Rambling Film

This week's TV theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is all about the written word making it to the small screen. There's plenty of examples out there and it was easy to pick my top three.  1) Game of Thrones This is one of my all time favorite shows and I'll be so sad to see it end this year. It's not always perfect when it comes to adapting from the books, but some of the most exceptional hours of TV have been from this show. 2) Sharp Objects I love Gillian Flynn's books and putting this one in mini series form was perfect. The entire cast was wonderful and I thought the slight changes they made were all for the better. 3) The Handmaid's Tale Now this one I actually like better than the book. The book left me wanting a lot more whereas the show expands on every loose end Margaret Atwood left behind. 

For the fourth year, M. Brown over at Two Dollar Cinema is back with his Mt. Rushmore of movies blogathon! If you're not already reading his blog, then you are clearly failing at life and need to get to it as it's one of the funniest things on the internet. The rules are below 1)I'd like to have all posts done by Friday, March 1st (where I'll create a master list, linking back to all of your lovely sites), but it's cool if you're an overachiever and finish early. Or not at all. 2)When you've finished, send me a heads up/dick pic on twitter @twodollarcinema , reply in the comments below, e-mail me (twodollarcinema@gmail.com), make circles out of black smoke that Amy Adams will decode, Hell, cut a note out of old newspaper headlines, I really don't mind. Just let me know that you're in and that I love you so much.  3)In your post, please use the rad banner my wife designed in eleven minutes. 4)Share the announcement, if possible. I don...

It's time to let go. One year after the events of the last film, Chief Hiccup (Jay Burachel) finds Berk overrun with dragons and a hefty target painted on their backs because of it. When a man named Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham) tries to hunt down Toothless, Hiccup makes the decision to try to find the hidden world were dragons can be safe from the humans who still wish to destroy them.  I never expected myself to adore an animated franchise so much at this point, but HTTYD drew me in right away with its beautiful score, which is still going strong its 3rd time around. The animation as always looks wonderful and they've continued to gracefully age the characters well. And it's those characters that keep bringing all of us, young and old back to see how their story progresses. What I've always appreciated about these films was the consistent development Hiccup, Astrid (America Fererra) and the gang have gotten throughout their journey and this is a great way to ...

We made it. You know, this ceremony started off promising then Infinity War lost and it all went (almost) downhill from there. Jesus. I'm glad it's over. I went  17/24 with my picks. Some of those I was happy to get wrong, others less so. The winners are in green.  Best Picture Black Panther A Star Is Born  Roma The Favourite Vice Bohemian Rhapsody Green Book BlacKkKlansman I'm surprised it wasn't Rohemian Rhapsody after the way this night went but still...fuck yooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu Best Actress Glenn Close: The Wife Lady Gaga: A Star Is Born Yalitza Aparicio: Roma Olivia Colman: The Favourite Melissa McCarthy: Can You Ever Forgive Me? YES Oh my God I screamed so loudly when this happened. I had screamed about a lot of things tonight but this one was special. I'm so happy she won. Best Actor Christian Bale: Vice Bradley Cooper: A Star Is Born Viggo Mortensen: Green Book” Willem Dafoe: At Eternity’s Gate Rami Malek: Bo...

Love has no borders. Spanning over several years and four countries, a composer Wiktor ( Tomasz Kot) falls in love with one of his singers at a music school he works for, Zula. (Joanna Kulig) They are both perfect for, and the worst thing for each other. A constant push and pull, and Wiktor wanting them to escape communist Poland doesn't make things easier on them. Cold War kind of came out of nowhere on Oscar morning, didn't it? While a Best Foreign Film nomination was expected landing in the Director and Cinematography categories was not and after watching the film I can see why it was given those honors.  Music plays a ubiquitous part in Cold War. Joanna Kulig has an amazing voice and I'm glad we got to hear so much of it. I also enjoyed watching the dance numbers the students were learning. It's smart to include these upbeat moments because the plot itself is very depressing. After watching Wiktor and Zula go through so much, you know there's no...

This week's theme at Wandering Through The Shelves is movies that star real life couples at the time. Some of these couples are still going, others have been done for quite some time, but these are three of my favorite films that fit that bill. 1) A Quiet Place John Krasinski and Emily Blunt play a couple here when they're together in real life as well. They have a lot of chemistry together, even though Blunt out acts him at every turn. 2) Ruby Sparks Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan are another couple that are still going strong. She wrote this film, and they've since written other things together, including one of my recent favorites, Wildlife. I love this couple.  3) Edward Scissorhands  Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder were together while making this beautifully bizarre film. Now she's got her gig on Stranger Things and he's probably off on a bender somewhere. 

So my dumb ass released her Oscar predictions on Sunday and like I always do, I ball parked the short nominees because I never get to see them. Turns out, nearly all of these are available to watch online, so here are my quick reviews. The film summaries are copied from IMDb.  Documentary Shorts Period. End of Sentence - "In a rural village outside Delhi, India, women lead a quiet revolution. They fight against the deeply rooted stigma of menstruation." Can you believe this was funded through a bake sale? I thought that was pretty extraordinary. This is available to watch on Netflix and I thought it was a very amusing and inspiring. Inspiring because these women are doing great things and amusing to see so many dudes be uncomfortable talking about periods. At one point someone compares a pad to an unattractive but competent man. A- Black Sheep - "After the high-profile killing of Damilola Taylor, Cornelius' family move out of London. But when they discove...

It's time to try to predict the Oscar winners ahead of next week's ceremony. The good news is the Academy caved and now will present all 24 categories on air. Below are my guesses on who I think will win, and in some cases, who should.  Best Picture Black Panther A Star Is Born  Roma The Favourite Vice Bohemian Rhapsody Green Book BlacKkKlansman Who will win: Roma Who should win: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman or The Favorite I would be happy with either of those three winning Best Picture as they are far more deserving films than Roma and Green Book, the two apparent front runners.  Best Actress Glenn Close: The Wife Lady Gaga: A Star Is Born Yalitza Aparicio: Roma Olivia Colman: The Favourite Melissa McCarthy: Can You Ever Forgive Me? Who will win: Glenn Close Who should win: Olivia Colman Colman is still in the running but I fear the Academy will give Glenn a career Oscar over Colman even though she gave the better performance by a long shot. So...

They don't age. When brothers Aaron (Aaron Moorhead) and Justin (Justin Benson) were younger, they escaped a UFO death cult. Now into adulthood and just drifting by, they receive a video tape from said cult. Aaron, the younger of the two begs Justin to take him back for closure. He doesn't have many memories of his time there, and none of the bad ones Justin does. His older brother reluctantly agrees to take him back. Aside from starring, Moorhead and Benson also direct. I watched one of their earlier flims, Spring a few years ago and this is along the same line as that. Very low budget, pretty weird, intriguing. Unlike Spring they don't have the powerhouse Lou Taylor Pucci to anchor their film, they were forced to cast themselves to keep the budget down.  The cult in this film isn't played up as sinister, even when you get to the big reason of why they are doing what they're doing. That's a nice change if you're used to seeing films about d...

Happy Valentine's Day, all! It's getting romantic over at Wandering Through The Shelves and this week it's all about romantic comedies. Those films are never my cup of tea, but the one rule I gave myself was that I couldn't use any of the films I chose back in 2015 when we last had this topic. Here are three more rom coms I love. 1) Crazy Rich Asians This is probably my second favorite rom com of all time. I loved this movie so much more than I expected too. It was just so wonderfully made. 2) Just Friends This film isn't the greatest but it's one I always enjoyed. Amy Smart is an actress I wish got more work.  3) Never Been Kissed Along with 10 Things I Hate About You, this is one of those rom coms that has always stuck with me. It's such a ridiculous premise but I liked it a lot when I was a teen. 

Everything's not awesome. Five years ago, things were awesome and Emmett, (Chris Pratt) Lucy, (Elizabeth Banks) Batman (Will Arnett) and the gang had just saved Bricksburg from total destruction. Now they face a foe from the Sis-star system that destroys everything they've worked so hard for. When all of Emmett's friends get kidnapped, he goes off to try to save them and runs into All The generic action heroes Chris Pratt has played Rex along the way. Ahh, the original Lego Movie . Back in 2014 when Chris Pratt didn't annoy me, they had a hilariously stupid song, and the film was funny and surpassed everyone's expectations. Now we're in 2019. Chris Pratt is annoying, their theme song is stupid without the funny, and the only thing that remains great is the animation. This is a sequel that's not worth the theater view. I realize I had some bias going into this because ever since Jurassic World came out I have not been able to stomach Pratt an...