- I’m glad that Hollywood Shuffle exists. It has some important things to say, and it’s not infrequently very funny. But I’m also inclined to agree with Roger Ebert, who wrote in his review: “The story behind ‘Hollywood Shuffle’ is more thrilling than anything on the screen.
- By nearly all objective metrics, Nomads is a bad movie. The problem is, it’s not very badly made. John McTiernan, for all his many faults, would, right after this, go on to direct in a row three of the greatest action blockbuster action movies ever made. Nomads is deeply flawed, confusing on every level, and yet it’s also—maybe because of that confusion as much as in spite of it—strangely compelling.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has called Red Sonja “the worst film I have ever made.” I don’t think it’s that bad—has he not seen The Expendables or Batman & Robin?—and there’s maybe just a hint of misogyny to the suggestion that it is, considering how Brigitte Nielsen is much more the center of the film than Schwarzenegger’s extended cameo. But yeah, Red Sonja is a pretty terrible movie, from its wooden acting to its extremely cheap-looking sets. It might have some hokey charm if it wasn’t also so boring. I mean, Schwarzenegger was wrong, but he wasn’t that wrong.
- The Age of Adaline gets a lot better midway through, with the introduction of Harrison Ford’s character (and Ford himself as a screen presence), but overall the movie is still clumsily structured, often emotionally distant, and filled to the brim with sometimes tedious voiceover. It plays like a film based on a novel, with a lot of character development and story details unfortunately left on the adaptation-room floor, and yet it’s somehow an original screenplay.
- Freaky Tales isn’t exactly deep, and it has a mean, gory streak that’s occasionally less than pleasant, but overall, it’s a very fun movie.
- Black Bag is perhaps a little too cold and precise, a little too straightforward for all the spycraft cat-and-mouse. But it is also a very fun and expertly made exercise.
I also re-watched two very different movies: Sicario and Brotherhood of the Wolf. I enjoyed them both, even if Sicario plays a little differently in the Trump era and Brotherhood of the Wolf is all a bit too much.
