weekend watchlist: is it good to be the queen?
Plus a teenage con artist, a skewering of late-night comedy, and more… (First published September 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Perfect Storm
In the Heart of the Sea movie review: here be monsters (and whales)
Solid, old-school man-versus-nature adventure melodrama, with a simmering green awareness; rollicking, smart, breathtaking, and sobering.
All Is Lost trailer: but where is the tiger?
Hmm. Is there something in the zeitgeist that’s prompting movies about desolation and survival in harsh conditions?
Ice Age: Continental Drift (review)
It’s movies like this one that make me despair. Because it is going to make a bazillion bucks at the box office around the world, and there’s absolute nothing here that warrants such success.
Poseidon (review)
Who knew there was so much on a cruise ship that could explode so spectacularly? Plus: ohmigod, Josh Lucas!
The Perfect Storm review: following bliss
‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it’ implies that there aren’t some people who actually enjoy doing a dirty job. As much as The Perfect Storm is an intense and terrifying man-against-nature action movie, it’s an unsentimental and uncliched drama about, as mythologist Joseph Campbell termed it, following your bliss: doing what you’re ‘made to do’ even in the face of opposition from all around you, even to the point of risking your life.
