A round up of what I've watched the past few months:
• Everybody Wants Some!: Absolutely charming and delightful Richard Linklater; his first partnering with Glen Powell who jumps off the screen here. Similar vibe to Dazed and Confused but set in college. Clearly somewhat autobiographical for Linklater.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Mutant Mayhem: I have no interest in this cartoon but heard the film was clever and fun so watched it; and it WAS clever, esp with interesting animation style.
• I Capture the Castle: Older British adaptation of the charming coming of age novel. Solid as one would expect, great cast, many of them very young (baby Henry Cavill)
• Anatomy of a Fall: The French Best Pic nominee from last year. Very solid psychological study/courtroom drama. Side note: the French court system seems absolutely WILD.
• Women Talking: Stagy and depressing but well performed drama about of group of Mennonite women in an isolated community who have to make a decision about what to do when some of them are being habitually abused.
• Asteroid City: I'm usually quite indifferent to Wes Anderson, but I did enjoy this quite a bit. Not quite as dark an undertone as some of his films.
• The Disaster Artist: Based on the true story of the making of the cult movie, The Room. Not particularly memorable, but well performed and diverting.
• Burning: This was a big film out of South Korea maybe 5 years ago, and it is a really solid psychological thriller about a feckless young man who falls for a manic pixie dream girl, but then meets her charming maybe-boyfriend...Outstanding performance by Steven Yeun in a supporting role.
• Warrior: Rewatch of this absolute banger of a sports classic. I have zero interest in sports movies or movies about Daddy issues or mixed martial arts, and yet this movie is completely 100% riveting. Incredible performances by entire cast. Joel Edgerton in this movie... :HEARTEYES:
• Minari: The best picture nom from a few years ago, starring Steven Yeun again in a wildly different, Oscar nominated performance as a man dragging his family to the Arkansas country side to try to make it as a farmer in the 1980s. Supporting actress Youn Yuh-jung won for her role as the live wire grandmother. Really enjoyed this but be warned it is very quiet, and not really interested in much plot.
• Society of the Snow: Spanish adventure/drama about the men's soccer team that got stranded in the Andes after a plane crash in the 1970s and resorted to cannibalism. Very solid and engaging.
• Scoop: BBC bio drama about the news scoop interview with Prince Andrew that partly busted his connection with Jeffrey Epstein. Topical (esp for me since I have a loose association with some other people connected to the Epstein grossness that just surfaced in the news), but it was just ok as a viewing experience. Best part is super fun performances by Gillian Anderson as the star interviewer and Rufus Sewell as Andrew.
• Blonde: I enjoyed the original novel by Joyce Carol Oates (sort of real person fanfic about Marilyn Monroe), and Ana de Armas and the rest of the cast gave their all, but this adaptation felt simultaneously pretentious and exploitative (the latter might have been intentional meta-text...hard to parse).
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Delightful and very touching whimsy about a dude who rents a house and discovers a couple of mobile sentient shells live there already. Hijinks ensue.
• American Fiction: I LOVE JEFF WRIGHT! Thoroughly enjoyed this dramedy about a somewhat emotionally closed-off author of well-regarded literary fiction who resents the financial success of other black writers that seem (in his opinion) to exploit the black story for best-selling misery porn. Plenty funny, but more of a drama than the very entertaining trailer makes it appear. Nice family dynamics, thought provoking, etc.
• The Handmaiden: More South Korean psychological thriller action...early Park Chan Wook, loosely adapted from a novel that I've always meant to get around to reading but haven't yet. Spectacular looking, kinky, and fun, though perhaps a little too male-gazey at times (very explicit and long sex scenes... be careful who you watch it with).
• Anyone But You: The less good recent Glen Powell movie, but we don't get many rom-coms of the traditional sort anymore, so even decent is welcome by me and this was perfectly watchable. Not sure comedy is Sydney Sweeney's strength, but everything and everyone looks amazing (including the location shooting).
• The Holdovers: A wonderful warm bath of an old fashioned character study, kind of throwback vibes...like one of those Hal Ashby or Altman style character studies. A cantankerous Classics prof at a private prep school is tasked with babysitting some students over Christmas holiday.
• A Most Wanted Man: John Le Carre spy thriller adaptation. The movie was fine, but it's mainly memorable for the last performance by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman.
• Rosemary’s Baby: Always meant to watch it, finally did. VERY stylish, and the costumes and set design were super fun.
• The Fall Guy: Silly fun, very much a throwback to 80s action comedies. Script could have stood another polish but with the great comedic skill of Ryan Gosling and a stellar cast (esp Hannah Waddingham, OMG) it is definitely a good lighthearted time.
• The Idea of You: This is being sold as a rom-com, but it's actually a pretty straightforward romantic drama... fanfiction type premise where a single mom accidentally meets a younger Harry Styles type boy -band star and begins an affair with him. This sounds so dumb, but again, the performances by Anne Hathaway and the young British actor who plays her love interest are rock solid and really sell this premise.
• Evil Under the Sun: OMG SO FUN... this is one of the raft of Agatha Christie adaptations from the late 70s to early 80s where they'd round up casts of superstars and stick them in some fantastic location. (MAN I WISH MORE MODERN MOVIES DID LOCATION SHOOTING). This one features fantastic turns by young, hot Maggie Smith and even hotter Diane Rigg as frenemies at an exclusive Mediterranean hotel.
• Godzilla Minus One: I'd heard this was rock solid for an extremely low budget Japanese monster movie, and I heard correctly. Fantastic effects for the budget. Engaging story, solid enough performances. GODZILLA STOMP.
• On the Waterfront: Young Marlon Brando has always been a huge blind spot... so I took the plunge and watched this raved about classic. This was excellent, and (go figure) Brando really is outstanding in this. Movie star, indeed. I get it now. I was unprepared for his whole vibe... so naturalistic, so graceful and physical, so angsty. Also, phenomenal supporting turn by Karl Malden as a firebrand Catholic priest.
• The Hit Man: And closing out the list with another Richard Linklater film, his new one starring Glen Powell as a nerdy college prof who moonlights undercover for the police, playing a hit man for hire. Extremely entertaining neo-noir with a lot of humor and sexy as hell too (a rarity these days). I would say the closest overall comparison I can make for the vibe of this film would be Grosse Pointe Blank.
