Tag: movies

  • Movie Pass Adventures Double Feature: Heretic & Memoir of a Snail

    Today was a “two movies at two theaters” day: Heretic at the Universal Citywalk AMC, and Memoir of a Snail at Alamo Drafthouse. Gotta keep those movie passes working!

    Heretic

    Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East in Heretic.

    Once I assumed that these were two Mormon missionaries who had so little sense of danger that they’d walk wide-eyed into a unsafe situation, this movie was a lot of fun. Nonsense, but fun. Also: Hugh Grant is a natural at playing a creep. What a surprise.

    Memoir of a Snail

    Grace & Pinkie from Memoir of a Snail.

    If you saw clips from this and thought “Oh, a stop-motion animation movie- I shall bring my children,” maybe give it another look before you load the kids into the SUV and head down to the multiplex. It’s a great movie, but it’s clear from the very first scene where someone dies- not in a Disney “maybe they’re just sleeping” way, but in a “gasping for their final breaths in their deathbed” way- that this is made for adults. Also, it’s Australian; are kids allowed to watch Australians (even in cartoon form)?

    Bonus image!

    I can only use one image for the featured image. Normally when I see two movies in a day I mash the images together in some way, but I didn’t care for the one I made for Heretic so I’m hiding it here. I bet you will love it so much that you will write an epic poem about it.

    (Poorly) Stylized image of Sophie Thatcher, Hugh Grant, and Chloe East in Heretic.
    Or maybe you won’t.

  • Going to the Movies Trying to Avoid Nightmare Election Results Adventures: Venom: The Last Dance

    Eddie & Venom in Venom: The Last Dance

    I see most superhero movies because I’m a sucker for them. It doesn’t matter how much nonsense they have; my brain goes into low-power mode and I accept it all.

    But I something about the first two Venom movies made me skip them. After watching this one, I can say that was probably a pretty good idea. My brain just couldn’t downshift enough for this thing. It clearly wasn’t expecting to be taken seriously- Venom is constantly making jokes that would make your dad say “that’s a little corny, don’t you think?” – but the movie is so determined to use as many stale and dumb tropes that it forgets to find new dumb trope to keep people interested.

    But as far as I know, it contains the first use ever of Chekov’s Hyperacid. I guess that’s something.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Here

    Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as 50 year olds in Here.

    I like when film makers try difficult and different things, and a whole movie shot from a single locked down camera position that takes place over thousands of years (though really mostly over about 100) with multiple timelines on screen at once certainly falls into the “difficult & different” camp.

    But a movie needs more than a gimmick to work, and this movie does not work. Some reasons it doesn’t:

    • Dialogue that no humans would ever say.
    • Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are not convincing teenagers, no matter how much CGI you throw at them.
    • Startling coincidences and extraordinary luck (what are the odds that before the house was built an indigenous person was buried in that location, and then a road ran through the same location and Benjamin Franklin’s coach got stuck right there, and after the house was built archeologists would find the indigenous person’s remains “just a couple of feet” underground, undisturbed by centuries of road and home construction?)
    • “We need a way to show when things are happening- make sure we show the TV a lot!”
    • “We’re only going to show exactly what can be seen from this spot- but later we’re going to be able to see through the house sometimes.”
    • A score that screams “THIS IS A HEARTFELT SCENE AND YOU SHOULD FEEL EMOTIONS.”

    Look- some of it does work, but not much. The final scene works, but it really only does because of the hour and a half that mostly doesn’t work before it. The weirdest thing about it: I think with the right director, this could be a good play. All it would take is some creative projections to show the different time periods, reusing actors as multiple characters, and losing Ben Franklin.

  • 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.

  • 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.”

  • Retro Movie Adventures: Batman (1989)

    Oh, this movie. It makes no sense, but it’s a lot of fun.

    Why doesn’t Vicki Vale know what Bruce Wayne looks like? What’s the time frame for the film? It feels like it’s a few weeks at most, but then how does the Joker have time to pull off his cosmetics mass murder? Why can’t Batman turn his head? Why, after Alfred casually gives away Bruce Wayne’s secret identity, is the focus less on “holy crap you’re Batman” and more on “I thought we had a love connection”? Why is Batman, flying a plane with machine guns, missiles, and precision targeting systems, unable to hit a man standing still in the open, but that man can take out his plane with one shot from a comically long handgun? Why is Robert Wuhl?

    But Michael Keaton is a strong Bruce Wayne, much harder than being good at brooding in a rubber suit. Jack Nicholson is best when he’s playing more dark and creepy, but he’s not bad at manically chewing the scenery, either. Gotham City is dark, industrial, and very tall & claustrophobic. The Batman cartoon refined the look and feel, but it all starts here.

    Oh, and this Batman definitely kills people. Throws them over rails, drops bombs at their feet, and ties gargoyles to them so they fall from great heights, all without a word.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: National Anthem

    National Anthem movie bar

    The best movie with a focus on southwest LGBTQIA+ rodeo I have ever seen. Very sweet, and very comfortable and open with gender and sexuality. And it has Teen Witch as an alcoholic mother, so you know it’s good. A big plus: no one gets beat up for being who they are.

  • Wales Movie Adventures: Twisters

    Twisters movie bar

    Part II of my Let’s Watch America-centered movies in Wales Tour.

    Let’s play Guess What Happens!

    • The movie opens with five inexperienced friends acting like nothing bad could ever happen to them driving into the path of a tornado. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!
    • The lead character’s friend gets her to help him with his tornado chasing company. Whenever the lead gets near the man bankrolling the friend’s company, the friend steers her away from the conversation. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!
    • The friend’s company is slick and high-tech. There is another group of tornado chasers that the friend hates; they are low-tech and wild- maybe dangerous- but charming. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!
    • The low-tech group is led by a handsome, charming man. When the lead first meets him, she rejects him. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!

    There is exactly ONE direct reference to the original film.

    This time I counted the commercials (not trailers, commercials) before the movie. There were FIFTEEN, including three for the armed forces, one for a cleaning product, and one misguided commercial for KFC. Is Kentucky Fried Chicken popular in Wales? I’ve seen a bunch of them- more than I’ve seen McDonalds.

  • Airplane Movie Adventures: The Marvels, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

    I’m traveling, so no graphics for now.

    On the plane I rewatched The Marvels and thought “This movie’s not bad for a rewatch.” Then I watched Spider-Man : Across the Spider-Verse and thought “This movie is awesome and gets better every time I see it.” Even wearing lousy headphones and watching it on a tiny screen on the back of an airplane seat couldn’t make it bad.

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