Category: Movie Pass Adventures

A couple of days ago I wrote “there are other ways to show the vulnerability of a character beyond nude stress eating in a bathtub.” Apparently the directors of Tuesday and this movie heard me; the bathtub scenes in their movies feature no stress eating. That’s right, it’s apparently Accidental Contemplative Bathtub Scenes Week! Every movie I’ve seen so far has featured a woman and a bathtub, and in two out of three the scenes actually supported the story!

This movie is strong, even if it is… Canadian. Rachel Sennott shows pretty much every emotion, and she’s great at it.

Man, this movie does not work. See the faces they’re making up there? That’s 95 percent of their interaction. It might work in a light comedy, but it’s a catastrophe in a story about a father and daughter visiting Poland to visit Auschwitz and examine the horrors inflicted on their family by the Nazis. Also: someone please let director Julia von Heinz know that there are other ways to show the vulnerability of a character beyond nude stress eating in a bathtub. It felt like she thought “Dunham doesn’t mind being naked; let’s throw that into the mix.”

Bonus fun: I always try to do something interesting for the front page feature image, but I couldn’t figure out what to do for this. Then I thought “They’re in Poland. I’ll color the picture to match the Polish flag!” So I looked up the Polish flag. It’s this:

Which translated to this for the featured image:

Good enough for this movie.

More stuff I want to show to my students who worry that they don’t have the tools or skills needed to make a decent movie. Hertzfeldt tells a more engaging and compelling story with pencil drawings of stick figures than most big studios do with huge budgets and millions of dollars worth of actors, locations, and graphic effects.

Side note: they fixed the shake machine at the Alamo Drafthouse and I had a reward for a free treat, and that automatically improves a film.

I saw two movies this weekend, both of them because I had been walking around all day and needed a break.

The Watchers

Actually, because I accidentally bought tickets to the Spanish subtitled version it was called “Observadores.” That was the biggest surprise in the movie. Some other surprises: how many pointless red herrings were in the film, and how obvious the “twist” was. Ishana Night Shyamalan has learned a lot of lessons about movies from her father. Unfortunately, it seems like she’s mostly learned the wrong ones.

Furiosa, again

Still fun the second time around. My only complaint: The projection in the San Francisco Alamo Drafthouse (in the smaller theater at least) was surprisingly pixelated.

Normally, a movie with a title that mentions a character not actually in the movie is a bad sign, but I liked this more than Fury Road. There’s still a ton of over the top action, but it felt like there was more story in there to hold it together. Also, it has a guy named Scrotus, which made me (and no one else in the theater) laugh.

All I knew about this movie before I saw it was that it was in black and white. It turns out it’s a modern (well, 35 years ago “modern”) retelling of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid.” It’s the kind of movie where a homeless artist witnesses a murder, takes home the toddler daughter of the victim and raises it while looking for the mom, and everyone’s cool with it. It works better if you pretend it was made in 1939 instead of 1989.

Also: there’s a brief bit with a couple making out in a horse drawn carriage. It’s Edie Falco’s third acting credit.

This movie was creepy, but it would have been much creepier if I knew nothing about it going in. Too many surprises are given away in the trailer. Not all of them, but too many. Even with the spoilers I was unnerved enough that I walked a little faster than normal through the silent parking garage and locked my door as soon as I got in my car.

And an entirely different creepy thing: the last two times I’ve gone to the movies by myself, I bought my ticket ahead of time and went out of my way to sit with space on either side. Then, right before the movie started, with a hundred empty seats to choose from, some random dude picks the seat right next to me. Come on, dude- let me have some space!