loaded question: what movie characters’ bad experiences make you feel better about your own life?
Inspired by TV writer JP Larocque noting that from Ripley’s perspective, Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 took place over about six weeks.
Month: August 2022
weekend watchlist: rethinking monsters (of the sea) and munchkins (aka kids)
Plus teenaged gymnasts, confused cops, and more. (First published July 29th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Where Are the Women? criteria now in a German translation!
Journalist Jasper Vormschlag approached me for permission to do the translation. So it’s an authorized translation… although I cannot vouch for its accuracy, because I don’t speak or write German.
Black Mail movie review: no reason to give in to it
Limp thriller is both overly earnest and naively preposterous. A mess of retro ideas about marriage and men, with a protagonist who lacks agency. There’s no suspense but plenty of misplaced moralizing.
Nope movie review: are we not entertained?
There are delicious popcorn-movie vibes and horrors galore, both funny-suspenseful and stone-cold bone-chilling. But most intriguing is the twistiness of how the movie grapples with its own existence.
loaded question: how would you cast ‘The Muppets’ Princess Bride’?
I’ve illustrated this post with an image of Miss Piggy in a wedding dress purely for aesthetic purposes: I think Buttercup, as the straight woman of the story, should probably be the one character played by a human.
Orphan: First Kill movie review: not-so-little girl lost
The rare sequel better than the original, but that’s not saying much. Takes too long to get to its surprises, its adult star is unconvincing as a child, and its minimal cleverness feels like a cheat.
Eiffel movie review: Gustave’s erection
Comfortably unchallenging French romantic drama, though it does Freudian-slip into implying that the engineer was only inspired to erect his soaring tower when an old flame reawakened his, er, heart.
loaded question: what movie have you seen the most times in its initial theatrical run?
I think for me it must be 1993’s The Fugitive. I’m not even sure how many times I saw it, but it must be a dozen at least.
The Princess documentary review: look back in anger
A portrait of Diana’s depiction in the press that is incendiary, incisive, and transfixing. A litany of horror, in retrospect, and an incredibly valuable look at how public stories are shaped by media.
