archcorenth's Reviews

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

7/10

A Fun Night Out With the Sanderson Sisters.

12 October 2022

This film is no better or worse than the first Hocus Pocus, which is to say it's an enjoyable evening's entertainment, leaving you with a smile, and easily forgotten about by the morning. What it is definitely not is a subversive cult film for people to be obsessed for for over two decades.

I really don't get what there is here that is controversial. Both films are more or less reimaginings of Hansel and Gretel. The witches set their sites on eating some kids, and the kids outsmart and trick them at every turn, usually with mildly humorous results. The witches are fun. The each have a role, one witch tracks the children, one lures the children, and one prepares them for consumption, and each role suggests a personality for the three actress, who seem to have great fun chewing the scenery. It's the fun they have that puts you in a good mood more than any particular jokes.

The kids this time are downright boring. The first go round, we were given Thora Birch and the kid from Eerie Indiana. I would be shocked if we saw any of these three again. I don't think I even learned their names, they were just girl 1, girl 2, and girl 3. Faring better are two more minor children. In a flashback at the beginning we see a little girl version of the head witch who mimics Bette Midler perfectly. Also, girl 3's boyfriend has some energy that makes you wish he'd be in the movie for than the three drips.

Speaking of the kids the moral of their story is bizarre. Girl 3 has moved outside of her childhood friends and started dating a star athlete. This makes girl 1 extremely jealous. In the early scenes we see girl 3 and the boyfriend attempt to keep including them in things, but girl 1 always reacts with hostility. Well, it seems the moral of this situation seemed plain to me, but I wonder if you'll be as baffled by what they went with instead as I was.

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Vengeance (II) (2022)

5/10

Interesting messages, totally unconvincing story.

12 October 2022

Towards the beginning of this movie the main character, who is a podcaster, has a conversation with his editor where he tells her he has all kinds of things he wants to say, and she tells him that he needs a story in order to say them.

This is the resulting story.

Basically, B. J. Novak has a number of little speeches that live somewhere between a rant and lecture that he wants to say, and the movie provides him a vehicle to get from one to the next. I'm not saying that none of these are interest or valuable, but the story simply isn't strong enough to get to take them to heart. And worse than that, B. J. Novak isn't really a good enough actor to get you to buy the choices his character makes in the more dramatic scenes at the movie's end.

The movie this is most similar to is David Byrne's True Stories, one of my favorite movies of all time. That movie has a similar setting, some of the rants the characters go on have an almost eerily similar ring (Spalding Gray and Ashton Kutcher's speeches in particular seem to be different takes on the same thing). But True Stories doesn't have a plot at all. Maybe that's the problem with this film. B. J. Novak shouldn't have taken his editor's advice. Let someone who has a story to tell, tell a story. B. J. Novak would have been better off just driving around the heartland interviewing eccentric characters.

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Hellraiser (2022)

4/10

Overly fantastic villains keeps the audience from being engaged.

12 October 2022

I'm wondering if I'm being a little harsh with my rating this time because there are some good things here, but when I comes right down to it, this is a horror movie completely lacking in scare and suspense. Usually, that is because you don't care about the characters, "So what if this or that air head gets picked off," you say to yourself and disengage from the whole thing. But in this film, I did kind of care about them. I wanted the sister and brother to come to some kind of understanding and they were both fairly good actors. Perhaps the problem is that they were the only good actors. Who could possibly care about the sister and brother's significant others or the roommate whom I didn't know one thing about throughout the entire film.

There were other problems, too. The villains are too fantastic, so it's hard to take the situation seriously. You never know what the rules are and if anything can happen there's no way for you to put yourself into the situation to figure out what you would do.

I did not come to this film as a fan of the franchise. I do kind of like Clive Barker's writing, I very much enjoyed The Thief of Always as a kid and I've liked the adult things of his I've read. But the only Clive Barker movie I've cared for was the original Candyman (and that is just the best of all slasher movies), but the first Hellraiser has some major problems too. Some of the same problems. This sequel does do one thing better than the original, however. In the original, you're given all the weird characters and told all about their problems, but then they are just killed one-by-one, problems solved! I felt like, why did I bother getting involved in theses people's lives. In this one, at least, the story is the main girl's story, and her issues with her brother are worked out through the movie's more fantastic events.

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Amsterdam (2022)

10/10

Dense, funny, beautiful, only a little sappy.

12 October 2022

I was reminded of many other films while watching Amsterdam, Inglorious Basterds, the films of Wes Anderson, Vengeance (perhaps because I watched it the night before), and the spy movies of Hitchcock. I think Amsterdam has an edge on all of those. It is smart and funny throughout, the cast has great chemistry together, and the message is always kept in focus.

The title is a bit odd, it's a bit like the title of the film Brazil, in that the movie doesn't (or barely in this case) take place in the location of the title and it just represents something the heroes are striving for. But I think it would be better for a movie's title to suggest to the audience what they will be seeing than what the movie's character would like to see. That's the strongest criticism I have over the whole affair. I suppose also the music, while very nice repeats a bit much and that makes it feel a bit manipulative in later scenes.

But everything else is just wonderful, the cinematography, the editing, the humor, the makeup, and the art--by which I mean the art within the movie. One of the main characters is a surrealist photographer here, and they show a lot of her work. Too often in films when they have to show a painting or a photographer, you have to employ your suspension of disbelief when the camera finally put it on screen. In this movie, the character's art is immediately engaging and you want to see more of it and understand it. Not just the photographs but also the sculptural works is of a very high quality, and I'm so glad that you get to see a bit more of it blown up during the credits.

Loved this film, best movie I've seen since Kajillionaire.

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Rainbow (I) (2022)

9/10

A wonderful reimagining of Dorothy's journey.

5 October 2022

Always a slight problem with the Wizard of Oz is the fact that Dorothy wants so much to go back Kansas, a place the book describes as monotonous and colorless and where a girl laughing at her dog is enough to give her aunt a shock.

In the book it's largely explained by just how young Dorothy is. Unlike in most film versions, the book Dorothy is perhaps 7 or 8, maybe even younger looking at the Denslow drawings, and when she gets to Oz she is left entirely to take care of herself. She wants to go home where she's safe and everyone loves her. In the MGM movie, they have a different idea. They make Dorothy older and have her run away from home. Through the course of her adventures in Oz, Dorothy is meant to learn a lesson about the value of home and family, that perhaps she feels most strongly when she's locked up in the Witch's castle crying for her aunt. But after that part is over, her yearning for Kansas is brought into question by audience, and when Glinda tells Dorothy, what she was supposed to have learned from her experiences mildly offends the more skeptical members of the audience.

The moral of the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is to believe in yourself and you can handle the misfortunes life throws at you, this is not only Dorothy's story, but it is repeated in the stories of each of her friends who learn to believe in the very qualities they believe themselves to be missing. The moral of the movie, The Wizard of Oz, is "There is no place like home." And this movie, Rainbow really flies with that idea. In this movie, Dora runs away from home and to another life and another family, and learns that family is the people who love her. Moreso than in the '39 movie, we feel this with Dora, and I think a large part of that is that in the '39 movie, it's forgotten about for long sections of singing and jokes and merriment, but it this film Dora's quest is always at the forefront. The important characters, the Wizard, The Witches, Glinda, and Aunt Em/Uncle Henry have a stronger connection to Dorothy and each other, and that allows for all the smaller adventures to no longer stand alone but to exist as part of one cohesive narrative.

Additionally, the roles of the characters are well-cast, the cinematography, editing, and music are all delightful. The movie just has a cool factor that makes you feel like it's part of the 21st century.

I suppose I gave the story only 9 out of 10 for a small reason, and that is that with all the extra focus on Dorothy, there's much less time for her friends. They are well cast, and instantly recognizable, but you don't really get to see them learning too much alongside Dorothy. That's okay, this movie doesn't have to be everything. But maybe it could have been if it had been a miniseries instead of a film.

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The Sandman (2022– )

6/10

Mr. Sleepy.

6 September 2022

My favorite thing about the comic book series, The Sandman, was all the different artists who worked on it. Every couple of issues, the style of the book would change completely and you'd be given the chance to see a brand new interpretation of the characters and the worlds. This is completely lost in Netflix's adaptation of the comic. Whether you are in the Dreaming, Earth, or even Hell everything is blandly homogenous. None of this is helped by Tom Sturridge's slow, monotonous intonation of all his lines. In a way, the Sandman lives up to its name because it's always about to put you asleep.

In some ways, not liking the series makes me feel like a traitor. This is especially the case be Neil Gaiman seems to be fighting with fans on Twitter. Their main issue seems to be with casting, and Neil is very defensive about it. But casting is a problem, not only is Tom Sturridge boring rather than mysterious, we also have Gwendoline Christie as the most timid Lucifer, I've ever seen. She seems to have control over nothing and is easily bullied by first the Sandman and then even her own henchmen. I can't imagine what she was going for. Tilda Swinton played a similar demonic angel in the Constantine movie and was terrifyingly self-righteous. Gwendoline seems... nice, I guess?

Lucifer and the Sandman are my main complaints, everyone else is adequate, although of a "TV" rather than a "movie" quality, as we used to say in the days before prestige television. There are two exceptions. Death is quite good in this, and I hope to see more of her and maybe for her to even have her own spinoff (The High Cost of Living, anyone?) and best of all is David Thewlis as Doctor Destiny. He's almost too good for the show, when he's on the screen, your eyes are glued to it, the suspense rises up in your veins. What will he do next? Can anybody stop him? It's what you wish the Corinthian could have brought to the mix since he's in the series more, but let's be happy with Doctor Destiny's 2 episodes anyway.

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Chucky (I) (2021– )

6/10

Starts off well, and then gets kicked down the stairs.

13 May 2022

Warning: Spoilers

It took me a while to collect my thoughts to write this review because, I will say right now, I disliked the last few episodes of the first season intensely. It's really too bad, because, the Chucky series has been blessed with really wonderful actors all the way through, from Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif in the very first movie, through Jennifer Tilly and Fiona Dourif in the last couple. But it's when these good actors show up in this series that things start to fall apart narratively, and I want to say it's not the actors' fault, old or new, they really deliver in all of their scenes.

A part of the problem that becomes apparently immediately, is that we've gotten really involved with the kids over the first several episodes. Everything seems to build up to them protecting their house when Chucky finally seems to have decided to kill them, but that episode is probably the first disappointment because the defense of the house really isn't on the level of Home Alone or Straw Dogs, and of course, since the show does not end there, the kids fail in the end. So it's kind of a let down, and afterward all of the established characters from the movies show up, and the kids aren't exactly sidelined by the story. I mean the adults don't appear to be particularly more capable than the kids, but they are a bit sidelined by star quality. I mean all of these adult actors, Alex, Jennifer, Christine, Brad, and Fiona just chew the scenery in the best possible way. I'm not taking anything away from the kids, but they are kind of natural actors in feeling, and the adults could hold their own against Vincent Price or Christopher Lee. It's kind of a problem because you stop paying attention to the kids when the adults are on screen.

And now let's talk about the adult characters' storylines. We've been following these people for a long time. We want a pay off, we want to see all of these characters, good and evil, Andy, Kyle, Tiffany, Chucky, and Nica, we want to see each one of them earn their place in the history books and succeed in some way. Unfortunately, they are all just kind of downers. Some worse than others. Chucky, himself, is killed in the least interesting and complicated way of any movie to date. I don't really get it, why did it take so much to kill him in previous movies and here a willowy 16 year old can hold him to a wall and choke him to death. Maybe there was suppose to be some sort of moral here about believing in yourself, but if Chucky is a fable, what on earth kind of messages is it delivering with Kyle and Nica's stories?

Of the two, Nica's story is the worse. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the thought process that went into it. We've followed Nica now through two movies. And since each movie ended "to be continued", we've kind of become more curious to see how it eventually ends, even moreso than we are with Andy's. The final movie, in particular, while perhaps being a bit raggedly assembled plotwise, ended with the promise of a really wild sequel, Chucky and Tiffany both in human bodies, driving around in a cool car causing havock with Kyle and Andy on their tail. You could really see a lot of possiblities there. At the time, I thought it could maybe be the premise for a TV show along the lines of the fabulous, Ash vs Evil Dead. Well, perhaps that was the plan at one point, but that script's been cannibalized and only a few scenes of it shoehorned into this one. Fiona Dourif does a great job acting like an unhinged exaggeration of her father, and we all know what Jennifer can do in front of a camera, but of what could have been an entire series by itself, there's only one scene that really sparkles in which Jennifer and Fiona play poker together. Otherwise, we just pop in from time to time on Nica briefly managing to wrest control of her body from Chucky, during which time she just looks confused and scared and isn't around long enough to even form any kind of a plot before Tiffany knocks her out and throws her in a trunk or ties her to chair so she can get on with the proper story.

And then, in the end, there's what happens to Nica, this character we care about if we've watched her previous movies. This whole review is brimming over spoilers, so why stop now? Nica never gets in control long enough to do anything and then in the end, she gets her arms and legs cut off and tied to a chair again so she never has any hope of escape, except maybe through death, I suppose. What a downer. Even if you come to this series fresh and are particularly invested in the Nica character (who never is given the opportunity to affect the plot of this show), it's still quite a pill to swallow when in the scenes around it you are suppose to be celebrating the kids' win over Chucky. I really can't figure out why an author would do this. First of all, it is not that it is such an original idea. There have been various horror movies where they've placed a character in this living nightmare, a Vincent Price movie had this gimmick and the second Dexter, and most notably the art film, Boxing Helena. Considering how famous (or infamous) that movie is, it's impossible to believe that Don Mancini hasn't watched it before writing this script, so why lift it? It's very odd, because, as we all know, that movie was a failure. Now, I'm really tempted to devote a paragraph to discussing that movie, because there are a lot of things to say for it and against it. Ultimately, i think it was a failure just because it was a bit naive. But that's not why it was a failure with audiences. It was a failure with audiences because it's not something audiences want to think about, not in an art film, and certainly not a comedy like Chucky. And Chucky is a comedy. It has always been a comedy. You laugh at Chucky's crassness and his creative violence, and you leave the theater in a good mood because in the end the protagonists survied and destroyed the malevolent doll. Except, apparently, for Nica, I guess, who even if she does survive in the end, has to learn to reinvent herself and learn to draw horses with her teeth or something. That has been an uplifting story, I guess, but I really don't have any confidence Don Mancini, who in all the previous Chucky movies has dealt with conflict by having Chucky kill off the villlain, can pull it off.

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The Power of the Dog (2021)

6/10

Interesting story, mixed up storytelling.

3 March 2022

I found the story of Power of the Dog to be a bit interesting to think about after the movie was over, but not so much during the movie because I found myself annoyed by a variety of little problems.

The first problem is the point of view. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the main character. The in the story, he sees the world one way, and it turns out that is not the way the world is. Similarly, he sees the other characters in a particular way, and that turns not to be just the way they are either leading him to pay a severe price. As I said, Benedict Cumberbatch plays the main character, but the way the movie is put together, that is not so clear. For one thing, obvious things about him, you probably know already if you've read anything about the plot, are played close to the chest and not revealed until partway through the picture. Furthermore, a lot of the film is shown from Kirsten Dunst's perspective, but the film isn't about her character, and she becomes less and less important as the movie goes along. Incidentally, if Jane Campion had wanted to make her more consequential, perhaps she could have been more aware of her son's true nature, but then that would have given away some things, and Jane was just unwilling to do that. It's almost as though she wanted this to be a mystery, but for this to really play as a mystery, she would have had to start with the last scene and told the film in flashback. There are really quite a lot of different ways to present this story that would have been stronger than what she went with, I think.

As it is, a lot of the drama is lost because the characters don't seem to know what they are playing with any more than the audience.

I'd like to end my review here saying something positive, since I think the film was worth watching, but instead I feel like I have to point out that Benedict Cumberbatch's accent sucked and often slipped into British (when, for the character it should have sometimes slipped into something effeminate that would have embarrassed him), and New Zealand is just as bad at playing an American as Benedict Cumberbatch is.

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The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

9/10

Jessica Chastain wins my best actor award.

3 March 2022

From Richard Wagner to Eva Peron, there are some celebrities with very complicated legacies, and one really wonders if it's possible to be fair to them to try and tell their stories in a short format like a 2 hour movie (In Wagner's case, Richard Burton's 10 hour miniseries wasn't enough to keep critics uttering the words "But what about....?). The Eyes of Tammy Faye is very kind to a woman who defrauded millions of people (and even kinder to her ex-husband considering he continues to defraud them with End of Days survival packs and fake Covid cures.) But maybe, for the same reasons it was for the musical, Evita, that's okay, because the movie works on its own level. I like this story about this woman believed in herself and her husband and stood up to bullies led by Jerry Falwell. It made me feel a variety of emotions from beginning to the end from giddy to sad and reflective.

Jessica Chastain is phenomenal in the title role. She transforms herself into another person in a way I haven't seen since Charlize Theron in Monster. It's awesome, and she does while making you care about everything she does or says. I could have watched a movie twice this long and not taken my eyes off of her. And i think it's particularly amazing when an actor can do this and make you feel for the person they have become. It's more than an act. Because both other movies came out this year, I compare Jessica here to Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog and Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos. I was always aware I was watching Benedict and Nicole in those movies and constantly alert to the fact they were acting, and to numerous little slip ups where they slipped into their old accents or mannerisms. With Jessica in this movie, there was none of that awkwardness, and I never was under the impression that I was watching someone "act", I was just watching the person. Andrew Garfield and Vincent d'onofrio both deserve applause too, because they both had such chemistry (positive and negative) with Jessica.

This was a wonderful movie in a year where most of the films had glaring problems. Maybe it was a little soft on the real person whose life it depicted, but she did do good and brave things too, and maybe after you watch this movie go read her wikipedia article and decide for yourself. But first, just ignore all that and look forward to an enjoyable time at the movies.

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Being the Ricardos (2021)

5/10

Lucy versus the Red Scare is Little Ado About Nothing.

3 March 2022

Nicole Kidman sounds a lot like Lucy in this film. I swear, if I had just been walking through the room when this was on and not looking at the screen, I would assume I Love Lucy play. However, she acts nothing like her. Lucy has a bigger energy that Nicole, who plays this just as subtly as everything she's in. Javier Bardem, meanwhile, gets both Desi's way of speaking and mannerisms down, but just looks so very unlike the original, you'd think Desi was being played by a different animal.

This just missing it goes beyond the casting, unfortunately. The idea of telling a story of the taping of one episode of the I Love Lucy comedy show sounds very intriguing. Perhaps, I thought, this will be less like a film and more like a play, big on drama, clever dialogue, tight plot. But that idea is undercut by really showing most of the story in flashbacks. And the thing with flashbacks is, they are great at giving the audience information, that's their purpose, but you just can't get emotionally invested in them. If they had just told the Lucy and Desi story in order: Desi leaves Cuba for the U. S., meets a struggling but talented actress, she gets her chance but it doesn't give her her break, she finds success in a way she hadn't planned on, they are happy until the cracks start to show. I mean, that's an interesting story and one I can get behind. Instead they given all that as a side order to the real story of this movie, which is, apparently, some hooey about Lucy once registering as a Communist and its being exposed not even making a blip on her career. Now come on, if you want to tell a story about the Red Scare, tell it about somebody it affected, like Charlie Chaplin or Trumbo--but I guess they've already made those movies so go watch them. In the mean time, I'll keep waiting for a movie that tells the Lucy and Desi story. I think it'd be pretty good.

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West Side Story (2021)

7/10

A More Explicit West Story is a Good Thing.

3 March 2022

It's difficult to remake a classic because the audience is always comparing the new work to the old one (and this case we were already doing that with the original West Side Story when we sat there comparing it to Romeo and Juliet). So, it's very difficult to say how I'd rate this if I were coming to it fresh.

What I can say is that the first hour and a half had trouble capturing me. Maria's is a boring character much overshadowed by her brother and sister-in-law, and I'm not sure Tony fits in as a part of his gang. He feels quite a bit older and less silly than them. Why do they even care that he's come out of prison and might rejoin them? However, once things get more serious overall, I found myself caring more. And whereas I was bored out of my mind during the day Tony and Maria spend together, in the last hour I couldn't stand seeing them being torn apart.

The end is the best. Especially, I liked some of the scenes with Maria's sister-in-law both with Maria (although their voice didn't blend very well in the song) and the sister-in-law delivering Tony's message to his gang (which was harrowing). Rita Moreno's scene with Tony just after that was also very touching.

I think part of why I was unengaged in the first half was Steven Spielberg's drab color palette. It all looks washed out and gray like a Marvel movie. It should be bright and fun. To me the story is that these kids are having fun dancing and getting into scrapes. They don't see that what they are doing might have serious consequences until they suddenly start having serious consequences and it floors them. The filmmaking doesn't really support that reading of the story (nor does Tony's new backstory in which something serious has already happened and he's gone to prison for it and just come out. That's a storyline for both and an older protagonist and a much older gang.) But a lot of the changes Spielberg makes I do approve of and make this version of the musical worth seeing. Mostly just his ability in this modern time to be a bit explicit about things that were hinted at the original and required the viewers to be savvy to get. Things like trans people, sex, rape, and having different languages spoken in New York City.

If you stick with it and keep an open mind, I think you'll enjoy this West Side Story and get just as weepy at the end as you did with the original.

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Big Bug (2022)

9/10

The Jetsons meets The Exterminating Angel

28 February 2022

A colorful variety of family members and neighbors are locked into an ultra modern house by their service androids while some sort of societal upheaval takes place around them to which they are largely ignorant.

It's a bit similar to the premise of the Exterminating Angel where some bourgeois dinner guests find themselves unable to leave the house during a civil war. But this time the audience is provided a reason they are locked in, and it's a bit clever because at first you think it's the big buy of the title, but eventually you start to realize there might be a good reason for it, and the big bug refers to something else.

I liked all the characters, even the more despicable ones and that's the main reason to watch this.

I suppose my only complaint is the payoffs of the story feel like they don't always get their due and feel just like the scenes around them. Additionally, some scenes seem to just fade away, while others are almost talked over. I think my 2 less stars has to do entirely with poor editing. But I hope you will overlook that because it's a great film, and a fun time.

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A Little Night Music (1977)

7/10

A curious--if not entirely delightful--film with a stand-out performance by Diana Rigg.

29 November 2021

I just watched this on youtube because of Sondheim recent passing. I'd never seen the play before, but I have seen the Ingmar Bergman film it is rather closely based on. I can't really think of any reason for the bad reviews. Some of the dubbing is bad, particularly for Fredericka who is a teenager but for some reason has an adult woman's voice. Also, it is a bit unfortunate that Leslie-Ann Dowd and the actor who plays her stepson have no onscreen chemistry (and I blame her since sparks do fly when the maid teases him). But both of these are small things considering Fredericka is such a minor character, and the relationship between stepmother and stepson is really just there as the prime example of Frederick's mistakes. The rest is wonderful. The lines are good and delivered with good humor. The songs are interesting and have a few lyrics here and there that I kept thinking about after the movie was over. And best of all is Diana Rigg, who is reason enough to watch the movie all by herself. She steals every scene she is in, if not walk away with the entire picture. She is revelatory, like Edith Evans' Lady Bracknell. The character Diana is playing is a bit sad and the lines she has been given rather pathetic, and yet Diana finds in every one a great deal of humor and self sufficiency. She really must be seen. Probably she is responsible for the majority of the stars in my rating.

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Donkey Skin (1970)

5/10

Great Artistic Design, Bad Script, Wooden Acting.

12 October 2021

The art in this is fairly interesting throughout and the songs were unusual and nice, but more really could have been done with the story. The premise involves a princess whose father aaks her to marry him, but you are barely given any hints as to what she thinks of this before the story settles down into a retelling of Cinderella. The second half spends more time with the Prince than Donkey Skin, who does very little to affect her fate. And the prince isn't very interesting bevause he knows her secret from the get go.

I think there are ways to make this story more interesting. Donkey Skin should be younger for one thing. It would explain her reaction to her father's request better. And perhaps she could live as a dirty peasant at the prince's castle for a few years where she could first become his friend before he falls in love with her. His parents and the whole castle, then, could disapprove of the match, and he and Donkey Skin would have to struggle through something. Also, Donkey Skin's father is just forgotten about from the time she leaves the castle until the end of the movie, where suddenly everything is forgotten. Considering he is the main character in the beginning of the film, we need to stay with him. See that he's learning a lesson from losing both his prize donkey and his daughter.

So, no. I don't think the film is very good, but it's got charming sets and costumes and songs, and worth watching and not thinking mich about the story.

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Put, vejini (1973)

7/10

An well-made historical romance

14 August 2020

I watched this movie because I really like the composer of the soundtrack Imants Kalnins. Fortunately someone had uploaded it to Youtube with English subtitles, or I don't think I ever could have found it.

The movie is a bit difficult to review. Everything that happens in the plot could be summed up in a paragraph, but that doesn't seem to be the point of the movie. The movie seems to be about showing what life might have been like in pre-Christian Latvia. People seem to do and say quite a lot of things because those are their traditions, and these aren't explained such as a girl climbing up a ladder to put a small fir tree on the roof of a building, or a guy trampling a broom. If these things were in the background rather than front and center, I think the movie would be more realistic. I'm sure we do and say all sorts of traditional things in our society that would be a bit inexplicable to people in the future, perhaps a handshake might be and example, but when I do them, I don't think about them much, and I wouldn't make long sequences of the movie devote to one after the other.

That's not to say it's totally uninteresting. It's quite strange some of the time, and as simple as the plot is it can be a bit difficult to follow because the characters' true feelings aren't on the surface. Quite often you're left wonder if the characters are playing or truly menacing one another until quite later in the film. That gives you some things to think about while you twiddle your thumbs through seemingly endless folk songs and dialogue that reminds one of church litanies.

Once about two thirds or three quarters of the movie, the traditional stuff lets up and the story is pulled forward. The music improves here (though it repeats a bit much) but it manages to carry you along with the characters and worry about them.

I would say this is in the same genre as Kristin Lavransdatter and Virgin Spring, but quite a bit simpler and without philosophical impact of those films. However if you like that sort of thing perhaps you might enjoy experiencing in Latvia rather than Scandinavia.

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A Christmas Carol (2019)

5/10

Is there a call for a Christmas movie this depressing?

22 December 2019

There's a lot to compliment in this new Christmas Carol, including the special effects and the performances (particularly Tiny Tim). I think the most interesting addition to the plot is a mine disaster Scrooge was responisible for. It was mentioned early and really seemed to me that it would do a lot to associate the story with the modern day in which investors outsource jobs to places with poor safety conditions to make a few more pennies. Unfortunately this storyline is definitely a subplot and isn't so much as touched in the denoument. Instead we are treated to yet another story about rape and the cycle of abuse and it seemed appropriate that Hulu recommended the Handmaid's Tale to me as the credits rolled.

The worst part is on the level of the theology involved. If Scrooge isn't forgiven by his victims, we are left imagining a sequel in which Scrooge ascends to Heaven while his victims are weighed down by their festering hatred into Hell. Merry Christmas.

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Mr. Nice (2010)

5/10

Aesthetically Pleasing and Uninteresting.

23 October 2019

Beautiful and interesting cinematography and Philip Glass music can't save a film that fails to reveal any insights into its main character.

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Paperhouse (1988)

6/10

A good but underdeveloped concept.

22 October 2019

I had been wanting to see this movie for many years, because I quited liked the director's other work and Ebert was positively gushing in his review of it. There are definitely good ideas in it, but it didn't really come together for me. The best part is probably the house itself. It's physically constructed unlike the computer animation they'd use today, but the builders managed to keep the warped perspective of a child's drawing which is really awesome. The lead actress is very good as well, and at age when child actors tend to be very artificial. Glenn Headly, on the other hand, is terrible. I quite like her in most of her other films from What About Bob? to Futureman, but there is zero chemistry between her and the actress playing the girl, and yet surely that should be the key relationship in the film. There are also some story problems. The worst being that there's not enough of it beyond the gimmick. You want to delve more into the relationship between the girl and her father since he is such a frightening aspect in the dream, and yet when he shows up, he's perfectly normal. It's also annoying that after he shows up, the girl's mother disappears from the film completely. So much more could be done with this. I think it would be a great one to remake as a miniseries.

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Living with Yourself (2019)

5/10

Multiplicity in Slow Motion.

19 October 2019

I'm not quite sure why Netflix has been remaking 90's comedies that had starred Andie McDowell as miniseries, but their version of Groundhog Day with Natasha Lyon was considerably better than this rehash of Multiplicity. Perhaps the worst part is how slow it is. QI's perennial contestant, Aisling Bea deserves better.

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50 First Dates (2004)

8/10

Charming Love Story, Questionable Gags

13 September 2019

It's difficult to know just how rate this film because the love story with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore together is inventive and delightful, as are the characters in drew barrymore's family to a lesser extent. But everything involving adam sandler as a marine veterinarian and his side show supporting cast is unbelievable and dreadful. I'm not an adam sandler hater or anything. While I found billy madison tiresome, I very much enjoyed Happy Gilmore, but why include that nonsense in a movie that isn't nonsense?

The Drew Barrymore story is endearing and brought tears to me eyes both by being touching and for being hilarious, sometimes at the same time. And I particularly liked that the film didn't feel the need to magically resolve everything, as would have happened in the old days with a second knock on the head. Instead the ending is possibly the best part of the whole film.

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Surviving Life (2010)

10/10

Wonderful

28 August 2019

Surviving Life is certainly the best film on its subject, dreams, ever made. It doesn't really have a message or any particular point of view to get across about dreams. The main character comes to understand his, which drives the mystery of the plot, but that doesn't make his life magically better, as it would in Hollywood movies. What the film does is display dreams as they actually are. This must be the only example of a realist rather than a romantic taking dreams as his subject, and as such it is invaluable. It does comment on theories of dreams a little, which is quite fun with portraits of Freud and Jung literally duking it out while a psychologist's analysis favors one and then another. Thoughout there are loads of wonderful, funny ideas like that as is typical of a svankmajer film, and I think this is probably his best.

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Midsommar (2019)

6/10

The Least Violent Horror Movie I've Ever Seen

10 July 2019

That might not have been my headline had it not been for professional reviews which promise something that never comes. If you go hoping to see carnage you'll be disappointed. Similarly, if you go hoping to get scared, that is about impossible with this slow hypnotic drug-fuelled film. About the only thing it delivers on as far as questionable material is weird sex.

But is it worth seeing as a drama? The acting is generally very good. There are some neat special effects that do capture the psychedelics of the mushrooms very well. The message on the other hand is no more complicated than drugs are bad because they take away your ability to make good choices and to protect yourself, and also, cults are bad. (but there are much better movies about the latter). I think the movie's strongest quality is that it is two and a half hours long with no real suspense and yet never becomes boring.

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After Life (2019–2022)

4/10

Ricky Gervais's Sermon to the Grumps

13 March 2019

After Life is Ricky Gervais' sermon on the meaning of life, and it's as saccharine as that subject could possibly be. Derek was also fairly saccharine, and it was that element of it that left a bad taste in people's mouth, but I liked Derek because it was about some things and some people who are very rarely written about. Nothing in After Life hasn't been written about before--and most of it written before by Ricky Gervais himself.

The worst episode is the final one in which Ricky sits you down and tells you exactly what you were supposed to have learned from watching the series. There is no room for interpretation, and interpretation is how the audience interacts with the art. It's like if Bernard Shaw hadn't let his audience go home until he read to them the essays he appended to his plays when he published them.

I was wondering if I would have felt differently about this show if I hadn't already seen Gervais' other comedies. There's a scene in a pub where he is annoyed by a man who is eating crisps too loudly. I had already that routine with soup in Extras. There were also some lines in which he fights a straw man in a religious argument which i was quite certain I'd seen before, though i couldn't as easily place my finger upon it--perhaps it is more appropriate in this film about death than in its original place (although writers need to learn that weak opponents and easily won arguments fail to show off the cleverness of the protagonists and are easily forgotten). There was one good idea, and that was the resolution to the child bully story. I hadn't seen that before and thought it was a good idea that might work. I also very much enjoyed the actress who played the prostitute, although the ongoing joke about whether she should be called a prostitute or a sex worker felt about ten years old.

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Greta (2018)

2/10

Third Rate Fatal Attraction

6 March 2019

Warning: Spoilers

One has some hope when this movie begins. Chloe's character isn't very interesting (to the extent that I don't think I learned her name by the end of the movie). (I think maybe the idea of making her so simpering was so we could possibly believe her to be unable to overpower an old lady, but it doesn't make for interesting viewing.) But Isabelle plays her character very enigmatically. Who is this woman who is so desperate for friends she hides purses with cash and an ID around the city? But the riddle is empty. She's just a malignant serial killer. The movie is utterly lacking in the psychological game play of Misery or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? firstly, because Chloe's character is too idiotically simple to engage in it, and second because Isabelle's might as well be a fairy witch as a human being (and frankly I have more sympathy for the witch from Rapunzel after seeing Into the Woods). At the point at which you find out Isabelle kept her daughter locked in a box growing up, you'll wonder why you're keeping yourself locked in the theater.

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The Leech Woman (1960)

7/10

The Best Film MST3K Ever Riffed

28 February 2019

The Leech Woman is a fairly interesting take on She, but it varies that classic adventure by returning to the US for the climax. Really all of the characters are villains without a hero among them which is pretty surprising for the genre. I would have thought that would make you uninterested in their fates, but far from it. I watched it as a Mystery Science Theater Episode, and it might be the highest quality film they've rifted, but that didn't make their jokes any less funny.

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