a decade after Billy Elliot (and no doubt a bunch more I don't remember / never saw), but this is obviously intended to be the Japanese version of the same. And it won best film, best director, best screenplay, best supporting actress, and most popular film at the Japan Academy Film Prizes, which is my way of saying that this is just the kind of movie people were really really into over that decade. Because Hula Girls isn't that good. Unless you find particular joy in seeing coal miners finding a new life in rough times through art, there's not much here.
It feels kinda like some people only a bit familiar with film were sat down with all those English movies and told to take notes and then some other people with marginal familiarity with film made a movie.
The only parts of the movie that really work are the dead dad (because that's something that can be understood), the train-station sequence (which was actually built to), and the final sequence (which, alas, goes on way too long). The rest of the movie is attempting to signify some stuff through traditional movie beats but we never really understand how characters understand one another, how or why they change, etc. The movie doesn't get people and it's asking its audience to do most of the work.
Anyway. I'm disappointed. Kinda wish it was the documentary I thought it was going to be,
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| THEATER Cinemark Century Hilltop 16 |
Nothing but spoilers. Brace yourself.
I was reminded a lot of Longlegs and Barbarian. Barbarian of course is the same writer/director. I heard him joke about putting in another down-to-the-basement scene, but there are many more similarities than that. A couple of the bads have obvious physical similarities, the nature of light and movement are related, Justin Long appears.
But Longlegs is the more obvious parallel and not just because it's almost exactly a year since I watched it. And, honestly, haven't really thought about it since until watching Weapons as they are doing similar things with creepy old "ladies" doing black magic and controlling people and being all mysterious and jumpscary and stuff. There's even a certain type of violence that's repeated. For the record, I like Weapons better. But Barbarian is better still.
I've heard a bit of buzz about What This Movie Is About and perhaps I'll read more now, but the main theories I've heard (school shootings, politics these days) aren't very convincing. I'm sitting here having finished it twenty minutes ago and honestly I don't really know what it's supposed to be about. I could force interpretations, but I'm hoping a clearer meaning slots itself into place as the movie settles into my subconscious. We'll see.
One small complaint. Nothing against the guy, but every time Eric Jepson gets a role (he's amusing here) he messes up my Google Alerts. Could someone talk to him about this? Thanks.
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
I've never actually read this Dahl novel, but Lady Steed and the girl read it together rather recently. The girl says it's not as good as the book; Lady Steed says it is, however, a good interpretation of the book: the interpretations of the dreams, Quentin Blake's illustrations. It does tone down the awfulness of the giants.
The cg was rather weightless. Nothing ever got that believable. In my unread opinion, a perhaps noble yet ultimately failed experiment.
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| ELSEWHERE Kanopy |
Rewatch for an essay write. (Which has since been rejected. Haven’t yet decided if I’ll shopt it more or just post it here.)
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| HOME Contra Costa Library dvd |
This is such a delightfully weird movie. I remember when I first saw it (the only time I'd seen it, until tonight) I thought it was another Ghibli masterpiece on the level of my absolute favorites. I guess I still feel that way, but it's not at all clear to me where it fits in. It's as confusing as The Boy and the Heron, as delightful as Totoro, madder than Spirited Away but just as strange and beautiful. I know it's based on "The Little Mermaid" but it feels more of a spirit with Alice. Granted, Spirited Away is in form more like Alice but emotionally and in terms of age and attitude: Alice.
Anyway, a bonkers movie but grounded as Miyazaki always finds a way to be. In short, wonderful.
Also, I just learned that Joe Hisaishi has scored all but one of Miyazaki's movies and so all that amazing we can thank him for. Thanks, Joe!
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| THEATER Cinemark Century Hilltop 16 |
Somehow, Lady Steed's never seen this before. She didn't watch it me either the first or second time, but when Son #2 wanted to go to the theater (and brought it up regularly for about a month) she came with us and loved it.
It's hard to do all the reading the movie wants you to do (and it would be nice if there were more—one character's English is barely intelligible), but the basic dive into government and courage and giant monsters is just so well done. I think this one might be evergreen.
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| HOME my parents' dvd |
What is this.
Everything in this film is trapped in-between. Is it the Nineties or the Oughts? Are these people teenagers or in their late twenties? Why are there so many jokes that only Latter-day Saints would get when so many things about Latter-day Saints are so sloppily presented that an LDS audience should spend the runtime rolling their eyes?
Now, the acting's actually pretty good considering the script is so incoherent I don't know how the cast can be expected to create decent characters. And the soundtrack's great even though it's too loud and too frequent and never relevant. And some stuff happens, I'm guessing, because the filmmakers knew somebody? Like, why else the biplane?
Anyway, there are a couple moments that work pretty well and I guess hs why people who like the movie like it. I don't regret watching it. But neither shall I watch it again.
Nice try, everybody.
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