Movie Diary

I got in the habit of writing down short remarks on every movie I watch, even rewatches. Initially this went in my diary, and then I started posting them here, in the castle, and then at some point I started using Letterboxd (username: pumpkinleg) and then that became the main place for this type of data.

I like using Letterboxd-- I enjoy seeing what my friends are watching and it's the only social media-like thing that's been able to create a situation in which old posts surface organically (which no other social media thing should even try but makes sense in the context of movie reviews). But I don't want to link to some other site, I want to have all of my writing here in the castle. So here's a mirror of my Letterboxd stuff, in one long page so you can easily search-in-page if you want. If you want to see movies that I watched because of Tsarlag, just search "Tsarlag". To see movies from the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon, search "Somerville". For movies I watched on a plane search "plane" and disregard the ones where I mention planes for other reasons. New ones are on top.

My default method of watching movies is via illegal download, unless someone is trying to litigate against me, in which case I only said that to look cool. In any event, downloading is cool, and regardless of the legality of the matter in your juristiction it is absolutely NOT immoral.

Watch dates are probably a few days off.

Shoutout to Anthony for writing in to request more "Movie Diary" content. Hi Anthony!

« TV Room

• Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) - Perfect movie, seen it a bunch, love it. Watched this at a bar for my friend Dan's movie night. I was the only person who rode their beautiful perfect bike there and I thought "I should get free drinks for this". Well I fished my wish-- Jim bought me a beer and then someone bought a round of tequila shots during the "Tequila" sequence. :) ❤
  watched 2025-04-08
• Swing Time (1936) - Astaire is great, Ginger Rogers is great, and then at the end there's a blackface routine and it's rough. I paused midway through to look up "Bojangles" on Wikipedia-- he was a real person: Bill Robinson, and it seems he helped Astaire early in his (Astaire's) career. Jeez, imagine giving an up and coming act a critical opening slot and then years later at the height of their powers they reduce you to a caricature like this... ❤
  watched 2025-03-28
• Death Line (1972) - Donald Pleasance is so unpleasant in this it's like he's a big guy named Tiny. He's great but he really underscores the fact that you should avoid talking to cops whenever possible, as true today as it was in the wet brown England of 1972. This movie has a few verrrrrry languorous sweeps across an interior landscape of gross-outs-- horror fans of the current era might be like "enough already" but I admired the trust that the filmmakers put in the props department and indeed I got yucked out. Watched this for Mr Mittens' birthday and then crashed out on a couch where I had a dream about a zombie Jesse James. Then I looked in the fridge and there was a small piece of hand in a Tupperware container and I thought "I should eat that and turn into a horrible ghoul". Then immediately "no, I should actually avoid doing that". Your mileage may vary. ❤
  watched 2025-03-23
• Shall We Dance (1937) - Fred Astaire tries to woo Ginger Rogers like he's an actual child talking to their first crush-- weird voices, insults, lies, getting your friend to say stuff for you, saying shit like "we are going to get married", etc.. The moment when it clicks (while dancing of course) is really nice. With the original "You Say Potato" and other Gershwin joints. ❤
  watched 2025-03-20
• Let's Dance (1950) - God, imagine being this kid, growing up around the magnificent hubbub of a 1950's nightclub with floorshow. Chorus girls running around covered in glitter and glitz, you're taking French lessons from the French chef, and going to the racetrack with the boss on a Sunday. A dream! I didn't like Betty Hutton during the number that opens the film but by the end I was on board. She's exactly as embarrassing as a mom would be, which is cringey but endearing. Fred Astaire is magnificent and does a "funny piano" routine that feels indebted to Chico Marx. I kept waiting for him to shoot the keys but he doesn't. The whole movie is great but this alone is worth the time spent. Astaire kind of has a skateboarder's vision for "what can I do on this" which is really delightful, to see invention manifest so breezily and so precise. ❤
  watched 2025-03-17
• Paddington in Peru (2024) - Watched this via illegal download at home on the projector while eating some absolutely heavenly Indian food and petting my cats. Needless to say I had a really nice time. Not as good as Paddington 2 but honestly I'm still riding the high from that-- probably why I cried a little in the first couple minutes of PIP when the people of the neighborhood give Paddington an umbrella as a present, then I was low-level misty throughout, unless there was an adventure sequence. Peru is a great setting. Antonio Banderas is great in this. I miss Sally Hawkins but I'm happy she was replaced by someone from Notting Hill (1999) (see also Hugh Bonneville and Hugh Grant). Hopefully for P4 they get Gina McKee or dare I say it, Julia. ❤
  watched 2025-03-14
• Godzilla Minus One (2023) - Watched this at SF50, the 50th installment of the yearly Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the Sommerville Theatre. They showed a little interview segment before with the director and an FX person, which was cool, but one thing they talked about was how often they used this one set in different settings, and then the whole time I was like there it is... there it is again... there's that railing.... So now here I am leaving a review of "too much railing". ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Between Time and Timbuktu (1972) - a mix of themes from Vonnegut books, with gravely character actor William Hickey (Puppet Master, Name of the Rose), as the schlubby everyman, plus comedy duo Bob and Ray, DJ Cousin Brucie, and Kevin McCarthy as beloved Vonnegut guru character Bokonon. Produced by WGBH, with lots of great psychedelic video effects. I liked it a lot. Watched this with a big crowd at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. I'm thinking at least half the room came away with "I should re-read Vonnegut". ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - Almost walked out on this when it was a story of a family, but then it kept going and going and going in a way that was nearly inspiring. Sadly it never gets good, only bonkers. It's like listening to someone tell you an idea that they riffed into oblivion. Like I'm sure that coming up with these riffs was a blast but I gotta go man. Wish the whole movie was just the Nightbreed-like society of robots in the dump, or Jude Law's Gigolo Joe character, the only person in the movie I didn't hate. Kinda made me not like Ministry (band). Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Algol: Tragedy of Power (1920) - Cool. watched with live accompaniment from Jeff Rapsis, at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Lifeforce (1985) - This was cool, another Dan O'Bannon Space Vampires screenplay. Great zombie effects and a nice role for a young Patrick Stewart. My only complaint is that there's 3 nudist vampires, and 2 of them are men, and you see a lot of boobs but the dongs are always obscured. I know the answer to this question but nonetheless I must ask: what's up with that. I'm not dong crazy I just think we should be fair. Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Arrival (2016) - I liked it. If you've ever tried to explain a problem to someone who thinks the solution should be simple, this will resonate with you. They're like "just make it work!!!!" and you're like "define 'work', 'it', 'make' and 'just'". On this rewatch I really enjoyed how the creatures were designed and presented pretty vague- just two big hands moving around in smoke. Anything more would've been a huge mistake and anything less would've been maddening. They hit the Goldilocks zone there.

  This is a spoiler but I loved seeing a movie that involved deterministic time as like, not soul-crushing. So many movies are about free will in this almost patriotic way, it was cool that Amy Adams saw the future set in stone and nestled into it without getting emo.

  Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤

  watched 2025-02-25
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) - So sick. This was painter/philosopher Paul Laffoley's favorite movie so I watched that with him in mind. As I understand his obsession it really cracked his young egg to see a movie where the people of Earth are wrong. Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. This is the wrong place to ask but I wonder if Paul ever went to the Thon??? He was in Boston the whole time and loved sci-fi but at the same time it's tough to imagine him leaving his room for more than a couple hours. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Barbarella (1968) - Great. Really really really fun set design, costumes, etc.. This is like Heavy Metal (magazine) minus Heavy Metal (music genre). Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - killer shit. Kind of nice to be living in the future of this movie and the humpback whales are not yet extinct. I love that we never get to know what the message was all about. Also I didn't put this together until just now but the main threat to humanity in the movie was sound pollution, which, here in reality, is partially what's destroying the whales as well. A big theme in TOS is that you're given an impossible choice between undesirable outcomes, and it takes a true head to refuse to accept, and to boldly go in a totally fucked-out direction. This is reflected in the song: The choices of the fathers being pushed on us, the sons / the only choice we're given is how many megatons. Long live colorful metaphors, pizza and beer, crazy ideas, sling-shotting around the sun, and friendship. Save the whales, up the punks! Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Gamera vs. Guiron (1969) - A fun and bright kid's adventure kaiju movie. I felt like a lot of the kids' dialog in this was meant to echo what kids in the audience might've been screaming, like "don't give up Gamera!" and "don't worry, Gamera is here!". Alas, I wasn't in a crowd of children on a Saturday morning in 1968, I was watching this at 6am after staying up all night at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. Great sets and backgrounds and the main kid looked so cool-- short shorts, high socks, leather loafers, pendleton shirt buttoned all the way up, bomber jacket with fake fur color. You can't dress like that as an adult. Or you can, but you can't wear it the same way. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Her (2013) - Pretty wild watching this in the future-- last May, Scarlett Johanssen sued OpenAI for replicating her voice for its chatbot. In October a 14 year old committed suicide after a weeks-long romantic relationship with a chatbot based on a Game of Thrones character. I guess this movie was good but ultimately I gotta give it a big thumbs down for helping to inspire what's probably one of the worst ideas of humanity.

  It was shocking how supportive almost everyone is of this premise, none of this guy's so-called friends give him any grief over this, not even the guy that sucks (friend's husband). Why even have a pain-in-the-ass guy around if he's not going to buck up when the time calls??? To any of my friends reading this, I want you to know I'd be there for you in this scenario. I wouldn't sit idly by while you date a chatbot. I'd be like bro, what the fuck are you doing. Get your head out of your ass.

  I thought they did a great job on the costumes, it sets the time period well. I mean in 2013 it might've seemed outlandish that Joaquin Phoenix would complement Chris Pratt's completely regular off-brand polo shirt, but in 2025, he's right, for good or ill that's considered drip.

  If you're planning on watching this with your parents please be aware there are multiple phone sex segments. Watched this at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. ❤

  watched 2025-02-25
• Blade Runner (1982) - Daryl Hannah's best movie after Steel Magnolias??? My nth rewatch, at SF50, the 24 hour sci fi movie marathon at the Somerville Theatre. This time we watched the "work print", which (as I understand it) was shown to test audiences in 1982, who didn't like it, resulting in the addition of a happy ending and a voiceover throughout. Then this version was shown again accidentally in 1990, and the great response led to an official "Director's Cut", and then later a Directors Cut XL. Cheers to the everpresent mix-ups and gaffes in life that allow things to percolate. ❤
  watched 2025-02-25
• Lola (1961) - "There's a bit of happiness in simply wanting happiness"

  I had a rare bout of insomnia so I put this on. It didn't make me fall asleep but it did put me in a warm and relaxed mood. A really nice French movie about a dancer in a music hall and the men in her orbit. Romance, regret, yearning, achieving, it's great. It doesn't even end in tragedy! Got me thinking "I should get a little sailor suit like that". ❤

  watched 2025-02-24
• Tai-Chi Master (1993) - I'm sick in bed and I wanted to watch a movie where people are really healthy, so I picked this and it really did help me feel better. Starring Jet Li in his most pathetic good boy mode but this is still great. They should've trained him in self respect, then he wouldn't have taken all that shit as a kid, the bully friend would've been taken down a notch, and this movie would be very different. Teach the children self respect! ❤
  watched 2025-02-23
• How to Steal a Million (1966) - I've only ever seen Peter O'Toole as an older man so seeing him this young like this was a little unnerving. His face looks unnaturally smooth, and I kept feeling like I was watching a Super Bowl commercial where they digitally de-aged him and edited him into an Audrey Hepburn movie. Once I got beyond that I really enjoyed this nice little art heist romance. I mean it's Audrey Hepburn, she's dynamite. ❤
  watched 2025-02-23
• Paris When It Sizzles (1964) - William Holden plays a leathery greaseball whose personality is strictly the very worst aspects of later Daffy Duck, it's horrible. Audrey Hepburn is great of course but that makes it even worse, like why is this funny lively beautiful person swooning for this malevolent weasel? The plot is like when you have no ideas and you land on the idea "what if the idea was 'Writer With No Ideas'?". We've all tried it and it's never worked. Then the movie that they spend the whole movie writing, at the end they're like "this movie is a real stinker". But like, that's this movie buddy. I'm watching this movie. You got Marlene Dietrich to leave the house for this. If you're not feeling proud at least lie to my face about it. Audiences hated it and I concur. Small roles for Noel Coward and Tony Curtis. ❤
  watched 2025-02-23
• The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk (1993) - Jet Li in nice boy mode, absolutely lovely. I adore these mythological nice boy heros that are like "a jumping contest? sure!". Bad guys are like WHO ARE YOU PRECOCIOUS STRANGER and the nice boy says "Gee mister, why not ask anyone here, they all know my name". Kind of a mix of Paul Bunyan, Huckleberry Finn, and young Krishna. He's virtuous but he might steal a pie cooling on the windowsill. YES there's fighting on shifting platforms, but then it turns into fighting while stepping on people's heads in a crowd ala Iggy Pop / Crocodile Dundee, then his mom enters the fray and there's a pretty touching lesbian love interest. Guess what you guys I loved it. ❤
  watched 2025-02-13
• Duel to the Death (1983) - ANOTHER really good Chinese vs Japanese martial arts duel movie with ninjas, and this one is maybe the best, it's so sick. they DON'T do the ninja hand mudra but they DO slide a single drop of poison down a thread. The DON'T have nunchucks but they DO swarm in to the battlefield silently on huge kites (!?!?!?). All the ninjas in this movie are perfect, they're quiet, sudden, flip in flip out, you don't know how many of them they are, and their collective bag of tricks is seemingly inexhaustible. In this one both the honorable Chinese fighter and the honorable Japanese fighter are like "hmm... kind of... dishonorable???" about the ninjas, which appeals to me. It's a dirty business!!!

  There's a lot of pretty unreasonable stuff here in terms of like, how far can a person jump, what would you do if someone cut your arm off, etc.. But it's kind of like if someone told you the story and then you told someone else. Like yeah he punched the guy's head OFF like totally OFF and then it said something ominous and THEN it blew up. I 100% believe that if actual ninjas swarmed my IRL temple there'd be so much crazy shit going on that my mind would sort it out later as "they flew in on kites, then it was just one huge guy, then he dematerialized into 12 guys, then they all turned into leaves" and I would swear on a sacred scroll to the veracity of my statement. Anyway this was super sick, strongly recommended!!!! Great choreography, great special effects, great editing, great sound, loved the two cute main guys, imaginative and joyous, this rocked. ❤

  watched 2025-02-07
• Ninja Terminator (1985) - Honestly pretty inspiring.

  wikipedia:

  Godfrey Ho frequently created movies by filming scenes that he then added to pre-existing films, re-cutting it together and dubbing over the actors with his own dialogue in order to create a new story. Similarly, Ninja Terminator reuses more than 50 percent of its footage from the South Korean film The Uninvited Guest Of The Star Ferry. IFD owned the international sales rights for the film and decided to insert Caucasian actors into the film in the hopes it would then do better overseas. Ho did this and added ninjas to the storyline, as he usually did

  Ho had the insight to realize that if you're dubbing an actor's lines into another language then you might as well give them new dialogue, and if you go that far, you might as well free the clip from meaning altogether and use it as raw material, as a mineral, in new productions. His other great realization is that if you're making an action movie and you make the main guy a ninja, you can conserve your star power by only using the actor for the mask off segments, and close-ups. With mask on it can and should be a stuntman. And the ninja stuff you can film in bulk. A couple days filming ninjas, a couple days filming faces, 2 weeks in the editing room, 6 movies. Release one a week while you work on the next batch.

  Handsome lead Caucasian Richard Harrison went to Hong Kong to film what was supposed to be a small number of ninja movies and wound up inadvertantly starring in at least 24 of them. Like how the Winston Brothers drummer "played on" tens of thousands of records (via the collosally sampled Amen break). FWIW Harrison hated it, he said it ruined his career. The Amen drummer died poor and destitute and totally unaware of his impact.

  This was fun to watch, and honestly I thought it worked pretty good. When I imagine myself in the primary audience for this, a loud theatre filled with screaming children and drunk losers on a Saturday afternoon, I can see that this is not only adequate fare but fun, wild, cool action, a little bit of kissy kissy, a lot of hi-ya. Totally cool. Cool (and absolutely stolen) soundtrack. Me and my friends afterwards fighting over who's going to get the new nickname "Tiger", and maybe reassessing wigs as a viable part of an outfit. As an adult watching this in the 21st century, zoning out on a couch, this gave me a lot to think about, though to be completely honest I was like "wait who is this guy" a lot of the time. Bottom line, I had fun.

  As we enter a new era of AI movies shemping smoothed-out actors infinitely I must note that I find automated versions of this material/mineral sampling idea pathetic, unwatchable, a crisis, an unpardonable sin against the spirit. But in the elbow grease era, and as an anomaly, and as, ultimately, a failure, with rough visible edges, there's something special here. Something new is being created. ❤

  watched 2025-01-26
• Heroes of the East (1978) - Gordon Liu is like a rich little pretty boy who marries a Japanese woman and tries to shame her into not practicing her native karate. She ankles back to the land of the rising sun, and then he writes her a letter which is misconstrued. Next thing you know he has to put his own Chinese boxing skills up against some of the deadliest fighters of Japan! YIKES! He holds his own against the sword guy, the judo guy, the nunchucks guy and the sai guy, all of whom are clear and distinct characters from the very start, with different builds, faces, and ways of moving and speaking. Compare with today's action movies where it's just Big Baldies by the bushel and they're all trading haymakers. Well anyway these fights are all super-fun and everyone's going all out, with every trick in the book. But then it's the ninja's turn and it's really not fair, I really think that shouldn't count. Imagine a tiddlywinks contest that's over the night before the match because one guy poisoned the other, or led him unawares into a booby-trapped corn field. Few would call that sporting. Aaaaaaaaanyway it was a great fight in a movie chock full of great fights, in which no one dies. How about that! LOTS of great lightning-fast hand-to-hand combat, really a thrill to watch, and no one dies. Everyone lives happily ever after!

  shoutout to Creature for the recommendation ❤

  watched 2025-01-22
• Ninja in the Dragon's Den (1982) - Great little ninja movie that marked the strong directorial debut of Corey Yuen. He was one of the "Seven Little Fortunes" of the China Drama Academy, alongside Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, etc.. There's lots of tight and creative mano a mano fighting where it plays out like speed chess, I love that. If you like movies where two people have a lonnnnnnnng fight during which their admiration for each other grows and they wind up friends, this is one. There's a lot of rappelling down buildings, and a horny friend subplot that resolves itself magnificently. And a LOT of exciting, CREATIVE hand to hand combat. ❤
  watched 2025-01-21
• Revenge of the Ninja (1983) - IT TAKES A NINJA TO KILL A NINJA

  A sequel of sorts to Enter The Ninja, in that audiences wanted to see more of Sho Kosugi, and in this one he's got his well-deserved top billing. Well it's great. Swords, throwing stars, smoke bombs, spikey things, tiger claws, masks, zip lines, nunchucks, robot arm, mob bosses who say "capiche", weird looking street toughs, it's great. With Sho Kosugi's real life son Kane, Punky Brewster's real life dad, and a far too small role for Professor Toru Tanaka. ❤

  watched 2025-01-19
• Enter the Ninja (1981) - I think part of the appeal of the ninja to me is that they're faceless, anonymous, and uncountable, like a horde of skeletons. So any movie that's about ninjas is kind of false I think, because it's invariably about just one ninja. But what are you gonna do, not watch a movie about ninjas?? Not me. Not me not doing that. I mean me yes doing the opposite of not doing it. ?? I mean I'm cool. In this one the main ninja is Franco Nero, I thought he did a good job but every time he was masked up, wow he really put 110% fury into his eyes and eyebrows, the only part of his face you could see. He was an overfilled tea kettle spitting boiling water out the spout. Sho Kosugi was the breakout star here, he was acting alone too but his story was like "we should get a ninja to fight this other ninja" "ok, here's one". He had his own personal ego narrative but he was closer to this idea of being a cloud of particles of sinister dexterity.

  Nero was married (twice) to Vanessa Redgrave, but this movie's complete life cycle was in the long years when they were apart. I wonder if she saw this when it came out, with her then-partner Timothy Dalton... I picture her with a laugh and a sigh saying "oh Franco" softly while Timothy quietly bites his nails. She looks over at him and he quickly flips a superior smile, but when she turns back to the screen he resumes fidgeting in his tuxedo. ❤

  watched 2025-01-18
• Ninja (2009) - This was cool, and I liked it, but at one point there's an invoice of the treasure they're protecting and I freeze-framed it and the total comes to $350,000. And it isn't even magical???? I'd be like bro, take it. Then they send it to America for safe keeping but it's kept so unsafe and no one seems to care? The good guys have to break back in to the vault to get it out later and it's so trivial, there's just 3 guys pulling minimum wage, and they're all reading magazines AND watching TV!

  Well anyway I had fun. Mostly sword stuff and kicking, some throwing stars, and brief moments with nunchucks and kusurigama. He does the hand thing. At one point a lady gets tied up elaborately, which is a traditional aspect of ninjitsu that I'm surprised we don't see more of in these movies. Probably if you're into rope stuff in a fetish way you have a lot of material to peruse and you know the best searchterms, you're not sourcing it from clips of action movies like the quicksand fetishists. Still it was a little shocking to see, and the foley for this part was extravagant. The sequel, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, is better.

  ❤

  watched 2025-01-18
• STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces (2024) - OK I only watched the first half but I loved seeing what a psycho he was in pursuit of this new idea of comedy, refining the act for 10 years before a breakthrough. And I loved hearing his thoughts on comedy-- I liked him a lot as a kid so it was great to hear him break down how his first goal in comedy was to avoid the signifiers that comedians use to tell you when to laugh, and get to that unhinged laughter you get with your friends. It's like a cool / hot distinction. It took a while to make that work but he got there, only to look back and see tens of thousand of people screaming his catchphrases at each other. He eschewed the ingroup only to form (accidentally or not) a bigger ingroup. Then he bailed! Leaving a vacuum to be filled by Gallager, who I imagine was in the crowd taking notes. Don't worry, they don't talk about Gallager in the movie.

  It was great to see the small but scary moves he made that really made the act pop, like shaving his beard, or not opening for other people. Also interesting to see when the big boost didn't come from hard work, but via the women he was dating, or his friendship with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. That's important! I think this movie is good IF you're a fan, who likes this sort of inside baseball stuff, AND didn't read his autobiography, which I understand covers all this in greater detail. I am right there so yeah I liked it. Movie as trailer for the autobiography, that's a valid format. Probably going to watch part 2. ❤

  watched 2025-01-15
• Ninja Assassin (2009) - Pretty good ninja movie that I watched for a project-- I'm looking for movies where they use the kusarigama, a ninja weapon that's like a sickle on a chain. That search led me here but what he actually uses is more like a knife on a chain (Kyoketsu-shoge). Starts off pretty gory and crazy but unfortunately doesn't keep that energy up-- for the first 10 minutes people are getting chopped actually in half, but then the CGI budget runs out and for the rest of the movie people are mostly just getting sliced or stabbed. The main guy has a weird vibe and I learned later it's because he was already a popstar, in the KPop domain. He did an OK job but it was kind of like every shot was just him posing for the poster. Nonetheless I thought this was fun. With Naomie Harris and Sho Kosugi, the ninja from Enter The Ninja (1981). Small role for Han from Fast and Furious. I think ninja movies sort themselves into ones where they do the hand thing (the Nine Hand Seals), and ones where they don't. This one does.

  If anyone can recommend a movie with the sickle and chain let me know! Not looking for "this one had a thing with a chain" or "this one had the sickle". I'm looking for the combo only OK guys ❤

  watched 2025-01-15
• Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013) - There is a truly exceptional clarity to every shot and move in this movie, it's kind of incredible. There's no camera shaking or lightning-fast edits-- everyone on the team respects the actors' abilities and the choreographer's intent, and it pays off. Every single detail is so crispy, I loved it.

  There's 2 good "getting suited up" montages, one where he finds the pajamas buried in the jungle, one he does the ninja version of shopping for bomb ingredients at the supermarket, but instead of getting fertilizer and milk or whatever he's buying fish liver and marionettes and making poison darts. The fighting is a good mix of showdowns in full regalia and bar fights with improvised weapons. He does the ninja hand thing.

  This is the sequel to Ninja (2009), and I chose to watch the sequel first because I felt like that's the kind of movie this is-- your friend rented it and you're like "what happened in the first one" and they go "this guy became a ninja". "Wait, who are these guys?" "bad guys". No problemo. Not "a great movie" or even "nuts" but if this is your favorite action movie I respect that.

  what is our code?

  TO HAVE NO CODE

  what is our way

  EVERY WAY

  what is our goal

  TO THRIVE IN THE SHADOWS AS OUR ENEMIES PERISH IN THE SUNLIGHT ❤

  watched 2025-01-15

• Soul of the Sword (1978) - Cool sword movie with brief lovemaking scenes. My own personal motivations in life are so out of sync with the main character that I kept thinking "I wouldn't do that if that was me". I mean I wouldn't dedicate my life to defeating the King of Swords, I'm cool. And even if I was (?) really good at swords (??) if someone came along saying they were better, I'd just be like "ya I believe it" and let it slide. But you know what, that movie would not be very compelling, I recognize that. Thankfully this movie (the one that exists) lets you eat your cake and have it too-- you get to see some cool swordfights motivated by sheer idiotic mythmaking and then at the end (spoiler I guess) it's like "I shouldn't have become... [choke] The King of Swords... [gurgle]... total bonehead move... [gasp]... what was I thinking...". It's kind of a feelgood movie for everyone that is not a King Of Swords nor has any desire to be one. ❤
  watched 2025-01-08
• It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) - OK the Muppets were very important to me as a kid, I still rewatch the first three movies sometimes, but I never got into any of the stuff made after Jim Henson's death. I don't like hearing other people do the voices, and in a very broad way I think the vibe is off. I did watch Muppets in Space, which I found deeply upsetting, and the 2011 movie "The Muppets", which I found interesting but not like, good.

  I (not on Christmas) watched this TV Christmas special from 2002 because it seemed to be about the same thing The Muppets (2011) is about-- the Muppets losing their livelihood to a soulless corporation. In The Muppets (2011) this is more overt, with them actually losing the rights to their identities to a callous cadre of imposters. But this one has the benefit of being made juuuuuust before the franchise was sold to Disney, and according to Wikipedia is one of the few Muppet things not owned by them. For this reason I thought there'd be more psycho shit in it.

  Ahhhhhh it's ok but not great. All the guest stars are bad, and the cameos are even worse, although to be fair I tapped out of watching network TV in 1993 so I actually don't know if these people were famous at the time. Also they list the cameos in a "cameo" section of the opening credits, I think that's a good example of what I mean by "the vibes are off". Someone good at making a movie would recognize the value of surprise there.

  For human stars we got David Arquette, who plays a nerd with thick glasses, a role that might've gone to an actually weird looking person in times long past. 2/3 of the way in his look changes exactly and for no reason to that of Canadian alternative cartoonist Seth. Whoopi Goldberg has a major role that was obviously shot in one day. Joan Cusack reprises her role from Addams Family Values, she's great obviously.

  I would say the most notable thing about this is the way it implies that Kermit was somehow responsible for 9/11, but others have written on that.

  If there's a big article about the Muppets rejecting the Disney buy out from inside the narrative please link. ❤

  watched 2025-01-05
• Monster (2023) - This is one of those movies where you see the same time period 3 times, following different threads. I went into this totally blind so I was uptight at the first go-round, then relaxed into the mystery when we started our second pass. I'm probably in the minority of people who watched this and didn't know about the reveal at the end-- anyone on here reading reviews of this has to know but at the beginning I thought the motivating complication was going to be aliens or vengeful spirits or I don't know what, and not like, a society that suppresses the individual, and specifically queer youth. Anyway I loved it. Another banger from Kore-eda. God, being a kid is so crazy, you're trying to juggle all this shit, all these different social structures, all these worlds. For that matter, being an adult is bonkers too. Cheers to the little guy. ❤
  watched 2025-01-03
• F9 (2021) - Watched on a nice lazy Christmas day, even though this is more of an Easter movie. This one is too self-aware, which is really an advanced technique and not for this context. When someone in the movie goes "this is just like in a movie"... I mean come on, that's a fool's idea of cleverness. Also Dom had completely the wrong idea about his brother, he should've talked it out when he got out of prison. And he should've apologized to him later! There's this toxic masculinity idea that a real man silently suffers for his family, and there's really no need for that. Dom's dad should've leveled with both of his sons, but he prioritized staying godlike in Dom's eyes, even though it drove a wedge between him and John Cena. And he shouldn't have played favorites so hard! No wonder the dude turned heel. Makes you wonder what lies Dom will tell Baby Brian in order to keep his own legend alive. ❤
  watched 2024-12-26
• Puppet Master (1989) - Kinda slow but I'm happy I watched it. The titular Master is played by beloved gravelly character William Hickey (the Producers, the Name of the Rose, Mouse Hunt). At the end I thought "I wish I knew more about these guys", and then I realized there's 873 more movies in the series. Probably going to watch Puppet Master 2, then maybe a supercut of kills, then possibly Puppet Master 3, then I'll probably get distracted by something else. ❤
  watched 2024-12-21
• Venom: The Last Dance (2024) - There's too much space nonsense driving this one. I don't care who that guy in the dark is. Why do they make everything so epic? I liked when he turned into a horse. With the roommate from Notting Hill (1999) and music by Dan Deacon ("Drinking Out Of Cups"). ❤
  watched 2024-12-17
• Roman Holiday (1953) - I am not now and never have been the princess of England. Nonetheless I really enjoyed this movie about "what if I, the princess of England, totally fucked off all day?". I got a little agitated as the movie went on, picturing Audrey Hepburn crying when she inevitably finds out about Gregory Peck's real intentions. But then (this is a spoiler but it doesn't matter) it doesn't matter. She's like well I sure had a lot of fun, and Gregory Peck says ditto, and case closed. With Eddie Albert from Green Acres. ❤
  watched 2024-11-30
• Saturday Night (2024) - OK honestly the main reason I watched this is because I hate Chevy Chase, and I thought this would allow me to indulge that without actually incurring any actual Chevy Chase screen time. I was 100% correct on that. I didn't anticipate seeing Milton Berle, who I also hate, and for him to be played by an actor I also also hate (JK Simmons). JK Simmons might actually be a nice person IRL but he plays a complete asshole so well that frankly it's hard to fathom.

  It's really satisfying when someone nails an impersonation that isn't obvious, and this movie is full of them, probably moreso than any other movie. Someone like Paul Shaeffer I could probably do a really bad impersonation of but Jane Curtin (for instance) I could not begin to describe and the lady who played her was great, it was shocking. Ditto everyone else, except maybe Andy Kaufman (too tall). The guy that did Garrett Morris was especially great and when the credits rolled and I saw his name (Lamorne Morris) I figured they were father and son. But I just looked it up and they aren't!

  All in all this was fun, and I love it when a movie is about putting on a big show, but this has major prequel vibes. Like a big part of my enjoyment of this is that it confirms that I have the knowledge to recognize that the actors are doing a great job. That's a cheap move in the fandom era, and I reject it. If you're not a fan of this stuff then this movie will be meaningless to you. And if you are a fan you're going to wish this was a book. ❤

  watched 2024-11-18
• The Church (1989) - Nice comfy Italian Catholic horror with a good role for 14 year old Asia Argento, produced by Dario Argento. There's enough weird stuff to make it worth your while but I have to say that the monsters and effects didn't have enough oomph behind them, they just sort of show up and disappear, on a "thought I saw something" vibe. I would've liked to be more engaged with that stuff. Someone worked hard on that fish monster, I want to have more than a second to watch it glisten and pulsate. Cool score with Philip Glass and Goblin. I just downloaded the Fulcanelli book they talk about in this, shoutout to archive.org! ❤
  watched 2024-11-17
• Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) - Not as much goo as the first one. Not much goo at all actually, which I should've anticipated because this was directed by a motion capture guy, not by a goo freak. I got a little bored during this and started focusing on picking holes in the three British actors' American accents. Hopefully V3 will have tons of goo. ❤
  watched 2024-11-16
• Get Smart (2008) - I hurt my back so I'm laying in bed all day watching movies, downloaded this on a whim and wow it really hit the spot. Great cast, lotsa laffs, the original Don Adams catchphrases played well, and then as the movie wrapped up I was like "the only way this could get better is if we had a rap over the credits", and boom, a TIMBALAND track with Madonna (and Justin Timberlake). cw: fat suit, but that's 2008 for you. ❤
  watched 2024-11-16
• Leprechaun Returns (2018) - Me and Melissa Number One watched all the Leprechaun movies 20 years ago (2004) as a friendship event, and tonight we got together and watched this one. Gotta say it's pretty good! I mean it's good if you liked any of the other Leprechaun movies. If you didn't like those you won't like this. Directed by the guy who did Psycho Goreman (2020). This is the first movie that got me wondering if I'd be good at being an undying cartoonish imp with nebulous powers and constraints. I think yes. Not that the guy in this was bad, he was good. I mean he's no Warwick Davis (who is still alive) but he did a good job.

  Please note that we skipped Leprechaun Origins (2014) because I heard it was against the spirit. But now I feel like I should go back??? ❤

  watched 2024-11-11
• Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980) - today is November 7 2024 and this is the only music I want to hear right now. I think this is a great intro if you've ever heard the name Sun Ra but don't really know what the deal is, or if you think you know the deal but never really checked it out. and for the fan this is essential. this is on youtube in it's entirety (59 minutes). If you have my number feel free to call or text if you have any thoughts on the subject. ❤
  watched 2024-11-07
• Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) - something crazy about these Hammer Studios Dracula movies is that Dracula isn't even having fun. If that was me up there and I was accidentally resurrected in this preposterous fashion, I'd be so psyched. But Dracula immediately and intractably becomes full of searing rage at a pretty basic slight. Someone essentially parked in his parking space, forcing him to park somewhere else for a short time, and he spends 87 minutes nearly paralyzed with indignation. It's pathetic. Others are carousing, drinking beer, kissing, eating big hearty loaves of fresh bread, and then there's Dracula, fuming silently for no reason, even though he was very recently dead and frozen in ice, and now he's not. I wonder if that's what it's like being family rich-- getting zero pleasure from your palatial estate and then blossoming into horrid spasms of life only when someone brings you the wrong beverage or forgets "no onions". He's not even getting revenge on the people who killed him! Come on guy!!!! ❤
  watched 2024-10-26
• Sade: Lovers Live (2002) - there's a really nice little bonus on the DVD called "A Message To Sade", it's like Heavy Metal Parking Lot but the vibe is very very different. I wrote about just that part in my weekly newsletter about peaceful videos:

  https://pleasantrealms.substack.com/p/sade-parking-lot

  check it out if you like realms that are pleasant :) ❤

  watched 2024-10-18
• Road House (1948) - This isn't 1989's Road House, but it's also good, unlike 2024's Road House, which can't be good. In this one Ida Lupino plays a gravelly-voiced chanteusey working in a bar and bowling alley in, I think, Northern Minnesota. She's incredible, and while the dialog is great my favorite lines are just her saying "hmm" in a funny way. The boss is this guy Jefty who you'll probably hate without reason from the very first instance, then you'll pick up reasons fast when it turns into a proper noir. He's a psycho of the smiling nervous "hey pal" type, an actually dangerous rich kid asshole. There's a couple of great songs and it's great to hear Ida Lupino gently curve her character's blown out voice around them. The worst part about this movie I think is that it makes compulsive smoking look really really cool.

  Inflation check: Jefty pays Ida Lupino $250 a week to sing in the bar, that's $3121 in 2024 money. She has a six week contract so that's like $18k, not bad! She says that's double what she usually gets so we can assume she usually makes an inflation-adjusted $1500 a week, though not every week. $50k a year? ❤

  watched 2024-09-24
• Hermits (2015) - Enjoyable and calm documentary that follows an aged Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) as he retraces the path he followed in his 1993 book "Road To Heaven", though the Zhongnan mountains of China, looking for hermits. On surface level, this is a pleasant and relaxing documentary, beautifully shot, which I watched in small chunks over multiple days immediately before turning in for the night. I really enjoyed it.

  A deeper think on the subject makes me feel like maybe something here is an apology to the hermits and to the spirit of hermitage-- sorry I blew up your spot. Many of the hermits interviewed confirmed that a., "Road to Heaven" was a massive book, and b., the mountain has changed because of it. This isn't directly addressed, this is a subtext if its anything at all. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but Porter seems apologetic and a little forlorn, and long sequences of him struggling up unforgiving mountain passes seem to me like an expression of his resolve to make amends.

  My favorite section is when he hikes 5 hours to a door and no one answers so he quietly leaves. It's not that I want to see him stifled, I just appreciate the respect here. It's almost like that scene's in the movie to show any future tourists "if you have to do it, this is how you do it". All the hermits are pleasant enough and many seem thankful for the visit, but at the same time there's a feeling among some of them that if it wasn't this guy specifically they'd've barred the threshhold. One of the hermits says this explicitly and it feels like he's talking to any potential tourist out there, Chinese and Westerner alike. Locals only, no randos.

  Again, I enjoyed this documentary, and I like Red Pine-- I'm not a hater. But if you watch this try and bear this subtext in mind, try and hear what people are saying through their politeness. And allow yourself to be inspired to bring some of the mountain to your life, without bringing yourself to this specific mountain. Also I'm not really tuned in to Chinese Buddhist discourse so if there's already a great article about this please leave a link in the comments.

  The whole doc is on YouTube btw ❤

  watched 2024-09-23
• Pilot Pirx's Inquest (1979) - Cool space mystery based on a book by Stanisław Lem, with music (and I think sound effects) by Arvo Pärt! Pirx was Lem's version of Sherlock Holmes, appearing in a dozen or so stories. I think this is the only one that made it to the screen, which is really too bad-- I'd love to unwind with a nice little collection of Sunday night mystery style space adventures. Anyway this is good. Someone onboard the ship isn't really human and no one knows who... It's up to Pirx to sleuth it out. There's zero human gore, though there is damage to robots (hands only). ❤
  watched 2024-09-23
• Hercules and the Captive Women (1961) - Love this type of thing. Great sets, great colors, mist, rocks, cool costumes, neat monsters, hunks, babes, ingénues, sinister villains, bubbling lava, buds that are there with you to the end of the earth, a little slapstick... that's a movie. I'm sure there's some duds in the Hercules / Samson / Maciste open franchise but so far I'm liking everything, at least a little. Reg Park is so good as Herc-- he has a real kindness and charm and also a wonderful air of sprezzatura-- a sort of effortless grace. He lounges around a lot in this one and it's a real joy. I watched this via Tubi but I just learned there's a Blu-Ray that looks superb so now I guess I gotta find that. ❤
  watched 2024-09-23
• The Man I Love (1946) - I couldn't remember why I downloaded this but I really enjoyed it. Killer tunes throughout, including the title track, which is just Gershwin as hell. I thought this was a dumb name for a movie until those big choppy chords syncopated in, then I was like ohhhhh it's a Gershwin joint! and I buckled right in. A wise-cracking nightclub singer with no ambition (Ida Lupino) falls for a jazz pianist with chronic depression. And she doesn't say "cheer up you idiot", she says "I hear ya". I liked her so much in this that I looked up other Ida Lupino movies and put them in the queue.

  Watching this I kept wondering was that really how it was back then? That you'd go to a club (even a shitty club) for a drink and there'd be a jazz orchestra just honkin away?? I don't understand the economics-- was there just less entertainment available back then so everyone went to the club and the club could afford to hire musicians? Or is there something else? The average American household spends $46 a month on streaming services (according to Forbes magazine), if enough of us committed to illegal downloading instead and reinvested the money saved into live music, could we bring back the white tuxedo???? ❤

  watched 2024-09-22
• Riddle of Fire (2023) - Really really nice childhood quest movie. Shot on film and it looks great. There's magic here (meaning sorcery) but it's pretty minor, and the people employing magic are using it for pretty low key reasons (animal trapping). I've never had the exact experiences depicted in this movie (searching for a speckled egg) but I have cruised around on my bike with my friends feeling free and swearing a lot, and I've also embarked on a quest that turned into multiple challenging and contingent tasks, so I identified with a lot of this. Kind of a Goonies vibe but instead of seeming like an epic life-defining moment, the events of the movie seem like just another weekend. The evil witch and the guy who kicks you out of 7-11 are on similar footing- they're obstacles to be overcome or routed around or crashed into head on. As with Goonies everything that happens is terrifying, but not so much more than a lot of the shit that happens when you're a kid, and your terror threshhold is uncalibrated. See also Gummo, which like this movie is full of strange stuff, but when you're a kid nearly everything is strange to you, so you roll with it.

  I thought the cast was great but on the downside I thought the littlest kid was a liiiiiittle too little, and giving him subtitles made the whole thing a bit too cutsie-wootsie. And the dialog was a little too rich in funny turns of phrase, I would've liked it better if sometimes they were like "yup" or "OK, let's get out of here" or whatever, instead of "bingo, lambchop" (or whatever). But on the other hand, this is childhood, it's a time before cringe really sets in, so maybe the dialog is, in it's way, realistic.

  All in all, I really enjoyed this :)

  ❤

  watched 2024-09-22
• All Up in the Biz (2023) - A good-enough documentary about the diabolical poetical angelical Biz Markie, with lots of great interviews and funny little details. It's great to have the story of Biz in a video format and it's so lovely to see all the people he touched on his improbable path. Rakim cries onscreen, which on the one hand is amazing because the R always seems so tough, but on the other hand it's very natural because he's always extremely sincere, and that is his strength. The weirdest parts of this are when Biz's widow reenacts the hospital stay at the end of his life with the aid of a puppet (there are several of these scenes punctuating the entire movie), and then during the post-credit sequence she comes back on and reiterates that he didn't die alone, and that she was shocked how some people acted after he died. It made it seem like a big drive for making the documentary was to refute something that was posted on TMZ. I'm sure that kind of thing sucks but this was a weird thing to do in a movie about a legend.

  ❤

  watched 2024-09-22
• The Education of Sonny Carson (1974) - I know this movie because of the Ghostface sample ("I'll put trademarks around your fuckin eyes"). I've got to assume someone else already compiled a Wu Tang movies samples list, and that all the movies are pretty good. This is really cool, about street gangs in New York City before the CIA invented crack cocaine. There's some great performances and great lines here. Gets a little slow at the end where the main guy is just like, remembering the earlier parts of the movie, but that didn't really bother me. It's like riding home with your buddy after the movie saying "I loved it when they were all just partying on the ferry" and "it's sad what happened to that nice lady". A true story based on an autobiography of the same name, I bet the book is great. ❤
  watched 2024-09-21
• Inside Out 2 (2024) - watched this while sick in bed and it really hit the spot. This is like VeggieTales for therapy. It's nice to be reminded (or not reminded, shown) that all your emotions are valid and can be helpful but you can't let any one of them hog the mic. teamwork makes the dream work. I hope they pull the plug here and don't continue the storyline, but they're probably going to keep going, because of the money, and they're just going to get more and more dubious. i recommend illegally downloading the first one and saving it for the next time you're sick in bed or in a stressful situation, then watching this one if you want a refresher. ❤
  watched 2024-09-21
• Big Top Pee-wee (1988) - I remember when this came out one of my friends told me it wasn't good so I never followed through, which is crazy because I loved Pee Wee Herman at the time (also now). "Ahh that's really too bad" I thought at age 9, without doing my own research. Typical maudlin youth-- over-eager to mourn. Well I finally watched it and found it imperfect but with cool parts-- it's nice to spend more time with America's favorite manchild but it's really missing Tim Burton. Kris Kristofferson really commits to the bit, and Valerina Golino is perfect as the charming young girl on the flying trapeze. I could've done without the pig's voice, it almost seems like initially the pig just oinked but then the studio wanted more jokes so they added a voice and loaded it with quips (voiced by artist and FOPW Wayne White). This is pure speculation on my part. long story short (too late), Big Adventure is essential, this is not essential. buuuuuuuuuut I had a nice time :) ❤
  watched 2024-09-21
• Johnny Guitar (1954) - Even though the movie's called "Johnny Guitar" I laughed out loud when they asked the guy his name and he said "Johnny... Johnny Guitar". There's a lot of great performances in this mostly-indoor Western. Mercedes McCambridge plays a sort of home-owner's association president, and I wonder if it was this performance that got her the part of the demon's voice in the Exorcist??? Kubrick heads feel free to log in on this. ❤
  watched 2024-09-21
• Another Thin Man (1939) - comforting rewatch of this the third installment of the enjoyable 30s-40s "Thin Man" comedy mystery series. Other reviewers are saying that this has a lower quantity of sophisticated quips than the previous ones but I'm not quip-starved and I found it sufficient. Shemp Howard has a small role in this and he really pops, I honestly thought "I gotta watch more Shemp movies". I don't though.

  ❤

  watched 2024-09-21
• The Addams Family (1991) - Nth rewatch, while I pulled an all-nighter working on a project away from the screen. I redownloaded this a few months ago because I saw there was an extended version, but the only thing that's extended was the Mamushka sequence-- there's way more verses, and the lyrics are very thickly set. I can see why this got cut but at the same time it's a shame because Raul Julia really pins it. I remember thinking at the time (1991) "how does Fester know the words to this song" but now that I've had more experiences I can honestly say that sometimes in the thick of a wild party shit like that just trickles off the dome careless and free, like pure mountain water. This movie ends in a rap about the movie, which is not exactly "how all movies should be", but I'd say any movie with a stinger at the end (which i find disrespectful) would be better with a rap instead.

  ❤

  watched 2024-09-15
• The Stuff (1985) - watched this at a bar with buds. they played the sound over the PA and it was really loud, which i loved. i don't really have the heart to crank a movie super loud at home, but seeing a crazy movie with friends at a loud volume and shrieking along is really fun. recommended. anyway this movie rocks. if you're on here wondering if you should watch this the answer is "big time". the cool parts of this movie will live forever. the worst part is the end-- they totally run out of steam and throw on 3 wimpy endings one after another. maybe they figured that by the end of the movie everyone in the theatre would just be rioting against corporate control???? ❤
  watched 2024-09-11
• The Girl on the Broomstick (1972) - wow, if you're looking for a whimsical 1970s Czechoslovakian movie about a cute teen witch, this is the one. I loved it. great vibe all the way through, all the witches and warlocks looked cool and imaginative, a perfect little Halloween romp for all ages. ❤
  watched 2024-09-11
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - I've seen this a million times but when I saw that the plane offered a Japanese dub with English subtitles I had to give it a go. I'm working on my Japanese and besides that's a great trick for defamiliarizing yourself with something you've seen before. Of course I was excited to see a snake crawl through an open-toed high-heeled shoe but this time I realized it was an effective setup for a huge snake crawling through a very nasty skull that still had quite a bit of meat on it, in full frame. Loved it. Do Raiders heads talk about the fly crawling into Belloq's mouth? it just crawls right in there and he doesn't react at all, it's great. Oh yeah and they didn't translate "top men", they left that in English. I can picture getting to that point and just throwing my hands up w/r/t to the particular nuance. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) - actually laughed a lot even though officially I hate this kind of heavy nostalgic reference movie. I am not made of stone! I feel like this is aimed directly at my age group plus or minus 3 years so cheers to the Xennials. They did mention that Chip is dressed like Indiana Jones but they did NOT mention that Dale is dressed like Magnum PI-- disappointing. Where are my Magnum heads?????? Watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Inside Out (2015) - I cried. It's really nice to make a movie like this, I bet it actually helps a lot of people deal with their emotions in a healthy way. Watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Men in Black (1997) - lots of fun, watched this on a plane. Barry Sonnenfeld needlessly reuses kind of the same font from his previous hit Addams Family for the opening credits, I wonder if he thought "I'll just use this one font my whole career (see also Crass, Man Is The Bastard, Woody Allen). He didn't though, I checked. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Ocean's Twelve (2004) - watched this at the tail end of an extremely long plane ride, when I was in search of comfort but also trying not to fall asleep. this time I started to think about how the end doesn't make sense, which I recommend against doing although it kept me engaged and alert enough to stay awake. I'm going to put a spoiler warning on this post even though "ending doesn't make sense" is the air that we breathe. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023) - Got to thinking about how this is basically what I always ask for-- a recent action movie that eschews shaky cam style and returns to the filmmaking style of Jackie Chan. Tom Cruise is visibly distressed by how crazy all the stunts are, there's good fight sequences with interesting limitations where you can understand all the choreography, there's some physical comedy aspects without being goofy, there's even uncooperative people handcuffed together and fleeing a mutual adversary! The main thing I don't like about this is that the main baddie is a total dud. But maybe they're just being realistic-- probably a lot of IRL bad guys have completely no charisma. It's also possible that that's to their advantage. Honestly looking forward to Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part Two: Leviathan Or Whatever. Watched this on a plane in Japanese, with English subtitles. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) - It's embarrassing that I rewatched this but I was on a long plane ride. And I decided that I was going to write up every movie I watch so here we are. I kept thinking how weird it was that this guy went on to play Oppenheimer, because in this one he also makes a tough decision that kills a huge number of people and it haunts him. But you know what I realized is that was a completely different guy. Different actors I mean. They don't even really look the same.

  ❤

  watched 2024-08-29
• Rain Man (1988) - I watched this on a plane and they showed the edited for airline use version where all the swears are dubbed. They don't even say "fart", they say "pass gas", but then at the end they do say "Walmart sucks", which I'm guessing someone had to fight for, and good for them. Also there's a brief moment where they draw a brassiere on Valeria Golino. For obvious but cowardly reasons they removed the entire Qantas Air sequence, in which Dustin Hoffman's titular Man recounts multiple fatal plane crashes. It's really difficult to see this kind of broadcast edit / clean version now-- no one's saving them for posterity so you really have to savor them when you find them in the wild like this.

  I remember watching this as a kid and thinking finally some representation for people who zone out super hard looking out the window on long car rides. This was the flagship media event for autism and honestly it's great. Perfect casting. Wish they did a whole series of Rain Man movies where they spend time in every US state, although I believe I understand the market factors that prevented such an undertaking. ❤

  watched 2024-08-29
• Fast X (2023) - It's incredible how bad the music is in these movies, except for Tokyo Drift, which has a good soundtrack (I think?) and the 6 seconds of this one where they play a Pharcyde song. It's like they're trying to do representation for people for whom music isn't really a big deal. I forgot Jason Momoa was in this one and when he walked on screen I said "ugh this fuckin guy" out loud, which was extra embarrassing because it was hour 9 of a 12 hour flight and the rest of the cabin was quiet as a bear's cave in winter. Thankfully I was able to watch this in Japanese with English subtitles, which made the character almost palatable. Fingers crossed that he dies in the opening credits for FurXIous, otherwise I don't think I can take it. ❤
  watched 2024-08-29
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) - watched this at the end of a lonnng plane ride, knowing I'd be unable to finish it. I kind of liked the earlier Transformers movies, I remember thinking that the transform sequences were like an Autechre video. But at this point I gotta say I'm uninterested. The design is bad, like everything is needlessly intricate, and I just don't feel like this thing is actually transforming into this other thing. It's like the original Transformers was designed to sell toys, and the new Transformers are designed to sell figurines. Also I don't understand the motivation of having a robot that looks like a rhinoceros or whatever that doesn't even operate in a context of other rhinoceroses. Like all the car guys look like cars so they can drive around among other cars, but these other guys are just tits out on a planet with real foliage but zero animals, looking like gorillas and turkey vultures for no reason. Maybe they'll cover this in Transformers 9: Rise of the Beasts 2: Lorem Ipsum (2025).

  One thing I did like about this was the soundtrack, which was a lot of 90s rap. Also love it when a movie is set at or near Machu Picchu. ❤

  watched 2024-08-29
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (1973) - Itto Ogami is always facing off with these other samurai who pretty much beg him to demonstrate his legendary wave-slicing style. Then he does it and their last words are like "wow... it really is... very cool... [gurgle]". I kind of lost track of the plot on this one but it's not a big deal. Cool underwater part, great face off with a priest who's just like "I regret to inform you that I do not have death energy radiating off of me. it's OK if you just want to try again later." Love this shit. ❤
  watched 2024-08-03
• Twisters (2024) - it was hot so we went to the movies. this was oddly dull. I was ready to be like "well that was dumb but I wasn't bored", but then I was. honestly kind of mystified as to how this was so boring when there was shit happening all the time-- my best guess is that the theatre was contracted by the military to test some sort of subaudible frequency that keeps soldiers calm in times of stress. if that's the case then it works great, I was completely cool and dispassionate from the very beginning. incidentally the movie is literally about using technology to release intensity from a system harmlessly into the atmosphere. ❤
  watched 2024-08-02
• Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell (1974) - OK, there's some stuff in here that cannot be explained by extraordinary swordsmanship or moviemaking flourish, and it almost took me out, but I think it works because in addition to being super-natural (far beyond the abilities of a human being) it's also supernatural (spooky, relating to living dead guys and spider cults). I wish more franchises would do a spooky episode, that's a great bit. Like if the Fast and Furious gang had to race Dracula on fucked up Model T's through the Carpathian mountains, personally I would love that. Or I think I would, I guess it would depend on a variety of factors. Anyway this one's great, I loved the spooky guys but I loved everything else too. I mean I'm watching the 6th installment of a movie series, obviously I'm into the whole gestalt. There's a big sledding scene that brought back a lot of memories for me. ❤
  watched 2024-07-31
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (1972) - This one has my favorite sequence from the comics ("shishōgan eyes") but they don't really pin it. Nonetheless this remains a typically gnarly installment of this beloved franchise. "Baby Cart In Peril" may not transmit the right energy to the modern viewer but trust me this is not about Swee' Pea at the zoo, or Look Who's Talking, this is about walking the demon path and slicing jugulars with a blade so sharp it seems for a sec like it didn't even hit. Cool bit about a smokin hot lady with a huge tattoo of a mountain hag on her back, that rules. I see a fair amount of Japan-inspired tattoos but I NEVER see mountain hag, what's up with that? This one ends in an absolute TIZZY so god help you if you're watching this and trying to eat something delicate, that shit's going everywhere. ❤
  watched 2024-07-28
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) - love it. love the comics and i loved the first movie, so i kept the other movies on reserve until i was sick or depressed. I'm watching them now (sick) and yes, great move ❤
  watched 2024-07-25
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972) - this rocks. i'm watching a kind of blurry file, it's not bad but it's like 700k so not great. but this is great filmmaking made for the neighborhood theatres of 1972 so it still looks great in less than ideal conditions, and anyway a generation of grandpas rewatched these movies over and over again in blurrier dubs than this. yes I'm going to get higher res versions and rewatch all of these, probably in under a year ❤
  watched 2024-07-25
• Problemista (2023) - I don't usually mess with stress comedies but it's Julio Torres so I watched it and loved it. He's the best! Loved how everyone is treated as a human being, even the most despicable, and the most laughable. it's great. loved the parts that were like the quiet moments on Pee Wee's Playhouse, loved the glimpses of roommate stuff. OK Fox said this already but it's so nice to have a word other than "Karen" for "someone who is upset in or towards a business or organization". ❤
  watched 2024-07-24
• The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) - Watched this while sick in bed and it was perfect for that. A gothic fantasy for kids based on a John Bellairs book (which had Edward Gorey illos). Hard to imagine this movie without Jack Black, he's perfect, and Cate Blanchett adds a needed oomph. The two of them are great and I loved seeing an unconventional (friendship) living situation. The whole thing feels VERY "Amblin Entertainment". It's too bad this director isn't making more like this. ❤
  watched 2024-07-24
• Intrépidos punks (1988) - I don't know if other subcultures are like this, but as a punk, I LOVE movies where the punks look completely unreasonable. Did the real Beats love Dobie Gillis? Did B-Boys and B-Girls love that one Fruity Pebbles commercial where Barney Rubble raps? I like all this type of shit. This movie has probably the most unreasonable looking punks I've ever seen. Total clown hair, mandatory eye shadow, spiderweb face paint, studded mask, leather bikini-- they look incredible and they're onscreen for a good 70% of the movie. This is really more of a biker movie than a punk movie so these guys are not the heroes-- they're bad people who kill and rape. They also party around a huge fire and constantly yell WOOOOO while they drive their nitro-burning funnycars through the Mexican desert, that's what I'm here for. I would love to read a nice little article about this one, maybe an oral history or something. Was everyone in charge of their own looks? Was anyone involved connected with punk in any way??? Other than the band that plays in the movie, I only spotted one band name or logo. No spoilers but let's just say it's not a punk band. There's a blurry dub of this on youtube but holdout for the restoration on Vinegar Syndrome, which is packaged with the sequel, La Venganza De Los Punks (1991). QUEREMOS ROCK!

  ❤

  watched 2024-07-24
• Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) - Wow, really good, exciting, inventive movie! A beautifully shot non-linear avant garde movie with some screwball parts, creative editing, and some really surprising choices, including putting some cast interviews (with spoilers!) inside the movie itself. Also I think they took all the experimental stuff that didn't work anywhere else and threw it into a micro-feature in the middle of the movie, attributed to one of the characters. Bold move but I loved it. It's self reflexive enough to be fun but not so much to feel overly clever or ponderous. That said there's a lot to chew on if that's what you're into.

  The worst part is the tragedy aspect, it kind of feels like they used "famous greek play" as a fundraising tactic or something, to signify "actual art". You get grants like that but you don't really have to do it, and in this case I thought it was unfortunate. Although that's how James Joyce dodged an obscenity rap for Ulysses, so maybe at the time they felt it was necessary. And maybe they were right, I don't know. Anyway, not every beauty is a cursed beauty! The movie's final chapter is "THE SPIRIT OF AN INDIVIDUAL / REACHES ITS OWN ABSOLUTE / THROUGH INCESSANT NEGATION". If that means "pick out the cool parts" then yes, OK. Luckily most of this movie is the cool part-- we're not sorting through rocks looking for a gem, we're in a field of gemstones in which some rocks are present, possibly for a good reason. All in all this is great, and inspiring even.

  Both tokusatso fans and Kurasawa fans will recognize co-star Yoshio Tsuchiya, he was the titular gas man in The Human Vapor (1960) and one of the farmers in Seven Samurai (1954), and did a lot of work in both camps, plus apparently he wrote a few books on UFOs. Incredible career. Incandescent star Peter (one name only) was also in Kurasawa's RAN, which I am adding to the queue. ❤

  watched 2024-07-24
• The Beastmaster (1982) - Cool sword and sorcery flick from the director of Phantasm. Loved it when the guy called him a freak and the Beastmaster went into the dunes to have a cry. I didn't have cable TV growing up so I never saw this but I can really see the appeal of watching it out of order in 20 minute chunks over the course of a couple months before my mom tells me that dinner's ready. ❤
  watched 2024-07-24
• The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) - starts out like it's going to be a fun little amnesia / mistaken identity romp and then the Pulp Fiction influence comes in kind of jarring and there's a lot of coarse witticisms and bloodsoaked bodies and everyone's smoking cigarettes. Samuel L Jackson wears a fuzzy kangol and Geena Davis says "suck my dick". conspiracy heads will enjoy the "FBI did the 93 WTC bombing" content, and the inference that the assassin's pleasant cover story is actually her real personality but minus a reinforced sense of self-hatred. I mean the 93 WTC stuff is on the books and yeah, they get you to hate yourself then turn you into a killing machine, that's how it works, but it's kind of nice to hear it coming from a blockbuster. Watched this while sick at home, great selection for that. ❤
  watched 2024-07-23
• What a Way to Go! (1964) - weird vibe with this one where it features so many tributes to movies of a begone era, and it's like "remember those corny old movies", but i'm watching this in the 21st century, and what i'm watching is a corny old movie. Great costumes by Edith Head but they're shown smeared in satire so the response the movie is looking for is like a camp laugh above it all, which, at the risk of posting cringe, is true cringe. Gene Kelley plays an intensely dislikeable clown but wow I would love to go to this wrestler-operated restaurant and get a truly large plate of spaghetti and a side of indigestion. This was developed as a Marilyn Monroe joint and Shirley Macclaine is good in it but it's really hard not to imagine What Could Be If-- a different kind of 60s maybe, a different kind of world. OK those are my gripes-- ultimately this one's a lot of fun, I liked it. Primo technicolor throughout. I gasped at the Paul Newman reveal. Actually every time a husband or potential husband appears for the first time, I gasped. Also very nice to see Margaret Dumont. ❤
  watched 2024-07-23
• Destroy All Monsters (1968) - watched this sick at home, so, perfect. Gold star for whoever pinned the name DESTROY ALL MONSTERS on this one, even though no one here has that objective. ❤
  watched 2024-07-23
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) - Loved a lot of this one but the bad guy was so irritating that I was on edge the whole time. I kept thinking "I'd love to go to this restaurant if I could be sure that this guy wasn't going to be there". Imagine saving up for months to go out to a place like this, dressing up in the mandatory Jean Paul Gaultier, and then a violent oaf who's there just to exhibit dominance over a situation blows the whole thing. I'd be mad as a wet hen (but madness directed inward). But I guess it helps to have that kind of guy to push the camera all around the restaurant, it helps the movie exist. All in all, this is great. Great sets, great colors, great clothes, great camera moves. Tim Roth is in there because if he wasn't you'd spend the whole movie saying Where's Tim Roth and Damn This Movie's Tim Roth As Hell. Stars include the lady who plays Jason Statham's mom in Fast and Furious, and the guy who was the voice of Sauron in LOTR. They have sex and you see the guy's wang a couple times. ❤
  watched 2024-07-23
• Action Jackson (1988) - I'm home sick and this is a perfect movie. lots of a certain kind of starpower here-- Carl Weathers (RIP), Vanity, Sharon Stone, Craig T Nelson, plus a million character actors you may remember from their myriad other henchman / goon roles. It's like a henchman convention, I love it. There's 3 guys from Predator AND one of them walks by an ad for Predator! I counted 3 Die Hard guys as well. Cool score by Herbie Fuckin Hancock. This movie isn't particularly inventive or psycho but if you like 80s action movies then you've probably seen all the classics already, and this is gonna hit you like a cold shitty beer on a hot shitty night. ❤
  watched 2024-07-23
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (2003) - pretty inspiring movie, the result of incredibly hard work by a bunch of 12 year olds who remake Raiders Of The Lost Ark on weekends and summer breaks, scene by scene, in order, over the entire course of their adolescence. It's fun to watch, but the real joy is constantly stepping back and asking yourself "how did they get access to a submarine" and "is that kid really on fire". I first saw this at a fan fiction film fest in 2004, and since then I've thought about it a lot. Finally found it again on my download site, I don't know if there's a legal way to watch this or what but if you're into Raiders or movie making of wild quests you gotta check it out. There's a documentary on the subject which is next on the viewlist, and is distributed conventionally.

  EDIT: you can get this on the director's website: https://www.theraiderskids.com/ and they added one more shot that they couldn't do as kids (the airplane scene) ❤

  watched 2024-07-20
• Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) - Well I loved it. Sort of a "Creepshow" anthology of absolutely bonkers short stories but then the framing device (also bonkers) is significant enough that the whole thing flows naturally, it's not just "OK, here's another one". Or maybe Scheherazade is the better referent because none of the stories really end they just kind of stop or drift away. The stories were very different but it also feels like you could hang a thesis on the common themes. Maybe the central idea is "the stories we tell each other"? Well don't get too hung up on it, this is a really fun and wild movie, I laughed a lot. :) ❤
  watched 2024-07-15
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) - This is cool but not bonkers. All the other ones were bonkers, and they were more bonkers than the previous one. But this one is at the same level of bonkers so it isn't nearly as inspiring. Also I kind of don't like backstory. Especially in Post-Apocastralia, as a viewer I want to be like, out in the wasteland, and I see a cloud of bikes and I'm like ohhhh shit who the fuck are these guys. I want to be constantly adapting to a harsh and shifting landscape, not remembering stuff. Like I want to want to know what's up with all these dudes but then actually being told is less rewarding than dealing with the mystery, or guessing. Hopefully there's a next one and it's mega mega mega bonkers and I don't know who anyone is again.

  All that said, yes I had fun. Chris Hemsworth wears Matt Damon's nose from Ocean's 13, and it plays. Elsa Pataky (Elena from Fast & Furious 5-7) plays a duel role and is one of the first couple actors we see, that's a nice little crossover. Anna Taylor-Joy was good but it's sad that she had to act like Charlize Theron the whole time instead of being able to find her own way. ❤

  watched 2024-07-09
• Marriage Counselor Tora-san (1984) - Wow, this one is really dramatic, I loved it. Some honorable tough talk from Tora amidst storms of emotion. But then at the same time some great goofball shit from the Octopus' daughter, and then at the end a guy in a serviceable bear suit chases Tora and bites his flip flop in half. In most of these movies Tora falls in love but in a few, this one included, he simply loves love and wants it to happen. These are really special ones. This one is especially rare because Tora's not alone at the end of the movie, which is so nice, it's a real happy ending. All these movies are on jp-films.com (with subtitles) for free, search for the Japanese title of the series, "otoko wa tsurai yo" ("it's tough being a man"). ❤
  watched 2024-07-08
• Stone (1974) - Watched this in a backyard setting with some buddies and well it's basically perfect. Great performances, KILLER soundtrack with some straight-up noise parts, and the moral is that being a biker kind of rules. Written and directed AND produced by the cool main biker. Towards the end there's a skinny dipping scene and you can see his wiener, I can't think of any other writer/director/producer/actor for whom this statistic charts at all. Honestly this movie rules. ❤
  watched 2024-07-07
• Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) - I struggled with the fact that there are lobotomies in this movie and that a big setting is a pretty inhumane-looking but maybe good-for-it's-time mental asylum of 1937. So that's my content warning-- this is basically a "psycho biddy" horror movie with a lobotomy endgame. But if that's manageable for you there's a lot to enjoy here. Great performance by Katherine Hepburn, she's a firehose of gemstones and she blasts everyone in the picture with unreasonable volume and force. She also has a cool way of wearing a shirt with the collar popped and the top button buttoned. Script by Gore Vidal based on a play by Tennessee Williams. With alto Liz Taylor and tenor Montgomery Clift. Katherine Hepburn has a VERY cool swamp garden behind her house-- hobby gardeners may laugh at the fantastical pitcher plant that they got standing in for a venus flytrap (which Hepburn feeds ala Morticia Addams). But they will be AGOG at the (thematically appropriate) titan arum (amorphophallus titanum) in bloom in the background. Cheers to the horticultural staff.

  ❤

  watched 2024-07-06
• Milford Graves Full Mantis (2018) - Nice little documentary on jazz drummer Milford Graves, well-made and inspirational. There's very little here to set the context of who this guy is or what are his bona fides, but also I feel like if you went in knowing nothing, you wouldn't be lost. I loved that there are zero celebrities in this, and there's almost no other people at all, it's mostly just the professor talking and playing drums, mixed with urban garden sounds (bugs, birds, swishing leaves, traffic). The feeling is like you get to talking with a guy on your street who has an incredible garden and he's showing you the garden and then he's saying all this wild stuff about vibration that kind of makes sense, and then you look at it again and it doesn't really make sense, but then you think about it more and you realize there really is something there. I loved it. Co-directed by Neil from western Massachusetts noise units Bromb Treb / Fat Worm Of Error. ❤
  watched 2024-06-30
• The Fall Guy (2024) - Fun movie, lots of charisma, I laughed, some nice moments about male fragility and tough guy syndrome. This was made by a former stunt person so they have a good eye for details and it feels like all the behind the scenes stuff is fun to see and probably pretty right-on. I'm sure it's hard to resist putting some corny little jokes in when you're making a movie in a movie but they do it pretty low key. They say pretty early on "we're not going to break the fourth wall" and then they don't! Which I really respect. Also I think they purposefully mention Tom Cruise a few times so that you don't assume that that's who the actor character is based on (his name is Tom, he makes a point of saying that he does his own stunts, he has a weird way of running, he acts erratically on and off-set). Diet Coke fans will appreciate that there's a woman in here who loves Diet Coke and is almost always drinking a Diet Coke, except for one scene where she gets 2 shots of tequila at a bar (seems right) and once where it's plausible that the Diet Coke was knocked out of her hand before her entrance. ❤
  watched 2024-06-26
• Daaaaaalí! (2023) - Wow I Loved It!!!!!! A really really fun and sufficiently far-out screwball arthouse movie about Salvador Dalí. This popped up on my download site and with zero info I figured I'd give it a go based on the subject, and I was absolutely flabbergasted. Surprised, delighted, enchanted. And then I was like "who is this director" and it's fuckin MR OIZO!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Ay yi YIIIIIIIII....... Pretty wild but at the same time if you told me in 1999 that the guy who made "Flat Beat" would make one of my favorite movies of 2024, and it's about Salvador Dalí, I'd be like "totally". Sorry if you guys already processed this but no one told me. Anyway this was really fun, crazy, I laughed a lot, I loved it. Multiple people play Dalí, which is appropriate since he was multiple people that shared a mustache. Everyone that played him really threw themselves into the voice. Makes a really strong contrast against Dalíland (2022), which this reviewer found to be a Vile Stinkeroo, dull and unimaginative (Ben Kingsley did not do the voice). This is appropriately bonkers-- a fitting tribute. Gonna watch all this guy's movies now. ❤
  watched 2024-06-24
• Jim Henson Idea Man (2024) - The Muppets were hugely important for me as a kid and to this day, so I had a nice time watching this. It's not sensational but it is nice. It's like a really good TV biography, the sort of thing that's interesting but the main takeaway is that you realize you'd like to read a book on the subject. I loved hearing backstories and seeing the team get put together, I loved seeing early material and behind the scenes stuff. But as far as "a movie" goes, the Sesame Street documentary (Street Gang, 2021) was better, and I wish this movie limited it's scope like that, like if it was just about the Muppet Show. Or if they went the other way, if they made a 5 part, 8 hour docu-series. Well anyway this is what we have and it's is nice. If you love the Muppets as I do then you're going to enjoy it. And if any Muppet heads are reading this, feel free to post book recommendations in the comments. ❤
  watched 2024-06-01
• Tora-san's Forbidden Love (1984) - Starts with a kaiju dream sequence featuring clips from The X From Outer Space (1967). Then the main story is great, a salaryman loses his marbles and runs away from his life, and they make no further explanation why because it's obvious-- that's no way to live dude.

  Tora-san has a wonderful habit of stopping the conversation to tell a little story, but it's never a story, it's just a description of a fantasy world. There's never a punchline, he's just describing a beautiful scenario and acting out each part while everyone around him really tucks in to the experience, smiling dreamily. And then they all quietly admit "that's nice". I really love it. ❤

  watched 2024-05-28
• Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024) - I'd be lying if I said there weren't any cool parts in this-- there were cool parts. But I definitely drifted away for long swaths. I kept losing track of how big these guys are, even relative to each other. "The guy is big" is among the oldest special effects in movie history, there's no excuse for messing that up. Another one where I'm watching it thinking "I wish this was made by someone good at visual storytelling and basic problem solving".

  Really didn't like the the "Guardians of the Galaxy"-style needledrops of otherwise unlicensed 70s hits, but I got to thinking that this would be a good avenue to exploit for global reach-- like you make a cut of the movie for Africa where he's blasting Fela, one for Japan where it's city pop and YMO, one for Belgium where it's Lio and Plastic Bertrand... is anyone on this? ❤

  watched 2024-05-21
• Vicious Lips (1986) - OK so this lady is a high school talent show winner who joins an existing band as the lead singer and with no practice plays a show that lasts most of one song, then they get in the van to go to a gig that will conclusively determine if they "make it" or not. Zero prac! Then we go into a dream sequence that we apparently never come out of, and the credits roll. This is like a movie that they watch in a movie. Great make-up, fun sets, that's about it. Presents an interesting look at what an incurious person might've thought being in a band was like in the years between Poison and Nirvana. ❤
  watched 2024-05-15
• Abigail (2024) - Hardly superb but I love ballet horror so yeah I had a great time. In five years maybe ballet will suffer a vibes inversion, where you see a ballerina and immediately think "something twisted is definitely going to happen" (see: clowns). But we're not there yet and you can still get a nice little frisson going when you realize something is not as it seems. So keep em coming is what I'm saying. Also great to hear Tchaikovsky on a soundtrack. ❤
  watched 2024-05-14
• Godzilla Minus One (2023) - Pretty cool, not mindblowing. I loved seeing Godzilla stomp through a city and I loved how there were actual people there getting smushed, not just structures that get knocked down. I know you guys are gonna want to know if Godzilla picks up a subway car in his mouth and shakes it and a screaming office lady falls out-- the answer is big time. There's a lot of human drama in this, which makes it feel more like a "good movie" than other installments, but the trade off is that they excise what to me is the best part of Godzilla-- that he's a vengeful aspect of the planetary intelligence and we woke him up with our shenanigans. Not to be childish but usually when I watch Godzilla I'm Godzilla absolutely throwing a fit, and at the same time I'm the people getting smushed by Godzilla screaming "Aaaaaah!!!!!". Because of all the regular emotion in this one I was watching it as the guy trying to kill Godzilla, which is harder to relate to. I mean I relate to the emotion (shame), but not the goal. All that said, I love Godzilla, and all the parts with Godzilla were cool. Godzilla has kind of a Magic Kingdom forced perspective design, where he looks huge and looming from any distance because of his huge beefy legs and tiny head and arms. In this one he was swimming in the water a lot, that's the one angle where the effect doesn't really work. But once he made landfall it was great. And it was still cool to see him swim around. Cheers to the original bad boy! ❤
  watched 2024-05-06
• The Language of the Unknown: A Film About the Wayne Shorter Quartet (2012) - Very nice little documentary about Wayne Shorter that has basically zero biographical content, and instead just focuses on a single performance from 2012, that's intercut with all the band members watching the performance on video and talking about it. It's a really great format and it's so lovely to see everyone's joy and amazement-- during both the concert and the playback. Wayne says a lot of stuff that doesn't directly make sense, but it's clear that if you're afraid or unwilling to not make sense you're going to miss out on a lot of good stuff. There's a really wonderful scene where someone tries to figure out what the fuck he's talking about ("put water on the chord") and then they do! Shoutout to trying!

  This whole documentary is on YouTube and it's under an hour long. There's also a more regular epic/iconic/legendary/underrated talking head style documentary that came out last year on Prime, and that sort of thing can be helpful in selling the idea, but if you're interested at all I'd start here, with the actual thing. You don't need any knowledge on the subject before you go into it, but you do need to have the willingness to try and enjoy (or at least roll with) something you don't understand. Seeing them play is really special, and I think it's very instructive that they can't really tell you much about what's going on other than "it feels like flying" and "it has nothing to do with ESP". Jazz is one of those things where maybe you didn't understand it right away and that led you to think that everyone who's into it is like, just pulling a prank on you, that it's all just pretense and Emperor's New Clothes (see also poetry, abstract art, punk, noise music, etc.). But that's an extremely middle school approach-- I'm sure there are some insufferable blowhards in the mix, but in my experience the people that really engage, the people that are really really really there, are full of joy, love, laughter. They love sitting in the sun and eating French pastries, and if you tell them "I don't understand jazz" they'll laugh from their bellies and say "I know!!! Me neither!!! Isn't it great???". RIP Wayne!!!! ❤

  watched 2024-04-28
• Tora-san Goes Religious? (1983) - "a shopboy near a temple will chant a sutra untaught"

  Tora is a creature of the wind and the street, and like a shadow, he can transform into anything in the right condition. Or as Jodorowsky says in Holy Mountain, "you are shit, you can become gold". In this one our errant goofball peddlar becomes a Buddhist priest, and really does an exceptional job. Not because he's a good student but because he's a natural. His family talks him out of it because of all the study involved but I really think he could've found his place there. Instead he continues to wander, and teach the dharma in his own way I guess. This is a great one of this series, with great performances all around, even from Hiroshi's boss, "Octopus". But if you're just tuning in it's not a good one to start with, because it breaks the pattern of unrequited love. Which is wonderful, but for max impact it's better for the viewer to have that pattern established first. I said this before but I think the ideal watch order is to watch any 3 from

  2 - 10, then

  1, then skip around for a while, then fill in the rest in order. I love Tora-san! ❤

  watched 2024-04-25
• Eames: The Architect and the Painter (2011) - Basically fine documentary about these guys. This is definitely of interest to anyone involved / invested in 20th century design, but it's not particularly revelatory. Which is OK! This is a totally fine intro to these guys.

  This is very minor and very niche but the narrator sounded so much like Van Neistat in the Tom Sachs videos I had to pause and look it up. It isn't him, it's someone else. But I've heard this other guy talk in other movies and he doesn't sound like this. Is he doing an impersonation??? Or is he just doing "art documentary voice" and only pulling from one reference? ❤

  watched 2024-04-24
• The Big Short (2015) - This movie is crazy, it's like a very watchable and enjoyable and I would even say fun movie that explains the 2008 financial crisis. The funny thing about fiction vs reality is that in fiction there are rules you have to follow or no one will accept it, and they clearly struggled with making a movie where far too many people were willfully oblivious, just doing whatever while the checks roll in. In a fictional work you'd expect to see a couple of those guys but no one would greenlight a story about a society taken over by them, you'd be like "I'm sorry, that's not realistic, someone would do something before it got this bad". But of course there's a huge chasm between the realistic and the real, and in some ways that's how these IRL crooks got over, with the implication "it's the bank, they're not going to screw you, that goes against basic narrative principles". Then they fuckin screw ya.

  Anyway the filmmakers succeeded in their task, I thought. I was entertained and informed. Killer cast. Strong Adam Curtis influence but Ryan Gosling is there to smooth the vibes out. I guess my only mark against is that Marisa Tomei should've had more screen time, but I feel like I could say that about any movie. I liked this enough that I looked up other movies by the director and they all have Will Ferrell???? This was his first movie NOT to star Will Ferrell. That's incredible. I'm happy they didn't put Will Ferrell in this, which is really incredible because half of the cast here are basically in the character of Will Ferrell-- stupid, self-interested, overly confident, a loud blowhard laughing to assert dominance, etc.. Hopefully some people got here via "Because you liked 'Anchorman'..." ❤

  watched 2024-04-20
• Asteroid City (2023) - Every time this guy has a new movie I'm like ay yi yi, this guy again with his fussy little shit? and then I wind up watching it and I remember oh ya I love this guy, and I love fussy little shit. Few would call this perfect, or life-altering, and there's a few little clever narrative tricks that I would even consider "fake deep". But it looks great, I loved the colors, and there's a million little things to zoom in on, I had a great time. Yes it's like looking at an extremely elaborate and overworked miniature, but I love looking at extremely elaborate and overworked miniatures. ❤
  watched 2024-04-13
• Delicious (2021) - Wow, I loved it! It's a relaxing restaurant movie AND a wigs in natural light movie??? It's great. Lots of slow camera movement over magnificent spreads, big clouds of flour, people working hard to achieve splendors in the eleventh hour, weaselly aristos getting their actual wigs literally snatched, beautiful French countryside... for me, this is perfect. Big smile the entire time. Is it particularly smart or clever? No and no. But do you want eat a clever dinner all the time? Or sometimes do you want a nice cut of beef wrapped in pastry with braised shallots, then a little jellied fruit for desert? I know what I want. The wine is not the best and it's somewhat watered down, would you like some more? Yes I'd love some, thank you. This is possibly upsetting if you're a food historian with a specialty in pre-revolutionary France, I can't speak to that. But as a person with a stomach, who responds to warmth, I loved it. ❤
  watched 2024-04-12
• Barbie (2023) - This is Starship Troopers for girls. By which I mean, I had fun but I wish they were more overt about how the world as described by the movie is a crime against the spirit. They stop just shy of saying "being Barbie absolutely sucks" and as such only strengthen the brand. Loved the musical numbers, wish the whole movie looked like that. ❤
  watched 2024-04-11
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) - Loved it. Something I've been thinking about lately is how new movies use music constantly-- here there's music but also long periods of silence and long sequences where the sound is just crazy explosions and screaming and zapping and whooshing. It's very effective! If I was a theatre manager showing this in 2024 I'd advertise one showing as screaming and one non-screaming, and at the screaming one it'd be loud as shit and it'd be ok to scream when everyone else is screaming. Did anyone ever do this? ❤
  watched 2024-04-11
• Crooklyn (1994) - Nice little nostalgic heartwarming mix tape movie from Spike Lee, co-written with 2 of his siblings. Childhood vignettes and massive tunes and they just keep coming, no problem.

  I couldn't put my finger on this at first but after a day I realized that this is exactly like a Mad magazine parody of Sesame Street, where instead of Oscar the Grouch there's a glue head that takes your ice cream money and the kids steal from Mr Hooper sometimes and instead of Big Bird there's Ru Paul (in a small but great scene) and some of the cast has PTSD but it's STILL VERY NICE. Makes you want to hang out outside. ❤

  watched 2024-04-04
• Oppenheimer (2023) - Wrote a big thing about this in my journal but I kind of spun out a little on it so I'll just say that this isn't even in the top ten Christopher Nolan movies, and for Robert Downey Jr movies I'd rank it well under "Back To School" (which is at the top by a mile). For a better blockbuster movie about a world-ending technology I'd pick Terminator 2, which at least showed a body turning to ash and blowing away in the wind. ❤
  watched 2024-03-27
• Perfect Days (2023) - A wistful and utopic movie about a world with clean public toilets that are accessible to all. I liked how dialed in this guy's life is, although it's troubling that one little unexpected hiccup threw off his whole equation-- his chaotic co-worker caused him to run out of gas with no cash, and he had to sell his Lou Reed tape to get his car moving. Interesting that it's a cash world and not a credit card world, or maybe this guy just uses "no credit cards" as a rule to keep his monk-like existence in check. I loved that he had a work van and when work was done he was strictly bicycle, even doing laundry, and even in the rain. That's a big money saver for sure, plus riding a bike is enjoyable. Also I loved that he pursued his hobbies in such a mellow way. Imagine the average protagonist getting into bonsai or photography-- it'd be more retail therapy than anything else, buying equipment to feel like the kind of person that does the thing (I'm guilty of this, for sure). For our guy his hobbies are more about having a focused environment in which to study and observe the patterns of life, which broadens his appreciation for the larger world. He has a nice little collection of yamadori (wild-collected) plants and apparently no $1000 bonsai scissors, and for photography he has a specific camera that he clearly loves (an Olympus MJU) but it's not like it's a "nice" camera and it seems like he keeps a tight leash on how many rolls of film he's allowed to go through in a week. As someone with very little vocational ambition who lives cheap so they can have time to enjoy the dancing quality of dappled light, it was great to see some representation. My hope is that people who love this movie try some aspect of it in real life. DON'T get hung up on the setting ("I wish I lived in Japan"), but DO ride your bike, take on a hobby with a free or cash-limited restriction, respect other people's religions and baseball teams, seek and enjoy dappled light, etc.. Also as a former record store employee, DON'T expect $100 per tape for your cassette collection!!!! Ay yi yiiiii... ❤
  watched 2024-03-18
• Memories (1995) - really good animated anthology movie from three heavyweights in the field. The stories don't really connect, which is fine-- there's a space junk / haunted mansion / opera one, then a nightmare where a guy smells incredibly bad without realizing it and it becomes a national emergency, and then a pretty basic but good "facism sucks" parable that seemed like a showcase for new technology in animation but not really "a story". As everyone on here will readily point out, the first one rocks and the other 2 are cool. Which is all you need! ❤
  watched 2024-03-13
• The Equalizer 3 (2023) - only one person goes for a Boston accent in this one and it's subtle and well done. The rest of the movie was enjoyable although now when I watch these I always think about how the henchmen are just people trying to make the best of their lives. I mean yeah it sucks that some guy stole $300,000 from someone you met once but what about the 100(?) people who got mixed up in crime and took a job doing security at a bad dude's chateau only to get their necks quietly snapped? Those people don't have families??? None of them come from an adorable town??? Come on Denzel... The other thing that grabbed me was at the very end-- OK he's sitting there in the cafe where he's accepted as a local AND the barista asks him out on a date, which is an extraordinary and conflicting double fantasy but we'll let that slide. He gets up to go and said barista says Hey you forgot this, and it appears to be a spoon??? Was there a scene I missed where he brings his own spoon to the cafe????? If that was in there, they didn't really sell it. Extremely weird move, and it happens in the last 30 seconds of the movie so that's basically all I can think about now. You don't have to stick the landing every time but you can't leave me on a weirdie. ❤
  watched 2024-03-13
• Body Melt (1993) - Loved it. Great name for this goopy horror in which yuppies treat suburbanites as lab rats and feed them experimental drugs that make them explode in unique and inscrutable ways. It's completely opaque as to what the drugs were even supposed to do, which I liked. If you like sunlit movies where people explode into various hues of gel, this is a must-see.

  There's a lot of great and creative editing here-- some parts are disjointed and dreamlike with no real explanation beyond "this is the feeling", which is perfectly valid, and it's wonderful to see a movie have the confidence to go for that. Also they do that Fast and Furious "you're the gas in the engine" shot a few times but you're an unknown and possibly sentient chemical rushing through, for instance, a body builder's wiener. And the music is really bonkers, enough that I looked up who did it. It was the director!!!! Who was in / led the group "→ ↑ →", which as I understand it was like an Austalian Devo / Gwar / Forcefield art project dba band. All the music is inhuman rhythmic patterns of general midi sound effects piped straight out of the groovebox. Kind of a Nickelodeon commercial break vibe. I would love a list for "director did the music"-- that displays a sort of mania that I really respect.

  In conclusion this reporter gives Body Melt... 8 out of 10 erupting neon magenta pustules. 🌋 🌋 🌋 🌋 🌋 🌋 🌋 🌋 🗻 🗻 ❤

  watched 2024-03-09
• Wonka (2023) - OK I loved Paddington 2 so I was upset when they announced that the director's next proj was going to be this, and not Paddington 3. Then I kind of forgot about it, then fellow p2head Davey texted me to say this is actually kinda good. Wellllllllll there's some cool parts, and this isn't Bad, but I just can't hang with this kind of music. I think I only like musicals that are 0% Andrew Lloyd Webber-- if his work is an inspiration in any way, I'm out. He's my cilantro. Anything in the ALW / Disney musical realm, I can't handle it. I don't have the enzyme required to convert this type of music into dopamine. Then this main guy, I'm sorry but this guy grosses me out. There's no spark. Maybe he's a really nice guy but onscreen he comes across as a good student who works hard, not a natural. Watching Chalamet is like talking to someone you know is lying to you-- any time I felt myself moved emotionally my defenses went up-- watch out, said my defenses, this guy's trying to manipulate us. Compare with Hugh Grant, who is a natural, he smiles and says let's go for a ride and you just hop in. I mean the writing is to blame here too-- Hugh Grant's oompa loompa doesn't need you which gives you the viewer some agency, whereas Wonka requires you to like him, that's the main engine of the movie and it's a stifling requirement. I'm kind of being a grouch here I admit. Long story short this movie had cool parts but it's ultimately just not my bag. Watched this as a double feature with Body Melt (1993), another colorful movie about feeding strangers experimental drugs. ❤
  watched 2024-03-09
• Guendalina (1957) - Nice little Italian teenager movie with minimal delinquency-- mostly just riding bikes around, flirting, falling in love. Set in a beach town and the main story is a tourist / local romance, that's a great riff. And then the star, Guendalina, she's great. I love this type of person that's always yelling and carrying on. You're hanging out in their bedroom and out of nowhere they break into a dance routine they've obviously been practicing, and then at some point they borrow your raincoat and then you're on their ass for weeks trying to get the damn raincoat back. Kind of manic but not a dream or a pixie.

  I never would've seen this movie but it came up on my download site and the poster made it seem like a cat suit movie, so I looked up some scenes from just see if it was about a diabolical assassin, in the vein of Fantomas. It isn't. But the clip I saw was just the part where the guy keeps saying "Guendalina!" in different ways, then the comments on the video were people throughout the years also saying "Guendalina!". Really nice vibe, and that's why I downloaded it. I'm happy I did. Guendaliiiinaaaaaaa!!! ❤

  watched 2024-03-09
• Mystic Pizza (1988) - first time watching this without a pizza in front of me and it's still good. ❤
  watched 2024-03-02
• The Goat (1921) - old comedy can be a tough watch sometimes because it's slow or the jokes no longer connect. but this is still extremely good, fast, and the humor is timeless-- mostly creative problem solving and running from the cops. 23 minutes long and extremely worth it. ❤
  watched 2024-02-27
• Evil Under the Sun (1982) - this is fun but I love David Suchet's Poirot so much that it's hard to accept any other. ❤
  watched 2024-02-15
• The Illumination of Jim Woodring (2019) - I'm a huge Jim fan so I enjoyed this doc about him even though it really felt like a Kickstarter documentary. I don't know if that's how this went down but that's the feeling I get-- someone has access to an interesting person either as a regular friend or a persistent fan, then a few hang outs are distilled, some fingerpicking guitar is commissioned for a score, and that's a wrap. It's a picture of someone interesting, so there's something there, but it's not great. It's like, you can throw anything in a well and hear a splash, but if you want to bring up actual water you're gonna need a bucket, and a rope.

  There's a lot of extreme close-ups here, which is like, something you do in a comic book when you want to make the dialogue feel ponderous, or you want to save time by not drawing a background (see Wally Wood's "22 Panels That Always Work"). Doesn't really work when it's like 30% of the shots. Again, Jim rules, I love his books and I think about them all the time and I'd recommend them to pretty much anyone-- Jim gets an easy 5 stars. But this documentary... some cool parts I guess but there's no bucket, no rope.

  I'm not sure if this would be a Hell or what but I'd love it if this email of a movie led to a A20 feature called "I'M STOOD YOU" or something, and it's like the garbageman years intercut with childhood stories, 100% true story with psychotic gibbering CGI apparations in garish colors digitally filtered for morning light, and it ends with Jim sketching Frank for the first time in an LA unemployment office to the thunderous din of Blade Runner horns. With Paul Giamatti as Jack Kirby if no one else is available. Call me. ❤

  watched 2024-02-10
• The Boy and the Heron (2023) - don't have a lot to say because i decided while i was watching it that I was just going to watch it, and save conclusions or takes for the inevitable rewatch. in short, the design of the bird man grossed me out, otherwise i loved it. every time i see a ghibli movie i have the same inspiration, which is to put the pedal to the floor and get weird as hell. saw this in the movie theatre ❤
  watched 2024-02-07
• Raiders of Atlantis (1983) - I fell asleep watching this and when I woke up the cats were on me and then I just layed there watching this from the middle till the end. There's no natural way to just start watching a movie in the middle nowadays, but in the broadcast era, flipping through channels, I landed on a lot of weird trash like this somewhere in the middle-- no exposition, just an assumption that probably everyone's motivations were squared away in the first quarter and everything makes sense, I just don't have the context. I love this feeling. Even though I personally and intentionally illegally downloaded this movie, and therefore knew the name and had a rough idea of the plot, I was happy to find myself once again in this sleepy zone of pleasant confusion. I'm thinking you'll probably have this feeling even if you watch the whole thing. ❤
  watched 2024-02-05
• Party Girl (1995) - I love when someone in a movie lives in a funky loft and this is a pretty realistic one-- there isn't like a basketball hoop inside or a chain link fence that you hang a poster on off-kilter, it's just a big space with no closets and a shitty paint job and your neighbor is a guy doing some kind of unspecified light industry. Also I liked how realistic the outfits were-- yes they're wild and fun but there's a part in the falafel montage where she re-wears things in different creative combinations, I feel like that's rare for a movie but obviously something real people do constantly. Also rare-- in the scene where she organizes the guy's records they actually show the method! Too often does a movie refer to a new structure or method but not actually describe it. Also this is among the very few movies that mentions Gopher, the computer ecosystem often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web. And in addition to being a collection of rare moments I thought this movie was fun, I enjoyed watching it. I was upset that Lady Miss Kier doesn't show up anywhere except the soundtrack, but I guess it'd be hard to put her in a movie and then have the movie be about someone else. ❤
  watched 2024-01-28
• 13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats (1975) - Sonny Chiba protégé Etsuko Shihomi stars in this 1970s girl gang martial arts movie that I really enjoyed. She has a great look, styling but practical, with a big "13" appliquéd on all her clothing for reasons the film never makes clear, though it's no problem. What are the 13 steps? Who are the titular aristocrats? The movie makes no mention but again, it's no problem. The story rolls along quite nicely without drag or confusion and I enjoyed every moment of it. Great fights, some boobs, a few butts, slobs vs snobs, prison break, a brawl at a wedding. I'm not a long hair freak but there's a part where someone with long hair uses it to strangle someone-- if that's your dream you probably don't see it onscreen very often so I hope this note is of service. It's not a huge part of the movie but it happens. ❤
  watched 2024-01-27
• Message from Space (1978) - I could imagine seeing this as a kid and being totally uptight about "this isn't Star Wars" but I'm an adult now and I enjoyed this. It's fun, it looks cool, great costumes, no problem. "You have to dress like this movie" would be a great setup for a party I think, and if any slobs show up without a costume you can just wrap them in a sheet, give them a schmear of Seven Seconds eye makeup, and plonk a crown of plastic leaves on top-- the host could purchase these items in bulk.

  As MDF pointed out in his review, this isn't better than the Star Wars trilogy but it's definitely better than the prequels. We got 3 Han Solos here, one of whom is 30% Luke Skywalker. Then there's a lady that's like Luke plus Leia, then a lady that's Leia minus Luke. Then there's a Ben Kenobi divided by Han Solo, he's been drunk since his C-3PO died in battle, but he's got a little R2 unit that's 20% Ewok. Darth Vader, the emperor, John Williams, Space Shintoism, they're all here too. They even did a little franchise on this, spinning out to a TV show, which according to IMDB was very popular in Peru. Chris Isaak is in this for a split second (playing space poker in the cantina) so if you're having an Isaakathon (Married to the Mob, Silence of the Lambs, That Thing You Do!, Little Buddha, Fire Walk With Me) you gotta watch this too. In conclusion yes I enjoyed this movie. If anyone does this party concept please call me up or at least send pics. ❤

  watched 2024-01-23
• Hopscotch (1980) - I was expecting some sort of cleverness on the part of Walter Matthau as the CIA guy who goes rogue, but this is mostly about a regular joe sticking it to the boss man, and there are very few tricks or contrivances. he stays one step ahead of them by simply being one step ahead of them, that's all! He really seems like a dead-eyed psycho, vain and ambivalent to human life. I guess this job attracts that kind of person. With Herbert Lom. ❤
  watched 2024-01-17
• Ocean's Eleven (2001) - Me and Mori watched 11 12 and 13 over a couple days around Christmas. Sometimes you want something big, fun, competent, and most importantly, known. These are all pretty good and you can tell that everyone's having a lot of fun, especially Soderburgh, who's constantly dropping film techniques on the viewer for basically no reason. I love heist movies and these are especially good because in the whole series no one gets hurt or even realistically threatened (George Clooney gets punched in the jaw but it was just pretend) and there's almost no guns (one person gets shot in a flashback and later there's a gun used menacingly but it's empty). Also they're never like bad guys brought together by the law to catch a terrorist, they're fun criminals that get away with it with great joy. They even make a point of saying that the casinos they rob are insured! Everyone is completely fine. Cops are onscreen for about 15 seconds across the franchise and they get completely and immediately bamboozled. The real bad guys are people that have too much money, which is absolutely true.

  Now for the cons: Don Cheadle's accent is so bad that it's like part of his character, he's just a guy that talks like that for some reason. That's not a con, but it draws out how Eliot Gould's accent is regular bad, irksome. Bruce Willis briefly plays himself (in 12), which for some reason I found reprehensible. I only accept him as an actor I guess. Also I would've liked more details about the Fabergé egg (also 12). That's about it for the cons. ❤

  watched 2023-12-29
• That Man from Rio (1964) - A really fun movie that inspired Indiana Jones but feels more like a live-action Tintin. The pacing is cartoonish and the action is a little whimsical, and even the way things are framed has a Hergé feel. Some of the action takes place in the futuristic city of Brasília while it's still being built, it's an incredible backdrop and well-utilized. There's a lot of other great sets too, museums and mansions and jungles and bars and a really nice little shanty in a favela that reminded me of An American In Paris (1951). Jean-Paul Belmondo stars and he's great. The only other Belmondo movie I've seen I think is Breathless (1960) which I loved, and he's also listed as the main star (as "Simon Belmondo") in the jokey end credits of the first Castlevania game for NES (1986). I gotta check out more of his films. Anyway this was a great movie, recommended for anyone looking for a romp. ❤
  watched 2023-12-22
• You'll Never Get Rich (1941) - I liked this, it's Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, they're both great. The only thing that took me out was that a good chunk of it takes place at an army camp and I got that same spooky feeling I get thinking about the day they send Beetle Bailey off to war. With a gun. To kill someone. There's a small role for the guy from Room Service (1938) who yells JUMPING BUTTERBALLS, and he yells a few different things but not JUMPING BUTTERBALLS, too bad. ❤
  watched 2023-12-22
• Double Dynamite (1951) - Groucho in his real mustache era plays weird friend to Jane Russell and Frank Sinatra. Strange title for a movie with 3 big stars, and it probably caused some fights among the crew. I looked it up, it was originally called "It's Only Money" but it got changed by detestable aviation-obsessed billionaire Howard Hughes, in reference to Jane Russell's breasts. That's insulting to Russell, insulting to the audience, and insulting to the cast. The billionaire class should be obliterated.

  This movie is fun but it's weird seeing Groucho in a movie without his brothers-- as part of an ambitious but destructive organism he's a joy to behold, but in the context of regular people he's an irritable complication. No disrespect! I imagine that this is what hanging out with a mitochondria might be like, outside of the cell walls. In context, an essential power supply-- otherwise just a glucose gobbling maniac. I caught myself asking "why do they hang out with this guy".

  At one point someone describes Frank Sinatra's character as someone who "looks a lot like Frank Sinatra", and it's very shocking. ❤

  watched 2023-12-19
• The Howlin' Wolf Story: The Secret History of Rock & Roll (2003) - I love him so I liked this-- some great footage here. The interview with Hubert Sumlin is especially sweet. I think if you're only exposed to secondary or tertiary sources of transmission (rich white rockers of the 1960s) it's easy to get blues damaged, but this just about as far from Eric Clapton as possible. I watched this on YouTube.

  If you want to see the whole video of "Blues at Newport 1966", where Wolf calls out Son House (extraordinary moment), it's on the Newport Festival website: https://newportfestivals.org/sessions/blues-at-newport-1966 . By a cruel twist, there's an out of tune saxophonist right next to the mic honking one of two notes the entire time, looking like someone's nephew and dragging the vibe like a bum tooth. Quel dommage... ❤

  watched 2023-12-06
• Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) - I love Little Richard, the quasar of rock, so yes I found this wonderful, inspiring, touching, etc., I loved seeing the footage and they got some nice interviews / commentators, and they threaded it together well. My qualms are with the few instances where they cut to contemporary up and coming musicians interpreting his songs and that's a nice idea but that's not why I'm here, it sinks the mood through an excess of reverence, and given the context of his life it's hard not to imagine LR saying "this is nice and good but my version was better of course". Then there's an emotional ending and they roll the credits over a cover-- why?????? It's hard to believe it's a money thing but I can't think of another good reason for this (and that's not really a good reason). Also there's too many, like, screensavers in this. I get it, he sparkled and shimmered, but there's no need to cut to cosmicshimmer.mp4. That said, I love Little Richard, I had a great time watching this. ❤
  watched 2023-12-06
• Stuart Saves His Family (1995) - As a kid I was really into comedy-- I loved Mad Magazine and SNL and I guess I thought that comedy was about making fun of something stupid. I liked Stuart Smalley and at the time if you asked me what the joke was here I'd probably reduce it to "wimps are bad". But in the 30 years since those skits initially aired, I've come to realize how helpful it's been to have the catchphrase "I refuse to beat myself up" firmly implanted in my mind. And instead of dominance by witticism I treasure joy, resilience, being alive, and celebrations of the spirit. I really genuinely like Stuart Smalley, I would watch his show. This movie isn't incredible but I liked it, I'm happy I watched it, I even found it touching. I like when things are nice, so sue me! I'd be excited to watch this again if anyone wants to do a D'Onofrio film night. Mystic Pizza, Full Metal Jacket, Stuart Saves His Family, Men In Black, Adventures In Babysitting, The Cell, Ed Wood, JFK, Jurassic World... there's lots of good ones to choose from. ❤
  watched 2023-12-06
• Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) - The only thing that took me out of this mutant crab movie was that the crab's eyes were like, the eyes of an angry human statue, flat and frozen and dry. If they made the eyes beady and kept them wet it would've been no problem. Live and learn! Otherwise I thought the crabs looked great. Even though this is the only giant crab movie I can remember ever seeing, I don't think this is the best of the batch. I'll update my rankings as I get more info. ❤
  watched 2023-12-05
• Chuck Berry: The Original King of Rock 'n' Roll (2018) - decent music doc with some really regrettable interstitial reenactments that look like a video game cut screen. You just have to wait it out while the rest of the movie loads. Gene Simmons is in this, gross, but on the other hand, Nile Rodgers is here too. The Berry family is in this a lot, which is cute, but that's a genre of music documentary for sure-- the one that has the whole family in it. Maybe because of that there's no big revelation here except that the scandals you heard about all have alternate explanations. I love Chuck Berry, and if you do too this is definitely worth a watch. The whole thing is on youtube. ❤
  watched 2023-12-05
• Please Baby Please (2022) - Extremely good movie set in a suitable fake 1950s setting with street thugs and non-denominational subcultural people. With the lady who plays Mandy in Mandy (2018), and a nice little role for DEMI MOORE. It's fun and imaginative and romantic and spooky and mysterious and funny, the performances are high keyed but it doesn't feel campy or sarcastic-- it's incredible. Fans of Scorpio Rising and West Side Story will definitely want to check this out. I loved it and felt effervescent watching. EFFERVESCENT! ❤
  watched 2023-11-15
• Dumb Money (2023) - There's something intensely embarassing about this movie. I guess I watched it because I wanted to see a documentary about this whole affair, and this seemed like an OK way to scratch that itch. It isn't. Paul Dano grosses me out (consistently) and there was no part of this that I enjoyed, other that seeing who in the cast could do a Boston accent. I guess something cool about Tik Tok is that you can't really Hollywood it? All the fake Tik Tok in this really looked like actors who were told to "have fun with it", it was a similar vibe to when there's punks in a movie but instead of someone drawing a spiderweb on their face they're dressing like a toddler and saying "amazeballs". I think this story would be better told with either complete reality (documentary) or complete unreality (a ghost that kills you if you're a hedge fund manager whose stock goes down). Also this is small potatoes but it's upsetting that the poster uses Impact but has it in the middle of the frame, which is a forbidden location for this font. ❤
  watched 2023-11-12
• Odissea (1968) - If you have any desire to watch a 6 hour miniseries of the Odyssey this is the one, it's basically perfect, and furthermore it's on YouTube (in French with subtitles). I watched it over successive nights as I fell asleep, which was a really nice experience. It's not boring by any means but there's something very comforting here-- maybe that it's well-built, confident, consistent, full of great performances. You can really understand why Homer's immortal poem was such a monster hit. Once I realized "wow, this is really good", I got excited to see what they were going to do about the cyclops, was it going to look stupid or what? But then it looks great. Mario Bava is listed as an assistant on this, it's my understanding that he did the whole cyclops episode. Great work everyone! All-time brooding beauty Irene Papas plays Penelope, scintillating Albanian hearthrob Bekim Fehmiu plays Odysseus, and Bond girl / Ringo spouse Barbara Bach has a nice little role as Nausicaa. The role of Polyphemus the cyclops is played by the well-named Samson Burke, who also played Hercules, Maciste, AND Little John, that's career goals for a big guy.

  NOTE: the 6 hour version is on YouTube, as noted (4 x 90 minute episodes), but the 8 hour version (8 x 1 hour episodes) is on Archive.org (search "Odissea", media type: movies). The YouTube version has English subtitles, the Archive.org version does not. BUT it seems like the subs for the 8 hour version are available on Subscene.com so you should be able to download the files and roll your own with VLC. The Archive.org version looks better, but the YouTube version isn't bad, and it has the telltale look of a slightly blurry oversaturated VHS, which is warm milk to anyone born in the last quarter of the 19th century. ❤

  watched 2023-11-10
• Subspecies (1991) - All I could get from my beloved torrent community was a 4gb copy of this, and when I sat down to watch it with my buddy my ancient computer couldn't do it. Luckily my buddy had the fix, which was one of those websites. Remember when everyone had some fucked up movie website that seemed to have almost everything and it was chill as long as you didn't click anything on the page other than the play button? Those sites are still out there and they still work, even though the landscape is forever shifting. Anyway great movie, I'm guessing the inspiration for this was Bugles corn snacks? I could immediately relate to the feeling of "I'm a spooky creep with long pointy fingers" and I recognize the childhood genius of "my fingertip broke off now it's a little guy coming to get you". There's a few points like this where they added to a legend in a cool way, another one I liked was like "everyone knows about driving a stake through the heart, our thing is we boil the heart and drink the heart's hot dog water". My viewing party loved these embellishments, loved the little claymation guys, and loved that the main guy looked like Lux Interior. The only thing we didn't like was that the grizzly old familiar was terrible at his job. They kept saying "let's find his coffin during the day and get rid of him" "yes, let's", and then he spends all day sharpening a stick (which was already sharp) and then it's almost nighttime and he's like "OK let's go". Would've been no problem if he just did what he said he'd do when he said he'd do it! To be honest, I have this tendency too, I can't pretend like this is unrealistic. And I guess it's ultimately helpful for me to see how annoying this is for other people in my life and how much it holds me back. Let's get that bread everyone. ❤
  watched 2023-10-30
• The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) - Loved it. I like that at least some of his antiques were replicas that he made himself (and bragged about), I wish more people did that. I mean imagine going over someone's house and they have, I don't know, a piece of a temple or something out on display, and you're like damn is this Cambodian? And they're like ya, you can pick it up, it's made of styrofoam. I made it in my Temple Pieces class. ❤
  watched 2023-10-27
• The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) - another one where Vincent Price plays a traumatized aristo whose mind is taken over by a deceased sadistic identical relative (Price switching). I feel like this is a pretty accurate tale of how trauma bounces down a family line. And from a movie magic perspective, VP is the primo actor for this-- it's a simple trick but wow, what a delight to see bedevilment spread across his magnificent face, after 4/5ths of a movie in which he's a scared little turtle. Also every single person in this dresses like Snow White, I loved it. ❤
  watched 2023-10-27
• Hercules (1983) - Really really good!!!! Great special effects, great costumes, great sounds, I loved it. Lou Ferrigno is great in this. I'm looking forward to watching this again at a later date for almost no reason. If you guys have a favorite Hercules / Samson / Maciste / other nice barbarian movie please leave a comment or just text me ❤
  watched 2023-10-26

• Fiend (1980) - This guy claws his way out of a grave and almost immediately starts a successful business and rents a house on a cul de sac. Kind of inspiring really! Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• The Kindred (1987) - part Alien, a touch of Gremlins. Really fun, I screamed several times. If you ever wanted to see a beautiful woman turn into a fish then you'll be psyched. But if you wanted to see continued adventures of a fishwoman you might be disappointed. Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• The Devonsville Terror (1983) - a cool witch movie about patriarchy. Cool modern ladies and miserable dudes. This one guy's face melts so much at the end, it just melts and melts and melts some more, it rules. I shrieked. With Donald Pleasance, who pulls live worms out of his arm for no reason. Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• Nightmare Weekend (1986) - A really bonkers movie where debauched young women turn into ghouls. Recommend for anyone interested in the subject of debauched young women who turn into ghouls. There's also supercomputers, a cool bar, and lots of not-weird very regular and completely understandable "let's have sex because that's something we both enjoy" sex. It's French but shot in Florida. Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, I would say this is the standout of the night. ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• The Body Shop (1972) - Sorry but I snoozed a little during this one. Writer and director plus actor JG Patterson Jr brings very little imagination, charisma, or movie making ability to this dull lady Frankenstien story, and by the halfway mark what little steam they started with runs out completely. It's incredible to think that over 6 people worked on this movie in some capacity, some of them over multiple days. Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• Sleepover Massacre (1989) - pretty slow shot-on-video vampire movie with surprisingly good torn-out-throat effects. Initially the vampire has a sort of Ryan Trecartin face paint look, but unfortunately she gets more and more beautiful with every kill. Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) - Clive Barker really invented a whole new mythology and as a result you barely notice that this is ultimately a movie franchise about the Rubik's Cube fad of the 1980s. Directed by Tony Randel. NOT the guy from the Odd Couple, that's Tony Randall. What if though? Watched this as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon ❤
  watched 2023-10-22
• The Undead (1957) - Really really enjoyable witch movie from Roger Corman, I loved it. There's craggy old witches, smokin' hot witches, a really great laughing Satan, Billy Barty turns into a lizard, time travel, reincarnation, hypnotism, a goofy gravedigger, a small role for Dick Miller... it's wonderful. The people from the past speak in iambic pentameter (or close enough) and they do a pretty good job selling it. Also there's a GREAT graveyard dance sequence. The only thing I didn't like is that the main lady is a sex worker and because of that the good guy scientists treat her as expendable. If not for that I'd say perfect picture. ❤
  watched 2023-10-20
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) - Downloaded a version with the commentary and watched (listened to) that while sewing. The commentary is Paul Reubens and Tim Burton, it's great. Paul has something nice to say about almost every person that appears on screen even for a second, and it's usually "I'm still really good friends with him/her". ❤
  watched 2023-10-19
• PG: Psycho Goreman (2020) - I'm pretty sure I don't like almost everything that's kind of like this (modern jokey 80's-inspired horror), but I liked this. It's like a Calvin and Hobbes movie for the Fangoria crowd. They even play Calvinball! Great monster designs, and the girl playing the Calvin role was really incredible. Amazingly there are apparently NO easter eggs in this movie! There's no catchphrases or nods or references that I could catch, other than the Calvin thing, which is more about structure than flair. It would've been so easy for the guy to say "I'll be back", or "groovy baby", or "ssssmokin" (??) or whatever but they played it pretty clean. I respect and appreciate that. ❤
  watched 2023-10-19
• Mark of the Devil (1970) - There's a costume jewelry odd lots store near me that sells plastic gemstones and for some reason the bags they give you to put smaller items in are the official barf bags from this movie. It was only a matter of time until I watched it.

  This is early torture porn, made palatable by time I guess. I can't watch movies like this that are made now but yeah I can watch someone dribble ketchup down their blouse when twisted on the rack. The bad guys in this are disgusting agents of power (in this case the church), who have been massively corrupted by that massive force. They do not speak in riddles and there is absolutely nothing fun about them-- various circumstances and personal weaknesses led them to the belief that the closest they can get to joy is witnessing agony, and the camera rightly shows this as absolutely pathetic. No one in the town is happy about the situation and it seems like no one thinks these guys are even on God's team, but no one says Hey because they don't want to get racked or thumbscrewed. This cowardice leads to a "it is what it is" sort of acceptance, and from there to an actual enjoyment of the carnage by the people at large. And then that's it, the whole village is subsumed by this horrible machine. Locally, the power of the church is expressed through the brutality of young men conscripted as guards who, driven down by the class system, see violence as their only opportunity to rise in status, though they are actually just as doomed as everyone else until the system is abolished.

  To cleanse myself of the vibe I imagined a coda to this movie set in a world where they never did the Inquisition-- Herbert Lom just cooling his heels in a mountain stream and grooving on the fresh air, then cut to Reggie Nadler and he's pulling big heirloom tomatoes from his garden with great satisfaction, watched over by a smiling Rubenesque wife and their approximately 400 children. Udo Kier is basically the same (a prettyboy who the camera really lingers on). He's pulling a big tray of hearty loaves out of the oven, mmmmm they look good! Cut to the barmaid and she's cutting the ribbon on a new town library which she designed. It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter due to the ingenious way the windows are oriented and the thermal mass of the rammed earth walls.

  Back to the actual movie, I didn't think it was very good and to be honest I only finished it because I love the costume jewelry store. But if you want to see Udo Kier at maybe his prettiest, then this is a must-see. I think the tough part about making a horror movie is you want to have fun and be wild but you don't want to make it seem cool to torture-- in that regard I thought this movie did a great job. My big takeaway was "I'll never Inquisition, I'm cool". Peace everyone. ❤

  watched 2023-10-16
• Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961) - I found this surprisingly beautiful. I'm not sure if it's because they did a really nice restoration or what but while watching this pretty slow movie in which a masked wrestler fights crime I kept thinking "this is like a Bergman movie!". I was entranced. Long shots with no music give you plenty of time to relax into the moment of, for instance, a bunch of guys on a boat smiling because their crime is going good, or a mean boss man waiting at a table in a cool club smoking a cigarette, or a mysterious luchador jumping off a pier and disappearing into the surf. I loved it. ❤
  watched 2023-10-14
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023) - I had fun but this wasn't particularly exhausting like the other ones in the series, it was just kind of here we go again. I kept thinking that I wish they got someone great for the mysterious bad guy role-- the guy in this is fine but he doesn't really chew the scenery like a Philip Seymour Hoffman. To be honest he reads as a rando, and it's frankly unbelievable that he could go tête-à-tête with anyone else in this picture, especially if he's got a knife and his opponent has a sword. The guy from Princess Bride is in this and honestly they should've got anyone else from Princess Bride-- Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Fred Savage... RIP Andre the Giant and Peter Falk but they would've been great too, obviously. Also this is like a skate video feeling but didn't they just drive down those same Roman steps in FastX? As I understand the mechanics here, Cruise did a 360 backside kickflip vs Vin Diesel's half Cab. Or maybe Tom Cruise did a fakie big spin, because the driver and passenger switch places? I would love it if someone could clarify this for me. It's very very easy to picture Tom Cruise vehemently insisting that he did the more technical trick so he should get all the accollades here. But at the end of the day Fast X, which I didn't like on the whole, had the style points-- they sold it better. ❤
  watched 2023-10-14
• Planet of the Vampires (1965) - Lots of mist and colored lights in this sci fi horror from Mario Bava. I read that they only had 2 big fake rocks to use for the outside shots and they multiplied them using mirrors, double exposures, and other camera tricks. The rest of the titular planet is mist and colored lights and it's no problem. Cheers to the problem solvers! Everything looked great-- cool costumes, great big old computers with rows of blinking lights, bubbling lava, ray guns, I loved it. And there was a great soundtrack too, with some real "electronic tonalities" provided by Gino Marinuzzi, Jr., playing (to the best of my knowledge) a synthesizer he designed called the Fonosynth.

  This showed at the Boston Sci Fi marathon 30 years ago and everyone went nuts over how many times someone onscreen says the name "Mark". I wasn't there but every time I've gone to the 'thon there's been a moment where that name is pronounced onscreen and verily the crowd goes wild. For the sci fi buff the memory is long and the love of ritual is high, and for me too-- despite not being there at the inception, I go crazy for the name "Mark" spoken on screen in any setting. It's a joke I've inherited by osmosis. It's a delirious feeling to finally watch this movie after all those years, best I can say is that it's like getting multiball in pinball, or getting the star in Super Mario. It's a cascade of ringing bells, each indicating reward. ❤

  watched 2023-10-07
• Tenebre (1982) - Argento really made one for the students here, I bet there's like a million papers about this one. It's a movie about a horror auteur, made by one of the finest, with metafictional elements, direct homage to previous works, a show-stopping crane shot, and a willful avoidance of established tropes. No one drinks or displays J&B scotch in this movie-- it seems like everyone is constantly being handing more and more elaborate cocktails. And the lighting, instead of being moody and misty, is harsh like daytime TV. It's cool but it you're programming a Halloween movie marathon, probably select something else from the catalog, something with a misty vibe. Save this for the midwinter movie discussion group.

  Argento is the main character in this one, or pretty much-- the main guy is a cool horror writer that everyone loves, smooth and successful. And just like Argento in real life, this guy has a professional relationship with John Saxon and is loved by Daria Nicolodi, a long-suffering assistant who is annoyed by him. Critics and obsessive fans have him all wrong but some cool people get it, that hey, he's just having fun. And honestly? I'm a cool guy so I had fun :)

  Oh yeah, and the Argento character in this is from Rhode Island! As a Rhode Islander it's great seeing the home state represented as a mysterious foreign locale. Gonna say "Rhode Island" a few more times so someone can find this review and add this movie to a "Movies Where Someone Says 'Rhode Island'" list. Rhode Island. Rhode Island. Argento. Rhode Island. ❤

  watched 2023-10-02
• House of Usher (1960) - Wow, I thought I saw this already but I didn't, what a gift! Extremely good Corman x Poe movie with Vincent Price. Great moody atmosphere of course, with long tracking shots that drift in and out of focus giving it a mild avant-garde feeling, and a kaleidoscopic dream sequence inspired by color-tinted silent movies. If they made this today everyone would be wearing black and the house would be black and you wouldn't be able to see shit. Luckily this was filmed in 1960 and everything pops-- the house drips with red velvet and the boyfriend character shows up like a peacock in royal blue brocade. Price plays Jandek, I believe, with bottle blonde hair and hushed tones, morosely plucking a detuned lute in a thickly curtained room. "Beautiful. Is that one of your compositions?" says the other guy with deniable sarcasm. Corwood fans, back me up here. There's also some really nice paintings in this. They aren't haunted or anything but if you like old horror movies with paintings in them you have to get into this one, they're kind of like Francis Bacon doing Edward Gorey in thick crimson impasto. Price was a big time art collector, I wonder if he recommended a cool painter for this gig? If I was a big movie star I'd be constantly trying to get my friends' haunted paintings in the frame. In conclusion great movie. ❤
  watched 2023-09-29
• The Name of the Rose (1986) - Based on a book by Umberto Eco that I have but haven't read yet. I knew this story was influenced by Jorge Luis Borges but I didn't anticipate to what degree and I was SHOCKED to find out that the blind librarian in this is named "Jorge of Burgos" (the real Borges was also a blind librarian). The story's Jorge is a grouch completely subsumed by a pestilent fear, which is not nice but whatever. Also Borges commonly wrote himself into his own books as a sad old man, so seeing someone else do it was kind of funny. What bothered me is his namesake character's central conceit is that he can't take a joke. That's a cruel and cowardly move, which preempts a critical response from someone I can only assume was a hero to Eco. Imagine someone saying that about you, in front of you. You'd be like "quite frankly I resent this implication" and they'd go "See, I was right! You can't take a joke!". It's diabolical, and more than that, it's cowardly. Borges was obsessed with labyrinths, but Eco limits his imagination to traps.

  The rest of the story is exactly what you'd imagine from a Borges devotee-- heretics, apocryphal books, a vast library of hexagonal rooms connected by stairwells, a labyrinth you navigate by always turning to the left, being afraid of a mirror, a slow war between two theologians who remain outwardly civil, your hero writes a book and you set out to write the exact same book and then insist it means something else.... there's no knife fights or tigers and it isn't set in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo, but still... come on.... This is like a Borges wikipedia article, subsection "common themes". This is like making a horror movie set in coastal Maine with a psychic kid, a blue chambray work shirt, an evil car, and a psychedelic unsatisfying ending, and the bastard inkeeper is named Sleven Kling. And in the movie someone makes fun of him so bad he poops his pants and then he writes a letter to Paris Review about it.

  I feel like Umberto Eco makes a partial confession by naming his clever, dreadful, and vain inquisitor "Bernardo Gui" and having him get chased out of town by a mob and thrown from a ridge, impaled on his own devious ironwork. I mean Gui was a real person but I imagine Eco had a fine ear tuned to other 3 letter 2 vowel last names, and kept them on file. Maybe this is a stretch? If the character's name was "Arnberdo Igu" I'd feel more confident calling it a riff... maybe it was subconscious??? Ultimately it's too delicious for me to ignore the possibility that you honor (?) the guy who writes himself into his books by writing him into your elaborate homage, and then you write yourself in as a precious and ambitious conniver who repeats other people's words out of context for personal gain. Then your book is a best seller that gets made into a major motion picture and the guy that plays you is the same guy that played all-time Machiavellian jabroni Antonio Salieri in "Amadeus" (1984) only 2 years earlier. Everyone wants to know if you like the movie and you're like "uhhhhh it's good... not great...".

  In addition to the Borges stuff, which is scaffolding, there are a couple Sherlock Holmes riffs in here, as blinking ornament. The detective's name is William of Baskerville, he says "elementary", and is accompanied by a sidekick / narrator, [W]Adso[n]. OK I'm in too deep at this point, I might as well say that this seems like a red herring to me. Like if someone says "this seems familiar" you can go "it's a rich pastiche. Borges is in there of course but also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Andre Dumas...". Then the headline is like "THE HUNKY MONK: SEAN C SPARKLES IN SHERLOCK SEND-UP".

  Ultimately I have to say this is not a big deal, I mean no one cares. I had fun watching this movie, I'm guessing the book is good, Eco died in 2016, and probably the massive sales of the book trickled down via keen readers to Borges in the last years of his life (1986). And personally I'm having a great time drawing lines on this map. If anyone has a good article on this premise I would really love to read it-- I have to assume that someone other than me must've already put this together more clearly.

  So anyway, pertaining to the movie, it's not great but I enjoyed it. :) Everyone has a slightly different completely insane haircut, almost like they're having a contest. Sean Connery does a great job as a sort of 14th century Indiana Jones-- "it belongs in a LIBRARY". Lots of "that guy"s in the cast, I love that. I was especially excited to see the macabre and reptilian William Hickey, though I wish they fed him some laffs. If you liked the cool parts of this movie definitely seek out any collection of short stories by Borges, they are easily available, brilliant, fun, and thoughtful in their construction. Most can be read in one sitting. ❤

  watched 2023-09-23
• The Haunted Palace (1963) - It's a bummer to see a movie where people with disabilities are only there to be like, evidence of a curse. There's also a pervasive patriarchy that's shown sometimes as horror ("a husband's right") and sometimes as heroism ("protect our women"), but it's gross either way. Beyond that, I enjoyed this greatly. Vincent Price plays a kind of dual role, a great showcase for his talents, and Lon Chaney Jr brings a gentle sweetness to his role as The Other Warlock. The palace itself is great, with a lot of those large and ornately carved chairs that palaces seem to have clustered around a huge fireplace. Tapestries, check. Evil painting, check. Cobwebs??? Buddy this palace has cobwebs coming out the ass, there's fuckin cobwebs everywhere. This is billed as a Poe adaptation but that's just for the audiences of 1963-- this is actually a Lovecraft adaptation: the Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Wikipedia implies that it's the first Lovecraft story to be made into a movie, but they hit all the marks- old gods, hauty villain, and beady-eyed small town Massachusetts. This story doesn't make sense if you think about it so I recommend just letting it wash over you like cold fast water from a shallow stream. With Debra Paget from the Ten Commandments (1956) and Love Me Tender (also 1956). ❤
  watched 2023-09-21
• Mill of the Stone Women (1960) - OK so this guy's a professor at an art school and he's so high-falutin' that he makes non-students call him "professor". But then his life's work is a classic wax museum? Respect to the trade but that's laughable, to put on airs like that. Add to that he didn't even start the business, he's a third generation wax museum guy. I'm thinking his grandfather was the gumption man, his father was the auteur, and he's the hack, that's the usual trajectory. And after all that, he doesn't even sculpt anything, he just kills local women and encases them in wax???? Pathetic. There's a strong mad scientist vibe but then actually he just has a mad scientist on staff and treats him like property. This guy has literally nothing going on beyond a deeply ingrained pompousity. That said, he lives in and grew up in a windmill, and based on what I'm reading about contemporary windmill NIMBYism, that can really mess you up with the vibration if you're too close to it. It's also bad for migratory birds. ❤
  watched 2023-09-20
• A Bay of Blood (1971) - nice little slasher from Mario Bava, with a simply incredible ending that left me feeling ebullient. Not my favorite Bava but there were a couple cool parts and sometimes that's all you need in a motion picture. Halfway through the film an octopus slithers over a corpse's mustache, that alone is worth it for me. ❤
  watched 2023-09-17
• Baron Blood (1972) - Nice little atmospheric castle slasher, with lots of cobwebs and spiral stairs. Most likely this movie will not irrevocably damage your mind with fear, but if you ever wanted to hang out and get chased through a spooky castle for 97 minutes then I recommend it. I liked it. The meanie in this wears one of those 1700's pilgrim hats, that's an overlooked style for an unholy murderer. And meanwhile Elke Sommer is an unreasonable cavalcade of spirited outfits, which provides a great contrast with the gloomy atmosphere. I read that when producer Alfredo Leone secured the rights to film in this castle that director Mario Bava grabbed him and kissed him, presumably on the lips. And wouldn't we all? With Joseph Cotton from Citizen Kane (1941). ❤
  watched 2023-09-14
• Phenomena (1985) - Dario Argento said later that this movie is set in a fictional timeline in which the Nazis won, and that's why the vibe is so weird. That's possible but it's also an incredible cop out for a movie where the vibe is weird, the performances are bad, and it seems like something is eerily missing. It feels like spin. Anyway it's not as good as his other movies but I had fun watching this and there were some good gross-outs involving bugs and also some tender moments involving bugs, which this reviewer greatly appreciated. Jennifer Connelly plays a young woman who can communicate telepathically with insects, a role she would return to later in Career Opportunities (1991), which we can assume is also set in a timeline in which the Nazis won. Is that what Labyrinth is about too?????????????? Apparently the bugs were no problem on the set here but the chimpanzee bit off part of Connelly's fingertip, scarred co-star Daria Nicolodi (who divorced Argento after this movie), and ran off into the woods for 3 days. Can't blame the chimp on that. With Donald Pleasance, who emerged unscathed. ❤
  watched 2023-09-10
• Meg 2: The Trench (2023) - I liked the first one and I even saw it twice (once at the drive in and once with someone who wanted to watch an unrealistic shark movie that wouldn't make them afraid of the ocean). The first one was fun, this one not so much. They just didn't do a good job making this one, it's as simple as that. You don't really get a good sense of the scale of the sharks, and the deep sea stuff misses out on a lot of the stuff that makes the deep sea cool and terrifying. Visually it's not very compelling-- they don't build up to or hang out at the cool parts. Also they don't recap anything, they expect you to remember everything and everyone from the first movie! I'm sorry but I don't retain that sort of information, and it's hubris on the part of the filmmakers to assume that I do. Hopefully someone in the command structure looks at this sophomore dud and says "we're not going out like this" and rallies a real tyrant of a director and an inspiring choice for soundtrack (I'm thinking Goldie). Hollywood keeps making these movies about a cool team with a wild captain rushing headfirst into madness, but then they make them with a huge, sprawling and dispassionate team of pencil pushers led by some timid jabronie who answers to a committee. It doesn't make any sense. ❤
  watched 2023-09-03
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) - I learned recently that Paul Reubens auditioned for Saturday Night Live in 1980, and he auditioned on the same day as Gilbert Gottfried. He said later that he knew they both couldn't get the job, because they were too similar as performers, and he knew that they would pick Gottfried because he was friends with one of the producers. Out of anger and bitterness Paul decided to borrow money and start his own theatrical show in Los Angeles set around his new character, "Pee-Wee Herman". That's a really great use of bitterness and anger! I watched this on a plane-- I've seen it a lot and it's extremely enjoyable every time. ❤
  watched 2023-08-31
• Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) - I enjoyed this, although I honestly think the concept of "soulmates" is toxic to society. The kid should honestly leave the girl alone. Great cast. I loved seeing Marissa Tomei. Watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2023-08-31
• 65 (2023) - Lots of problems with this one, including "this movie isn't good", but one thing that really bugged me is that the dinosaurs are fake! I mean obviously they're fake, it's a movie, but they aren't based on real dinosaurs, and it's obvious. Why have a movie where the big reveal is that actually it's Earth, and then populate it with non-Earth guys? They also haven't kept up with the literature-- the general consensus now is that dinosaurs didn't look like that, they had feathers and shit. I would love to see a dinosaur like that on the screen. And why'd they call it 65 when all non-avian dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago??? You're a million years late to the party! If you showed up on Earth 65 million years ago, at the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, that seems like a pretty tranquil realm of birds and shrews, long grass...? I mean I'm sure there'd be challenges but we can agree that that's a pretty different movie. Also we're expected to believe that Adam Driver lands on Earth exactly 1 day before the cataclysmic comet that wiped out the dinos AND he lands right where it hits, on the Yucatan peninsula???? Those are simply tremendous odds. I'm sorry but I just don't believe it! I watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2023-08-31
• American Graffiti (1973) - Hmmmm kind of a dud to be honest. In Beach Boys' "I Get Around" they say "the bad guys know us and they leave us alone" and it's the voice of a young person demonstrating the horrible flatness of an inability to dream. This whole movie is like that. This movie was enormously successful in the mid 70s due to the incredibly large number of people who were teenagers at the time this story was set, and is one of the first movies to utilize this historical feature, which American society has been drowning in for the entire duration of my life. I watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2023-08-31
• Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980) - really great Sun Ra documentary that I watched on my phone, on a plane, to help me calm down and relax into being myself. "Space Is The Place" is great, and it's the more exciting motion picture document but I think Joyful Noise is the better entry point because it takes place in consensus reality. Recommended for the devotee, the casual, or just the average music documentary enjoyer. ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• ¡Three Amigos! (1986) - the differences in their characters are so slight that it's really just like Steve Martin doing a character, then Martin Short does his version and then Chevy Chase does his version. It's not even a team, it's 3 versions of the same guy! I loved it. They do a great simultaneous "tequila take" that I really appreciated, that's not a take you see much anymore. I guess I love a riff with variations? With a small role for Brian Thompson, the bodybuilder from Miracle Mile (1988). I loved this as a kid and I still love it. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• The Darjeeling Limited (2007) - I liked it but it seems much more casual than his other movies, it's like one of these guys was going through a life issue and the other guys said "let's just go make a movie and have fun". For the record that's a fine motivation for making a movie (see also Halle Berry in BAPs (1997), which I loved). I guess I like Wes Anderson movies but I think maybe I'd like them more if I ever felt the urge to impress my father. No offense but that's not one of my goals and never has been. I watched this on a plane and it was a nice time no problem. ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• The Big Lebowski (1998) - there's so many movies you can watch on the plane now that I had the Netflix problem, just scrolling scrolling scrolling, and it led me to pick this, which I know, over something unknown. My decision energy wore down and I went for something comforting. I wonder if that's part of their playbook? Netflix I mean. Regarding the movie, this time around I was bothered that the nihilist's band was clearly based on Kraftwerk - they wore red ties and black shirts and the band was called "Autobahn". Don't these people know that Kraftwerk was warm and utopian? Maybe that's a pet concern for me only, that Kraftwerk were cute. What's the touchpoint for this riff, Dieter from Sprockets on SNL? I just looked it up and Mike Myers says he based that character partly on Klaus Nomi, which is insane. You don't think Klaus Nomi is fun and cute???????? ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• The Usual Suspects (1995) - OK I never saw this before, and it was fun, but isn't it pretty obvious from the beginning? Also you know that Benicio del Toro is going to die early because he accent is simply unsustainable over a 90 minute runtime. Watched this on a plane. ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• Repo Man (1984) - Haven't seen this in a long time, it's still great. Watched this on a plane, shoutout to whoever included this one in the movie package (Delta). ❤
  watched 2023-08-29
• Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016) - It's impossible to overstate the positive effect Pee-Wee Herman had on my life, and like many of you out there, I've spent idle moments in the past couple days deep in the weeds of old interviews, cameo reels, and TV apperances. I watched the episode of 227 where he flirts with Jackée Harry, I watched him on the Dating Game, I watched the HBO special of course, and I even hunted down the Cosby episode where (no one ever talks about this) Colin Quinn plays "Baby Herman", a hip, screaming comedian in a suit (s04e22, 1989). Cliff tells Clare with palpable malice "he's hip, and if you watch him, you'll be hip too"-- it's pathetic. Looking back on my life I'm going to say "no shit" that the weird guy who dresses funny is IRL extremely nice and the Reactionary Regular Guy With Old-Fashioned Good Values turned out to be a monster.

  This led me to the last Pee-Wee movie as a palate cleanser. When this came out years ago I thought "it's too bad they're doing this, there's no way it's going to be good". But then I saw it and while it's no Big Adventure, it is in fact good. There's a lot of great bits in here. The part where he plays a balloon, I think that's really incredible-- it's like the noise music version of a Chico Marx routine. As with my favorite kind of noise sets, it's delightful and joyous, and part of the joy is a sort of disbelief that it's happening and that it's allowed to happen and that you love it and that you're surrounded by others who love this sort of thing too. They are ready to experience joy in art without referent.

  I read a lot of testimonials from Paul's friends and one thing they all said is that he loved making friends and he loved celebrating other people's birthdays; that made the plot of this movie really ring out-- Pee-Wee's trying to get to a birthday party, to celebrate his new friend. I also love friendship, and birthdays, and joy, and I love Pee-Wee! :,) ❤

  watched 2023-08-06
• Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (2021) - Great documentary about the monumental utopian television show Sesame Street, which if you're reading this, probably affected your life for the better. I cried a little bit. Recommended! ❤
  watched 2023-07-23
• Pavarotti (2019) - This feels a little like a sports documentary in that Pavarotti's singing ability is physically incredible and even breathtaking to behold. And as a person he's both dedicated and capricious, that's the mark of anyone (artist, athlete, etc.) who harbors a great gift from God. My grandmother loved Pavarotti and that was the basis of me watching this and now I love him too, I'm on Team Luciano. The Three Tenors is a real Dream Team, and that part of the doc is extremely cute. If you're thinking "maybe I do want to watch a documentary about Pavarotti" then I recommend this one, it's a lot of fun. No prior opera knowledge is required. Ron Howard directs. CW: Bono. ❤
  watched 2023-07-21
• Tora-san's Song of Love (1983) - Really nice one. Real-life enka singer Harumi Miyako plays a famous singer who runs away from the fame and the madness for a fun weekend with Tora-San, just hanging out, hitching rides on boats, and hucking rocks into the water. They understand each other in a very special way-- the singer and the traveling salesman, always on the road. Ughh I love these movies, they're perfect and there are 50 of them. ❤
  watched 2023-07-17
• Snakes on a Plane (2006) - Watched this on World Snake Day (July 16) and it's great. Something I love about this movie is that the story line is completely flat-- it isn't like a 5 course meal where one thing flows into another, it's like a buffet where you take a minute to look at everything, then you pile it all on the plate and work through it methodically. Pretty early in the chaos a snake bites a guy's wiener while he's peeing, it's great. Julianna Marguiles really shines as the main flight attendant on her last day at work. Samuel L Jackson is perfect of course, impossible to imagine this movie without him. This movie ends on a perfect note (no spoiler) but just past the ending, during the credits, there's a terrible music video that really sours the mood. My recommendation is to watch the music video first (on youtube), then watch the movie, then stop the movie when the music video starts. If you don't watch the video beforehand you'll be like "is it really that bad" and your curiosity will get the best of you, so watch it first, even days in advance of actually watching the movie, and then when it comes around again you'll say no no no not again thank you. ❤
  watched 2023-07-17
• School of Rock (2003) - guess what I loved it ❤
  watched 2023-07-13
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - OK, Raiders was the Old Testament one, Temple was the (pretty fucked up) Hindu one, Last Crusade was the New Testament one, and this one is the New Age one, with ancient aliens ("interdimensional beings") in Peru. I used to love this riff but now I find it depressingly unimaginative-- I mean I believe in interdimensional beings but I also believe strongly in humanity's ability to invent, for instance, irrigation, and for that invention to first appear somewhere other than Europe.

  Anyway, this movie is one of Spielberg's worst. I liked when people were being devoured by huge (but not giant) ants, and I loved it when a guy screamed and ants ran into his mouth. I also loved seeing the machinery of the temple-- it's a particular strength of this series to imagine a booby trap or huge automatic door that would still work after thousands of years. The rest of the movie not so good. Is it the cinematography? I feel like part of the reason it's bad is because of the cinematography but I also don't really know what cinematography means. One thing that's for sure is the first three had a legendary cinematographer and then the cinematography in this was from someone else. I don't know, maybe that's not it. All I know is that the other ones bring you along with the story in a fun way, and that makes them fun to rewatch. This one's like check this out. OK now check thiiiis out. I like watching a big dumb movie so yeah I had fun but this is not the work of a master. Watch it for the guy screaming and ants run in his mouth. Rewatch it later to be like oh yeah I guess the other ones had something special going on. ❤

  watched 2023-07-09
• Amélie (2001) - I thought the Da Vinci Code was kinda ehh but I loved at the end when they revealed that (spoiler) Amélie was the last living descendent of Christ. Not to be hyperbolic but that kind of sums up my feelings about Amélie. Christ loves people, tearing bread, fresh fish, and being on Earth. He can't stand moneylenders in the temple. Absolutely watch this movie if you like delightful shit. ❤
  watched 2023-07-09
• Inherent Vice (2014) - Really great Pynchon adaptation by the son of Ghoulardi, PT Anderson, who claims as inspiration for this Zucker Abrahms Zucker and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, among others. Pynchon is like George Lucas in that every character has the worst name you could possibly imagine, with the key difference that when it happens in Pynchon it's fun. Every time someone new rolls up you're like ahhhhhh what's this fucker called, Zoogie Breakfast? Colg Dramloo? Dormand "Dinky" Subloxx? I loved it ❤
  watched 2023-07-09
• WHAM! (2023) - Very cute music documentary about two friends that love each other!!! I'm not a Wham!head by any means but I found it touching.

  Shoutout to Jeff Poot for his enthusiastic review from earlier this morning / sometime last night. I'm looking forward to being in a karaoke situation with you and trading off Wham! hits ❤

  watched 2023-07-06
• Uncle Drew (2018) - If you're logging in to letterboxd.com to see if you should watch this movie then I don't know what to tell you. You should already know if you want to watch this one or not. ❤
  watched 2023-07-05
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Indiana Jones is so weird, like he never directly proves the existence of God but at least proves that there's something spooky and real going on with a few different religions. And through it all his personality, lifestyle, and motivation absolutely do not change, he's strictly going Pokemon on artifacts with no introspection. Classic tenure track dipshit. I'd like to think that if it was me up there, seeing people melt and so on, I would rededicate my life to some form of religious contemplation. But it's not me up there, it's a perfect dumbass whose evident failures I am free to reflect on. That's a great arrangement. Add a rousing John Williams score and we got ourselves a nice little motion picture franchise.

  It's interesting to contrast this with Raiders-- Raiders was the Old Testament one, and as a kid the main thing I got out of it was the idea of running in terror in front of an enourmous rolling stone sphere, which I think is a very Old Testament idea. This one is the New Testament one, and the stunt that stayed with me most was the idea of thinking you're going to live forever but instead you age all the way to dust in the blink of an eye because you "chose poorly". Also it gave me a lifetime appreciation for rustic cups, that's a criminally overlooked aspect of Christianity. Oh and this isn't really a Bible thing but another thing I loved as a kid was the idea that if you don't get along with your family you can rename yourself after a beloved pet! It's crazy that Sean Connery had both "you're the man now, dog" and "the now you is the dog from before". If anyone can think up a third iconic instance where Sean Connery utilized dogs, identity, and time, please light up the comments. ❤

  watched 2023-07-04
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) - When I read these comics for the first time I loved them so much that I limited myself to one a day so I could really soak up the details. Similarly, I watched this over a couple days, just one or two bits at a time. I'm happy I'm not walking the demon path between a lake of fire and a lake of ice, I'd be terrible at it. This guy is great at it though, he's like the Jordan of demon path walking. ❤
  watched 2023-07-03
• Dalíland (2022) - It's absolutely incredible to me that this movie is bad but it really is... I love Dali, this is a side of the story I've never really seen, and I think Ben Kingsley is well-cast, and yet I can't actually finish this movie it sucks so bad. I'm not upset that Dali is shown as a fragile jerk-off, or that Gala is shown as a sneering demander-- I accept these things. What upsets me is that this movie is incredibly boring and looks like garbage! I'm not at all saying there should be trippy visuals, in fact I admire their restraint in not doing just that. I just wish it was like, made with care by a tyrant. The whole thing has the quality of a Saturday Night Live film parody-- a combination of dull staging, digital fake 70s filters, and the type of writing where it's just hitting points and then moving on. On the plus side, it did make me want to read a book. ❤
  watched 2023-06-21
• Tora-san, the Expert (1982) - I love these movies, they're all slight variations of the same story, and whether it plays it right down the center or gives the narrative a little tweak, it's always a fun and bittersweet watch. Other franchises deal with a sort of creeping intensity, where each next one gets crazier than the last and they lose track of what makes it good. But Tora-san is the longest-running franchise of all time, and it gives you almost exactly the same arc every time and it's delightful every time. Who else does this? I mean the Ramones and who else?? Tora-san is a loafer and travelling salesman who falls in love, and loses love, but never loses loving love. Why mess with perfection?

  This is one where the narrative is a little tweaked-- it's extremely sweet and very nice but if you're new to the game you should probably watch AT LEAST five other ones before this one to get the maximum dopamine payout. I think the ideal watch order is like, watch any 3 from

  2 - 10, then

  1, then skip around for a while, then fill in the rest in order. You will be able to pick up the character relationships immediately. There are 50 movies in the series so maybe you feel like "damn I can't mess around with all that". But I have to tell you that this is NOT ADDICTIVE-- you probably won't feel driven to watch 3 of them in a weekend, nor will you feel an aching need to know what happens in the next one. Instead you will return to it as you return to a beloved recipe. All these movies are on jp-films at the moment (with subtitles), and if you're a download head like me, try searching "Otoko Wa Tsurai Yo", which is the official title ("it's tough being a man"). If you get into this even a little bit and you have my number, go ahead and give me a call :) ❤

  watched 2023-06-20
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) - I love Mario and thankfully this movie wasn't very good, while at the same time, it's fine. This did not impact my love for Mario in any way. I think the Bob Hoskins / Dennis Hopper / Mojo Nixon one was better, if only because it was more fucked up-- the choices they made in 1993 were far more outlandish and it seemed like everyone was having fun even though they were constructing an absolute nightmare. Personally I feel like any narrative involving Mario is basically a graven image, but like I said, this one (2023) is ultimately nothing to worry about. Mario can be talked about and argued about and tales can be freely told of him, but the true Mario, the living Mario, can only be experienced directly, by personal identification.

  I watched this in a no items speedrun, which is to say I refused to acknowledge or comment on any easter eggs. Challenging but not impossible! ❤

  watched 2023-06-19
• The Dream Team (2012) - Documentaries are great because you can have a narrative with completely no conflict and nothing really happens and it's no problem. If this was a movie they'd be facing an unholy army of ghouls, helmed by a demonic warlord with a single weakness. That's cool but it's great sometimes when the story is "it looked like a lot of fun and it really was a lot of fun". The closest thing to a conflict here is that the management thought (and the press hoped) that Charles Barkley would be a PR disaster, but then actually everyone loved him and he had a great time. Everyone's really cute in this and nothing bad happens. If anyone out there has a favorite basketball documentary light up the comments. Also what are the other good dream teams? All I can think of is Fat Worm Of Error, but maybe that's more a supergroup than a dream team. ❤
  watched 2023-06-14
• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - There's a guy who stands in the street near my house rapping emotionally for hours in a loud and hoarse sort of singing sort of crying way, and it's hard to tell if he's working on his material or if he's simply quieting some other voice. I mean his style is both desperate and contemporary. It's not really a problem but last night he was out until 2am, shirtless in the light rain, and I couldn't close the window because it was too hot, I couldn't sleep. So I got up and watched this movie on the couch, and that was a great solution. A beautiful and slow and mysterious movie, psychedelic without drugs. This was extremely popular when it came out and everyone liked it, which is amazing to think about kind of-- if you tried to make this now I'm sure studio cats would tell you no no no I'd love to but it's impossible. I watched the Director's Cut, and apparently it differs from the theatrical cut in that it's 7 minutes SHORTER??? Usually the director's cut goes the other way?? The only thing that took me out of it was that I became convinced that the British guy in this was the same actor from Ghostbusters 2 (Sigourney's boss at the museum). I'll save you a trip to IMDB: they are entirely different people. There is however a little personnel crossover with that other "greatest Australian movie of all time", Stone (1974), which I also enjoyed immensely but for other reasons. ❤
  watched 2023-06-13
• Charade (1963) - another great movie where Cary Grant is a thief who is beloved by a beautiful woman (Audrey Hepburn) for reasons that must be unrelated to his looks or his personality. I don't think it's entirely true, that common concept that girls like bad boys, but I think it's more to the point that doing things is attractive, and that crime displays an intoxicating amount of agency. With Walter Matthau, and a soundtrack by Henry Mancini of course. ❤
  watched 2023-06-10
• Gigi (1958) - I watched this on a plane and I truly hope those around me wondered What The Fuck Is That Guy Watching with all the dresses, hats, gilded furniture and other associated Belle Epoque drip. I hestitate to note this one on here because I missed the last 3 minutes, because we landed. I enjoyed this and maybe I'll watch it again at some point-- until then I'll entertain the possibility that they reveal for instance that Gigi was an alien, or that Louis Jourdan was a vampire, or it was all a dream in the mind of Bob Newhart. With none other than the great Maurice Chevalier. ❤
  watched 2023-06-10
• Golden Eighties (1986) - Every couple months I look on YouTube for Lio music videos that I might not have seen already-- imagine my surprise to discover that she stars in an entire musical motion picture by acclaimed director Chantal Akerman!! Then imagine my surprise to discover that she doesn't sing a single word in it!!! In some ways this is a cool trick to make all the other singers really pop, but probably the reasoning for it is like, a contract issue, like she wasn't legally allowed to do music outside the aegis of Warner Brothers Belgium or whatever. The entire movie is set in the pastel demimonde of peak 1980s mall, and this denial of the artist is a very mall feeling-- the popcorn store can't sell candy, the candy store can't sell drinks, this is a Pepsi food court. Anyways I liked it. There's a real wabi-sabi approach to affairs of the heart, which I respected-- things are beautiful even when they melt, fracture, or dissolve.

  After watching I read up on Delphine Seyrig, who was great in this-- she was in a real life unrequited love situation with Michael Lonsdale (who played the villain in Moonraker). It started when they were both in acting school in 1947 and he said "it's her or no one". He never married. In the movie her unrequited fella (spoiler alert) moves on, and it's the only part of the movie filmed in the natural light of the open air. Was Seyrig involved in the riff stage of this one?

  ❤

  watched 2023-06-10
• Michael Jordan to the Max (2000) - Is it possible that MJ was better at basketball than anyone has ever been at anything else???? That's such a wild claim but it feels right. This doc has some great footage of that last season (a story told in greater length in the new Netflix docuseries) and that's extremely enjoyable of course, but it's also a fun example of "the Omni movie" as a format-- it's spectacular and that's the main thing. Opens up with a shot of MJ dunking from the free throw line and they do the Matrix freeze-and-spin trick-- looks a little eh nowadays but it's very easy to imagine watching this projected 30 feet high in a planetarium and losing your fucking mind. Narration by Laurence "Morpheus" Fishburne really adds to the messianic feeling. With music by Fat Boy Slim and Soul Coughing. Man I hate Fat Boy Slim as a person but you have to admit that his music is IMAX as hell. ❤
  watched 2023-05-29
• Spirited Away (2001) - This movie is like 98% cantina guys, I love it. If you never got into this shit get into it bro. Get in there. ❤
  watched 2023-05-27
• Fast X (2023) - First one of these that I don't really like, I guess that's it, they're all bad from now on? Jason Momoa sucks, and his character is bad. Also the movie never ends??? Like there's no resolution, the bad guy just says "OK, that's enough from me". It's like they're too scared to kill him off because what if the fans love him? Kurt Russell's character might be dead in this one but no one will say, and he's replaced by his own daughter. Elena's still dead but she's been sort of replaced by her own sister. Han was resurrected in the last movie. Gal Gadot comes back at the very end of this one and it's completely unreasonable. Paul Walker died in real life but he's in this via file footage, and in the world of the movie he's still alive, which is just sad. They're like "I just talked to him on the phone, he's safe". You want us to assume that his wife is out there actually killing government agents and he's just hanging at home playing Wii Golf???? Keeping him alive in the movie is not honoring his life!!! They should've either stopped with FF7 or dealt with his IRL death in a real way. People say that this movie series is "about" family, but it consistently presents the worst possible living fantasy of the family-- one in which everyone who acts against the family eventually reconciles to the family, no one really dies, and if someone does die we can just pretend they didn't. This isn't healthy!!!! ❤
  watched 2023-05-23
• Judex (1963) - remake of the 1916 serial of the same name. Judex is basically a nice guy version of Fantômas-- the original Judex movie was made by Louis Feuillade, who adapted the first Fantômas book as a serial 3 years previous. Although Fantômas was incredibly popular, critics wanted a main character that wasn't a criminal, someone they could like without feeling conflicted. So Feuillade rolled his own mysterious character and probably took home a much bigger paycheck because of it. Judex in turn inspired the Shadow, which then inspired Batman, and now we're more or less caught up with the story. This, as I said, is the remake, and it was pretty fun. Set in prewar France and shot in an old-timey but not corny way, it features lurking men in great coats, cruel mistresses, beautiful acrobats, street urchins, nuns, unknowable henchmen, cat burglars who crawl along roof tops and stab you with long knives.... It's pretty much a live action Edward Gorey book, it's great. A Fantômas movie came out the year after this (Fantômas (1964)) but it's a Technicolor action-comedy set in the present day, it's fun but it doesn't hit the same. A small portion of the 43 Fantômas books have been translated into English and of those I can only find 4 (for free on archive.org). They're great. ❤
  watched 2023-05-23
• The Sting (1973) - I'm a sucker for a movie in which the characters decide to put on a show. Usually the stakes in this kind of story are pretty low, like there's the excitement of putting on a show, and learning your lines, and peeking out from behind the curtain and so on, but then the show is whatever, it doesn't have to be good. In this case there's a wonderful twist where the audience of this show-in-a-show is only one person and the stakes are huge-- the show has to be perfect or everyone dies. And the perfect show is one where the audience never learns it's a show, or that they were the audience. Great choice of using the music of Scott Joplin, even though the timelines didn't really work. Great carousel too, that's a wonderful thing to have in a movie in which plot elements are going round and round. What are the other great carousel movies? It's like this, Ride The Pink Horse (1947), what else? ❤
  watched 2023-05-19
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) - At this point in history it's still difficult to make a convincing human face that's 100% CGI-- humans are just too good at examining a face for microexpressions. But we can do a great job making an entirely nonhuman face ripple with human emotion, so we're getting a lot of wild character design, it's great. Main characters are still mostly just humans with some sort of latex forehead, I think because the promotional apparatus is tuned to work best on human stars. But secondary guys are free to examine a wilder morphology-- there's a guy who's a raccoon, a bipedal tree guy, and then as for the background guys who you only see a couple shots of, it's open season, there's all kinds of shapes. We have finally left the Emotive Non-Human Primate Era of CGI effects and entered the Cantina Guys Era. I don't necessarily think this is the sweet spot in CGI technology, but I do think it's going to get less sweet from here.

  I watched this at the drive in so yes I had a great time but this is one of those movies that no review can really convince you to watch or avoid. At first I was uptight because I couldn't remember everyone's backstory but then I relaxed into it and had a good time. CW: Howard The Duck ❤

  watched 2023-05-14
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) - Watched this at the drive in so I had fun, and a few lines had me laffin. We were all excited to see MODOK but then he looked pretty bad. As with Guardians 4 there were a lot of "Cantina Guys", but it was shot pretty dark so it was frustrating. Movie directors should go back to making movies for suboptimal viewing conditions! There's no downside to this! Look at an old Jackie Chan movie-- he's always wearing contrasting colors to whoever he's fighting and it looks sick as hell. Show some pride in what you're doing by making it visible onscreen! And while I'm on the horn, what are the market forces making these movies so long???? If I was in charge of this shit I'd make them all a tight 90 minutes, get 2 more showings per day out of each theatre, and then make a floundering and preposterous 240minute couch denting Blu Ray edit to soak the fans. You guys don't like REVENUE? I thought that was your whole shit! I guess it's kind of good to know there are some decisions made in the entertainment industry that aren't driven by market research or simple greed, even if these decisions are bad. ❤
  watched 2023-05-14
• Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) - Mario Bava directs a masterclass in colored lights and mist for this movie about a beefy hunk trapsing through the underworld. There's crypts, ghoulies, rock monsters, stalactites, bubbling lava, cobwebs, moving walls that crush you, main characters getting stretched out on the rack, everything you could want, and it all looks amazing. Even the regular shots give you some flavor of colored light bouncing off a cheekbone. Bodybuilder Reg Park plays Hercules, he was Mr Universe 1951 1958 and 1965. Christopher Lee plays the baddie and he simmers of course. If you watch this and then want to buy some colored gels to put over the clip lights in your house there's a few people selling rainbow packs on eBay for $20, which should be fine as long as you only use 2 or 3 per room and pick the combinations well. That's a small price to pay for even a demitasse of Bava allure. ❤
  watched 2023-05-09
• Face Like a Frog (1988) - absolutely perfect 5 minute "fun nightmare" from Sally Cruikshank where everything blinks, grins, flirts, eats you, then morphs into something else that blinks, grins, flirts, and eats you. Danny Elfman score of course. Always looking for more of this 80-90s gothic oompah / cocktail expressionist crayola bold colorway scene so if you catch a good one please leave a note. What do you call this, Elfmaniana? New Caligari? Memphis Bleak? This is on youtube and vimeo, uploaded by Sally herself, and it looks like she reads the comments so go ahead and tell her you love her. ❤
  watched 2023-05-09
• Spartacus (1960) - Suitably epic sword and sandals flick starring the sailor from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and the voice of Prince John from Disney's Robin Hood. Directed by the guy who did The Shining. With Tony Curtis and Sir Laurence Olivier. I watched this while sick and had a wonderful time, simply wonderful. I'm thinking this is probably the best one of these (battle epics where a rag tag army fights for freedom) so if you liked any other members of this class you gotta check this one out. Towards the end a guy's arm gets cut off and you see the blood squirt out pyew pyew pyew-- I screamed. I'm no prude but I loved that they only did this once, it's like in Beatlejuice where there's exactly one F bomb. Great color, great locations, great matte paintings, great enormous crowds, great performances all around. Warning: this movie is 3 hours long but there's a sensible intermission. ❤
  watched 2023-05-07
• Salvador Dalí: In Search of Immortality (2018) - I loved Dalí when I was a teenager, then I moved on to like, hipper guys, guys that didn't talk so much. But I still love him, honestly, he's great. No one did it like him, his paintings are still very rewarding, and his life is still fascinating. This is a really good documentary that focuses on his houses, which were of course works of art. I always thought of Dalí as very cosmopolitan, walking his anteater on the streets of New York or emerging from a taxi full of snails at some type of soiree in classic Paris. But his heart was always in a small fishing village where he spent summers as a child. He bought a small fishing shack there with his first (?) big check from a painting, and over the years kept adding to it until it was a palace. I admit to a home-owning fantasia at the moment so "buying a crappy little shack from an older lady in your town that likes weirdos" really resonates with me. After that shack was firmly palacized there was a nearby castle he bought for his wife / muse Gala, where he wasn't allowed to go without a written invitation from her. Then finally there's a grand Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the town he longed to escape from as a kid. It seems like he bought the most iconic building in town and stacked huge eggs on top, that's a dynamite move. Let the grand-children of the teachers who hated me gaze forever on these monstruous eggs. That's the dream isn't it? This documentary was made by the foundation that currently manages these three places as museums but they really did a great job and this is a really interesting lens to view his life and his work from, with a few new insights for the fan to chew on and, amazingly, blessedly, zero celebrities, other than Dalí of course. ❤
  watched 2023-05-04
• I Vitelloni (1953) - there's a lot of movies about idle young men trying to be cool in their crappy small town and they're all kind of shitty and the nicest one narrates, but this one was directed by Federico Fellini so yeah I had a lovely time. ❤
  watched 2023-05-04
• Jason and the Argonauts (1963) - I'm sick in bed and this is like cool mountain water to me ❤
  watched 2023-05-04
• Clue (1985) - There was an incredible absence of music in this, but I think if there were more musical cues the slapstick parts would've felt corny and the dull parts would've felt interminable. I wonder if the filmmakers discovered this in an early edit or if it was a guiding principle-- for maximum surprise you need long periods of relative silence. Anyway, fun but not great movie, with an incredible cast that includes Lee Ving from Fear and Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Go's. Really reminds me of having a sleepover at your friend's parent's nice big house with a small crew of friends and you're freaked out about how nice the house is. The parents aren't home and you're all just scampering about and you hear a noise and make the whole group go investigate it. If anyone wants to do this please let me know, I'm still down. ❤
  watched 2023-05-01
• Men in Black (1997) - fun light summertime blockbuster no problem. there's a few details jokes in here but there's no references to other sci fi, which is kind of incredible. I don't think they even say "Roswell"? if they made this today it would be like 200 minutes of referring to things. but they made it in 1997 so it's 98 minutes long and ends with a rap about the movie over the credits. Oh wait there was one visual reference to a character but it was Riff Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show???? No problem. ❤
  watched 2023-04-25
• John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) - They did a mirror maze sequence and it wasn't that cool, that's pathetic. If you're a director and you go for mirror maze but can't make it work they should take away your megaphone and stomp on it. Also everyone says "John Wick" waaay too hard in this, it's like they're competing to be the person in the trailer who says the name of the movie. "nice to see you again... John Wick". Come on dude. There's more worldbuilding here and it's kind of neat but I think if they build the world up any more than this we're going to get into Star Wars prequel territory and John Wick 5 is going to be about a trade embargo or something incredibly boring. Already I'm asking myself how much the coins are worth, like is a coin worth 12 guns, or just 2 drinks? That's the danger of continued worldbuilding right there. ❤
  watched 2023-04-24
• Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) - It's not like this movie was earmarked for greatness but what went wrong with this one? Cast was good, plot seemed fine, was it the editing? It was so calm and evenly paced, just pulling you along, I forgot that movies like this are generally supposed to be fun. This was absolutely not a caper. Actually the one genuine laugh I got out of this was from what seems like an ad lib mixed with a genuinely surprising editing choice, so maybe the editor was OK? Or maybe they sucked but someone put their foot down for that one part. Jason Statham doesn't eat a nice meal in this, but he does mention a lot of expensive wine, which really isn't the same. Nice to see Hugh Grant's second act as "a 90s hunk playing a current villain" (see also Paddington 2, a fun movie I can actually recommend). This is extremely a movie you watch on a plane. ❤
  watched 2023-04-21
• Inferno (1980) - Hell yeah. If you like evil buildings, colored light bulbs, wet silk, cats, candleabras, weird valets, and horrible hands that kill, buckle up. If you hate all those things or you need things to make sense in an extremely basic and rational way, pass. Personally I loved it. There's a few cool basements in this, including one that's inexplicably under water. There's really a lot of inexplicable in this, hopefully you can groove on that. OK I'm going to issue a Content Warning in case someone I know wants to get high and watch this-- there's a part where a guy drowns a bunch of cats in a bag, that might spin you out. Immediately after that he's getting eaten alive by rats though, that kind of turns it around. You can't miss it because he goes "ahhhh! I'm being eaten alive by rats!". Again, I loved it. 2 questions though: 1, was this an inspiration for Ghostbusters? 2, Why did they hover over a "Gurdjieff lived here" plaque in front of the evil building? Did Argento have a bone to pick with the Fourth Way crowd? Or were they just throwing more sauce on the landscape? ❤
  watched 2023-04-21
• John Wick (2014) - John Wick looks like your cool friend's hot friend's grouchy boyfriend. She's cracking jokes and scream-laughing at the soiree with her arts non-profit / library degree pals. He has tattoos and a cool old car and that's about it. "hey, what's up man, how's it going?" "sup." "how's it going?" "huh?". He was straight edge then became an alcoholic at age 21 and now he's drinking O'Doul's and watching the game with the sound off while everyone else is playing Scattergories. You're like "what's up with Mr Dud?" but then later you see him at the dog park and he's in smile mode romping with a Welsh Spaniel and you're like ahhhhh there he is. There's the light within. You wave. He smiles big and trots over. Full disclosure: I began this paragraph not liking this guy but now I like him.

  I hit wikipedia to try and figure out who did all the shitty music (a: the guitarist for later-era Marilyn Manson), and in so doing learned two surprising things about the screenwriter. 1), he's related to highly successful Christian romance novelist Lori WICK, that's funny. 2), he also wrote the screenplay for Nobody (2021). That's insane! That's like if one person wrote Star Wars AND Spaceballs.

  In conclusion this movie's fine, the absolute genius thing about it is that there's a puppy at the center of it all, and then the thing that really sets it off is that Keanu is the guy who loves the puppy. Sadly this resulted in a spate of gun movies, when what the world truly wanted was more Keanu + puppy movies. Keanu if you're reading this, call me. ❤

  watched 2023-04-17
• Run Lola Run (1998) - I loved this in 1998 and I'm happy to report that i still love this. I'm a sucker for divergent timelines and "let's see that again", and this movie really lets you have it. Franka Potente is perfect in this, her hair and outfit are truly iconic. Great colors all around. And then the soundtrack really makes the movie-- acid-inflected electronica with some Charles Ives parts. Dynamite. ❤
  watched 2023-03-29
• The Wedding Singer (1998) - this movie was released in 1998 but set 13 years earlier, in 1985. You can tell that the hairdressers, costumers, and set directors had a great time with this. I remember at the time it seemed so funny to set a movie in 1985 but can you imagine if they released a movie this year that was set 13 years ago in 2010? I mean how could you possibly communicate to the audience that a film was set in 2010? It's depressing, to be robbed of momentum like that.... Though another way to look at it is that the only thing that gave the 80s "a look" was centralized media and a culture of "staying in fashion". Now there's a million different looks available to the young person and no one really cares if you're wearing bell bottoms or whatever (I think). Anyway I watched this movie with my Adam Sandler movie-watching club "Deathwatchers" and this was one of the rare good ones. Drew Barrymore is great and they seemed to have real chemistry, there was a nice little role in there for Jon Lovitz, it was like, a nice movie. He didn't produce this one, I think that's key to why it doesn't seem bad for humanity like most of the rest of his oeuvre. ❤
  watched 2023-03-28
• Santo vs. Doctor Death (1973) - You never see tough guys that look like this in movies anymore-- strong and fit but not like a bodybuilder type. Would love to see the return to film of this practical and sustainable bodytype. As Eric Spicely said, "abs don't win fights". Regarding the movie, wow, I loved it. Great formula where Santo is a wrestler AND a spy, and you see him fight both in the ring and out. I thought the actual wrestling scenes would be kind of dull but it's a real joy to see him swirl all over these jobbers. And then outside the ring he's still got the silver mask on (always), looking smooth as Hell in a nice suit, stalking madmen through an old Spanish castillo. And I know I watched the dub but his voice is so kind-- it's very easy to picture Santo helping you through literally any difficulty, from "car needs a jump" to "panic attack" and all the way up to "pursued by werewolf". I would recommend watching this if only to install in your mind an iconic and easy-to-imagine strong helpful presence. There's one part where Santo and his partner are almost in a car crash and Santo just shrugs it off, then his partner expresses how freaked out he is by saying the smallest little molecule of a joke, and Santo busts his ass laughing. I don't know, just a sweet little moment. Great sets, art heist, exciting action though hardly fast-paced. It's great. This just got re-released so you should be able to find it on one of your illegal download sites. ❤
  watched 2023-03-09
• Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain (2022) - a nice little band documentary with no drama. all friendships remain intact by the end. i wish they talked more about the discovery of their sound-- specifically 1., the division of the audio spectrum between b-real's crispy high end leads and sen dog's sonorous woofs, and 2., muggs' oompah beats. they talk about each for only a second, and it's just like "oh yeah, then we figured this out and everything got a million times better". instead it's mostly like, regular narrative, tour stuff. which makes sense because this movie was made by their long-time tour manager, who they were buddies with growing up. your buddies love you and they're proud of you but they're not going to bring in a musicologist to talk about your innovations and impact, they're going to be like "remember when you did all those mushrooms and yelled at a hat for an hour?". thurston moore is NOT in this at all, which, good or bad, that's pretty incredible. i wonder what happened, was he recovering from a surgery or something? they did get ice t though, he's like the thurston moore of hip hop (in that he's in nearly every documentary he could possibly be in). in conclusion i liked this, i liked hanging out with these guys, and now i'm searching youtube for "black sunday analysis" ❤
  watched 2023-03-05
• Bell, Book and Candle (1958) - Kim Novak is a smoking hot witch who lets herself get so bored she falls in actual love with Jimmy Stewart. Kind of a cautionary tale for any subcultural person that falls in love with a jabronie. With Jack Lemmon, Elsa "Bride of Frankenstein" Lanchester, and Ernie Kovacs. Dynamite cast and everyone is superb, I loved it. the witches aren't even corny, it's incredible, and the bar they hang out in is perfect, it's just some weird bar. ❤
  watched 2023-02-26
• The Dunwich Horror (1970) - pretty decent Lovecraft movie, with Dean Stockwell as a sort of fey lothario with a very occasional fire behind his eyes. Sandra Lee (Gidget) is the female lead, sadly this role doesn't give her much to groove on, she's zonked pretty much the entire time. Small role for Talia "Yo Adrian" Shire (née Coppola). I thought this movie did a pretty good job not showing the creature, and there's some great psychedelic effects when someone is trying to behold the unknowable. If you've ever wanted to be hypnotized by Dean Stockwell this is the movie for you, he stares right into the camera and bewitches you directly on more than one occasion. At the end he takes off his shirt and he's covered in really poorly done tattoos in a rough grid pattern and even though it's stupid and looks like shit, it's much more realistic AND way cooler than if they were actually well-done. Or maybe his character really did draw them on with magic marker, that would also make sense for this guy. I have a friend where for years I though he re-drew this one crummy little tattoo every day and I thought it was so cool, that kind of dedication. In conclusion, I don't think this movie is "good" but I watched in bed when my tummy hurt and that was nice. ❤
  watched 2023-02-15
• Tora-san, His Tender Love (1970) - After watching a bunch of the later ones we went back to this, the third in the series. Shin Morikawa was the first of three actors to play the uncle/dad character, and he only did 8 of these movies but he's the best, like an overfilled kettle sputtering and boiling over. The second uncle (11 movies) is OK and the third uncle (14 movies) is a dud- zero passion. Small role in this one for Kurosawa regular Bokuzen Hidari, you'll recognize this guy for sure, he's like the Dick Miller of Japan. Also has a young Kiki Kirin! So is this "a good one"? Buddy they're all good ones. ❤
  watched 2023-02-09
• The Italian Job (1969) - this movie has one or two fun ideas and in 1969 that was enough. Audiences left the theatres like "wow, how about those two parts!". Or they were only in the theatres to make out to a Quincy Jones soundtrack. In 2023, it's a mess. Absolutely bizarre starpower, with Caine, Benny Hill (??), and Noël Coward (????). This is on many "100 greatest British films" lists, which is a damning commentary on the history of British films. ❤
  watched 2023-02-09
• To Catch a Thief (1955) - I'm in love with the way this girl says "Souf Amewica" and that was the basis of this rewatch. Cary Grant stars and he's so suntanned he looks like a handbag, it's incredible. Is he charming? I can't tell. Grace Kelly treats him as charming but he seems kind of persnickety and belligerent. I guess that's what she's into. There's a few shots here at night where they shoot during the day with a blue or green filter over the lens-- I want to go on record as saying this is completely fine, even preferable to they way they do it nowadays. Also there's a kind of a car chase with no music and it's great. I love music but it's OK to just do sound sometimes! I know what to do with my emotions. Shot on site in the South of France to great effect. In VistaVision, which looks incredible. ❤
  watched 2023-01-30
• Notting Hill (1999) - I accidentally told Sakiko that it seems like she wants to watch this like 6 times a year, and that translated to "2 months is an appropriate gap time". Next time I'm going to renegotiate. It was interesting to watch this after Four Weddings And A Funeral-- it almost feels like they set out with the same formula: Hugh Grant is out of his league; small village vibe in the middle of big city England; heterogeneous friend group of loveable losers includes a loud shameless guy, a dumb guy, a somewhat cold lady with a previous romantic entanglement with the protagonist, a wild younger sister with shocking red hair, someone who is disabled (merged with cold woman in this case). the big difference is that Four Weddings is like a comedy with strong romance elements and Notting Hill is definitely a romance with some jokes. And instead of the tumult of F-bombs in Four Weddings, Hugh Grant says "whoopsadasies". ❤
  watched 2023-01-29
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) - I loved how many F bombs there were in this! I guess they made an American cut where they replaced "fuck" with "bugger" because one of their initial test audiences was in Mormon-run Salt Lake City. There's no way to check beforehand but if you're illegally downloading this, make sure you get the British cut-- it'll be obvious in the first minute. The only weak part is at one point he's swearing loudly in a church and I guess they thought that was too much for even the Brits, they sub in "BUGGER!" and it's just not convincing. No one says any other swear in the entire movie, just "fuck" (and in one case "fuck a doodle-doo") but then at the pivotal moment the main guy says "bugger"? They should've stuck to their guns. Really fun movie though, recommended. ❤
  watched 2023-01-28
• Royal Wedding (1951) - not the best Fred Astaire movie but I liked it, and he does the oft-referenced "dancing on the ceiling" routine, which still looks superb. An absolutely perfect trick. ❤
  watched 2023-01-20
• Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) - I liked it but I wasn't completely on the same wavelength. If you're obsessed with this movie you're not wrong but it was a liiiiiiittle too dreamlike for me. All the dudes in this are reprehensible-- much respect to anyone growing up and trying to learn what being alive is all about among a coterie of mostly horrible dudes with base motives. ❤
  watched 2023-01-20
• The Menu (2022) - only watched about 20 minutes of this because it's another one of those movies that's all bad people and then bad stuff happens to them. No thanks. ❤
  watched 2023-01-20
• Inception (2010) - love to see the walking on the ceiling gag from "Royal Wedding", and accomplished it the exact same way, beautiful. And it's inspiring how breezily they establish the central idea of the movie, that you can just go into someone's dream. They don't explain it or give you a backstory or anything, just "this is something that happens in the world of this movie". ❤
  watched 2023-01-20
• Krull (1983) - nothing makes sense in this laser fantasy medieval alien invasion team quest movie and it's no problem. If I were an adult watching this in 1983 I'd probably be disappointed but as an adult watching this 40 years later I had a blast. The baddies have a really cool look and the baddie's lair looks like the inside of an ear (very cool). And the main baddie, you never see him except through a foggy disortion lens, it rules. Early on in the movie this one guy says "gooseberry" a couple times and I was hoping it'd be a running gag but it wasn't. That's probably for the best. With early roles for Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane. ❤
  watched 2023-01-15
• Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) - a really enjoyable sailing adventure movie that's also about friendship. It's a crime that this didn't spin out into a franchise, they were clearly angling for that with the title, and I'd love to watch 10 more of these movies over successive Saturdays. The original Master and Commander was a series of 20 novels so there's no shortage of material. I guess the mood had swung away from historical epics since Gladiator (2000) and fantasy movies were more in vogue.

  Crowe and his in-movie buddy play violin and cello together and I was surprised how good it looked, so I looked it up-- according to wikipedia,

  "Richard Tognetti, who scored the film's music, taught Crowe how to play the violin, as Aubrey plays the violin with Maturin on his cello in the movie. Crowe purchased the violin personally as the budget did not allow for the expense. The violin was made in 1890 by the Italian violin maker Leandro Bisiach, and sold at auction in 2018 for US$104,000. Bettany learned how to play the cello for the role of Maturin, so the pair could be filmed playing with proper posture and technique instead of miming. The recording was dubbed in the final version of the film."

  They definitely overdubbed a good version but their hands were really hitting the notes! Which means if you threw Russell Crowe a violin he could eke out something akin to Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3. Do all actors have this, a weird little skill they acquired for a role? Do they show them off at parties? ❤

  watched 2023-01-12
• The Protégé (2021) - fun assassin movie with Samuel L Jackson, Micheal Keaton, and starring Maggie Q, who was great. In her non-assassin life she runs a rare book store, which is such a good cover-- it's totally believeable that it remains open despite very few actual customers, and it presents a great excuse for travel. And like fine art it's probably a great way to casually store value in the millions of dollars. None of these things were mentioned in the movie, in which the bookstore plays only a very very small role. My only objection to this movie is that the main character's name is Anna, and come on, we just had a lady assassin protagonist with that particular mononym, in Luc Besson's Anna (2019). There's a lot of names and there's nothing particular to this one in this movie, they could've picked anything. Weird move. ❤
  watched 2023-01-12
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - it was really crazy to watch this just after watching Cameron's newest stinker, Avatar 2. T2 is good, exciting, there are ideas, and they are well communicated. If only this movie was a flop when it came out, we might have another half dozen tight action packed creature features where Cameron had to use a creative approach to problem solving. Instead it was a huge box office hit and what followed was a light sprinkle of obnoxious, flashy, and poorly manufactured garbaggio, where every problem was solved by hucking money at it. ❤
  watched 2022-12-28
• The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez (2022) - great documentary about "Mr Pipeline" Gerry Lopez, which weaves together recent interviews with old footage in a way that's so perfect it makes the old footage seem like a re-enactment. Talking about yin and yang and surfing seems so corny nowadays but Gerry was (maybe) the flashpoint for this-- probably the most famous surfer in the world at one point, who studied yoga to advance his boardwork, and brought his calm and balanced approach to the deadliest waves in the world. Free on YouTube. ❤
  watched 2022-12-28
• Glass Onion (2022) - it feels so embarassing to watch a movie where people talk about Twitter-- does this always happen with technology or are we in an especially embarassing time? As with Knives Out, almost every character here is the most annoying person you've ever met, and that's something that really binds them together as a group. The main bad guy is obviously Elon Musk, and I loved how they made such a big deal of pointing out that people think he's a genius but actually he's just a rich idiot. Then there's like a flaky racist starlet, a manosphere influencer, a gutless politician. I know that the point of the movie is that all these people are terrible, but who wants to watch a bunch of terrible people for 90 minutes? I already know I don't like these people IRL, I'm not getting anything out of this. This was named one of the best films of 2022 by the National Board of Review, an organization founded by toadies and morons whose only goal is to censor objectionable material from motion pictures. ❤
  watched 2022-12-28
• Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - it's really incredible that this movie is bad-- it's the sequel to the biggest moneymaker in Hollywood history, famous director, big stars (I think?), great special effects... they spared no expense. Still, there was literally nothing in here. I really think they would've benefitted from some sort of difficulty or restriction. The whole movie felt like a cutscreen for a video game, where they artlessly establish the plot and nothing really matters. At parts it was noxiously crisp, like when you watch a movie at someone's house and they have a new TV with motion smoothing factory installed. The 3d was tiresome-- I think the rules for 3d cinema, regarding what your brain can manage and what seems unsettling, have yet to be written. I just read that Kate Winslet set a record for holding her breath underwater for one scene in here, but honestly I didn't know she was in this, and with so much of this movie happening inside a computer, it seems reckless to do real stunts like this. As with the first one, it's about fighting colonialism, and the bad guys are clearly the US military, who are there strictly for capitalist reasons. That is an INSANE plot for a mega-blockbuster and it's got me thinking that maybe art can't actually change the world. No one who was obsessed with the first movie went on to save the rainforest, and I'm thinking no one's going to watch this and change their relationship to the ocean. Almost certainly this movie is bad for the ocean, in that all economic activity in this day and age is bad for the ocean. It's 3.5 hours long and I left the theatre depressed, not because it was bad, but because I spent the whole time in a void, no emotion at all, not even boredom. I know I'm pissing in the wind here but I hope no one ever makes a movie like this ever again. ❤
  watched 2022-12-23
• Invaders from Mars (1953) - classic saucer movie, filmed in moody SuperCinecolor. If this is "about" anything, maybe it's about when you're a kid and something happens and your parents go from being warm and understanding to cold and mean, and the change is unacknowledged and world-shattering. Kudos to the film for introducing a doctor that you can talk to, and a scientist who is ready to believe you. Also they make it clear that there is a faction of bad guys who have infiltrated the police force, that's real.

  I watched the British cut of this, where everything really happens, not the American version, where in the end they pull back and it's all a dream. In some ways "it's all a dream" is the weakest twist imaginable, but in this case maybe it's compassionate, to put this twisted but overly-plain explanation of a common childhood trauma behind two levels of unreality- a dream within a movie. I wonder how many British children of alcoholics watched this and then tried to pull the crystal transmitter from an abusive parent's neck? ❤

  watched 2022-12-16
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) - There's not a lot of Thanksgiving movies, it's like this and Addams Family Values (1993) and probably a small number of direct-to-video horror movies like "Gobble Gobble" or "PilGrim" or whatever. This movie takes the part of Thanksgiving that's about putting up with someone obnoxious but well-intentioned and puts it before the actual dinner, instead of during or immediately after, and offsets the role of the boor to someone outside the family unit, who a protagonist is allowed to openly dislike without taboo. Very smart! ❤
  watched 2022-11-25
• Wayne's World (1992) - pretty wild that Penelope Spheeris did this AND Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 (1988) very different but important works on the subject of hair metal. This entire movie is like a dream to me. It's not perfect and it doesn't "speak to my soul" or anything but it's fun and surprising and lively, still. I noticed while watching that this is the third version of this movie I've seen-- in the theatrical release Wayne competantly plays the opening bar of "Stairway to Heaven", prompting a guitar employee to angrily point to a sign that reads "NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN". In between the theatrical and the video version someone from Led Zeppelin's estate called and demanded money, so for the video release he just plays random notes and subsequently the joke makes no sense. In this version (unnamed streaming platform), he IS playing stairway, but the number of notes is reduced, and he plays them poorly. I guess they figured out that that's just enough change to elude the copyright trolls.

  Full disclosure: until just now (the writing of this review) I thought Penelope Spheeris and Penny Marshall were the same person. I think because there's a Laverne and Shirley sequence in this movie??? That's embarrassing... ❤

  watched 2022-11-25
• The Band Wagon (1953) - rewatch while doing a task, it's still great. I love the excitement of putting on a show, and this movies gives you twice the excitement, in that they put on 2 shows. One of the shows is considered bad in the world of the movie and the other is good in-world, but watching it this time I realized that I think both are actually bad, only the story behind the scenes is good. That said, I don't think you could make a play-in-a-play where the nested play is good, or if you could, I don't think that would be an advantage. ❤
  watched 2022-11-25
• This Is GWAR (2021) - nice documentary about this longstanding band. I was never super into Gwar but I respect them. It was nice to see their career trajectory-- they had massive jump-offs via Beavis and Butthead and appearances on daytime talk shows. Also interesting to see the organizational structure, which was like, they had competing tyrants but everyone's ideas are valid, and a lot of work got done because it's fun just to be a part of it, and the payoff is immediate- a wild show. ❤
  watched 2022-11-17
• Highlander (1986) - watched this with Sakiko without telling her the setup, and for the first part she was like "he's a time traveler?". I said yeah kind of. I mean everyone's a time traveler. Great soundtrack by Queen-- did any other band ever do the full soundtrack to a movie?? Queen did two, this and Flash Gordon, and I think no one else ever really tried it. Which just goes to show you-- Queen rocks. The recurring phrase of this movie is "there can be only one" and then it ends with no room to continue the story, because there's only one guy left. Nonetheless, there were like 3 more movies and 2 TV serieses to follow, which is insane. This one's still good though. ❤
  watched 2022-11-17
• Dune (2021) - OK I never read the book and I don't really remember much of the other movie, so at no point in watching this was I reminded of things I already like. As such, I didn't have a great time watching this. I kept thinking "I wish this was made by someone with a great imagination, or someone who's a great visual storyteller". They kept talking about the heat but no one was sweating? Also they kept teasing out things from the next movie, it was inelegant. I felt like I was being sold a bill of goods. At a few points I thought "I bet they explain this part in the book", and eventually I decided that the main thing that's wrong with the movie is that I was watching it. To paraphrase Scorsese, fandom doesn't make good movies, it makes theme parks. ❤
  watched 2022-11-17
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) - I guess this is "my Dune" in that it requires a pretty deep awareness of Weird Al and his career in order to make sense of it all. But I do have that awareness, so I found it to be absolutely incredible, a fever dream, unrelenting in it's madness. For the first half hour I kept waiting for the main character to wake up from his dream, and when that didn't happen I felt absolutely electric. It's inspiring-- you really can make a totally insane movie. ❤
  watched 2022-11-17
• Morgiana (1972) - Halloween rewatch of this great dreamlike Czech horror with exceptional wigs. I didn't realize the first time I watched this that the two main characters are both played by the same person! She's phenomenal. Great atmosphere, incredible costumes and makeup, and the main character is evil in a very human way-- not so much evil as jealous and proud and twisted. There are some literally psychedelic passages, as in, shot from the point of view of someone hallucinating, but the whole thing is lush and fanciful and ornate to the point of psychedelia. Another great Halloween watch even though there's nothing supernatural-- it just seems supernatural. Did people really dress like this??? This movie will make you want to get a wig and wear it around the house. ❤
  watched 2022-10-31
• Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966) - also called "Operazione paura" in Italy ('Operation Fear') and "Die Toten Augen des Dr. Dracula" in Germany ('The Dead Eyes of Dr. Dracula'), this was called "Don't Walk In The Park" when I downloaded it. None of these titles make any sense for the picture. Anyway it's great, a superb Mario Bava movie set in a Carpathian village, with a spooky child that kills anyone that talks about her. Some really nice psychedelic parts, great atmosphere, a perfect spooky cozy Halloween watch. There's a cool beautiful witch with long black hair and a tough town burgomeister who's bald as an egg, and the movie introduces them separately and then reveals that they're in love. That's a really nice angle. I wonder if they fell in love on the job, or if they were in love and then one of them got the gig as a town witch and said "you know, they're looking for a burgomeister, I think you'd be great for the job...". ❤
  watched 2022-10-31
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) - My friend told me he wrote his dissertation on this and I said "oh, I loved that! I loved the artist that didn't have a door and raised cats for food". He got real quiet and said he didn't know what to make of that so he didn't mention it. It didn't fit in with his analysis. I'm not capping on my friend here, I bring it up only to say that that's something I like in a movie-- a headscratcher. ❤
  watched 2022-10-23
• Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021) - the trailer teases out this idea that Vonnegut actually had premonitions of the future, like his character Billy Pilgrim, that he saw the firebombing of Dresden years before it happened. But then that never comes up in the doc, what gives? I guess someone else cut the trailer, that probably happens all the time. This doc 40 years in the making, and as the minutes tick on it gets more than a little sentimental. I guess that's to be expected with a long-haul proj like this-- relationships blossom and grow, the film becomes a part of the filmmakers life, and the two become inextricable. I feel weird saying that this is not good, because I really love Vonnegut, and there's a lot of nice footage of him. But overall I gotta say "kind of weird, some cool parts". ❤
  watched 2022-09-26
• The Jeff Koons Show (2004) - I liked Jeff Koons before but I always thought of him as an evil dude. After watching this I changed my mind, I think he's a cute little guy, who may be evil. I thought he was a sinister operator, laughing behind the scenes at this so-called "art world", but like many artists, he's just going after things that interest him to the best of his ability, and laughing right in the middle of the scene, simply having a great time. He doesn't love money, he loves color and having fun and the idea "equilibrium", which expresses itself in breathing machines and novelty balloons. I watched this on YouTube via Kino Lorber, I don't know why but they dumped a bunch of stuff online last month. ❤
  watched 2022-09-26
• Blank City (2010) - OK / fun documentary about No Wave cinema, it's a bunch of the main people telling stories and really that's what I want from this experience. Favorite part is when John Lurie says he still hates Jean-Michel Basquiat for making it cool to have money and not cool to not have money, whereas before it was the opposite. Is it possible that Basquiat was the knife edge on this movement? Lurie also says that he staged a break-in at his own apartment for the insurance money and used that to finance a film, which is inspirational. ❤
  watched 2022-09-26
• Death Spa (1988) - I was tasked with picking a movie for a small group that was high and wanted a horror movie but "not too scary", so I selected this 80s supernatural leotard horror and we all had a great time. There's a lot of fake Memphis furniture in this, and I mean that's kind of the look of the 80s so whatever, but they went so far as to make a knock-off "conversation pit", which is one of their less-iconic pieces. That makes me think that whoever did the set design was a true fan. It's also interesting to watch a movie that's like, about yuppies, but not for yuppies, and not anti-yuppie. I mean there are no allegories against consumerism or anything, and pretty much everyone on screen just wants to get fit, look great, and have sex, and it's not really a problem. There are some horribly melting faces in this, maybe there could've been more? that's my main critique, could've had more melting faces. Buuuuut if you like movies with lots of leotards and you haven't seen this one, run don't walk. ❤
  watched 2022-09-25
• The Waterboy (1998) - my Adam Sandler movie watching club "Death Watchers" hasn't met up since the pandemic, so we got together for Jaan's birthday and watched "one of the good ones". Maybe it's because all the other ones we watched were so dismal, but I actually enjoyed this. Not to the point that I'd recommend it to others, but I had some actual laughs. Kathy Bates really commits to it, she's a pro, and Fairuza Balk is great. Sadly, this doesn't pass the Schnieder Test. That is to say, Rob Schnieder is in it. Nonetheless I can confidently state "We Had A Nice Time" (+7)
  ❤
  watched 2022-09-25
• Blood and Black Lace (1964) - gorgeous giallo thriller from Mario Bava, set in a fashion house. Great sets, great clothes, and wonderful use of colored lighting, like a Basil Gogos cover of Famous Monsters. Probably going to watch this again just to take screencaps of the interiors. ❤
  watched 2022-09-21
• Career Opportunities (1991) - I remember the commercial for this movie from when I was a kid, and it gave me this incredible feeling, and sparked a fantasy for being alone in a mall in the middle of the night, just going nuts. It's like a friendly version of an apocalyptic "last person alive" scenario, just rollerskating around putting on clothes and taking them off, eating a single bite of ten candy bars. But I never saw it because it seemed "too horny" (?). Well I finally capitulated and it was just the commercial that was horny, the movie is about as horny as any other John Hughes movie, that amount of horny and no hornier. The main guy is kind of a Ferris Bueller type but he's a working class loafer, not a kid with a $20,000 synthesizer. Most surprising is that when he meets his dream girl he remains true to himself-- he doesn't fawn over her or lie to her or try to look big, he remains exactly the same, and even tells her off when she absentmindedly insults him. This was inspiring! Like he didn't even learn that it's better to be yourself, he just has no other mode of operation. I guess no one really likes this movie, and John Hughes tried to disown it, but I liked it. Cool soundtrack in the John Hughes model but with nothing as iconic as Yello "Oh Yeah" or Tone Loc "Wild Thing (instrumental)". ❤
  watched 2022-09-21
• A Town Called Panic (2009) - extremely fun animated movie from Belgium with an incredible economy- all the characters are common unposeable plastic toys- a cowboy, an indian, and a horse. Different effects are achieved by switching out different sculpts. Doesn't seem like you could do 90 minutes on this but you can and it's very enjoyable! Is there a better word for this than "economy" because that seems a little disfavorable. They do too much with too little, which generates an incredible power. ❤
  watched 2022-09-21
• Elvis (2022) - I only made it a half hour in-- I looked at the clock and couldn't rationalize sticking it our for the full 2 hours 40. This entire movie looks like the first stylish 30 seconds of a movie, but it's not intoxicating, it feels boring and hellish. Every song is a mash up??? Enough with the mash ups!!! And there's a lot of new songs, with people rapping over beats made of tiny bits of Elvis songs. At one point Elvis is walking down Beale St and the soundtrack is a guy rapping a quote from the Bobby Brown song for Addams Family Values, I felt like all meaning had collapsed. Dreamlike but dull, not like dreaming but like someone telling you their dream at great length. Tom Hanks is insane in this, with a bizarre accent (which may be perfectly accurate) and facial prosthetics. Got me thinking "now Cloud Atlas, that was a good movie". That's when I new it was time to quit. ❤
  watched 2022-09-16
• They Live (1988) - pretty perfect little movie. This time around two things struck me-- first, Rowdy Roddy Piper is great but all his action movie quips are so dumb, and not even appropriate to the situation, and I've always viewed this part as just "that's how it is". But this time I got to wondering if the lines are dumb and disjunctive on purpose, like if that's a layer of meaning. I think the answer is no, I think they're just dumb, which is fine. Secondly, I got to thinking about the aliens, like what the hell are they even doing that's bad? This part is extremely vague-- the only thing you know that they're doing is using subliminal messages to lure humanity into a sort of fogged out existence. But I think this absence is a strength actually, I mean you don't need to know what "they" are doing in the movie, because it's obviously an allegory for Reaganites and we know what they're doing. Hinkley had a vision. ❤
  watched 2022-09-10
• Tora-san Confesses (1991) - every Tora-san movie is good ❤
  watched 2022-09-05
• Tora-san's Cherished Mother (1969) - every Tora-san movie is good ❤
  watched 2022-09-05
• Tora-san's Grand Scheme (1970) - every Tora-san movie is good ❤
  watched 2022-09-05
• When We Were Kings (1996) - I rewatch this periodically, it's inspiring! No spoilers but the strategy at play here is incredible. It's insane how George Foreman was essentially killed in the ring, giving him a shot at rebirth (as an affable pitchman). Points removed for the filmmaker's creative use of Miriam Makeba as "the woman with trembling hands", that's disrespectful, and for Norman Mailer saying "negritude". Other than that, great. I can see hating either of these guys but Norman Mailer and George Plympton are so great and so cute in this, I wish they made more movies together. Also this made me wish that David Foster Wallace lived to be in like, a documentary about Woodstock 2 20 years later, and it's him and William Gibson palling around calling P-Nut from 311 "a tumult of excrable pubescence" or whatever. Anyway great movie, strong recommendation. He's the Champ!!!! ❤
  watched 2022-09-05
• Mystic Pizza (1988) - perfect movie starring Julia Roberts and Lili Taylor, this is essential townie cinema! We got pizza to eat during the picture (and beer to drink) and it was great, I think if we didn't then all the onscreen pizza would've driven me mad. The only weird thing about this movie is how much light beer there was. I wouldn't really have noticed but early in the movie when the preps show up at the townie bar, the ladies order white wine and one of the guys asks for "anything light" and it's a villainous feeling. The main prep gets a regular beer and that's how you can tell that he's at least aware of his surroundings. But then after that moment everything turns, and throughout the movie, everyone's drinking Miller Lite and there's signs everywhere. I'm guessing the filmmakers hooked a deal but didn't change that one line? Nothing against light beer. ❤
  watched 2022-08-27
• Runaway Bride (1999) - they tried to do Pretty Woman again (Julia, Richard Gere, Hector Elizondo, Larry Miller, director Garry Marshall) but this one didn't work as well. I really hated Richard Gere at the beginning and found his actions not only reprehensible but criminal. By the end of course the magic worked on me and I could picture them looking back and laughing, but really I'd've liked to have seen some remorse on Richard Gere's part. Julia has a positive change but Richard Gere not so much. This was set in Maryland and I was happy to see them have a nice crab dinner, with the hammers and everything. I love to see a little regionalism in a movie. That said, there was one person at the end with a genuine Maryland accent, and it was actually kind of jarring, like wait why doesn't everyone talk like this? Was that one guy not an actor but like a contest winner from that town or something? ❤
  watched 2022-08-16
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) - honestly, this is a great movie. I hope when they make Jumanji 3 they can somehow avoid explaining what the fuck is going on, like what is Jumanji, who made it, etc.. We would like to see this cast in this movie again and we don't need any more information cluttering up the formula! Unrelated but I'd also like to see more hippopotamuses in movies. There's like, Fantasia, and then this, and nothing in between? Anyway the mighty hippo is featured and given the respect it deserves. J'approve. ❤
  watched 2022-08-14
• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - perfect movie, what do you want. ❤
  watched 2022-08-14
• A League of Their Own (1992) - great starpower in this one: Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell. There's also a lot of great "other guys" with bit roles: Major Briggs from Twin Peaks, Bill Pullman, Jon Lovitz (he's perfect), director Penny Marshall's IRL brother Garry Marshall, and two of her old castmates from Laverne & Shirley- Eddie Mekka and David "Squiggy" Landers. This movie is so good and it seemed like they were having so much fun-- while I was watching it I kept thinking "why didn't they make another movie with the same crew??". Like they wrap up filming and Geena says "you know, someone just sent me this script... seems like there's a good Madonna role in here... and a Lori.... AND a Tom... got a nice little Lovitz in here.......". Big smiles on set and everyone jumping up and down in excitement chanting "we're doing it again! we're doing it again!". I gues that's really not how movies work, but imagine literally any movie made after 1992 with this exact cast... think about it... dynamite. ❤
  watched 2022-08-14
• Animalympics (1980) - initially made as two hour-long parts, to accompany NBC's broadcast of the 1980 Olympics (summer & winter games), this cartoon of sensual anthropomorphic animal athletes was adapted to a feature-length standalone when Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the Moscow Summer Olympics and NBC fell in line. I saw this as a kid because someone in my family taped it off TV in the one week we had HBO. I used to watch this when it was too hot to do anything but sit in the basement and watch tapes, and now that it's too hot again I went and found it, in its entirety, on YouTube. Is this huge with the furry community? Seems like it should be but I never hear anyone talking about it. But then how many furries do i even know, like 2? I already sent them the link, I'm waiting to hear back. Anyway this rocks. Needlessly psychedelic, with long musical numbers by the guy from 10cc. One thing I noticed this time is that one of the announcers (a Norweigan horse) is making a movie with Ingmar Birdman, and they show a little clip. I loved it. It's sensual, I already said that part, and the animation is certainly luscious. There is romance but the feeling I got as a kid wasn't so much "now I want to have sex with a lioness" as "a lizard and a chicken can get married and have successful ice skating careers". The most inspirational part for me (and I'm saying this many years after I first saw this) was that the true athletes don't care about the medals, they're looking way beyond, into the infinite pathless path. ❤
  watched 2022-08-08
• Con Air (1997) - made nachos and watched this loud movie. Malkovich is great, he does this malevolent diction that's extremely effective for a boss-type villain. Ving Rhames plays a member of the Black Guerillas with similarities to BG co-founder George Jackson. I found that unfortunate. Nic Cage was the first guy I was aware of to make the jump from "a guy who's mostly in weird good movies" to "a guy who's mostly in loud profitable movies". It's too bad he couldn't bring John Cusack along-- he's in this and I thought he was pretty decent. I guess Cusack's general character is too strong. Also nice to see Colm Meany, who for the first time in his career (I think) plays an actual meanie. For their "diagetic classic rock cargo plane song" they went with the anti-segregation ode "Sweet Home Alabama", which was a bummer and not really on theme. The only purpose it served was to allow Buscemi to make a quip about how it's ironic to rock out to that on a plane, because the band died in a plane crash. Wish they went with La Bamba instead. Or Chantilly Lace. ❤
  watched 2022-08-08
• San Andreas (2015) - nice little disaster movie with Dwayne The Rock Johnson and a rare good guy role for Paul Giametti. There's very limited human stupidity here, which is shocking-- there's like one vile guy and he gets smushed by a container boat. Other than that it's pretty much people either being smart and actively good for those around them or just responding to a traumatic event in a way that can't be judged on a smart/stupid axis. CW: drowning. ❤
  watched 2022-08-06
• Tora-san's Promise (1981) - Tora-san promises his terminally ill peddler buddy that he'll marry his wife when he dies. It is extremely regular for Tora-san's romances to not work out and oftentimes it's a drag, but this is a rare one where Tora-san really makes the right move in breaking it off. This lady already went through the shit living with an itinerant salesperson, she should be with someone more sedentary next. In order to set us up for this realization, the first act shows Tora-san drunker than usual and more of a bully than usual. These movies just tick along like clockwork, I love it. ❤
  watched 2022-08-03
• The Mummy (2017) - This was supposed to be the launch vehicle for the "Dark Universe", the Universal Studios version of the MCU- a shared cinematic universe using their monster properties. Everyone was going to get a reboot-- Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, the Creature... but then this came out first and it got bad reviews and so that's that I guess. I didn't even think this was that bad?? The only thing I balked at was that it was about Tom Cruise getting possessed by Set, the Egyptian god of the dead, and at one point Russell Crowe's Jeckyll/Hyde character compares Set with Satan. 1., Set/Satan is an extreme reach. 2., all the mega-crossover events in the comics eventually battle Satan, but if you're just making the first in the series you absolutely can't bring it up as even a possibility! Also no one in these movies ever really wrestles with the theological implications involved. Like OK if you found out that the Egyptian god of the dead was real, that should effect your worldview and your day-to-day activities tremendously, after you deal with the immediate "this guy is right here and I'm fighting him" issues. Actually in this movie they bring it up a little bit once, the archaeologist says "I've studied the old gods" and the demonic Egyptian princess says "old gods???". Anyway, too bad about "Dark Universe", I was looking forward to Abbott & Costello Meet The Wolfman 2099. ❤
  watched 2022-07-22
• Jurassic World Dominion (2022) - there are too many people in this movie! Some of the people were from the previous two, some were from the ones before that, and then there were some new guys where I truly couldn't tell if we were supposed to know who they were. It starts off with like a lonnnnnnng infodump of a reporter talking to a screen and immediately I thought "I'm not remembering this shit". Then it has the modern movie problem where everyone quips constantly, which destroys the power of the quip. It's like every moment has been juiced and as a result there's no ebb and flow, no rhythm to the movie. Also it's shot poorly. The first movie shows you the dinosaurs in this beautiful way that makes you appreciate their scale. This one just shows you a dinosaur on screen and then it cuts to a small subgroup of the large cast making their best "epic moment" faces. It's incredible that the first one was so good and all the other ones suck. It's like they had no idea what made the first one good, or more likely, they thought that the thing that made it special (dinosaurs made of computer graphics) was what made it good. ❤
  watched 2022-07-17
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) - I watched this while doing a mindless task on my computer, thinking there'd be trippy visuals at least, and there were. Sam Raimi directed, so there was a little Bruce Campbell cameo and some nice zombie stuff. And I liked how Dr Strange is kind of a dick that no one really likes. I didn't have a bad time watching this movie but I would not recommend it to anyone. ❤
  watched 2022-07-04
• Top Gun (1986) - I guess it's weird that I never saw this until now but there was never anything about this movie that called to me. No one ever said "you have to see this". Watching it now, I feel like it was good but like, yeah, not a lifechanging event. It was interesting seeing 1986's idea of attractive people-- I kept thinking about how everyone's teeth were a little messed up. In today's Hollywood that gets fixed. And then it was weird how opaque the "enemy" was in this-- in most of the movie they're at school so they're in practice sessions just dogfighting each other, but in the beginning and at the end there's like actual bad guys and we aren't even told what country they're from. They're like bad guys in a video game. Huge soundtrack on this, I think that's a big part of the appeal of this movie. Then there's this, from the wikipedia page, section "Influence":

  "Film producer John Davis said that Top Gun was a recruiting video for the Navy, that people saw the movie and said, "Wow! I want to be a pilot." The Navy had recruitment booths in some theaters to attract enthusiastic patrons. After the film's release, the US Navy stated that the number of young men who joined wanting to be Naval Aviators went up by 500 percent."

  "The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General blamed sexist behavior depicted in Top Gun for making sexual assault more likely in the real-life military, contributing to the Tailhook scandal in 1991."

  Kudos to Matthew Modine and Bryan Adams, who were offered roles in this and refused to participate in this movie that glorifies war. ❤

  watched 2022-07-04
• Top Secret! (1984) - One time when I was a kid I fell asleep watching TV and I woke up and this was on, the scene with the cow costume. I had no idea what it was and then later I convinced myself that it was a dream. Then I saw the box in the video store (with the cow on the cover) and I couldn't believe it. A magnificent farce from the team behind Naked Gun and Airplane, starring a young Val Kilmer and featuring a few really incredible sequences. As with Airplane, it's solid jokes, and nothing else really, and that's no problem. ❤
  watched 2022-06-10
• Sisters with Transistors (2020) - nice documentary about female electronic composers, from the 50s to the 80s. Maryanne Amacher, Bebe Barron, Suzanne Ciani, Delia Derbyshire, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Éliane Radigue, Clara Rockmore, Wendy Carlos and Laurie Spiegel. Well, it's great. ❤
  watched 2022-06-10
• Wild Strawberries (1957) - The first time I saw this (years ago) I thought it was going to be ponderous and depressing. That was my concept of "Bergman movie", gleaned from mostly parody sources. But it isn't cold and confusing, it's warm and uplifting, and it's not like a heady allegory where this guy represents this thing and this other thing is time or whatever-- it's a sequence of events that make you feel a certain way but everything in it is just some stuff that happens. Where did I get this idea of "foreign movie"? From that one Bud Light commercial???? This one's for everyone that likes wild strawberries, which are delicious. ❤
  watched 2022-05-16
• Drive My Car (2021) - Pretty good but very long movie based on a Haruki Murakami short story. There were so many layers here it felt dazzling without purpose-- I thought that the title being a Beatles song was going to be relevant, but it isn't. Also there's a lot of other texts woven through-- Beckett and Chekov mostly-- but it didn't feel like a deeper appreciation of the referenced works would enrich the story, it felt like they were just kind of window dressing. And it was set in Hiroshima, which to me is an emotionally charged place, but those emotions didn't seem to be in play, it was just a place on the map. Well the story's about a play director so there's gotta be a play, and you have to set it somewhere so it might as well be Hiroshima. But the thing that really pushed it over the edge for me, in regards to needless cleverness, was that the main guy's name is Kafuku ("Kafka"), but it didn't seem relevant at all! Like the story wasn't Kafkaesque and no one turns into a cockroach or anything. It was a little like watching a sci-fi comedy where a background guy is named Bob O'Fett or Garth Vader or something and it's not like a joke per se but it's there to tell you the filmmakers are into the same stuff you're into. All this stuff notwithstanding, I liked it. In fact it was an interesting experience once I decided to actively disregard many of these details. It felt realistic. Like you meet someone and they go "hi, I'm Mark" and you think "oh, I have a friend named Mark" or "oh, just like Mark Twain" but connecting these dots doesn't give you any kind of narrative insight, they're just like, all named Mark. I bet there's thousands of people named Kafka out there and they probably have the same likelihood of turning into giant bugs as anyone else. ❤
  watched 2022-05-10
• What We Do in the Shadows (2014) - can't believe I never saw this but I watched it while I was feeling kind of low and it really made me laugh. A vampire mockumentary from New Zealand, I loved it. ❤
  watched 2022-05-10
• Tora-san's Love in Osaka (1981) - aka "Tora's Many-Splintered Love". Since I don't understand Japanese, I really missed out on the jokes about the Osaka dialect. Thoughtfully the music got extra goofy during these moments, to at least let me know that there is a joke there. As I understand it, the stereotype of the Osaka person is that they're funny and pushy, and there were a few characters like that in here. I guess when they dub a Disney movie into Japanese they give the weird little animal friend an Osaka accent- Timon and Pumba from Lion King, for instance. That's the feeling. Unfortunately this makes Tora go extra-stoic in contrast, and he narrowly misses out of love, yet again. ❤
  watched 2022-05-06
• Star Trek Beyond (2016) - OK this entire movie builds up to this one Beastie Boys song and honestly it's sick as hell. ❤
  watched 2022-05-01
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) - OK when we rewatched the first one of these reboots I remembered from my first viewing that a young kirk blasts Beastie Boys "Sabotage" from a stolen car. But I didn't remember that the second one has a Beastie Boys song too? And it's sex music while Kirk is boning twin catgirls???? Buuuuuuuuut it's a Fat Boy Slim remix?????????????? Honestly this selection was a big mistake. If they were really committed to using Beastie Boys as diagetic music they should've used one of the instrumentals from Hello Nasty, that's like "future music" and some of it is sex-appropriate. As for Fat Boy Slim... give me a break. I don't know, maybe it's appropriate for the character, considering that Kirk kind of sucks. The other mark against is that Benedict Cumberbatch is Khan, that's poor casting. I mean he was good as "the bad guy" in the early part of the movie, when he was just a psychopathic thinker with a hidden identity. But when they revealed that he was Khan I felt like a major opportunity had been lost. I know that Ricardo Montalban (the original Khan) is a hard act to follow but I wish they got someone more a little more passionate. Or at all passionate! This guy doesn't simmer, he just glares. There's a lot of nods to Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan in this and each time I was like "o ya, Ricardo Montalban, that's who I wish I was watching right now". You can't spell "terrorism" without "eros" (I just made that up). ❤
  watched 2022-04-29
• Hook (1991) - Man, Julia Roberts get caught up in the same shit here as in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)! She's the buddy in love with the manchild, who grows up into someone else's arms. Damn. Watching this I got kind of hung up on the world of Neverland-- how it works on the day to day, their alliances and emnities. But it's best to just take it in a broad general way ("it's fun to have fun"), even though a big riff here is believing literally in the fantastic realms. Dustin Hoffman is dynamite, he really chews up the scenery with extraordinary relish. Weird star power in this with Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia, Spielberg behind the camera, John Fucking Williams with the rousing score of course, and then tons of cameos, including but not limited to Glenn Close, George Lucas, Carrie Fisher, Phil Collins, and Jimmy Buffett (?). According to Wikipedia, Carrie Fisher re-wrote all the Tinker Bell lines, that's wild. ❤
  watched 2022-04-27
• My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) - We wanted to hit a rom com and one of us (me) didn't want to watch Notting Hill again, so I looked up "Julia rom com best" and got this one. I didn't even think that "best" is in the title! Good SEO on that one, I was hornswaggled. It's not bad, but unfortunately, this movie subverts the rom com in a way that I found displeasing in the moment. I mean it was good but I wanted a rom com, not an interesting take. Like when you're hungry for a pizza, you don't want someone's novel twist on the concept, for people tired of the same old same old. You want the platonic idea of a pizza. So anyway this was good but it's definitely "an interesting take". It stands out in its field due to its narrative innovation but if you don't watch a lot of rom coms and then you're like "let's watch a rom com" and you watch this, well it's kind of a drag. Julia Roberts plays kind of a bad person that messed up big time and that's life baby. Cameron Diaz is great in this and it was nice to see karaoke in a movie where they get it right-- karaoke crowds like to see you give it your all, good singers and bad alike. Another nice thing is that even when Julia Roberts is at her most Machiavellian, the guy is like "it's sweet that you cared so much [to commit such cruel and duplicitous acts]". Again, this wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I wanted in that moment. ❤
  watched 2022-04-23
• Star Trek (2009) - Rewatch of this fun reboot. After watching all those Mission Impossible movies in the previous quarter I remembered this other fun series with Simon Pegg in a supporting role. I like Star Trek and I like this. Great cast. Chekov is especially cute. I remember feeling shocked in the theatre when (spoiler) Nimoy shows up-- it's an interesting move to make the reboot an alternate reality version of the thing you know. I mean that's how it is anyway, with the new and the old existing simultaneously in the viewer's mind, but it's interesting to state this explicitly, and to allow for the reboot and the original boot to mingle. The only thing that bothered me on the rewatch is that I remember the "red matter injection" sequence going on for a surprisingly long time, and talking to my theatre companions Tumblecat and Pak about how it was great to see something so abstract on the big screen. But I guess it was just a few seconds? Is there more red matter in the theatrical cut?? Maybe it just made more of an impact on the big screen. Director JJ Abrahms did a good job not explaining at all what red matter is, just saying "here's some goo, it's important". Which is especially daring when you consider how classically pedantic the Star Trek fandom is. I liked it. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• The Expendables (2010) - This is probably the worst movie I've seen in a long time. If all these guys really wanted to hang out so bad they should've just gone on a camping trip, or joined a softball league. The entire movie is like an old rich guy who gets one of those modern big pickups and says "it's just one of my toys", except there's 10 of these guys. Or they have a band and they have really nice guitars and their practice room is extremely sweet and they never play out and it's no problem because they're having fun. Unfortunately in this case they did "play out" so to speak, they launched a movie franchise, and I watched the first one. Jet Li is in this, but his main character feature is that he's short, come on that's infuriating. And he gets beaten up by Dolph Lundgren????? I guess they couldn't make him "the fast one" because every other guy in this seems incapable of running-- being the fast guy is meaningless. Same thing for "the one who displays imagination". Schwarzeneggar shows up for a sec just to say "you guys are making a movie, huh? and you want me to be in it? no thanks". Very bad vibe. I guess he has a bigger role in later ones, which is an even worse vibe. "OK, I'll be in your dumb little movie". Stallone and Mickey Rourke look disgusting in a very modern way. Jason Statham is in this and not only does he not prepare a nice meal for himself (as happens in a few of his movies), but at one point him and Stallone go to a cafe to meet their contact and the cafe lady goes "you guys want drinks?" and they're like "no, we're just going to sit here" and the lady's like "ok, no problem". That lets me know that the people who made this are completely cut off from reality. The whole cafe had like 3 tables max and you think it's OK to just sit there and neither of you are going to order anything? Maybe the script had them order dos cervezas por favor but Stallone changed it because he's drug free or something? This is pure speculation. OK, one last bit: Usually in movies like this they blast Creedence Clearwater Revival in the chopper but I guess everything on Chronicle (Greatest Hits Vols 1 & 2) was used (in the chopper sequences of other movies). So they went with "Keep On Chooglin'"??? I mean I love Creedence but come on, this is weak. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• Once Upon a Time in China (1991) - Huge movie from Jet Li that's a little too epic for my taste, and I'm lacking a lot of the history and subtext that made this narrative (presumably) easily navigable by the huge crowds of early 90s China, who made this a massive hit. Jet Li's Fong Wei Hung is a little too much of a goody goody. Like we get it, you're virtuous. But maybe he was struggling under the weight of a legend. Maybe he was reacting to Jackie Chan's Drunken Master (1978), where he also plays Fong Wei Hung but makes him a sort of lazy goofy nut. Of course there are some great fight sequences and yes this set the standard for martial arts excellence to which all others are compared. Jet Li loves to use shifting platforms and there's a good one in here with ladders. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992) - also called "Supercop". It's great. Michelle Yeoh joins the action. Partly set in Malaysia, so they got 2 durian gags in, I loved it. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• Once Upon a Time in China II (1992) - unlike UOATIC 1, Jet Li doesn't have any slobs to bounce his Nice Young Man persona off, so there's a bit of a Pollyanna vibe. But on the good side the plot is a little simpler. Donnie Yen is great as an adversary, and the fight with the mystical sect at the end is cool and spooky. Yes there's shifting platforms in this. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) - one of us wasn't feeling good so we rewatched this extremely enjoyable and rewarding movie for the one millionth time. ❤
  watched 2022-04-20
• Transporter 3 (2008) - more innovative fighting stuff but this time it was edited even faster, with even jumpier cuts! Still, I had fun. great stunts even if they were hard to see. And I was delighted that the soundtrack had Tricky (from my favorite record of his, Maxinquaye). ❤
  watched 2022-03-30
• Tora-san's Pure Love (1976) - One of the rare ones where Tora's love is reciprocated, very touching. All the Tora San movies last for a little longer than you'd think, it's very nice. Like the story wraps up and then there's 10 or 20 minutes more where people are just living their lives in the wake, reflecting and moving on. Fumi Dan is the love interest for a brief section of the beginning, then everyone says "she's too young for you, you could be her father", and then he falls for her mother. This one is the 18th in the series. ❤
  watched 2022-03-30
• Tora-san, My Uncle (1989) - Later Tora San movie about floppy teenage Mitsuo falling in love. The kid who plays Mitsuo is so good and this feeling of being mean to your parents because you're confused and in love is very real. There's one regrettable part with a predatory homosexual biker, other than that this was a great one. The actor who plays the biker is in hundreds of Japanese movies, a real "one of those guys" guys. If I was one of those guys in Japan in the late 20th century I'd be chomping at the bit to get into a Tora San movie. Fumi Dan is in this one too, again as a nice lady, but a different character. ❤
  watched 2022-03-30
• Transporter 2 (2005) - As with the first one, this had a lot of inventive fighting. I had hoped they'd figure out how to shoot it this time, but they didn't, the cuts are still too fast and the visual storytelling is lacking-- there's a part where someone gets impaled on like a decorative wall of knives, and you only see the wall for a sec and only after the guy's already there. I'd believe it if you told me that this guy has a wall of knives as a decorative element in his villainous villa, but I need a taste of if before it comes into play. It's like an inverse Chekov- a gun that goes off in the fifth act should be shown in the third act, at the latest. ❤
  watched 2022-03-29
• The Transporter (2002) - We were in the mood for a Fast and Furious movie so we looked up "movies similar to", and this came up. With Jason Statham and the guy who plays Vince in FF. This had some inventive fighting sequences that gave me a Jackie Chan feeling, but it was cut too fast, so it didn't communicate as well what was happening. Stanley "Return To Forever" Clarke did the music, but it just sounded like Toejam & Earl to me- like a keyboard rhythm and some record scratching over it. That said it was enjoyable and I'm definitely going to watch the sequels. ❤
  watched 2022-03-27
• Mission: Impossible III (2006) - First one with Simon Pegg, and now the team is assembled. Pegg is a great addition, bringing a likeable lightness and "that's what I'd do if I was there" feeling to the mayhem. All spy movies have cool gadgets in them but this franchise is great because the key gadgets are so unreasonable- a super-realistic rubber mask, and a message that explodes 5 seconds after you read it. It keeps it pure in a way, like firmly a movie. what's funny is seeing the other technology-- no one had cell phones in the first two, although at one point in 1 or 2 there's a car accident and someone cries out "does anyone have a phone?", which is quaint. In this one they have phones and it's no big deal but at a certain point they're driving around and they're trying to make a call but they can't get a signal. I was like ahhhhhhh I remember that. ❤
  watched 2022-03-25
• Tora-san, the Intellectual (1975) - Tora falls for an archeologist. There's a nice twisteroo at the end where the madonna du jour reveals that she isn't going to marry the other guy-- she isn't going to marry anyone! Then Tora and the other guy meet each other on a trip and have a great time. The 16th in the series. ❤
  watched 2022-03-24
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) - Happy to see someone finally lifted the only (?) good part from Hudson Hawk (1991), which is precisely timing a caper using diagetic music shared by the team. Unfortunately this one had the fewest rubber masks of any of these movies- there's one and it doesn't even make sense for the guy to be wearing it. As far as technology, they got to the point where everything's a fuckin touchscreen. At one point Tom Cruise just plops a thumb drive ON TOP of a touch screen, and the screen draws a red circle around it and then opens the files. I mean that's stupid but I accept it, not as a gadget thing but as a solution to the problem of "it's boring to watch someone use a computer". Realistically we should be seeing him rooting around trying to find where to plug the thumb drive in, and then he tries to plug it in but he puts it in upside down and has to flip it, then that doesn't work and he flips it again, and now for some reason it works, and he looks at any other character, they're like "whuh??", and he makes that smug multivalent Tom Cruise face that's like "what are you gonna do / hey don't knock it / it's complicated / I know right?". Tom, call me. ❤
  watched 2022-03-24
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) - It's funny watching all these in a row because now instead of saying "that must be some guy from one of the earlier movies" I'm like "Oh there's that guy again, I pretty much remember who that is". Lots of good masks in this one, the most recent one as of this writing. That's a relief. This movie is 2 and a half hours long, they don't tell you that when you start watching it, it just keeps going, and you lose the pacing of a standard 90 minute action movie and you have to just give in to the madness. Saw this at the drive-in with Dave and Tsarlag when it came out and I remember by the end I was feeling unmoored but elated. This time I was ready though and I paced my expectations, so it was just a movie again. I mean it's still nutso but I was more prepped. ❤
  watched 2022-03-23
• Mission: Impossible II (2000) - The first one in this series felt like it was just barely enough mayhem, but this second entry, directed by John Woo, is sufficiently crazy. Some great stunts and a really good slugfest at the end with a *lot* of different jump kicks. It's like a department store of jump kicks. My mind wandered a little during this because one of the henchman in this looks enough like Scott Thompson that I felt I had to map all the other characters to other Kids In The Hall. That was ultimately no problem except that there were two Mark McKinneys-- the main baddie and the evil tech guy. Not going to say who everyone else was but it shouldn't be a very tough puzzle for a fan. ❤
  watched 2022-03-22
• The Equalizer (2014) - rewatch of this enjoyable "assassin with new life gets called back" movie starring the superb Denzel Washington. Last time I watched this I was really dialed in on the Boston accents-- who can do it and who can't. This time the little thing that I enjoyed was watching people on smart phones get an incoming call, look at the name of the caller onscreen, then reject the call by swiping the bar gently to the left. That's a funny little gesture that we all know, I guess there's nothing special about it, but I've been watching all these recent action movies and everything's on a touchscreen nowadays because it's more cinematic. People are always tapping the tablet confidently in the midst of a skirmish or during a debriefing and it's so fake. If I was in some kind of firefight I'd want an actual button that I can find without looking, feel without pressing, and then press with the confidence of "I definitely pressed the button". Anyway it was nice to see a realistic use of this technology-- you have be dainty and slow and look at the thing for the duration of the event to make sure that what you pressed was really a button and that it did the thing you anticipated. Oh yeah I liked the movie, this was hardly the only thing I enjoyed about it., ❤
  watched 2022-03-21
• Fast Five (2011) - rewatch for the nth time, on the occasion of a visiting friend who had never seen them and lives down the street from the house in LA. this one starts with a heist gone wrong and quite frankly it's Vin Diesel's fault. They could've just done the heist, got their cut, and moved on. No one ever brings this up. Also their take (for the second heist) is like 100 million dollars or whatever but I kept wondering during the movie if they were doing 100 million in damages, or more, or less. I mean they're stealing money from this bad guy but they're also "stealing" time and resources from basically every person onscreen, not to mention the human lives lost, to which I refuse to assign a monetary value. What if there was a Minority Report sort of movie where an insurance agent that can see through time pre-empts a mass mayhem event by giving like one person $5000? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure after all. OK 1, that's Quantum Leap, which was a great show, and 2, I guess that's what welfare is supposed to do?? ❤
  watched 2022-03-15
• Fast & Furious 6 (2013) - there's a little thing in here where the villian can shut down any car that's computer controlled, so for the rest of the movie they can only drive classic cars. That's a nice set up (previously used in Battlestar Gallactica) but I wish they didn't stop there. What if they made it so that they could only drive Model T's? Everyone wearing long scarves and big fut coats? I'd love that. Too steampunk? What if the villain had some sort of gas that turns power steering fluid into a vaporous neurotoxin? Yes I am available to juice a screenplay. My rates are competitive. ❤
  watched 2022-03-15
• Furious 7 (2015) - there are other spy movies where someone creates this sort of semi-intelligent panopticon surveillance tool, but usually it's like an evil guy. In this case the evil guy simply steals it, and then they get it back, and then they use it. Zero issues with privacy concerns or human rights. Did we all just give up on the idea of protecting one's privacy??? Kind of feels like it to be honest. Another weird thing about this one is that they're fighting over a computer program that's embedded in hardware-- that's not how these things work! A program is something you can make infinite copies of-- the scarcity required by an action plot just doesn't exist. A lot of action movies do this, fighting over a thumb drive or whatever-- I guess it's just a disbelief that we suspend for the sake of the thrill. Other truths we eschew for narrative ease: cars don't blow up like that, you can't get punched that many times and still run around, and the police force is basically a criminal organization. ❤
  watched 2022-03-15
• Ninja, A Band of Assassins (1962) - Like many children of the 80s / 90s, I love ninjas. Sneaking around, having cool tools, being invisible, having a secret... Unfortunately when you really get down to it the life of a ninja basically sucks. This movie is about that. It's based on a series of popular novels and that's why the movie just sort of twists and turns-- it was born as a serialized page turner and now you're forced to breeze through it all in one go. There's a mid-movie reveal that's positively Lynchian, where it's revealed that this guy's rival is actually the guy himself in disguise-- I would have lost it if that dropped on the last page of this months installment of some adventure magazine, but in a movie it was weird that it just happens and now we're moving on. Well anyway yeah the life of a ninja sucks and large narrative arcs are phony anyway. I know that you need to know if there are throwing stars in this and the answer is: big time. There's no other cool ninja weapons but there is poisoning someone via a long thread, wearing black pajamas, and moving silently with extreme intent. there are a few movies in this series and I'm probably going to watch them. ❤
  watched 2022-03-15
• Death Race 2000 (1975) - A great gory crazy movie about a futuristic cross-country race in which the drivers get extra points for killing pedestrians. Roger Corman had a great thing going making cheap crazy movies and serving as a proving ground for new talent-- I guess there's nothing like that today because you don't even need the semblance of a studio to start making movies, you can just get a camera and a computer and get going. But that is a great loss-- I think a lot of people would benefit by getting a quick lesson in [chosen field] by grinding out some cheapo variant for a content mill like Corman's. Wikipedia notes that "Corman wanted to make a futuristic action sports film to take advantage of the advance publicity of Rollerball (1975)". It shows the power you have as an independent-- I mean maybe Rollerball put more butts in the seats in 1975 but in the long view of history Death Race 2000 is the good one, because it's fun and wild and carefree. Paul Bartell directs, you may remember him as an actor from his key roles in other weird road movies like Eat My Dust (1976), Grand Theft Auto (1977), and Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (1985). ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Psychos in Love (1987) - a slasher film in the style of early Woody Allen, and honestly it was pretty good! That set-up sounds kind of cringey but there's a surprising amount of good jokes in this and we had a lot of fun watching it. the main character runs a strip club, and as with Times Square (1980), the music is crazy, the dancing is fun, the clientele is varied, and I would definitely hang out there. ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Mac and Me (1988) - bizarre and blatant ET rip off that is absolutely full to bursting with product placement for McDonalds and Coca Cola. I've never seen so much product in a movie. The alien's design is completely repugnant, absolutely disgusting, with a little butthole mouth that can only sip Coca Cola from a straw, no other food or beverage or energy source. IMDB suggests that if you like this you may enjoy Garbage Pail Kids (1987), which I think is true and also very damning. "If you like this you may enjoy lying face down in sewage being screamed at by children and bitten by rats." I mean I had fun watching this but I was with a small crowd, I'm starved for human contact so being with friends doing anything is a blessing, AND we were all pretty drunk. CW: the kid gets shot and killed by cops at the end but it's ok because he gets Lazarused by these nauseating aliens. ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Death Spa (1988) - great supernatural 80s gym horror with all the leotards that setting requires. Need I say more? ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Blast from the Past (1999) - Really nice Brendan Fraser rom com with Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, and Dave Foley. About a family that seals themselves in a bomb shelter in 1962, and come up in 1997 when the shelter's 35 year locks disengage. This is the second "guy from the distant past emerges from underground" movie for Fraser, after 1992's Encino Man. After this of course he did the Mummy trilogy, but he didn't play the underground past man in those, it was someone else. And then in 2008 he did "Journey To The Center Of The Earth", which I didn't see but I'm thinking that must've been like a prequel? This one has music by the Cherry Poppin Daddies and it's honestly a great part of the movie, I think it's the least I've ever been annoyed by a swing revival band. To be honest this was fun and everyone was great in it. Brendan Fraser is great. This is a long shot, but if you're reading this Brendan Fraser, I thought you were great in this. I watched this with some friends and afterwards we all said "you know what, that was really nice, and Brendan Fraser seems like a really good guy". I hope all is well. ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Deadly Friend (1986) - Wes Craven wanted to make a macabre love story with a teen interest, to try and break free from his catalog of gory movies, but when the initial cut of the film was shown to a test audience of Craven fans they were like hey buddy, where's the gore? and the studio insisted on additional filming. So what we're left with is a fun little movie that periodically veers into mayhem and ends in total nonsense. I enjoyed it but that's a tough situation for any filmmaker. ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Viy (1967) - Russia's first horror movie, based on the short story by Gogol. not really "thrilling" but fun, cool ghost sequences, great haircuts, great atmosphere. ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Magic Crystal (1986) - I loved this absolutely bonkers kung fu movie with really great fight sequences AND psychedelic "what is this movie" parts. There's some Indiana Jones parts, and an ET theme with a cute kid and a papier mache alien, I guess that's how you sell a movie to a distributor in 1986. But there's also a lot of innovative stuff, including a completely original sequence in which a guy wakes up and his feet and hands have switched places. And the fight sequences are top notch. This is currently on youtube and I strongly recommend it. With Cynthia Rothrock in a supporting role. Also released as "Fight To Win" ❤
  watched 2022-02-22
• Jason Bourne (2016) - I liked how many flip phones and burners there were in the first couple of these movies, and this one's right on the cusp of smart phones everywhere. There's a not-bad-but-sketchy snake-voiced guy in this that's clearly based on Julian Assange and a surveilance tech social media company that's kind of like Facebook but with the culture of early Google, and they're called "Deep Dream", which is software that Google came out with in 2014. The head of the tech stuff is named Aaron, which made me sad thinking about Aaron Swartz (who died in 2013) but I don't think that was a direct riff, I think they just had to name the guy something. The cyber cop lady in this was the same person who played Tomb Raider in the latest movie of that name (2018), and I finally looked it up-- she didn't go to Brown University, she just kind of has that look. Not sure if that makes sense. Aaaaanyway I feel like the first one of these is the best one, the rest are just objects in the wake. Though I mean, I had fun watching this. ❤
  watched 2022-02-15
• The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) - I wanted something funnish that I've seen before to zone out to and this was great, lots of nice little bits, though they don't drink at all in this one. I just learned that it's because of wartime liquor rationing! They thought it would be rude to the audience I guess, to show main characters quaffing what the audience cannot. I appreciate that. The guy from Room Service (1938) who says JUMPING BUTTERBALLS is in this, but he doesn't say JUMPING BUTTERBALLS, not even once. ❤
  watched 2022-02-15
• Ocean's Eleven (2001) - after incidentally watching a few more recent Matt Damon movies we longed for this earlier work. Yes, it's still extremely fun. I just learned that they tried to get Luke and Owen Wilson as the "two Jethros", and their second choice was Joel and Ethan Coen (!!!) who balked, then they had to settle for Ben Affleck's brother and James Caan's son (who are both great in this). There's a lot of family in this ensemble cast: Rob Reiner's dad, uhhhh Rosemary Clooney's nephew... OK he doesn't show up in this one but I need to mention that when Matt Damon's dad shows up in O12 he's played by Albert Brooks' brother (Super Dave). And wow, before Matt Damon they were going to go with Donnie Wahlberg's brother, but he bounced to do Planet of the Apes!!! Whaaat's up with the FAMILY?? It's like they made a movie that was 70% Zeppo. And why didn't they call Clint Howard???? He would've been great in this.

  ❤

  watched 2022-02-15
• The Green Planet (2022) - I don't usually include nature docs in these write-ups because I think of them as "television" rather than "movie", but that does them a disservice. I watch them all the time and they're honestly better than most movies. And each one gets better and better, due to the advances in knowledge and in camera technology. This one has a lot of stop motion plant photography that really puts you in the plant's time frame and allows you to see the drama. The research, patience, editing, sound design, pacing, and the presence and personality of David Attenborough all add up to make a truly delightful and inspiring program. Hopefully by naming this "Green Planet", they attract the viewership of the stoned browser clicking through titles at home, for whom the entire Attenborough oeuvre is perfect. ❤
  watched 2022-02-13
• The Bourne Identity (2002) - cool spy movie with Matt Damon, who Sakiko refers to as "potato man" because of The Martian (2015). Co-Star Franka Potente stars, loved her in Run Lola Run (1998) and she's great in this-- they updated her hair from ketchup red to auburn with pink streaks. I was happy to see some representation for "cool person that does whatever". Something I loved about this whole series is that no one has a nice car! Everyone's driving some tiny little European shitbox. If this was made today they'd pull over and steal a Ferrari or something, but it's like they say in Fast and Furious, "it's not about the car, it's about the driver". The soundtrack has a lot of jungle, which is ideal, but for the ending credits there's a Moby song with vocals and it's like the weakest shit in the world. Small role for Walt Goggins. ❤
  watched 2022-02-12
• The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - Another one and it's pretty good, although they really steered into the "shaky camera" look. Someone told me that this is the first one of these movies to do that and then it spread like wildfire. I wish they didn't and I wish it hadn't. Bourne is a cool character-- a trained assassin with amnesia. This gives him a funny edge over all the other trained assassins coming to get him, in that he only has instinct. The other guys can remember their training and that limits them-- Bourne has a hunch that something is possible and nothing stops his body from giving it a go. They don't talk about this in these movies, that's just something I'm thinking about. ❤
  watched 2022-02-12
• The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - OK this one was alllllmost too shaky for me but I liked it. I wouldn't want to watch an action movie shakier than this one. Julia Stiles reprises the role she had in the first two of these movies but she gets a bigger slice of the narrative pie this time. She plays a continuation of her "cyberpunk teen" character from the PBS television program Ghost Writer (1994). ❤
  watched 2022-02-12
• Mission: Impossible (1996) - this is based on a TV show I've neither seen nor ever considered watching, yet somehow I know the main riffs already-- the message will self destruct, ripping off a rubber mask, theme music. It's easy to see how this movie launched a franchise but at the same time, it's not very good. The thing that caught my attention was the computer stuff-- Tom Cruise is looking for a guy and his only clue is a bible verse, so he goes to Usenet (!) and seemingly stays up all night sending the same message to the same malformed address (???) on different bible groups (that are shown as websites in the movie). Hmmm. Computer stuff in movies is tough because you have to make it visually compelling, with emails that fold up into a little envelope or something, I'm not going to take this movie to task for that. I enjoyed seeing an internet from before wide-spread web adoption but after (or during) Usenet's "Eternal September" (which happened, or started, in 1993). Incredibly he does search the web but gets nothing-- he's looking for this guy max so he types in "MAX.COM", gets no results, and looks really frustrated. Via the Wayback Machine I'm able to access max.com from 1996 and it's Integrated Technologies and Systems Group (ITG), a full service Systems Integration and Client/Server Software Development company specializing in the development of Powerbuilder, Oracle, and Lotus Notes client/server applications on Microsoft NT, Novell, and UNIX platforms. I hope they had a good laugh about this.

  ❤

  watched 2022-02-07
• Talk of the Town Tora-san (1978) - the 22nd movie in the series. Reiko Ohara co-stars as the madonna, a recent divorcée. Ohara was voted "Japan's most adored actress" a whopping 14 times in her career, and as far as I can tell, really was a recent divorcée during the filming of this movie, from frequent co-star Tsunehiko Watase. Her life was made into a TV program, "Actress Reiko: Like a Flame", I wonder if Tora-San is mentioned?? I'm assuming this is the same Reiko Ohara who sang "Peacock Baby" in the 60s, although her bio doesn't mention a singing career. [youtube] ❤
  watched 2022-02-07
• Red Notice (2021) - as fans of the Fast and Furious franchise, we capitulated and watched this non-spinoff starring 2 of the main actors and a supporting role. I really don't like Ryan Reynolds, and there was too much quipping, it was overworked. This was made for netflix and it feels like it-- it's not poorly made per se, but it does feel like someone just checking off boxes. When Netflix started making movies I was kind of interested-- I mean they have tons of data so presumably they could recognize a gap in the market for, for instance, a buddy cop movie with orcs (Bright, 2017). I thought they'd grind out a bunch of weird entries like this that stacked search terms in novel ways. I was wrong. I guess once you capture a certain chunk of the market you don't need to innovate anymore, you can be lazy. Once a year I housesit at a place with Netflix and it blows my mind that people pay for it. There's really nothing there and there's less and less every year. "This food stinks" "I know, and such small portions..."

  ❤

  watched 2022-02-07
• Gangs of New York (2002) - pretty bonkers Scorcese movie that's like almost a fantasy movie. Everything in the world of this movie is so bananas, and it seems like the craziest stuff was pulled from real life, like Hellcat Annie, who had sharpened brass claws she'd wear into battle, and kept a jar of human ears on display at her bar. Daniel Day Lewis doesn't exactly have a psycho accent but it's pretty weird and he really punches it, and all the little turns of phrase are so peculiar, that yes I would classify this as a "psycho accent movie". Love to think of Scorcese picking up the book this was based on (also called "Gangs of New York") and thinking "what's this book going to tell me that I don't already know?", and getting his wig pushed back. ❤
  watched 2022-01-30
• Ride the Pink Horse (1947) - Lily's on a noir kick where she reads the book then watches the movie, and I started lurking her Letterboxd account for recs. This one was good-- the main guy is unpleasant but it doesn't really matter, and if he was contemporary-likeable it would've made the movie worse. He's a guy wound pretty tight trying to get something for himself. Something really weird that I loved was that the guy gets really physically messed up and basically loses his mind for a while-- I mean that certainly seems like it could happen if you got stabbed and had to keep running on empty, you just don't see it in movies very often-- lots of times people get hurt and all you see is they either shrug it off or not. There's a really great merry-go-round operator in this that starts off as a friendly guy who's taking advantage of the main guy, but then the main guy is like, I like your spirit. The movie takes place over a weekend in Santa Fe, during the Fiestas de Santa Fe, when the giant marionette Zozoba is burned, along with as much of the towns sadness and woe as can be written on scraps of paper. I looked up "Zozoba" on wikipedia:

  "Zozobra is a Spanish word for distress. The Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga has used the term to describe a specific form of existential anxiety related to uncertainty and ambiguity, following its usage by the poet Ramón López Velarde.

  The term has been used to describe the feelings of uncertainty and distress in the United States due to the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political events of the Trump presidency and 2020 U.S. presidential election."

  Do you guys want to meet up sometime and tack our anxieties to a large marionette and then burn the whole kit and kaboodle in the town square? ❤

  watched 2022-01-30
• Rampage (2018) - I needed a loud movie to watch while eating nachos ('needed' is maybe too strong a word here) so I fired up this dynamite movie that is maybe my favorite video game movie adaptation. The NES game fascinated me as a kid-- it's like a bootleg King Kong and an ersatz Godzilla tearing a town apart and that's it. I don't need anything else. Of course the movie adds something else, it adds action movie star The Rock, and no complaints there. After some consideration, I would say this is my 3rd favorite "small group of pals destroy Chicago" movie, after Blues Brothers (1980) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). Rampage is only at the bottom because they didn't show the Picasso in Daley Plaza, as the others did. You're talking about enourmous mutants colliding with the urban landscape and you don't show the Picasso, that's a major league missed opportunity. Other video game adaptation movies I liked include Super Mario Brothers (1993), Tomb Raider (2018), and Street Fighter (1994). Sadly none of those include a Picasso either (I think). For a sec I thought there was a Picasso in Batman (1989), a movie that was made into a video game (also 1989), but I looked up the clip, it was a well-chosen Francis Bacon. I tried to figure out if there's a reason for excluding Picassos from motion pictures and it doesn't seem to be a licensing issue-- in fact a 1970 District Court declared that the Chicago Picasso is technically in the public domain. So what gives?? ❤
  watched 2022-01-30
• Night and the City (1950) - another noir from Lily's list. Great cast, and the main guy is dynamite as a kind of pleasant weasel, "just trying to be somebody". He's got brains and he's got guts and he's just pointed in the wrong direction, "an artist without an art" as his cool neighbor says. His girlfriend Gene Tierney is so striking that it's almost unbelieveable that she'd be with this zero but that's how it goes sometimes, we all know that. Herbert Lom is smoking of course. And there's some great wrestlers in this too, including one of the greatest legitimate wrestlers of all time, Stanislaus Zbyszko, who basically plays himself. Zbyszko was famous in his day for wrestling legendary undefeated grappling demigod the Great Gama to an unabashedly undignified technical draw in 1910, and the movie treats him with enourmous respect. Jules Dassin directs. ❤
  watched 2022-01-30
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) - Third Lily noir of the weekend. Now I'm just echoing Lily's Letterboxd account but Robert Mitchum really nailed this particular flavor of old Boston accent. At one point one of the titular friends says that he's a bulldozer driver, and does bank robbery because the bulldozer thing is seasonal, and it got me thinking that crime does pay but not really very much. I mean this guy does 3 bank robberies and that's equivalent to 6 months of a regular job? And the bank robbery is probably harder, with all the scouting and the stress. And then Peter Boyle is a hitman who feeds info to the cops for a measly $20 a week???? OK, adjusting for inflation from 1974 to 2022 that's about $120, and over a year that's like 6 grand, but still, come on! Not only is he getting paid shit, he's risking his life for it! If I was a crime guy I'd tell my dudes, listen, if you're hard up for cash, come see me, I'll find you some more work. Don't rat me out just so you can afford to buy a used car in rough shape. ❤
  watched 2022-01-30
• Gandhi (1982) - dynamite movie, Ben Kingsley crushed it. Great casting, I loved it! This movie is 3 hours long and there's an intermission in the middle, which is quaint but I appreciate it. Did movie-goers really get up and stretch their legs? Seems like a logistical problem-- If I did this now I think I'd put a status bar on screen so you'd know how to time it. That's how they do it at the drive-in. ❤
  watched 2022-01-23
• UHF (1989) - I loved Weird Al as a kid, and I loved this movie. As an adult I'm amazed to find that I still feel the same way. Weird Al seems like such a sweet guy, and maybe that's the weirdest thing about him- that he's nice and sweet and everyone loves him. Great casting in this: Fran Drescher, Billy Barty, Kevin McCarthy, John Paragon (RIP), Michael Richards, and the first person to play Bozo the Clown on TV, Vance Colvig Jr., plays an incredible bum, perhaps the most scintillating bum performance in Hollywood history. According to wikipedia, Ginger Baker from Cream wanted this role???? I doubt he was much put out by the snub though, I mean Vance Colvig Jr really lit the screen on fire, and besides, Ginger Baker can always tell his friends that "some Bozo got the job instead of me". Other almosts: they wrote the TV scientist character for Joel Hodgson (pre-MST3K) but he wasn't comfortable acting, he bailed. Then they tried to get Crispin Glover for the role, but he was only interested in playing the car salesman in the commercial. They turned him down, not the right type. The studio thought this was going to be a huge hit so they released it the same time as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Batman, Do The Right Thing, Licence to Kill... needless to say it flopped. ❤
  watched 2022-01-23
• Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) - After all those James Bond movies I remembered this franchise but then we put it on and it's surprisingly cruel and joyless. The action shots are filmed in an innovative way but there's so much killing and it's all so casually approached that it grossed me out. The bad guy in this (played as a lisping cowardly tech billionaire by Samuel L Jackson) is motivated to mass annihilation by environmental concerns-- I feel like I've seen this angle a few times and it only furthers the idea that the problem is over-population. The more this gets repeated, even in an action movie, the more it seems like an obvious truth, but it's a dishonesty that's easy to exploit by IRL bad guys. The problem isn't too many people, it's that some of them are fuckin BILLIONAIRES. ❤
  watched 2022-01-23
• Sneakers (1992) - Absolutely dazzling starpower in this great, almost quiet movie from the writers of WarGames (1983). It's about hackers, and they never once use the word "hacker". Nonetheless I think it's more realistic than any other movie about or tangential to computer crime. The movie is about a motley crew of freelance security engineers, that's like the legal side of hacking-- you rob a bank and then tell the bank how you did it, and they let you keep some of the money. The key aspect of this field is finding a way to bypass the problem in a novel and unexpected fashion, and Sneakers visualizes this in a few fun ways, without feeling overly clever. There's one elegant part where Redford has to move suuuuuper slow to avoid a motion detector and it's really brilliant-- how many times have you seen a thriller where people are trying to go as fast as possible?? Moving extremely slow is even more tense, and it's a great use of resources when you're making a movie starring Robert Redford in 1992. The team they assemble in the movie is dynamite, a believably mixed bag of rogues, and as for the actors making the movie, I mean the only thing I can say is "star power": Redford, Sidney Poitier (RIP), Dan Ackroyd, River Phoenix (RIP), Ben Kingsley, James Earl Jones (in a small role)(RIP). Technical advisor on this was Leonard Adleman, the "A" in RSA encryption, so the math stuff is pretty alright (as I understand it). And the soundtrack features fuckin Branford Marsalis! I'm not a Marsalishead by any means but come on, that's star power, baby. According to the director, they had so much fun making this movie that the only way they could've had more fun would be if the film lab lost the footage and had to make the whole thing all over again!!!! UGH that is sooooooo CUTE!!!!!

  NB: at the time of this writing, James Earl Jones was not yet RIP, that was an error. He is RIP now though, so RIP. ❤

  watched 2022-01-17
• Pollyanna (1960) - I had this idea of "a Pollyanna" as a sort of goody-goody character, so I wasn't really that interested in seeing this for a while. Finally I did and I really liked it. There's a bit of a Moomin feeling, where there's a likeable character in a griping Hell world, constantly beset by miserable operatives hung up on their own hook. This made me anxious for the first half, and I was thinking "if only Pollyanna was with other Pollyannas, then she could start really lifting some serious weight". But then wouldn't you know it, she transforms the hell world into a glad land. This movie rekindled my interest in what I call "the bullshit ice cream 1910s". It's a weird mood to pin down but architecturally it's like the Addams Family but everything's new, and emotionally, tightly manicured. I tried to watch this again later with some rowdy pals and they weren't ready for it yet. ❤
  watched 2022-01-16
• Project A: Part II (1987) - rewatch of this extremely enjoyable Jackie Chan movie, the sequel to 1983's Project A (which is similarly superb). Set in Hong Kong of the late 1800s, which is suuuuuuch a great time period for a movie, mostly because very few people are in cars and there are only a few guns - just enough to add a level of high danger when present. Also the costumes are great! And setting it in Hong Kong at this time is also great because you have Hong Kong police, Chinese secret agents, imperial dudes, revolution guys, corrupt cops, regular bad guys, AND pirates, all working with and against each other at different times, with lots of new construction to climb on and through. I watched an interview with Jackie and he said that after Project A, western reviewers kept comparing him to old film comedians, even though he had never seen these movies. It's crazy to think of making a movie where you hang from a huge clock without being aware of Harold Lloyd, but watching old movies was a non-trivial feat in the age before the VCR. Anyway he made a point of watching them, if only to figure out what everyone was talking about. This one has a crazy scene based on the famous stateroom scene from Night At The Opera. ❤
  watched 2022-01-16
• Wrath of Man (2021) - Jason Statham / Guy Ritchie movie that is simply not good. It's not bad, but you can tell that the formula is way off. Ritchie adapted this from a French movie, and it's like in order to make it "his" he had to go ahead and topload the first half with ennnnnndless quips. Quite frankly there's too much quipping in this!!! You can't have everyone quip all the time, it's tiresome. They keep ragging on this one guy, saying he's gay and he likes kissing boys and so on, and he just rolls with it and you're like, wait, are they being homophobic or is he actually gay and they're trying to be supportive in their own shitty way? They never clear that up. Anyway it's just quips and people shooting at each other, I didn't like it. They do the thing where you see something happen and it makes sense but then later you see it again with more information and it makes a different sort of sense-- generally I like that in a movie. But like I said I didn't really like this. It's neither well made nor passionate and I need one or the other, ideally both. Statham plays his trademark tough but fastidious guy, but unlike his better films, not once in this does he prepare a nice meal for himself, or even take a bite of any food. At one point he orders "a burrito" but he doesn't even say what he wants in it, he just tells the guy "burrito" and the guy goes "coming right up". And then he doesn't even eat it, he just drops it on the ground! How are you going to make an action movie if you skip lunch like that??? The worst part is that the crux of the movie is that he's avenging his son's death but the only thing you learn about his son is that his name is Dougie and he's a college kid who doesn't believe in global warming.... Neither of these things inspire sympathy. ❤
  watched 2022-01-16
• Life with Father (1947) - I went looking for more movies set in the ice cream bullshit 1910s and someone suggested this so I looked it up. Usually I watch a movie all the way through but this one I had to stop, it was unrelenting. I watched this on YouTube and the comments were very enlightening-- they were all like "what a wonderful movie, it was a time when everyone knew their place and stayed there". Yuck! Wikipedia says "The more he rails against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesmen, holidays, his children and the inability of the world to live up to his impossible standards, the more comical and lovable he becomes to his own family who love him despite it all." I didn't find this loveable at all, I found it tiresome and unbearable. A vile and contemptable stinkeroo.

  edit: i was going through my ½ star reviews and realized I accidentally tagged "Bringing Up Father" instead of this. whoops! leave a comment if you know of any actually good "ice cream bullshit 1910s" movies, other than Meet Me In St Louis (which I loved) ❤

  watched 2022-01-16
• Spectre (2015) - After watching "Cowboys and Aliens" the other day on a whim, we went back and rewatched all the Daniel Craig Bond movies. He's great, in a way that didn't come into focus until we watched a little bit of a Roger Moore Bond later-- with Bond, as with any spy movie spy, you want to see a high level of confidence, but you also want to feel like what they're doing is actually difficult. Roger Moore just kind of walks around and everything seems too easy, but Daniel Craig is really working out there. Spectre is the one about building a global surveillance network, and it's also the "daddy issues" one, with Bond's adoptive brother seeking to destroy him for usurping his father's attention and affection when they were children. According to wikipedia there's a copyright issue with the character of Blofeld, who appeared, as part of the SPECTRE organization, as the main baddie in 8 movies from 1963 to 1971. then nothing until this particular picture. As I understand it, there was a plagiarism lawsuit about his appearance in the books, and the settlement gave the other guys the movie rights to the character. Bond author Fleming had a heart attack during the trial, followed by a second heart attack nine months later. So in some way you could say that Blofeld is a bad guy who killed his own author, as Blofeld in this movie is said to have killed his own father. The studios finally got the character back in 2015, through circumstances unclear. Maybe they just paid up? ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Casino Royale (2006) - First one of the current epoch. Watching it this time I kept thinking about how the young Daniel Craig looks like Weird Mike (aka Mike From The Future). Has anyone seen Weird Mike lately? How's he doing? The bad guy in this is Mads Mikkelsen, who we love, and he cries blood for completely no reason, it rocks. There's a love interest who (spoiler) kills herself at the end for apparently no reason, and this is a plot point for the rest of the Craig Bonds-- not that she died for completely no discernable reason, but that she like "betrayed him". Grow up. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Quantum of Solace (2008) - great bad guy in this, a greenwashing developer who seeks to privatize all the water in Bolivia. All the bad guys in this era of Bond are just doing stuff that governments and corporations are already doing, it's bleak. Of course in Bond world this guy gets abandoned in the desert where he gets so thirsty he drinks motor oil. Meanwhile in our world the Nestle dudes are watching pre-release screeners of this and laughing from their impregnable superyachts. The producers wish to thank Coca Cola. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Skyfall (2012) - if Spectre was the Bond movie about daddy issues, this is the mommy issues one. There's a final battle at Bond's ancestral home in Scotland, which has a secret tunnel in it for a completely historical reason. Scotland rocks. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• No Time to Die (2021) - Finally they made one where Bond realizes "OK, we're doing bad stuff too". Then his boss is like "we have to!" but doesn't make a very convincing case, because power corrupts. In the end they destroy the diabolocal invention, but like, can you really destroy an invention? No one has a copy of the plans? The bad guy in this is great, played by Rami Malick. Malick was Freddie in the Queen biopic, a role that was at one point offered to the guy who plays Q in this. The two of them don't have any onscreen time together in this movie, I wonder if they spoke at all. Anyway I spent the first half like "wow, that's Freddie Mercury" and then once the unrequited love angle showed up I tried to convince myself that actually it was the guy who played Ducky in Pretty In Pink. Something funny that happens in this one is that Bond makes a simple breakfast for his (spoiler) young daughter, but it's just an apple that he peels and cuts into thin slices. Then while she's eating it (with a fork) he goes "is it good?" and she's like "uhhhh yeah, it's great" and he's all proud. This made me realize that Bond probably hasn't prepared his own food since he was like, 6 years old-- he probably eats in restaurants and hotels for 3 meals a day and doesn't really know how food works. His "cool hack" is peeling an apple. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Logan Lucky (2017) - Fun Soderbergh heist movie with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Daniel Craig (continuing our Craigathon). Daniel Craig knows that he has to do a weird accent in every non-Bond movie he's in, or the audience will say "there's James Bond". Some people can't operate with a burden like that but some people seem to really luxuriate in its horrible gravity. Needless to say Craig is on team Burden Luxuriate In Gravity Of, and in this movie his accent is as unconvincing as his joy is evident. Director Soderbergh describes Logan Lucky as being like Ocean's Eleven but it's all "rubber band technology", which is apt, and as with Ocean's Eleven et al, we get to watch a plan that we think we understand play out perfectly, and then at the end there's a reveal that there's an even more diabolical plan underneath that, and it also goes perfectly. Checkers to chess. I liked it. Adam Driver has the best accent of everyone in this, I really liked him (and I didn't really like him in Star Wars). ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Knives Out (2019) - zany whodunnit that upends the format in a novel way, where you know who did it at the beginning (ala Columbo) and then you hope they don't get caught (because it was just a mistake), and then only at the very end do you learn that (spoiler) it actually was a murder. Daniel Craig does his craziest accent yet, a sort of Foghorn Leghorn. Don Johnston, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Toni Collette make the most of the opportunity to play annoying low-level bad people. I watched this initially at the beginning of the pandemic, and rewatching it now felt weird-- I've been inside long enough to rewatch a movie I saw already and didn't totally love. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• Goldfinger (1964) - Searching around trying to find another Bond movie that we like. Tried to watch Moonraker but Roger Moore was just too much of a dud. This one (with Sean Connery) was good. One thing that really struck me is that the initial bad thing that the bad guy does, which is the reason that the Bank of England (!) tells Bond to go after him, is that he's buying gold in one location and selling it at another location where it's worth more money. That may be against the best interest of the Bank of England but come on, that's not morally wrong by any stretch of the imagination. Also Goldfinger's ultimate plan is to 10x his investment, which honestly seems kind of paltry by today's standards. I mean if you're kind of evil and you already have 10 million dollars, I imagine you'd be able to get to 100 mil in a fairly short period of time, without ever personally pulling a trigger or vivisecting a rival by laser. Maybe it's just that times have changed since 1964 and opportunities for millionaires have increased. I mean that's certainly true. ❤
  watched 2022-01-10
• A Night at the Opera (1935) - I love all the Marx Brothers movies but this is my favorite. Great performances, great bits, great songs, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones are great as the lovebirds, and the whole thing flows beautifully. It isn't funnier but it just pops. This one is the saddle point between the more anarchic movies they made for Paramount, but before the MGM ones got too much like other people's movies. I've watched this one... a hundred times??? Every line and nuance is inscribed in my mind. At this point my favorite parts are the very little things, like Chico saying "sure..." or "Do you mind if I, uh...". I hung out with ML a few months ago and he got me with a perfectly apropos "one of those is a day bed". ❤
  watched 2022-01-09
• Stage-Struck Tora-san (1978) - We're moving in order through Tora-San movies for the moment, although that's not set in stone-- I may jump around. This is the 21st movie in the series. Opens with a UFO dream sequence and has an oddly funky soundtrack. ❤
  watched 2022-01-02
• Cowboys & Aliens (2011) - I remembered this as being fun, and it really fit the night's requirement of a good but not intense movie. James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) star in this "just what it says on the tin" sci fi western. And of course Walt Goggins is in this, this is primo Walt Goggins territory. It's cool but also nuts that the aliens in this just want gold-- that's humbling. You almost wish they were more evil, that they wanted to eat people or something, but they just want gold and they have no respect for human life. Sounds familiar. ❤
  watched 2022-01-02
• Tora-san Plays Cupid (1977) - I love the ones where Tora helps out a shy guy in love, and that's what we got here. ❤
  watched 2021-12-30
• F9 (2021) - pleasant and comforting rewatch that we turned to at the onset of a booster-induced fever. Usually the villain is kind of fun but I hated Charlize Theron so much in this that I found myself starting to hate her as a person, which is completely unfair. She's great in this but it's like she did too good of a job- I wish I could tell that she was having fun chewing up the scenery, but instead it just seems like she was inhabiting this character, who wears a mask of calm to cover a seething cauldron of fear and pain. I like that each time she appears she has a terrible, terrible haircut, in some way that softens the blow-- long white dread extensions in Fate of the Furious and a preposterous bowl cut in this one. ❤
  watched 2021-12-27
• Paddington 2 (2017) - pleasant and extremely comforting rewatch during the height of a fever. When I pressed play my body was pulsing in agony, but I was quickly transported to this British Eden where kindness always pays off. The main villain in this isn't even bad, he's just like, in the wrong place. The worst person here is the fake cop that lives in the neighborhood, who irrationally hates Paddington, and who everyone else hates. His authority is purely imaginary, which is a fiction that everyone in the neighborhood works to dispell. The movie itself looks like a Wes Anderson movie, with a fair amount of whimsical shots right in the center of the screen. The only difference is that Paddington 2 isn't so ponderous, and it doesn't have a cool mix tape that goes with it. ❤
  watched 2021-12-27
• Galaxy Quest (1999) - I like this a lot, and somehow that feels embarassing to admit. I mean it stars Tim Allen, it's a Star Trek send-up, and all the promotional imagery looks cheap as hell. Buuuut this is surprisingly good. It's a great script that sails along beautifully, the performances are great, it's even touching, in parts. It's a loving satire??? Sigourney Weaver is great as a sort of blond Nichelle Nichols, everyone's good. Tim Allen's good in this! Sorry, this is a good movie. In his book about the movie business, David Mamet calls this one of four perfect films. A trek-loving roommate made me watch this years ago, this time I rewatched it during a fever and it was a great selection. ❤
  watched 2021-12-27
• Kong: Skull Island (2017) - day 2 of my vaccine booster-induced fever, so we turned to this pleasant and comforting rewatch. We watched this last Christmas and I speculated at the time that maybe I'll watch this every Christmas, because at one point one person says "Santa Claus" out loud. Well here we are, Christmas Day. It's great. Samuel L Jackson, John Goodman, all the monsters look great. The best thing this movie does is recognize the intricate web of nature, and realize that there are situations where humanity as a whole can just fuck off. ❤
  watched 2021-12-27
• Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977) - loved this as a kid and I still love this. Jim Henson is a really inspiring artist in that he consistantly tried to do something good for the world and more or less succeeded. who else can say they did the same??? ❤
  watched 2021-12-27
• Roma (1972) - Watched this in small doses over a few days, and later I told myself I'd go back and watch it again, all the way through, but by the end I thought that maybe the small doses approach is the best. This is just "a movie about Rome" with no real main characters, except Fellini, who can be seen making the movie throughout. I loved being in this Rome, Fellini's Rome, and I kept thinking about how much I'd love going to a Fellini party, where everyone had to dress like someone from a Fellini film. My only issue is that it ended so abruptly after a long and smoky motorcycle scene, that I thought maybe my file was corrupted. No credits or nothing. I guess in Fellini's day "is the movie really over" isn't a question, because you're in a movie theatre and the lights are going up. but I would've liked something, even just a black screen with a little "(c) 1972 Fellini" at the bottom. ❤
  watched 2021-12-22
• The Suicide Squad (2021) - OK after the Harley Quinn movie I said I wouldn't watch more "movies like this" but I wanted a movie to watch while doing a task and I noticed that this had a big shark guy in it. Honestly I had fun, there were some good parts. Like The Green Knight, they broke things up into chapter with titles onscreen-- I remember Mandy did this too. It reminds one of a comic book (or a regular book) and maybe it's just a solution for abuptly transitioning from one part of the movie to another, but I could also picture a DVD owner being like, I want to just watch the part where they fight the starfish, or whatever. I mean that wouldn't be me- I just download movies illegally. But I could imagine some ownership fetishist out there enjoying that particular utility. ❤
  watched 2021-12-22
• The Green Knight (2021) - cool and far-out adaptation of this 14th century chivalric ode. I appreciated how far out it was-- it's fun to think about a time where you'd go on a quest and honestly have no fucking idea what's out there. Giants, magicians, sure. If you're watching this at home put the subtitles on because there's a few critical plot points that just get whispered. wish they didn't do that. For music I want more dynamic range but for movies I honestly want less. One thing I couldn't figure out even with the subtitles was one part where he was doing it with some lady but then it turns out she was just jacking him off? I think? I should ask Caity, she likes horny movies with witches, I'm sure she has an opinion about this. ❤
  watched 2021-12-22
• Nobody (2021) - Bob Odenkirk had an interesting career turn-- here's his straightforward action movie, which would surprise anyone time-travelling here from 1998. This was like the non-lonely version of John Wick-- families remain intact and instead of a pet being lost, a pet is gained. I liked it, Bob did a good job. They went a little aggro with cutting the scenes to cool music in a few parts, but that's life baby. ❤
  watched 2021-12-22
• Alien (1979) - very inventive sci-fi horror, it's great. ❤
  watched 2021-11-29
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) - an essentially perfect movie that I enjoyed enormously as a kid and now. ❤
  watched 2021-11-29
• Whisper of the Heart (1995) - nice romantic Ghibli movie with very few fantasy elements. the 2 second animation loop used in popular youtube "lo-fi beats to study to" (a girl at her desk with headphones on) is from this movie. It feels incredible when you see it on the screen. Before the drop there's a few other very similar scenes, and you go "hmm, that's almost like 'lo-fi beats'" and then when it happens it's a rush of recognition, a warm flush of excitement and almost embarassment. Then after that they show other characters at their desks, and you wonder what kind of beats they're listening to. ❤
  watched 2021-11-29
• Alien³ (1992) - unequivocably the worst one. I remembered this as being pretty bad but I was hoping to find that I had misjudged it. I hadn't, it really is bad. Michael Biehn (Hicks in Aliens) was so mad about his character getting killed off that he demanded and recieved almost as much money for the use of his likeness in one scene as he had been paid for his role in Aliens. The movie ends with Ripley diving into molten lead ala 1991's Terminator. ❤
  watched 2021-11-29
• Tora-san Meets His Lordship (1977) - I love the Tora-san movies where some old guy loves Tora because he's fun and says what's on his mind. This is one of them. The guy playing the butler (who is great) was the star of the Kurama Tengu movies (1928 - 1950), which are parodied in the opening sequence, with Tora as Kuruma Tengu (Tora's full name is Torajiro Kuruma). ❤
  watched 2021-11-29
• Room Service (1938) - the rare Marx Brothers movie where neither the script nor the characters were developed for the Marx brothers. They certainly shine, and it's nice to see them interact with other people giving good performances. The heavy in this is a real scenery chewer, he's great. With a young Lucille Ball. ❤
  watched 2021-11-23
• Casino (1995) - great Scorcese movie I watched while doing a task. When you're great you can have a movie set in a casino and call it just "Casino" and it's no problem. Great performances by everyone, especially Sharon Stone, who walks, flies, and eventually crawls. James Woods I personally don't like but he's great at playing dudes I hate. Deniro and Pesci are perfect of course. Don Rickles has a small role and god I would love to see a behind the scenes where Rickles obliterates the entire cast with his inimitable style of insult comedy. ❤
  watched 2021-11-23
• The Equalizer (2014) - Denzel as the ex-assassin living a regular guy life and acting as a sort of casual coach figure to anyone that needs it. Eventually someone needs help dealing with some actual bad dudes and his eyes deaden and he goes into kill mode. The thing that really got me is that it's set in Roxbury and his Boston accent is actually decent, which elevates his performance. Some of the other characters do an ok job at the accent, no one's terrible, and blessedly, not everyone goes for it. I mean realistically, not everyone in Boston talks like that. At one point this overconfident Russian mob guy tries to do the accent to fool Denzel and he sucks at it and you can tell that Denzel's character sees right through him, and it really underlines what a good and subtle job Denzel himself is doing. At some point every actor of suffienct ambition tries to tackle this famous accent and they usually fuck it up, but Denzel absolutely pinned it. Outside of the accents, yes, I enjoyed this movie. ❤
  watched 2021-11-23
• The Equalizer 2 (2018) - This time instead of working at the in-movie analog of Home Depot he's a Lyft driver, which kind of feels weird but makes sense for the character. Co-starring the guy from Mandalorean who looks like Jeremy Harris (Lazy Magnet). As with the first movie, there's a small part for Bill Pullman, who's always great to see. Denzel's character isn't especially strong or fast but in a fight he has an extraordinary sense of where things are and where they're going, which couples with a stony confidence to achieve wonders. Kind of a Larry Bird feeling. ❤
  watched 2021-11-23
• Aliens (1986) - casual rewatch over 2 nights of this tense thrill ride. It's pretty wild that the Alien movies swing around so much in tone but that's also a great strength. I could see loving the first Alien movie and then hating this one because of how different it is, but I like them both. Perfect casting in this-- Paul Reiser is great as the yuppie schemer. One crazy thing that I latched on to in this one is that Ripley basically time travels 60 years into the future but everything's pretty much the same, which is really truly dystopian. ❤
  watched 2021-11-23
• The Band Wagon (1953) - rewatch while stressed of this great Fred Astaire / Cyd Charisse movie. Grotesque co-star Oscar Levant seems blisteringly out of place, but not bad. They all launch into a dance number and he just marches confidently off-screen. What's his deal? As far as I can understand he was incredibly funny in real life and everyone loved him, and onscreen he was a wincing boglin. He commissioned Piano Concerto #1 from Schoenberg but then Schoenberg (who was his teacher) quoted him too high a price and they parted bitterly. Anyway I think this is my favorite Fred Astaire movie. ❤
  watched 2021-11-16
• Mr. Vampire II (1986) - Sammo Hung produced this action comedy martial arts movie about Chinese vampires (jiangshi) and it's fun as hell. Jiangshi have different rules than western vampires-- generally speaking they're from a Taoist worldview rather than a Christian one. There's rules of course, which gives the whole thing some structure, and they have a particular manner of dress- either funerary garments or the uniform of a Qing Dynasty official (seems like these get confused). Most importantly they hop around, which is cool-- if you have a particular way of moving then its easier for kids on a playground to imitate you, that's almost essential for a monster. This movie jump started the genre of jiangshi movies, with a bunch of sequels (all staring stern dynamo Lam Ching-ying) and a slew of imitators. ❤
  watched 2021-11-16
• Easter Parade (1948) - Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, with music by Irving Berlin. A lot of these movies involve figuring out how two people with different styles can learn to dance together, and it's a great bit that works (on me) every time. you see them stumble around, and then when they really click it's magical. Judy's competition in this one is Ann Miller, who's good but simply doesn't pop. Judy pops right off the screen and says hi how are you. This was supposed to be a Gene Kelly picture but Kelly broke his ankle just before production. Marx Brothers fans may recognize that Judy makes a "gookie" face at one point, a very specific funny face that was the Harpo's trademark-- cheeks puffed, tongue out, tongue curled, eyes crossed. ❤
  watched 2021-11-16
• Funny Face (1957) - Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn co-star and "fashion magazine" is the set-up, and it's fun. Hepburn gets a really fun and wild solo in a beatnik club, which is a highlight. Overall though I'd say it's kind of a downer-- a big point of the movie is laughing at "the intellectuals" and that's a drag. At one point Astaire and wonderfully mean co-star Kay Thompson (playing Diana Vreeland) have to blend in with a crowd of beatniks and they do this sort of hoodoo inspired dance number in phony southern accents, and while it's true that intellectuals always jam on this overly simple idea of a raw and primitive culture, I found it a bit much. ❤
  watched 2021-11-16
• No Time to Die (2021) - I guess this closes out the Daniel Craig era of Bond movies, I liked it. I mean I had fun. With this last batch they did changed the formula in an interesting way-- previous versions existed in a sort of vacuum, with each movie building on the vibe but not neccessarily the events of the previous movies. With the Daniel Craig movies the first one was a hard reset, and the history of this character-actor pair grew over the next couple movies, and then he dies in this one. It's kind of a good way to do it- you can't build up too much history or you can't really get anything done, and it's too hard to onboard new fans (comic book problem). That said I prefer it when it's just like, giving you the set up in the first couple minutes, no worries, no starting point. ❤
  watched 2021-11-10
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - This movie blew me away when it first came out. The special effects were so good, the main kid was about my age, and it was the strongest entry in the era of "morphing"- a new kind of special effect / movie monster that changes shape dramatically and resolves to a "liquid metal" state. see also Michael Jackson "Black or White" video (1991), Lawnmower Man (1992), Deep Space Nine (1995), and I guess Animorphs (1996 - 2001). I bet someone could (or already did) write a nice little article about morphing and the idea of a post-racial America. Anyway I wasn't really thinking about all that while watching the movie this time-- this time I was really listening to the soundtrack. The music to a lot of this is just like, rhythmic clanking, it's great. Am I right in assuming that no one does this anymore? Remember when Mike Tyson entered the ring to COIL blasting from stadium speakers and everyone got really freaked out? No one has the guts for shit like that anymore. ❤
  watched 2021-11-07
• Shaun of the Dead (2004) - this Edgar Wright zombie comedy is like all (?) of his movies- fun, fast-paced, with great editing. I don't know anyone who works the quick rhythmic cuts as well, certainly not in a comedy. ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Beetlejuice (1988) - rewatch of this enjoyable Tim Burton film that I've watched a half dozen times. It's a gem. There's one F bomb in this and it's perfect. Probably there was a lot of talk about "should we cut the F bomb" but they went with it and it was a great move. Are there other movies with only 1 swear? ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Critters (1986) - a perfect movie for a sleepover, which was the context I watched it in. You'd think this was inspired by Gremlins but the filmmakers vigorously deny it. Sometimes there's just something in the air and people the world over all invent steam engines at the same time or make small voracious monster movies. Did animatronics suddenly get way better in 1985? Or was just some feeling in the air? The monsters in this are able to form a perfect sphere, which is a great design for a small monster, especially in a cheap movie, where you can just roll them around instead of using elaborate puppetry. ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Trick or Treat (1986) - fun heavy metal horror movie with backwards masking as a key component. Gene Simmons plays a DJ and Ozzy has a small role as a preacher on TV. Another great movie for a horror movie sleepover, which is the context in which I watched this. Keep your eyes peeled for the lady who played "Large Marge". ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Ginger Snaps (2000) - great werewolf movie, one of my favorites. "Teenage werewolf" is obvious in retrospect, with body changes, hair in new places, surging hormones, etc.. But "teenage girl werewolf" adds a new kind of blood / moon connection aspect, so it's even better. Great casting, great characters, loved the mom in this, it's great. ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Blade (1998) - this was one of the first Marvel movies, and although it's not really "MCU", it is one of the best ones, maybe the best. Wesley Snipes is great, Kris Kristofferson is a weird choice but he's great, and Udo Kier once again plays an aristocratic vampire to much acclaim (see also "Andy Warhol's Dracula". Great action sequences, great soundtrack. Why did they stop using jungle for action movies? There are two soundtrack albums for this, one of which is "music inspired by", but neither of them really represent the music of the actual movie, which included Aphex Twin, New Order, Shonen Knife, Photek, Onyx, and more. ❤
  watched 2021-11-02
• Love Me Deadly (1972) - creepy movie about necrophilia with a few nice "date montage" sequences (among living people). The main lady drives around in a white Rolls Royce and that's really her undoing- having such an unmistakeable car. The second big problem is that this satanic necrophilic sex cult doesn't lock the door when they're doing a thing. This happens twice! If it was me, I'd lock the door. It's a lesson in security culture. This was the first movie in Tsarlag's annual Halloween marathon, I watched this one then dipped out into the malevolent night. ❤
  watched 2021-10-29
• Black Sabbath (1963) - cool, kind of goofy triad of horror stories hosted by Boris Karloff and directed by Mario Bava. Each story contains a long pan through at least one dense apartment filled to the brim with carved wooden furniture and dingey candelabras. I loved it. The band named themselves after the movie but I don't think they saw it, they just saw the name, and they saw that teenagers liked it. They could've just as easily named themselves after something else teens like, like "Driving Irresponsibly" or "Being Disrespectful". ❤
  watched 2021-10-27
• Evil Dead II (1987) - we ate weed gummies and watched this perfect movie and had a great time. ❤
  watched 2021-10-27
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) - This worked almost like a prequel, in that it was leads up to a huge moment that the audience should be aware of, the murder of Sharon Tate by Mansonites. What I didn't expect is that the script flips at the end and the main guys defeat the "hippy weirdos". If this was when the 60s ended, then I guess this presents the hypothetical "what if the 60s never ended?". The movie only extends a few minutes into this hypothetical timeline but it got me thinking about other movies that could go farther. There are hypothetical works where something bad happened (nuclear war, nazis won WW2), why not a hypothetical where something bad didn't happen? Maybe all "nice" movies are like this, set in a hypothetical world different from our own-- Notting Hill is set in an England without Thatcher, for instance. Well it would be nice if this were clearly elucidated. Anyway this movie was fun to watch but I got too hung up on the period piece aspect of it-- like I could tell they had a lot of fun getting the props but I was thinking about it the whole time, it was kind of distracting. ❤
  watched 2021-10-16
• The Ring (2002) - American remake of the Japanese horror movie of the same name, about a video that if you watch it, you die in 7 days. There's a franchise of these movies, and the last one was in 2017-- that must've been tough because I don't think you can really have a movie like this at the same time as YouTube. I mean the ghost kills you if you don't make a copy of the video but is sharing a link the same as making a copy? I mean, is it the same to the ghost? Mulholland Drive's Naomi Watts stars, which is funny because the video in the movie (the one where if you watch it you die) is like an early David Lynch. And I just learned that the producers initially offered the script to Lynch, who said no! I wonder if he saw this later and laughed about it. Anyways, I liked it. No gore or jump scares, just spooky stuff. ❤
  watched 2021-10-06
• Ocean's Eleven (2001) - very fun movie with a lot of star power, enough that Eliot Gould is the weakest link. There's a lot about communication in this- George Clooney and Brad Pitt are crime partners with an essentially imperceptable way of communicating and knowing what the other is thinking. Plus there's a lot of impenetable slang, one character speaks only mandarin (no subtitles) and is able to hold conversations with everyone else, and one guy has a ridiculous cockney accent with lots of rhyming slang, the classic theives argot. It's also bizarre for a movie in that they have an elaborate plan and (spoiler) everything works perfectly, no problem. it's like watching a Japanese woodworking video-- you see all these odd-looking pieces get carefully constructed, then at the end they all slot together. great editing, great music, great sets, kind of seems like you're not allowed to love a movie like this but I loved it, I had a great time. ❤
  watched 2021-10-01
• Ocean's Twelve (2004) - Also very fun. Julia Roberts has this bit in this that I've never seen in a movie before, where she plays someone that "looks exactly like Julia Roberts". Truly brazen to deploy such a tactic but I loved it. It's not even like a fourth wall break, it's like they built a fifth wall. ❤
  watched 2021-10-01
• Ocean's Thirteen (2007) - Another good one! I was happy to see Super Dave Osbourne in a small role. Then there's a computer guy in this that looks a LOT like Aaron Cometbus, enough that I pondered the possibility. I mean what's that guy doing nowadays? Anyway it's a different guy tho (looked it up). I also looked up Super Dave-- he's Albert Brooks' older brother??? Al Pacino is in this as the perfect disgusting kind of guy that Al Pacino always plays. Also the bad guy from O12 comes back as like, kind of a part of the team, same riff as Fast and Furious. I guess when you have a movie franchise with star power, any given star wants to stay onboard if possible. ❤
  watched 2021-10-01
• The Departure (2017) - good documentary about a Japanese monk who works with suicidal people, he works too hard but each time the phone rings he's got to pick it up because he doesn't want whoever it is to kill themselves :( the main guy is great. Suicide is a huge problem in Japan, it's the leading cause of death in men aged 20-44. ❤
  watched 2021-09-15
• Black Widow (2021) - fun superhero movie where no one really has super powers. I liked it EXCEPT that Don McLean's "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" was a plot point AND it opened up with a breathy slowed down "epic cinematic" version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, which made me very uncomfortable. I have to assume that everyone working on the song and its inclusion in the movie thought "wow, Kurt Cobain would absolutely hate this". But they did it anyway, and you know what? Fuck 'em. ❤
  watched 2021-09-07
• The Exorcist III (1990) - cool sequel to Exorcist that has nothing to do with Exorcist 2, which as I understand it isn't very good. Part of the reason that William Peter Blatty wrote this one is that he learned how much the Zodiac Killer liked the original Exorcist and I guess he wanted to make one that was like, against serial killers? But then this one turned out to be Jeffrey Dahmer's favorite movie... that's gotta be depressing for any filmmaker. This one is good although I guess the studio insisted there be an exorcism in it so they just tacked one on in the end. George C Scott is great and him and the priest have a great peppy banter. ❤
  watched 2021-08-26
• The Sentinel (1977) - I love Burgess Meredith in this! despite the fact that everyone who lives in this apartment building is actually a (spoiler) murderer who lives in Hell, they all seem... very pleasant! They have a birthday party for a cat, they dance to polka music, it's cute. The main lady is the mom from North Shore, that's so nice. Chris Sarandon is great as a greasy dud. Chris Sarandon could be an actually nice guy in real life but damn does this guy play a lot of cruel little pieces of shit. ❤
  watched 2021-08-26
• Jack Reacher (2012) - fun spy movie with Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise really is something else, it's hard to describe. He seems kind of just dumb enough to summon a bizarre sort of personal power. They made 2 of these movies with Cruise and then the writer (it's based on a series of 25 books) said it's actually super important to the character that he's really really tall, which Cruise isn't, so they're going without him for the next one. That's a bonehead move! In this one he uncovers a seedy corruption thing involving an evil construction company run by Werner Herzog. I love Herzog's 3rd act as a movie bad guy! ❤
  watched 2021-08-15
• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) - this time Tom Cruise has a lady buddy and the two of them run at full speed with maximum efficiancy, and it's almost like flirting, like they're on a date and one of them learns the other likes to run so they go "let's run" and then they're both just running, and they get to the restaurant and sit down, smiling. The end piece is needlessly set in New Orleans and because "chasing someone through Mardi Gras" has been done already they chase them through a Halloween parade! Which is just Mardi Gras with Dracula heads. No problem. ❤
  watched 2021-08-15
• F9 (2021) - pretty much everyone that was in more than one of these movies shows up at some point and it's fun. I think the only recurring characters they missed were Hobbs and Hector, although it's possible Hector was in the background of a flashback- that's where Vince was. Thankfully they didn't shemp Brian in but they did talk about him as a living chararcter and they show his car driving up to the barbeque at the end. The most noteable comeback was Han, who comes back from the dead, or rather, it was revealed that he didn't really die. That's something the fans were asking for and the writers capitulated. I sort of hope this is the last one of these because I think this is just about as crazy as I want these movies to get- they go to space, and they start to toy with idea "do we have mutant powers?". If they do another one there's going to be a time machine, dinosaurs, cyborgs, aliens... it's going to be a shit show. ❤
  watched 2021-07-31
• Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) - really weird modern movie. The basic idea of the movie is that a sentient computer program created by Warner Brothers wants to "scan in" Lebron James so he can "star in" (aka be shemped in to) new media for all eternity. He rejects the idea as "the stupidest thing he's ever heard" (appropriate response), which makes the program mad, resulting in the program pulling Lebron and his kid, Tron-like, into the computer, where he has to play a high-stakes basketball game against the program. the game is live-streamed. For his team he's allowed to choose from anyone in the Warner Serververse, basically any property they control, but he randomly links up with Bugs Bunny first, who steers the team into being just Looney Tunes, when it could've been Superman, the Flash, etc.. There are a TONNNN of crossovers, and half the crowd was just easter eggs for the parents: Danny Devito's Penguin from Batman Forever, King Kong, Clockwork Orange guys (???), Jabber Jaw, Herculoids... A record-breaking amount of shemps for a movie where the main character's main fight is "don't get shemped". Although at one point Lebron is flying a spaceship through the Serververse in wonder of how many incredible things there are in there-- making the whole movie seem like a flex, against Disney I guess. At one point the evil AI turns the traditionally animated Looney Tunes into CGI versions and they all hate it... it's like the villains in the movie are the people that made the movie??? ❤
  watched 2021-07-31
• Old (2021) - this movie is so bad I thought that movie being bad was part of the movie- I mean at first I thought the spooky reveal was going to explain why everyone had completely no depth. Every character formally announces their name and occupation to every other character, it's like the weakest scriptwriting you could imagine. The twister at the end was insipid and then cut to the two main people in a helicopter talking to a cop who says "well, we arrested everyone down there". Oh, there was one thing in the movie that I liked, which was that one of the characters was a rapper named "Mid-Sized Sedan" ❤
  watched 2021-07-31
• North Shore (1987) - one millionth rewatch of this, our most-rewatched movie. ❤
  watched 2021-07-21
• Stargate (1994) - James Spader and Kurt Russell star in this Egypt / ancient aliens movie that isn't very good but has some cool looks in it. Anytime the Earth guys do something I thought "wrong move". I realize that you can't make a movie without some cavalier protagonists but damn, just charge right through the stargate, huh? ❤
  watched 2021-07-21
• The Meg (2018) - shark movie with Jason Statham, sadly he did not have time to prepare and enjoy a meal in this one. Sakiko stopped watching shark movies when she started getting into surfing, but this one is crazy enough that it's nothing to really worry about. I liked it. ❤
  watched 2021-07-17
• The Muppet Movie (1979) - I don't have a thesis on this or anything but this movie does a great job of bringing you into their world- it starts with all the muppets in the movie theatre getting ready to see the movie, and it ends with them in the studio making a version of the movie itself, and in that movie there's a surprising explosion that topples a papier mache rainbow and results in a real rainbow streaming in. all the while there's a lot of fourth wall breaks, or moments when the characters read the screen play... it really reinforces the idea that the muppets are actors in the movie but also just like that in real life. incredible. ❤
  watched 2021-07-17
• Death Race (2008) - nearly unenjoyable remake of what I remember being a pretty fun (or at least crazy) Roger Corman original. In the original they race across the country- in this one they're just on a track inside the prison. More than any movie I can think of, this was like watching someone play a video game. But unlike a video game the entire production was slate gray, and the camera constantly shook or zoomed to make up for lack of visual interest. All together it was like staring into a concrete mixer. For some reason I watched a bunch of movies written and directed by Paul WS Anderson recently and they are all abysmal. It's almost inspiring that he continues to get work, I guess he makes a lot of calls. ❤
  watched 2021-07-14
• Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) - another great FF movie that wikipedia calls "an unlikely pairing of titular characters" and I couldn't agree more. It was a balm to watch this after watching all those Transporter movies-- in this one the camera moves to slo mo in the cool parts of the fight, for which I am grateful. From the few that I've seen at this point, I can say that Jason Statham movies tend to show him preparing and enjoying a nice meal, it's a nice part of his character as an actor-- precise but also passionate. In this one he makes a nice well-seasoned omelette right at the beginning, that's how he gets the energy for the rest of the movie. ❤
  watched 2021-07-14
• Lovers Rock (2020) - I've never seen a movie that describes a great party better than this one. The whole movie is the party, and there isn't really a huge plot, just some stuff that happens. It's not like an 80s rager with 1000 people and a rock band and a swimming pool, it's just in a house with like, 50 people? Maybe less. There are 2 lonnnnng sequences where everyone on the dance floor loses it to a song, both are transcendent. The whole movie I was waiting for something really bad to happen, and I cried at the end when everyone is safe and sound. It's like the first part of a horror movie where everyone's hanging out and having fun, but then no killer ever arrives. The music is all reggae and everyone speaks in a heavy west indian british dialect that I couldn't always figure out, but for me it was like being at a loud party and only understanding 1 out of ever 4 words people are saying. I loved it. Probably the best movie I've seen all year. Flan wrote a great review of this where she said "not since Terminator 2 have a watched a movie and wondered 'how did they do this?'". Not only are the performances incredible but the movie itself is incredible-- it's hard to believe that they were able to raise funding for a movie that's just a really great party, not punctuated by some tense event. I guess because it's part of a series of movies by the same director, and the other ones have more conventional stories. Anyway, great parties are transformative by themselves, that's enough of a story event. I loved this movie!!! ❤
  watched 2021-06-29
• After the Thin Man (1936) - rewatch of this enjoyable whodunnit. Other whodunnits rely on a smart investigator at the center, the Thin Man series has a smart guy too but he never really "figures it out" until the very end, when the entire cast gets together in a room and someone inevitably makes a fatal error. This movie's kind of a lesson in branding too- the first one, "The Thin Man" was about a thin man. After The Thin Man has no thin man in it, but they needed to tie it in. Then there's "Another Thin Man" which is like "another one of these movies". They should've done a Fritzi Ritz and called the second movie "Nick and Nora" (after the characters that everyone loved and remembered), but they blew it. But on the other hand, it seems like no one cared and it's better to be clear ("here's another movie you like") than pedantic. Nick and Nora are a great team, they love each other, they make fun of each other, and they love love love to get drunk. ❤
  watched 2021-06-29
• The World's End (2013) - Another Edgar Wright late-grab genre reveal with Simon Pegg and Nicholas Frost, this one a sci fi action comedy (or really a comedy sci-fi action) about corporate chains and old friendships. All the performances are great, lots of great little jokes at a fever pitch, I loved it. Great soundtrack too. The movie hangs on the party feeling of being in an excited state and doing something crazy just because "that's what we're doing", which is irrational but very real and they sold it well. I think I love an action movie where everyone's drunk? I loved this, Drunken Master, and that Irish horror movie they showed at the thon, where aliens won't eat you if your blood alcohol level is high enough. Are there more like this? ❤
  watched 2021-06-13
• Gretel & Hansel (2020) - this horror movie hit the sweet spot for me-- spooky but not gory or jumpy, lots of great shots, great atmosphere, and you get just enough information about everyone. Things stay mysterious but you still feel a sense of closure. It's set in a vaguely European fantasy world and fantasy time (pre-industrial revolution) but only one person has a British accent. Usually in these things they give the fairy tale residents these dumbass YA British accents, this time they decided "let them talk how they talk". Gretel is great, with a Vidal Sassoon haircut. Hansel is a loveable dummy. The witch is dynamite, perfect casting. The costumes were great and even the witch hats seems totally natural in that world. "Witches Hut" is a spooky location I haven't really given much thought to before but the hut in this one is superb, almost a Tadao Ando feeling-- big shapes intersecting, and a huge subterranean concrete room with a thick frosted glass roof at ground level. A superb hut. ❤
  watched 2021-06-11
• Nashville (1975) - This was cool, I didn't love it, didn't hate it. You have a bunch of cool characters and they sort of interact for no reason, having fun little episodes, and then it seems like everything's spriraling in to one fatal finale in which all is revealed, but really it's just "a bunch of characters all in the same place at the same time". I guess you have to end a movie somehow, I just wish they didn't make it seem like something was going to happen. I guess if you want someone to fund your movie you need to give them a wow somewhere. ❤
  watched 2021-06-11
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) - we watched this last on this recent rewatch of the series, it was sort of hard to motivate towards this one because with the exception of Han, the "family" isn't in it, it's mostly about a 35 year old man playing a 17 year old. Buuuuut it's pretty good. This one has the best music of the franchise, with DJ Shadow, Atari Teenage Riot (!), and the 5 6 7 8's. No one has ever succeeded in making a franchise that's based on an idea rather than a set of characters-- they tried it with both Halloween and the Exorcist and in both cases it just didn't take. But I like a weird entry. I liked this one. They came up with a really elegant way to do a fast cars movie in a place with very little open space. Han dies at the end but a few movies later he shows up again, and you get the feeling like Tokyo Drift isn't canon. That's their right- Han rules and it's great to have him back onscreen. But then there's a callback at the end of 6 and your brain spins out for a sec to try and work out the chronology. I liked this too. ❤
  watched 2021-06-06
• Hot Fuzz (2007) - extremely fun buddy cop comedy, one of a two movies by the same team (see also "World's End") that do a sort of mid movie pivot where something new about the world is revealed, or you think you're watching one kind of movie but then its something else. I love this sort of thing, it feels exciting. Great chemistry between the two mains and some extremely British characters that I really enjoyed. ❤
  watched 2021-06-06
• Point Break (1991) - they show a clip of this during World's End and so we went forth and rewatched this too. Great movie up to the last robbery, which straight up doesn't make sense. If I was the surfers, I would simply get in my van and peel out, then just surf into a new day. Is this what happens in the remake?? ❤
  watched 2021-06-06
• The Fast and the Furious (2001) - we rewatched a bunch of these movies in anticipation of the new one. I don't like fast cars, in fact you could even say that I hate fast cars, but I like these movies. There's a great team that's actually not really a great team, just "some people I know that wanted to be here", and they get into slightly different problems and for every single problem, the solution is precision driving. It's like instead of making a well rounded team that also has a master of disguise and a demolition expert and a ninja, it's "Oops All Car Guys". It's preposterous for sure but it lets you get into a little more of the finesse of car-guy-ism than if the team's portfolio of expertise were more sensibly diversified. I feel like you could roll a very similar scenario with basically any skill set, and I would enjoy it. Like the team is all marine biologists and every drug cabal they encounter has an undersea hideout protected by sea snakes but only some of them are poisonous. Or it's all restoration cabinetmakers and they have to replicate an ornate mechanical clock to make a switcheroo with a diabolical mercenary who keeps a computer chip hidden inside an original Roentgens secretary desk. Tyrese says "look at that marquetry, it's gotta be mid 18th century" and then Ludacris rolls his eyes and says "late 18th actually. See the precise dogwood inlay? That was at the bequest of King Frederick William II". Well obviously these other movies don't exist, only the ones where eveyone's a car person. So that's what we got, and there's no use crying over milk that doesn't even exist on this timeline. The ones we have are good. ❤
  watched 2021-05-27
• The Big Boss (1971) - Bruce Lee movie about the workers, it's great. At first we were watching it with the subs, but then I realized that the subs were missing a lot, so we switched to the dub and were able to get more context. Generally I think of the dubs as being a dumb version (made by a studio) and the subs allowing for a closer translation (made by fans) but maybe there's a point in time before which these standings were inverted. ❤
  watched 2021-05-09
• Enter the Dragon (1973) - rewatch of this perfect movie. I learned recently that Bruce fought for the spiritual stuff to get included in this and it's great. I remember seeing this as a kid and when he says "the art of fighting without fighting" that was like an enourmous gong sound. This time around I got really into the Jim Kelly / John Saxon relationship, they're 'nam buddies, they place bets on each other, they compliment each other, it's great. Good storytelling. The mirror scene at the end is magnificent- a cool idea we've seen before that they really ratcheted up. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• The Young Master (1980) - Early Jackie Chan movie that has the most rapid-fire hand to hand stuff of any of his other movies. I liked it a lot but it's more like watching a ballet than watching a movie. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• 20 Feet from Stardom (2013) - great music documentary about back up singers from the 60s to the 80s. There are a lot of different stories here but one that really affected me is that some people just don't want to be a star. Everyone here loves singing, and singing with others, and music. I cried. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• TINA (2021) - great documentary about Tina executive-produced by Tina's husband. Tina is an absolute powerhouse and everyone wants to ask her about the abuse she suffered from Ike, causing her to constantly relive it. Towards the end of the doc Mr Tina says something like "that's why we're making this movie, so she doesn't have to talk about this ever again". Tina is incredible. I cried. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• The Go-Go's (2020) - good documentary about the Go-Go's- their rise from the LA punk scene, their successes, their infighting. I had two main takeaways- 1., this movie really makes it seem like they had two huge songs, We Got The Beat, and Our Lips Are Sealed, and that's it. That's extraordinary but that's pop I guess. I guess I post a lot so I'm amazed by people that have like, two posts. 2., they goofed off a lot, that seemed like an essential part of the mix. I didn't cry during this but I liked it. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) - I remembered this being "kinda good" but really I think that when it came out it had just been a while since the last Alien or Predator movie. There's no passion here, no joy. Every other installment in either of these franchises has passion for weird goo and strange times. This is strictly a movie based on a video game. It doesn't even have the desperation that can make a bad movie fun. This is just someone's job. ❤
  watched 2021-04-29
• I Am Bruce Lee (2012) - made for TV documentary about Bruce Lee with a lot of talking heads, some of them wisely chosen (his wife, kids, partners, etc.), some of them not (miscellaneous whoevers including someone from Black Eyed Peas and Ed Bundy). ❤
  watched 2021-04-20
• Walk with Me (2017) - good doc about Thich Nhat Hanh that does a great job of "show, don't tell"-- there's no "now they're doing this" narration, you just figure it out. Maybe the filmmakers were like "we're doing it like this as a statement about zen", but really everyone should be shooting for this, it's a great way to go. The doc was cool and it was a lot like a punk movie- a tight crew of people all shave their heads and go on tour. ❤
  watched 2021-04-20
• Tenet (2020) - I started to watch this while doing a task and then I stopped because I was missing too much. Watched it with attention the next day and yes, it's confusing and doesn't ultimately "make sense" but it's basically a time travel action movie with a novel aspect, which is that you can't "hop" backwards but you can (via some gateway) invert your timeflow or whatever and start going the other way, with people moving both ways in time able to share space, guns that suck bullets out of the wall, etc.. I wouldn't call this an important movie but I liked the way it brought up fatalistic time in a fun way. Spent half the movie thinking the bad guy was Kenneth Braunaugh, then the other half thinking it was the EPA guy from Ghostbusters. Gonna look it up now... ahhh I was right the first time, KB. I quickly (but not immediately) realized that "tenet" is part of the famous palindrome / magix square "sator arepo tenet opera rotas" and sure enough, all those other words appear as characters or locations throughout the movie. This is a real "neat little package" movie. ❤
  watched 2021-04-20
• King Kong (2005) - Watched this over 2 nights because it's 3.5 hours long. For the first hour I wasn't into it but after a while I got really into it. Naomi Watts is great, she really pops off the screen, and at the end they do this weird trick where in different ways and different scenarios you're shown fake Naomi Wattses and it's so dissatisfying and then you see the real Naomi Watts and you're like ahhhhhhh there she is. The turning point of the movie for me was when she flabbergasts the beast with vaudeville pratfalls-- a really really weird move, for her and for the movie, but I loved it. There's a few disgusting parts, all the "other guys" are great, and Kong looks pretty good- way more like an actual gorilla than any other Kongs, with a face that was really afire with emotion but quite distinctly not human emotion. I didn't think about special effects very much, which is how I judge special effects movies now. ❤
  watched 2021-04-20
• Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) - fun movie where unfortunately you kind of have to watch the previous Godzilla movie to start to make sense of. Central to the concept is this idea that Godzilla doesn't want to kill all the other monsters, he just wants them to bow to him as the king of the monsters. If they do that, then whatever. It's a sort of modern media problem where they want every character to be a cool tough bad boy with a good heart. I can understand that. Anyway that wasn't really explained and then on top of that there were a fair amount of infodumps, I found myself wishing I was watching a French dub with no subtitles. In order to display plot points the filmmakers utilized a conspiracy guy as a secondary (or maybe tertiary) character, which I thought was irresponsible for the world we live in. He bathed in bleach??? Is that a dogwhistle???? Anyway all the parts with Godzilla or King Kong were great, and like I said I had fun. ❤
  watched 2021-04-04
• Ponyo (2008) - rewatch of this dynamite flick. So refreshing to see a great movie with a cool weird rich world, in which no one ever tells you details and you simply do not require them. Of course there are a million questions you could ask, from "who's that guy" to "why is this happening" but we don't ask those questions because we're not nerds, we're people enjoying a beautiful moment. Even the people in the movie don't know what's going on! That's really inspiring-- everyone just rolls with it. If this movie was made by a committee like most modern movies they'd insist that audiences need a stand-in character to constantly ask questions and be perplexed. Luckily it was made by a tyrant. ❤
  watched 2021-04-04
• Tora-san's Lullaby (1974) - somewhat unremarkable entry in this reliably pleasant series. Sometimes in this series you really see that Tora loves love more than he loves his own love, his own happiness. This is one of those instances. This is also the first movie with the third uncle, Masami Shimojō. He's not the best but he does OK. There's a passionate moment in this that either of the previous uncles would've really eaten up, and you can tell he really worked himself up about it but he just doesn't have the same fire. One of the characters is supposed to be ugly but he's just a handsome guy with glasses on-- first time I've seen that trope on a man. ❤
  watched 2021-04-02
• Monster Hunter (2020) - a pitiful movie with no story and uninspiring design. Total piece of shit. I guess I was excited because it's the lady from Fifth Element and the guy from City of Lost Children but really the key players in this fable are a video game company and a guy who makes movies based on video games. There's an Alien part that will make you say "I wish I was watching Alien" and a Tremors part where you'll say "ah, Tremors, that was a really fun movie". ❤
  watched 2021-03-28
• Stone (1974) - great Australian biker movie where the bikers come across as wild and gross but ultimately a reasonable response to bullshit society. Really makes a good argument for being a biker! Everyone looks cool and even the main guy's dopey Paul Revere look grew on me. Cool soundtrack that also had a lot of well-placed silence. A few of the actors reappeared in Mad Max (1979), and there's even a guy named "Bad Max". ❤
  watched 2021-03-26
• Police Story 4: First Strike (1996) - Action-packed Jackie Chan movie, this is the one with the snowmobiles, sharks, and he fights the guy with the ladder. good mix of delirious close-quarters fighting, and stunts, with none of the huge tedious explosion stuff that tends to slow down his later movies. ❤
  watched 2021-03-20
• Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978) - Jackie Chan's breakthrough movie, made just before Drunken Master, with the same cast, but everyone's even better in this one and everyone's character is more friendly. The magnificent and childlike Yuen Siu Tien co-stars and his IRL son Yuen Woo-ping directs. Yuen Siu Tien was the inspiration for Ol' Dirty Bastard (via 1981's "Ol' Dirty & The Bastard") ❤
  watched 2021-03-20
• The Accidental Spy (2001) - fun but confusing Jackie Chan spy movie with a lot of great fight sequences. I just hit wikipedia to check on something and learned that the version I saw was re-cut by Dimension Films (then a sub-set of Miramax, owned by Disney). In the original version the vials they're fighting over are Anthrax 2, in the Disney version it's like Super Heroin, which I guess makes it less of a moral issue when Jackie eventually hands it over to the bad guys. Also some scenes were completely re-edited and some scenes where people were talking in English were dubbed over with Turkish, and Jackie's responses were dubbed over with "I don't understand what you're saying". I guess that makes the story cleaner but dubbing into a foreign language? that's a great solution to a problem. ❤
  watched 2021-03-20
• Project A: Part II (1987) - perfect Jackie Chan movie. Project A is wonderful and this keeps up the same energy, but this time the pirates are cute. I wish they'd set more movies in the 1800s, it's perfect for settings and costumes and guns are more rare. Guns make action movies worse! I checked the wiki and allegedly Jackie wasn't really aware of silent comedy but everyone kept bringing it up in the reviews of Project A pt 1 (in which he hangs from a clock ala Harold Lloyd). Kind of hard to imagine but I guess video technology wasn't really there in 1986 so watching a specific old movie wasn't a trivial thing. Well anyway in between pt 1 and 2 Jackie clearly did his homework-- this one as an incredible Buster Keaton nod and a mindblowing Marx Brothers bit, where people keep showing up to a small apartment. Strongly recommended! ❤
  watched 2021-03-20
• Sunset Boulevard (1950) - Damn I can't believe I hadn't seen this already, this is like a Dracula movie! Great castle, incredible hyperbolic performance from Gloria Swanson, I loved it. You can really see the emotions pace through her mind like a caged jaguar. Really magnificent. ❤
  watched 2021-03-12
• King Kong (1933) - more fun than the Jessica Lange one, and maybe because it was less smart and less willfully campy, it felt more innocent. Like the 70s Kong is racist, but the 30s Kong has racism. Kong himself looks great, if a little goofy, and all the dinosaurs on the island look wonderful. The part where Kong fights at T Rex is superb-- because they can't really do jumping with the stop motion animation, it's a real and surprisingly engaging grapple.

  watched this in 2021 but I just edited this (in 2023) because I noticed i had tagged the 2005 King Kong for this by accident, i mean no cares but i noticed it so why not fix it? ❤

  watched 2021-03-12
• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - comforting rewatch of this basically perfect movie. Kept thinking about how the little girl, Mei, was Ponyo, and the main girl, Satsuki, was the boy's mom in Ponyo. Here's Miyazaki talking about Totoro (the character), quoted on wikipedia: "[Totoro is] not a spirit: he's only an animal. I believe he lives on acorns. He's supposedly the forest keeper, but that's only a half-baked idea, a rough approximation.". ❤
  watched 2021-02-20
• King Kong (1976) - Kong looks crazy in this and there are definitely fun moments but I kept thinking about 1. racism, and 2. imagining an unpleasant scenario where a stoned 1976 Jeff Bridges tells a 1977 cocktail party that "actually it's really smart, and about media narratives" or whatever. Once they capture Kong, the oil guy pivots to being a Hollywood guy, and there's almost a meta-narrative where Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange are like "we don't want to be in this movie anymore" but they do it anyway and their hand-wringing accomplishes nothing. I mean I don't think this was intended to be "a critique", and it doesn't work as such, these are just things I was thinking about while watching this white anxiety movie where the special effects are enjoyable. ❤
  watched 2021-02-20
• Tokyo Story (1953) - another delightful Ozu movie. The starring role goes to Chishū Ryū (the high priest from Tora-san), who plays the husband in an older couple from Hiroshima who go to visit their kids in Tokyo but the kids are kind of too busy to make time for them. Setsuko Hara plays their widowed daughter-in-law, who's nicer to the couple than their own kids. As with Late Spring, characters talk directly to the camera and it's intoxicating. At one point Chishū Ryū gets shitfaced and does a small and understated comedy drunk routine that I loved. ❤
  watched 2021-01-24
• Drop City (2012) - good documentary about the legendary dome commune Drop City. Drop City has a bad rap as like a nightmare hippie zone, and that's what it turned into, but the early days seem full of the magic of Building A Wild House, which is absolutely extremely fun. they didn't even do drugs! They just grooved on the horizon. Unfortunately when that fades you're just like "damn, this dome is cold as shit" and you're surrounded by dickhead wastoid egomaniacs telling you what your vibe is because they read most of an article in Rolling Stone. ❤
  watched 2021-01-22
• Departures (2008) - heartwarming movie about a guy who quits his try at city life, moves back to his hometown, and inadvertantly becomes a traditional Japanese mortician (which is sort of a mortuary aesthetician-- no embalming or anything). I liked it. The main guy was kind of a clam and in a lot of sequences I was like "tell her how you feel!" but that's how a movie works sometimes. His boss is played by Tsutomu Yamazaki, the magnificent cowboy from Tampopo (1985). ❤
  watched 2021-01-21
• Jurassic Park (1993) - I don't know if it's because there's a reptile in the house or because there's a vivarium in the house, or maybe it was the combo, but we felt compelled to watch this, the best reptile vivarium movie of the 90s, maybe (?) best of all time. Man, dinosaurs are so awesome, and this movie is really a blessing. The special effects still look good, the cinematography is great, fuckin John Williams delivering ANOTHER rousing score... magnifico. And the casting is great. Laura D and Sam O both play some species of doofus parentus in this, but then you think about their credentials and it's like, a grip of David Lynch movies, and fuckin POSSESSION. Throw in stars of The Fly, Pulp Fiction, SEINFELD, Tremors... that's a potent brew. I read a hot take about Jurassic Park that was something like the predators in this would probably steer clear of you, but the herbivores would potentially stomp the shit out of you on site-- something about how predators need to pick their battles wisely because each kill costs almost as much calories as it gets them. But the herbivores have calories just growing out of the ground, so they can afford to be aggro (see also rhinoceroses). Anyway I'm not trying to take JP to task, just something to think about. Also-- Richard Attenborough was David Attenborough's brother? I wonder if they had a stupid little fight about this movie? ❤
  watched 2021-01-15
• Kong: Skull Island (2017) - I think this is my favorite King Kong movie? Kong looks great, and instead of just "a scared animal" he's like a straight up good guy in this. John Goodman and Samuel L Jackson co-star, and all the monsters look dynamite, with the exception of the main baddies, which look confusing, which is a cool move in like a Lovecraft way, as if to say "we tried to recreate this monster from a nightmare and our minds would simply not allow us". We watched this on Christmas, and at one point someone says "Santa Claus" out loud, which has me thinking that maybe I'll just watch this every Christmas? ❤
  watched 2020-12-25
• The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020) - really nice documentary about Best Group with a few "wow" moments- like how the drums on "Staying Alive" are a tape loop, that's insane. Flan was put off by the presence of one of the Oasis brothers but I think he did 2 huge things: pointing out that family singing together is an insane sound you can't just get; and being a known grouch that embraces this group that history remembers as cheesy. ❤
  watched 2020-12-23
• The Muppet Movie (1979) - zillionth rewatch of this beautiful movie. My mom said she saw this in the movie theatre the day I was born and went into labor right at the end. I think maybe the Muppet franchise is why I seek to be appreciated without belonging? the Muppets are a crew but some of them don't even like each other, which is utopic. ❤
  watched 2020-12-23
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - damn this movie is great! In want of a sense of a belonging, a classic middle child conjures up an alien that's both stronger and smarter than him and weaker and dumber; they exist together in a dual form and when one drinks the other gets drunk. They both get sick and approach death but only the alien goes over. Luckily he's fine, and the boy, the boy's brother, and the boy's brother's weird friends haul ass on bmx bikes through the subdivision to evade cops and bring the alien back to his ship. As with John Williams' rousing score, everything seems magical when it's happening and obvious when you think about it, and at the same time doesn't really "make sense" outside of a child's outrageous feeling of wonder, which is everywhere. ❤
  watched 2020-12-03
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - there was way more action than I'm used to with this crew, but I had a great time and there were a few things that you could tell they always wanted to do in the show but weren't allowed to, like say "bullshit", walk around on the outside of the ship, and get drunk. The absolute craziest part of the movie was when a guy said "are you guys on some kind of star trek?", which is frankly unreasonable. Watched this on Thanksgiving. ❤
  watched 2020-11-28
• Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) - I was really anticipating this and I had a lot of fun. Very early in the movie they tell you explicitly that this won't really make sense until the end, and it's never like "explained" what's going on, but it does kind of "make sense". The whole movie is about trying to be creative on a strict deadline, which I particularly appreciate, and although the premise is outlandish, it is kind of a good distillation of how it feels to play a great show, that sort of reality-melting flow feeling. Kid Cudi is in it, which makes the movie feel like it's from 2010, and Weezer plays the theme song, that's a bad move. Buuuuuut like I said, I had fun. ❤
  watched 2020-11-28
• Dark Shadows (2012) - well I gotta say I had fun. not great, some cool parts, and they kind of threw too much into the ending, buuuuuut...? I had fun. I had this grouped with the Burton / Depp "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" which seems abominable from the 1 minute of it that I saw, but this was mostly fun. Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Lee, Alice Cooper, no problem. ❤
  watched 2020-11-04
• Halloween II (1981) - as I understand it, the Halloween franchise was supposed to be an anthology series, like every year on Halloween there'd be a spooky movie called "Halloween" with no recurring characters. But the first one was so good they were like, OK we'll do another one to wrap it up but that's IT! It's funny how they failed on that-- they got locked in. Something extraordinary about this is the depth of field-- so many of the shots have a main character on one side of the screen then a long view of the background, where sometimes there's a bit of critical activity. Very fun way to do a movie and also this must've looked like shit in the original home video release, it's uncroppable. ❤
  watched 2020-11-04
• Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) - it's incredible to me that I haven't seen this up to now. Nosferatu is a weird fork of the Dracula concept, maybe the best way to say it is that the Lugosi Dracula is the American idea of the aristocrat, Nosferatu is the European idea. I mean America doesn't really have hereditary royalty so we think of them as being like, suave and genteel with a permanent tuxedo. Europe has a long history of villainous aristos, so Nosferatu is a misshapen cowering abomination, delicate but infinitely cruel. Herzog's Nosferatu adds an explicit plague aspect to the character, although it's seemingly disconnected at the same time, just "also I brought all these rats". Some of the shots look right out of Bruegel, a view from a hill of a psychotic crepuscular jamboree. Bring back isometric layouts! Lots of great spreads in this too-- Harker wakes up in the castle and the count has a breakfast laid out that's like, a whole watermelon, a stuffed rooster, pastries. Harker's like "wow, just a couple grapes for me thanks". Oh yeah, and author/artist Roland Topor plays Renfield and hits it out of the park, an all-time giggling freak. Kinsky's good but Dracula is almost too easy a role. Renfield was dynamite. Renfield's always good-- Dwight Frye, Tom Waits, Kinski (in Franco's "Count Dracula", 1970)... ❤
  watched 2020-10-22
• Halloween (1978) - a tense and well-done movie that ultimately just isn't my thing-- halfway through I thought "I'd rather not be watching this" and whereas sometimes I feel this way and then there's a payoff, this time I just came away like "they did a decent job". All the teens were annoying and it reminded me that as a teen I was probably really annoying too. I liked that the scary guy is just wearing a regular Halloween mask, that feels like a cool cheat. Also I'm into the way the story doesn't make sense-- it doesn't dovetail in on itself or anything, it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. The bad guy's motivation (in the first movie anyway) is just "he's really crazy". OK my favorite part was that Jamie Lee's bedroom had a large framed James Ensor painting in it, and it wasn't one with skulls and masks, it was a fairly straightforward self-portrait. I logged onto imdb.com and added "james-ensor" as a keyword for this movie. ❤
  watched 2020-10-11
• The Gate (1987) - fun "young people's horror" movie with cool looking ghoulies and a Satanic metal aspect. Fun but not great, and like too many movies from this era, tainted by 2 easily cuttable instances of homophobic language. ❤
  watched 2020-10-05
• Morgiana (1972) - really nice atmospheric Czech horror movie, great dresses and wigs on nearly every single character. There's nothing supernatural, just human jealousy. Not a spectacular plot, it's just fun to be these characters for a little while. I loved it. ❤
  watched 2020-09-25
• Late Autumn (1960) - extremely good Ozu movie starring "the Japanese Audrey Hepburn" Yoko Tsukasa. In nearly all the dialogue, the actors address the camera, and it's intoxicating-- you're constantly pulled into the movie, into sympathy with everyone. There are a lot of establishing shots of low angles in still moments, as though you're sitting on the floor quietly enjoying the scenery. I loved it. Small role for a young Chishū Ryū, the priest from Tora-san. ❤
  watched 2020-09-25
• The Terminator (1984) - This is Sakiko's favorite movie, and it took me a little while to figure out exactly why-- it's not because it's violent or has robots, it's because it's solid, good without feeling pompous or overworked, fun without feeling stupid or goofy. This time around I was paying a lot of attention to the sound-- the music is a split between iterations of the main theme and herky jerky "guy running around" synth patterns. I was watching it thinking "how would this get made now" and realized that all the action sequences now would be cut to music, whereas in the original these passages have little to no music, and it's a lot of just sound effects. Bill Paxton plays a punk in the first couple minutes of the movie and him and his buddies look so stupid, it rules. One of the other punks is Brian Thompson, the bodybuilder in Miracle Mile. The special effects look great thanks to good editing-- another thing that would never happen now. When the terminator is reduced to just a skeleton you can tell it's him because it limps, and just before the crash you see Arnold limping-- really elegant solution. ❤
  watched 2020-09-13
• Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) - I watched this while doing a task, I guess it was fun and/or had some fun parts but also I hope no one ever makes a movie like this ever again. ❤
  watched 2020-09-03
• Alone in the Wilderness (2004) - this is the ultimo for the "building a cabin in the woods all by myself" genre. it's the earliest one (or the earliest movie one anyway) and the only one that's like, "a movie", whereas all the other movies are long youtube videos. It's nice, and relaxing. After a while I got caught up on a few things though... I started thinking about how the sound was dubbed in later, and specifically there's a water droplet "poiuyt" sound that's too perfect. And I kept thinking about him setting up the camera and tripod constantly just to film himself walking away from it-- then he's gotta walk back just to get the camera? Maybe he saves those shots for the end of a reel so he doesn't waste film, just walks away till the film runs out. And there are some tracking shots, or shots of him with the camera, and it's like, well how the hell did you shoot that if you're alone in the wilderness? Also this production is from 2004, using footage from the late 60s, no problem, but every now and then maybe the original shot didn't come out so they splice in some video and it's really disconcerting. These are small points though, all in all I loved it. ❤
  watched 2020-09-03
• Tora-san's Lovesick (1974) - this one fakes you out with a very short intro romance that fits the entire arc common to every Tora-san into like 5 minutes. But it's just a set-up for the return of Utako, the madonna from 1972's "Tora-san's Dear Old Home". I didn't realize in the earlier movie that her dad is the cool expert from Seven Samurai! He's great in this, everyone's great. ❤
  watched 2020-08-27
• Venom (2018) - saw this in the theatre with Mickey and we both loved it. The main guy is great, the sinewy goo looks dynamite, the bad guy is Elon Musk (or some other dot com billionaire with a space program). I read a thing that Tom Hardy based his character partly on Redman, which is incredible, but it's too bad there's no Redman in the movie (or Venom (band) for that matter). The worst parts are all in the last minute or after the last minute: Stan Lee cameo, Eminem song, Woody Harrelson. I don't have a whole riff about this, but this is a "bicameral mind" movie. ❤
  watched 2020-08-08
• Dracula's Daughter (1936) - fun but not great sequel to Dracula with Gloria Holding as the titular daughter. She didn't want the part, as she didn't like horror and saw what happened to Lugosi after Dracula. Wikipedia quotes critic Mark Clark- "Her disdain for the part translates into a kind of self-loathing that perfectly suits her troubled character." ❤
  watched 2020-08-05
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) - there is 1 instance of homophobia, a persistant male gaze, and an obvious eurocentric outlook (befitting an American high school history class) but otherwise this is pretty perfect. Bill and Ted are sweet dummies who love each other and care about all people. Loving each other lets them love themselves and love the planet. There's a very minor secondary plot about Billy the Kid and Socrates... I would love it if we could zoom in on them. Ditto Joan of Arc, played by Jane Wiedlin from the Go Gos. If we could get a movie where the 3 of them fuck around in the San Dimas mall for 90 minutes, running from the stupid ass mall cops, well I would love that. ❤
  watched 2020-07-29
• Tora-san's Forget Me Not (1973) - first appearance of cabaret singer Lily. She's great, very much Tora's equal. There's a great scene where everyone's sitting around the table listing the women that Tora has fallen in love with, and laughing. I love it when they all laugh together. ❤
  watched 2020-07-24
• Tora-san Loves an Artist (1973) - this is the twelfth one in the series and you feel like they really decided to shake things up for this one-- there's no major character changes, but instead of Tora going to a different prefecture, the rest of the family goes (to Kyushu) and Tora stays at the Toriya. There's a few other funny echoes like this, each one casts a compelling light on the characters. ❤
  watched 2020-07-24
• Tora-san, Wish You Were Here (2019) - with appropriate dignity, they stopped making Tora San movies after Kiyoshi Atsumi passed away in 1996. Then for the 50th anniversary of the first movie, they pulled together one last one, the 50th in the series. Well, they did an extremely good job and I hovered close to crying from the opening song to the end credits. There's a good amount of flashback material but it's integrated well. They didn't shemp anyone in but there are some tasteful parts where Tora appears as a ghost in the background. But they don't make him say anything, he just fades in and out, like everyone feels his presence. Perfect. ❤
  watched 2020-07-17
• Nights of Cabiria (1957) - beautiful movie starring the magnificent Giulietta Masina. This was just what the doctor ordered. Is the ending shot a tribute to Chaplin's Modern Times? I loved it. Loved every single character, even the people that only shown in passing, or as a brief reaction. I guess Fellini is my favorite filmmaker? I think this every time I watch a Fellini picture. ❤
  watched 2020-07-10
• The Way of the Dragon (1972) - Bruce Lee movie with Nora Miao and Chuck Norris. There were a few jokes in here that I didn't get, all based on the assumption that the audience reads Bruce as like a country bumpkin. But we're not watching for the jokes! Bruce is great, everyone's great. After the anti-Japanese stuff of the previous movie "Fists of Fury", it seemed like he went out of his way to say that it's ok for Chinese people to learn karate, and even has a little "whatever works" teaching moment with another character. The boss's evil fey henchman is great, and the scar guy from Enter The Dragon (Robert Wall) is a little younger and a little cuter. Fake scar is a great look. ❤
  watched 2020-07-10
• Ip Man 2 (2010) - As predicted, I watched the sequel. It was ok, some great sequences. I didn't know Sammo Hung was going to be in it, so I was delighted when he showed up. My big problem is that the finale is a fight against an English boxer, and the boxer is wearing boxing gloves, and Ip Man really struggles to beat him. Come on, we just saw this guy take on like 20 guys with machetes, he can't beat this one dude, who only punches, and is wearing pillows on his fists? It's totally unreasonable. ❤
  watched 2020-07-07
• Ip Man (2008) - kind of wild to watch this after watching the Grandmaster (2013), also about Ip Man. There's this whole "dueling with a Japanese general" plotline that is totally made up, which led me to the wikipedia entry on Ip Man (the person), to learn that most of the Grandmaster was made up too, even though it seemed a little more sensible? Anyway the movie (2008) was fun, no problem, fights are cool and Donnie Yen's portrayal of Ip Man is calm cool and collected. Probably going to go ahead and watch the sequels. ❤
  watched 2020-07-05
• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - one millionth rewatch of this immensely enjoyable and inspirational movie. Legendary writer Shigesato Itoi is the voice of the dad?????? Boioioioioioioing ❤
  watched 2020-07-02
• Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - lots of great shots and sequences in this, and the main voice is the lady who plays Sakura in Tora-san! Buuuut there were just too many times I wondered "why is this happening". Other Ghibli movies present fantastic scenarios with little explanation, but they inspire you to imagine the details, or to gloss over them because of the strong folktale vibe. Howl's feels like you're watching the condensed version of a series with the motivations stripped out. I saw this when it came out and while I was watching it just now I was like "it's incredible that I can't remember any of this". Already I can tell it's just slipping away, nothing to really hold on to. ❤
  watched 2020-06-29
• North Shore (1987) - I've said before that this movie is as tight as a drum and it's true, there's a wonderful efficiency but it's not rushed or sparse. The main guy's attitude is a sort of naivete matched with a willingness to break a problem down into steps. At one point he's confronting the toadie who took his stuff, and it looks like the toadies's gang is going to beat him up and he says to the leader "this is between me and him, let us fight". If he just asked the leader to give him back his stuff it would've gone nowhere, it's incredible to me that he saw what the steps neaded to be taken! The only time in the movie that he's kind of floundering is when he's given too much too early with no fight. ❤
  watched 2020-06-24
• Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) - damn it's so good (for the planet) that not all Kiki's problems get solved at the end. It's great to have a main character that's lively but also has depression. And the depression isn't like a "sadness because", it's just a sadness that swells up (and never really goes away but becomes manageable). ❤
  watched 2020-06-24
• The Falcon's Brother (1942) - the Xth in the series of "the Falcon" movies, starring George Sanders, who you may recognize as the voice of Shere Khan in the first Jungle Book movie. I watched this because mystery novelist Craig Rice (who Lilah loves) wrote the screenplay. It was fun, not great. George Sanders great voice. Midway throught the movie the hero (the Falcon) is incapacitated in bed, and his brother (played by the actor's IRL brother) swoops in and finishes the case. In the end the OG Falcon dies and passes the torch, that's real heraldry in action. ❤
  watched 2020-06-19
• Malcolm X (1992) - really really good biopic from Spike Lee. Everyone is extremely good, it's extraordinary. ❤
  watched 2020-06-17
• The Legend of the Swordsman (1992) - fun but super confusing wuxia movie starring Jet Li. The last movie of his that I watched (Hero) was very pompous, so it was lovely to see him as a charismatic drunkard, leaping off a cliff to save a gourd full of delicious wine. Lots of great sequences here but the translation was terrible and the plot is pretty complex. Still worth it. Great camera work that gives everything a Sam Raimi feel. Based on the 1967 wuxia novel "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer" ❤
  watched 2020-06-17
• 13th (2016) - great netflix doc about how the 13th amendment (making slavery illegal) left the door open to using convicted criminals as slave labor, which allowed slavery to sort of just keep going under a new design. They also got into for-profit prisons and the lobbyists that support it. ❤
  watched 2020-06-13
• Tora-san's Dream-Come-True (1972) - kind of a weird one that slightly modifies the Tora in love theme to "Tora loves love" and instead of being the unrequited, he's the unrequitee. There are a few of them where Tora comes close to love and walks away, they're maddening but rich moments. The erstwhile Madonna in this is Kaoru Yachigusa, who played dancer Fujichiyo in the Human Vapor (1960). Her name in this is "Chiyo", maybe that's short for Fujichiyo??? Her character is someone that was a classmate of Tora's in grade school. ❤
  watched 2020-06-10
• Princess Mononoke (1997) - this movie rules, nothing more to say really. No big revelation: it slaps. We watched the subtitled version, and I regretted having watched the dubbed version because I kept projecting Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes, and Gillian Anderson onto the relevant characters. ❤
  watched 2020-06-07
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - damn I forgot how good this is. Michelle Yeoh is so good and Chow Yun Fat is a neccessary calm (a dud) that she can really swirl around. We watched another 21st century wuxia movie later and it brought into focus something great about CTHD, that's it's not epic. The story is pretty small-- no emperors, kings, or world-ending magic. ❤
  watched 2020-06-07
• Hero (2002) - definitely lots of cool parts in this, and I love when a story goes back for a "let's look at that again", as this does. Jet Li is great but emotionally outclassed by everyone else, especially Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. I felt like this was a liiiiiiittle too epic tho. ❤
  watched 2020-06-07
• Hereditary (2018) - I have a hard time with modern horror-- I like monsters but I don't like feeling anxious. With this one I watched it while doing a task, and over the course of a few sittings. The first time I tapped out was when a kid was about to have an allergic reaction to walnuts, in a situation that also had teen flirting. too much for me at that moment. when I came back later I ended up getting into it-- once actual spooky stuff started happening I got into it. I liked it. The kid from Jumanji is in this, they're not the same thing but they're both sort of "weird avatar" situations. ❤
  watched 2020-05-24
• The Grandmaster (2013) - every part of this movie felt like the end of a movie, it's insane. It's a biopic on Wing Chun master (and Bruce Lee's teacher) Ip Man, about whom there were already 3 biopics by the time this came out. Another 3 (plus a TV series) came shortly thereafter. Anyway you can't make a movie that's solid epic vibes, it doesn't make sense. The fight scenes didn't even look good because the camera's swirling around the whole time. Give it a break! Wong Kar Wai writes and directs, Tony Leung stars, and Zhang Ziyi steals the show. ❤
  watched 2020-05-24
• Planet of the Apes (1968) - the end of this one seems like it was supposed to be some big reveal, but is that even possible? Isn't it totally obvious from the very first few seconds of this movie? Anyway I still enjoyed this. Charleton Heston sucks but it's cool to see a non-homesick astronaut, and his "Earth? Fooey" attitude is really the only way you're gonna keep a main character sane through all this. secondary to the big twisteroo there's an oft-overlooked secondary note where Heston was driven to be an astronaut because he was so sure there was something out there better than idiotic humanity, only to learn "that's life baby". Reading on wikipedia I learn that the ape civilization was supposed to be more advanced but they dialed it back to make it cheaper to film. There's nothing really clever to say about this, I just like how these two axes line up, time and money. "Let's set our story in an age of cheaper rent". ❤
  watched 2020-05-11
• Tora-san's Love Call (1971) - Another great Tora-San movie. I thought we watched all the ones with the original dad actor but I found one more. The second guy to play the dad is just holding space-- the first guy is great, a real ball of nerves playing big for the back row. This was a really good one and the different threads of the narrative wove together beautifully. Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura guest stars, causing everyone to really step up their game. ❤
  watched 2020-05-04
• The Wicker Man (1973) - I had seen this a few time already, it felt right to rewatch this on May Day. But this time around I downloaded a longer version than the one I had previously seen, and I don't know if this part was even changed but it felt like the end really dragged on with everyone laughing horribly. I like the settings and aspects of the weird pagan stuff in this, and I like that no one is intimidated by the cop, that's my takeaway, but I think at this point in my life I'd prefer a version of this with a stronger "actually both religions suck" feeling. This time around I recognized Bowie mentor Lindsay Kemp as the innkeeper??

  edit 5 years later because i realized i logged the wrong one, embarrassing ❤

  watched 2020-05-03
• Spirited Away (2001) - Energizing rewatch of this Ghibli epic. Me and Nick saw this in the theatre when it came out and I remember on the drive home talking to him about really committing to a full presentation of your craft. I forget what our exact words were but he was concerned that I wasn't going big enough with my art, I was keeping things too small and withdrawn, which was a really thoughtful comment I thought. "gotta get more Spirited Away" I think to myself sometimes when I'm being petty or insufficiently grandiose with my ideas. ❤
  watched 2020-04-29
• Interstellar (2014) - OK but confusing and fake-deep sci fi epic. I think fiction can be really useful in bringing up ideas that are hard to grapple with, this one did a good time with fatalistic time-- bringing it up and staying upbeat with it. The robots looked really cool in this one, in that they looked totally weird and kind of stupid. Ok, the coolest thing about this is how weird the robots look, that's a ballsy move. This was Matthew McConnahy's second spiritual astronaut movie (after 1997's Contact) and Matt Damon's first of two "stranded astronaut" movies (followed by 2015's The Martian). ❤
  watched 2020-04-29
• Rampage (2018) - I think I saw this in the theatre when it came out? Earth Day rewatch of this absolutely fun smasheroo based on the NES game I loved in which you're basically King Kong and you destroy a city. Surprisingly no one mentions King Kong at all and the Godzilla analogue was reworked to look less like Godzilla, so no one mentions Godzilla either. Huge pet peeve when the riffs refers directly to the OG. Lots of great destruction as the three main monsters do a classic Chaos Walk through Chicago. There's a great shot of (spoiler) the evil boss lady getting eaten in one gulp by the gorilla, which must've been such a thrill to all the "tiny evil boss lady swallowed by enormous gorilla" fetishists out there. CGI still can't do a convincing emotive human face, so while they work out the kinks we get a good couple very convincing emotive gorilla movies. Keep em coming, I say. ❤
  watched 2020-04-23
• Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016) - nice documentary on Hayao Miyazaki, he wears an apron the entire time, puttering between his house, office, and studio, which seem like they're on the same block because he never takes the apron off, and how far are you going to go outside your zone with an apron on? The most shocking thing is that his car, which you only see briefly, is like a perfect Ghibli car- a Citroen 2CV. Perfecto. ❤
  watched 2020-04-16
• The Wind Rises (2013) - the most recent Ghibli movie, I didn't like it. The main guy dreams of designing airplanes, and then he grows up to design a very cool airplane, but like, he works for the army during WW2-- he's making death machines. Along the way he falls in love, and she has tuberculosis and pretty much dies alone while he's at work. But he's like a Ghibli floppy whimsical dad-type and the whole thing is presented like "well, that's just how it is". The whole time I was like, I'd never do that. If my dream coincided with building a war machine I'd just get another dream. Dreams are free baby. ❤
  watched 2020-04-16
• Ponyo (2008) - Had to rewatch an unequivocably good one after Wind Rises. This time I was thinking about the parent styles on display-- both Sosuke and Ponyo are raised by single parents that are apart but still love each other. Sosuke's dad is always at sea, his mom is cool and tough, she mostly stays calm but drives like a demon and drinks beer when she's sad. Ponyo's mom is an elemental spirit (?) who she deeply loves but she lives with her dad who comes off as mean but is just super protective. Hats off to the movie Ponyo. When I saw this in theatres the animation bugged me, like I thought the frame rate was too slow? Now it looks totally fine to me. You really do learn to see, it doesn't just happen. ❤
  watched 2020-04-16
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) - periodic rewatch of this killer shit. ❤
  watched 2020-04-16
• Knives Out (2019) - a fun whodunnit with a twist. All whodunnits have a twist I guess but pretty much any whodunnit after Agatha Christie has a twist that's like, structural. Like in Columbo where you see who has dunnit in the first 20 seconds. This was fun, I enjoyed the twist, Daniel Craig has a preposterous Kentucky (?) accent that really signified "we're having fun making this movie". I guess I should watch more "crazy accent" movies?? There were a lot of current events in the movie-- they argue about Trump, one of the characters is based on Gwenyth Paltrow qua new age skin care snake oil. I can't tell if that's weird or just seems weird because I mostly watch old movies. ❤
  watched 2020-04-16
• Catch Me If You Can (2002) - great Spielberg heist movie where the heist is ongoing. High competance, basically victimless crimes. I mean he only stole from banks and airlines so like, who cares. Based on a real guy. There's a great laundry-turns-pink scene and a great part where Tom Hanks says "knock knock" [who's there] "fuck you". Tom Hanks' Boston accent is out of control but if I was an actor with a certain number of films under my belt, I would absolutely steer towards "my guy should have a crazy accent" at every opportunity. Tom Hanks and Leonardo diCaprio are both the kind of actor where you picture all of their characters as being the same guy on different timelines-- it was nice to see them both in a movie together, it felt like a crossover event. ❤
  watched 2020-04-06
• Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) - Tsarlag recommended this to me and it was sitting on my hard drive forever. Set in the fucked-up ice cream 1900s, a time period that I can only think of as deeply perverse. Great Halloween sequence, and the youngest child of the family is delightfully morbid. Their house is great, it's a type I only know as a haunted house, it's like the Addams family mansion when it was new. ❤
  watched 2020-04-03
• Fantomas (1964) - pretty good, not as psycho as the books, with a slapstick element that undermines the pure electricity of crime. ❤
  watched 2020-04-03
• Fantastic Fungi (2019) - great documentary about mushrooms / fungi, focusing on mushroom hero Paul Stamets, who wrote the book on the subject. The corny quasi-religious epic narration is pretty strong but not really a problem. It's great, and Paul is really warm and good. I didn't catch that the mushroom guy in the new Star Trek is named after him! We "rented" this on Vimeo for $4.99, which is maybe the first time i've ever paid for access to a digital file? Even though we "rented" it rather than bought it, I was able to download it using youtube-dl. ❤
  watched 2020-04-02
• Aliens (1986) - Paul Reiser is a great yuppie scumbag villain, Bill Paxton is perfect, Sigourney irreplacable. Dynamite casting through and through. Did yuppies in charge of the studios finally put the kibosh on the yuppie villain??? I feel like that was a very relatable character that suddenly disappeared in favor of like, "terrorist". Well anyway I love this one, but it was a little too much of a hellride for the moment, so we followed it with Great British Bake-Off s03e01. ❤
  watched 2020-04-02
• Live and Let Die (1973) - this movie's got it all- snakes, alligators, AND sharks! very entertaining, unlike some movies I could mention. Yaphet Kotto is dynamite, great music, loved it. ❤
  watched 2020-03-27
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - there's one great scene where the hacker lady is at the reporter's computer and he's looking for a file and saying "oops" and making the "ch ch chhhh" sound of "let's see here" and she's rolling her eyes. Never saw that in a movie before! The rest was, uh, "a stylish thriller". ❤
  watched 2020-03-25
• Now You See Me (2013) - Lily recommended this to me because I was watching a lot of heist movies. really weird movie, you don't know anything about what's going on but you're going on faith that all will be explained anon. So much of it feels like "an epic part" which grows tiresome. Is there a good movie about stage magic? ❤
  watched 2020-03-25
• Project A (1983) - it's still great ❤
  watched 2020-03-24
• Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) - me and Mori saw this in the theatre when it came out, I remember feeling "uh oh" when it was revealed that the virus is called "snowflake", due to the use of that word to mean like, "entitled liberal". But then I couldn't figure out what the metaphor was. The last act is set in Samoa and many of the characters use little Samoan words and phrases with no subtitles but it's clear through context what they're talking about. It was nice to see this trust, in such a stupid movie, that the audience is not going to have a problem. ❤
  watched 2020-03-21
• Casino Royale (2006) - I wanted to watch a spy movie because it's reassuring to see extreme competance. Something I didn't realize about this one is that it's a full reboot of the character, which (I think) never really happened before-- the other installments are more like a comic strip, where there's basically a hard reset after each movie and the main character is always in mid- or mid-late career, or with very slight continuity of key villains. This one they don't really let you know that it's a new one, so when Bond falls in love, a major plot point for the next couple movies, it just feels uncharacteristic. ❤
  watched 2020-03-21
• Quantum of Solace (2008) - What is "a quantum of solace"? They never say. ❤
  watched 2020-03-21
• Skyfall (2012) - more of the same, some nice MacGuyver parts ❤
  watched 2020-03-21
• Spectre (2015) - this one's about surveilance, which was and still is a huge problem, in the UK and everywhere. At one point they mention Orwell, who wrote the book ("1984") on the subject, though it didn't make a lick of difference. I mean "changing people's minds" isn't really the issue and I doubt this movie set out to do that anyway. ❤
  watched 2020-03-21
• PlayTime (1967) - this was cool to look at but all the jokes were too small and too few! is the ultimate joke "modern life is crazy"?? Like a dull pompous Chaplin. I kept thinking about how people probably write term papers about this. We stopped it after a few minutes, once it no longer seemed like it was going to pick up, to watch Tampopo. ❤
  watched 2020-03-03
• Tampopo (1985) - an extremely good film that's fun, funny, warm, lively, smart, AND well-made! There's one shocking part where a live turtle gets butchered on screen, but the whole movie is about food so calling one small part "animal cruelty" just because we see the animal die, that's a weird line to draw. Maybe this was a nod to Cannibal Holocaust??? I couldn't find any film blogs about this but I've only ever seen 2 movies where an animal dies onscreen and it's a turtle. Anyway that part made me sad but still this is a really really really good movie. ❤
  watched 2020-03-03
• Tora-san Goes to Vienna (1989) - One of only 2 Tora-san movies that take place (at least partly) outside Japan, this shows Tora out of his element and an absolute stick in the mud. It's kind of a drag that he can't figure out how to have fun in another land, but it points out how his delight is in expertise, whether real or percieved, and when he doesn't have that, he's totally adrift. Wonderful Akira Emoto guest stars as the depressed salaryman. ❤
  watched 2020-03-03
• Anger Management (2003) - another bad Adam Sandler movie, this one co-starring Jack Nicholson for reasons no one in my viewing party could discern-- maybe he owed someone a favor or had a large gambling debt? It's like a much shittier version of Fight Club (1999), in that a psycho mercilessly taunts a nebbish, with some sort of be-a-man therapy as the excuse. The high point (????) was a cameo by Rudy Giuliani (doing a Rob Schnieder impersonation???), who we all booed. Actually there were a ton of cameos, which was disturbing. Why did everyone rush to get involved in this? Like all his movies, this one oscillates between annoying and dull. Watched this as part of "Deathwatchers", an Adam Sandler movie-watching group I have with friends. ❤
  watched 2020-02-22
• Miracle Mile (1988) - a great 80s nuclear paranoia movie starring Anthony Edwards, the cutest nerd from Revenge of the Nerds, in sort of an apocalyptic (and somehow less tense) version of After Hours. Denise "Tasha Yar" Crosby co-stars along with a long list of character actors. Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Fiend Without a Face (1958) - fun 50s movie about an invisible killer that ramps up to a suprisingly gory conclusion, when the killer becomes visible in the form of hundreds of pale floating brains with whip-like tentacles. I imagine a 1958 audience of mostly children screamed and screamed in absloute delight when each of these brains gushes strawberry jam and cottage cheese when hit by an ax. In 2020 I also screamed and screamed with delight. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Spaceballs (1987) - "Mel Brooks Star Wars riff" should tell you all you need to know, for good or ill. Mel Brooks breaks the fourth wall exactly the perfect amount, that's maybe his greatest finesse. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Mysterious Island (1961) - great Ray Harryhausen movie. set for almost no reason during the time of the American Civil War. I think setting a special effects movie in a different time period really eases you into believing a fantastic scenario. Anyway I loved it. Magnificent Herbert Lom plays Captain Nemo. Score by Bernard Herrman. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) - silent version, with John Barrymore. Lot of magnificent leering. For the past couple years of the Thon there's been a silent movie with live accompaniment, and the guy that does the accompaniment, Jeff Rapsis, is incredible. It took me a little bit to figure out how he does it but I think he programs a keyboard to play different sounds depending on how hard he hits the keys- if he just barely touches it the sound is a soft violin, if he slams it there's a tympani, and inbetween there's a celeste, an orch hit, and I don't know what else. An elegant set up and the dude slays. Standing ovation. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Altered States (1980) - I never liked William Hurt because of the way his dull character treats Geena Davis' manic pixie character in Accidental Tourist, and this movie presents a much sharper edge to that narcissism, or maybe an active narcissism vs a passive one. That said, the movie is bonkers and I really enjoyed it. Ken Russell directs. Loosely based on the life of psychonaut John Lilly, who told OMNI Magazine that this movie "did a good job". The main character wakes up nude in a zoo, that's a great bit. American Werewolf In London, Cat People, are there other movies that do this? ISO zoo nudes. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• The Fly (1986) - Great movie with lots of extremely gross parts, including a sequence where the titular fly pukes acid on a yuppie scumbag's clenched fist, dissoving it into wax. Geena Davis co-stars, with cameo by Cronenberg as the doctor in a dream sequence. Extremely good (if you like body horror) and like all good movies (Sakiko's theory) it has a feeling of lightness throughout. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Midnight Special (2016) - messianic kid / family on the run storyline that goes totally nowhere. The big reveal is that there's a race of angel beings living in a reality layer superimposed on Earth, and that they did what we could not-- realize utopic 1960s architecture where walkways and greenspace connect multipurpose buildings that respond intelligently to weather conditions. Nothing else about these angels is revealed or inferred and no one in the movie has any sort of character whatsoever. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Seconds (1966) - OK, I fell asleep a little bit for this one but it's about being a fucking baby and instead of trying to change your life in a way in keeping with your interests and desires you pay a God-like service to fake your death, surgically transform you into Rock Hudson, and set you up with a new life as a swinging bachelor, a life which sucks because you've been given a fish, rather than taught to fish. I should hope that anyone watching this would come away with the twin revelations of don't fake your death and don't be a baby. The camera swings around all the time and zooms in a little too much, sort of a drunken master feeling. I liked it. Watched this eaaaaaaaaaaarly in the morning as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Die, Monster, Die! (1965) - Boris Karloff adaptation of Lovecraft's "Colour Out Of Space" that I dipped in and out of consciousness for. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Tarantula (1955) - John Agar movie which I wilfully slept through because something had to give. Namechecked in the Rocky Horror theme song, so I feel like I have to see it at some point. I watched (?) this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Fast Color (2018) - in a movie where someone has a special power, there's an unexamined moment where you have to decide "how serious is this in this world". Like how in Superman world he can fly but life goes on, but in our world we go bananas when someone can improve a record by like .00000001%. Anyway this movie was great because the main characters have what they describe as "a parlour trick" that later they realize is actually mega huge. Like a lot of independent sci fi movies, this takes place largely on a bleak road or midwestern ranch-style home, somewhere you can film for free without seeing other signs or structures that would mess up your shot. I thought it was good. Watched this as part of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Soylent Green (1973) - Charleton Heston sci fi movie, which, like Planet of the Apes (1968) hangs a satisfying weight on a Twilight Zone style late reveal, and which unfortunately is yelled by Charleton Heston in a way that's fun to imitate, preventing anyone from ever seeing this movie without knowing the end. That said, I had never seen this before, there were some cool parts, some parts that were a huge bummer. I'm sure not everyone had this takeaway but it was one of those dystopian movies that made me really want to go out and enjoy the natural world and also treat people with respect and dignity. I left the theatre recommitted to investing in a future that doesn't grind people up and coerce others to literally ingest them. This movie is set in 2022, and this makes me feel crazy to admit but the thing about the storyline that came true the least is that the US adopted the metric system. Watched this as the last movie of the annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, at the beautiful Somerville theatre. ❤
  watched 2020-02-18
• Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) - Like Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2017), this movie was extremely fun. There's a really dynamite set up in which characters in the movie get sucked into a magical video game, where they inhabit avatars played by Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan. It's a great trick where you remap a character to another character and it effectively dissolves a layer of reality-- you can back up one step to "the kids playing the game" but it's hard to back up two steps to "actors playing the roles". The second movie adds Dannys Devito and Glover, less as actors than as characters played by other actors. Danny Glover is onscreen for maybe 2 minutes but is still "in" the movie the whole time, via other actors. Saw this at the mall, 10pm showing, we had the whole theatre to ourselves. They show too many commercials before the movie! Also they only showed 1 preview, I was offended. ❤
  watched 2020-02-05
• Juliet of the Spirits (1965) - extraordinary Fellini movie with the magnificent Giulietta Masina in a showcase role. A movie that really makes you re-examine your wardrobe. ❤
  watched 2020-02-03
• Jubilee (1978) - man this movie isn't good. Lots of mean people yelling. The part that stuck with me was Adam Ant saying "I don't care about money, I just don't want to get ripped off". Also there was one guy who had this incredible laugh that the whole movie really steered into. ❤
  watched 2020-01-30
• Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) - straight-to-video threequel of the 1990 worm monster classic. Original Tremors has a weird energy, solid but also light. Maybe the energy is just "destined to be a straight-to-video franchise". A huge part of these movies is that you're only safe if you're standing on a big rock. I love it. I love any situation where the floor is lava! Tremors is probably the best giant worm movie, although the best movie with a giant worm is probably Beetlejuice, with a special accommodation to Dune, which people seem to like, and the worm parts in that are great. Kevin's brother from Wonder Years reprises his role as "shitty kid" but now he's leveled up in life to "real estate developer". I checked the wiki to make sure it was him and found out that at the same time he was making this movie he was building his business as a real-life real estate developer! Nonetheless the movie ends with him about to be eaten by the worm, as the hero character says "the people of this town decided they'd rather have a monster than a developer". Damn. ❤
  watched 2020-01-21
• The Thing (1982) - a great gross movie with a lot of dynamite shockers. Set in Antarctica, a great one to watch in a snow storm. Shocking bit from the wiki:

  "It was described as "instant junk", "a wretched excess", and proposed as the most-hated film of all time by film magazine Cinefantastique. Reviews both praised the special effects achievements and criticized their visual repulsiveness, while others focused on poor characterization. The film earned $19.6 million during its theatrical run. Many reasons have been cited for its failure to impress audiences: competition from films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which offered an optimistic take on alien visitation; a summer that had been filled with successful science fiction and fantasy films; and an audience, living through a recession, diametrically opposed to The Thing's nihilistic tone."

  Kind of a nice reminder that some things just take time to be understood. ❤

  watched 2020-01-21
• Linda Linda Linda (2005) - rewatched this again just two months after the last time, this time with my band. You have to share foundational documents like this. ❤
  watched 2020-01-21
• The Brood (1979) - dynamite Cronenberg movie with great 70s interiors. Sort of about how trauma bounces down through generations. Is Cronenberg obsessed with the lymphatic system? If so, it certainly works to his advantage. ❤
  watched 2020-01-06
• Paddington 2 (2017) - rewatched this one with Cool Breeze because he came to visit me years ago and was mad I didn't have any good comfortable "falling asleep" movies. I don't think he was as swept away by the magic as I was on this one, that was shocking to me. But you know what, he's a doctor now, and I think he sees miracles every day. He helps someone relearn how to walk and then their entire family cries tears of joy-- it's understandable if we have a different baseline for heartwarming. ❤
  watched 2019-12-25
• The Wraith (1986) - a cool "teen car supernatural revenge romance" movie with a few Hollywood relatives in it- Charlie Sheen (son of Martin), Nick Cassavettes (son of John), Clint Howard (brother of Ron), and Griffin O'Neal (son of Ryan). Randy Quaid (brother of Dennis) and Sherilyn Fenn (niece of Suzi Quatro (that's a stretch)) round out the cast. It's a real "nothing makes sense but who cares" kind of action movie, with a melancholy feeling. I liked it. ❤
  watched 2019-12-25
• Die Hard (1988) - a classic "I want to watch a movie on Christmas" movie. Sometimes in an artwork you need to create a problem to find a solution-- it's smart of the screenwriters to realize that the movie's gonna be better if he's not wearing shoes. And it's positively brilliant to get there by having a guy in the very first scene say "I know it sounds crazy, but go home and take your shoes off". A lot of you hacks would try to get clever with this! Today I learned that the guy who plays the main henchman is the former Borshoi Ballet dancer who defected to the US in 1979. What a career! ❤
  watched 2019-12-25
• Pippi Longstocking (1969) - it's great. ❤
  watched 2019-12-25
• Conan the Destroyer (1984) - a poorly made and unfortunately goofy sequel. Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Olivia d'Abo, and the guy from Repo Man who says "plate of shrimp" co-star. The first movie rips, this one blows. Better to watch Ator: Fighting Eagle or any of those other Italo-Barbarian movies, which are at least weird. Andre the Giant plays a monster (in a suit, unrecognizable, what a waste). ❤
  watched 2019-12-17
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) - this one is derived entirely from a line in Star Wars where they say "many people died to get this information [about the Death Star]". Prequels already have this weird weight where you know what's at the end (the starting conditions for the thing you know and like already), but this one felt even cleaner. There were a lot of little things in this that you'd only really catch if you were watching them like this, one after the other. But they aren't really "rich points", just little continuity things that they nailed. They Shemped in Peter Cushing and the digital Shemp looks bad. At the end they Shemp in Carrie Fisher and that looks bad too. Watched this with Dan when he organized an "all the Star Wars movies in storybook order" marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-12-16
• Star Wars (1977) - we watched a "theatrical release" version that undoes all the extra garbage that Lucas put in after the fact, by deferring to the highest-definition source of whatever scene is required. so most of the time it's the blu-ray, some of the time it's from a dvd, some of the time i think it's from a laserdisk, and maybe some of the time it's from a very nice VHS. Whoever made it juiced it again in post to try and even out the lower-def parts, and there's a lot of moments where the sharpness is up too high and every single surface has little nicks and scratches. Something I noticed this time is that in this, the first one, pretty much no one gives a shit about the Jedi, and even Darth Vader is just another middle management type. Regular-ass Brits with bowl haircuts buck up against Darth Vader with zero damage and everyone else is like shut the fuck up with that Force shit. Later on it's a given, but in this one it's like, I don't know, the early days of being gluten free- to the extent that anyone understands it, they hate it. Unless it changed your life. Watched this with Dan when he organized an "all the Star Wars movies in storybook order" marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-12-16
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - good. Watched this with Dan when he organized an "all the Star Wars movies in storybook order" marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-12-16
• Return of the Jedi (1983) - good. again we watched a special version that had the original Ewok music. Yub Yub. Shoutout to piracy, which is archival. Watched this with Dan when he organized an "all the Star Wars movies in storybook order" marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-12-16
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) - good. The main lady looks a lot like an old roommate (Hi Clare!), enough that's it's constantly distracting. all the little weird digital dudes look cool, good, or at least fine. Watched this with Dan when he organized an "all the Star Wars movies in storybook order" marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-12-16
• Conan the Barbarian (1982) - both the best of its kind and the seminal example of the barbarian genre. John Millius directs. The editing is really great and very effective-- more than once an incredible action would be totally passed over in a cut, leaving you to complete it in your mind. that's not just economical, it's a good move! James Earl Jones turns into a snake with a minimum of effects, it's great. ❤
  watched 2019-12-12
• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) - weirdly perfect garbage movie. I would hardly call this essential viewing, but if any part of you is veering towards this I'd say go for it. ❤
  watched 2019-12-10
• Addams Family Values (1993) - technically a Thanksgiving movie? Way hornier than the first Addams family movie, so I liked it less, but everyone I was watching with liked it more. The writers mined fewer jokes from the comics for this one, but pulled out a few things from the TV show-- there's a hypochondriac love interest for Wednesday that calls back to a flashback episode from when Gomez met Morticia, and he was a sniffling idiot. ❤
  watched 2019-12-08
• Linda Linda Linda (2005) - god, what a great movie. One of the best movies about being in a band-- being excited to practice, and play your song, finally playing a show... It would be a good movie with different songs, but the songs they play (by the Blue Hearts) are tremendous. ❤
  watched 2019-11-14
• The Monster Club (1981) - goofball anthology movie with interstical segments at a night club for monsters, where Vincent Price tells stories to John Carradine and both listen to shitty bands. The monsters in the club are mostly just people in leotards with consumer-grade rubber masks on, it's bizarre. ❤
  watched 2019-11-11
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) - yes, I rewatched this, I wanted something with neat characters that I could zone out to. It's so twisted how non-sexy this movie is, it almost feels like it's someone's kink, to allude to sexiness without displaying it. OK this is like Fifth Element but you want it on in the background and don't want to get drawn in to watching it, you want to actually get work done. ❤
  watched 2019-11-11
• Babylon A.D. (2008) - completely nonsensical sci fi Vin Diesel movie with Michelle Yeoh, Gerard Depardieu, and Charlotte Rampling. It really feels like a movie that went crazy during production- probably everyone believe in it at the beginning and went on faith that the weird parts would get ironed out, but then the weird parts only snowballed. ❤
  watched 2019-11-11
• Night of Terror (1986) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Blood Lake (1987) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Hallucinations (1986) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness This was the best one of the night! Really really fun and weird and gory. Recommended!" ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Blood Massacre (1987) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• The Long Island Cannibal Massacre (1980) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Ogroff (1983) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Space Zombies (1990) - watched as part of the Tsarlag Horror Movie Marathon, all night video madness ❤
  watched 2019-11-04
• Paddington 2 (2017) - rewatch of this extremely comforting movie. The next day I kept comparing myself at different points in my life to different characters. At my worst I'm the dad, sometimes I'm the villainous actor, at my best I'm the mom, in eternity I'm Paddington. ❤
  watched 2019-10-12
• Tora-san's Sunrise and Sunset (1976) - the 17th movie in the franchise, and maybe the best one?? There are two really good threads, with a painter that everyone thinks is a bum, and a geisha trying to get money back from a guy that swindled her. Opens with a Jaws riff. Extremely good but to get the most out of it I think you need to watch a bunch of other Tora-San movies first. ❤
  watched 2019-10-12
• Tora-san's Runaway (1970) - the fifth in the series, Tora actually looks like he's settling down for a sec but instead he's jilted again by an alternate universe version of Sakura and Hiroshi, who live down the river from Shibatamata (where Tora floated while asleep on a rowboat). Ragdoll Noboru co-stars. ❤
  watched 2019-10-12
• Anna (2019) - another "beautiful assassin" movie from Luc Besson, with a lot of "let's look at that again"s. Not great, but fun enough. ❤
  watched 2019-10-02
• Bulletproof (1996) - Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans star in this movie that, as far as data shows, was enjoyed by 8% of the people who saw it. Not 8% of everyone-- 8% of the people who thought "this might be good". That's wild. Watched this as part of "Deathwatchers", an Adam Sandler movie-watching group I'm in with friends. ❤
  watched 2019-09-30
• Near Dark (1987) - Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson star in this pretty good vampire movie which stands alone in the genre for existing in a world in which no one has ever heard of a vampire. The main guy gets bitten and develops an extreme sensitivity to sunlight and an insatiable thirst for blood, but all he can say about it is "I'm sick". I refined my mneumonic for remembering which one is Bill Paxton and which one is Bill Pullman- Bill Paxton packs a punch, Bill Pullman is just pulling your leg. ❤
  watched 2019-09-17
• The Howling (1981) - cool werewolf movie with many great cameos and bit parts (Dick Miller, Forrest J Ackerman, Roger Corman, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Slim Pickens). Joe Dante directs. Same year as "American Werewolf In London"! ❤
  watched 2019-09-17
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) - kind of a slow weird movie I guess but I love it for the ornate interiors of the submarine and for Captain Nemo's Dracula-like character. Kirk Russell plays the ukulele and gets drunk with a sea lion, it's great. ❤
  watched 2019-09-07
• Jailhouse Rock (1957) - I decided to watch this based on a youtube clip labeled "Elvis Discusses Atonality". That part was great, this movie is fun, I'm realizing I like Elvis and don't feel strongly about him either way. I'll leave the Elvis take to someone else. This movie was fun, I watched it while doing a task. ❤
  watched 2019-09-04
• Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) - really enjoyable movie about early 80s New York, like a nicer version of After Hours, which came out the same year. Tons of great cameos and small roles for people like Richard Hell, Arto Lindsay, John Lurie, Ann Magnuson, etc.. Watched this while I was doing a task and as soon as it was over I watched it again! ❤
  watched 2019-08-30
• Grown Ups 2 (2013) - extremely lazy movie with many unsettling features. There's no plot or character development or anything that can be said to change- the first movie (presumably) solved everyone's problems, now they're just all living and doing their thing. There's no music? Watched this as part of "Deathwatchers", an Adam Sandler movie-watching group I'm in with friends. I love my friends which is how I'm able to endure, and even thrive, in such a dismal setting. ❤
  watched 2019-08-29
• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) - Passable family adventure in which Michael Caine is a despicable adventurer who doesn't even love Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. Made for a 3D theatre experience, so there's a lot of stuff that shoots right out at you. The set up is that everything that Jules Verne wrote was true, so they pull from all the books. I don't know why but I love it when Captain Nemo comes up in a movie. Might rewatch 20,000 Leagues. ❤
  watched 2019-08-28
• Hotel Artemis (2018) - Kind of like John Wick in that there's elaborate world-building around services geared towards assassins. Set in a near-future dystopic LA, where people riot against water privatization. I guess it's fun to write about assassins because they're rich, so they have agency, but unlike regular rich people they actually do something, rather than just sit around and accrue interest. Sure they kill people but they do it one at a time-- an actual rich person's life is an unending series of actions that deprive everyone on the planet a miniscule fraction of life every tick of the clock. ❤
  watched 2019-08-27
• Baywatch (2017) - I think if anyone but the Rock starred in this I'd hate it. I liked it. The key quality of the Rock, to me, is that he's good at making other actors (and anyone around) feel good. I think that quality is at its apex here. Moments that anyone else would turn into a cruel joke or snide comment are here presented as moments for possible uplift. ❤
  watched 2019-08-27
• An American Werewolf in London (1981) - perfect werewolf movie. Great soundtrack, great special effects, two Frank Oz cameos (one as Miss Piggy). There's a movie in the movie where the main guy goes into a porno theatre, and the porno is needlessly absurd. Recommended. ❤
  watched 2019-08-26
• Little Nicky (2000) - Adam Sandler movie I cannot recommend watching. featuring Patricia Arquette. Watched this as part of "Deathwatchers", an Adam Sandler movie-watching group I'm in with friends. ❤
  watched 2019-08-06
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) - I don't have a favorite of these movies, maybe I like them all? This is one of them. Patricia Arquette stars. This is kind of an Exorcist 3 situation- Wes Craven made Nightmare 1, bowed out for Nightmare 2 because he didn't want to do a franchise, then came back for 3 because 2 was bad. Do any other franchises follow this pattern? ❤
  watched 2019-08-05
• Step Into Liquid (2003) - surfing documentary from the son of the guy who made Endless Summer. There's definitely some cool parts, but a smirking fake-deep voiceover pervades. Sometimes the voiceover guy talks about himself and it's jarring. I had fun watching it but it really feels like a famous person's son made this movie. Also the music is super terrible-- I think they scored it with like, u2, rage against the machine, sublime, and then didn't want to pay the usage fees so they hired a studio to get close enough to the vibe. ❤
  watched 2019-08-01
• Big Wednesday (1978) - sort of a surfing Deerhunter that doesn't get as bleak, from John Milius. As with Milius' Conan the Barbarian, features a small part for pro-surf legend Gerry "Mr Pipeline" Lopez. Gary Busey plays a career-defining maniac. ❤
  watched 2019-07-29
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004) - I balked initially at the Looney-Tunes-style special effects, but it was fun as hell and I very quickly fell in. ❤
  watched 2019-07-24
• North Shore (1987) - delightful surf movie starring the quiet friend from Teen Wolf. There's no bad parts. ❤
  watched 2019-07-24
• Chasing Mavericks (2012) - surf movie with weirdly low energy. Maybe because it's based on a true story, all the little things that could've been tweaked remained untweaked. The main actor is a sort of baby-faced dude I would categorize as "demon-aligned". ❤
  watched 2019-07-24
• The Wicker Man (2006) - I had put off seeing this for years, because I love the original Wicker Man. I was right to have done so- this one isn't good. The original gives you time to slowly develop the feeling "I hope the cop gets killed". With this one, the main character just isn't square enough, which makes the movie's villains less fun and more psycho. And with the matriarchal society of the island, the whole thing comes across as anti-feminist. People like Nic Cage movies because he's a weird actor but this isn't even fun to watch. Not good. ❤
  watched 2019-07-07
• Airheads (1994) - very weird movie that has the wrong idea about what it is to rock. At the end the stupid band plays their song and it's "Degenerated" by the Reagan Youth. I mean yeah, it rocks but like, everything in this movie sets you up to think this band is going to sound like 3rd generation grunge rock, not punk at all. How did Reagan youth get involved in this???? Everyone plays their idea of a rock-adjacent person, it's terrible. Watched this as part of "Deathwatchers", an Adam Sandler movie-watching group I'm in with friends. ❤
  watched 2019-07-05
• CJ7 (2008) - sloppy kids / aliens movie from the creator of Kung Fu Hustle. I didn't like the complete lack of empathy any of these characters expressed towards the alien, even when they thought it was a toy robot. No one plays with toys like that. ❤
  watched 2019-06-24
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) - some cool parts but overall this one felt like kind of a dud. I liked the first one but now the riff is established and the world is built. The best parts of this were the fight scenes that felt like speed chess, the worst parts were just like watching someone play a video game where you shoot people. Halle Berry co-stars, love her. At one point a guy says "parabellum" out loud, I guess that counts as a high point. ❤
  watched 2019-06-20
• Us (2019) - a lite but well-made horror movie with a core concept that doesn't stand up to any sort of logical scrutiny, which I found refreshing in this instance. There were a lot of nods to other horror movies, but it didn't feel too clever, and I'm sure the compulsion to do this as a contemporary filmmaker is huge, and the payoff, of signifying to your ideal audience that you've done the required homework, is enormous. ❤
  watched 2019-06-06
• Paranoid Park (2007) - usually if I don't like a movie I'll say "it's not for me", but this time I felt a strong "this movie isn't very good". The cast is mostly amateurs but it's not like watching real kids, it's like watching real kids trying to act. At one point the main character says "guitar punks", that must've been a misreading of "gutter punks"? And no one in the whole chain of creation caught the gaff? Skateboarding is a central feature of the movie and the skateboard parts look like the artsy parts of skate videos. This movie isn't very good. ❤
  watched 2019-06-05
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019) - By a hair's breadth I was too old for Pokemon when it hit America, so I never got into it the way seemingly everyone younger than me got into it. Also I hate gritty reboots, which despite being OK for kids, is what I would call this movie- the guy who plays Deadpool is the voice of Pikachu. So I wasn't going to see this, but then it was at the drive-in, so I went. I was pretty confused watching this, but that's on me- I'm sure almost everyone else watching this has a pretty good idea of how the world works and who the characters are. ❤
  watched 2019-06-02
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) - a pretty confusing movie with cool parts. At a certain point our radio went out so we were listening to the audio for this from all the radios in all the cars nearby, that was mostly fine. Something I liked about this is that the "eco-terrorists" win-- the monsters are unleashed to cause destruction and thin the herd of humanity as it were. The movie sort of glides over this by putting that win in the middle of the movie, and making the end about something even worse, which can and does get averted. Cool. ❤
  watched 2019-06-02
• Tora-san Confesses (1991) - This one is more about Mitsuo and Izumi-- she runs away from home and lands in Tottori, where she runs into Tora. Mitsuo comes and finds her. Tora has a short rekindled romance with a restauranteur, Seiko. It seems like we should remember her storyline from a previous movie but I think this is the character's first appearance. Mitsuo is at his floppiest and best. This is a great one, good use of the Tottori dunes. I know a bunch of people from Tottori who were psyched about this one. Every installment he goes to a different prefecture, that's a great aspect of this series. Imagine if they set every different Marvel movie in a different US state? I'd love that. Cincinnati crowds go wild when Iron Man eats Skyline chili in Avengers: Ohio. ❤
  watched 2019-05-30
• Tora-san's Dream of Spring (1979) - co-stars Herb Edelman, the guy who plays Dorothy's ex on Golden Girls, as a traveling salesman who's sort of the American version of Tora-san. His name is Micheal Jordan??? There's a lot of interesting Japanese ideas of Americans in this, most noteable is that Americans aren't good at figuring out other people's emotions, so they need everything said to them out loud. This leads to an uncomfortable couple moments where Micheal is in love with Sakura and tries to kiss her, but also makes everyone think of him as sweet and thoughtful because he says "thank you" all the time. ❤
  watched 2019-05-27
• Tora-san Goes Religious? (1983) - Tora goes to Okayama and stops at a temple to pay his respects to Hiroshi's dad, who was played by Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura in three previous movies, and died IRL earlier in the year. Tora gets along with the drunk priest of the temple, and falls in love with his daughter, who is also in love with him. After a night carousing, the priest is too sick to do a funeral so Tora fills in and has a great aptitude for the work. Despite everything going great, Tora feels like he can't marry her without first becoming a priest, which he tries to do and fails. It's a sad bummer, makes you want to reach out and shake him.

  ❤

  watched 2019-05-26
• Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - a fun animated movie about behind the scenes at video games. There were a lot of references to other (mostly older) video games, but it wasn't like that was the whole movie, and it didn't feel like they were just mentioning things you knew about- if you didn't know these characters you could still get into it. One of the voice actors was doing a great Ed Wynn impersonation. Wynn was the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland (1951) (I had to look up his name). Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• Glass (2019) - someone in a seat ahead of me was watching this on a previous flight, and I saw little bits of it. But when I started to watch it myself I got about 5 minutes in and then bailed. Seemed stupid. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) - a cool spy movie that I didn't realize was the third in a series, but that didn't throw me off. I think the main thing I didn't like in this was that right before the main battle the titular Girl spikes her utilitarian / lesbian signifying bowl cut into a faux hawk. That seemed greatly against character. Or maybe they did this to show that she is actually a bad person, that's my experience with this particular hairdo. People with full mohawks (sides are shaved) I tend to like-- they are full of life and they commit to the bit, which I respect. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) - I purposefully saved this to watch after another movie about hackers, I think I made the right move. It was fun. For fans of the other one. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• Tag (2018) - really fun. Hannibal Burress is great, everyone was great. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• Whiplash (2014) - Watched this on a long plane ride, towards the end of the flight, and I had to pick something that I'd be ok with not being able to finish. I didn't like any of these characters or their idea of what good music is. It's about a teacher that's really abusive, but like, he cares a lot? The real problem I had with it was that so much of the abuse was just homophobia, and like, sure, every who grew up as a boy in America has been called a fag in a bullying situation, so I guess it's "authentic", but the harm is asymmetric- if you're not gay then "fag" is a mean word someone used at you, if you are than it's an entire narrative calling you worthless. Pass. ❤
  watched 2019-05-18
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - I put off watching this because everyone told me it was bad, and I hate that idea that there are some "Movie events" that everyone watches. But I sort of like those comic book mega-events, so I watched it. These events in the comic book world, where there's a massive battle and some major characters get unwritten somehow, are really helpful in comics, and happen periodically. In addition to spurring book sales, they serve a practical function of making room for new characters and storylines. In comics you have hundreds of writers that enrich a pretty complicated fictional world over a long period of time and eventually make any big movement basically impossible. Infinity War is basically about this- the main bad guy wants to erase half of all sentient beings in a bid for "balance". From a movie franchise angle, I can see that it's helpful to have an excuse for inventing a new Spider Man, or giving an actor a graceful exit. Anyway yeah this movie is neither good nor essential. My notes from this say "space doors close mad slow". Watched this on a long plane ride, where you're allowed to engage in garbaggio. ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• Mortal Engines (2018) - I only watched the first 15 minutes of this, I couldn't really get over the premise. Why commit enourmous resources just to drive around? Is it an allegory for how stupidly dedicated to cars we are as Americans? I didn't stick around to find out. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - A comforting movie that I watched on a plane. Interesting to rewatch this after seeing Paddington 2, another whimsical movie in which a loveable main character goes to jail and makes friends. I used to think that Ralph Fiennes and Ray Fiennes were different people- in my mind they were brothers and one of them did dramas and the other did goofball stuff like this. Lala told me they're actually the same guy tho. :\ ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• Furious 7 (2015) - Me and Mori watched this on the plane on adjacent screens but with syncronized start times. This franchise definitely suffers from character creep, in which a strong guy gets absurdly strong because they have to be stronger than the previous movie. In the first movie Vin Diesel mentions nearly killing a guy by hitting him with a wrench, and this guilt almost destroys his life. By the seventh movie, Diesel is trading off hits in the face with enourmous wrenches, and it's not a problem. This is really underlined by a teary montage at the end (Paul Walker RIP) where you see bits of all previous movies and it's like Little Archie. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• Saturday Night Fever (1977) - a classic movie I previously only saw the iconic part of. For a movie in which the main character is a great dancer, there isn't really a lot of great dancing in this. Maybe because disco really is democratic, and all you need to do is just get out there and move and have fun? Some actors are so chimeric they seem brand new every movie, and some actors are sort of always the same guy, but some are in a sweet spot where you feel like all their characters are phoenix-like continuations of the same spirit slowly spinning through space, learning lessons and overcorrecting from past mistakes. Travolta's one of these. Also John Travolta's brother in this is a priest in the process of quitting the church, and I convinced myself that he's the same priest as in the Exorcist, which takes place immediately after events pictured in this movie. Watched this on a long plane ride. ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• The Favourite (2018) - great period piece, great interiors. I've never seen a movie with this much fish-eye lens, and never with multiple fish-eye tracking shots that weren't like, views through a security camera or something. From the very beginning, my question was "is this the lesbian Barry Lyndon?" and having watched it I feel fairly certain that that was the elevator pitch. It felt rare to see a love affair between two supporting characters, which the main character interferes with for her own advancement. I liked it. Watched this on a long plane ride. Edited this in March 2023 because I noticed that i had tagged the Favorite instead of the FavoUrite. ❤
  watched 2019-04-30
• Neon Maniacs (1986) - a perfect specimen of 80s goofball horror-- some weird looking guys kill teens in America, some of the teens fight back, and a single boob is shown. There's no explanation, backstory, ending, or arc, and it's not really a problem. Mild romance, battle of the bands. Watched this as part of Mr Mittens' birthday party. ❤
  watched 2019-04-22
• Uncle Drew (2018) - a pretty enjoyable "getting the band back together" movie but it's basketball, with current NBA players wearing old guy makeup. Based on a Pepsi commercial. What can I say, I love it when there's magic and I love it when it gets recaptured! I feel like this is probably the best movie based on a soft drink commercial but also I feel like I'm forgetting something. ❤
  watched 2019-04-20
• Castle in the Sky (1986) - another great Miyazaki movie about flying machines. "La Puta" means "The Bitch" in Spanish, a tidbit I masterfully kept to myself while watching this. ❤
  watched 2019-04-14
• Shazam! (2019) - went to the mall with Davey and Nick Holstrom because Davey had a hunch this movie was going to be really fun, and he was totally right. Set in Philadelphia for maximum effect. Sometimes I see a movie that has an intended audience of kids, and I think "is this going to make kids more annoying?". Didn't feel that way here. Captain Marvel is kind of a weird character, set apart from the shared universes of other comic book companies. The character was originally published by Fawcett Comics in 1940, then they were sued by DC in 1953 for ripping off Superman, resulting in a 12 year legal battle. Then in 1972, DC licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett, which seems wrong. Like if you think it's a rip off why invest??? Meanwhile they're hogtied from effectively marketing the character by the unrelated Marvel Comics publishing house, who developed and trademarked their own suite of characters named "Captain Marvel" in the late 1960's. As a result, the OG Captain Marvel exists in a sort of nostalgic alternate reality of "What Could Have Been", like Mithras, or the Bay City Rollers. Of course the movie didn't address any of this, which only adds to the "veil between worlds" feeling. ❤
  watched 2019-04-12
• Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) - extremely good movie that I rewatch when I or anyone I'm near is feeling low. If you don't like this movie you need to get your goddamn head examined. Last time I watched this I edited the subtitles to say my name instead of Kiki. ❤
  watched 2019-04-07
• The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) - in my mind this movie is about "main character loses identity in New York City, has to be rescued by friends", which is true, but a bit reductive. Contains an absolutely disgusting Muppet Babies inset. Something classic about the Muppets is that their backstories change to fit the storyline, and it's never any sort of trouble because the characters and relationships are so solid. In some ways it makes them seem more real, they're more than just characters, they're actors. ❤
  watched 2019-03-20
• Paddington (2014) - OK, not as good as Paddington 2 but still good! Nicole Kidman's villain is a liiiiittle too bloodthirsty for this level of movie, but I still had a great time. ❤
  watched 2019-03-18
• Notting Hill (1999) - Sakiko was having tooth pain so I rewatched this movie with her for the third time. Julia Roberts plays an incredibly famous actress who sort of stumbles into a relationship with a handsome tongue-tied nobody played by Hugh Grant. Neither Hugh nor anyone in his tight circle of pleasant underachievers can believe it the entire time. This time around the thing that struck me is that Julia Roberts outclasses everyone else in the movie that it makes the story seem meta. Like the movie itself can't believe that Julia Roberts is in it. ❤
  watched 2019-03-18
• Paddington 2 (2017) - absolutely delightful. My viewing party was delighted to see not one but two members of the cast of Notting Hill in this, another tidy "one London street as a village" movie. Great casting, funny parts, heartwarming. I never once thought about the special effects. I loved it! ❤
  watched 2019-03-14
• The Peanut Butter Solution (1985) - I saw this on TV as a kid and remember it as being fractured and nightmarish, with the most nightmarish part about it being its casual tone. Well I watched it again and I was spot-on. It's a bit like a Canadian Twin Peaks, for kids-- lots of weird little moments and strange details that the characters just roll with, as what else can one do? Even the soundtrack is a bit Badalamentesque-- same hazy keyboards, but with less bass response, and a young Celine Dion instead of Julee Cruise. Recommended. ❤
  watched 2019-03-10
• The Rules of the Game (1939) - I had never heard of this until I saw Tom talking about it, so I downloaded it. I guess it's one of the best movies ever made! Extremely enjoyable comedy of manners, set and filmed just at the onset of WWII. The camera swings around a ton and there's massive depth of focus in a lot of the shots, which movie heads love, but more than that it's beautifully done and all the characters are so light and wonderful. ❤
  watched 2019-03-04
• Innerspace (1987) - I remember really liking this as a kid, so I was super happy to find that it's really really good! Great cast (Martin Short, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Kevin McCarthy), and great practical special effects. Joe Dante directs, so there's a great role in their for Dick Miller. Quaid and Ryan met on set and then got IRL married! Dante describes the early stages of this movie as "what would happen if we shrank Dean Martin down and injected him inside Jerry Lewis?". Now that's a great pitch. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Dr. Cyclops (1940) - Another "people get shrunk" movie, from 1949 and in magnificent Technicolor. It's based on the part in the Odyssey with the island of the Cyclops. My only wish is that they didn't mention the connection. It would've been fun to see it all play out, and besides, everyone that could've cared about the reference would be able to pick it out. Instead they had someone yell "it's exactly like that part in the Odyssey!", benefitting no one. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Rollerball (1975) - Super violent future sports movie. James Caan stars as someone so good at sports that Something Must Be Done. I liked the story line but the game itself was so gnarly I had a hard time accepting the good guy as a good guy. Nice futuristic buildings and furniture. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Woman in the Moon (1929) - long Fritz Lang movie, shown with live organ accompaniment. I thought I might nap through this but I got hooked on the performances, and the live accompaniment was dazzling and inspiring. The main guy, the love interest, the best friend, the villain, the kooky scientist, and the kid, all the main characters, were all extraordinary. I don't know if I can recommend this, as it's a very long silent movie, but I really liked it. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, with live organ accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) - shown in 70mm! David The Projectionist at the Coolidge Corner theatre had an incredible spiel on the forum about this, about the print they got of this and how there was (all caps in the original) "NO BETTER SOUND IN CINEMA HISTORY THAN MAG WITH SR NR" and how this print would "ALTER YOUR LIFE". It did look and sound great. The Trek movies famously swing from good to bad with such regularity that the good ones (2, 4, 6) are even and the bad ones (1, 3, 5) are odd. I really enjoyed seeing my desk lamp in one of the conference halls. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Annihilation (2018) - "not as good as the book" goes without saying but I found this fun and visually imaginative. It's hard to show a completely non-human intelligence, and something I liked about this was that they weren't sure if it was even "an intelligence" in the same way we can think about it. "What does it want?" "I don't think it wants anything". Garish colors and weird blobs growing everywhere, reminded me of living in the mills and using Great Stuff in the drafty spots. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• The Andromeda Strain (1971) - I booed when Michael Crighton's name showed up on screen (due to his climate change denialism) and then fell asleep. This is one of those movies for people that love elaborate procedure, so much of it is "here's our cool facility". If you like this, God bless. As stated, I fell asleep. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, extremely late at night. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Destination Moon (1950) - fun rocket movie from George Pal. Need I say more? George Pal movies are always kind of corny, bright, and fun. No problem. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Source Code (2011) - Groundhog Day set up in an action movie "find the bomb" set up, I love the Groundhog Day riff in general and honestly I liked this one a lot! Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Sunshine (2007) - most space movies focus on how cold it is, but if you're near a star, it's super hot. This movie is about the sun, and has some cool parts and an Alien-style ensemble cast, but suddenly turns into an unfun slasher movie in the last third. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Escape from New York (1981) - great movie but I was in and out of sleep and also sort of nauseous from chugging lousy coffee all night. Watched this at the 44th annual Boston Sci Fi Movie Marathon, and it was extremely late at night, so late it was actually 10am the next morning. ❤
  watched 2019-02-19
• Police Story 2 (1988) - decent Jackie Chan movie, the huge explosions are just things that happen. More elements of great choreography, but still nothing like Project A & A2. ❤
  watched 2019-02-16
• Police Story (1985) - good but not great Jacky Chan movie, still trying to find more movies of his where the stunts are at a personal level and not just a bunch of explosions. Project A and Project A 2 were both so good but that doesn't mean everything in between is as good. ❤
  watched 2019-02-12
• Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) - why did people not like this? I had fun. I guess I also had zero requirements. I thought the cast was good. The prequel is a bizarre format, it knows you know what's going to happen, so that tension is removed, replaced with an "ohhh, so thiiiiiis is how it happened" chuckle. ❤
  watched 2019-02-11
• Shoplifters (2018) - a family drama from Hirokazu Kore-eda about a non-traditional family unit of a couple people living together in poverty. Kind of frustrating end where everyone's being strong for each other in a way that makes it seem like they don't like each other, when really they should just all, like, hug. Anyway I liked it. Incredible cast.

  I watched this in 2019 but I only just noticed that I had tagged the wrong movie when someone faved this in 2024. shoutout to username eeyore ❤

  watched 2019-02-08
• The Witch (2015) - great horror movie set in New England of the 1600's, with dialogue mostly from period sources (according to the end credits). Like Valhalla Rising (2009), they (spoiler alert) really nailed "old American light". I guess growing up in New England I always felt it was kind of spooky, this movie makes me feel like maybe it's Transylvania-grade spooky. The woods look great, despite being what I would call regular shitty woods. Of course what the woods really looked like before or concurrent to English settlers is probably very different? I told Sakiko this movie has a "Penderecki-ass soundtrack" and I stand by that, with the addendum "I like it". ❤
  watched 2019-02-03
• Tales from Earthsea (2006) - Studio Ghibli LeGuin adaptation/riff. This is Miyazaki's son Gorō's first, and it's OK but nowhere near his father's output. LeGuin wrote a blog post about how this movie isn't "bad" but is a huge disappointment. Miyazaki Sr wrote her asking about a possible collab, she didn't know who he was and said nah. Years later she saw My Neighbor Totoro and loved it, wrote him back. He was busy with Howl's Moving Castle, and Ghibli head Toshio Suzuki tasked Gorō with it, to no one's delight. The movie's honestly OK but what a collosal bummer the whole situation is. I can't even remember Howl's Moving. ❤
  watched 2019-02-02
• Notting Hill (1999) - romantic movie with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant that is good and somehow at this perfect level of being good but not feeling important, well made but not really a display of craft. ❤
  watched 2019-01-27
• You Were Never Lovelier (1942) - Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, with Xavier Cugat. Set in Buenos Aires, in Palermo. Rita Hayworth looks like she's working hard and having fun, Astaire as always is just a shape on the face of the water. ❤
  watched 2019-01-27
• The Band Wagon (1953) - Great Fred Astaire movie, I think this is from after his first retirement, and the storyline is like, an old song-and-dance man struggles to make a comeback with contemporary flourishes and fails, then goes back to good old hoofin it. Cyd Charisse co-stars. I love Fred Astaire, so natural and elegant. Sakiko said it's like he's not Doing The Thing, he Is The Thing. ❤
  watched 2019-01-25
• Armour of God (1986) - lesser Jackie Chan movie in an action vein, more explosions and car chases than choreography. The best parts were those little moments he always throws in, of like, eating gum in a cool way. ❤
  watched 2019-01-25