Rambling Film

Look at it. Something is causing mass amounts of people to kill themselves. Malorie (Sandra Bullock) is pregnant when it starts and finds herself in a house with several different people she doesn't know. There's helpful Tom, (Trevante Rhodes) sweet Olympia, (Danielle MacDonald) and ass Doulglas (John Malkovich) among others. But that's not where we start the story, we start five years after this when Malorie is alone with two children and have to wait to see how it all unfolds. It's impossible to talk about Bird Box without comparing it to A Quiet Place . Even though the novel this is based on came out before the latter. Aside from creatures that feed off of one of our senses, the way things play out are quite different. The stakes feel so much higher in Bird Box . Not only is not seeing harder to navigate, but they're not the only threat out there as we eventually find out. Plus, Malorie isn't a loving mother, she's very to the point with the...

It's time to guess how I think the Globes are going to do next week. Last year I went 15/24 with my predictions so that's my score to beat. Here's who I think will win, and in some cases, who probably should instead Best Picture — Drama Black Panther Blackkklansman Bohemian Rhapsody If Beale Street Could Talk A Star Is Born Who will win: A Star Is Born Who should win: Black Panther or BlackKklansman ASIB doesn't feel like the front runner it was once made out to be, but the HFPA love star power so I fully expect them to win even though I personally find both BP and BlackKklansman to be better movies. (I haven't seen Beale Street and BR being here is a joke) Best Picture — Comedy or Musical Crazy Rich Asians The Favourite Green Book Mary Poppins Returns Vice Who will win: Vice Who should win: Any of these aside from Green Book and Mary Poppins God, this is hard to predict too. I'm going with Vice since they got so many nominations but I hon...

Can your brain unsee this? When we meet Collin (Daveed Diggs) he's coming off a prison sentence and is being put on probation. We catch up with him in his final three days of it, where he's trying his hardest to lay low. His short tempered friend, Miles (Rafael Casal) is making this difficult. On top of that, he witnesses a police officer shooting an unarmed black man and it keeps coming back to haunt him. I remember when I first saw trailers for this, I wasn't sure if I would rush out to see it. But after hearing so many positive reviews, I bumped it to the top of my Netflix queue as soon as it came available. This film was nothing like I was expecting. I didn't realize they would fuse so much humor and poetry into this. Director Carlos López Estrada has a lot of ideas. Sometimes that effects the tone, is this a surreal comedy? A racial politics drama? A music video? It's all of those things. It's a little messy but there's never a part where I w...

Why did you address these? (I realize this is a Netflix movie and not a DVD but it's no longer a new release so that's why I labeled it this way) When Lara Jean (Lana Candor) has an intense crush on someone, she writes them a letter. She pours everything into them, addresses them, but they've never meant for the mail. They hide safely in a hat box in her closet. Which is good, because one of them is about her sister Margot's (Janel Parrish) long time boyfriend, Josh. (Israel Brossuard) When someone mysteriously mails them, Lara Jean uses one of the recipients, Peter (Noah Centineo) as a cover to avoid talking to Josh about this and they begin a fake relationship to make Peter's ex jealous. I'm not one for rom coms and I've never read the book this is based on (and after reading the Wiki summaries of all three in the trilogy, I definitely won't be) but I was intrigued. It looked cute enough, and Lana Candor instantly grabbed me in the trail...

We're wrapping up 2018 with our final TV pick. This week Wanderer wants us to talk about comedies. My favorite comedy on TV right now is easily Veep, but I used that last year and wanted to highlight a few others I enjoy. 1) Chewing Gum I stumbled upon this on Netflix in 2016 and it's honestly one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I instantly became a fan of Michaela Cole. The show is pretty random but it works.  2) American Vandal Another Netflix show. I knew immediately after I saw the trailer for this - which they structured to look like an actual true crime documentary - that I needed to see it. The first season involved someone spray painting dicks all over the cars in the teacher's parking lot. It was hysterical. Season two was okay, but season one is what shines. 3) All That And one from my childhood. Josh Server is the earliest crush that I can think of and I loved Amanda Bynes because she was this tall beanpole like I was at ...

We're not a band. Sam (Kiersey Clemmons) is a few weeks away from heading off to medical school and her father, Frank (Nick Offerman) isn't coping well. His record shop is about to close, they're broke, but they still bond over making music together. Even if Frank has to beg Sam to do it. When they record a song, he puts it on Spotify without her permission and when it gets some attention, he tries to get her to form a band with him. The music in this film is lovely, particularly the title song, but nice music isn't enough to distract me from the fact that Frank was kind of awful. He has Peter Pan syndrome and he's trying to drag his daughter down with him. She has hopes and dreams but for the majority of the film he's fine with trashing those for what he thinks should be their joint dream. It wasn't played maliciously, but I couldn't look past it. It didn't help that Offerman was way out of his league here. He has a particular range and w...

Let us rule side by side. Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) has returned to Scotland to claim her rightful throne and attempts to persuade her cousin Queen Elizabeth (Margot Robbie) to name her the heir of England. They both have to put up with the men of their courts deciding that they know better than the women in power. The two messages I got from this movie were 1) Men who don't see women as equals are the fucking worst. and 2) People who get butthurt over religion are the fucking worst. This is a yet another good example of a long hist of things gone wrong because of the two.  Kidding aside, I enjoyed this. It's been one of my most anticipated all year but recent reviews had me scale back my expectations. That worked in my favor because outside of Ronan and Robbie, Adrian Lester and to a lesser extent, Eileen O'Higgins ( Brooklyn is life), no one else really stood out. The majority of the men in this movie could've been interchangeable. No one was bad, th...

Time to shred. Camille (Rachelle Vinberg) is an awkward 18 year old girl in New York with a tough relationship with her mother who doesn't approve of her love of skateboarding. Especially after the pretty serious injury the film opens with. Camille finds solace in an Instagram feed called "Skate Kitchen", and when she meets up with the girls who run it she's finally found her place.  Director Crystal Moselle is apparently the first person to base a feature off of an actual Instagram feed. It's a good idea. How often do you find movies about girls who love skateboarding? We're almost always given the teenage boy's views instead and showing adult women with a love for the sport is refreshing. But the manufactured drama she adds brings this film down and makes me wish that I had just watched a documentary of the Skate Kitchen girls instead of the narrative created for them. The issue is, these girls seems really interesting. They're a diver...

Don't be like them. Little Jonah (Evan Rosado) lives with his volatile parents (Sheila Vand and Raúl Castillo) and two older brothers, Joel and Manny (Josiah Gabriel and Isaiah Kristian) He retreats to his imagination after his parents fights and when his brothers start to mimic their father's behavior. This is a very thoughtful film and it's shot in somewhat of a cinema vérité style. The hand held camera makes you feel like you're in a home video. Like you're there with the boys. Cinematographer Zak Mulligan gets some stunning shots, not just of the actors but the scenery around them. The film occasionally transitions into Jonah's drawings as well, as equally erratic as his home life. Rosado is a fascinating child to watch. Jonah knows how different he is from his brothers. The film explores his sexual orientation before he's old enough to put words to it. When a neighbor boy shows them porn, he finds himself watching the men. I think the way...

A moment in history. Roma follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) a maid to a wealthy family in Mexico City in the early 70's. Particularly during a life altering event for both herself and the family she serves.  This has been one of the most talked about films all during awards season. It's appeared on numerous "Best" lists and so many interviews have been given about how close this film is to director/writer/cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón. Despite all of this, I was never really hyped for it. Sure, I wanted to see if after reading all the reviews but the trailer never sold me on it. So I started this film with a bit of a skeptical attitude.  It actually started off well. Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and Antonio, (Fernando Grediaga) the couple Cleo works for have some marital issues and Cleo herself is facing an unplanned pregnancy with no support after her boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) leaves her like a total jackass. But then the film stops to mar...

It's time to start looking forward. Wanderer wants to know what movies you're looking forward to in 2019 the most. There's a handful of films I can't wait to see, these are the biggest ones.  1) Avengers: Endgame I'm a Marvel bitch for life and Infinity War just gets better with every watch. I can't wait to see how they wrap it up. I just hope our dusted characters get to come back before the last 15 minutes of the film. 2) Star Wars Episode IX I loved The Last Jedi and I can't wait to see how Rey, Kylo and Finn's stories wrap up. I am a bit nervous about JJ remaking Return of the Jedi or undoing some of the things Rian Johnson did (Like Rey being a random, which is really the best decision ever) but I can't not be hyped for a Star Wars movie that has to do with this trilogy.  3) How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World I fell in love with the first film because of its beautiful score, now it's become a series I love wat...

You can wear the mask too. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes Spider-man in his own right. Soon after, Peter Parker is killed, but King Pin (Liev Schreiber) has opened a portal to multiple dimensions bringing back the thought dead Peter (Jake Johnson) and several other Spider-people Miles must learn from. Sony should never have bothered with the Amazing Spider-man franchise and should've jumped straight to this. Everything about this film works and still manages to feel fresh despite all the different versions of Spider-man we've had over the years. Of course, Miles is a big part of that. Fans of the comic have been wanting to see him brought to the big screen for years and his debut does not disappoint. The animation in this film is out of this world. They play with different textures and styles and it can be very in your face at times. But considering how weak wide release animation has been this year, I was happy to ha...

The bare necessities Do I even need to do a plot run down at this point? Mowgli (Rohand Chand) is a boy left in the jungle who is rescued by a panther, Bagheera (Christian Bale) and ultimately raised by wolves. But the dangerous tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) is hell bent on killing Mowgli as he did his parents. WB and director Andy Serkis started work on this film before Disney came along and made their own live action Jungle Book, grossed a billion dollars, and won an Oscar. Then they got stuck in the awkward position of telling everyone "but this is the dark version!" Despite the insistence that they were going to go full D.C Universe with this, WB dumped it on Netflix.  For me personally, Netflix was a good move because I don't think I would've went to this in theaters. The fact that WETA, the same people that brought us the flawless Planet of the Apes movies ( War should've won that Best Visual Effects Oscar...I will fight you) the CG...

I'm sorry I wasn't there. After her mother dies, Nancy (Andrea Riseborough) becomes convinced she was kidnapped as a child after seeing a composite drawing that resembles her on the news. She contacts the family, Ellen (J. Smith-Cameron) and Leo (Steve Buscemi) and puts them in a very emotional situation.  This was a film I hadn't heard about until the Independent Spirit Nominations came out. J Smith-Cameron is nominated in the supporting actress category, and after watching this film I can see why. This film was obviously shot on a microbudget but when you have talent like this it doesn't matter if the quality isn't the greatest. When we meet Nancy, she's not someone I warmed up to. I'd describe her as "full of shit" to put it bluntly, but in a strange way Riseborough gets you to almost want her to be right here. Ellen and Leo have been hurting for years, but still remain a strong couple and they are easy to root for. Overall, I jus...

Shine, girl.  Willowdean (Danielle MacDonald) is the plus sized daughter of a former beauty queen, Rosie. (Jennifer Aniston) She decides to stage a protest by entering her mother's beauty pageant along with her friend Ellen, (Odeya Rush) and ends up inspiring two others Millie (Maddie Baillio) and Hannah (Bex Taylor-Klaus) to go along with her.  Danielle MacDonald is easily becoming one of the most intriguing new actresses for me. I adored her in Patti Cake$ and Every Secret Thing , so when I saw the trailer for this Netflix film, I knew I'd give it a watch. What I wasn't expecting was how much I was going to love this. This movie checked so many cliches at first but as I kept watching I stopped caring less and just enjoyed watching it. I even cried a few times. Shocking, I know. Danielle of course was great as the lead but the one that really stole the show was Maddie Baillio. She did a great job last year as Tracy in Hairspray Live and she's got th...

Are you ready to party? It's that time over at Wandering Through The Shelves . What's the dumbest thing you've ever done at a party? I immediately thought of when I was sixteen and was drinking at a friend's apartment. The cops came and three friends and myself jumped off their second floor balcony into a snowbank and ran off. Then we had to awkwardly come back later because none of us had our coat or shoes. Here are three films where others have made some pretty dumb moves at parties.  1) Alpha Dog This movie is insanely underrated. I would honestly give Ben Foster an Oscar for it and Anton Yelchin a nomination. A group of guys "kidnap" the younger brother of another druggie that owes him money, yet no one is taking it seriously. They take him to parties, he even wanders off and gets laid, but he ends up dead in a ditch at the end of it. (Not a spoiler) It's really phenomenal.  2) Superbad This film is pretty nostalgic to me. It came out tw...

Can I just say, 9:00 am announcements? Really? That's late. My ass has been ready since 6:30 am. I can't remember the last time I side eyed a list of nominations this hard. While there's some things I obviously like, girl, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? The list of nominations is below + my thoughts.  Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture A Star Is Born Black Panther BlacKkKlansman Bohemian Rhapsody Crazy Rich Asians” This biggest wtf here is obviously Bohemian Rhapsody and I'll go the extra mile into unpopular territory and say A Star Is Born shouldn't be here either when all three of the main actors already got nominated. It's not like anyone else got a thing to do in that movie. But Bohemian Rhapsody? Really? Widows, Wildlife, If Beale Street Could Talk, Blindspotting,Beautiful Boy, Boy Erased, hell anything else would've been better. This is taking away how awesome it is that Black Panther, BlackKklansman and Crazy Rich Asians all got ...