Rambling Film

It's another TV week over at Wandering Through The Shelves and this week we're talking about college. This was hard for me, because I don't watch Community, Greek, or Undeclared. Most of the big college shows I missed so I had to reach a bit. I wouldn't say I love any of these shows, but I watched them and college played a small part 1) The Big Bang Theory The main characters in this show all work at a university. I used to love this until Mayim Bialik showed up with her ridiculous character of Amy Farrah Fowler and ruined it all for me. I haven't watched in years.  2) The Fresh Prince of Bel Air The later seasons got to college, even though it was mostly just a set up. This was a show I'd usually watch after school.  3) Sabrina the Teenage Witch Another show where the later seasons started dealing with college. This show in retrospect is so bad. They didn't give one single fuck about continuity. I remember getting in a fight with my dad ...

We're comfortable... Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) is an economics professor in NYC who goes to Singapore with her boyfriend, Nick (Henry Golding) for this best friend's wedding. She's meeting Nick's family for the first time, and she knows next to nothing about them. Especially about them being crazy rich. I had never heard of the best selling novel this is based off of prior to the trailer coming out. So I can't compare the two. I'm also not usually a fan of romantic comedies. I'm struggling to remember the last big studio rom com I even saw in theaters, but this had a lot of hype surrounding it. Not to mention the last time a film with an exclusively Asian cast opened in a wide release in the United States was in 1993. Let that ridiculous stat wash over you for a minute.  Pro tip: Do not go to this movie hungry. Because not only is the production of this movie absolutely gorgeous, it doesn't stop at outfits and sets. It goes straight to the...

The lovely Allie over at Often Off Topic is hosting a one day blogathon in honor of National Dog Day! Here are the rules: 1)Write a dog-related movie post for your blog. Tell us about your favourite on-screen canine, put together a Top 10 list, whatever your creative minds can think of. 2)Publish your post on Sunday 26th August 2018, on National Dog Day. 3)Either send me a link to your post as a comment here, send it to me on Twitter, or email it to allieisoftenofftopic@gmail.com. Heck, write the link on a post-it note and stick it on my front door if you like! Just let me know! 4)Optional: Do you have a dog? Or perhaps you had a dog you sorely miss? Share them with us, all dogs should be celebrated! 5)On the following day, I’ll create a master post with links to everyone’s posts. I've talked about this before, but I cannot handle dog death in film. Any canine death hits me harder than any other animal. I know why. I blame my day care center who thought it was totall...

This week's theme with Wandering Through The Shelves is about discoveries or explorations. I decided to take it the self discovery route. Here are three that I enjoy.  1) Everything is Illuminated Jonathan goes to a small town in Ukraine to find a woman that helped his grandfather during WWII and learns a lot about himself and his family in the process. I really liked this, and I never stopped being amused at the dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.  2) Tracks Robyn takes a 1700 mile trek across Australia with a few camels and her dog while she tries to figure things out. This is a quiet little film, but it has a great performance from Mia Wasikowska 3) Wild Cheryl's mother has died and her marriage has crumbled, so she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail to get her head together. Everything about the plot sounds like a lame Lifetime movie but it works in every way. 

Oh man, do I love this blogathon. It's my fifth year participating and I'm glad Dell is bringing it back again. Before we get into it, here are the rules from the man himself: 1. Pick one movie that "everyone" loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have a score of 75% or more on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you hate it. 2. Pick one movie that "everyone" hates (the more notorious, the better). That movie must have a score of 35% or less on rottentomatoes.com. Tell us why you love it. 3. Include the tomato meter scores of both movies. 4. Use one of the banners in this post, or feel free to create your own. 5. Let us know what two movies you intend on writing about in one of the following ways: Comment on this or any ACB 2018 post on this site Tweet me @w_ott3 E-mail me: dellott@yahoo.com 6. Publish your post on any day from Monday August 20 through Sunday August 26, 2017. So what did I come up with? I actually had a hard ti...

What I knew going in: Apparently nothing  In Germany, a man named Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) kidnaps children. The town is in terror, the police are on high alert, this doesn't sit well with the other non child-murderer criminals. They decide to try to catch the killer themselves so everything goes back to normal. This is director Fritz Lang's first "talkie" (Though he can't resist leaving a few parts of the film silent) After being unimpressed with Metropolis , this one fared better with me personally. I thought I had a good idea of what this was going to be like. But it ended up being kind of goofy. It's certainly no comedy but for something marketed as a murder mystery it was kind of light, almost upbeat during certain scenes. It's not the tone I was expecting. Lorre is perfectly creepy in this and he stands out easily while the rest of the cast sort of blends together. I'll never hear "In The Hall of the Mountain King" the same wa...

Oh bother. Author Alan Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) is scared after WWI and moves his reluctant wife, Daphne (Margot Robbie) and their young son Christopher Robin (who goes by Moon) out into the country side. Normally he and Daphne are fucking off and being absentee parents while Nanny Olive (Kelly Macdonald) takes care of their son, but for a short time Alan has to actually be a dad, and during the time spent with his son he comes up with the idea to what will be his wildly successful Winnie The Pooh series.  Man, poor Moon. His parents truly weren't ready to commit. And when they do they exploit him for book sales. I never knew the story of how Winnie The Pooh came to be. At first I expected to never look at Pooh the same again, but this film isn't very memorable so I no longer have to worry about that. The cast are great, and the film looks beautiful. From the costumes to the sets and locations, it really was a lovely little spot in the country side they cre...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves asks us again to talk about films that aren't in the English language. I gave myself a rule where I would try to avoid the foreign films I talk about the most (you probably know my favs) so here are three other excellent films not in the English language.  1) The Lunchbox (Hindi) This movie is just so damn charming. It's about a man who subscribes to a lunch box delivery service in India, only to receive the wrong lunch box and strike up a friendship through letters with the person making his lunches.  2) Memories of Murder (Korean) Being a big fan of director Joon-ho Bong's English language work, I finally started to go back and watch the films he made in his native language and this murder mystery was gripping from start to finish 3) Mustang (Turkish) I'm still annoyed this didn't win the Oscar in 2016. It's about 5 sisters and how their lives change after they are married off by thei...

Going undercover. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first black officer at the Colorado Springs Police Department. Eager to prove himself, but treated poorly by several other officers, he's finally given an opportunity to go undercover. Wanting to take it a step further, he infiltrates the local KKK chapter using fellow officer Phillip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to go as his "white" self while he speaks to to them over the phone. Director Spike Lee is never subtle, nor gentle with his opinions and BlackKlansman is better for it. His direction is incredible. I especially loved how he would show the juxtaposition between the two groups. How we would be watching a klan initiation and flip back to a man telling a group of black college students about the horrors of racism and what they need to do to fight it. Lee manages to make you feel disgusted, laugh occasionally, and overwhelm you with power all within the film's two hour run time. If you think he...

Musical Marriage Counseling Anna (Zoe Lister-Jones) and Ben (Adam Polly) are a married couple that can't stop bickering. To channel this, they decide to start a band with their eccentric neighbor, Dave (Fred Armison) where all their songs are their fights.  On top of starring, Zoe Lister-Jones wrote and directed this. The plot itself is very clever and the little details she put into it were wonderful. When Anna and Ben are having a good spell, their clothes (and in some cases, lack of) reflect that.  She took on a lot and it paid off. She and Polly are one of the most believable couples I've seen in a film in quite some time. Their fights were relatable and every married person, myself included has had a few. Listening to them sing it out was fun, and a little heartbreaking one you finally hit that emotional rock bottom you know is coming.  I've had a few people recommend the show Life in Pieces to me, which Lister-Jones stars in (and a few of her...

Hold steady, this week at Wandering Through the Shelves we're talking about sieges! There's a lot to choose from this week, but my mind went straight to franchises. I'm sure everyone has seen these. 1) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers The siege of Helm's Deep is the gold standard of cinematic sieges, in my opinion. I loved watching this in theaters, it was so exhilarating and I felt the same way watching it at home.  2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II While it felt a bit more powerful in the book, the attack on Hogwarts is the most intense thing to happen in the Harry Potter books. There was so much going on, and we lost so many characters we loved. 3) Prince Caspian The Chronicles of Narnia sequels didn't exactly soar at the box office, but I still really liked Prince Caspian. The siege in this film was focused more on Peter fighting Miraz, but it was a good scene over all. I got the feeling from the actor's commentary that ...

You know what I'm talking about. You're watching a movie but because of something that happened during or around the time you watched it, you associate it with something else. Maybe it's a romantic comedy, yet all you can think of is a loud fight your neighbors were having. Maybe it's a horror film, but you think of a nice phone call you got from your grandma during it. Maybe they're so random you just never say them out loud. Until now. Tell me the weirdest thing a movie reminds you of. I'll share a few of mine below Beavis and Butt-Head Do America - Tornadoes It was summer. I was 10 or 11 years old and home alone watching this on TV. Our TV room was in our basement and I had the volume up so high that I didn't notice the blaring tornado sirens that were going off outside. Not until my neighbor ran into my house to get me. I'll never forget stepping outside, looking down my street, and seeing a big ass tornado floating above the sky only a few b...

It's not a dream Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a veteran of the Gulf War who makes his living now as a hitman. He's traumatized not only from the war but from past experiences. He takes care of his elderly mother and wanders from job to job in an almost dream like haze. When he's tasked with finding the young daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov)  of a senator that hasn't returned home, things escalate.  I was a huge fan of director Lynne Ramsay's last film, We Need To Talk About Kevin and I've been looking forward to this ever since it was a huge hit at Cannes. Since it never came near me in theaters, I had to wait for the DVD, but it was certainly worth that long wait. The film is very dreamlike. Despite being centered around violence Ramsay doesn't show a lot of it. Most of the time the scene cuts to the aftermath of Joe's jobs and it works. It makes this more than just another hired gun film. Phoenix is phenomenal. I'm hoping Oscar voters ...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is about switching bodies and of course I already used Freaky Friday this year. Your girl struggled this week. This was hard for me. I know I'm stretching this a bit but here's what I came up with.  1) In Your Eyes I really like this indie gem. It's about two people on opposite sides of the U.S who all of a sudden have a telekinetic connection and can see through each other's eyes. That counts as a body switch...right?  2) Get Out One of my favorites from last year. When Chris finds out exactly what Rose's father wants to do - put someone else's brain in his body, he takes Get Out into full horror movie mode.  3) In Her Skin Now this is a total cheat, but Caroline literally wants to be Rachel. If she could body swap, she would. This movie was based on a true story in Australia that I wasn't familiar with beforehand but it has one of the most horrifyingly realistic murder scenes I...