Category: Movie Pass Adventures

  • Streaming Retro Movie Adventures: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

    Mei in My Neighbor Totoro

    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.

    Would you like a confusing poster?

    A poster for My Neighbor Totoro in the style of the first Terminator poster.
    “I’ll be back… with acorns.”

    All my silly posters can be found here: https://letterboxd.com/dogwelder/list/movies-i-watched-in-2025/

    At least, they’ll be there if they don’t get mysteriously pulled.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Retro Movie Adventures: Speed Racer (2018)

    Sparky, Mom Racer, Pops Racer, Trixie, and Speed in Speed Racer.

    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!

    Movie poster for Speed Racer modeled after Breaking Bad.
    He’s a demon. His engine is the one that knocks, but only if he uses cheap gas.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Streaming Movie Adventures: Frida

    Frida Kahlo's eyes

    The 2024 documentary, not the 2002 movie.

    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.

    But hey, I got a pretty good poster idea!

    Fediverse reactions

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Babygirl

    Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman in Babygirl.

    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.

    …and the Letterboxd movie poster special:

    Babygirl poster (very) vaguely similar to the poster for the 2008 film "Baby Mama."
    Fediverse reactions

  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

    Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult

    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:

    Poster Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult in the style of a poster for Top Gun

    It’s not great, but it’s not much worse than the real poster I based it on:

    Poster for Top Gun. The foreground right is Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis sitting on a motorcycle. Surrounding them are the credits and tagline for the movie. The background shows three fighter jets in silhouette flying in front of the sun.

    I should have made Leslie Nielsen more orange and been more careful with the white space around the logo. Too late – not going back.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Movie Pass Adventures: All We Imagine As Light

    All We Imagine as Light movie bar

    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:

    A poster for All We Imagine as Light inspired by the poster for Anora.
    Maybe she also speaks Russian?

    Fediverse reactions

  • Retro Movie Adventures: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

    part of Malcolm McDowell's head, including his eyes, nose, an part of his hair - on a black background.

    I forgot how good this movie is. Malcolm McDowell 110% charm, which he needs to be to make a brutal thug like Alex a protagonist worth watching.

    Now I need to find the full version of “I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper.”

    Today’s poster:

    Poster for A Clockwork Orange poorly imitating the style of the poster for Singin' in the Rain.
    I promise there will be better ones. I’m warming up!

  • Movie Pass Adventures: The Room Next Door

    A horizontal slice of Tilda Swinton's face, showing her right eye and the right side of her mouth, from The Room Next Door

    My first movie of 2025!

    …and it’s not great. This is Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language movie; maybe the rhythms of English don’t flow as naturally for him, and it’s effecting his directing and editing. Lots of stiff exposition, including a couple of scenes with dialogue so hamfisted that people laughed. Still, it’s mostly Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and they’re often watchable.

    Oooh! A new thing I’m doing!

    I track the movies I watch on Letterboxd. When I log a movie, I can accept the default poster, choose one of the available alternates… or UPLOAD MY OWN. My goal this year: create technically accurate but misleading posters for every movie I see. This is the first one I’m posting:

    Fake movie for "The Room Next Door" in the style of the poster for "The Room."
    “Oh, hi Martha!”
    Fediverse reactions

  • 2024 Movie Roundup Jamboree Extravaganza

    This is going to be A Post With a Lot Of Links to Old Posts.

    I saw a lot of movies in 2024: 182, If my count is right. Most of them for the first time. Most of them at a movie theater. Thanks, AMC & Alamo movie passes. I liked most of them. Counting repeat views, and pre-show videos, that’s about a solid month looking at movie stuff.

    98 of them are eligible for the 2025 Academy Awards. The rest were released too early to be considered, even thought some of my favorites (like Perfect Days, Hundreds of Beavers, and La Chimera) were not available for mere mortals until 2024. The oldest film I saw was Suspense from 1913 – it was great.

    I wrote little snap reviews for all of them right after I watched them. My feelings for some of them have changed with time. They’ll probably change again.

    Would you like some lists?

    Movies I Liked A Whole Lot that are Also Allowed to Win an Oscar in 2025

    My favorites of my favorites are in bold.

    Some of these didn’t get much of a release, but they’re worth finding.

    Movies I didn’t really care for, but at least they were trying something different

    …and, since I know people will ask:

    The Worst New Movies I Saw This Year

    …and a special shout out to Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One, Two, and Three for turning a celebrated classic comic book maxi-series into six hours of lifeless mush.

    Movies I Should Have Seen Decades Ago

    HEY LOOK PICTURES!

    I made graphics for every movie I saw in 2024, plus a few other things. They’re all in this google drive folder. Wheeee!

    Fediverse reactions

  • Last Movie of the Year Adventures: The Apartment (1960)

    Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon in The Apartment.

    SPOILERS FOR A 64 YEAR OLD MOVIE BELOW.

    I’d never seen this but I knew lots of people watched it on New Year’s Eve, so I decided this would be my year. Here’s what I knew: It starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, it was directed by Billy Wilder, and it was a comedy about a guy who loans out his apartment to people so they can have affairs. All of that is accurate. I also heard it was great. I agree.

    HOWEVER…

    All the descriptions, images, and clips I’d seen managed to gloss over the very serious suicide attempt in the middle of the film. I’m not saying I need a movie to stay in one lane the whole time; Anora, probably my favorite film of the year, took some VERY sharp turns. I was just surprised that this comedy had a dark center I had somehow completely missed hearing about.

    …and that’s a wrap on movies seen in 2024!

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