Rambling Film

This week's TV theme from Wandering Through Shelves is prequels. I'm actually a bit excited this week because I get to gush about one of my favorite animated shows. The other is a popular show airing now, and the 3rd is something from my childhood that I probably should've left there. 1) Star Wars Rebels The first season of this show is a little rough because it is geared towards younger kids, which I obviously am not, but this show gets SO good. Hera and Kanan in particular are some of my favorite characters in the Star Wars canon. (and they are also the best ship...sorry Han/Leia) I've been re-watching random episodes of this lately and it's just so good. Highly recommend.  2) Better Call Saul As much as I love Breaking Bad, I was always iffy on this as a prequel idea but it turned out to be wonderful. I'm excited for its final season. Excited and scared..Kim has been so dumb lately and I hate seeing it happen. 3) Muppet Babies I randomly get this theme song s...

  The wonderful Dell over at Dell on Movies  is back with his annual summer Against The Crowd Blogathon! I've participated in this every year , and it's always a fun post to write. This year it snuck up on me though. Where did August go? It's not like I've been doing anything. As always, here are the rules: Pick one movie “everyone” loves (the more iconic, the better). That movie must have score of 75% or more on rottentomatoes.com (or at least 7.5 on imdb.com). Tell us why you hate it. Pick one movie that “everyone” hates (the more notorious, the better). That movie must have a score of 35% or less on rottentomatoes.com (or 4.0 or less on imdb.com). Tell us why you love it. Include the tomato meter scores of both movies. Use one of the banners in this post, or feel free to create your own (just include all the pertinent details), or just mention this blogathon if using an audio or visual medium. Let us know what two movies you intend on writing, vlogging, posting,...

I re-subscribed to Hulu for a short time to watch a few TV shows, and while I was there I cranked out a few movie watches as well. Here's a few quick reviews of movies available on the platform. Hail Satan? - This documentary about the Satanic Temple was very enlightening When it comes to religion, I'm at a place where I just....I don't care to hear about it. I consider myself spiritual, but I view religion as a private thing and it irks me to no end when people try to force their religion on others, which is a big part of what the Satanic Temple works against. If you're going to put up a statue of the 10 Commandments, then all other religions should be allowed to have their beliefs showcased as well.  T hey don't actually worship Satan, but instead recognize him as a symbol for someone who was ousted from society for not following the status quo, and now fights back at injustices. As one of them puts it: w"hen Abraham is told to kill his son, Satan didn't...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is something we don't have enough of....female "buddy" movies. I imagine movies like Thelma and Louise and Booksmart will be popular this week so I'm using one recent pick, then going back to my tween years for the others. 1) Tangerine Sin-Dee drags her best friend all over town trying to find the ex boyfriend who wronged her. This film features two very charismatic leads and was shot entirely on an iphone yet still manages to look good. 2) Sugar & Spice A group of cheerleaders decide to rob a bank to get money for their friend who has gotten pregnant. This was the "edgy" Bring it On but I remember laughing my ass off at a few of the jokes in theaters when I saw it.  3) All I Wanna Do A group of girls going to an elite boarding school decide to sabotage their school's plans to let boys in. As long time Kirsten Dunst stan, of course I watched this one too. It came to mind recently because someo...

  Results may vary. A new pill is being sold around New Orleans that gives each person very unpredictable super powers...or sometimes they just explode. Detective Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has been tracking it low key for a while, and works with a teenage dealer, Robin (Dominique Fishback) to help get it off the streets. Meanwhile, Art (Jamie Foxx) known as "Major" is also after the source of the pill for very personal reasons, and when he kidnaps Robin looking for a lead, the three begin working together. I ended up liking this a lot more than I was expecting - mostly because when I see "Netflix action movie" I immediately think garbage. But while this film is far from perfect, I found most of it pretty enjoyable. It definitely takes the easy way out with the villains, who might as well be blurred out suits that speak in Charlie Brown Adult voices because they're all exactly the same and have zero depth to them. Thankfully our three leads have the chemistry ...

They won't take you. Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) is fresh out of juvie for committing a violent crime. While in the pen, he found God, and now he wants to be a priest, only that's not possible for a criminal. When he arrives to a new town, a little white lie he tells Eliza (Eliza Rycembel) ends up with everyone believing he's an actual priest, so he decides to take up their parish.  While Poland is currently giving us 365 Days on Netflix - which I still haven't watched - this was their Oscar nominated submission to the Academy Awards last year. I can see why. It's a quiet little drama that is anchored by an incredibly moving performance. Bielenia reminds me a lot of a young Cillian Murphy. I'm sure the similarity initially came to mind because of his bright blue eyes, which always seem to be staring at you right through the screen, but he carries so much weight. We know Daniel committed a crime and still struggles with sobriety. He's 20, after all and hasn...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is about that time of life that I can't think about without cringing....school. The fact that school is going to look so differently this year for my child is another source of frustration. Thankfully there's a few movies that take place during that time that don't give me that feeling. Here they are. 1) Mean Girls This is the ultimate teen movie for me. It came out when I was a junior in high school and I can still quote the entire film to this day.  2) The Perks of Being A Wall Flower I thought this was a really good adaptation of the book for the most part. Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller were perfectly cast and it did a great job of capturing that awkwardness and how dependent one can be on their friends.  3) The Half Of It This is a newer find for me but I did not expect to enjoy this Netflix film as much as I did. It's a sweet story of friendship and first love and even though it gets corny as hell at times, i...

  Time to brine. Hershel Greenbaum (Seth Rogan) immigrates to America with his wife, Sarah (Sarah Snook) and begins to work in a pickle factory to fuel his American dream. One day he's accidentally knocked into a pickling vat, and the factory is condemned so he's left to brine for 100 years until two kids accidentally free him. He then meets his only living relative, great-grandson, Ben (also played by Rogan) and becomes a media sensation. I absolutely love how they explain the science of how he was able to stay alive. It's hysterical. Sometimes the easiest way is the best way. When I sat down to watch this on Saturday night (pro tip: it's best to have pickles handy in your house because you will want to eat one at some point during this movie) I had pretty much forgotten the trailer I had seen months ago. Because of that, the conflict in the movie was a bit of a welcomed surprise for me. Seth Rogan is great in this. It's easily the best performance he's ever gi...

What I knew going in: The famous songs. IMDB sums up Meet Me In St. Louis up best. "In the year leading up to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York." The majority of the film follows Esther Smith (Judy Garland) as she tries to get her new neighbor Jon Pruitt (Tom Drake) to notice her. Esther also has an older love sick sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) and two mischievous little sisters, Agnes and Tootie (Joan Carroll and Margaret O'Brien)  I realized, embarrassingly that I'm not very well versed in the late, great Judy Garland's filmography. I knew plenty about the drama surrounding her life, but I had only seen two of her films. This year I decided to right that wrong and I figured Meet Me In St. Louis was a good place to start. This movie was delightful and just what I needed after a long, depressing week of another needless killing of a black man ...

We've hit our final Deadly Sin edition from Wandering Through The Shelves ! These were very challenging and fun. At this point, we all have to be proud of what we came up with on the previous weeks? So let's talk about pride. Here are three films I enjoy that have characters that need to overcome it. 1) American History X Edward Norton's Derek is a racist. He's pride comes with being white and when he's sent to prison for murder he's forced to confront that pride head on and re-think his entire garbage existence. This film is hard to watch, but it's very well done.  2) The Last King of Scotland It takes a bit of pride in what you do to take the leap Nicholas does in this film. To practice medicine in a foreign country, hit on his boss' wife, then eventually become close do Idi Amin and have an affair with his wife too. I love this movie. Much like American History X, it's brutal at times, but it works so well. 3) Beauty and the Beast Nooooooo onnnnnn...

Oh, you're on the other side.. When we first meet Lucy, (Ellen Page) she and her siblings Martha (Amy Seimetz) and Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell) are on their way to protest a prisoner being put to death. They've found themselves to be anti death penalty advocates after their own father is also put on death row. On the other side of the fence is Mercy, (Kate Mara) a junior lawyer who was happy to see a prisoner put to death for his crimes. They spot each other from across the way and form a secret romance. I've been a huge fan of Ellen Page for years and I remember her talking about this movie quite a bit, but I could never find it. Now with a feel trial of Starz, I'm finally able to watch....and it's another case of Page carrying an average film. The first word that comes to mind when I think of My Days of Mercy is "shallow." This has quite a bit going on for it, but doesn't dig deep enough to become a better film. Lucy doesn't believe in the death p...

Shoot 'em up. Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is a hapless programmer by day, and online troll by night. Mostly, he argues with people in the chat rooms of a popular online fight to the death style show, Skizm. After pissing off Skizm's overlord Riktor ( Ned Dennehy) they break into his apartment, bolt two guns to his hands, and place him in a match against Nix (Samara Weaving) with millions of people watching. I've always been curious to see the movie behind the popular crazy Daniel Radcliffe meme above, and it was certainly as crazy as I expected, but unfortunately it wasn't as much fun as I had hoped. At first, this movie won points for realism. Miles quips that Rambo would be studying sign language because of how loud the guns are when they go off and it physically hurts him to shoot because they're bolted to his hands, but then, like many other things, that's thrown out the window for plot. Take Nix for example, shown to be a master shooter. She's introduced t...

Still social distancing. Still consuming a lot of television. I May Destroy You - I'm in awe of this show and Michaela Cole, and I wish it had premiered in time for the Emmys this year so it could get even more praised heaped on it. The way they deal with the fall out of sexual assault is so real. But the show isn't all sadness, it's also very funny and the leads have excellent chemistry. Also, have we ever had a show that talked so openly about period sex like this one does?  I'll Be Gone in The Dark - I wanted to hear more about the late Michelle McNamara and her obsession with finding the Golden State Killer but this just got a bit too triggering for me to keep up with. The survivors recount their assaults in such disturbing detail that I had to stop watching. I might circle back to it eventually, but I needed a break. Pose - They finally put season 2 on Netflix. I love this show and the actors were even more top notch this season. There was a lot of heartbreak, b...