Rambling Film

Just a little reach.. Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is a hot shot journalist at The New Republic. He always finds the craziest, most out there stories. The only problem is, he's fabricating a bunch of them. And a rival journalist, Adam Penengberg (Steve Zahn) starts asking questions about his latest story, it puts a lot of pressure on his new editor Chuck. (Peter Sarsgaard) I've been meaning to watch this movie for years. It always escaped me, but now it's available on HBO Go so I, well....gave it a go. I'm glad I did. I love journalism movies and this one is fast paced and interesting as it should be. Sometimes it's hard to watch Christensen after being subjected to him in Star Wars , but like he did in Life as a House, he gives a good performance here. Stephen is not likable at all, but you can understand why others might gravitate towards him. The real star here is Peter Sarsgaard who add so much nuance to his character. He's immediately p...

This week's theme at Wandering Through The Shelves is a tough one. Non English TV shows. We had this topic last year and I ended up being a bit creative with it,and using shows that were originally in another language, but were dubbed over when I saw them. This time around, I'm going with a few shows in my Netflix queue that I haven't watched yet that I plan to. 1) Death Note My niece highly recommended this to me and it's an anime I've been curious about for a long time. And when I say recommended, I mean she angrily turned off the new Netflix movie version after 10 minutes and ranted about how the show was so much better.  2) Attack on Titan I watched a few episodes of this with my husband but never finished it for some reason. He loves it, and I liked what I saw. So this is one I'll definitely be revisiting.  3) Dark I love all things German and this is one of Netflix's newer shows. I've been in my queue for a while. I'll even...

Maybe it's all in my head. Sawyer (Claire Foy) has just moved to a new city to flee a stalker, though she still "sees" him everywhere she goes. She goes to a mental health facility looking for a therapist to talk to and winds up getting involuntarily committed instead. Then she finds that her stalker, David ( Joshua Leonard)  is working at there with her, or is she seeing things again? Hearing that director Stephen Soderbergh of all people is going to shoot a film on an iPhone is strange enough as it is. He has plenty of funds at his disposal, he can shoot on whatever he wants. So why the gimmick? Apparently atmosphere. Shooting like this makes us feel like we're actually right there with Sawyer. Like we're following her, locked somewhere we don't want to be with her, it's very claustrophobic. The graininess you see in the trailers is easily forgotten one you're fully immersed in the film. This is one of the best thrillers I've seen ...

Sleep out time! Alex (Marcienne Dwyer) is reluctantly tagging along with her boyfriend Nathan (Matt Dellapina) on a " Slasher Sleepout ." Part scavenger hunt, part escape room, horror isn't really Alex's thing. When people start actually dying, she finds herself really fighting for her life. I tend to have a good time with slasher movies. Many of them start to look the same so I appreciate when one like Ruin Me comes along and tries something different. It takes the fun weekend trope and spins it just a little to feel fresh. It's also littered with humor. I laughed out loud when resident douchebag, Pitch (John Odom) chooses Chaos as his favorite horror movie. Is there anything douchier then someone looking at Last House on the Left and going "I can do that, and grosser!" I'm not sure if that's how the director intended that exchange to be taken but I got a kick out of it.  This is pretty low budget so don't expect to be wowed...

Got needles? Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works in a facility that harvests celebrity illnesses so they can inject their rabid fans for top dollar. Want your favorite actor's herpes? There's a place for you! Of course, Syd can't play it straight and attempts to sell illnesses to shady side dealers by injecting himself before he leaves work for the day. This all backfires when he injects himself with a disease that kills their top client, Hannah Geist. (Sarah Gadon) Does anyone play shady white trash like Jones? I don't think so. He's perfect for this roll. Syd is a sleazeball but one you end up caring about despite the level of fucked up-ness that is his day to day life.  Director Brandon Cronenberg definitely shares a few of his father's traits. This film isn't over the top gory but the amount of needles you see going into skin is very unsettling. And this is coming from someone who has never been bothered by needles. Unfortunately even wit...

This week's them from Wandering Through the Shelves is nostalgia. Last week we talked about our childhood favorites, and this week is almost a continuation of that. Here are some films that make me feel young again. Edit: So, I think I may have misunderstood the theme. I think perhaps I was supposed to use movies featuring nostalgia, so let's just pretend Lando was nostalgic for the Falcon in Return of the Jedi. Everyone in Jurassic Park was nostalgic for when they were a kid and loved dinosaurs, and Robin is nostalgic for when he didn't have to babysit Bebe's kids.  1) Return of the Jedi Have I mentioned that I watched the original trilogy backwards for the first time? We had Return of the Jedi on tape, but we couldn't find Empire Strikes back. So I went ahead and watched it. Eventually we found our copy of Empire, so that came second. We never had A New Hope, so the first time I saw it was when they re-released them in theaters in 1997. Star Wars still...

What I knew going in: Apparently nothing.  A knight, Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow) and his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) are returning home from the crusades when Block meets death personified. (Bengt Ekerot) He doesn't feel it's his time, so he challenges Death to a game of chess. As they play, their game affects the lives of others around them as the Black Death begins to sweep across the lands.  I know I've said this before, but Ingmar Bergman is a filmmaker who I was not aware of at all until I became a movie blogger. I was never very good at looking further back into the history of cinema to begin with, so when the Blind Spot opportunity came along, I've had a Bergman film nearly every year. Why am I bringing this up again? Because in my Bergman research I mixed this film up with a different one. See, I thought this was one of the films in his Faith trilogy, which I meant to finish after watching Winter Light . I keep a list of films I want to watch and I cha...

Ground yourself. Nancy Green (Catherine Keener) is no stranger to mental illness. Not only does she show signs of it, so do 3/4 of her children. Madeline (Annie Starke) is the well adjusted one. Elisa (Riley Keough) is estranged from her mother and has gone on to become a famous singer. The only daughter still living at home, Lily (Kaitlyn Denver) whose not taking her meds. When her only son Max (Anton Yelchin) goes missing, Nancy begins to re-evaluate her life.  There's no way around this, We Don't Belong Here is technically not a good movie. The dialogue is full of platitudes. It feels like it was hacked apart in the editing room and the side stories don't mesh well. But despite that, I enjoyed watching this. I always feel like I'm drawn to stories where the main character feels uncomfortable. I don't know why, but that describes Lily well. Her therapist says she's bipolar, but she doesn't want to be on medication. She's the one sibling ...

This week, Wanderer wants to take us back to our Childhood favorites. Who doesn't love talking about films they enjoyed as a child? I do. Here are some of my favorites.  1) The Secret of NIMH I did a post back in August  where I ranked all of Don Bluth's films and this was my number one. I loved watching this as a kid and still do. It's one of my all time favorite animated films. 2) A Little Princess While I liked Shirley Temple's version, the 1995 film was so much more magical to me. I even had a plastic version of the same locket in the film.  3) The Last Unicorn My sister is a decade older than me and this was one of her favorites that ended up being one of mine as well. It's weird as fuck when you watch it now but I really liked it back then. 

What do you feel? Amanda (Olivia Cooke) feels nothing. Never joy, hate, love. She's just good at pretending. When a former friend, Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) comes back in her life as a tutor, Amanda see's that Lily's seemingly perfect life isn't so. She hates her stepfather, Mark. (Paul Sparks) Amanda suggests killing him, and Lily at the end of her rope considers it.  This was at Sundance last year, and it's Anton Yelchin's final film. Of course I wanted to see it for him at the very least. He plays a skeezy drug dealer, but still.  Thoroughbreds is an interesting take on unlikely friendships. Both Cooke and Taylor-Joy excel in their roles. When I saw the previews, I wondered whether or not they should've switched characters just based on what I had seen them in previously, but they were perfect where they are. A film like this would fail of the lead actresses couldn't carry their parts, because really a lot of the scenes are just Amanda and...

Be a warrior Meg's (Storm Reid) father (Chris Pine) disappeared without a trace four years ago. Since then, she's no longer the top student she once was. She's angry, and nothing makes sense. Strange things start happening when her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) introduces her and her friend Calvin (Levi Miller) to three women they've never seen before. Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) Their father is alive and they must cross through time and space to reach him. I never read the beloved book, but I still wanted to see this. I love director Ava DuVernay and I wanted to see how she handles a potential block buster like this. It's also nice sometimes to not have the written word to compare it too. Unfortunately, even going in without knowing the story didn't stop the glaring issues. First thing, I love the story. I really do, it's inspiring to see a young girl be in touch wit...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is movies that all take place in one day. I had all these horror movies in mind and then I realized I need to save those for Halloween. Here's what I came up with. 1) 12 Angry Men This is one of my all time favorite films to come out of my Blind Spot list. Not only does this take place in one day, but the majority of the film is set in one room. 2) The 25th Hour Another film I love, it's pretty out there and at times brutal to watch. But I absolutely love the cast. 3) Do The Right Thing Another product of my Blind Spot list. This film about racial tension is nearly 30 years old, but is still so relevant today. 

I need answers, but I don't know the question. When Una (Rooney Mara) was 13, she ran off with her adult neighbor, Ray. (Ben Mendelsohn) After their relationship turned sexual, he abandoned her, then spent a short amount of time in prison for what he had done. He got a new name, a new job, and a new life. Una didn't. And 15 years later she still has questions and feelings and she finally gets to a point where she tracks him down and confronts him. Una brings in an interesting and little talked about voice to the sexual abuse conversation. What happens when the victim still has feelings for their abuser? What happens when they aren't allowed to move on? And how should we look at those abusers after they have been "rehabilitated?" We all want to think that Una went to therapy, came to terms with what happened to hear and was allowed to move on, but she wasn't. Her parents kept her in the same town, and the same house. Like she says to Ray at one point...

..... Set in a futuristic Berlin, a mute bartender, Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) goes searching for his girlfriend Naadiah (Seyneb Saleh) after she abruptly goes missing. He ends up crossing paths with some dangerous people, mainly Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) in the process. Being a huge fan of Duncan Jones' Moon - which gets a nice little easter egg in here - I was really looking forward to this one. Even when all the bad reviews started rolling in. While I didn't find it nearly as bad as its Rotten Tomatoes score suggests, calling this movie a mess is a bit of an understatement.  I'm not sure Jones knew which way to take this story. Naadiah and Leo feel like they've only been in a relationship for a week or so, so the lengths he's going to find her seem odd. Not to mention, Saleh is not good in this film at all so it was hard for me to actually route for him to find her again. Bringing in Cactus Bill also felt a bit forced, even when you find out why he's ...

I made a new Awards Coverage banner but I wanted to see Saoirse and Greta one last time too. #WakandaForver Another Oscar season in the bag! Truth be told, Kimmel wasn't the greatest host and since the winners were so predictable this year it ended up being kind of boring. Plus they did another cringey "surprising real people!" bit. How did I do with my picks? 17/24. I missed Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Animated Short, Doc, Editing, Live Action Short, and Foreign Film. Here are a list of the nominees. The winners are in blue.  Best Picture Call Me by Your Name Darkest Hour Dunkirk Get Out Lady Bird Phantom Thread The Post The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri I knew as soon as Three Billboards lost Screenplay that they were in trouble. I liked The Shape of Water quite a bit but it was nowhere near my favorite of the nominees. Three Billboards would've made a far better winner.  Best Lead Actor Timothée Chalamet,...

M.Brown over at Two Dollar Cinema is hosting his wonderful Mount Rushmore of Movies blogathon again! Here are the rules in his own words: I'd like to have all posts done by Friday, March 2nd (where I'll create a master list, linking back to all of your, er, both of your sites), but it's cool if you finish way before that. Or later. I honestly don't mind. Send me a heads up/steamy nude pic on twitter @twodollarcinema , reply in the comments below, text me, e-mail me (twodollarcinema@gmail.com), fart in my general direction, whatever you want, when you've finished, okay? That would be mighty kind of you. In your post, please use the rad banner my wife designed when she should have been working. Share the announcement with every single person you've ever met. Or being that we're all bloggers, you're digital friends. Be awesome. And if you're here, already know that you are anyway. When I first saw the announcement, I saved the link with...

You all know me and how much I love talking - and complaining - about the Oscars. This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is perfect for me. Now I have to preface this by saying I already used the ultimate Oscar snub in a previous category, and that's Brokeback Mountain. Seriously, fuck you, Crash, This should of won. Here are some other films I'd replace Best Picture winners with.  1) Inception The 2011 Oscars has one of the greatest Best Picture nominees of all time. They actually used all 10 slots and only one of them - Toy Story 3 was truly terrible. That being said, they gave it to The King's Speech when there were about 6 other films I liked better. My favorite of that bunch is Inception. I so wish this would've won Best Picture.  2) Sunset Boulevard It lost to All About Eve, which is also a great movie but Sunset was just so much better. I wish this had won. 3) The Descendants  This one is less about a great movie snubbed...