Legacy sequel, 25 years since the fourth movie. I had to take a 7-day free trial for Full Moon Features streaming.
Anyway, it was OK in a few parts, but poorly edited and kind of dull. Full Moon is committed to the 80 minute or so movie and this movie felt very chopped down. I’m not a fan of extended cuts, but this movie doesn’t even feel like a full cut. Far too short and choppy.
Anyway, not terrible but also not all that amazing. I’m not fully sure I understand the story and how it connects to the previous four movies, but it was decent.
Subspecies 2-3 stand alone and the only really good ones.
I watched Mrs Harris Goes To Paris last night. It’s like Paddington crossed with Phantom Thread. It’s aggressively nice. Sweet old lady has an unusual amount of good luck happen to her all at once and gets overwhelmed with a load of money, so she goes to Paris to buy a fancy dress, and her naive gee whillikers way manages to befriend people from the (famously) rudest country in the world, and also transform Labour Laws along the way.
Very unlikely, not in any way realistic, especially as every attempt to instil any jeopardy into the story was immediately solved, sometimes within minutes. But nonetheless, watching it is still a good time, so fill your boots.
Past Lives - It wasn’t until the credits rolled that I realized it isn’t a Korean production. A pitch perfect, beautifully photographed movie about in-yun. It deploys what would be, in less skilled hands romance movie tropes, and delves into them with depth and insight. The characters are compellingly ordinary, mixing screen presence with believable actions. It nicely inverts the themes of Return To Seoul, a movie I had high hopes for that turned out to be more muddled than insightful.
Quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen this year.
And, because I apparently spoil movies: It’s a movie about long-distance relationships.
I’m sad that you can’t watch this movie now that you know this.
I also just saw Past Lives tonight and really enjoyed it. We had a Q&A afterwards with the director Celine Song and star John Magaro which was really cool.
We live in The Information Age. You should not expect all others to keep you ignorant. You were the rude one in this conversation. And no, it wasn’t a ‘spoiler’.
While we’re all in a churlish mood, let me say this …
First they made a movie about a shoe (Air) now they’re making a move about a goddamned Frito flavor … Flamin’ Hot, directed by Eva Longoria. I swear to Buddha, we are less than a generation from Academy Award winning film, Ass.
Tense Brit sci-fi, a superior, if lesser-known follow-up to The Quatermass Xperiment (1955). Hardass Prof. Q (Brian Donlevy) uncovers an alien invasion, infiltration reaching top levels of gov’t and a trio of giant slime monsters who (sort of) dance. Most of the action takes place at a sprawling refinery, which keeps things visually interesting, and the film makes effective use of a few models and paintings. Despite some fuzzy plot logic and gratingly stupid behavior, this was tightly-paced, well-executed on a low-budget and entertaining.
They were scouting the [TV] filming location, (Shellhaven refinery) when the construction workforce began pouring out at lunchtime. They were intrigued to find that the workers, mostly Irish labourers, didn’t know what they were building, and weren’t greatly interested either, as long as they got their money every Friday, and incorporated that into the script.
Several things. Start with the MTM documentary. Quite interesting. They danced around quite a bit with her alcohol issues. They omitted completely the highlight of her career: the first Mary variety show . I didn’t remember her being such a decent singer.
We watched not too long ago the complete run of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I was struck then by the awfulness in terms of trite, lame, uninspired two specific episodes: Laura bleaches her hair and Laura opens up an inflatable life raft. The writers knew better than to do such low humor. Of course the documentary showed both bits. Of all the great stuff on the show they showed those two things??? Another bit they showed was Laura falling out of a closet full of nuts. Not great, definitely not memorable. But tell that to the creators of WandaVision which we just watched as well.
I came across a 1930 movie called Madam Satan. A bizarre Cecil B. DeMille flop. Almost half the movie is the usual upper-crust love-gone-old story set in a mansion with a maid singing a show tune for some reason. Top-hats and dressing gown stuff. Then the last half+ is an incredibly weirdparty on a zeppelin with a huge cast, special effects, fancy dress costumes, props, miniatures, acrobats, etc. It’s like watching a completely different movie. Some of these scenes are so weird they are practically nightmare fuel. (The end of the first clip linked is like a scene straight out of Metropolis.) And this is without the lost color scenes. What the bleeping bleep is all this? (Just found a better clip of the Fritz Lang like scene.)
In terms of regular movies:
A week ago we watched Days of Daisy. A high school librarian in Louisiana has a rapidly ticking biological clock and wants to help some art students as well. (And magically becomes an art teacher.) Most of the first part of the movie is nicely different: funny at times, unexpected things, etc. But as the movie movies along it becomes cliched bound. You can almost hear the echoes of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying “Hey kids, let’s put on a show! We can use the old barn!” So promising and then thud. Good cast, for the adults. Not so much for the teens. The star Jency Griffin Hogan is quite good.
Give it 2 collages.
This week it was the 2015 movie *Age of Adaline. With Harrison Ford and Ellen Burstyn and I guess some other people who did the heavy lifting. But who cares about them, right? A woman has an aging non-issue. It works okay as long as you ignore the “explanation” for the non-aging thing.
Snoozefest, mainly. Laughably bad at a few moments, but mostly dull. Not enough here to warrant a viewing. It came with my week trial of Full Moon Features streaming. I would never see it otherwise.
. I didn’t remember her being such a decent singer.