Rambling Film

Official synopsis:  Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up alone on a spaceship light-years from Earth. As his memory returns, he uncovers a mission to stop a mysterious substance killing the sun, and save Earth. An unexpected friendship may be the key. Andy Weir is an author I've really come to enjoy over the past decade. I enjoyed Project Hail Mary too, and I already knew Gosling was in line to play this role while reading it. So how does the film stack up even with my book reader expectations? Pretty darn good! I will admit, tonally the two mediums are quite different. It's no surprise that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller leaned heavily into the comedic moments. It's what they're good at, and it works more often than it doesn't.  Ryan Gosling is really the perfect actor to tackle someone like Grace. He has the perfect balance between comedic and dramatic abilities. Grace is a dorky middle school science teacher, but he's a damn smart ...

Official synopsis :  In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein (Christian Bale) asks Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to help create a companion. They give life to a murdered woman Ida (Jessie Buckley) as the Bride, sparking romance, police and radical social change. It's only fitting we get The Bride soon after Frankenstein. Not that either film is connected other than being Franken-Fan-Fic, but director Maggoe Gyllenhaal takes a huge swing with this and I'm here for it. The Bride! tries to be many things. A love story, a police drama, the start of a feminist movement. It also attempts to invoke the voice of the Mary Shelley, which is a bold choice. Not all of these things work. Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgard have an interesting dynamic as detectives, and I wish the film had done more with the part of the story that was linked to them BEFORE they are hunting for a pair of murderers. (No spoilers) I think they could've leaned more into the work Ida was doing prior and fleshed out tha...

  Official synopsis: A schoolgirl ruins her two headmistresses with a scandalous lie. What I knew going in: That it was an underrated Audrey Hepburn film This blind spot came from a reader comment, which are some of my favorites. I need people better versed in classic film than me to recommend titles, and this one came up when I expressed interest in wanting to see more Audrey Hepburn.  Seeing her and the wonderful Shirley MacLaine together was a treat. Both play young teachers whose lives are torn apart by one child's lie. And man was that child, played by Karen Balkin the ultimate little shit. There's a reason the highest rated review on letterboxd for this film simply says "can children get the death penalty" It's a frustrating film on multiple fronts. It shows homosexuality as something one should be "ashamed" of (you should never) but at the same time the fact that a film in 1961 was putting this much focus on it at all is pretty significant. Even...

 Okay, I still can't get used to calling these The Actor Awards. I thought the show was kind of chaotic. They started off with a really great skit with the Abbott Elementary cast then, they followed it up with some of the most awkward presenting banter I've seen in a long time.  I actually welcomed the "ad breaks" Netflix had where they paid tribute to different genres of films. They did somewhat redeem themselves with Miles Caton singing after the In Memoriam segment, but it was all over the place. I went 7/13 with my picks, which is awful, but hey! I like surprises too.  What did you think of the show? Below is a list of the nominees and winners + my thoughts.  OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners Samuel L Jackson was so excited to announce this win lol. One Battle has Best Picture locked up, so it's nice to see Sinners get to shine here. I saw online that Ryan Coogler became the...

  I'm back with my completely inconsistent Blind Spot Series picks! I swear I'm still trying to look behind, instead of just looking ahead when it comes to movies. And I'm starting the year off with one that I've been meaning to watch for quiet some time. What I knew going in: That I keep mixing this up with Splendor in the Grass I have no idea why I was getting the plot of this movie mixed up with Splendor in the Grass, a film that has NOTHING to do with this, but either way, when I started this film with a lobotomy, then was treated with a grand elevator entrance from Katherine Hepburn, I knew I was in good hands.  Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor are chewing so much scenery in this. I loved every minute of their monologues. They were so good that poor Montgomery Cliff just didn't know what to do. He seemed stunned in every scene he had to interact with them. I found it unintentionally amusing how lost he looked. I know he was having some personal struggles around th...

Official synopsis:  Tells the story of Lorenz Hart's (Ethan Hawke) struggles with alcoholism and mental health as he tries to save face during the opening of his former working partner Richard Rogers' (Adam Scott) "Oklahoma!" All, I wanted to write this off as pretentious so badly. Just the first few sentences had it brewing under my skin. That and it "took" my beloved Sorry, Baby's Original Screenplay nomination at the Oscars. I was ready to hate this film, it wasn't deserved, but I was ready. Damn it, I loved this.  I was SO hooked by Hawke's performance. It really is HIS film. Everyone else, no matter how nice they are to see. Bobby Canavale as a bartender, Margaret Qualley has Lorenz's college student love interest, even Scott's small part as Richard Rogers are nice, but nothing quite stands up to the power house performance Hawke is laying down. They all compliment it, but it's a one man show. Lorenz Hart would have it no other ...