Saturday, May 13, 2023

Weekend Open Thread

8 comments:

  1. The Pope's Exorcist (2022) was a fun exorcism movie. It leans hard into the tropes of the religious horror genre, but Crowe's amusing performance as a witty priest carries it. I've loving this era of Crowe. I could have just watched him ride around on that moped for hours.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought it was a super dark horror movie. I didn't watch the trailer. But your text pushed me to watch it, and now i'm interested

      Delete
    2. Make no mistake; it's not a horror comedy, but it's hard to take exorcism movies completely seriously. Not that I was watching ironically, but they're often a little silly at times.

      Crowe is playing the part with a seriousness, but you can still see he's loving every scenery chewing minute on screen, and his natural charisma is there as much as it ever was. Also, it's kind of like a buddy cop movie where he's playing the grizzled older priest who's not as taken aback by everything that's happening and often throws out an irreverent remark. It was really his performance I loved, and the rest of the movie is decent enough.

      Delete
    3. I'm not expecting an Evil Dead level of humor, but i get what you're saying. The trailer feels pretty much like what you're saying

      Delete
    4. Hope you get as much enjoyment as I did if you eventually watch it!

      Delete
    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  2. Good weekend to everyone.

    With the choice of the first two Terminator films playing at the Mahoning Drive-In or seeing EVIL DEAD RISING playing at a drive-in that I have never been to, I decided to have the new experience tonight. It was a perfect drive-in night, too. The Circle Drive-In is located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is an establishment I have intended to go to for a couple of years. It is an old-school drive-in. Though the car speakers are long gone, the poles they were attached to are still there. The tables by the concession stand seem not to have been changed for a couple of decades. In short, my kind of place. The only reason I have not been there before is because it shows mainly new films. The Circle is actually is closer to me than the Mahoning.

    There are four drive-in theaters within two hours drive of home. Shankweiler's and Becky's are south of me in the Allentown area. Shankweiler's is the oldest one in existence, built in 1934. It now is the only one I have yet to visit. The Circle, as was already mentioned, is to the north in Scranton, and the Mahoning lies to the south near Lehighton, which is west of Allentown.

    What is my verdict on Evil Dead Rising? I had a good time watching it. Though it does feature aspects of modern horror (quick cutting) that tend to irritate me, there was a good atmosphere to the film. To get the right level of isolation, the story did have to take some extreme turns. Who would have thought that vinyl albums would be relevant in a 2023 horror film. The level of the gore was very surprising to me. Being a part of the Evil Dead franchise, it does have those elements that one expects, but Evil Dead Rising is not a complete slave to them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. There were a couple of other watches during the week.

    RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1991, dir. Zhang Yimou) – This is one of those titles at Blockbuster back in the late 1990s that I never had the curiosity to watch it at the time. A quality production all around. The visual beauty (lighting, locations, sets) is in stark contrast to the ugliness of the story. When 19-year-old Songlian decides to become the fourth wife of a wealthy man, she has no conception of the difficulties she is getting into. It truly is a golden cage scenario as she competes for the attention of her husband and influence among the hierarchy of the wives. Yimou’s very controlled aesthetic does not lead to much spontaneity in the drama, but, having watched many stiff period dramas before, that did not bother me.

    PLEASE BABY PLEASE (2022, dir. Andrea Kramer) on MUBI – When a repressed married couple become entangled with a street gang, nobody is going to be the same. I am not sure that I am the audience for this kind of self-aware camp. Though I much appreciated the wild style of Please Baby Please, the references to 1950s iconography and frequent questioning of sexuality and gender became grating over its length. The film does not add up to anything that I found satisfying, but I can concede that there are people who will be content with the cinematic package it offers.

    ReplyDelete