Rambling Film

Gawain (Dev Patel) is the King's nephew and knight in training when he accepts a challenge from The Green Knight. (Ralph Ineson) One year later, he's tasked with tracking that Knight down, and encounters much more on the way. This has been one of my most anticipated films of the year, and I purposely avoided reading the book so I could go in as blind as possible, now after leaving it, I wonder if that was the best choice. I had to sit with this a bit. I liked it, but I wanted to love it. Dev Patel is a fantastic actor and I'm 100% here for him getting leading roles, especially in projects like this. He doesn't have a ton of dialogue, but he's very easy to watch. Alicia Vikander also gives a wonderful performance in her two roles.  The standout of this film is the cinematography. It's absolutely gorgeous and it will be a travesty if it's not an Oscar nominee, let alone winner. I loved how everything looked. It was so eerily beautiful.  Let's talk about th

  This week's TV theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is about book to show adaptations. In the past I've tried to go with adaptations where I read the source material, but this week I decided to pick three shows where I've never touched the book(s) they are based on.  1) His Dark Materials - I had never even heard of this series of books until the Golden Compass was made into a movie and church going folk freaked out. I never bothered with any of that, but the HBO show had a great cast so I gave it a watch and I'm glad I did. I especially loved the second season and am very invested. Sometimes I have a bit of trouble following the "politics" of the show, which likely makes sense to book readers, but I still enjoy it.  2) The Queen's Gambit - I don't think I know a single person that didn't watch this on Netflix. Anya Taylor-Joy was wonderful and the costumes are everything. I may or may not have bought a dress specifically because it reminde

  What I knew going in: The basic premise and all the inspirations that came after. When a man overhears a group of bandits saying they're going to sack a small farming town after harvest, the townspeople hire samurai to protect them. I'm not sure if there's a film on my Blind Spot lists I've put off like Seven Samurai . 3 and half hours of this is a COM.IT.MENT. I ended up having to watch this over the course of a few days but I'm very glad I finally did. I really ended up loving this. The run time was always what put me off but in the end, I'm glad it was long. I loved that we really got to see the day to day of the townspeople and how the samurai come together and get to know each other. Most movies would cram all of this into a musical montage, but seeing it all play out was nice. I can definitely see where a lot of movies take inspiration from this, which is one of my favorite parts of watching these older films. If I had any issues with it, it's that

  This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is about summer break! Summer is halfway over here already and it feels like it's gone by so fast. But here are a few films I enjoy that give you that forever summer mood. 1) Adventureland - I re-watched this recently and I forgot how much chemistry Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart have together. This is a fun, nostalgic film to watch for anyone that's spent their summers visiting an amusement park or a fair. 2) My Girl - Full disclosure, I have never been able to watch this film without crying at the end, but I loved it growing up. I felt like I could relate to Vada and it was such a sweet story of first love. 3) Kings of Summer - This is a movie that surprised me. At first glance a movie about 3 teenage boys who decide to build a house in the woods didn't appeal to me, but I listened to my fellow blogger's reviews and gave it a go. I ended up really enjoying it! 

When Lebron James takes his son, Dom (Cedric Joe) to a sales pitch meeting, they're both sucked into a computer by a rogue algorithm (Don Cheadle) and are forced to play basketball against each other to escape.  It's sort of impossible for me to objectively review this. The original Space Jam came out when I was 9, so of course I loved it. I've seen it several times since and while I can admit it's kind of stupid, the nostalgia factor never goes away. So on principle, I was never going to like this. But now that I have a 9 year old of my own who really wanted to see this, I was open to it. I'm not above laughing at dumb things. And dumb this movie is. At least the first Space Jam was mostly about basketball, this is more about being a glorified WB sizzle reel. The big conflict between Lebron and Dom is that Dom would rather spend his days creating video games than play basketball like his dad, and it's his video came they play. Full of powerups and random charac

Sam (Karen Gillan) is a second generation assassin who makes a rogue choice in saving young Emily (Chloe Coleman) and finds herself running from the very people who hired her.  I'm almost embarassed to admit at this point that I didn't get into the John Wick films. The first didn't hold my attention so I never bothered with the others, and this film has essentially been marketed as the "Female John Wick." But I ended up having a lot of fun with this. There are plenty of badass women assassin movies out there but I love that this one chose to feature all their leads above the age of 30. Since I'm in my 30's now as well, that's very appealing to me and I loved the action. It was fun, over the top, and gory and I loved the settings they chose to showcase it. (A bowling alley, a library, etc.) While there isn't a ton of "showy" moments for acting, Gillan was great and I loved Lena Heady, Carla Gugino, Angela Bassett and Michelle Yeoh as wel