One step closer to the vision of the internet we were promised in the 90s.
Master and Commander
Master and Commander is up there with Mad Max: Fury Road for sheer dad-level “how the FUCK did they even make this??”
The Martian
You solve one problem, and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.
Somewhere during Covid, this became my ultimate comfort film. A colossal epic and Ridley Scott makes it look easy.
Companion
Dopey, dirtbag Ex Machina but make it fun. Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher are perfect ‐ Quaid playing against his usual loveable goofball type and Thatcher is right up there with Samara Weaving for “actors I love to see going feral”.
Way better than it should have been.
Something Wild
Ray Liotta is rightly the star of the show here. His introduction halfway through the film shifts the story into another gear entirely. He’s electric, absolutely magnetic and steals every scene he’s in. But at what cost? In the first half of the film, Lulu/Audrey (the 80s Manic Pixie Dream Girl) is a whirlwind of life and vitality and an absolute smokeshow, one of the sexiest characters in cinema.
But in the second half of the film, she’s relegated to being a helpless, screaming damsel as two men fight for her. I guess there’s some indication that this is partly Ray Liotta’s grip on her and she’s regressing but the story doesn’t really bear this out fully, so I’m back-filling an explanation. The film did her dirty.
Singing in the Rain
Slowly trying to wean my children off whatever (AI-generated??) Netflix slop they’re so used to by introducing them to some classics. And I’m delighted to report that Singin’ in the Rain was a huge hit. My 6-year old was literally rolling around laughing at the “Make ’em laugh” number.
Saturday Night
Saturday Night occasionally descends into boring, clunky exposition with more than a few “chubby hmm” moments that don’t pass the sniff test. But its heart is in the right place, and that’s not nothing. The performances are solid across the board, but it’s interesting to see how much the tenor of the film changes when a genuine star like Rachel Sennod is on the screen. And Jon Batiste’s wonderful propulsive, anxiety-making soundtrack does an incredible job of underscoring the chaos of the story.
Could have been a lot worse.
Labyrinth
40 years later and this is still a magical experience. From a purely visual standpoint, it looks like nothing else, and every song on the soundtrack is a top-class banger. I watched it with my kids and they were completely rapt and delighted at pretty much every turn (their favourite character was the ’ello worm, naturally).
Thelma
The fuckin balls it takes to trick an audience into thinking they’re just getting a sweet geri-action heist film by drawing cute comparisons to Mission Impossible films where the action isn’t running full speed across roofs and jumping impossible gaps but is instead just getting a thing down from a high place. But then to pull the rug and reveal the whole thing has been built above a deep, deep well of heartbreak that only occasionally bubbles to the surface? Incredible.
Loved this.
Exhuma
A slow burn horror about exhuming bodies to appease restless spirits. The film almost imperceptibly layers superstition upon superstition until there’s someone covered in blood and carving up pig carcasses and you’re like “okay, sure!” The middle section is old-school proper terrifying, to the point where the actual ending and final act feels like a tiny bit of a let-down. It went in a completely different direction than the rest of the film had me expecting. If I hadn’t been receptive or hadn’t allowed myself to be pulled along by the story, I can imagine it would cross the line into ridiculous. But I should also caveat this by saying there’s a strong possibility that this is another one of those films that probably has a deeper layer to the horror that I’m unable to tap into because of my ignorance of historical geopolitics in that region.
Still, extremely enjoyable.