2022 Movie Post #3
Jan. 19th, 2022 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsI found Six By Sondheim on HBO Max when I was in the mood for something light. The documentary discusses Sondheim's work through an exploration of six songs, and I have seen enough Sondheim documentaries that it all seemed very familiar, but still pleasant in a "if you like this kind of thing you'll like this kind of thing" way.
The Haunted Strangler was a low-budget Boris Karloff movie written as a vehicle for Boris Karloff late in his career. Karloff plays a writer and social reformer investigating a twenty-year-old murder in which he's convinced the wrong man was hanged. He thinks the doctor who performed the autopsy, then vanished, was the real killer, and he both proves his theory and realizes that he is the missing doctor, and lapses into homicidal mania. It's not a very good movie but it's a very Karloff-y movie, if you want to see Boris Karloff playing the kind of role you expect to see Boris Karloff in this movie certainly delivers.
Next up was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I enjoy a good odd-couple romance, but I didn't see how they were going to get to a satisfying ending given the premise, and wow they really didn't. The whole story goes completely off the rails IMO, the ghost makes her forget about him and she spends her entire life having given up on the idea of romance so she can be reunited with him as a ghost when she finally dies of old age. Old movies have really screwy notions of fidelity but this is going above and beyond in the "is this really a good outcome" sweepstakes.
Next, The Eternals. The Celestials and their technology are very Kirbyesque, I liked the golden-line visual manifestation of the Eternals' powers, the movie worked for me on a visual level. The story, the action, the level of humor was all fine. I just felt the movie was a little too much in love with the worldbuilding, and I didn't care enough about any of the characters, and I don't care about the characters they spent time building up for future movies. I liked it more than, say, Black Widow, I may well re-watch it, I am not thrilled with it.
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love is a 1995 movie which the Sundance Festival put up for everyone with tickets to test their viewing arrangements before the actual festival movies go live. It is a very '90's lesbian movie, and I don't think I could add anything to Roger Ebert's review.
I was thinking of re-watching Ikiru, since I have a ticket to the Bill Nighy remake in a few days, searched for "Ikiru" on the Criterion Channel, and ended up watching Zatoichi and the Fugitives instead. Takashi Shimura, who starred in Ikiru, has a supporting role as a generous and kind doctor in the small village where Zatoichi stops for a time. It wasn't a very good movie, but Shimura was very good, and it's always interesting to see how a charismatic, professional actor can liven up an otherwise uninspired film.
Total movies so far this year: 13, including 2 movies I had already seen.
I went to two plays last week, Flight at Studio Theatre and Sam and Dede at the Washington Stage Guild. Flight is effectively a single-person experience: you sit in a booth facing a giant turntable, and a series of miniature scenes (with figures and scenery like you might find in a model train layout) appear in compartments in front of you while a recorded play chronicles the adventures of two boys travelling from Afghanistan to London. It was an interesting experience, I liked the non-traditional format, but it was a very bleak, dark story, which I am not so much in the mood for. Sam and Dede, on the other hand, a play about Samuel Beckett and André the Giant (who was driven to school by Beckett when he was a child) was much lighter but not as well-written. I had tickets to White Noise by Suzan Lori-Parks at Studio tonight, but I decided case rates are much too high to see a play with more than eleven people in the audience, and I donated the tickets back to the theater.
Haven't read much lately, but Megatropolis, an art deco re-interpretation of Judge Dredd, is worth taking note of.
The Haunted Strangler was a low-budget Boris Karloff movie written as a vehicle for Boris Karloff late in his career. Karloff plays a writer and social reformer investigating a twenty-year-old murder in which he's convinced the wrong man was hanged. He thinks the doctor who performed the autopsy, then vanished, was the real killer, and he both proves his theory and realizes that he is the missing doctor, and lapses into homicidal mania. It's not a very good movie but it's a very Karloff-y movie, if you want to see Boris Karloff playing the kind of role you expect to see Boris Karloff in this movie certainly delivers.
Next up was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I enjoy a good odd-couple romance, but I didn't see how they were going to get to a satisfying ending given the premise, and wow they really didn't. The whole story goes completely off the rails IMO, the ghost makes her forget about him and she spends her entire life having given up on the idea of romance so she can be reunited with him as a ghost when she finally dies of old age. Old movies have really screwy notions of fidelity but this is going above and beyond in the "is this really a good outcome" sweepstakes.
Next, The Eternals. The Celestials and their technology are very Kirbyesque, I liked the golden-line visual manifestation of the Eternals' powers, the movie worked for me on a visual level. The story, the action, the level of humor was all fine. I just felt the movie was a little too much in love with the worldbuilding, and I didn't care enough about any of the characters, and I don't care about the characters they spent time building up for future movies. I liked it more than, say, Black Widow, I may well re-watch it, I am not thrilled with it.
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love is a 1995 movie which the Sundance Festival put up for everyone with tickets to test their viewing arrangements before the actual festival movies go live. It is a very '90's lesbian movie, and I don't think I could add anything to Roger Ebert's review.
I was thinking of re-watching Ikiru, since I have a ticket to the Bill Nighy remake in a few days, searched for "Ikiru" on the Criterion Channel, and ended up watching Zatoichi and the Fugitives instead. Takashi Shimura, who starred in Ikiru, has a supporting role as a generous and kind doctor in the small village where Zatoichi stops for a time. It wasn't a very good movie, but Shimura was very good, and it's always interesting to see how a charismatic, professional actor can liven up an otherwise uninspired film.
Total movies so far this year: 13, including 2 movies I had already seen.
I went to two plays last week, Flight at Studio Theatre and Sam and Dede at the Washington Stage Guild. Flight is effectively a single-person experience: you sit in a booth facing a giant turntable, and a series of miniature scenes (with figures and scenery like you might find in a model train layout) appear in compartments in front of you while a recorded play chronicles the adventures of two boys travelling from Afghanistan to London. It was an interesting experience, I liked the non-traditional format, but it was a very bleak, dark story, which I am not so much in the mood for. Sam and Dede, on the other hand, a play about Samuel Beckett and André the Giant (who was driven to school by Beckett when he was a child) was much lighter but not as well-written. I had tickets to White Noise by Suzan Lori-Parks at Studio tonight, but I decided case rates are much too high to see a play with more than eleven people in the audience, and I donated the tickets back to the theater.
Haven't read much lately, but Megatropolis, an art deco re-interpretation of Judge Dredd, is worth taking note of.
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Date: 2022-01-22 03:02 pm (UTC)