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March comes in like a lamb and out like a lion.
I suppose that's a not-insane comparison between The Thin Man and T2.
But would not describe it as a straight line from L to L.
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| HOME our dvd |
She rarely if ever bothers to smolder but no one in the history of film is more attractive than Myrna Loy. I would watch her sit and be bored for thirty minutes at a stretch. How does she do it?
I wonder if the dinner scenes in Black Bag were inspired at least in part by the Charleses' dinner scenes?
It is astonishing to me how slobberingly drunk people were during Prohibition.
While I don't think any of the movies is perfect, this remains one of my all-time top franchises.
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| ELSEWHERE × 3 Prime Video |
I've seen this movie, on average, once every nine years since it came out and all of them yesterday and today.
I kinda loved it, actually. I was a little worried from reviews at the time that it would be too sexy and/or not well acted, but come on. It's exactly the right amount of sexy and the acting's pretty solid throughout. A few lines really hammered the blank verse (but I actually liked those line readings, Ms Pfeiffer, don't worry), but I wonder if what was disliked at the time (by those who did) was the pure theatricality of it all? The woods are all sets. But it remains cinematic. The characters, in their greatest madness, move in and out of sightlines much as they might on a stage. But it never stops being a movie.
Also really like some of the dramaturgical choices. Allowing Bottom to be more than a joke, the tension (and eventual resolution) between Theseus and Hippolyta, the way the women watch the play differently than the men.
And I like the darned bicycles.
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| ELSEWHERE Kanopy |
In twelve chapters and a prologue and an epilogue, so a great film to split over four days (as I did), but a little hard to wrap my arms around. The acting from the leads is excellent. The various angles on human experience are intriguing. The closeness of death to life, of truth to living—and yet, do they meet?
It seems like it has a 50% chance to be a movie I'm still thinking about years from now.
I liked the use of static cameras and the recurrent motif of our hero walking through the streets with the camera on her front. And I was more satisfied that usual with how it displayed psychodelics.
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| HOME our bluray |
It's amazing to me how much I like this movie. Sure, I love Wes Anderson's work, but movies about preteen love and such obvious French New Wave debts usually rub me the wrong way and this is both! So why is it so great? I hate 12yrolds kissing!
I guess what it comes down to is that, in the end, I just believe Wes in a way I don't believe Truffaut (for instance). I think he means it. I find him sincere. The artificiality of his imagery is a tunnel to truth, and that gets me to overcome even these burdens. The colors and the delivery and the cuts and the pans and the angles and the music and the sound mix and the miniatures and the costumes—it all adds up to something straight from the soul, and that I cannot not appreciate.
And so I do.
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| ELSEWHERE Prime Video |
Of the six options I brought to students, this is the one I gave my lowest expectations. (Or maybe this one, but it was close.) But, in fact, I kinda loved it.
It's a modern-day Shakespeare which can really be good or bad, but it dived right in with terrific wit. The script employs lots of lines from other plays (a tradition that goes back at least to Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet) but it does it particularly well and with particular wit. The most blatant one (and perhaps least clever and perhaps also most delightful) was a 2B-or-not-2B bit. And it delights in the anachronism of modern-day Shakespeare—one I particularly liked (though the subtitlers missed the joke) was calling the phone AI Sirrah rather than Siri. Clever. And sensible. A fine and tiny gag.
For me, the movie stalled out in the forest, but the conclusion was also pure entertainment.
Part of the problem is that I found Puck utterly without interest and part of the problem is that the monochrome forest scenes while a cool idea, just rendered the screen...plain—uninteresting to look at once you're accustomed to everything being red.
It's always interesting to see what new ideas for line delivery a new production might employ. For instance, I liked Demetrius giving his lines about falling back in love with Helena in private to Helena. That was a nice.
Lastly, I loved how deliriously SoCal the whole thing is. Lots of examples, but the overtanned and oversurgeried Hippolyta was perhaps the most subtle example.
Happy to have laughed this much.
ps: young gen z dismisses the humor as "millennial"
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| ELSEWHERE Prime Video |
Gen Z has had it with stuff from the Teens. This too is very "of its time" (meaning ten years ago) and they found it hard to like. THAT SAID, they absolutely enjoyed every bonkers moment of this adaptation and they had a LOT to say when it was over.
In this one, Theseus is a heavily Nazi-coded fascist and Hippolyta is imprisoned like a magical Hannibal Lector. And that's just for starters.
I admire how British television just embraces bonkers effects without too much concern how they mesh. That said, this is cleaner than, say, the Terry Pratchett things I've watched.
As for me, I loved it. It's absolutly bananas but it's wholeheartedly engaged with its bananiness and so I am as well. Every other scene brought a startling and unexpected surprise even though I know perfectly well what comes next, according to the text.
One of Gen Z's complaints is its awkward attempts at being diverse, but, man, this play was hella queer to start with. That that freak flag fly, Midsummer. Let it fly.
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| ELSEWHERE Kanopy |
This is my favorite.
Generally, if I'm watching a movie, I prefer a movie to a filmed play, but they did an excellent job with the cameras and editing here. And Taymor's mindaltering imagery and blocking is just terrific all the way through. Kathryn Hunter is, of course, a deliciously weird Puck. The king and queen of the fairies are regal to the point of godly and the rude mechanicals are freshly modern in their funny. My only real complaint is that Theseus sounded so much like Matt Berry I couldn't figure out if he was trying to be funny or not.
I've liked all the Midsummers I've watched the last couple weeks but, again, this is my favorite.
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| HOME our dvd |
The 9yrold's teacher just finished reading this in class and, by a bizarre coincidence, the same day we discovered the dvd in our collection. The universe is looking out for her.
She was (naturally) hyperconcerned with slight changes but overall she liked the movie.
It's...not that great. It's not bad! don't get me wrong! but it's just a typical family film with some of the eyerollers we associate with the genre.
But I definitely liked it, if for no other reason because we get to see elderly Eva Marie Saint and Cicely Tyson plying their trade. The former didn't get much to do, but Cicely Tyson worked her scenes like nobody's business. On the other side of the spectrum you get a 6yrold Elle Fanning. It's the darn circle of life.
I was surprised by the tiny amount of magical realism (the candy made with sugar and sorrow) and kinda wished this smiling dog had pulled a Mary Poppins and just vamoosed at the end of the movie.
But you can't get everything you want.
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| ELSEWHERE Peacock |
"Therefore we must judge a [comedy] not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the [hilarity] level which it attains at its least mundane point." --- H. P. Lovecraft
Look: it's not a good movie. But, by Lovecraft's standard, its a terrific comedy. Because there were some moments I laughed a lot. And those are redemptive.
Largely, the movie's an awkward transition from sketch to feature, but let'm try again, says me and Lovecraft.
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| HOME our dvd |
Remarkable little film. Genuinely scary, utterly stupid, truly funny, and somehow feelgood. I mean—isn't that as much as one may reasonably ask of a cartoon movie?
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| HOME our dvd |
It's amazing the dvds that turn up in our collection. Where did it come from? Anyway, eight months after the then8yrold and I watched movie one, here we go again.
(Incidentally, yes, our dvd has the American title. I don't know that the British title is better, but it's less boring than Nanny McPhee Returns.)
These are curious movies. Obviously, she's in the Mary Poppins vein, but Nanny McPhee has quite different ideas about ethics—compromising other characters' agency, for instance. The nature of time and place is also peculiar. And the tie-in with the first movie is also surprising. And the nature and democracy of the world's magic requires attention and uncovering. It's asking similar questions as Mary Poppins about appearance and character but coming at it from an opposite direction. And it has surprising (and uncredited) stars in R**** F****** and E*** M*******! But some of the minor characters are the most exciting. The two scary women for instance: amazing.
In the end, they're charming movies and I'm glad to watch them but they're no one-two like, say, Babe or the first two Paddington movies. But what is?
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| HOME Peacock |
The closing credits are the best part of the movie. Normally this would be an insult but these closing credits are, visually and aurally, wonderful.
That said, I didn't like the movie. It was very compelling up top, but the last act was filled with twists like someone was making fun of the worst excesses of M. Night Shyamalan having only heard Twitter haters talk about M. Night Shyamalan.
Without his track record with excellent weird movies, I don't know that such good actors would have signed up for this nonsense.
Beautiful cinematography and knitwear though!
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| THEATER Alamo Drafthouse Cinema New Mission |
I get people's complaints but if "The Monster Mash" did not reveal to you that Maggie Gyllenhaal knew exactly what she was doing, I mean, come on. Yes she did.
I'll grant it's a mad film. Honestly, could've used a couple more honest eyes on the script before going into production. But it was great! I wasn't always sure what was happening or why, but I was very happy to be along for the ride.
And what a great film to watch the day after Jessie Buckley won for Hamnet. Even though I could not recognize her as the same woman to save my life even knowing it was her.
Plus, I appreciate that this too rewards familiarity with the Whale movies, with the novel, with a huge grabbag of relevant popculture history. That was fun. Thank you.
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| ELSEWHERE × 3 Prime Video |
After learning that Die Hard is "based" on Midsummer Night's Dream, I knew I had to teach Midsummer and then sic the kids on Die Hard. Allegedly, after rereading Midsummer, the screenwriter reduced the action from three nights to one and had a couple new ways to think about the film:
It's always enlightening to watch a movie three times back to back (half one, half one, half one, half two, half two, half two). You can notice slight errors (Karl's hand keeping him alive ain't the next time we see him; Holly blouse rips open during a single cut), intentional motifs (John checking out hostess/airportgirl/sexycoworker/nextdoorneighbor/pinupposters, broken glass). Doesn't mean I know what to do with all that stuff, but this is a movie that holds up to close inspection. Lots of smart decisions that are easy to miss when watching it only every third Christmas.
But I think this may be why Die Hard holds up so well: it embraces being part of the One Story. It embraces being a Shakespearean comedy, it embraces being a Christ story—but, less highbrow, it embraces being a mashup or genre pieces as well: cop, action, buddy, etc.
Good movie.
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| HOME Peacock |
• I'm guessing the screenwriters laid out all their favorite beats and moved them around in circles until they found an order that felt good.
• I was just listening to an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour about the magical challenge of casting and I think that might be part of the problem, even with Julia Roberts and George Clooney and Kaitlyn Dever.
• It feels like an advertisement for Bali even though all the big geographical taxbreak logos at the end are for Australia. And it really did make me want to go to Bali. Sorry, Australia. I think you got ripped off.
• Almost nothing in this movie works (but not nothing! a couple moments play!), which feels like such a waste. Somehow, this bad movie makes me sadder.
• Was the primary motivation just wish-fulfillment for kids of divorce?
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| HOME our dvd |
I have complaints about removing agency in order to teach but the character work and certain lines are simply incredible.
Even only half paying attention and missing twenty-some minutes in the middle I teared up with some frequency.
The 9yrold prefers the sequel as the dancing pigs are funner.
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| HOME our dvd |
The first half is not that well paced, it's true. But the second half is perfect. The music throughout is excellent. The voice work is terrific (and probably more period-accurate than Errol Flynn, truth be told).
Those looking to hate will find reason to, but the pacing is tight and once it finds its rhythm it's excellent and haters ought let themselves be won over.
Part of the trick is that it manages to create high stakes even though no one dies.
Since last seeing this, I've watched too many YouTube videos about how either this movie is great or how portions of it are great and I just cannot disagree.
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| HOME library dvd |
I wonder if the production company being named 1984 Cinema '84 meant anything.
The sex scene isn't really sexy but if I ever remembered the shots of Linda Hamilton's breasts I'd probably hesitate on showing this to teenage boys. Too late. (Again.)
It does feel old now but it's still good. And once you embrace the idea of paradoxes all the way down, no worries!
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| HOME library dvd |
We wanted to see this because of the cool midcentury visuals. Not sad we missed paying twenty bucks to see it because that's about all it had going for it. The script is an absolute mess. The edit is a disaster. Only Vanessa Kirby does anything interesting and that might only be in comparison.
It's a bad movie.
They didn't learn from all the bad things that have been done in previous Marvel movies and they didn't learn from all the good things that have been done in previous Marvel movies and they certainly didn't learn anything from The Incredibles (other than who to hire to write the score).
It's not good.
None of the characters make sense, from the heros to the bystanders. It's a disaster. More's the pity.
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| HOME Peacock |
It's Certified Fresh but it doesn't surprise me that the audience score is 20% higher, almost perfect. It's a crowd-pleaser if any movie ever was.
The film is well made though I don't think it's perfect enough to become a classic. (I like what Josh Larson said: "Writer-director Craig Brewer...does more veering that [sic] navigating.") But Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman are both incredible. Perfection from them both. And, in the last half of the movie, the same can be said of Ella Anderson and King Princess.
I thought this was just going to be a fun, feelgood, ragstoriches story—plucky nobodies make good! And they do make good. More than I had even guessed. But oh, it's not so easy. There is pain. There is suffering. There are the absurd slings and arrows of fortune. But it's lovely and beautifully and, ultimately, life- and art-affirming.
(Foreigners will definitely read this movie as a damning commentary on the American healthcare system. And they will be right.)
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| HOME our dvd |
The T-1000 looks just as good as the Silver Surfer in last years Fantastic Four. I'll leave it up to you whether that is a compliment for T2 or a knock on FF.
The movie's great and, had the studios known enough to leave well enough alone, this would have been one of the great one-two punches in movie-franchise history.
One question: Had Linda Hamilton spent the last seven years working on her arms and shoulders?
You know, if Robert Patrick had been ten years younger ten years later, he would have made a great elf (and not had to be the one falling into the lava). And being an elf probably would have been better for his future as a leading man.
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