Rambling Film

I'm back! With my vacation and work being busy, I haven't gotten to do as much on the blog this month as I wanted. I fell behind on my Indie Gems for the first time in years, and I didn't fell asleep during my Blind Spot viewing. (which is what I get for trying to watch it at 2:00am, I suppose) Either way, thanks to airplane TVs here's a few things I watched in the past week. Hopefully it's back to business as usual around here.  Kubo and the Two Strings I saw this one in theaters with my husband and son. The animation was gorgeous, easily the best of the year. The story, however just didn't match other animated greats like Zootopia or Finding Dory. Plus, my son was irrationally bothered by the fact that Kubo's instrument had three strings on it for most of the film. "Why isn't it called Kubo and the THREE strings?" Symbolism, son. Grade: B Hello, My Name is Doris When I first saw the trailer through this, I figured it would be a...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is another foreign language edition! This week we get quite a bit of variety to choose from, any of the Scandinavian countries. This was actually quite hard to narrow down, there's so many great ones. I chose one film from three different countries these week, with a mental note to see more Finnish and Icelandic films.  Please note this post is queued, I'm still on vacation and will check everyone else's out when I get back! 1) Troubled Water From Norway - this story follows a man who was convicted of killing a child when he was a teenager, and after he's released from prison he has trouble starting a life without people finding out what he did. 2) The Hunt From Denmark - The Hunt is about a teacher whose entire life is ruined due to a lie by a young student. I actually wanted to burn this fictional town to the ground by the end of it.  3) Let The Right One In From Sweden - One of my favorit...

I'm a little early with this post, but I'll be going on vacation this week and likely will not have internet access for most of it. So before I wake up at a ridiculous hour to head to the airport, he's my contribution to one of my favorite blogging events.  Wendell over at Dell on Movies is back with his yearly Against The Crowd blogathon. This year he's teaming up with KG over at KG Movie rants as well. He asks us to choose one movie we love that the majority does not, and one we dislike, that the majority loves. Here are the official rules. 1. Pick one movie that "everyone" loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have a score of at least 75% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you hate it. 2. Pick one movie that "everyone" hates (the more notorious, the better). That movie must have a score of less than 35% on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you love it. 3. Include the tomato meter scores of both movies. 4. Use one of the...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is movies about crimes gone wrong. I realized there's a lot of classic movies with this theme that I haven't seen yet. Here's three of my favorite crime fucks up: 1) Reservoir Dogs What didn't go wrong in this movie? Botched robbery, botched shooting, botched secrets. But that ear, though....that came off with precision.  2) Before The Devil Knows You're Dead Two brothers that also botch a robbery of their parent's own jewelry store. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so good in this. 3) No Country for Old Men The makings of my favorite Coen Brothers movie - The drug deal goes wrong, the man stealing the money from said drug deal doesn't make the wisest decision, and way too many people get shot.

This isn't what I signed up for.  I'll admit it. I saw Suicide Squad for Harley Quinn. The promotions started to sell me, but I tried to stay focused.  So when all the shitty reviews started rolling in, I told myself I'd be okay, because I was only here for Harley. That worked out in my favor because this film is a damn mess. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) wants to put together an elite team of super villains to guard the U.S in wake of Superman's "death." She plants bombs into their necks and demands they do her biding, and she'll reduce their sentences. There's Dead Shot (Will Smith, playing himself) the leader who desperately wants to get out to see his daughter. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) the crazy ex psychiatrist, who I'll talk about a bit later. El Diablo, (Jay Hernandez) a fire starter, and a bunch of other people the film doesn't care to let us get to know. They are all lead by soldier named Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) Their assi...

He's more important Roy (Michael Shannon) has left a cult with his son, Alden (Jaeden Lieberher) who they worshiped. Alden has special powers, ones that tell him that he needs to be at a certain place on a certain date for an unknown reason. He's aided by his childhood friend Lucas (Joel Egerton) and his assumed ex wife, Sarah. (Kirsten Dunst) But he has not only the FBI hot on their trail, but an NSA agent, Sevier (Adam Driver) who wants to know why Alden is able to figure out top secret government codes. My road to this film has been long. It premiered at Sundance two years ago to rave reviews, I book marked it, waited for it's release date that year...then it got pushed back....then it was pushed back again. Finally, it got a limited theatrical release. My own art house theatre got it...for 6 days only. It felt like everything was preventing me to see this movie. But when I watched it, it immediately made all of that waiting work it. Midnight Special is a...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is movies about writing or writers of novels. The catch is you cannot use movies based on real authors. That was tough because my mind immediately went to End of the Tour , but it doesn't qualify here. Here's what I could come up with. 1) The Shining I thought of Misery first, but I already used it in another week. The Shining may be less about the writing process itself, but Jack writing in a cursed hotel makes for some interesting developments to say the least. 2) Ruby Sparks This little indie starring real life couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan is about an author who writes his dream girl for a story, and she suddenly comes to life. 3) Stranger Than Fiction Harold stars hearing someone narrate his life. He eventually realizes the voice belongs to an author named Karen who is famous for killing her main character at the end of every book. 

Doing the right thing. This Oscar nominated documentary short is about the case of Manny Babbitt, a Vietnam vet who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia upon returning from his tour a duty. What he was not diagnosed with was post traumatic stress disorder, had he been, things may have been different. Manny, in a confused state beat a woman named Leah Schendel  to death. His brother Bill, our interviewee (in animated form) found something in Manny's belongings tying him to the murder that was in the papers. Bill tells us how he turned Manny in and had the impression the trial was going to go a certain way due to his mental illness, but was proven wrong. This is a quick watch on Netflix Instant, but the profound sadness this film generates in its 30 minute run time extends beyond that. Mental illness has such a stigma in the United States. People who have it don't get help, people who don't have it try to use it to their advantages. This case is ju...

A collection of bad decisions Tallulah (Ellen Page) lives in her van. She's a bit of a dreamer, she has to steal to survive as she has no job. After her boyfriend, Nico (Evan Jonigkeit) leaves her, she wanders around a New York City hotel stealing food from room service plates outside doors when she runs into Carolyn. (Tammy Blanchard) She mistakes her for staff and drags her inside her hotel room where she pays her to watch her one year old daughter Maddy so she can go out and party. She's very insecure, she asks Lu several times if she looks fat and/or pretty. When she returns home and passes out drunk later, Lu makes a hasty decision to take Maddy with her while dropping in on Nico's mother, Margo. (Allison Janney) I've been wanting to watch this film since it was at Sundance, so I was very pleased that Netflix picked up the distribution rights. It can be a hard sell, Tallulah, Carolyn, and to an extent, Margo are all very unlikable characters. Especiall...

I'm in for another tough one. This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is movies about Gambling. I find gambling movies to be mediocre at best. Here's 3 gambling movies that aren't too shabby....I guess..okay fine, I'm phoning it in this week. (As opposed to last week where I only phoned in Flyboys) 1) Rain Man This is probably going to be on a lot of lists. It's likely responsible for every card counting joke out there. Out of my three picks, this is the only one I can actually say I liked.  2) 21 The last half of this movie is kind of terrible, but the first half isn't so bad.  3) Ocean's Eleven I don't care for the Ocean's movies, but the cast is very charismatic. I suppose this is more of a heist movie, but I'm stretching it this week, obviously.

Studio lot life. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a Hollywood fixer who we follow around a studio lot as he tries to handle problems on various sets. Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is a huge star who has been kidnapped. Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is a new star being shuffled around pictures. Plus many more things Mannix has to give his attention to. I'm not the biggest Coen Brothers fan. They've made some great films, and some not so great ones. My favorite of theirs is actually the least Coensy of them, No Country for Old Men . Hail, Caear! is very much a Coen film, and unfortunately it's a very boring one.  It's not a good thing when you want to dose off the minute the leading man is on the screen. Brolin's character nearly put me to sleep. As we jump around between sets and see sometimes too long sequences of the films they're shooting, we get glimpses of greatness. Like Ehrenreich's character, who is the true star of the show. Or Scarle...