Month: May 2023

Weekly Movie Roundup

I watched just 5 movies last week.

Linoleum The Sandlot The Hole in the Ground
  • Linoleum has a lot of interesting ideas, and if they don’t all come together in the end, that might actually be sort of the point. I don’t think it’s entirely successful, but the cast is really good, and there are some very nice moments throughout.
    • The Sandlot is not without its charms, especially if you remember what it was like to be a twelve-year-old boy in the summertime, but it’s so incredibly hokey, with such low stakes and a weird episodic structure and annoying voiceover that do little but distract.
      • The Hole in the Ground gets a lot of mileage out of spooky old houses in the Irish countryside and creepy child performances. At the same time, the movie felt like it was moving towards one of two unsatisfying endings, and I’m not sure if it picked the better of the two.
      Puss in Boots: The Last Wish They Might Be Giants
      • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is surprisingly dark and violent for what’s ostensibly a children’s movie, but it’s also very tender and touching and often delightfully animated. You don’t need to have seen the first film, or any of the Shrek franchise, to enjoy this.
        • If They Might Be Giants is remembered nowadays only as the movie from which the more famous band took its name…well, that’s probably for the best. There are almost some good performances here, particularly by George C. Scott, but it’s almost hard to even say what those performances are actually wasted on. I suppose the movie is a comedy, but I can’t recall a single real laugh.

        I also re-watched 1983’s The Hunger, which is very much style over substance—it’s maybe Tony Scott’s Tony-Scottiest movie—but also very effectively so.