One of my summer goals with my kids(ages 10 and 12) is to watch the Marvel movies. We have watched Iron Man and Thor and even with their flaws, they are nowhere near as dumb as WW84. We are skipping the Hulk movie and Iron Man 2, but even those are not as bad as WW84.
It’s a gem of a bad movie, to be honest.
First Cow
I’ll tell ya what… go to IMDB and read the reviews. Every one of them are right! 
From the ones who give it no stars to ten. Every one is spot on. Words you’ll encounter: Glacial, beautiful, magnificent, amateurish… and on and on…
Very entertaining reading. The movie??? You decide.
I will say this: Pretty stunning display of piss-poor archelogy.
Bad Trip - Netflix
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Gist: Some parts hilarious, but more parts frustrating, painful, and awkward
This is prank movie like Bad Grampa or a Borat, but a lot less funny than either of those films. These types and movies live and die on the quality of the pranks and catching genuinely great reactions on camera. This movie sadly did not often deliver on either of these requirements. Most pranks were only mildly funny, some were quite mean spirited, and a few did indeed come off quite well and provided some laughs.
Pros:
Some very funny moments
Some great moments capturing real people being kind
I did like both Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery
Reveals of the pranks during the credits were very amusing
Cons:
Most pranks unfunny and fell flat
Two pranks in the movie were more mean-spirited than funny
Just not enough laughs throughout
I’d recommend this movie to people who truly love prank shows and movies. There is some good material here, but the majority just falls flat. I think a movie like this can vary very much depending on what types of pranks a person finds funny. I think they were well below the 50% success rate for me in this movie, but another viewer may very much enjoy more.
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
If you are lucky enough to have this film playing at a theater near you, run, don’t walk, to that big screen.
Capturing the “Black Woodstock” held over the summer of 1969, this footage, “lost” for 50 years, captures a time and place that many histories gloss over.
It features a who’s who of black musical artists that played in a park in Harlem to about 300,000 people over 6 weekends. All the artists are at the top of their game and the scene is high energy, but the highlights for me were:
Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson tearing into “Precious Lord Take My Hand”
Nina Simone singing “Backlash Blues” and “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black”
Sly and the Family Stone bringing a bit of psychedelia to the affair with “(I Want To Take You) Higher”
One of the attendees, interviewed for the film says he and his friends were “Suits” (fans of the dapper, synchronized Motown groups) when they came to the festival, but after Sly performed, “We weren’t suits anymore”
Absolutely recommended
Watched The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it on HBO MAX
I would like to invite the makers of this film to suck my ass. Mindless dreck supposedly a “true story”, where a human can call up demon with a spell and levitate a grown man miles away and force him to kill himself…aw fuck the lot of you.
Worst part, it wasn’t even scary.
On the other hand, we watched the Fyre: The greatest party that never happened documentary on Netflix which was entertaining. Fun seeing some kids with too much money scammed and some massive egos deflated when the found out they needed a vison AND some expertise
Another Round - streams on Hulu
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Gist: A great movie. Tragic in parts, also a celebration of friendship and life.
It wasn’t until the end of Another Round that I realized that it was one of the best movies I’d seen from 2020. I was under the impression this was a movie about a bunch of teachers that drink their way through their life and career, but while that makes up part of the plot, it isn’t what the movie is about. The movie is about friendship, life, and that difficult period of time in our 40’s and 50’s when we begin to realize that this is all there is.
Pros:
Every lead actor gives a great performances
Laugh out loud funny quite often
Tragic in a completely realistic way
Excellent portrayal of life between 40-50 years old
The male leads portray their friendship very realistically
The ending sequence with Mads Mikkelsen dancing is one of my favorite recent scenes
Cons:
I would recommend this movie to anyone. It’s a great celebration of life and a wonderful movie. It’s one of the best movies from 2020 and if I had seen it in 2020, it would have likely been my #1 movie of the year.
His House - streams on Netflix
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Gist: Very powerful, intense, and frightening movie. Highly recommended.
His House is a movie about a Sudanese couple who have been given a house in which to live in England. Many restrictions apply to their permission to stay, but most importantly they realize that the house they live in is haunted(or perhaps possessed?). The connection between the evil in their house and the loss of the daughter, who died while fleeing South Sudan, is the most gripping aspect of the movie and it drives all the plot and character development throughout.
All of it comes together very powerfully and in the end, this movie was very effective and impactful.
Pros:
Powerful story about the loss of a very tragic loss of a child
Unique horror movie about Sudanese refugees and their struggle
The antagonist is genuinely frightening in its brief on-screen appearances
Demonstrates what people will consider to be reunited with lost loved ones
Cons:
Slightly slow middle 25 minutes or so
Matt Smith, a great actor, is essentially wasted in this movie-making
Any points against this movie are minimal. It is a great film and it leads up to an incredibly powerful and satisfying conclusion. I’d recommend this movie to anyone, especially those sympathetic to the plight of refugees around the world.
I watched Casablanca last night. Of course I’d seen it before, but it’s been a while. Man, what a great film. So many iconic moments.
And it’s so beautifully structured. There’s not a superfluous scene or even a superfluous line in the whole thing.
It’s a classic for a reason.
I watched a “Turner Classic” today. Suddenly, Last Summer
What a snore-fest and utter shite, with an ending that was like a diaper full of Taco Bell, Steaming.
Okay, Hepburn and Taylor and even Drugged up Clift were big draws, but Goddamn, that movie sucked. I hate Tennessee Williams’ shit. Yeah, you get to see some… Oh, wait, this is 2021 Dope. Can’t mention that. So nothing to see here. I only watched it because a ‘trusted friend’ told me to stick it out. Feh!
Did Not Like.
Watched The Million Pound Note on youtube
Might be my favorite Gregory Peck film now. I loved so many of his major films. His performance as Atticus Finch was one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest character portrayal of all time if you ask me. But this particular one suited his personality and style to the ground. He played a character called Henry Adams but really it was like he played himself. The serious symbolism of the story coated in a wholesome down to earth way was really fun to watch.
I rewatched The DUFF recently because I want to relieve my high school years and I miss the drama back then.
Slacker - purchased on Amazon Prime for around $2. I just finished Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, a book about existentialism, reality and 90’s pop culture. In it, Chuck talks about the innovative works of Richard Linklater and particularly his first project Slacker which would go on to inspire Kevin Smith to make Clerks among others (I can definitely see the influence in Harmony Korine’s work and movies like Bottle Rocket).
Raw but with dead pan humor, I could imagine something like this coming from a Woody Allen and Bukowski collaboration. It is very much about a specific time and place, Austin in the early 90’s, so I am not sure it has aged well, but I don’t think it needed to have. The target audience is mopey disaffected 20 year olds, and had I been that in 1990 and saw this I think it would have left a greater impression on me. Still, for a middle aged man in 2021 it was worth my time and I have been thinking about it these past few days.
Slacker is on my list of my 100 favorites. I saw it when it came out in 1991, and it made me nostalgic for the years I lived in Austin from 1974 to 1977. Linklater has five films on my top 100 list, more than any other director.
Agreed, and as it happens, it’s my all-time favorite movie. I recently suggested it to two friends, a woman in her 50s and a man in his late 30s, who watched it and were, alas, unimpressed. It was too melodramatic for them, and in black and white, and Bogart was ugly, and the plot was farfetched, and the acting was too artificial, etc. Or so they said. I tried to address their criticisms but don’t think I made any headway. Sigh.
The VVITCH, or The line of people who can suck my ass starts right here.
It was on people’s best horror lists and some festivals or groups of assholes said it was great. But they were mistaken. Dull and dreary. And dull. Did I mention dull? With witches and Satan, I expected it to be a little scary, or at least creepy and interesting.
So, Puritan family licked out the village for being too Puritanical. They find a place and erect a house and barn in zero time flat, then begin their dreary and dull existence. Then the witches and Satan visit the family with misfortunes and death. But by then I did not care. And when the sole surviving daughter joins Satan after he showed her nothing but misery, well fuck off.
It was overrated. Honestly, Robert Eggers second movie, called The Lighthouse, is much better. Less horror and more…well, hard to explain. I would recommend The Lighthouse much more.
I have seen both. The Lighthouse is Eraserhead-level strange so that’s a hurdle, but the acting is superb and I am glad I saw it.
The VVitch, meh.
No kidding. I was like…. “Who the hell happens upon a human skeleton (the first one), and then proceeds to spend the morning uncovering it?” You either freak out and call the police, or you know something about archaeology (or just basic human decency, wondering if perhaps you came upon a very old graveyard), recognize (perhaps) that this person has been log dead, and… well, honestly, even then you probably call some government entity to report finding a human remains, but you definitely don’t just go digging it up willy-nillie on a lark.
Did the book at least provide some insight into WTH that woman was thinking?
Mileage varies. I was mortified when the dad got them banished. Terrified their first night in the woods. And in a state of constant dread from the moment they knelt before the site of their new farm. The atmosphere alone was enough to keep me horrified, the hardships they would face even absent the supernatural. I am still indifferent as to what actually happened vs. what was merely in their heads. Flights of fancy signifying a complete mental breakdown brought on by stress and trauma.
I’ll give The Witch credit for looking more authentic than most movies of this kind. The house and settings were realistic. The witches did the kinds of things New England witches were credited with, and they looked the way witches then were described. I agree that the daughter’s actions don’t make a huge amount of sense (although, with her family dead and her out in the wilderness, what other choices did she have? Working her way back to the settlement was about the only other.)
My complaint is that I can’t buy the single isolated family building so large and finished-looking house all on their own makes even less sense. even houses built with community help in those days were smaller and less finished. Look at the reconstructed shelters put up by the first year settler at Plymouth – tiny holes in the earthen banks with enough worked wood and oiled paper windows to cover, with lots of people jammed into each.
Outlander is massively guilty of this. Claire and Jamie build a house in America in the late 1700’s that is insanely gorgeous and professional. It’s distracting when we watch it.