Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (1993) - Having watched the recent tepid animated film, I went and watched the live action one to see if it was still as ridiculous as I remembered it being. It’s pretty bad (and badly dated) but in an entertaining way, and frankly Bob Hoskins as Mario is too good to miss. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but I enjoyed revisiting it.
Kill Bonsoon - Basic premise is that a top-level assassin is also a single mother raising a teenaged girl and her relationship with her daughter begins to affect her work. There are some excellent fight scenes and it avoids some of the more common clichés of the genre; also, watching a normal-looking middle-aged woman wearing normal clothing kick ass is almost a novelty. There’s not a huge amount of plot and the expected twist of “all the other assassins are now out to kill her” gets resolved surprisingly quickly, largely because despite the body count the mother-daughter relationship is more central to the film.
I appreciate that celebrities feel exposed with their inner most private lives splashed across tabloids, but they error in believing even most of us going to their show care enough to pay attention. It is fair to require some of the audience to go home and look something up to get a joke most would get. But if it’s an obscure joke about your own drama, it smells like narcissism even if it’s funny.
(Bolding mine)
I tend to have one rule for comedians: Be funny.
You can be narcissistic, if it’s funny.
You can curse all you want, if it’s funny.
Your jokes can have very serious undertones, if they’re funny.
You can be provocative - even to the point some may consider you offensive (There are limits) - if you’re funny.
If you do any of these things and you’re not funny, it’s just self-indulgent.
I think he sacrificed content over substance, he wasn’t trying to be funny. But then he wasn’t talking to me, a liberal white suburban dude in his 40’s, he was talking to the African American community, as a whole.
That was my take away. I would love to hear what any African American has to say about his performance.
Linoleum with Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn, Michael Ian Black and a little bit of Tony Shaloub. Gaffigan is downward moving Mr Wizard type guy who dreams of being an astronaut.
Not what we expected. Much darker, weirder, etc. Not much for laughs. And a really stupid title.
The Lighthouse (2019) - starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. Weird movie. Very art house. Filmed in almost square aspect, black and white, dream sequences featuring disturbing imagery, homages to classical art, Shakespearean soliloquy’s, Pattinson jerking off with an ivory mermaid doll.
That is one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen. I can’t quite make my mind up about it, but I’m glad I saw it. I loved the acting in it, especially Dafoe.
Seven Days in Utopia - Pioneer Woman meets Bagger Vance - Wholesome, inspirational entertainment, for 12 year olds. Best for wealthy, white, protestant, rural, southern, male 12 year olds.
Air. How Nike signed rookie Michael Jordan and created the Air Jordan line of sneakers. With Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis and Ben Affleck. Directed by Affleck.
It sounds like a love letter to Nike (and Jordan) and it is, but it’s also surprisingly entertaining, with great performances by Damon and Davis. (Although Affleck likes extreme closeups of his actors’ faces and it’s kind of off-putting.)
The movie was preceded by a trailer for a film I hadn’t heard was coming; but from the first frame I knew exactly who the director was just from the color palette. Check it out.
I re-watched Arrival now that it’s free on Kanopy. I think I liked it even more than the first couple of times I saw it, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Since Cocaine Bear is on Peacock now, Mrs. solost and I watched it last night to see what all the buzz (heh) was about. My opinion was pretty much ‘meh’. Horror / Comedy is tough to pull off; you get too wacky and the suspense and sense of danger is drained from the scary parts. Which I think is what happened here, and the humor was not funny enough for it to be very successful as just a dark comedy for me.
Also the sense of 80s nostalgia, despite a soundtrack that featured several 80s songs, was pretty downplayed. Normally I think this is a good thing-- I don’t like it when period 80s movies try to shoehorn every 80s trope and fashion look into the movie-- big teased hair, one glove, jacket with many zippers, leg warmers, neon dayglow shirt and pants, Reagan on TV in the background saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”. etc. But the 80s influence seemed almost halfhearted in this movie. I thought maybe Elizabeth Banks was too young to have experienced the 80s, but I looked her up and she’s a bit older than I thought-- born in 1974, so she was definitely an 80s kid. I know, I’m saying I don’t like it when movies set in the 80s are either too 80s, or not 80s enough. Hard to please much? Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.
Rescued By Ruby - Nice family movie based on a true story about a K9 dog and her handler.
Last Seen Alive - Starring Gerard Butler. About a wife disappearing while she and her husband are at a gas station. It was pretty good. Entertaining enough. My husband actually watched the whole movie with me which doesn’t happen very often.
The Departed. Leo is too pretty to play a criminal. He just is.
The Great Gatsby. Definitely in the Leo wheelhouse, but this is just one big mess of a movie and we turned it off halfway through.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Much, much better Baz+Leo vehicle, greatly assisted by the screenwriter. Sometimes I forget just how bawdy Shakespeare can be.
We saw Renfield. The five minutes of dialogue, about a guy who is easily influenced by narcissists was actually very nicely done. The other 85 minutes of action film were, I suppose, fairly well done if you appreciate the hardcore comic book, slaughterfest style (I was largely ambivalent) but I felt like the ratio of story to action was too extreme to really care about it.
They went “wall of sound” with all of the sound effects so just hearing someone pop their knuckles sounded like a gun was being fired, so that was a bit annoying.
It was hard to take Awkwafina serious as an action figure when she has a permanent slouch. This also influenced my ability to take the romance angle seriously since she didn’t seem like she could tilt her head back enough to look into her partners eyes. The lady needs to see a mobility expert.
For Nicolas Cage, I’m not sure if he’s finally mellowed out a bit, if the frenetic directorial style of the film was so extreme, if the makeup was hampering him, or what but I think the one thing that the movie was relying on for its success was that Cage would magnificently chew all of the scenery as a full-core Dracula. As it was, he was fine, but didn’t really stand out. It was disappointing.