We started watching Northman, based on Rotten Tomatoes and some other reviews. We tried. We really did. We gave up after 30 minutes of what must have been someone’s idea of Viking speeches and ceremonies. Everything was way overdone. Two thumbs down. Back to The Last Kingdom for us.
Impetigore <–streams on Shudder
Big recommendation for me and one of the best movies I’ve seen the past couple months. It is a horror movie, but wow what a movie. I haven’t been this gripped and on the edge of my seat during a movie in a long time. I think I kind of loved it.
A woman moves to a remote village because she has inherited a house there. She plans to fix up and sell the house and use the money to live on. When she gets to the town, she learns that the cemetery is filled with small graves, baby size. Some kind of curse or something?
A strange movie to be sure, but an excellent one. Scary, well acted, excellently edited, a great movie.
So it is rather disturbing, but I did not end the movie feeling haunted the way I do with some movies(Hereditary, Possession).
See it.
The Piano Teacher
A big winner at the 2001 Cannes festival, this film follows a sexually-repressed female music instructor who begins an affair with a young male student. She also has mother issues, the mother has daughter issues, and everyone in this film is just unexplainably broken. Even (especially) the young man. Can’t really recommend it, can’t really say ‘don’t watch it’, it’s that sort of film which REALLY appeals to some… but not all.
Oh. Not a date movie. At least not if you don’t want your partner thinking about sexual dynamics and power at the end of it.
I found Northman more of an endurance test than entertainment, a bit like The Revenant, although just as that film, it was well made. I think the biggest difficulty for me was the lack of anyone to get behind, as virtually every single character was repulsive in some way. Ok, maybe not Anya Taylor Joy.
I watched Jaws again, this time with my kids (age 8 and 5 1/2)… The seemed to love it but found it scary. Looks like we’re going to need a bigger bed.
I hadn’t watched it in a long time. So the themes involving the town’s politicians ignoring science and putting financial gain ahead of public welfare seemed a bit out of date.
A fair comparison. I found both to be extremely well made and immersive films, but also extremely bleak.
Also I kind of feel like Amleth’s plan sucked and Olga seemed to do very little to “break their minds”. I don’t think it would have been a hard sell for Amleth to gather a couple of his berserker pals and just go kill Fjölnir and his hand full of goons.
Saw What Happened to Monday on Netflix
In a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation, a set of identical septuplets must avoid being put to a long sleep by the government and dangerous infighting while investigating the disappearance of one of their own.
Each of the siblings goes by a name of the week, and can only venture out of the apartment on that day. On Monday night, Monday still has not come home.
I figured out what happened to Monday half way through. And I am not that bright.
Monday has sold out her siblings. They try to justify this by revealing that Monday has been having a once a week affair and is in love and pregnant, with twins. And her saving her twins is enough to offer her 6 sisters up to be murdered. Lame.
So I am watching Daniel Craig on Colbert and he looks absolutely wired to the gills. But I want to watch the next knives out film
Just watched Jerry and Marge Go Large about a retired couple who exploit a flaw in a lottery, loosely inspired by a true story. It stars Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening, with Rainn Wilson and Michael McKean. It’s a sweet movie that doesn’t go the way I thought it would. Recommended watching for a nice quiet evening with your loved one.
Bernie - Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey - 2011
Saw this again. I think I like it more this time. It’s filmed with a documentary feel and I don’t know how to classify it. It’s has a lot of music in it and interviews, it’s not really a comedy and it’s not really a drama. It’s a light musical dramedy. With a murder. I really like it. Matthew McConaughey is good in this, and Jack Black sings his ass off in this. If you can’t stand Jack Black singing don’t watch this.
Drunk? Drugs? I’m not sure what wired means.
Jittery , not clear when talking, off tangent responses , looks nervous, some over top gesticulation when drinking his vodka soda. Usually seems much more relaxed in past interviews. Had a few extra drinks in green room or other stuff , no clue he just seemed a bit off.
Definitely the vodka:
My latest five:
Call Me Lucky
Downbeat documentary about Barry Crimmins, the standup comic and activist who made mid-Nineties headlines taking on AOL and the Catholic Church for sexual exploitation of children. Some of his standup was funny, but the movie is a lot more about the turmoil he went through in his life, and his speaking out for a good cause. Also appearing: David Cross, Tom Kenny, Stephen Wright, Margaret Cho and Patton Oswalt, as well as the director, Bobcat Goldthwait.
They Live
Sf action/horror/satire about a guy who’s finally able to see - and fight - the reptile people infiltrating American society and turning us all into consumer drones. Not as good as the reviews, I’d say, although it had its moments.
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Just about as different a film from They Live as it’s possible to be. The Crawleys go to the South of France to look into a house the Dowager Countess has inherited. As with the first movie, everyone gets a moment to shine, the family saga moves forward incrementally and any fan is left with a big smile at the end. I particularly liked the meta reactions of the Earl of Grantham, and other characters, when a movie is filmed at Downton Abbey.
Death on the Nile
An all-star cast chews the scenery in this 1978 adaptation of the Agatha Christie whodunnit. Not as good as Murder on the Orient Express from four years earlier (in part because Peter Ustinov isn’t quite as good a Poirot as Albert Finney was), but still pretty good.
Casablanca
My son and I watched it, at his suggestion. He’d never seen it before. Being my son and a film buff, of course, he picked out all the logical flaws of the film (why didn’t the Nazis just grab Laszlo late one night and make him “disappear”? And why were the letters of transit so unchallengeable?), but he also enjoyed it, just as I did all over again. Still my all-time favorite.
Something I’d never noticed before - in the first scene in which we see Bogie, he approves a credit slip for his cafe that’s dated Dec. 2, 1941, just five days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. I checked on Wiki and learned that the Japanese fleet was already approaching Hawaii by then. A sobering thought.
The wife wanted to watch The People We Hate at the Wedding, so we did. A brother and sister travel to London for their half-sister’s wedding and both act like complete assholes in ridiculously over-the-top ways for no apparent reason, until everybody makes up in the end. Not a single thing happens that you don’t fully expect to happen.
But Kristen Bell and Allison Janney are always watchable, there’s a decent rom-com subplot with Bell and a guy she meets on the plane, and the dynamic between the half-sisters is interesting, though underdeveloped.
If you’re bored and looking to kill an hour and a half, you could do worse. (On Netflix)
You just weren’t wearing the right glasses.
I watched Raya and the Last Dragon yesterday. Amazing animation, good story, okay characters.
I have two issues. First, was the movie based on an actual SE Asian legend or was it something they made up for the movie?
Second, I feel the did a poor job with the central theme of the movie, which was trust. The problem was that the story showed plenty of examples of characters extending their trust to other people - and then being betrayed. So in the ongoing debate between Raya and Sisu, I felt that Raya was actually making a good argument. Just blindly extending trust to strangers often was a bad idea and extending trust to people like Namaari or Virana, who had already betrayed your trust when you offered it in the past, was an even worse idea. But the movie ignored all this and had the climax being Raya trusting Namaari once again but this time it worked out.
Agreed. 
My husband and I saw The Automat last night and liked it very much. Features Mel Brooks along with other luminaries. I wish there was still an Automat to go to! I never had the chance.
‘Don’t Worry Darling’ - Hard pass.
Stylish as hell, well acted but the pacing sucks. Major plot holes, lots of false or loose ends. A lot of it just doesn’t make any sense. No real pay-off.
Let us very unsatisfied.