Month: November 2023

I watched a half dozen movies last week:

• When I watched Free Solo, I don’t remember thinking, what these directors need to make next is a non-documentary film. Yet now they have, with the sports biopic Nyad, and it’s the things you wouldn’t get with a documentary—namely, the outstanding performances by Annette Bening and Jodie Foster—that make this film worth watching. It’s otherwise a pretty standard-fare biopic, uplifting sure, but also light on the sort of details and critical eye that a documentary might have supplied.
• Albert Finney puts a lot of relish on his portrayal of Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, but honestly, that’s kind of what you want from this kind of star-studded whodunit.
• I can’t exactly fault 1984 for being too bleak, since that more or less comes with the territory. But it is bleak more than anything else. It’s very well made, though, and John Hurt and Richard Burton are both very good.

• I can’t help but feel like Moloch rushes its ending just a little, but that’s only because the rest of it is so well-paced and unsettling. And my quibbles aren’t with the ending itself, which is great and surprising and caps off a really strong small horror film.
• Hangover Square was the last movie in Laird Cregar’s too-short career, and he’s the best thing about it. The rest of the movie feels well made and noir-ish, but also a little dated.
• Body Snatchers makes a lot of really interesting and creepy choices. I still think the 1978 version has it easily beat for stylish science-fiction horror—and this remake apes its predecessor’s most iconic shot a few too many times—but there’s a lot to really like about this version as well.

I also rewatched a couple of movies:

• When Harry Met Sally… holds up really well, and it’s arguably the best romantic comedy ever made. (I’d discredit any list that doesn’t at least have it in the top ten.)
• Around the World in 80 Days…doesn’t really hold up. I probably haven’t seen it in forty-something years, and didn’t remember it terrifically well to begin with, but it was a Best Picture Winner with a great cast. So I was hoping for something a little more than a dated and very Eurocentric (if not borderline offensive) travelogue. It’s not unpleasant, just kind of dull.

I watched 9 movies last week:

• Albert Brooks is a very smart and funny man, and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is an amiable stroll through his life and career. It’s sometimes a little strange who director Rob Reiner decides to talk to—why so much Jonah Hill, for instance? and did they even try to get Lorne Michaels or anyone else involved with the early days of Saturday Night Live?—but if you like Brooks’ movies and comedies, this is well worth a look.
• Jodie Foster’s commitment to her role in Nell is admirable, but the rest of the movie is a lot less so, with its tired “wild child shows us what it’s really like to be alive” storyline.
• The Killer is well crafted and a lot of fun, even if it does feel like little more than a genre exercise for David Fincher.

• I can’t pretend like Rambo III is a quiet and contemplative movie…except that it almost is, at least compared to the previous film in the series. It’s a little slow and boring at times, which surprisingly works in its favor. It’s not as thoughtful or as well made as the original First Blood, but I enjoyed it a lot more than First Blood Part II.
• Barbie is incredibly winning, vibrant and silly and clever and biting. It is in many ways a love letter to the toy line, making a real case for why an aspirational female doll remains important, but it also takes real shots at the culture and corporation that has mass-produced and marketed that aspiration. It’s not a scathing indictment of Mattel by any means, but it’s also not uncritical of them. The movie has a lot to say, and it speaks with such an inventive visual style, but it never once loses its sense of simple fun.
• It’s Pat: The Movie is more than a little dated in its jokes about gender, but what’s interesting about it—indeed, the only interesting thing about the movie—is that it’s not deeply offensive or weirdly backward. Pat isn’t being mocked for not being easily idenifiable as cisgender, despite the jokes. As Kevin Thomas wrote in his LA Times review, the movie “offers a simple message of self-acceptance, asserting that what counts is who you are rather than what your gender may or may not be. The trouble is that its telling is truly terrible…” The trouble is, Pat is an obnoxious and unpleasant character, full-stop, and the movie around that character isn’t ever funny.

• Blue Beetle feels very familiar, and it’s more than a little too long, but there are a lot of fun things to like about it. It’s hard not to imagine another strand of DC’s crumbled multiverse where this was a more successful entry.
• Clark Gable and Myrna Loy are well paired in Too Hot to Handle, but it’s not a particularly good movie, even before it devolves into a half-baked plot filled with racist caricatures and jungle witch doctors.
• I’m not sure that Rustin does the man, or the historic March on Washington, the full justice it deserves. But it’s a very compelling watch, and Colman Domingo is outstanding in the title role.

I also re-watched The Brood. In his original review, Roger Ebert asked, “Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?” Which, you know, seems kind of harsh. It’s not my favorite David Cronenberg movie—by his own admission, it’s fairly humorless, and more than anything you’re left with the thought that his own divorce must have been extremely unpleasant—but it grapples with some uncomfortable emotions in interesting and unsettling ways.

Here are all my #nowplaying songs from last week:

I watched 9 movies last week:

• Out of the Furnace is a little too slow and too long, and it doesn’t have anything wildly original to say about its characters. But they’re elevated by some very good performances, particularly from an understated Christian Bale.
• Citing a couple of different reviews, Wikipedia notes that Nobody Knows I’m Here has been “praised [for] its earnestness and simplicity.” The earnestness part is definitely on the mark, and much of that comes through Jorge Garcia’s quiet and wounded performance, with which we can’t help but empathize. I do wonder, though, if the film isn’t deceptively simple, if only because it leaves room to wonder how much of the ending is actually happening, and to question exactly how much we should empathize with Garcia’s Memo.
• MUBI describes Pandora and the Flying Dutchman as “a Technicolor fever dream of impossible love, heady folk mythology, and heartstopping color.” It’s such a strange movie, but James Mason and Ava Gardner are never less than compelling in it.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is silly and inventive and charming, and it’s maybe the funniest Ice Cube performance since the first Friday movie.
• There’s a lot going on in The Furies, which appropriately has been described as a “Freudian Western.” Stanwyck and Huston are both very good.
• The Mysterious Island probably still wouldn’t be entirely effective even if it wasn’t a strange semi-silent movie—delayed at the cusp of the sound era—and that’s arguably the most interesting thing about it. There’s definitely ambition on screen, and even some genuinely impressive special effects for 1929, but the film isn’t especially exciting.

• Mixing together a little of movies like Booksmart and Superbad, Bottoms is never quite as smart or funny as those influences, but it is very silly and winning.
• The Sure Thing is maybe more amiable than laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s hard not to judge it against later, better movies in its cast and director’s careers. But overall, it has a good heart and a good cast, and that’s good enough.
• At nearly three (unresolved) hours, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One probably is too long for its own good. (That title alone could take you half an hour to stumble around.) It mostly gets past that by jumping (sometimes quite literally) from one fantastic set-piece to another, and doing so with a fairly simple story and a very engaging cast. Despite its over-abundance of plot and characters—some maybe only vaguely remembered from previous installments, some more or less retconned in entirely—the movie never really feels long, much less padded. And while it’s maybe a little silly, I did like the novelty of of making it so the antagonist is the MacGuffin.

I also, somewhat randomly, re-watched 1971’s The Andromeda Strain. A lot of pulse-pounding tedium in that one.

Here are all my #nowplaying songs from last week: