Midweek Movie Free Talk

I went on a Robert Eggers mini-dive and watched The Witch and The Northman this year and fell into the promo of Nosferatu to learn his history with it a little. I also loved the lore around Shadow of the Vampire back when it came out, so I was primed. (All is trivia worth looking into IMO- especially the origin of the Shadow of the Vampire story, I love that.)

It is (lumen-wise) dark. I saw it in a theater that I’m convinced uses projection bulbs that are not bright enough or low-quality screen canvas or something. It’s an issue. So, I kind of blame the theater to an extent and write the rest off as artistic expression. There’s nothing wrong with wanting some things 1/2 seen, but maybe some people aren’t into that. Art is subjective.

Evidently Anya Taylor-Joy was attached to this for Lilly Rose-Depp’s role. That would have been amazing to see. If you’ve not watched Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, I’d highly recommend it. I’m thinking she could have acted the hell out of delivering some of that more challenging dialog.

I hesitate to bag on this film anymore and will be interested to see how it stands the test of time. I’m totally biased on this one though because of what Eggers seems to be into. Smart, beautifully shot, authentically detailed and well acted classically artful slower “films”. I guess some might call it pretentious, but I’ve been into it ever since seeing someone point out how well he captured the crushing fear and isolation of living on the edge of the unknown in the Witch. I like the depth of deliberateness he brings.

Man, that one single film class in college can ruin a guy. Sorry if this all sounds like pretentious nonsense. IMO, give it a shot but don’t go in hyped if possible.

I gave Flow (2024) a watch after coming across it and absolutely loved it. It's a silent animated film starring a kitty who is caught up in a weather related apocalyptic situation in a world devoid of humans.

The animation is wonderful, the animal characters are realistic but extremely emotionally expressive, the plot had me guessing constantly, and the tension hit perfectly.

I was invested from start to finish and that's hard for me things these days when I find fewer and fewer films to be this riveting. So I would absolutely recommend it.

This got some traction in last week's thread, so I figured I'd do another set of short reviews. I made a point of watching a bunch of movies this week, so this is more than I would usually have to talk about. I can't usually put together more than a few sentences about each movie from my own thoughts, but I'd like to discuss them more if anyone else is interested.

As before, my ratings reflect my enjoyment from watching the movie, not necessarily objectively how good the movie is. As such, I only use a three star scale. One star means I wish I had tried something else, two stars was worth watching, and three stars mean it's at the top of my list to watch again. Half-stars indicate that I'm torn between two categories (and maybe test your computer's ability to render uncommon unicode characters).

Nosferatu (2024): ★☆☆

I went to this one to get back into the theater, but the movie was a dud. I guess supernatural horror romance drama isn't the genre for me. The whole movie is so dark that it's hard to even see what is going on half the time, and the actors mumbled their lines the other half of the time. The jump scares were predictable and felt cheap. So I never really got invested in either the plot or the presentation, and I was ready for it to be over. So I went home and popped in the DVD for...

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): ★★⯪

This is more my style. This was the first movie I've seen by Wes Anderson, and now I want to try another one. The bright colors and comedic tone what exactly what I needed after snoozing through Nosferatu. The time jumps (four levels) at the beginning threw me for a loop, but it didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the movie. I would recommend this if not for the pornographic painting, which is a non-starter in my circle.

The Philadelphia Story (1940): ★★⯪

My package finally arrived after 22 days, so I was able to watch this one. I honestly didn't know it existed until I saw this youtube video, but I wanted to see more golden-era Hollywood, and that video motivated me to watch this. Worth watching, and it got me thinking about how even though social expectations have changed since 1940, you could still make a movie with the same basic premise today.

Spirited Away (2001): ★★★

The right movie at the right time. I've been sampling various genres, and this is the highest-reviewed Japanese animation film. I was laid off a while ago and haven't found a new job yet, so the multiple times where Chihiro is stuck in someone's office and yells something like "Shut up and just gimme a job already!" were probably more cathartic/hilarious to me than the creators intended. But the story does a good job of being whimsical when it makes sense and serious when it needs to be. It's simple enough for someone like me to understand, even without knowing much about the genre conventions going in. The art style took me back to Saturday morning cartoons (remember when those were a thing?). So I'll probably look for another movie like this. There is a shortlist of next movies to try in the genre, but none as universally praised as this one.

There Will Be Blood (2007): ★⯪☆

Meh. I enjoyed the plot lines about the oil business and the relationship between the oilman and his son, but the parts with the church and preacher were so ridiculous and exaggerated that it broke my suspension of disbelief multiple times and kinda ruined the movie for me. I don't want to say too much and spoil plot specifics, but it just took me out of it by the end.

Once Upon A Time in the West (1968): ★★☆

I didn't really think about it going in, but this is another western, but focuses on a completely different aspect of life from the period. Maybe it's because I watched two westerns back-to-back, but I feel like this one didn't need to be almost three hours long. It does a good job of going slowly to build tension before an action sequence, but some scenes spend a bit of time just immersing you in the wild west setting, which I enjoyed less. But still worth watching, and it was interesting to compare a classic western to a modern (ish? is 2007 modern in film?) one.

Roman Holiday (1953): ★★☆

Okay, to be honest, I didn't do any research on this beforehand. But I saw it on clearance at the store, and I've been meaning to watch more from the classic Hollywood era, so I gave it a shot. I didn't recognize the title, but I did recognize Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. I liked the supporting cast too (the boss, landlord, and photographer), so the movie was better than I expected. If unicode had a quarter-five-pointed-star character, I would give it to this movie to ordinally put it ahead of the other ★★ movies so far.

I watched The Room Next Door and liked it so much that it got the 10th spot on my list for 24. I thought it was well done melodrama, poetic, and the score is beautiful. People complained that the dialogue sounds like it went through google translate, I've seen one other Almodovar film and I have to say the dialogue sounds the same in Spanish (I'm a native Spanish speaker). It comes across as more natural than in English because Spanish is more rhythmic, but Almodovar's films are soap-like.

Presence was a great familial drama with a supernatural twist. It's impactful emotionally and well-crafted in a way that I wasn't expecting. Probably the best film from Soderbergh in some time.

We're already kind of into the year now. But here's my most anticipated:

1. One Battle After Another (Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Film)
2. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story
3. The Running Man
4. Superman
5. Avatar: Fire and Ash

Ten Things I Hate About You -- turned it off. Terrible movie with a terrible script... likely hasn't aged well and was fine when it came out.

A Real Pain (2024) -- This was alright, but not great. It felt like Eisenberg learned a little from Kelly Reichardt (Night Moves (2013)), but not enough. I heard Eisenberg on Scriptnotes (podcast) and decided to give it a go. I was hoping to see more range from him, but instead we got more of the same fumbling over words, awkward, somewhat self-righteous guy he always plays. It felt like the film dragged along to the house and then... that's it.

I also think that this is the wrong role for Kieran Culkin. He was basically Roman Roy-lite. He's great at this sort of character, but he should have had something else between the two performances that wasn't voice work.

I think this film has a lot of great ideas, but failed in the execution. I'd say this was an excellent work for a first time director, but he isn't a first time director... so it just falls flat when it shouldn't have. The rock thing at the house was.. is obtuse the right word?

edit: listen, I'm not some crank who hates all movies, but I was really expecting a lot more from Beware of Mr Baker (2012). Its a documentary with videos and Baker being Baker... I just thought it would go deeper than it did and have way more drumming.