Rambling Film

With the holiday I almost forgot to write about TV this week, despite Westworld having an amazing episode. Let's talk about that first. Westworld SO many theories were confirmed in the penultimate episode. Bernard really is a host made in Arnold's image. There's almost certainly two time lines and William really will end up becoming the Man in Black.  They didn't let us know what happened to Elsie, Stubbs went looking for her and was captured by hosts, which leads me to believe she's at least alive. Logan was tormenting Dolores in front of William until she escaped. Logan handed him a picture of his sister, the same picture that threw Dolores' father out of whack in the premiere and gave it to him to "remind" William he has a girl at home. William says he understands, then while Logan is passed out, he kills all the other hosts. Mauve is still plotting and building her army. We got a visit from old Clementine again. Bernard corners Ford a

Could you do it? Canadian Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) is an intelligence officer on a mission in Casablanca. His partner, French Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard) are instructed to pose as a married couple and assassinate some German officers during WWII. After completing their mission, they move to London and marry for real. After some time, Max is told that Marianne may be a German spy, and if it's proven she is, he must execute her himself.  Allied poses a heavy question. If you found out your beloved spouse was spying for another country, one that's consistently bombing the one you live in, would you believe it? If it was true, could you actually kill them yourself? I'd probably chicken out, personally and Max is understandably about 2 inches away from an existential crisis over it for the last half of the film.  I feel the same way about Allied as I did The Accountant . It's not a bad film, far from it, it just didn't wow me. It's certainly

What would you do to prove yourself? Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) is a young FBI agent that's eager to prove himself. When another agent, Angela (Toni Collette) asks him to go undercover as a white supremacist to help her uncover a terrorist plot she believes they're planning, while apprehensive at first, he's eager to prove himself a capable agent. I didn't intend on watching this movie the same week we found out who will become our next president, but it happened. It's actually scary watching this movie and seeing how normal some of these people look on the outside. Sam Trammell plays one of the leaders who has a loving family (whose younger daughter spouts some surprisingly paranoid shit to Nate at one point) and looks like a normal guy. Every time we see a swastika or a burning cross, you can't help but cringe. It's a scary and sad reality how deep racism can run.  This film builds two different kinds of worry very well. The first and more p

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves happens to be the one "big" genre of film I never get into. One I dislike even more than rom coms: Westerns. I tolerate some of them, as I'm sure you'll be able to tell this week as I pick the three most un Westerny Westerns that ever Westerned.  1) 3:10 To Yuma The remake, obviously. I saw it for the cast and ended up liking it a lot more than I normally like Westerns. Would I watch it again? Probably not, but it was good enough.  2) Bone Tomahawk This film really drags its feet getting from point A to point B, but point B is so damn entertaining.  3) An  American Tail: Fievel Goes West Don't judge me. I told you Westerns aren't my thing! Admittedly, I'm not sure how this holds up as an adult.

Ahh the Independent Spirit Awards. AKA the awards where I immediately save half of the nominees into my Netflix queue because they haven't made it here yet. Quite a few of these I expected, while there were a few surprises.  FEATURE American Honey Chronic Jackie Manchester By The Sea Moonlight Chronic is the only head scratcher. It makes me wonder which year Midnight Special was supposed to be eligible for, this year or last? Because if it was this year, that defintiely should've been in there.  FIRST FEATURE The Childhood of a Leader The Fits Other People Swiss Army Man The Witch I love seeing Swiss Army Man and The Witch here.  JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD (best feature made for less than $500,000) Free in Deed Hunter Gatherer Lovesong Nakom Spa Night DIRECTOR Andrea Arnold - American Honey Barry Jenkins - Moonlight Pablo Larraín - Jackie Jeff Nichols - Loving Kelly Reichert - Certain Women I think Jenkins might repeat in the Oscars. Moonlight i

Conceal, don't feel. Sometime in the future, society has figured out how to suppress all emotion. Those who do show signs of it are diagnosed with SOS - switched on syndrome. They're given medicine to try to combat emotion before they're taken off for more intense deprogramming. Silas (Nicholas Holt) after witnessing a suicide of a colleague notices Nia (Kristen Stewart) subtly reacting. He starts to feel different, and ends up being diagnosed with SOS. He and Nia start having an affair, and try to hide it for their own good. Director Drake Doremus brought us films like Breath In and Like Crazy that I adored. Equals is very different on the outside, but explores a similiar theme: love. Forbidden love as well. Terrible things happen to people caught "coupling" as it's explained, so Nia and Silas have to be extra careful. Holt and Stewart both eventually give great performances. As do actors like Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver who show up later. I

Wendell over at Dell On Movies is hosting a Girls Week. He's focusing on films with female protagonists between November 21st-27th and anyone can join in. Now, I'm being pretty lazy this week. I'm on vacation, all my content for the week is stuff I wrote months ago and scheduled, but I can't just miss the opportunity to talk about great female roles and participate in the fun posts Dell always has. Since I love my indies, Here are some of my favorite Indie Gems with a strong female performance  (If you do actually click those links, some of these are super old so don't judge my even messier writing style. I've grown in my ramblings, I swear) Thirteen - I've said many times how much I could relate to Tracey, the teenager who just wants to fit in and goes down a dangerous path. Evan Rachel Wood gives a career best performance and she was robbed of an Oscar nomination Dreamland - Audrey has so much on her shoulders, and Agnes Bruckner makes us fee

Westworld It was going to be hard to top last week's episode. While this one was a little slower it provided a lot of interesting information, and gave another big theory another point in its direction. Let's talk about how fucked Sylvester and Felix are. Felix's sympathy for Mauve bit him in the ass in a big way this week. Mauve wants to build an army to escape, and Sylvester thinks they should shut her down and wipe her memory. That doesn't happen, and she slits Felix's throat lightly to demonstrate just how little they can control her. He lives, though. Later, she murders the new replacement Clementine and is taken out by techs. We get a flashback of her begging them not to wipe the memories of her daughter by saying "this pain is all I have left." Now we know where Ford got that line for Bernard. Speaking of Bernard, he cleans up his tracks for being with Theresa, but when he asks Ford if he's ever made him kill before, a memory flashes bef

Who are you? Moonlight follows a boy named Chiron in three parts. When he's a child who goes by Little (Alex R. Hibbert) and finds refuge with a couple, Juan and Teresa (Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe) that he looks up to. Then, when he's a shy teenager who doesn't like being called by any name other than Chiron. (Ashton Sanders) After an incident there, we meet him again as an adult who goes by Black (Trevante Rhodes) when he gets a call from a childhood friend Kevin (André Holland as an adult) that changes everything. Watching Chiron is a very sad experience. He's gay, but he can't show it living in the predominantly black neighborhood in Florida. He's constantly teased for not being tough and his only relief seems to come from meeting Juan. A moment with Kevin made me want to cry for him, when Chiron admits he cries so much at times. It's hard to watch anyone who has to hide who they really are. The film is beautifully shot (though a f

Boys weekend. Josh (Thomas Middleditch) was happily engaged, and then that suddenly ended. And not in the way you think. He had put down a deposit on a house in Ojai, California for his bachelor party and his friends, Ari, (Adam Pally) Adam, (Alex Ross Perry) and Eric (Nick Kroll) decide to throw a party anyways to bring his spirits up. This film is disguised as a comedy where these men drink and smoke away their problems, but it actually ends up being pretty heavy. There's a few laughs, but the bulk of the film isn't just Josh's pain. All of his friends are having issues too, and aside from Adam, none want to address them in wake of Josh's problems.  Middleditch is very talented, which anyone watching Silicon Valley knows. It's always a pleasure to watch him. The cast has chemistry, especially when Jodi, a character played by Jenny Slate shows up. A lot of other actors make small cameos in the film as well. Aubrey Plaza, Lauren Graham, Frankie Shaw,

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves are films that were based on their smaller screen counter parts. This was really hard to narrow down. A lot of children's shows came to mind, like Rugrats or Doug . Shows that were a bit before my time like 21 Jump Street and Dukes of Hazzard came to mind too. I decided to stick with movies based on shows that I watched quite a bit. 1) X-Files: The Movie (Or Fight the Future depending on when you bought your DVD) My dad and I watched a lot of TV together (we also watched Highlander, which I used a few months ago) X-Files was one of our favorites. I was shipping Molder and Scully before I even knew when shipping was. I remember being so pissed that they didn't kiss when we saw this in theaters.  2) Jackass: The Movie (and sequels) So the show and the movies it spawned are all gross and outrageous but I loved how much people hated it. This bothered so many simply because it existed. The reaction it all pr

What happens now? Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguistics professor who is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to help translate when 12 alien ships suddenly descend to Earth. However not everyone wants to take the time Louise does to teach them how to communicate when other countries are on the verge of declaring war. Early on, Louise explains how you have to start with small words and that learning language takes time. That's how the first part of the film feels. It takes its time setting up the premise. The eerie score haunts us right up until the moment we see the aliens for the first time. It's a slow burn, but it needs to be. That's how learning another language is. Once we get to the back half of the film it completely filps around everything we thought we knew. It's an amazing turn of events that I felt completely wowed by. Amy Adams is a dream. I've said that countless times, she never gives a bad performance and she's perf

I'm not even in the mood to write about TV. Aside from Westworld, everything I've seen on TV this week has been downright awful. From TV that drags, to forced monologues, to the fact that my country elected a racist as president. It's not been a good week. Let's get all the shit out of the way first. The Walking Dead This week's episode was a prime example of how sometimes a show reads better than it watches. When I read the spoilers, I actually had a bit of hope. I'd be seeing Rick and plenty of the other characters again, but instead it was just more of the same. More of Negan speechifying everyone, more forced stupid decisions. You're really going to tell me that Rick, the guy that buried weapons outside of Terminus, and hid a gun outside of Alexandria didn't think to have Olivia make a fake inventory list and then hide half their weapons? After they already said they set aside supplies for the Saviors? Come on.  The episode was also 90 minu

What I knew going in: A good amount of people seem to feel very strongly about Hepburn winning an Oscar for this. Guess Who was somewhat of a remake.  Joey Drayton (Katharine Houghton) and Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) met 10 days ago in Hawaii and have fallen in love. They intend to marry, only it's the 1960's and she's white, and he black. They know how society will view their relationship, so they decide to start small and hope to win over Joey's parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) first. Of course, they only give them a few hours to decide before they fly onto Geneva for John's work. It's so embarrassing that I saw the awful Guess Who , yet never watched this until now. When I put together my Blind Spots, I knew I wanted to see more of Katharine Hepburn, and this movie was one had some strong opinions about it.  I enjoyed it. The acting is phenomenal across the board. (Okay, Houghton isn't that great, but Joey is so sweet you al

How dare you disrupt my extramarital affair! Therese's (Elizabeth Olsen) life kind of sucks. She's orphaned at a young age, sent to live with her Aunt Raquin (Jessica Lange) and her sickly cousin, Camille. (Tom Felton) Now Madam Raquin babies her son excessively, then when they come of age, she decides to marry Therese to her cousin and move them to Paris. It doesn't help that Therese is very sexually curious, and her husband is well...sickly and her cousin. She ends up having an affair with one of his friends, Laurent (Oscar Isaac) and it ends up having dangerous consequences. I should start by admitting my stupidity. While I was watching this, I kept thinking to myself, especially towards the end, that "man, this reminds me of the non vampire version of Thirst " Well, turns out they were adapted from the same book. I never knew that, but seeing as I liked Thirst , I feel justified in my pick. Did I mention I put this movie in my Netflix queue beca

I'm addicted to the internet. I love staying connected, but that's not as destructive as the films I'm going to talk about today. This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is about addictions. I'm sticking with three separate addictions. Here's what I came up with.  1) Smashed This film follows Kate, a teacher with an addiction to alcohol. When that addiction leads to a very public incident at work, she tries to stay sober and her relationship with her husband suffers because of it.  2) Trainspotting Renton is addicted to heroin and struggles with trying to get out of the drug scene. We showed a movie called Wasted to teenagers in our addiction studies group at a former job. Effective, but I can't help but wonder how much more effective it would've been if we showed Trainspotting instead. You know, sometimes scaring kids out of something works.  3) Shame Brandon is addicted to sex. He's frequently hooking up with

Not everything makes sense. Not everything has to. Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant neurosurgeon with a massive ego. When he suffers permanent nerve damage to his hands after a car crash, he desperately searches for ways to repair them so he can practice again.  This leads him to Nepal where he encounters Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofer) who brings him to a woman called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) they train him in the mystic arts and help him open his mind. Only a former master, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson) has stolen part of an ancient book and threatens to unleash dark magic on the Earth. Strange must now help them stop him. When I first saw the teaser for Doctor Strange last year, I wasn't sold. I thought it drew too heavily from a film I already loved - Inception, and I wasn't thrilled with that. As time went on, I just became more and more hyped. Marvel tends to do that with me. This is unlike any other film Marvel has done. Visually, it&

Who are you? Swede Levov (Ewan McGregor) was supposed to have the perfect life. He was a star athlete in high school, when he came back from the war, he married a beauty queen, Dawn. (Jennifer Connelly) He now runs his father's shop and has a beautiful daughter, Merry. (Dakota Fanning) Merry has a severe stutter, and that stresses him out a bit, but that's nothing compared to the radical anti war ideas she develops when she's 16. When Merry bombs a post office and flees, Swede is stuck between wanting to find his daughter who hates him, and trying to move on. McGregor takes on not only the lead role but the directing reigns too. The former is easier for him. His direction is quite text book at times, but he nails the more emotional scenes. The acting from the three leads is wonderful, especially Dakota Fanning. I wish she was talked about more when it comes to Supporting Actress nominees. The film captures the 60's look well and Alexandre Desplat's score

The Walking Dead How I felt during this episode.  Oh my god this episode was boring. Did it really need an entire hour devoted to it? They could've summed up the Saviors and how the run shit in 5 minutes. I don't understand why Gimple gives boring characters like Dwight, Beth, and the Governor episodes all to themselves? It's a waste of time. They shouldn't be playing "Easy Street" on a loop for Daryl, they should be showing him this episode over and over again.  Westworld No Dolores and William this week. Instead we spent most of our time with Mauve, Bernard, and Elsie. Let's start with Mauve, who was glorious in this episode. Flex explains how she works, and even takes her on the world's most paranoid office tour. She's shocked to see her "dreams" on the screen. When Felix's colleague returns and threatens to turn him into HQ, Mauve puts a scalpel to his throat and talks him into helping her. He and Felix change her c

Not your regular camping trip. Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a frequently misbehaved young boy bouncing around the foster care system. He's placed with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Hector. (Sam Neil) His happiness with them is soon disturbed, and when he and Hector go into the New Zealand bush, a nation wide manhunt is set out to look for them. My indie theater had this for a few weeks earlier this year and I missed it. The glowing reviews made me regret that. This film has unbelievable heart. It's very much a Waititi film (and honestly, this makes me even more pumped for Thor: Ragnarok even though I'm sure the tone will be different.) There's lots of humor through out, most subtle, some perfectly ridiculous. It covers the harder topics with ease.  Dennison and Neil are perfectly casts. Both characters are assholes in their own ways, yet vulnerable in others. They play off each other well. Rachel House, playing an over zealous social worker and her appointed po

It's another foreign language edition at Wandering Through The Shelves . This time Wanderer asks us to focus on films in Middle Eastern languages. I look forward to these foreign weeks the most because it opens me up to films I may have missed. I love watching films from other countries and seeing what the world has to offer cinema wise. Regrettably, I haven't seen many films from the Middle East, but here's what I've enjoyed.. 1) A Separation From Iran -  This film is about a married couple that faced with some difficult life decisions and how those decisions may drive them apart. It stars the wonderful Peyman Moaadi who I cannot get enough of. This movie was wonderful, but the ending made me rage. I think both me and my husband yelled "what?" a little too loudly when we first saw it.  2) A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night From Iran* -  This film is about a lonely vampire who lives in a town aptly named Bad City. This is one of the most stylish