i liked mandy quite a bit, but i feel like i may have slightly over-praised it. i'm going to give it a rewatch fairly shortly & i'll see how well it holds up with me.
revenge i thought was great, tough & brutal & lean, and nicely sidesteps, even upends some of the uglier aspects of these types of films.
my week:
a matter of life and death (1946) 3.5/5 lots of winning qualities, undeniably, but just a bit too syrupy for my tastes. i enjoy a touch of guilelessness in a film, & i think pre-60s melodrama is something to be savored & generally applauded, but this slightly tipped over into a zone that annoyed me rather than pleased me.
1945 (2018) 3.5/5 residents of a small hungarian town are uneasy when two jews arrive in town in the aftermath of the war. intriguing if ultimately somewhat unsatisfying. worth a look, but i'd say it's the lesser of the foreign language critically acclaimed black and white 2018 films i've seen recently.
three colors: blue (1993) 3.5/5 i can't quite fully embrace this because it felt so distant & removed, & a film about grief ought to have had at least some kind of gut level impact on me, no? i can help but think of how ghost story trod similar territory in a way that rattles around my head to this day, 18 months after i first saw it. there's clearly greatness here, but it's cold, removed & distant to me.
wildling (2018) 2/5 horror fantasy film that tries to be somber, but just seemed silly & self-serious to me.
the color of pomegranates (1969) 3.5/5 i don't have much to say, except that eventually this bored me.
it's filled with neat images. the deeper meaning is lost on me, but i did find it fun to look at what was being presented. however, after 70 minutes i was numb & wanted to do anything other than look at more of this.
i think it would probably work nicely broken up into discreet portions based on the chapters.
it feels silly to rate such a thing, but my ocd tells me i must, so i give it an average rating, because it had great things yet ultimately did not make me want to see more of it.
lifechanger (2018) 2/5 shapeshifter goes through various bodies in an effort to win back a woman. fun premise, haphazard execution i'd say. & there are shots at the end that made no sense to me. perhaps i missed something, but i just didn't grok the last moments of this thing.
the guilty (2018) 3.5/5 remember tom hardy's locke? this is like that if locke had been an emergency phone line operator. this is pretty good. might have been great to me if they had kept the tone smaller & more modest at the end.
pyewacket (2018) 3.5/5 low budget drama/horror. this is a terrific surprise, & almost shockingly good. it sidesteps the tired cgi effects & gore that dominates even lowest budget horror, & instead gives us a pretty neat little story, one that's quite well acted as well imo. my only complaint is a slightly too abrupt ending, but otherwise this is absolutely worth checking out, even if you're not a horror aficionado.
let the corpses tan (2018) 2/5 sporadically nice-looking, but awfully dreary. i certainly enjoyed certain shots, and i appreciate any filmmaker that dedicates that much screen time to ants, the world's most fascinating creatures. but ultimately this is just thin & repetitive & dull.
dead & buried (1981) 3.5/5 good, genuinely unsettling cult horror, though marred by a slightly lethargic pace & a muddy, grey look. definitely worth a watch for people who value such things.
enemy (2013) 3.5/5 left me flummoxed, but in a pleasant, head-spinning way that makes me want to dive into message boards to see what people make out of this in a way that i haven't since...mulholland drive, maybe. not that i think this is on that level of greatness, but it is weird & spacey & intriguing enough that i might watch it again soon. parking my rating at 3.5, but i feel like it may go up.
solo (2018) 3/5 gave it a watch after seeing it was available for streaming. i still think it's ok. like the last jedi, i don't think it deserves all the vitriol it's received, but it's certainly no unheralded classic. it is oddly muddy looking for large patches, though, isn't it?
after seeing what a triumph spider-verse turned out to be, one can't help but lament for the film lord & miller might have given us.
from dusk till dawn (1996) 3/5 a true critic would be able to describe why i find the tarantino dialogue of pulp fiction & basterds witty & likable to this day, while i find it arch & smug & contemptuous here. is it the direction? the timing of the actors? i don't have the arrows in my quiver to lay out why, but once we get to mexico this turns a corner into offputting territory for me.
it's still fun in places, & selma hayek's boobs deserve their own special oscar. but it feels like a sporadically enjoyable misfire instead of the demented hoot it might have been.
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5 years ago
green book (2018) 3.5/5 it's perfectly fine. it's funny & warm, & while it occasionally flirts with being cloying, it's hardly the worst offender among oscar friendly films you're likely to see any given year. there is nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it felt a touch too perfectly programmed. it's competent & heartwarming & has enough not too overblown but overblown enough moments to win a slew of awards, i'm sure.
also has very convincing music scenes. i'm assuming digital effects were used to show ali playing. maybe if i looked closely on a rewatch i'd see the seams, but it sure looked perfect last night.
the lookout (2007) 3.5/5 i revisit the lookout every three or four years, mainly because large parts of it were shot in my apartment block & the surrounding area (winnipeg's millennium library shows up a few times) and it's always nice to see my little bit of home showing up on film.
but i wouldn't bother if the film wasn't pretty good. it's no unheralded classic, but it's clever, sad but sweet, & modest. it's only real flaw in my books is that it's just a bit too pat in the way it wraps things up in the end.
three colors: red (1994) this feels like a much more complete story than blue to me, and it locks together in a way that manages to be both ambiguous and satisfying.
escape room (2019) 2.5/5 reasonably entertaining for the first 1/2 or so, in the way horror movies are usually fun. certainly not very distinguished in any way, but it moved well enough. i did find it dragging towards the end, & there were a few moments that were oddly confusing. there were a few edits where i didn't quite follow how things went from where they were to where they are, and i really didn't grok exactly how they solved that puzzle in the upside down room. i'd say it's just a touch below average for most of the widely released pg horror films we've seen coming down the pike these days.
meet me in st. louis (1944) 3/5 my first vincent minelli film, i believe. i found this to be sappy & grating & far too cute. really a bit of a chore to get through, if i'm going to be perfectly honest.
the foutain (2006) 3.5/5 this is a bit of an overblown mess, no doubt, perhaps a whiffed swing for the fences, and i was pretty bored by the conquistador business, but i can't help but love the way aronofsky has no filter. this isn't quite the controlled madness of mother or requiem..., but it's still mostly an engaging, weird watch, & i think it's mostly something to be applauded. i'd certainly rather have more of these than middling comedies or action films.
happy death day (2017) 3.5/5 i completely, without a hint of irony or cynicism, love this film. it's pure bubblegum horror. completely lightweight, but it's never anything less than total fun the entire time it played.
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