Watched
Craig Ferguson: I’m So Happy, 2024 - ★★★½ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
The big laughs come and go, but I’m just a sucker for Craig Ferguson so I was smiling the whole time I watched I’m So Happy, available in full on his YouTube channel. I thought his mini-rant about context and not filming on phones was well done, especially because, in context, his “attack” on young millennials lands well in that context (though, at 41, I'm an elder millennial, so who really knows), and he extends a few olive branches qualifying the more critical stuff. He always knows when he is a bit too close to any given line for audience’s comfort and, like Bill Burr, seems to revel in it.
If anything, the special just makes me miss his show.
The Holdovers, 2023 - ★★★★
I watched this in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving Eve while I decorated the living room for Christmas because I couldn’t sleep. And that is one of what I imagine are a few of the best ways to watch a movie like this. The three characters at the core of the story are all exactly who they need to be for each other, even if not who each would say they need, at least not at first. And the actors do more emotional work in the moments between their lines in this movie than most actors do in their entire careers.
The 1999 movie Sleepy Hollow is, to my mind, the film to watch during the transition from early autumn to the Halloween season.
It captures the dreary, de-saturated feeling you get, on the east coast of the U.S., anyway, when you realize there won’t be another day without a chill in the air for a few months.
It’s full of weirdness and dark humor, but one of my favorite exchanges in the movie is this:
Ichabod Crane: You have moved the body.
Dr. Thomas Lancaster: I did.
Crane: You must never move the body!
Lancaster: Why not?
Crane: … Because…
The Princess Bride, 1987 - ★★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This is the first time watching it with the kids. They were enthralled from the initial sword fight on, though we did skip the fire swamp, the “Booooo!” lady, some torture, and much of the burning-giant-in-a-trenchcoat scene.
To me, it’s still true that the idea that more than only a ver small handful of movies are better than this one is wholly, totally, and in all other ways…
Inconceivable!
The Princess Bride, 1987 - ★★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This is the first time watching it with the kids. They were enthralled from the initial sword fight on, though we did skip the fire swamp, the “Booooo!” lady, some torture, and much of the burning-giant-in-a-trenchcoat scene.
To me, it’s still true that the idea that more than only a ver small handful of movies are better than this one is wholly, totally, and in all other ways…
Inconceivable!
The Creator, 2023 - ★★★
I agree: it has its problems. Just one example: The phrase “hack everything” shouldn’t be uttered once in a serious movie, let alone two or three times, let alone by a real actor like Allison Janney.
But it has heart and if it doesn’t make you cry once or twice you’re evil.
Bilby, 2018 - ★★★★
This short is, indeed, extremely cute. But it's also impressively executed in terms of the writing and the animation.
Parenting pro-tip: Shorts like this one are good to keep handy for when you need to extinguish a tantrum without starting a longer watching session.
Top Gun: Maverick, 2022 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
Sure, it’s a couple hours of Tom Cruise being paid millions of dollars to do stunts literally everyone else in the world would have to pay millions of dollars to do. But nails the fan service, the tech, and the physics.
And it’s fun.
Also, it includes an appearance by the Ice Man himself, though anyone who has seen Val Kilmer’s autobiographical documentary Val will instantly notice that Kilmer basically just walked onto the Maverick set dressed as he always dresses to greet company these days.
🍿 Prey, 2022 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
A Predator movie is only as good as its protagonist.
The dialogue can mostly suck, as it does here.
The CG effects can look like trash, as they too often do here.
The plot can be an early colonial-American choose-your-own-adventure story, as it (mostly) is here.
But if you have 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger, or 2022 Amber Midthunder, you will have a movie worth your time, and worthy of a theater run.
That Prey didn't get the latter is an affront to Midthunder's performance.
She carries the movie, together with the skilled eye of Philadelphia's own Dan Trachtenberg.
And you can't help but notice, as the movie progresses toward a climax that thrills in spite of its predictability, that only she and the Predator get any character development. They're growing in parallel: she coming into her power, and it learning that its power may, for the first time, not be enough to ensure its survival.
(And yes, the dog lives.)
Moon, 2009 - ★★★★★
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 out of 5 stars)
This is the last one for today, I promise.
Another rewatch, Sam Rockwell’s performance puts this movie on a level with The Martian.
I know they’re very different movies, but, for my money, Moon does at just as much with fewer/older VFX and a much lower budget.
How much lower?
Well, The Martian had a $108 million budget. (Source, via Wikipedia)
Moon had a $5 million budget. (Archived source, via Wikipedia)
And a little piece of trivia: Benedict Wong is in both Moon and The Martian, not to mention Annihilation, which I also recently re-watched.
Annihilation, 2018 - ★★★★
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 out of 5 stars)
I can confirm in watching this movie again that it is ambitious, original and has a fully committed cast.
If you like sci-fi and somehow haven’t seen Annihilation yet, do yourself a favor and watch it.
The Menu, 2022 - ★★★
⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 stars out of 5)
I don’t regret watching this and I would certainly recommend it to certain people, but I’m not sure I’ll ever need to watch it again.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, 2023 - ★
⭐️ (1 star out of 5
Wouldn’t watch again, wouldn’t recommend
The story was incoherent except as a forced setup of Kang and of passing of the Ant-Man-tle to Lang’s daughter.
Riders of Justice, 2020 - ★★★★
It both is and is not the movie you think it is, and both in the best way.
CODA, 2021 - ★★★
Awful family places burden of their livelihood on daughter for her entire life and finally decides to let her be her own kid as she leaves for college.
It was good but it was kind of missing that one show stopping, jaw dropping song that the third act of any movie in this vein kind of demands.
Black Widow, 2021 - ★★★
It’s worth a watch for the chemistry between the sisters - you don’t see a lot of effective portrayals of sisterhood in action movies - and David Harbour is a lot of fun.
Edit: the pig scene was totally unnecessary and gross.
The Suicide Squad, 2021 - ★★★★
A lot of people love this movie for the same reasons a lot of people hate this movie. It simultaneously shamelessly indulges in the same clichés and tropes that it’s constantly subverting. A lot of people just want it to pick whether it’s going to shamelessly indulge or it’s going to subvert but I think what makes it so much fun and so unique is that it does both.
Don't Look Now, 1973 - ★★★★½
The non sequitur implementation of the ending cost half a star but the film is visually stunning and narratively bold. I can’t say what movies clearly took inspiration from it without giving it away, but you’ll probably know right away after you watch it.