I haven’t defined how the reviews should be laid out yet. My first thought is to include both. Talk about the movie so people can get interested in it, and then include what it was about Robin’s performance that made it stand out.
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I saw The Money Pit in the list, but don’t remember him in it. Looked on IMDB, too, and didn’t see him listed.
I got that wrong, so I removed it.
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We watched The Favourite last night: It’s a loosely-historical tale of Queen Ann and her two closest advisors. The actress who played the queen, Olivia Colman, did a lot of really tough acting as she’s playing a woman who’s lost something like 17 children and is ruling a major nation… Her sanity is quite a bit doubtful.
That said she feels like almost a secondary character as the real meat of the movie is her two advisors who are using her for their own ends.
It’s hard to describe: It’s an ‘artsy’ movie in many ways: The typography used for a lot of text has a force-justified effect that I found kind of annoying, actually, but is used for titles to break the film into shorter vignettes.
It’s labeled as a comedy and there’s funny parts… But in a weird way. There’s a lot of “Should I be laughing at this?” stuff in it, I thought.
Maybe watch it if you’re into the period drama stuff or want to spend time with someone that is. It is funny in places.
If you had planned to go see The Hunt next month, you won’t be able to. Though it was a satire, a movie about “the elites” hunting people really started to not look like a good idea in the wake of the two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton that occurred within 13 hours of each other. Universal Pictures won’t release it at this time.
Yet Ready or Not is out.
Something else is going on here. This is an old trope and shouldn’t be an issue.
For those who drink, you may want to hoist a glass today of the Phoenix Brewing Company’s “Rooftop Bohemian Style Lager” or their “Redemption IPA”. The first is desribed as a “Perfect for tarring a roof or just relaxing”. The second says you will “Find your redemption with a floral bouquet of pine and citrus notes without harsh bitterness”.
The IPA was released this week to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Shawshank Redemption. Phoenix Brewing is located in Mansfield, Ohio where the scenes for the Shawshank prison were filmed in the Mansfield Reformatory that closed three years prior. Tours of the prison have been going on for several years.
Unfortunately, if you wanted to go see the tree in nearby Lucas, OH where Andy left the note and traveling money for Red, strong winds knocked it over in 2016 and had rot since at least 2011. It was on private land and visitors weren’t allowed anyway.
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There’s actually a big party or something going on up there all weekend. Like, the governor took his grandson and did all the things party. And don’t forget the Halloween tours of the place as well.
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We watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Saturday and enjoyed it. It’s a Quentin Tarantino film, which I say as both a recommendation and a warning. I’m about 50/50 on his stuff, but this seemed to be in the ‘good side.’
It’s a 1969 period piece and has close ties to real history (the Manson family) in part due to the setting. The lead characters are a cowboy actor trying to determine the next stage of his career and his loyal sidekick/stunt double who hasn’t made a big deal that he’s living of next to nothing while his buddy is merely inconvenienced by working less. They have some adventures, try to figure out where they should go, and end up stopping a horrific murder via extreme violence.
There’s theories that all/most of Tarantino’s movies exist in a sort of alternate universe, and this definitely supports that theory.
It’s well done and entertaining. Lots of stuff that is iconic of the era’s film and TV production. Probably many I missed, but even the titles and credits fonts were picked to look like fonts from that era, I think.
Lots of smoking, near-zero non-white guys, and probably not winning any awards for portrayal of women. Surprisingly light on sex: $Wife remembers seeing a breast, but I can’t recall it. Some extreme violence, oddly limited to one long sequence.
I enjoyed it though. It’s well done overall. Funny but there’s a definite feeling of sadness to it.
Also, I feel like Al Pacino’s small part was channeling Mel Brooks.
We also watched CBGB a couple weeks ago. It’s a dramatization of the story of a somewhat infamous music venue in NYC that was big in the 80s and 90s.
It’s also one of Alan Rickman’s last movies, and an interesting break from those who think of him mostly as the kind of serious, stern voice from the Harry Potter movies, Dogma, etc. He’s still a very charismatic person in this, but kind of an idealistic type who wants to make music. And terrible with money.
It’s interesting. probably best watched on home streaming as we did. Good music selection, although they should’ve at least mentioned TMBG who I believed played there a bunch in the 80s. I guess they don’t fit the mold of the over the top punk bands the movie focuses on.
“Giggle, giggle… Clown!”
-Sadie Doyle, Beyond Belief
We watched It, Chapter 2 today and overall enjoyed it. For anyone who listened to the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast, it’s hard to take the ‘Pennywise’ Evil Clown Who Feeds on Fear concept too seriously, but they did good with the material.
Stephen King gets a cameo, and even is part of a recurring joke that the author character (arguably a stand-in for King as-is) can’t write a good ending to save his life.
We’re not sure, but the naked old lady squick from the trailer is actually lessened in the actual film as far as we can tell. They cut from the gratuitous nudity too cares quicker.
The ending is much better than the old miniseries. To my understanding it’s a little lighter on ties to King’s overall mythos, but it’s more that the links aren’t mentioned, not that they’re in any way contradicted.
$Wife and I watched Jojo Rabbit this weekend. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s an absurdist dark comedy about a little kid who’s imaginary friend is Hitler. Set during WWII. In Germany.
It’s made by Taika Waititi, who also plays Hitler. The same Taika Waititi who made Thor: Ragnarok as well as What We Do In the Shadows to give you an idea of his general sense of humor, but this isn’t part of a huge franchise, so the can go a bit darker… And do.
Several big names in it, albeit in small roles: Scarlet Johansen play’s the boy’s mother and is probably the 3rd biggest roll. Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson are big names in the ads, but have small (but important) roles in the movies.
Overall we enjoyed it. You probably know the overall arc of how the story must go (For some reason i do not think these Nazis are good people?!?) but the details may surprise you.
I watched The Dead Don’t Die on Saturday.
Oh, my god. What a waste.
I swear that Jim Jarmusch must have owed some people favours and made this movie to get rid of them. The actors broke the 4th wall in horrible ways. There were 2 plotlines that went absolutely nowhere. This is in a very slow moving zombie/ghoul movie set in a sleepy town. That took some doing. It was just terrible. I wouldn’t even recommend it to people who like bad movies.
There were a lot of big names to draw in the dollars, but not utilized well in any sense.
Bill Murray
Adam Driver
Iggy Pop
Carol Kane
Selena Gomez
Tom Waits
Danny Glover
Chloë Sevigny
Steve Buscemi
Dang it, I was hoping this wouldn’t suck.
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I watched 6 Underground (Netflix) last night. It was probably the Michael Bayest movie that Michael Bay has ever Michael Bayed. It was well shot and I always love Ryan Reynolds, but there was just WAY too much going on. Half of the backstories could have been cut out. If this is a gateway for 8 more of these movies, well I’m not gonna kid myself. I’ll probably watch them.
6/10
What? No review of the latest ‘Disney Does StarWars’?? You people are getting slack… 
I’m seeing it today via a free ticket from a vendor. I think @Force10 we t with her wife and friends last night so she might have early info. The reviews I’ve seen can be summarized as “it’s fine” with a bit of “too much shoved into one movie.”
Disney put out a warning a week ago that you have photosensitive epilepsy, there’s flashing lights in the movie that could trigger a seizure. The Epilepsy Foundation has tips on how to handle this, which are to have a friend see the movie first, then when you’re ready to go, they go with you and give you notice when those scenes are coming up so you can block your eyes. There’s also info about teaching them the “Stay, Safe, Side” first aid method so they can help you if needed.
I’ve read a few articles about the movie, but no reviews yet and I’m waiting a little bit before I go see it. A different article said there weren’t any test screenings to avoid spoilers leaking out. The drawback is they didn’t get the normal feedback from those audiences about what was working and not working in the movie so they could make adjustments.
There was a bit of this, yes. But overall I enjoyed it. At the very least it should shut up all the fanboys who trashed The Last Jedi. There are a lot of Easter eggs and callouts to earlier movies which were pretty well done IMO.
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Works for me. I just want a fun movie, not demanding fine art.