Rambling Film

It's another TV theme from Wandering Through The Shelves and this week we're talking about shows with spies/secret agents. That was an easy one for me, here's what I came up with. (And yes, one day I will watch The Americans) 1)  Agent Carter For me, this is the gold standard of spy shows and it was wrongly cancelled way too early. ABC didn't give this a chance. They pump money into Agents of SHIELD when this was far better. I'm forever bitter about it.  2) Agents of SHIELD I have a love/hate relationship with this show. The fact that it now mostly revolves around Daisy has made it pretty unwatchable for me. She is a textbook Mary Sue. (and if you ever try to say Rey from Star Wars is one, watch Daisy then apologize for your mistake) This is a shame because it has some amazing characters aside from her, and did Ghost Rider super well. I wish they had focused more on just being SHIELD and left out the Inhuman bullshit.  3) Archer I don't watc...

There's still a few days left in May but my TV watch for the month has ended. Here's a quick recap of what I've been watching last month.   Game of Thrones Wow. Wooooooooooooooow. GoT has consistently been one of my favorite shows on television but they flopped hard at ending this. These past few seasons were just way too rushed and they completely ruined one of my favorite characters, Jaime Lannister, by having him regress back to the character he was in the first few episodes. That's the most egregious thing to me. I'm pretending the season ended after Jaime and Brienne fucked. I'll save you all the long winded rant.  Veep Another wonderful show that ended this year is Veep. This season hasn't been the best, but they ended it in the same spirit they've had all season..which is mean as hell. I was so sure they'd end with Jonah being president and the fact that they didn't do that was nice. It hits too close to home. Chernobyl Th...

Wanderer loves having us explore foreign cinema and this week we're talking movies that were adapted from a different language. No rules on which ones so there's plenty to choose from. The only rule I gave myself was to not choose my go to's like The Ring or the Departed, or any horror remake really. Here's what I came up with. 1) Brothers This is a remake of Susanne Bier's Danish film and I really enjoyed it. I feel like no one talks about it anymore, but Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal were great.  2) Some Like It Hot Did you know this was a remake of a German film called Fanfaren der Liebe? I didn't when I originally watched it. I haven't seen a lot of Marilyn Monroe's work despite her being so iconic but I love this film.  3) The Kindergarten Teacher This is a remake of an Israeli film of the same name and Maggie Gyllenhaal is brilliant in it. It's a frustrating watch at times, but certainly ...

Gotta catch 'em all. Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) is an insurance salesman who is called to Ryme City because of the mysterious death of his detective father. They've been estranged for some time, so Tim isn't thrilled with the prospect of collecting his things. Then he finds his father's Pokemon Partner, Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) who was supposed to have been dead alongside him. Even more curious, Tim can understand what he says. Now they are forced to try to solve this case together.  I wasn't a fan of Pokemon growing up, but I was familiar enough with it. They're currently my son's newest obsession so of course we found ourselves in this. The nice thing about it is that you don't need to know the ins and outs of Pokemon to enjoy this movie. There's surprisingly very little fan service. I was expecting far more references to the obvious things. Maybe there were more subtle ones I didn't catch. Ryme City is a city where humans and Po...

Goodbye, solar system. The sun is expanding, and soon Earth will be engulfed. Scientists formulate a plan to launch Earth out of our solar system into a new one by installing massive engines all over one side of the globe. In 2500 years, the Earth will reach a new solar system. Liu Peiqiang (Jing Wu) leaves behind his four year old son with his grandfather, (Man-Tat Ng) to go aboard the international space station that is monitoring Earth's move. The remaining inhabitants of Earth move into underground cities. 19 years later, his son Liu Qi (Chuxiao Qu) has grown into a rebellious young man and takes adopted younger sister Han Duoduo (Jin Mai Jaho) on the service as Liu Peiqiang is getting ready to make his return to Earth. But Earth is moving too close to Jupiter and is going to collide. Now all of these people are getting caught up in a last ditch effort to save humanity.  This is based on a short story by popular Chinese author Cixin Liu. I read a translation of on...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is movies that have letters as a plot point. Nicholas Sparks basically has an entire filmography on this so here we go. 1) The Color Purple I've written many times over the weeping mess Celie and Nettie make me in this film, and when Mister pulls them apart and Celie yells "write"...honestly I think I may cry all over again. 2) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri Willoughby's letter to Mildred about how he paid for another month on her billboard was amusing, but the letter he writes to his wife before taking his own life is downright heartbreaking.  3) The Notebook As much as I make fun of Spark's work, I actually really did like this. It's a nice sappy romance. And Noah wrote a letter every day for a year. That's commitment. 

What I knew going in: The plot, but nothing else. I'm not really sure what pushed me to add Kramer vs Kramer to my Blind Spot list. It might have been a recommendation from a friend, it might have been just wanting to cross more best picture winners off my list, I'm not sure. But what I can be sure about is that I'm happy it got there. Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and Joanna (Meryl Streep) are getting a divorce. Joanna is fed up and leaves Ted with their seven year old son, Billy (Justin Henry) convinced she's not a good mother and he'll be better off with there. Ted has always been a workaholic and has no idea what to do with his son.  From reading the trivia on imdb, it seems Meryl Streep did a lot of saving of this script from Joanna's perspective. It's hard to favor one parent over the other. Sure, Joanna leaves, but she has her reasons. Ted's not a great father, but he gets there. Ultimately, I just felt bad for their relationship crumbling, espe...

Extremely long title. Notorious murderer Ted Bundy's (Zac Efron) story is told through the eyes of his one time girlfriend, Liz. (Lily Collins)  I'll never forget the first time I read about Ted Bundy. His crimes were so horrific I don't even want to think about them. Making a movie about someone this disgusting isn't easy, but director Joe Berlinger goes about it in the most restrained way possible. We're spared the gory recreations of his crimes, thank God. Most of this film focuses on his time in various courts, and his time with Liz, who dated him for years. Lily Collins is incredible here. She was strong in To The Bone but this might actually top that, and it's easily the best performance Zac Efron has ever given. It was nice to see him step out of his comfort zone, but it also presents one very large problem. Ted Bundy would fucking love that Zac Efron is playing him because Efron is arguably very good looking. See, the narrative aro...

This week we have Steven of The Void to thank for topic. Over at Wandering Through The Shelves it's all about those movies that you felt one way or another at first, then changed after watching it a second time. The one that instantly came to for me was Fargo but I already used it this year. I kind of struggled a bit with this, I know there's so many films that make me feel this way but I've never kept track of them in any way. I literally went through my watched films on Letterboxd waiting for a title to jump out at me and here's what I came up with. 1) The Exorcist This movie absolutely terrified me as a child but when I re-watched it again, it wasn't so scary. Actually, it was quite brilliant. While hiding my face behind my hands I swore I'd never watch it again and I'm very glad I put on my big girl panties and got over it.  2) Up It's almost comical how much I hated Up when it first came out. I looked back at a few of my old posts abo...

Writing for someone real. Fred is a journalist who quits his job when a huge media conglomerate buys out the magazine he writes for. By change he ends up at a part with the Secretary of State, Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) who used to be his few years older babysitter. She hires him to be her speech writer as she takes on a presidential run. While pulling up IMDb to reference as I started writing this review, I just realized that the character of Parker Wembley, the sleazy dude that buys the magazine Fred worked for and routinely tries to corner Charlotte was played by Andy fucking Serkis. I had no idea. I could not figure out where I recognized the actor from while I was watching this and had no clue it was just Serkis under a bunch of makeup. Wow.  Now that my mind is done being blown, Long Shot is a pretty solid comedy. Theron and Rogen are both good in their roles and have great chemistry together. This is being sold as sort of a reverse Pretty Woman...

Veep This show continues to be one of the funniest comedies I've ever seen. Everything they are doing this season, particularly with Jonah marrying his former step sister is just comedy gold. I'm happy to see so many guest actors like Hugh Laurie return as well. Game of Thrones The final season is here! We're three episodes in and have three left of the entire series. It's been somewhat surprising so far. I've like all three episodes that have aired, but 802 was truly masterful in its character moments. I've rewatched that one alone at least 5 times. I can't wait to see where the rest of this goes.  The Disappearance of Madeline McCann Netflix usually has some of the most interesting true crime docs I've ever seen but this one was incredibly boring. Nothing new is revealed and you can spend less time reading it online. Huge bust for me.  Fosse/Verdon I was so excited for this because it's Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams and w...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is True Crime. This is something that's always interested me. When Crime Library used to be a thing, I always seemed to end up on that site reading articles for hours. There's plenty to choose from this week. I usually stick with three picks per week, but I decided to pick three features and three true crime documentaries since I couldn't decide which direction I wanted to go. Features 1) Bully  So, Larry Clark is a massive perv, let's get that out of the way. But creeper shots aside, he really managed to capture that Florida white trash feel in this film about a group of kids that murder a fellow friend for constantly berating them.  2) True Story This little seen indie is about a man who murdered his wife and kids, disappeared and was caught using the name of a New York Times reporter who then interviews him in prison. James Franco, Jonah Hill, and Felicity Jones all give strong performances.  ...