Films I've Watched
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show
It’s probably been twenty years since I last watched this movie, and it is even more delightful than it was then. I don’t know that I previously appreciated just how great the direction is, how perfectly Tim Curry chews the scenery, or how much it influenced the development of my own deviant mind.
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Blithe Spirit
A cute little comedy about death with some witty banter, but nothing compared to the heights David Lean would achieve just a few films later. I appreciate that it prefigured some of my favorite gallows-humor movies of subsequent decades, but the characters don’t entirely draw you in and the end isn’t really earned.
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Die Hard 2
No amount of hanging a lampshade on the premise could disguise the fact that this will always be just a sequel. Still, it’s a solid action flick with a likeable protagonist and some creative reasons for things to explode.
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Hail, Caesar!
As often seems to happen with Coen Brothers movies, I didn’t quite appreciate this film fully in my first viewing or two–it was fun, but maybe not quite fulfilling. I didn’t get how everything fit together and all the film vignettes seemed disconnected.
But this time around, it really hit how wonderfully it works as a whole, and that helped the jokes to land even better. It’s a wonderful love letter and sendup of golden age Hollywood all in one, with classic Coen delight in the absurdity of life and people.
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Coraline
The movie is strange, quirky, visually imaginative, and creepy, but it can’t hold a candle (a darkness?) to the perfect child’s-eyes horror of the novel.
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Little Shop of Horrors
I’d give this five stars for the amazing puppet work alone. But in top of that, it’s dark, hilarious, campy, has great music and performancs, and is super well directed. Fun in every way.
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Stardust
A charming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, bolstered by an excellent cast. I miss some of the more traditional faery elements from the original, but the added humor and exuberance make for a fun watch.
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Robocop 2
A lesser carbon copy of the original, without the clear vision of Paul Verhoven’s razor satire and beset by the studio polishing off all the corners. Still, there’s some over the top humor and Phil Tippet’s stop motion work is phenomenal.
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School of Rock
Jack Black at his most Jack Blackest—in a good way. This is a silly little film, but it is very well executed by Linklater and has an appreciation for rock music that falls very close to my heart. And I think all the kids really do rick at their instruments. Just a joy to watch.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
I enjoyed this return to the Guardians franchise more than I expected I would. Lately, most of the new Marvel movies have felt very rote and the characters very shallow. So I was surprised to find one with some real heart and a story with the smaller stakes of saving a friend.
Not every joke lands and the CGI bustup in the climax is predictably overlong and over the top, but it works, all in all. Plus CGI young Rocket is super cute.
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Groundhog Day
I’ve seen this film several times, and enjoyed it on each viewing, but this time it hit me on a whole different level. As never before, it hit me how perfectly Phil’s story explores the existential dilemma of extrinsic meaninglessness and proposes it’s own solution about how to live the good life.
In past viewings, the setting in Punxsutawney and the on Groundhog Day had always seemed fairly incidental, and I could never quite grasp why it should be the title of the whole movie. But now, considering that the protagonist shares a name with Punxsutawney Phil, it seems obvious that the very arbitrariness and even absurdity of the holiday’s ritual is exactly the point.
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Baby Driver
Hadn’t watched this since it first came out, and on the second viewing I think my opinion is the same but a bit clearer. As ever, Wright’s directing is vibrant, kinetic, and super fun. The setup and the characters grab you, and the music pops.
The downside is that the plot doesn’t quite develop to a satisfying conclusion, and it’s mostly an issue of which characters turn out to be the final antagonists Baby must defeat, and of the way it ends overall. It just doesn’t seem to live up to the promises the story makes in the beginning.
It’s too bad because it’s so close to having the makings of a classic.
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Oppenheimer
It’s hard to know how to rate this movie because there is so much good and so much bad and just so, so much of all of it. It’s not Nolan at his most self indulgent, but it has many of his trademarks, for better and worse: nonlinear storytelling, bombastic score (that’s nearly wall-to-wall through the whole film), melodrama aplenty, and quick jumps between scenes. In fact, the way it’s edited makes it feel like the whole movie is one long montage.
There’s a lot to admire here, but it’s exhausting and not a little bit bloated.
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Robin Hood: Men in Tights
A very, very silly movie. I loved it as a kid, in the era just after Robinhood: Prince of Thieves, and I still enjoy it now. A bit of the humor seems a bit insensitive by today’s standards, but it has that Booksian spirit of poking fun at bigots, so it still mostly goes down smooth.
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Much better than Crystal Skull, but no candle to the original trilogy. Long and ultimately dull action scenes. A climax so over the top that I loved it in spite of its silliness.
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Veronica Mars The Movie
It’s weird watching this movie right after finishing the original series run. You can tell the whole thing is aimed at pleasing fans who’ve been waiting a very long time to see their favorite characters back. Without the wait, what I want out of it is very different. Not to say it’s bad. Not at all. It just doesn’t shine.
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Monsters, Inc.
Cute, fun, exciting, funny, and wonderfully directed. This is a feel-good film from the golden age of Pixar!
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Princess Kaguya
A beautifully animated Japanese folktale. No Studio Ghibli film by another director ever lives up to Miyazaki, but that’s a high bar, and this one has merits aplenty.
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The Departed
One of my top Scorsese films. I hadn’t rewatched it in a good while, but what stuck me this time around is the way the editing constantly makes you feel unsettled as J-cuts and intercutting keep you from ever really relaxing into a scene.
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The Seven Samurai
This one is a bit hard for me to judge. It’s one of those cases where first I saw the parody (The Three Amigos) of the adaptation (The Magnificent Seven) well before I got to the ur-example. And since both of those other films are so great, it’s really hard to get them out of my head when watching this film. Still Kurasawa is one of the greats for a reason. His visual poetry is all the more noticeable for the comparison to those other movies.
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Sunset Boulevard
An all-time favorite. Twisted, funny, psychological, satirical. Perfect shots and perfect cuts. Brilliant.
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Beetlejuice
A movie so weird it could only have been made in the 80s! A family film filled with grotesque horror and uncomfortable sexual innuendo! Tim Burton before CGI!
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A Man Called Otto
In the past, I never liked movies that tugged too much at the heart strings. I suppose I’m going soft as I age, because this one got me good.
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Seven Kings Must Die
I love The Last Kingdom, so I was excited for the epic film to end it all. Unfortunately, the movie feels like they tried to cram a whole season of the show into less than two hours. I could see how the story might work if the events, the relationships, and the emotions had time to breathe, but the plot beats keep coming, one after the other. Too bad. It’s not the worst ending to a beloved series, but it’s not all I hoped it could be.