Rambling Film

  What I knew going in: I had seen parts of the film before. Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) is bored on her tour of Europe and sneaks out one night to enjoy herself. She then meets an American expat Joe (Gregory Peck) who at first doesn't recognize her. They spend the following day together. I've been meaning to "finish" this film for ages. Whenever I watched it before, I always missed the beginning. I had no idea what the circumstances where that Ann ends up sleeping in Joe's apartment, so it was nice to have some context there. This film is delightful. I can see why Peck was so convinced Hepburn was winning an Oscar after working with her on this. She absolutely shines as Ann. She's innocent, fun, and very endearing. That's pretty remarkable considering early on we meet her having a tantrum. Peck of course is smooth as always. His characters are always so likable. I really wish this was in color. I know that's a bit sacrilege to say with older films

Sam (Colin Firth) and his husband Tusker (Stanley Tucci) are traveling across England in an RV to visit friends and family. Tusker was diagnosed with early dementia and has been declining. This trip is important to them and their relationship. This film came out late last year and made zero impact on the Oscar race despite some early predictions for the lead actors. It's easy to see why. A similar film in The Father was also out and far superior in every way. But even if The Father didn't come out in the same year, I doubt this film would've been an awards darling. In a way it's not fair to compare them. Despite them sharing dementia in their themes, the films couldn't be more different, but I had to bring it up because now I see why I heard next to nothing about Supernova after initial screenings. It's just bad.  Firth and Tucci have excellent chemistry and the film is very much about their relationship and how they're about to lose it to an unfair disea

Dane (Jason Segel) doesn't really have a direction he wants to go in life. We meet him early on, a best friend to Nicole (Dakota Johnson) and eventual best friend to her husband, Matt. (Casey Affleck) Over a decade later, Nicole is diagnosed with cancer and Dane sees that Matt can't handle the house and their two young daughters all by himself, so he drops everything to go to live with them while Nicole's diagnosis turns terminal. I recently lost a family member to cancer, and on my plane to their funeral, I decided I wanted to mope and only watch depressing movies. So this is how I landed on Our Friend . Otherwise Affleck alone would've normally put me off it. But the thing is, I liked this. Sure, it didn't have anything new to say in the terminal illness department and it uses the ever popular jumping around in the time line trope. (Thankfully in a more coherent way than My Sister's Keeper , for example)  But it's been so long since I've seen Jason Seg

  This week's TV theme from Wandering Through The Shelves are for those who just don't quite fit in. I've been pretty excited for this week because I was saving one of my favorite new shows for it. Here's what I came up with. 1) Ted Lasso - I cannot describe how much I love Ted Lasso. This show is so wholesome, sweet, and absolutely hysterical at the same time. I'm so glad I started watching it. I just hate that it's on Apple TV and I'll have to pay to watch the second season after my free trial runs out. Football coach Ted moving to England and coaching soccer, a sport he knows nothing about is very out of his element.  2) The Great - I was somewhat interested in this Hulu show where Elle Fanning takes on the role of Catherine The Great, but when I finally started watching I was faced with something so unexpectedly funny. I was not prepared for the tone this has. It's wonderful and Catherine is so adaptable to her new surroundings. Huzzah! 3) The Fres

A young sea monster, Luca (Jacob Tremblay) dreams of a life bigger than the one he leads under the sea. One day he goes to the surface after following Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer)and realizes they turn human when they are out of water. The meet Giuila (Emma Berman) and try to achieve their goal of owning a Vespa. That sounds like a weird summary, but really that's what the movie is about. The Vespa part is hilarious. The less context the better. Aside from a few running gags that I appreciated, this was pretty mid tier Pixar.  I felt like this film was more of an animation showcase than a strong story. Luca often day dreams, and we see those dreams play out, but they don't exactly add anything. They feel like a slight distraction. The plot itself isn't particularly innovative and there's plenty of bad Italian stereotypes. It's going to draw plenty of comparisons with The Little Mermaid but it's a pretty basic story about friendship that Pixar has told time and t

Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) take on one of the most difficult cases yet after a routine exorcism ends up being something deeper. I was late to the Conjuring trilogy, but I can still safely say the first film is one of the best horror films in recent memory. The second film was very strong too. It was just unsettling. There is that constant feeling of dread and not knowing what's going to happen next. The 3rd installment starts out that way, but then quickly turns into something generic that lacks the magic of the previous films. What made the first two films so scary were the things we couldn't see. I still think that scene in the first film with Joey King and Mackenzie Foy in their bedroom, staring into the dark corner is one of the scariest things in the entire franchise. This film doesn't have that. It's assigned an actual speaking villain, and it lifts so many shots from other iconic horror films that it becomes distracting.  James Wan n

  Nature is taking center stage during this week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves . This week we're talking about natural disasters. There's plenty of those to go around so here's what I came up with. 1) The Impossible - About a devastating tsunami, I've never been so grateful to not see a movie in theaters. I cried not even exaggerating through about 80% of this movie. It was a lot 2) The Wandering Earth - I wanted to think outside the box a bit, in this film, the sun is dying out, so it's part natural disaster/part dystopia. While I think the film overall had some pacing issues, it was a really interesting story. 3) The Day After Tomorrow - We have tornadoes, we have floods, we have blizzards, this film is a feast of natural worst nightmares. 

In the neighborhood of Washington Heights in Manhattan, Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owns a bodega but dreams of going back to his native Dominican Republic. He pines for Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) who has big dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Meanwhile his friend Nina (Leslie Grace) has just returned home from her first semester of college and realizes the location might not be for her.  I didn't get to see this on the big screen like I originally wanted to, but even watching this at home on HBO Max it felt larger than life. The musical numbers were fantastic. They were so colorful and full of energy, I couldn't take my eyes off them.  Anthony Ramos is an absolute star. I hope he can carry momentum all the way until awards season because he deserves it. He's so energetic and talented. Everyone involved in this had wonderful singing voices. I loved seeing Corey Hawkins, who plays Usnavi's friend (and Nina's love interest) Benny. I was first introduced to him on The Wa

  This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is all about those book adaptations that just let us down. We all have them. It's hard as hell to translate a book to screen. Very few have done it well. Here are some films where I felt they were lacking compared to their book counterparts.  1) The Lovely Bones - I should say that I don't hate this movie. I actually really liked the cast and I think they were great in their roles, but I wish a woman would've directed this. What makes The Lovely Bones so compelling and sad is Susie having to watch everything she's missing out on go on without her. How she never gets to have these "firsts" she looked forward to as a young woman. Director Peter Jackson chose to brush over that quickly and instead focus on the more fantastical elements of the story that were not even important. I hope someone takes another crack at this again in the future, even though Saoirse really was the perfect Susie. 2) The Woman i

Picking up immediately where we left the Abbott family in the last film, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and her children Regan,(Millicent Simmonds) Marcus (Noah Jupe) and her newborn son are on the move after their home is damaged. They run into an old family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy) and he's reluctant to help them. It's hard to do a sequel to a surprise hit like the first one does, but writer/director John Krasinski once again crafts an interesting and high stakes story. It may not feel as fresh as the first go around, there's a lot of very tired post apocalyptic tropes and the direction can at times feel very repetitive, but I'm so invested in the Abbott family that I needed to see where they go next. This film really belongs to Simmonds. While she was the focal point of the first film she takes on an even bigger part of the second. Determined to help not just her family, but everyone with her new found knowledge on how to kill the creatures. She takes off on her own adve

This month has been a bit slower on the TV front for me. Life has been a lot lately, but this is what I've managed to watch on the small screen. Mare of Easttown - This was excellent. I thought the show did a great job of keeping us guessing until the penultimate episode. There are so many ongoing mysteries and the show never felt bloated, although there were some story lines I could've done without. (Like Siobhan's relationship) I did not see that ending coming for Zabel at all. It was very heartbreaking. I also liked that it didn't wrap up with a huge shootout in the woods like I expected it to. Great troll job with Guy Pearce as well.  Pose - Aside from amazing performances by the cast, I have not been that invested in this final season of Pose. It doesn't feel like a natural conclusion to a story. Every episode is an actor showcase because the show is leaving, which is normally fine but obvious to the point where it's distracting. I can't get lost in the

  It's the first TMP of the month, so that means its another Oscar edition over at Wandering Through The Shelves.  This week we're talking about screenplays, and since it's pride month I decided to pick my favorite screenplay winners for LGBTQ+ films. Hopefully we have many more of these winners to come. 1) Brokeback Mountain - The more I think about this film, the more I think it's actually perfect. It absolutely deserved its Adapted Screenplay win. I read the short story in college and Ang Lee beautifully expanded on it.  2) Milk - I believe when Dustin Lance Black won his Best Original Screenplay Oscar he was the first openly gay man to do so. His speech was beautiful, and this was such a good movie.  3) Moonlight - When this film ended, I wasn't ready to leave Chiron. I wanted to stay with him and make sure he was going to be okay. Normally I would hate that in a screenplay, but I get it. This is one of my all time favorite Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay

A new take on Charles Dickens' David Copperfield sees our title character (Dev Patel) narrate his life story from his childhood of privilege, to hard labor, to earning money, to becoming poor again, and everything in between. I started to list who I loved in the cast but it got so long. Every single actor in this is absolutely delightful. There's not a single weak link. It's funny, I was utterly bored with this book when I read it as a teenager. The only reason I made a point to see this was for Dev Patel. I found this version to be very engaging and fun. I shouldn't have been surprised by that. Director Armando Iannucci made The Thick of It , Death of Stalin and Veep . This is much more wholesome than the work of his I'm use to. It was a nice change. I liked the way this was shot. At times, adult David is in the scenes narrating his childhood, backgrounds tear away like scene changes of a play. The costumes and the production design were all very well done. Since

Shola "Rocks" (Bukky Bakray) is a teenager living in a council estate in England with her mother (Layo-Christina Akinlude) and her younger brother Emmanuel. (D'angelou Osei Kissiedu) When their mom leaves them on their own, Rocks finds herself avoiding social workers trying to take them away, and trying to find a place for she and her brother to stay. I hadn't heard of this film until the BAFTA nominations came out and this film got a whopping 7 of them. The film reminds me of Fish Tank in a way. The actors feel so organic in these roles, yet green at the same time. Not because they're struggling with the material, but because they feel so authentic.  Rocks is very complex. She goes back and forth between being very responsible and a bit of a trouble maker as all teenagers are. Her love for her brother is genuine, but she shouldn't be burdened with being his sole caregiver. One of my favorite aspects was her friendship with Sumaya. (Kosar Ali) Sumaya might be