What a great movie. If I weren’t already into cycling, this movie would get me there.
So, about this movie’s poster…
The obvious parody poster would be Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, I already used that one, so I had to do something else that was more complicated, and far too difficult for me to knock out on a school night when I should be in bed. Please enjoy this concept of a plan for a poster:
After we saw this, my spouse said I should call this section “Mike Leigh needs a hug.”
Some of the audience seemed to think this movie was a comedy, but it didn’t feel like one to me. Pansy says some clever things, but every word is soaked with anger and pain. She gets no relief from her caustic behavior.
A strong movie, but holy cow it was painful to watch. You know what it needs? A silly poster.
Hundreds of Beavers
HE TRIES TO CATCH BEAVERS BUT HE LOSES HIS CLOTHES AND GETS POOP ON HIS HEAD! AND THERE’S A GUY IN A HORSE SUIT!
I love this movie.
After Hard Truths I needed something silly and fun, and Hundreds of Beavers definitely qualifies. It didn’t trigger the crazy gut laughs like when I saw it the first time, but I re-watched by myself on my computer instead of in a crowded theater so that’s not surprising. I wish I could show it to my classes so they can see that great movies don’t require huge budgets, but it’s just a little too racy for me to risk playing it for middle schoolers.
Do you know what the wildest part of this movie is? This:
Things this movie has in common with Poe’s story:
The title
a cat (briefly)
Things this movie does not have in common with Poe’s story:
plot
characters
tone
message
It’s fun to see Lugosi and Karloff in the same film, and to see Lugosi is a (kind of creepy, but still mostly) good guy, but good golly this movie is silly.
Speaking of silly, here’s this movie’s really dumb poster:
The buzz about this movie was stuff like “Pamela Anderson’s greatest performance! Incredible!” That sounds great until you remember that she’s never been known as a great actress. I don’t mean to sell her short- there are some scenes where she is absolutely riveting- but they are surrounded by acting that ranges from “okay” to “bewildering.” Jamie Lee Curtis is strong, as she always is when not terribly miscast and slogging through dreck. But my favorite performance was from Dave Bautista, who gets to play small and subtle. I’m really glad he’s been able to somehow avoid always being cast as “Large Angry Fighting Person.”
And now some (very) slightly sad news!
I started making fake posters this year so I could use them as replacements on Letterboxd, but the site where they draw posters from is cracking down on fan art, which means this is the last one you’ll see on Letterboxd (and it will probably disappear from there). The good news: you’ll still see them here! Another great reason to visit my blog!
Othe spoof considered include: The Las Starfighter, The Last Dragon, and Last of the Red Hot Lovers
My students have raved about this movie for decades. Decades! I always thought “I’m sure it’s good, but I’m too old to enjoy it.”
It’s wonderful. I’m not sure how a movie that starts with almost twenty minutes of people moving into a house is so charming, but it was absolutely captivating. The animation works so well that I found myself thinking “that girl is really good; I wonder if she made other movies.” Not if the voice actor had done more work- if the animated girl had continued her acting career.
That’s two kid movies in a row that I watched and enjoyed after years of people saying “watch this – you’ll enjoy it.” Maybe it’s time to accept I should finally watch Paddington 2.
I really thought I’d seen this one already, but as I was watching today I realized there were huge chunks I didn’t know at all. I’m glad I gt to see this in a theater, because this movie is big and bright and has ALL the colors. It’s not afraid to be a giant cartoon. It’s smart enough to know that a race movie needs lots of car crashes, but takes advantage of cartoon reality to make sure no one dies. Everyone in an crash gets wrapped in magic safety bubbles or just happens to have a parachute.
But the best part of the movie was the woman sitting next to me who could barely contain her excitement. If a tenth of the people who saw this when it came out loved it as much as she did, this thing would have made a zillion dollars.
Hey look a poster!
He’s a demon. His engine is the one that knocks, but only if he uses cheap gas.
I think this would have worked better as a book, where they wouldn’t have been afraid to let Frida Kahlo’s art stand on its own. This documentary decided that nearly every image of her work had to be animated and color graded to match every other image, breaking the composition of everything she made. She complains at one point that a French artist wants to display her work with junk he bought in street markets in Mexico; I wonder how she would have felt about her work in this.
I thought I had this whole movie figured out from the trailer. I did not. I mean, everything I expected to happen happened, but not in the way I expected.
That was a weird sentence.
Fascinating power dynamics and an incredible performance by Nicole Kidman.
Sure, it’s racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic (“it was a diffferennnnt tiiiiiiime!”), but if you can see past that, just underneath is a thoroughly stilted and unfunny film. I do thank it for being mercifully short, though.
This movie’s poster:
It’s not great, but it’s not much worse than the real poster I based it on:
I should have made Leslie Nielsen more orange and been more careful with the white space around the logo. Too late – not going back.
This movie is on the shortlist for best international picture. It takes place in India, so naturally it’s being submitted by France. I had a hard time connecting to this at first – possibly because my old man ears struggled to differentiate the voices of the three leads, or possibly because I might have a cold coming on – but eventually my brain figured it out and I locked in (as the kids say).
So, good, but be ready to focus on dialogue processing unless you’re familiar with the 23 official languages of India.
This movie’s “attempt to be confusing” Letterboxd poster: