Category: movies

  • San Francisco Accidental Double Feature and Half Movie Pass Adventures: MaXXXine and Anora

    Also: I didn’t plan it, but this weekend’s movie theme was “women sex workers dealing with unusual situations.”

    MaXXXine

    MaXXXine movie bar

    I skipped this when it came out- I’m not a huge horror/slasher fan, and I didn’t see the first two movies in the trilogy- but I had a couple of hours to kill in my hotel room and it was on, so I gave it a shot. Very watchable, campy fun that doesn’t hide its love of the eighties in general, and eighties slasher movies in particular. Also reminded me how good Frankie Goes To Hollywood could be.

    Anora

    Fantastic. A three act story, deftly switch genres as it goes, driven by Mikey Madison’s unstoppable energy. Constantly went in ways I did not expect but that made total sense. Hilarious, touching, crushing. One of the best films I’ve seen this year.

    Also: my second film at the San Francisco Alamo Drafthouse, and the first one in the big theater. A great space (much better than the little screen upstairs where I saw a very pixelated version of Furiosa), and a crowd that was fully engaged with (and responding to) the movie.

  • Movie (No-) Pass Adventures: Devo

    Devo movie bar

    First you believe in the system.
    Then you protest the system.
    Then you work to subvert the system.
    Then the system absorbs your subversion.

    Then you make a documentary.

    My spoiled self was annoyed that I had to wait in line to sit in the back of the theater instead of having a reserved seat, but it was worth the wait. And my old ears probably enjoyed the controlled sound environment of a movie more than they would have appreciated the noise of a live show.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Rumours

    I am officially declaring that my opinions of movies have no basis in reality and should not be considered when evaluating a film. How else can I explain that of the nine movies I’ve watched in the last three weeks, my favorite was a willfully nonsensical story of the leaders of the G7 countries trying to write a meaningless joint declaration while dealing with ancient masturbating bog monsters?

    My biggest disappointment was the lack of Timex Social Club.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: We Live In Time

    Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in We Live In Time

    Pugh and Garfield play well together and the movie is entertaining- but for a movie with so many big events going on, it somehow feels light on content. Maybe it needed fewer extreme situations and more demon carousel horse.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: The Apprentice

    The Apprentice movie bar

    I’m not sure if this movie is ten years too late or ten years too early. Great performances- Stan really shows the evolution of Trump from rent collector for his slumlord father to pompous ego-maniacal windbag, and Jeremy Strong’s Cohn is spooky as hell- but I don’t know anyone right now who would want to watch them.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

    Super/Man movie bar

    This is DC Studios’ first official release, but it’s also from the CNN documentary division, and CNN’s documentaries can be pretty fawning. This one is, but it also actually lets Christopher Reeve have some flaws, which is refreshing. Reeve and his family had some impressive hardships and triumphs, and I’m a sucker for inspirational music in general (and the John Williams Superman theme in particular) so it was often effective at making me feel what humans call “emotions.”

    Not bad, but I wish it wasn’t cut with obvious spaces to insert commercial breaks.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Saturday Night

    Saturday Night movie bar

    A ticking time bomb story that never quite feels like the timer is running – maybe they have 90 minutes until showtime, but the movie takes 110 minutes to get there. Lots of people playing famous people with uncanny valley impressions just strong enough to remind me how much talent the actual people had.

  • Retro Movie Fundraising Adventures: Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

    Geena Davis in Earth Girls Are Easy

    Just a silly, fun movie. The wildest part was watching Jim Carrey as “the other alien- no not that one, the OTHER other alien.” Bonus: According to Julie Brown (who did a Q&A after the show), Jim Carrey was a really good kisser.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: A Different Man

    A Different Man movie bar

    I think Megalopolis broke my movie judgement. I’ve seen two movies since watching it. First was Joker: Folie a Deux, which most people hated and I thought was okay. Today was A Different Man, which is getting strong positive reviews… and I thought was just okay.

    I had no problem with the handwave science that gives Edward his new face – the movie is a look at appearance versus perception, not a fact-based medical procedural – but I did struggle with some very strange choices made by the characters. Also: there’s an early scene where the doctors make a lifelike mask of Edward’s face, supposedly for reference. As soon as they made it, I thought “well, he’s going to miss his old face later and put that on.” And you’ll never guess what happens.

    I think I need a willfully silly movie to reset my film brain. Good thing I’m going to a special screening of Earth Girls Are Easy tomorrow!

    Also: this is the third “person deals with an alternate version of themselves” movie I’ve seen in two weeks.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Joker: Folie à Deux

    Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel and Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in Joker: Folie à Deux

    Spoilers below. Frankly, I’m not sure how I could talk about this movie without giving away at least one major plot point.

    I’m going to write using a bunch of one- or two-sentence paragraphs to give anyone who might read this a chance to bail before they read something they don’t want to see.

    First of all, the biggest surprise of the film: I didn’t hate it. It wasn’t great, but I thought it held together better that the first film.

    Second: Despite what Todd Phillips might say, this absolutely is a musical. A jukebox musical where the male lead isn’t a very strong singer, but a musical nonetheless.

    Joker (2019) showed that Fleck is a VERY unreliable narrator. This movie doesn’t try to hide that. Almost all of the musical numbers are imaginary. That’s fine and good, but they were too timid about Fleck’s grasp on reality. I really wanted more “wait- is this real?” scenes.

    There are some really silly moments – including some very unlikely decisions by the judge about courtroom behavior, and by some guards about inmate interactions – but the movie mostly stays in “real world” mode.

    Okay, let’s do the big spoiler.

    The spoiler for the end of the movie.

    Seriously, the last scene. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know how it ends.

    At the end of the movie, Fleck has declared that Joker was completely made up, and has admitted to killing six people. As he walks down a hallway, another prisoner stops him to tell Fleck a joke. As he tells the punchline, he stabs Fleck multiple times. Fleck falls and dies, and out of focus in the background the other inmate laughs and cuts his mouth to match Heath Ledger’s scars in The Dark Knight. Were these movies secret prequels to Christopher Nolan’s Batman films? Is that random prisoner the “real” Joker, and Fleck just a setup? It doesn’t quite make sense, and it doesn’t really need to. It’s also pretty funny for a director to say use the last five minutes of his film to say “By the way, nothing you saw up to this point had anything to do with the character you thought you were learning about.”

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