Weapons (2025): It's about school sh**ting right? Great movie. I'm gonna have to see Barbarian now.
KPop Demon Hunters (2025): The biggest argument I've heard about this movie, to get guys like me to watch it, is that the animation style is like Spider-Verse. My answer to that is: Get your own style, the Turtles and Puss in Boots already copied it. It's fine, whatever.
Mortal Kombat (2021): It's fun enough, I guess, but I think they forgot it was about a fighting tournament... there's a little fighting, but zero tournament. They fight in a kind of arena at the end, but just to cheat eliminate the good guys before the competition. Now that movies are basically tv shows, I guess you can expect the first movie of a franchise to be like a pilot episode. The main dude is kind of boring and the music is forgettable. I'll take MK95 any day of the week before this. There's a sequel coming out soon, and it does look good.
Riddick (2013): I gotta stop upgrading my stuff to 4k. But it's Riddick, I had to do it, I already have the Chronicles and Pitch Black on 4k, I couldn't let that little guy alone. I really didn't need to upgrade, the regular Blu-ray is fine, but I'm a crazy OCD collector nut job, so here we are again. It's not the best movie of the franchise, but I enjoy it. There's a new movie apparently in production, can't wait to see it.
Speaking of upgrade (and the picture of the day), my Spinal Tap 4k copy is in the mail. I can't wait to crank it to 11, which is kind of low volume on my tv, so I'm not sure I get it (just kidding, of course I get the joke 🤣).
Gonna go on a little bit of a rant here, but has anyone else noticed the absolutely insane reviews almost every movie has been getting lately? Look, I know Rotten Tomatoes is stupid and who cares, but there used to be standards. We used to be a proper country. Most summers, you'd see about 80% of the releases float somewhere between 30% and 79%. And that was fine, not every hit can be a homeowner, and not every out can be your pants falling down while you helplessly whiff. But it meant that anything above or below had the potential to be something special. But now, as I look at what's currently playing, the single rotten movie out of the dozen listed is Honey Don't!
There's a reason im ranting about this: I saw There's Long Talk (boom, roasted) this week. A movie currently receiving the critical praise we used to reserve for movies like Fury Road. A movie about characters partaking a 300 mile death march that does little to improve on the idea just taking that walk yourself. Its not a bad movie, per se, I wouldn't begrudge a person for liking it. Sure, it looks like it was filmed through a bottle of piss and the script is trash, but some of the actors are trying. But the idea of 9 in 10 critics, people who are paid to be critical, giving it a recommendation in baffling to me.
So what's the problem here? Have these sites given too much access to online fan blogs whos writers are just happy to see a free movie? (Not you, Rob) Are cinematic movies movies just becoming too much like TV, where competency is the only bat to clear? Or are we in the middle of a classic period I cinema, and im just too cynical to see it? Am I the problem? Is this why my wife left me? Did I get food poisoning from spoiled sour cream? Why wont Daisy list an expiration date on the packaging? Why can't I stop asking questions?
The necessity of getting to movies that were going off of the DVR made this week a busy one. Having some late nights also helped get a couple more watches in than usual. I started Anora last week but only finished it this week because I had to let my mind adjust to how modern it is. The only other watch requiring a similar mental adjustment was Clash of the Wolves; it was the first silent film I have seen in a long time. The rest are in my cinematic sweet spot.
CLASH OF THE WOLVES (1925) – A century ago, a dog named Rin-Tin-Tin was a big movie star. He plays a half-dog, half-wolf named Lobo that has to take his family (all clearly regular dogs) into the Californian desert when a wild fire destroys his home forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Fires in California are clearly not a new phenomenon. Conflict with ranchers puts Lobo and his clan at risk, but he finds a sympathetic prospector when he gets hurt. There is a little bit of romance, comedy, and western action to keep you engaged.
MODESTY BLAISE (1966, dir. Joseph Losey) – Adapted from a comic strip, this is a spy comedy done in a very 1960s camp style. For this second viewing, the faults of the film only stuck out more. Modesty Blaise is a former criminal who got rich enough to retire, but British intelligence services find her particular skills useful for their operations. She gets put on an investigation of an organization trying to steal diamonds destined for an Arab ruler. In addition to a script that fails to adequately define the relationships between the characters, the tone of the film goes all over the place. Great actors like Dirk Bogarde, Monica Vitti, and Terence Stamp (R.I.P) are wasted.
CRIME WAVE (1954, dir. Andre De Toth) – A trio of escaped convicts make their way to Los Angeles for an admittedly small crime wave. Sterling Hayden is the tough detective on their trail through the streets of the city in this entertaining B-movie thriller clocking in at less than 80 minutes. This is the kind of role that Hayden excelled in. One of the escapees is a young Charles Bronson still using his real name (Buchinsky). Shot throughout the Los Angeles area, Crime Wave captures the city while there were still street cars running.
THE GOLDEN HAWK (1952) – I came to this looking for a pirate adventure. The Golden Hawk does deliver on that, but there is a lot of romance and melodrama thrown into the story as well. Sterling Hayden plays the title character, a 17th-century French pirate in the Caribbean. Hayden, with his drawl and awkward physicality, seems like a weird choice for the role, and the shifting between pirate scenes and romantic subplots breaks up the flow of the film considerably. There are much better pirate films from this era.
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1972, dir. Monte Hellman) – A beautiful fall evening and a pristine print made for a memorable Thursday night at the Mahoning Drive-In. Existentialist cinema meets exploitation in a very early 1970s way with this. Musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are a duo wandering the United States in their souped-up 1955 Chevy staying afloat financially by challenging other cars to races. They keep encountering another road nomad in Warren Oates driving his yellow Pontiac GTO and end up in a cross-country competition with him. The connection and disconnection with the people they interact with is more important than whatever elements there are of a plot. Two-Lane Blacktop may be the most car focused film I have ever watched.
ANORA (2024, dir. Sean Baker) – There is a lot that one can say about what appears to be one the most important films to come out this decade. For me, it is the quality of the filmmaking in Anora that really stands out. The camerawork and the lighting work very well for the story. Did I like the characters? Not particularly, but that does not seem to be Sean Baker’s intention. I did not expect Anora to gradually become a screwball comedy. Even with a director whose sensibilities are clearly influenced by older filmmaking styles, I struggle to get into movies made this decade.
GAMBIT (1966, dir. Ronald Neame) – A breezy heist comedy that takes unexpected twists, the kind of film that is best to go into blindly. Shirley Maclaine is a dancer in Hong Kong roped into a scheme to steal an Arab business mogul’s priceless sculpture. The thief is a charming Michael Caine more out of his depth than he can see. Gambit is nearly two hours of escapist entertainment, nothing more and nothing less. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. There is some weird stereotyping that happens with European actors playing all of the main Arab characters, but that is to be expected from the period.
Weapons (2025): It's about school sh**ting right? Great movie. I'm gonna have to see Barbarian now.
ReplyDeleteKPop Demon Hunters (2025): The biggest argument I've heard about this movie, to get guys like me to watch it, is that the animation style is like Spider-Verse. My answer to that is: Get your own style, the Turtles and Puss in Boots already copied it. It's fine, whatever.
Mortal Kombat (2021): It's fun enough, I guess, but I think they forgot it was about a fighting tournament... there's a little fighting, but zero tournament. They fight in a kind of arena at the end, but just to cheat eliminate the good guys before the competition. Now that movies are basically tv shows, I guess you can expect the first movie of a franchise to be like a pilot episode. The main dude is kind of boring and the music is forgettable. I'll take MK95 any day of the week before this. There's a sequel coming out soon, and it does look good.
Riddick (2013): I gotta stop upgrading my stuff to 4k. But it's Riddick, I had to do it, I already have the Chronicles and Pitch Black on 4k, I couldn't let that little guy alone. I really didn't need to upgrade, the regular Blu-ray is fine, but I'm a crazy OCD collector nut job, so here we are again. It's not the best movie of the franchise, but I enjoy it. There's a new movie apparently in production, can't wait to see it.
Speaking of upgrade (and the picture of the day), my Spinal Tap 4k copy is in the mail. I can't wait to crank it to 11, which is kind of low volume on my tv, so I'm not sure I get it (just kidding, of course I get the joke 🤣).
Plot twist, Spinal Tap arrived this morning
DeleteGonna go on a little bit of a rant here, but has anyone else noticed the absolutely insane reviews almost every movie has been getting lately? Look, I know Rotten Tomatoes is stupid and who cares, but there used to be standards. We used to be a proper country. Most summers, you'd see about 80% of the releases float somewhere between 30% and 79%. And that was fine, not every hit can be a homeowner, and not every out can be your pants falling down while you helplessly whiff. But it meant that anything above or below had the potential to be something special. But now, as I look at what's currently playing, the single rotten movie out of the dozen listed is Honey Don't!
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason im ranting about this: I saw There's Long Talk (boom, roasted) this week. A movie currently receiving the critical praise we used to reserve for movies like Fury Road. A movie about characters partaking a 300 mile death march that does little to improve on the idea just taking that walk yourself. Its not a bad movie, per se, I wouldn't begrudge a person for liking it. Sure, it looks like it was filmed through a bottle of piss and the script is trash, but some of the actors are trying. But the idea of 9 in 10 critics, people who are paid to be critical, giving it a recommendation in baffling to me.
So what's the problem here? Have these sites given too much access to online fan blogs whos writers are just happy to see a free movie? (Not you, Rob) Are cinematic movies movies just becoming too much like TV, where competency is the only bat to clear? Or are we in the middle of a classic period I cinema, and im just too cynical to see it? Am I the problem? Is this why my wife left me? Did I get food poisoning from spoiled sour cream? Why wont Daisy list an expiration date on the packaging? Why can't I stop asking questions?
The necessity of getting to movies that were going off of the DVR made this week a busy one. Having some late nights also helped get a couple more watches in than usual. I started Anora last week but only finished it this week because I had to let my mind adjust to how modern it is. The only other watch requiring a similar mental adjustment was Clash of the Wolves; it was the first silent film I have seen in a long time. The rest are in my cinematic sweet spot.
ReplyDeleteCLASH OF THE WOLVES (1925) – A century ago, a dog named Rin-Tin-Tin was a big movie star. He plays a half-dog, half-wolf named Lobo that has to take his family (all clearly regular dogs) into the Californian desert when a wild fire destroys his home forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Fires in California are clearly not a new phenomenon. Conflict with ranchers puts Lobo and his clan at risk, but he finds a sympathetic prospector when he gets hurt. There is a little bit of romance, comedy, and western action to keep you engaged.
MODESTY BLAISE (1966, dir. Joseph Losey) – Adapted from a comic strip, this is a spy comedy done in a very 1960s camp style. For this second viewing, the faults of the film only stuck out more. Modesty Blaise is a former criminal who got rich enough to retire, but British intelligence services find her particular skills useful for their operations. She gets put on an investigation of an organization trying to steal diamonds destined for an Arab ruler. In addition to a script that fails to adequately define the relationships between the characters, the tone of the film goes all over the place. Great actors like Dirk Bogarde, Monica Vitti, and Terence Stamp (R.I.P) are wasted.
CRIME WAVE (1954, dir. Andre De Toth) – A trio of escaped convicts make their way to Los Angeles for an admittedly small crime wave. Sterling Hayden is the tough detective on their trail through the streets of the city in this entertaining B-movie thriller clocking in at less than 80 minutes. This is the kind of role that Hayden excelled in. One of the escapees is a young Charles Bronson still using his real name (Buchinsky). Shot throughout the Los Angeles area, Crime Wave captures the city while there were still street cars running.
THE GOLDEN HAWK (1952) – I came to this looking for a pirate adventure. The Golden Hawk does deliver on that, but there is a lot of romance and melodrama thrown into the story as well. Sterling Hayden plays the title character, a 17th-century French pirate in the Caribbean. Hayden, with his drawl and awkward physicality, seems like a weird choice for the role, and the shifting between pirate scenes and romantic subplots breaks up the flow of the film considerably. There are much better pirate films from this era.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteTWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1972, dir. Monte Hellman) – A beautiful fall evening and a pristine print made for a memorable Thursday night at the Mahoning Drive-In. Existentialist cinema meets exploitation in a very early 1970s way with this. Musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are a duo wandering the United States in their souped-up 1955 Chevy staying afloat financially by challenging other cars to races. They keep encountering another road nomad in Warren Oates driving his yellow Pontiac GTO and end up in a cross-country competition with him. The connection and disconnection with the people they interact with is more important than whatever elements there are of a plot. Two-Lane Blacktop may be the most car focused film I have ever watched.
ANORA (2024, dir. Sean Baker) – There is a lot that one can say about what appears to be one the most important films to come out this decade. For me, it is the quality of the filmmaking in Anora that really stands out. The camerawork and the lighting work very well for the story. Did I like the characters? Not particularly, but that does not seem to be Sean Baker’s intention. I did not expect Anora to gradually become a screwball comedy. Even with a director whose sensibilities are clearly influenced by older filmmaking styles, I struggle to get into movies made this decade.
GAMBIT (1966, dir. Ronald Neame) – A breezy heist comedy that takes unexpected twists, the kind of film that is best to go into blindly. Shirley Maclaine is a dancer in Hong Kong roped into a scheme to steal an Arab business mogul’s priceless sculpture. The thief is a charming Michael Caine more out of his depth than he can see. Gambit is nearly two hours of escapist entertainment, nothing more and nothing less. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. There is some weird stereotyping that happens with European actors playing all of the main Arab characters, but that is to be expected from the period.