To Catch a Killer. Shailene Woodley is giving young Meryl Streep throughout, and she’s fine, but Ben Mendelsohn gets a rare chance to shine, and there is, as is traditional for him now, a small role for Ralph Ineson, which should be better than it is, but only just barely works in the first place because it’s him doing it. Standard manhunt stuff, nothing particularly good about it. Woodley’s not just doing a Clarice, which is nice.
Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva. Relatively (perhaps mercifully) brief, this follows the template set by the first, some ‘found footage’, some talking heads, lots of eerie audio. The first film lived, and promptly died, based on the talking heads, and it’s the same here. There’s nothing to top or otherwise improve on the first film, and most of it is nowhere near as interesting or compelling. This feels threadbare by comparison, and the first had no budget in the first place.
Sam Worthington turns in a good performance, which is fortunate, because there isn’t much else here. An ex-soldier, with a son who is unlucky to be a cool bad boy committing mishief yet with zero social cachet, his money worries are resolved by resorting to a little bit of crime, which gets out of hand. Haunted by his dead wife (fridged within 20 minutes, you will be delighted to know), and exploited by his friend (a very decent supporting role from Matt Nable, who also wrote/directed), the film suffers from simply not having much of an ending at all, just a soft anticlimax and nothing else. Definitely has some soul to it, but is rather unfocused. Phoebe Tonkin is great despite her role being Dead Wife.
Speaking of dead wives! Dead & Buried follows a sheriff who, investigating an unlikely series of deaths in his quiet little town, comes across mounting evidence that his wife may be up to no good. Of course, it turns out that she is in fact a revived corpse who is busy committing murders, and filming them, along with rest of the townspeople, who are also undead. The final reveal is heartily stupid, and I have never felt more like punching someone in the balls. Honestly: what the fuck.
The Living Daylights. Oh for the days when you cast British actors as just any old nationality and flung them in to a production where no-one else is playing their own nationality either, uncaring if they managed to maintan an accent, any accent. I quite like Dalton as Bond, he had a bit more of an edge, and he’s not stumbling from scene to senility like Moore was. An increasingly shiny Joe Don Baker and Jeroen Krabbe conspire, John Rhys-Davies is somehow a Russian general, Maryam d’Arbo as a Czechoslovakian cellist because why not. Lots of practical effects and stunts, not too many dodgy quips.
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I brought my kids to see the new Indiana Jones movie and it wasn’t as bad as I feared it was going to be. It was certainly far better than Crystal Skull. As long as you know what you’re getting in to - a popcorn flick centered around chasing the newest McGuffin, it’s passable. I personally didn’t feel like it tainted the Indiana Jones legacy like Crystal Skull did and handled the idea of an aged Indy well. It also worked as a “transition” movie for my family where we didn’t have to settle for whatever new, shiny, animated schlock was available and could watch a more grown-up movie.
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Guardian3 of the Galaxy. The formula is still good. I found myself involved despite all my issues with it. Gunn still knows how to put together a great scene, some of the CGI design is good, maximum value from the soundtrack, but the villain this time is weak, Chukwudi Iwuji is wasted in this (check him out in Peacemaker for a role worth his time), Gillan’s Nebula is improving, and the group getting back to being weird is a good thing.
Asteroid City: Wes Anderson Has Made His Film Again. The structure is a box within a box within a box, and there is his usual visual style, sense of humour, and (often successful, to be fair) attempt at real pathos. A truly bewildering assortment of a cast, all of whom deliver. I often wonder if some of the jokes are as funny as I think they are, or if they’re being played on me.
Theory of Everything, or: Explaining Science is Hard, so Here’s a Slightly Rancid Film About an Open Marriage, Kind Of. Hilariously brushing over Hawking’s ‘struggle’ with motor neurone disease and career to focus on the ordeal his wife, Jane, underwent because they couldn’t afford a nurse or some shit, only to struggle with depicting Jane being, quite rightly, attracted to another man. The, rather unfortunate, climax of the film was the terrible juxtaposition of Jane spending the night with her paramour for the first time (with Hawking’s consent and full knowledge) in one scene, and Hawking collapsing dramatically of pneumonia in the next. I think the writer and director should be locked up together, and not released until they can a) explain and b) apologise. A supposedly non-judgemental film does an awful job, and proves that suffering isn’t enough in itself to be ennobling or noteworthy.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Not quite as good as the first one, lacking the spark that made the first special, but still an energetic, rambunctious ride that throws handfuls of whatever it can summon at the camera, and is happy to bury you in a deluge of visual detail. It’s a good ride.
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I brought the kids to the new TMNT movie. It was sensory overload. They were clearly trying to tap into the same artistic vibes as the Spider-Verse animated movies but everything was unpleasantly deformed and I didn’t really like it all the time. I also didn’t like what they did with Splinter’s character. That said, there were some fun nostalgic throwbacks and I still prefer this kind of animated move over most things Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks lately. The kids certainly enjoyed it.
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Took the wife and daughters (10.5 and 8 rn) to see Barbie. (Full disclosure, I was not opposed to watching Margot Robbie do just about anything for 2h).
Everyone loved it, myself included. Great summer movie; fantastic jokes and some nostalgia hits for the parents, as well as enough of a “plot” to keep the kids entertained. Nice female empowerment message for the daughters and again, not a single person in that movie is hard on the eyes (one particular joke that points that out was a huge winner).
Highly recommended. Doubt it’s the kind of fare that will win awards, but do any of the entertaining ones really do?
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I enjoyed barbie. There’s been something’s that’s been bugging me though. It’s not that the tone was inconsistent, but I can’t quite find the word I’m looking for.
It was trying to keep a lot of balls on the air. It wasn’t just a comedy, it was a social commentary, it was a musical and dance number, it was a tear jerker, it was slapstick, it was aesthetic, it was both a barbie and chevrolet advert, it had appeal to kids while clearly being aimed at adults. I could probably go on.
And yet all those tonal shifts (probably still not the right word) worked for this film. I think other films would get crucified for jumping around so much. Is it the theme? Do the shifts help different demographics (feminists, musical fans, whatever) love the film? Is the film tapping into the ADHD/smart phone user attention span?
Anyway, the films been a phenomenon. I don’t remember the last time the cinemas were booked up for weeks like for this film
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The Void. Been playing a lot of Call of Cthulhu with friends, so I’ve been digging into Lovecraftian films for inspiration. There’s a good film here, buried under a lot of budget limitations and a script caught halfway between keeping up unrelenting pressure and doing slow-burn horror, and I wish they had made something simpler and less ambitious (a Lovecraftian Assault on Precinct 13 would have made my day).
Indiana Jones and Another Small Ethnic Boy. CGI Indiana Jones isn’t great (and some of the larger CGI shots are awful) but what really distinguishes this from the good films is the lack of practical stunts and effects by comparison. Not a bad film (unlike Crystal Skull), Waller-Bridge is arguably the best woman in an Indy film, not enough Toby Jones, and if I was Mads Mikkelsen, they could not have paid me enough money to be in this. Boyd Holbrook lives up to all the promise he showed in The Predator: zero. Harrison Ford is fine, but you’d think he would have exerted a little more influence over these entries. Felt particularly bad about guessing it was about fucking time travel within five minutes.
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I started watching the most recent Thor movie last night, despite deciding I was done with Marvel movies some time ago. Was reminded within about 15-20 minutes why I decided I am done with Marvel movies and watched football instead. Was reminded why I loathe amazon’s football coverage (sooo many ads plus wooden Kirk Herbstreit) and watched Temple of Doom while folding laundry. Scintillating entry into the biffpow chronicles, I know.
Seriously, though, that Thor movie was deplorable.
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We went to see Haunting in Venice today (passable; probably not worth a trip to the theaters but if you like the recent Poirot movies you should like it well enough) and saw the trailer for the new Marvels movie. It looks incredibly bad. To think that back in the early Marvel days I would have instantly watched anything in that first bunch of Avengers movies. How the mighty have fallen.
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Rear Window. This is a re-watch, of course, and while I always find Stewart more or less irritating (more this time), Kelly’s poise and class impressed me all the more. The ridiculously elaborate set, and the cinematography, are both spectacular even now they’re showing their age. The voyeurism and tension is still there. Stewart’s everyman act doesn’t go over well when he’s trying to glibly put off Grace Kelly from marrying him, but their repartee is good.
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Have you seen Harvey?
Don’t think so?
It’s where I think his approach worked best. Marvelous movie, though one I did not appreciate at all on first watching.
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I have always felt the dialogue in Rear Window is some of the best in Hitchcock. Another for me is North by Northwest, which is perhaps my favorite Hitchcock at this point.
I feel as you do about Stewart. The Man Who Knew Too Much is perhaps the least palatable as far as his “aw shucks” stuff goes.
Can you imagine Grace Kelly showing up and nagging you to hang out at your apartment while you were recuperating? The movie does rather stretch the boundaries of belief…
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North By Northwest is perfect. One of my favourites.
Can you imagine Grace Kelly showing up and nagging you to hang out at your apartment while you were recuperating?
It really does not wash. Certainly, you’d have reservations. You would also throw them out of the window when Grace Kelly walked through your door. Who cares if she divorces you after a year or whatever.
They Cloned Tyrone. Really good premise let down by a standard ending that appears to have been grafted on from another, much more average, film. John Boyega and Teyonah Parris satisfyingly sideline Jamie Foxx, in a pulpy investigation into strangeness in their neighbourhood, and two-thirds of the film are really enjoyable: funny, interesting, unusual, with solid characterisation. The last bit is unfortunately a downward slump into an ending you’ve seen plenty of times before. Bonus Kiefer Sutherland is a treat.
Harvey. A nice comedic farce, as Jimmy Stewart and his giant invisible rabbit friend bumble through life, in the sort of gentle, amicable film they don’t make any more. Scheming family members and psychiatric workers alike are innocuously confounded. Very light hearted, and a suitable role for Stewart as he bumbles through it all.
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Counterpoint: NbNW is too baroque and too long for what it is (and James Mason is underutilized). Notorious…now that’s efficient use of time!
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Notorious. Natus is right, it is efficient, a very lean film about Cary Grant shoving Ingrid Bergman into a big pile of shit and leaving her there until it suits him. While Grant is the same charmless mask in every scene, Bergman is astonishingly good, and it’s a shame the script didn’t do her any favours. Hitchcock’s construction is as fine as ever, Claude Rains is very worthwhile, but the central macguffin of the story doesn’t make a lick of sense. The best bit of the whole piece is Rains and Bergman’s marriage, as Rains genuinely loves her, and Grant seems to have genuine doubts about a woman who likes a drink and has slept with more men than he has.
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Agreed. There’s a ton of misogyny in there that doesn’t make Grant look good at all. That said, the whole last third of the film, for me, is priceless. I really do love that there isn’t a blast of gunfire at the end but Rains going back in to face the “family.” Brilliant.
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Murder on the Orient Express. On the one hand, a great cast. On the other, the last 35 minutes of the film is Albert Finney ranting to a carriage full of people. As hilarious as this is at first (and Finney does a great, albeit caricaturish job), it does get tiresome, especially when there’s an all-star cast all just stood there like lemons with nothing to do. It is painful that such a good (for its time) ending was dragged out for so long, when after the first couple of reveals, even if you fell asleep and missed half the film, you can guess the rest. A cast absolutely bursting with quality, only to be given perhaps one decent scene each.
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I just rewatched this a few months ago and was also struck by, “Gee, this scene at the end is going on for kind of long–just get to the point already.” I think we had a lot more patience for that sort of stuff back then. It also felt sort of too realistically claustrophobic–I liked how Branaugh staged that scene in the train tunnel outside instead.
I was also struck by how unnecessarily loud the train whistle is at the beginning of the film, and by Lauren Bacall. It is a great cast all around, no question. But every time Bacall has a scene, it’s like every other character fades to black and white or something. And the talents of Connery and Gielgud are kind of wasted in this.
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