Rambling Film

When someone asks me what TV shows I watch, I'm always aware that the network that gets the majority of my viewership is HBO. I was a Starz viewer until about 2010 when I switched my premium channel option to HBO and never looked back. They've consistently had good TV. I recently finished watching The Sopranos for the first time, and it got me thinking of where I would place it on the list of shows I watched. So I figured why not do that?  Now, I know this is going to be kind of unfair, because some shows only have one season vs others that have several. There are also shows I love that have seasons I absolutely hate, so I'm going to rank by how I feel about the shows at their best. I'm leaving out limited series for another post, and I'm only ranking the shows that I've seen every single episode of.  21) Run - Thankfully cancelled after one season, while this show had a more than interesting premise and capable cast, clearly no one thought about more than 45 mi

The final horror themed week from Wandering Through The Shelves is horror themed TV shows. I wanted to do something a little different this time and pick one horror show, but use individual episodes for my picks. I'm also bringing it back to my childhood. The TV show I'm going with is Goosebumps . 1) The Haunted Mask  This is kind of the crowned jewel of the Goosebumps TV show, in my opinion. It translated perfectly to screen, the mask WAS legitimately creepy and Carly Beth was always a character I found very relatable. They even did a "part 2" of this in a later season that still somehow managed to work even though it was repetitive.  2) Stay Out of the Basement This was one of my favorite books from the series as well, and I remember the dad being almost exactly as I pictured him when I read.  3) Night of the Living Dummy This was another one where I really liked the lead character, Amy. And anything with a living dummy/doll already has that uncanny valley creepine

  or  Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Kazakh journalist Borat (Sasha Baron Cohen) has brought shame on his home country after the events of the first film. Now he's given one last chance to deliver a prized monkey to U.S Vice President Mike Pence, however his fifteen year old daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova) sneaks in the crate instead, and her father gets the idea to present her as a gift instead. Borat has always been an acquired taste for most. The first film was very popular and because of that, Borat impressions were everywhere. Now we've spent quite a bit of time apart, and the world is still a raging dumpster fire so what better time to revisit this character? It's impossible to recreate the first film. Baron Cohen has too much notoriety now and no one should go into this film expecting that. What we do get is still a very deeply funny performance, yes with plenty of unsuspecting morons doing bad th

I smell children.   The hero of our story (Jahzir Bruno) is a young boy who after losing his parents in a car crash goes to live with his grandmother. (Octavia Spencer) Is with her that he finds out witches exist. In an attempt to run from them, they end up at a swanky hotel where the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) is hosting a convention of sorts where all witches are conspiring to turn children into mice. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with Ronald Dahl's original story, and I didn't see the 90's version of this either. In fact, I never bothered watching the trailer either, so I went into this as blind as possible when my nine year old brought up watching it for family movie night. So how did age nine fair with this? Well, parts scared him a little. He's too young to be distracted by bad CGI, but overall he liked it. For me, I can't imagine ever wanting to watch this again. Campy Anne Hathaway is wonderful and she's clearly having a good time. Octavia Spenc

  This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves  is Holiday Horror! The only rule I gave myself was to have a different holiday for each pick. Here's what I came up with. 1) Gremlins This is a must for me around Christmas time. I watch this every year, it's just so fun and cute and it's the perfect holiday film. It's A Wonderful Life? We don't know her.. 2) Halloween  Yes, I went the basic route and took the horror film named after the holiday, but I love Halloween. It holds up so well after all these years and the score is timeless.  3) Valentine Of all those slasher films that came out in the lat 90's/early 2000's, this one is probably the worst. I haven't seen it since it was in theaters, but hey, it fits. 

  The whole world is watching. During the 1968 Democratic Convention, protests over the Vietnam War were made by several different groups and this film focuses on seven of the men (well, technically eight, but we'll get to that) charged with inciting riots. There's Tom Hayden and Rennie Sharp (Eddie Redmayne and Alex Sharpe) of the Students for a Democratic Society. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin ( Sasha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International party and David Dellinger, (John Carroll Lynch) John Froines (Danny Flaherty) and Lee Weiner. (Noah Robbins) The 8th man, is Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) a member of the Black Panther party who is being unfairly lumped in with the rest of the group, despite not having a lawyer present. Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) is unfair to say the least so the defense lead by William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) has a lot to go up against. The prosecutor on the other side is Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) And I have

  Not the will you're looking for. When her powerful father passes away, Lauren Monroe (Lily Collins)  a recently appointed distract attorney gets the short end of his will. Her younger brother William (Chance Crawford) is currently running for office and inherits 20 million dollars. Lauren inherits one million, and a sealed envelope with a set of keys and a flash drive apology from her father stating this burden is now hers. On her own, Lily follows his instructions and goes to an underground bunker on her family's property and finds out there's a man, Warren(Simon Pegg) who has been chained up there for the past 30 years. Thanks, dad.   There is something about this movie that I simply cannot wrap my head around. It's not the only film to do this, plenty of others do it too and I never understand it but here most of all.....Lauren choses to tell her spouse NOTHING about what is going on. They're not written to have problems, they're seemingly in a loving relat

  This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is winter horror. Maybe you're one of those lucky ones like me who occasionally has to deal with snow in October. I hate it, but I don't hate scary movies in the snow. Here are a few horror films that take place during the winter.  1) Jack Frost This one is honestly so dumb and I've only seen it once, but it immediately came to mind when I saw the theme. I had to use it.  2) 30 Days of Night This film's Alaskan setting fits perfectly with the theme this week. I liked this movie a lot, and also enjoyed the graphic novel it was based on. 3) Frozen This one is actually quite terrible. After a serious of unfortunate events that require a lot of disbelief to be suspended, three friends get stranded on a ski lift over the weekend in the frigid cold. Wolves show up. On paper, it is very tense but the film overall is poorly executed. 

 The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. The titular Glorias refers to feminist icon and writer  Gloria Steinem. We see her at four different stages of her life, played by four different actress. (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Lulu Wilson, Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore) From childhood, to the powerhouse we know now. After having seen a glimpse of her (played by Rose Byrne) on Hulu's wonderful Mrs. America , it's only fitting that we get a Gloria biopic in the same year. Being Directed by Julie Taymor is another plus, but unfortunately the messiness of how this story is told brings it down a few notches. Taymor tells this story similiar to how she did Across The Universe, which I really enjoyed. But psychedelic and scattered works for The Beatles' music, it doesn't so much work here. She makes a few really interesting choices, like having all versions of the Glorias talk to each other on a bus in between scenes. I thought that was a nice touch, but othe

  What would you do to protect your child? We're introduced to fifteen year old Kayla (Joey King) while her mother Rebecca (Mireille Enos) sends her off with ex-husband Jay (Peter Sarsgaard) for a weekend dance retreat. We can deduce they've been separated for a while but remain civil. Rebecca is a busy lawyer and Jay is the lead singer in a band, so they have very different lifestyles. On their way, they spot Kayla's friend Britney (Devery Jacobs) at a bus stop and give her a lift. The girls dial the passive aggressiveness with each other up to eleven, and when Jay pulls over so they can have a rest break, a sudden scream sends him running into the forest after the girls, only to learn that Kayla pushed Britney off a bridge into a river, and they can't find her body. Instead of calling the police, Jay chooses to cover for his daughter and brings her back to Rebecca. While they figure out what to do with their child murderer, Britney's dad Sam (Cas Anvar) shows up l

What I knew going in: That nearly every horror director out there credits this film for inspiration at some point in their careers. Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) is an estate agent sent out to Transylvania to meat Count Orlok (Max Schreck) as he wants to purchase property. Hutter begins to suspect that Orlok may be a vampire. Silent films are not for me. I can admit that, I don't think I've ever truly connected with one. Nosferatu however is easily the most enjoyable time I've had watching one. A big part of that is the score. It's beautiful. I absolutely loved the  glockenspiel at the beginning. It's such a lovely score it's hard to think of this as a horror film. I think I expected a bit more horror element to the film itself, but there really isn't. I can see why the creepy makeup job they did on Orlok would inspire a lot of horror fans, but with the amount of praise this film gets I had expected more of it. I really liked von Wangenheim thoug

  This week's Halloween Theme from Wandering Through The Shelves are those horror movies that are based on true stories. Just like last week, there's lots to choose from. Here are some of my favorites.  1) The Amityville Horror (2005) I swear I don't just like this because of the gratuitous shot of Ryan Reynolds sans shirt, but for a story as creepy as Amityville, I think this is a very successful horror thriller.  2) The Conjuring I took way to long to finally watch this movie based on real life paranormal investigators but it was absolutely worth the wait. This is one of the best horror movies I've ever seen, and it's crazy intense without being gory or relying on near constant jump scares.  3) The Exorcism of Emily Rose I've said this before, but Emily Rose is one of the best PG-13 horror movies out there. It's part courtroom drama, part horror and it's very creepy. The shot of Jennifer Carpenter all contorted on her dorm room floor always gets me. 

  It's all there. This documentary on Netflix follows the 2018 disappearance of Shanann Watts and her two young daughters in Colorado, USA. Constructed almost exclusively by social media posts and police footage, we get first hand knowledge of the investigations and the lives of everyone involved. After seeing Asshole's Watching Movies review this, I knew I was going to check it out. True crime docs are something I've always found intriguing and lately I've been watching and listening to these type of cases while I work. Shanann's name rang a bell, but I didn't recall the case specifically. Since I didn't research anything prior all of this was new to me. I really liked the structure of this documentary. Re-enactments are were docs can lose me and I'm glad this film didn't use them. Instead, nearly everything is crafted together by social media posts. Shanann posted a lot of content online and text messages she sent flash across the screen rather th

 Something's in the sky. In a small town in New Mexico in 1958, everyone has packed into the high school to watch a basketball game. Mostly everyone, young nerdy radio DJ, Everett (Jake Horowitz) is out walking with his friend and town switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) before they separate to do their jobs. While Fay is listening to Everett's show, she catches a strange frequency through the radio and phones Everett. When he broadcasts it on his show, he receives a strange call with an even stranger story and it sends these two on a mysterious mission. We jump right into Everett and Fay's dynamic. The opening scene, showing the two teens leaving the school, testing out Fay's new tape recorder, then heading to their jobs is very dialogue heavy and thankfully these two have excellent banter. I was surprised to find out this movie wasn't originally a radio play to be honest. This film is very much "tell" over "show." The majority of the in

More social distancing, more TV. I feel like The Sopranos is taking over my life. So many movies and books are taking a back seat to it. Here's what I was watching on the small screen last month. Lovecraft Country - This show continues to be wonderful and weird. This last episode was complete filler but it was GOOD filler. That's how you do it. There's only three episodes left as I'm typing this, I'm curious to see where it goes. The Sopranos - As I'm typing this, I'm almost finished with season 5, then I just have their mammoth season 6 left. This show is all I want to watch at the moment but like...men are the worst, right? There are no likable men on this show at all.  The Vow - I vaguely remember reading about NXIVM and how the girl from Smallville was involved when that story dropped a few years ago, but I never took a deep dive into it. This documentary has been eye opening and I had no idea how far this went. At first glance, I was surprised they we

  It's Halloween month at Wandering Through The Shelves ! The first spooky pick of the month is horror movie houses. There's plenty of films about haunted houses so was a lot to choose from. Here are three I enjoy. 1) The Others Nicole Kidman is very good in this and even though it's easy to guess the ending, this film does a good job of being creepy throughout. 2) The Haunting (1999) I'm pretty positive there is no way this film actually holds up, but I really liked it when I was in middle school. This is a bit of a nostalgic pick to me 3) The Rocky Horror Picture Show While this isn't a haunted house, it does involve two people stumbling upon a house party that will change their lives forever and it screams "Halloween" to me. I've been a fan of this movie for a few years, but last year was the first time I finally went to a rowdy midnight showing of it at a theater and I had such a great time I'll probably do it again when the pandemic is over.