Rambling Film

  This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is about TV family comedies. And I remembered it was a TV week this month! I decided to bring back a few from my childhood, plus one that my husband and I still joke about watching together. 1) Full House - This one is my favorite of the bunch and I grew up worshipping the Olsen Twins because of it. They had everything I wanted, man! All those people in one house is completely illogical, but it was fun. 2) Home Improvement - This was another popular one when I was a kid. Everyone had a crush on JTT and I was kind of meh on him. But of course I never admitted that to anyone. 3) The War At Home - This Michael Rappaport comedy was only on for one season, and he deserves that because he truly sucks. My husband and I watched this together when we were dating and we still to this day have no idea why. It was bad. The most memorable thing was the closeted character Rami Malek played. He's really come a long way.

Loretta is a romance novelist who has been a shut in since the death of her archeologist husband 5 years prior. She doesn't want to do her upcoming book tour, especially with her cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum) who is starting to take as much credit for making her books as she is. She's then kidnapped by a billionaire, Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) to translate some ruins and find a lost treasure she centers her novel around. Adventure/romances are not something I typically seek out, especially in theaters, but Daniel Radcliffe playing a petulant rich asshole was enough to get me in a seat. And I had a good time! This isn't the funniest thing I've seen all year, but I laughed enough and I enjoyed the chemistry of the lead characters. Where this film struggles is with its side plots. There's an entire one focused on Loretta's agent (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) who is a very good actress but the material wasn't strong enough to justify it. There's a ...

Well that was....something. The Oscars cut out 8 categories from the live broadcast and still managed to go over 3 hours as they bloated the show with stupid comedy bits and audience awards. But as bad as it was for Oscar lovers, nothing could've prepared us for how bloody awkward everything was going to get when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a shitty joke about his wife. The vibe never recovered. Welp, I guess the Academy will get their ratings bump, but at what cost? Below is a list of the winners + my thoughts. Best Picture Belfast CODA Don’t Look Up Drive My Car Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog West Side Story I knew in my heart CODA was winning, but I guessed Power of the Dog because of the STATS. I still think it should've won. CODA is great and this isn't a bad win at all, but TPOTD and Dune were still better films.  Best Actor in a Leading Role Javier Bardem - Being the Ricardos Benedict Cumberbatch - The Power of the ...

  What I knew going in: I had seen clips of some of Gene Kelly's dances. Jerry (Gene Kelly) is an American living in Paris. He's friends with Adam (Oscar Levant) a concert pianist, whose friends with Henri (Georges Guétary) a French singer. It's through them Jerry encounters Lise (Leslie Caron) A beautiful young shopgirl that Jerry immediately falls for. At its very least, this film is about two grown men lusting after a teenager, and it's easy to make fun of in that regard. In fact, this is one of those films I'd file under "oohhh shiny!" Meaning overall, it's a basic plot, not too thrilling of a story or set pieces, but then those dance number start and suddenly I don't care about how bare bones everything else is. The dancing is perfection. That day dreaming sequence at the end? PERFECTION! BRAVO! I want to watch it on repeat. Those 20 minutes really elevate the entire film. I can see why this is Gene Kelly's favorite of his filmography. He...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves really loves you. It loves you so much, no one else will. You can't love another theme. Remember? You said you'd only love this one....that's right, we're gaslighting this week. Bring on the Lifetime movies. 1) The Invisible Man - Gaslighting so harsh it ends up being a literal man in an invisible suit. This is a great thriller and honestly I think of the initial escape sequence in this film a lot. It's so effective.  2) Changeling - I will almost always give a Clint Eastwood joint a hard pass, except for this one. I love this movie. It has a frustrating case of gaslighting against its main character but I was engrossed the entire time. 3) Girl on the Train - I'm still bitter that this film didn't live up to the book's high expectation, but hot mess Rachel's boozy nature leaves her vulnerable to a LOT of gaslighting.   

  A CEO (Jesse Plemmons) and his wife (Lily Colins) head to their vacation home only to come face to face with a robber (Jason Segel) who holds them hostage.  This caught my attention as Justin Lader wrote the screenplay, and I enjoyed The One I Love. Aesthetically this film feels a lot like that one, but the similarities end there.  Be prepared to suspend a fair amount of disbelief to keep the plot in place. Underneath it all, it's simply a "rich people suck" movie and provides little to no insight on anything else. It's even more egregious when one character played by Omar Levya gets involved, though to explain why would be a massive spoiler. Acting wise, all the main players are great. Plemmons get to show off the most, and I feel like it's been years since I've seen Segel in anything, so it's nice just to watch him again. Collins is shot like a goddess, which is no surprise since her husband, Charlie McDowell was behind the camera. So is this for you?...

Vic (Ben Affleck) keep his marriage together by allowing his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas) to have various affairs. She is in no way subtle about any of them. Then, they start dying, and Vic becomes the prime suspect for their murders. This movie had one of the worst trailers I had seen in a long time, so of course I had to watch it since it's streaming on Hulu. I love a good trash fire. It's supposed to be an erotic thriller, only it's not really either. Melinda is horny, Vic is brooding, they have an overly precocious daughter who flat out accuses her dad of murder at one point and somehow is not popped in the mouth like I WOULD HAVE BEEN IMMEDIATELY! They also cast Nate from Euphoria as one of Melinda's lovers and expect us not to instantly root for Vic to kill him.  It slowly creeps along until its unintentionally hilarious climax. The last 10 minutes of this movie are probably the hardest I've laughed at any more all year. It's worth it just for that one guf...

Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a stage actor/director whose wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima) passes away unexpectedly. In the years following as he tries to cope, he's hired to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima, and is assigned a driver, Misaki. (Tôko Miura) They form an unexpected friendship. If there's one thing you've heard about Drive My Car aside from it being a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars, it's probably that the opening credits don't roll until 40 minutes into the film. When they queued up for me, I was surprised that amount of time had passed. It didn't feel like it. Then as it kept going, I started to feel its runtime. There's a lot of beautiful things about this movie. Some parts are nearly perfect. I liked those introspective moments between Y û suke and Misaki.  Y û suke is a complicated guy and is very meticulous in his ways. I liked that he had those traits, but didn't come off as an asshole because of them. He's ...

The biggest movie day of the year is almost upon us! Time for me to throw my picks into the universe and hope I do well. Below is who I think will win, and in some cases who should win instead. Best Picture Belfast CODA Don’t Look Up Drive My Car Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog West Side Story Who will and should win: The Power of the Dog I think CODA could upset, and I'd be okay with that too, it's a great movie. But POTD has been my favorite film of the year. Best Actor in a Leading Role Javier Bardem - Being the Ricardos Benedict Cumberbatch - The Power of the Dog Andrew Garfield - tick, tick…Boom! Will Smith - King Richard Denzel Washington - The Tragedy of Macbeth Who will win: Will Smith Who should win: Benedict Cumberbatch I still can't believe Cumberbatch isn't going to win a thing for his amazing turn in this movie. Smith is great in King Richard, but he doesn't reach the level of Cumberbatch (Or even Denzel if we'r...

This post is made with the help of my Twitter buddy, Paul  and the r/oscarsdeathrace subreddit. Like the year before, we helped each other locate all of the Oscar nominated shorts online, and this year I was lucky enough to go 15/15 again! (click the "shorts" tag to see my previous posts) This year, there's a pretty clear winner for me in each category. We'll see if the Academy sees it that way too. Below are a few quick thoughts on each short. Live Action Short Film Ala Kacchu – Take and Run - This is absolute nightmare fuel and it's horrifying to know this actually happens thousands of times a year. I'm grateful for the direction this film went, because if it had gone another, I think I would've lost my mind. A- The Dress - BIG yikes. This short is needlessly cruel. All of the live action shorts this year are depressing, and frankly misery is kind of this category's forte, but this really sets you up like it's going to be a life changing moment ...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves was a suggestion by yours truly that I'm grateful that Wanderer picked! I thought it sounded fun, and I had a specific movie in mind while thinking of it. Here are three films I love: 1) Whisper of the Heart - I'm sure anyone who follows me on Letterboxd is tired of hearing about my Studio Ghibli watch, but I swear this one gets better and better every time. It's such a cute little first love story. 2) The Eyes of Tammy Faye - Is Jessica Chastain actually going to win an Oscar for this? Maybe. Truthfully I really liked this movie. It was funny and the ending is actually kind of genius. 3) Wristcutters: A Love Story - This one is very offbeat, but I like it. It's one that I've seen several times and never get sick of. 

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves was suggested by the lovely Getter ! We're talking about people falsely accused of crimes this week. There's so many movies to pick from this week, but three came to mind immediately. 1) The Hunt - I have never wanted to burn a fictional town of people to the ground as much as I did when I finished this movie. Masterful performance by Mads Mikelson. Rage inducing everywhere else. 2) The Shawshank Redemption - If there's one thing I miss about cutting cable (besides Baseball) it's the amount of times this movie was on, and how it looped me in to watching it in full every time.  3) The Green Mile - Michael Clarke Duncan was taken from us way too soon and I cry watching him in this movie EVERY time. Fuck the police. 

Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) has quietly been trying to make a difference as The Batman in Gotham. He can't be everywhere. He works closely with Lt Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and they face a puzzling crime by a masked murderer going by The Riddler. (Paul Dano) As the stakes get higher, they realize just how deep corruption runs in Gotham.  The Batman is first and foremost a detective story. Director Matt Reeves obviously took inspiration from films like Se7en and Zodiac when he crafted this story. S e7en is one of my all time favorite films, so that worked well for me. I loved seeing Batman and Gordon work as a team. Same with Batman and Selina. (Zoe Kravitz) They ooze chemistry. As much as I love the Nolan trilogy, Christian Bale only really had good chemistry with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Here, Pattinson and Kravitz click together instantly.  I'll admit I was worried about Pattinson as Batman. His Bruce is VERY mopey, which fits with the story. My main issue with the movie,...

The Olympics took up a lot of my TV time in February but I still managed to catch a few weekly series, and even binge one in a few days. Here's what was playing on the small screen at House Rambling The Book of Boba Fett - So this took a swerve into being The Book of the Mandalorian, but it was still a good show overall and I enjoyed how it was wrapped up. I know there were a lot of complaints about how uneven the story was, but it was all good TV to me.   Servant - I've cancelled Apple TV again and don't plan on getting it back until the next season of Ted Lasso drops, so thankfully I won't have to watch this stupid show week to week. Yes, I'm somehow still invested even though the show is full of dummies.  Peacemaker - Vigilante is the easy MVP of the season. This show is unapologetically stupid and I love every minute of it. I'm glad there's going to be a second season Pam and Tommy - It's eerie how much Lily James looks like Pamela Anderson in this...

Yes, it's March and here I am doing my Top 10 15 of 2021. There were still a few films I really wanted to see before I made this list, so that contributed to its lateness. I also wanted to do something slightly different. With last year's weird Oscar cut off. I ended up putting out my list in January because it felt weird waiting until MARCH for the Oscar cut off. And because of that, 5 films that would've easily made my Top 10 were released between January and March and it felt wrong not to include them anywhere. So since they were *technically* 2021 theatrical releases in my region. I've decided to include them here. I'm calling them "holdovers."  Top 5 2021 "Holdovers" Top 10 2021 Films Honorable Mentions: Flee, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Green Knight,  The Tragedy of Macbeth, Passing.

  This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves are movies featuring a dig. This is a really interesting topic, but also one that I don't love a ton of movies from. So in a Good, The Bad, and the Ugly fashion, I'm bringing in one movie I loved, one I hated, and one that is definitely a bad movie but I liked it anyways. 1) Jurassic Park - A classic movie that starts off with a dig that got millions of kids interested in dinosaurs. It's amusing to me that they keep trying to make the Jurassic franchise happen when none of them have even come close to being as good as the original. 2) The Dig - This movie was so dull. You know it's bad when Carey Mulligan, one of the best actresses working today is incredibly miscast. I hated this.  3) The Exorcist: The Beginning - Okay, I KNOW this is technically a bad movie, but before it goes completely off the walls, I thought it was legitimately creepy. 

Cyrano de Bergerac (Peter Dinklage) has a way with words. (and fighting) He longs for his childhood friend, Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar. When she confesses to him that she loves a man named Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) though she has never spoken to him, Cyrano writes her letters under Christian's name confessing all the things he's too afraid to say to her.  I'm at a strange place with this movie. I'm perplexed at how MGM completely bombed the marketing for this. It had a very limited release in December for critics to make it eligible for the Oscars, but then radio silence until its release this week. The only places I saw previews for Cyrano were on my Instagram stories. And strangely enough, it's like they wanted to hide the fact that this was a musical. Sure, there was singing in the theatrical trailer, which I did see occasionally, but most of the ads I got had no singing or dancing it at all. My husband went into this movie having no idea it was a mu...