July 1st The place I want to start with Pompeii is its budget, because it’s a blockbuster/spectacle movie and, cynically, I have a hard time starting anywhere else with those. The numbers vary, but let’s call it $90 million in 2014 dollars. My guess is that you are watching pretty close to $90 million on… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (7/1-7/5): Please Stop Making Me Watch Clips from High Society
Okay, two sentences each, let’s make this happen, ready, hike.
Two sentences per movie. The last time I did a retro movie diary, I had three weeks to catch up on. Now I have…more than that. No sweat!
Okay, this is the hyperspeed version of a movie diary. Two sentences! Each of you movies gets two sentences!
This one’s real late! A surprisingly busy schedule at work, the Oscars, and March Madness have all contributed. But it’s still really late! March 7th At least it was a good day for rewatches historically? Maybe Last Temptation, The Fugitive, and Badlands don’t make for the neatest triple feature in the world, but there are… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (3/7-3/16): Gamified Horror
March 2nd “Truly,” Sherif Ali says to Lawrence, “for some men nothing is written unless they write it.” It’s one of the most profound, haunting, and countermanded lines in cinematic history, and in a film which does not include any female characters, it’s noteworthy that the line refers only to “men.” Ala Kachuu adds “and… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (3/2-3/6): Benediction
February 20th One of the first pieces that Woodward and Bernstein try to get through in All the President’s Men is, on the whole, kind of thin. When Bradlee actually reads it, he tells them, “You haven’t got it,” says, “Not good enough.” The sell, delivered by Jack Warden’s Rosenfeld, initially described the piece to… Read More Movie Diary 2023 (2/20-3/1): A Rush of 2020s to the Head
February 15th I suppose if you compare virtually anything to Gunga Din or The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, it starts to look surprisingly nuanced about imperialism, but Wee Willie Winkie demands that we give the British Raj some side-eye from the very beginning. Priscilla does not immediately grasp the idea of what colonialism is,… Read More 2023 Movie Diary (2/15-2/19): The IQ of a Rabbit and the Faith of a Child
February 10th It’s not weird enough. It’s what I keep coming back to with this movie, which is daffy but not weird enough to register as something special. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are different enough for a trailer’s worth of gags, but over the course of the movie this is nothing more than a… Read More 2023 Movie Diary (2/10-2/14): Burning and Drowning and Pills, Oh My
February 5th What follows is a cursed description of a great movie. The screenwriting award at Sundance? Yuck! Charlie Kaufman loves this movie? Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! A two-hander where people bounce off each other awkwardly? Good God! But you oughtn’t to judge a movie by its little description on Criterion or Mubi any more than you… Read More 2023 Movie Diary (2/5-2/9): Three Thousand Yangs of Longing
Seeing Things Secondhand 