Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator.
This has to be one of the worst movie titles of all time. And though I watched tons of trashy horror movies in the 1980s, this masterpiece was not among them. I think I will continue to pass on viewing this work.
Movies
Stake
All the people who didn’t like the movie Presence — jeez, put the crack pipe down. That was a great film. Get off your high horse and realize that not every movie has to be a cookie cutter “the whole world is at stake” action extravaganza. There’s nothing wrong with a little introspection and calm.
Bec
This film is how you use Rebecca Ferguson. Overall, Dr. Sleep was only ok. However, Rebecca as Rose the Hat…très magnifique. Also, “Rose the Hat” is one of the best character names ever.
As I noted about the weirdo in Les chambres rouges, it’s hard for a beautiful woman to read as creepy. Our girl Rebecca has no problem with this, though. She’s demented and ghoulish and a real scumbag.
Houseful
Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite is a repetitive and unsatisfying film. I’d avoid it. It’s not wholly bad but it just feels like a TV show episode with a cliffhanger that got expanded into a film.
Did not care for it, and it gravely misused Rebecca Ferguson.
Crash
I love crash zooms.
Cages
The 1970s French version is good, but the American version of The Birdcage is such a great film. And I say that as someone who rarely enjoys farces.
That movie is just absolutely fun from end to end and never makes a false move. I was shocked by how much I liked it when I watched it soon after it came out. The casting choices were just perfect, and the chemistry between Nathan Lane and Robin Williams was unbeatable.
Recommended.
Hole-a
What’s the first movie you ever watched in theater?
The Black Hole (1979). Also one of my earliest memories.
And that was at a drive-in theater located approximately right here. That drive-in has been closed since the 1980s; no trace of it remains on the ground or on the internet.
Grade A
The warm, natural color grading of 80s and 90s movies shot on film.
I’d like to point out that none of these movies have anything resembling “natural” color! The “warm, natural” vibe people remember from a lot of ’80s and ’90s movies isn’t some untouched neutral image. It’s just as crafted a look as any more modern film. Back then, the look and feel was created using the chosen film stock, lenses and filters, lighting, lab timing, and was optimized for the way those movies would’ve been viewed at the time. (In fact, many of those films would have had digital intermediates.)
How those films look is no more “natural” than the films created now. And those films were all produced using wildly different techniques and technologies.
By the way, of course there is NO SUCH THING as a “natural” image. It’s all constructed. It’s similar to philosophy. If you believe it’s pointless and shouldn’t exist, it just means you are then following someone else’s philosophy without even being aware of it.
Filmic
The destruction that copyright causes.
One of Chantal Akerman’s films (among many others) cannot see the light of day because of music rights. This is true of many works that are unavailable due to copyright insanity.
Copyright should be destroyed.
Takes
The first pivotal conversation scene in David Fincher’s The Social Experiment had 99 takes.
And Scene
Good illustration of the difference between beginners, intermediates and pros/experts. And it is vast.
In the film’s context, I prefer Anne’s and Heath’s version of the scene. It is integral to their already-revealed characters. Out of the context of the film, I think Nina’s and Logan’s (the non-Oscar pros) version is better as a disconnected scene.
Slice Of
Quentin Tarantino obviously likes and appreciates women in all their complexity and contradictions. In his works, they are always fully-realized characters and not sugar-coated.
This is precisely why feminists despise him so. He does not subscribe to the socially-mandated feminist women are wonderful beliefs.
If he pretended women were always flawless saints, they’d love him. But he refuses and has women as real flawed people operating in a fallen world. That makes him a good writer and director, but a bad feminist (to today’s pseudo-feminists).
Sam Was Never Really There
Her has really quite a different meaning now that we’ve seen how LLMs actually operate.
Samantha as AI slop and Theodore with AI-induced psychosis makes it an even sadder film than it already was.
K Circ
I don’t care what anyone says, the line “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K” from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is one of the best from any film.
The movie itself is super fun but doesn’t hold up today, really. You had to be there in the late 1980s to really understand where it was coming from and what it was doing. With modern eyes it seems tone deaf or weirdly stilted, but it did not then as the entire mode of the late 1980s and early 1990s was that way in reality. To us now, though, it all seems affected and overtly, almost suspiciously, sincere.
And to Gen Z, the film would be utterly incomprehensible.
Un rouge plus rouge
I love this entire set of scenes; a masterclass in filmmaking. And it’s all so nasty. You feel kind of dirty after watching it. Which is, of course, the point.
But it’s all so perfect. Juliette Gariépy just nails the creepy psycho vibe (very hard to do for an exceptionally beautiful woman, by the way!) and the music intensifies the feeling of dread that is and dread to be. I also like it because the director (et al.) made sonic and blocking choices I never would’ve considered — and these made the scene so much better than my tendencies here would have. (And yes, the entire film is in 4:3 format. It’s not some YouTube upload issue.)
Apologies, this is all in French with no subtitles and I’m too tired to translate, but the visuals, music and non-speech here are what really matter anyway.