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Teaching a film class means more films from school showing up on my list. And sometimes they inspire additional watches. I've been thinking a lot about an alternate poster for The Long Goodbye and realizing Altman was the M*A*S*H guy when he made it and they sold it like it was M*A*S*H. But is it like M*A*S*H? I'm...not so sure. And I finally saw one of the most terrifying movies I knew of back in my childhood. So how scary was it?
Anyway, those are possible reasons to read on. That, a coyote, and Scooby-Doo.
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| ELSEWHERE our bluray |
Starts cute, ends sad.
I've been wanting to watch these movies for a long, long time.
The first has left me...uncertain what to think next. I can't decide if my reaction is evidence of its greatness or of it's onetenthness.
This is the only one on the Film & Philosophy curriculum, but now that I have them on bluray, naturally I gotta get through'm all.
Wish me luck!
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| HOME our dvd |
I have this bad habit of watching movie based on plays and trying to figure them out. I'm guessing there was an intermission between the hotel and the boat? But those were the only two sets? Could be.
It's hard to believe but I'm not certain I've ever seen an Edward G. Robinson movie before, nor a Boge-and-Bacall. I don't want to believe it. But I'm not checking because I don't want to confirm it.
Sadly this viewing included multiple interruptions, one lasting about an hour, right before the final thirteen minutes. That shows no respect to a classic.
Anyway. this is a very Casablancaesque film for Bogie. He plays a character much like Rick only it's postwar now and he's put into a rather different tough situation, but the inner conflicts echo. The film's quite restrained on the romance angle. As is Bacall's blouse. I'm uncertain whether it stays closed due to movie magic or some 40s button technology I'm unfamiliar with.
This is a great use of weather and confined spaces. And I had no idea Robinson does fearful as well as he does frightening.
Classic for a reason. I'll hope to watch it again sooner rather than later.
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| ELSEWHERE our bluray |
Oh wow.
Those were incredible closing seconds. I literally spoke out loud what I felt.
And the choices before (the bee, the lie), also incredible.
These movies are gentle and nonabrasive but they are not light.
Terrific ethical dilemma.
But I'm surprised the Ten Commandments are not the Catholic version. This is Poland!
Anyway, be careful how many people you fall in love with, mkay?
[that was not a funny thing to say in this review]
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| THEATER Century Cinemark Hilltop 16 |
So yes, it's great. I laughed a lot. I got choked up. I have a few minor beefs regarding execution, but they are entirely negated by the loving use of old cartoons without debasing the film with cheap fan service. Really, it's a remarkable accomplishment. Praise be it made it to theaters. (The still-present copyright date in the credits is 2023.)
This isn't a fresh insight, but the battle couldn't have happened to a more appropriate movie. This isn't quite a burn-it-all-down anti-corporate rabblerouser, but it is a try-and-fail-again underdog friendbuilder with Bugs as Deep Throat (now we know why he's always headed through Albequeque) and a willingness to let major characters barely appear and a sorta Batman Lego take on the movie's founding relationship.
Anyway, I really liked it. Happy to spend my money on this.
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| HOME library dvd |
This is the rare Marvel movie that just improved on a second veiwing. I liked it the first time, but this is the sort of movie that works better when you know what it's up to. Which, again, is not always the case with Marvel movies.
Marvel is running out of imagery. Manhattan getting sucked into some magical (but reversible!) disaster? We just saw that again in the new Spider-Man movie. And while this one got over the default sense of violence-as-a-metaphor-for-every-sort-of-problem-solving, it spent most of the movie in that mode. (But that it does move past it is part of what makes this movie great.
The setups at the end of this movie really emphasize what a disaster Fantastic Four was but also how disjointed the movies progress one to another. Seeing Yelena in the new Spider-Man helped I suppose but still. The quality of this movie and the mess of FF really makes one assume this years Avengers film will be an utter disaster. I honestly don't see how it's possible to do all the things their teasing and all the stuff they've promised into a coherent whole. No wonder they're assigning homework. Avengers: Doomsday is like a test. And if it fails, that's on you, they're saying—not poor test design. As a teacher, let me respectfully suggest otherwise.
But who knows. Maybe it'll be great.
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| ELSEWHERE Hoopla |
I remember reading about this documentary what felt like all the time when it came out. Everyone was gaga over it. Just as they had been over her feature directorial debut, Away from Her.
I'm slow getting around to things (he said needlessly) but I'm happy to've finally watched this tale of what truth looks like from within a family, a dozen different perspectives triangulating but never quite nailing down what happened or why or what it meant to people we never fully know.
We watched this as part of my Film & Philosophy class and we started by discussing metahistory (simply, how the ordering of facts turns them from facts into a story) and metafiction (in short, "Duck Amuck").
This is a good movie.
And it seems a lot of the documentaries we call great deal with these meta elements (and rightly so?).
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| HOME library dvd |
Honestly, I never wanted to see this. I hated the '90s film, for one thing. And although people spoke of liking these and although they've all three had hilarious trailers, I figured it would just be a passable entertainment and no more.
But then the daughter watched the first ten minutes with a friend and wanted to finish it so here we are.
And I was right: passable entertainment.
The leads are great, yes, great at being piloted by teenagers. And that's reason enough to blow two hours in Jumanji. But in the end this is pretty disposable stuff.
But.
Now that I've seen one....
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| HOME Peacock |
The Addams Family (2019)
It's pretty funny with some excellent voice work and no bad voice work. It's going to age . . . less well than some other Addams properties, but it's fun enough.
Which is to say I guess my opinion from last time has held pretty steady.
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| ELSEWHERE Kanopy |
Feels like I've seen this before?
Have I?
It's possible
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| HOME library dvd |
Not only have I never seen this before, but my memories of not having seen it are wrong. It came out in 1985, two years before my family moved to California, which means my memory of seeing a COMING SOON poster in Fresno ain't true. So maybe my not wanting to watch it as a kid because the couple kids I knew who'd seen it said it was scary might not be based on real memories.
The movie was, of course, an enormous flop. I think everyone in America felt the same way about it Siskel and Ebert did. No one could separate it from the almost 50yrold musical. Every difference was an offense.
I'm not sure I knew that anyone had seen it until my mid-twenties when I was working at a job in Sandy, Utah and the high-school kids there had their own little meme about the Wheelers (whom I'd never heard of before).
The only thing that's made me want to watch the film happened almost two decades ago when the excellent musician Eliza Wren crafted a fresh soundscape to accompany the film. (Here's a review of the album. And here are links to my reviews of her band Haun's Mill's albums.) I'm excited to watch it again with her music and probably fall in love with the album and then buy it. I wonder if the actual cd with her Oz illustrations is findable....
Anyway, the thing that made us finally watch it was watching The Wizard of Oz with the 9yrold. Lady Steed then wanted to share Return to Oz with her a movie that, to my amazement, she thinks she's seen more than 1939's. That and a making-of feature that was her introduction to the incredible craft behind movies.
And with the exception of a pretty lame Emerald City, there is a lot of very cool craft in Return to Oz. The gnome king and his minions stand out, but most the effects look terrific. Sort of a Labyrinth / Neverending Story / Quay-or-Czech look to everything. It just delves deeper into the weird and the surreal and the threatening as it goes on. So, yeah, different from 1939. But interesting as its own thing. (The asylum scenes are like Baby's First Scary Movie, teaching kids how to read horror.)
In the end, I'm not sure how "good" it is, but it's interesting and very cool to look at and completely worth the 90 minutes it takes to watch. Here's to watching it again with Eliza Wren in our ears.
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| ELSEWHERE Hoopla |
Leisurely but not genuinely slow.
Easy to see this is the filmmaker who will someday make Tree of Life.
Exactly as long as class and we have a guestspeaker tomorrow so I won't learn what they think for two whole days! Torture!
I was told as they went out the door that reading Genesis 20 and Exodus 10 was helpful, and was asked a bit about my take on the Brooke Adams character. Hope they remember their thoughts!
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| ELSEWHERE Hoopla |
Fun to watch things pop up in this movie. Of course I knew Raymond Chandler and I knew Elliot Gould, but as the opening credits rolled, I was surprised to see Robert Altman direct and, a day after an hour thinking about him, John Williams as well. Williams's score is pretty minimalist, a bit jazzy. Most of the music is dietetic, a wide variety of the theme song in different genres.
Having recently read the novel, I was impressed by the quality of the adaptation. Marlowe's apartment is exactly what it should look like, just moved to the 1970s. The plot is simplified, but it doesn't feel like it. The change to the ending came as a surprise (and a weird one), but, largely, solid adaptation.
Having Arnold Schwarzenegger show up in an uncredited role caught me off guard. This is now my earliest Arnold film, predating Scavenger Hunt by six years.
I read once that you either have a naked neighbor or you are the naked neighbor. Marlowe's definitely the former.
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| HOME friend's dvd |
I'm glad that Wikipedia says the movie's a big departure from the novel because I've liked Karen Joy Fowler in the past. That said, Lady Steed just found her notes on having read the book in 2020 which basically said good writing but did not enjoy, disliked all the characters.
The soundtrack is some nice Oughts stuff, but weird choices. The most bizarre was using "Save Me" less than a decade after it got an Oscar nomination. You can't do that!
I know Robin Swicord has written some good movies but woof. This movie is pretty not great. The direction of the actors is mid, the weird injection of golden-hour shots doesn't make sense, the implication of full-on taboo romances (most egregiously high-school teacher/student) are left ungrappled with, the pacing is off, the editing is subpar, it's weirdly pleased with itself for being horny for lesbians.... I mean, hey—making a movie about reading books is a challenge.
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| ELSEWHERE Hoopla |
Time Travel Is Dangerous (2024)
Basically a science-fiction The Office. Even at a reasonably tight sub-100 minutes, it drags a bit in the third act. The aesthetic is similar to my beloved Molli and Max in the Future.
It has the feel of a lot of friends a-putting on a show, with lots of British That Guys filling up the roster.
I didn't love it but it was a fun way to spend some time multitasking.
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| HOME library dvd |
This is a pretty consistently hilarious movie. It incorporates post-Ren&Stimpy technique and makes everyone more sexy (especially the villain whose body jiggles Betty Boop could only dream of) and leans on the Velma's-a-lesbian thing, all of which made me skeptical, but it really came together. It's one of the funniest Scooby-Doo things I've seen and is obeys the primary rule of the world. The first Scooby-Doo movie I saw circa 2004 had "real" zombies to which all I can say no no no, not canon, no.
New characters are great, an enormous number of old characters making deserved cameos, hearkening back to earlier shows' opening credits!
The music's great too. You might not guess from his Bandcamp selection, but this guy's Scooby songs sound more like Magnetic Fields and are excellent. A soundtrack worth pulling out at Halloween if it's available. (I think only the score is?)
Anyway, we laughed a lot. That's gotta count for something. (As should falling under 80 minutes.)
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| ELSEWHERE YouTube |
Never fails to engender excellent conversation. Fitting it into Nietzsche week was kinda great. Especially when the accused the kids of being dumb because they didn't realize the connection to what they were studying while simultaneously missing the connection to what we we studying.
Classic for a reason. Long overdue for a remastering. Surely it's possible? Maybe?
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