Films I've Watched

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cute, fun, exciting, funny, and wonderfully directed. This is a feel-good film from the golden age of Pixar!

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.

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.

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.

An all-time favorite. Twisted, funny, psychological, satirical. Perfect shots and perfect cuts. Brilliant.

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!

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.

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.

Sometimes a movie is chock full of all the familiar tropes but it has such a unique flavor and perspective that it feels entirely original. The formula of Road House is the classic western story of a badass who comes into town to clean up the place and runs afoul of the corrupt local powers that be. But it walks this really interesting line between all out camp and meditation on whether one can be masculine and gentle at the same time.

Pain don’t hurt.

A meticulously directed film that escalates from a dry and subtle satire into something surprising and frenetic. Compare to Parasite and The Menu in all the best ways.

Epic, sumptuous, and powerful. There are a number of shots and edits in this film that rank among the greatest of all time.

Not a great movie. Perhaps not even a very good one. But it’s feel-good nostalgia for me.

Jailhouse Rock is perhaps more interesting as a historical artifact than it is enjoyable as a movie. It’s fascinating how unglamorous and even unsympathetic Elvis’ protagonist is allowed to be, especially compared to his more vacuous later filmography. Also intriguing is the ways in which his character’s rise to fame, transition to Hollywood, and ultimate alienation as a result mirror Elvis’ own life. It’s too bad that he wasn’t able to read the film as an omen and extricate himself from that path.

A classic I’d somehow never seen before now, and brilliant all the same. Funny, painful, and heartbreaking. (And also very similar to Cool Hand Luke.)

This film feels like a Neil Gaiman story, all about myth and narrative and heartbreak. The script is a bit uneven and the directing leans into the cartoonish, which is a shame because it might otherwise have been really effective.

This is one of the most fan-servicey films I’ve ever seen, apart from the intolerable Ready Player One. Still, I actually enjoyed it more than most of the other Marvel movies I’ve watched in the last few years. I suppose I have a soft spot for young, always in over his head, always anchored to his moral center Peter Parker.

I don’t go in much for romantic comedies, which I find to be generally formulaic and saccharine, but Nora Ephron’s oeuvre is more charming and genuinely funny than most.

I think I might have enjoyed this more if I could just stop comparing it against Singin’ in the Rain. They have a lot in common: loose plotting interspersed with delightful song-and-dance numbers and an extended, highly abstract ballet sequence toward the end, not to mention Gene Kelly at the center of it all. But, despite the excellent Gershwin score, this one seems like a dress rehearsal for the masterpiece that Singin’ in the Rain turned out to be.