Space Sweepers on Netflix. To summarize what I said in the CS thread about it: great visuals, terrible writing, way too long. A film for when you’ve been drinking and can’t be bothered to get off the couch or worry too much about a coherent plot but want to look at pretty space things.
Sorry to Bother You - There is a rather thick line between “profound social commentary on dystopian capitalism” and “weird shit that looks weird” and this film wobbles back and forth across it like a drunken cyclist. Sometimes it’s a comedy about a lovable loser who through luck and happenstance keeps falling upwards into situations he is ill-equipped to deal with. Sometimes it’s a commentary on how terrible people are and why we should despair for the future of humanity. Sometimes it just makes you go “WTF is going on?”.
Weirdly, it still all works, as long as you can adjust to the different things going on all at once. Worth a watch if you’re in the right frame of mind.
Watched the first part of Sergei Bondarchuk’s 7-hour version of War and Peace. It seemed appropriate, being stuck here in the house surrounded by snow (and a welcome change from my usual surrounded-by-snow movie, David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago) Haven’t seen it in ages.
I also re-watched the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, arguably the best one since Connery, and Sky Captain that World of Tomorrow, which I think was horribly underappreciated…
Decided to check out some of the more obscure Sherlock Holmes films out there over the weekend starting with these two:
A Study In Terror (1965) - Sherlock Holmes hunts down Jack the Ripper. Pretty good horror film. It’s not aged bad at all given it was made almost 60 years ago about a real life murder spree that took place 80 years before then.
Mr. Holmes (2015) - Hard to say a movie made just six years ago is obscure but I’ve never heard of this one nor the modern book it was based on. Story of an elderly (93 years old to be exact) Sherlock Holmes who now only has fleeting memories to look back on as he continues to deteriorate but there is something that continues to haunt him from the past that he must reach closure.
A pretty good film, and, as far as I know, the first time anyone put The Great Detective up against Jack the Ripper. There have been countless examples since, including Murder by Decree, wher the late Christopher Plummer played Holmes (and which wasn’t as good as A Study in Terror).
Intriguiningly, there was a novelization by Ellery Queen and SF author/editor Paul W. Fairman, which is also pretty good.
It was fine. Didn’t hold much expectations but I came out enjoying it. Worth watching just to see a different more vulnerable side of the great detective.
I’m still rocking HBO/Max (I’ve been trying to get into Game of Thrones - I do watch it periodically, but I lose the thread … I digress). With the app comes access to Turner Classic Movies and I was able to watch My Favorite Year (1982) the other day. Peter O’Toole is basically Errol Flynn and the estimable Mark Linn-Baker is the hapless Benjy Stone, the sap who’s charged with keeping the drunken Alan Swan on track.
Great slapstick in a 1950’s New York City that looks like it’s painted on in the background.
Although Ian McKellen is always great, I thought Holmes living long enough to witness the bombing of Hiroshima was pushing it. Also, I got the impression that author Mitch Cullin was trying too hard to be “literary”, and not be another of those Holmes fanboys.
I watched some crap called Hereditary. Dreck. Made little sense, featured Toni Collette (I cannot stand her), was just generally bad. I’ve been watching a whole slew of bad films lately. I really need to get out of the house more.
Goddamn, that was a tedious read. Whoever wrote that doesn’t have a leg to stand on to bag on the film.
I never watch horror movies - I have absolutely no interest in them. I’d heard from horror fans that Hereditary was really good - one of the best horror movies of its generation. Are you a horror fan and disagree, or would you likely hate it regardless?
Well, there really wasn’t that much ‘horror’, just a long string of seemingly unrelated things that happen that may or may not make sense in the end. I just wasn’t impressed. Sure, it had some interesting camera work and visuals, but the story was pretty weak and it got tedious real quick. There is somewhat of a payoff in the end, but you really got to piece it together for yourself for anything else you just sat thru to make any sense.
And some parts are just plain stupid. Eh, I’m hard to please with movies. I want Entertainment, Dammit!
Watched Into the Forest today. Highly implausable, but not a bad film if you accept the premise. Nice scenery and score. Time-line is a little sketchy. Not ‘bad’.
The early scene with the Jeep? Actually very realistic. I gotta slam my hatch 4-5 times to get it to latch. So you see, it’s all the Jeeps fault!
I am surprised to see it catch any negativity. It’s an amazing movie, though very depressing. It made my top movies of the decade list, so I clearly found it powerful.
My list, if anyone cares to hear what I put on it, was this:
Inception
Silence
Mad Max Fury Road
Blade Runner 2049
Hereditary
Avengers: Endgame
I Saw The Devil
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Dredd
The Force Awakens
The Martian
This was the first jump of David Caruso in movie stardom. But as an actor, he sucks. He can’t be convincing as a DA or an investigator, and we kept asking ourselves which one he was supposed to be. The action made no sense. None of characters were likeable. It was supposed to be ‘shocking’ but it was just dreck.
We watched Hereditary last weekend. Reading through IMDb Trivia and TVTropes pages on the film (as is my wont), I see that the biggest problem with the film is that getting it requires reading through IMDb Trivia and TVTropes pages on the film. There’s a lot going on that you have to already understand what you’re seeing to understand what you’re seeing. I didn’t enjoy it, really, and I’m not going to argue with your assessment, but I appreciate it more than I did right afterward.
I will say, I’m very amused by the fan nickname for the film: Her Head-itary.
