Rambling Film

Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is a world renowned conductor/composer who is not only an EGOT winner, but the first ever female conductor of a prestigious orchestra in Berlin. While gearing up for her next concert, she finds herself involved in a scandal. Cate Blanchett is one of the greatest actresses alive and much I've been hearing so much buzz for her performance in this. Plus, it's director Todd Field's long awaited return to the screen since 2006's excellent Little Children . I was pretty excited to see my theater was opening it. Everything you heard about Blanchett is true. This is a tremendous performance. Not only does she look natural conducting, sound natural speaking German, and just overall has such a captivating presence on screen. It really stuck out to me the amount of dialogue she would have to memorize for this role. Lydia has so many long sequences, speeches, and monologues. I'd love to find a word count of how much of it was hers vs the other cast me...

  What I knew going in: Pretty much all of it.  Two best friends, Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Surandon) go off on an adventure only to find themselves running from the law after comitting a crime along the way.  I feel like Thelma & Louise is so well known within the culture pantheon that I felt like I had already seen it before even pressing play. The infamous ending is always talked about. To this day, this film still comes up when discussing female leads. But I needed to see it all play out.  I'm glad I finally saw it the whole way through. I think my expectations might have been a bit high, but it's pretty tremendous for a movie like this to be released in 1991. I think it struggles with pacing here and there and some of the decisions these women make are very frustrating, but over all I enjoyed it.  Davis and Surandon are of course marvelous. Davis being my favorite. It's also fun to see Baby Brad Pitt at one point.  Sometimes I feel li...

  It's the last horror theme of the month over at Wandering Through The Shelves and we're finishing it off with TV show themes! I have easy favorites in this category, let's get to them. 1) Stranger Things - This is one of my current favorite TV themes, I never skip it. It's a catchy tune. 2) The Walking Dead - Sometimes I'm nostalgic about how much I used to love this show, before AMC, Scott Gimple and Norman Reedus tanked it. At least I'll have the early season openings. 3) Tales from the Crypt - I used to watch this with my sister all the time when we were kids. I didn't always understand what was going on, but I enjoyed it. 

In 1996, a mass shooting occurred in the Australian State of Tasmania. This film attempts to question how Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones) eventually got to the point where he took so many innocent lives.  I had been wanting to see this since it got strong reviews out of Sundance. You hear a lot about how well Australia handled gun reform in the wake of this tragedy. Especially here in the United States where we do nothing and 100's of people die every year in mass shootings. The film handles it as well as it can. It never exploits the deaths, it doesn't ask you to feel sorry for Nitram, it merely asks you to observe.  You could say there are multiple failures in Nitram's life. He clearly not cognitively all there and has little to no empathy. His parents love him, but can't give him the proper care he needs. Too many excuses are made for him. Knowing what he eventually does, it's unnerving to watch him go from place to place, making one reckless decision after another. ...

photo courtesy of Youtube 5,000 years ago, Teth Adam (Dwayne Johnson) was given the power of the Gods, then immediately sealed away. Now he is awakened and doesn't recognize the city that once was his home. His way of "justice" directly opposes that of the Justice Society, which is sent to deal with him. A few years ago, I was pretty excited about the prospect of Black Adam. I thought The Rock (once a wrestling fan, always a wrestling fan. It's still weird calling him "Dwayne" was going to be great and I usually love my morally grey super heroes. Aside from some cool characters, Black Adam is a step back in the DCEU. This film feels like Snyder's DCEU, not the DCEU that has been slowly trying to recover itself from his direction. Back is the over use of slow motion and scenes that would better fit in a music video. The majority of the dialogue is exposition, giving no one a chance to show off their acting chops. The majority of the performances are pai...

Four years after Michael Myers murdered her daughter, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is still sticking it out in Haddonfield with her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Madichak) despite the majority of the townspeople being downright abusive towards them. Allyson meets Corey (Rohan Campbell) who is also a town pariah, and eventually Laurie realizes something just isn't right. Real talk for those who have seen this? Am I going to hell for how hard I laughed at the first kill in this movie? I'm sorry, but it's hysterical. That kill alone is better than anything Halloween Kills did the last time around. It was so over the top. It's too bad the rest of the movie didn't live up to that one moment of brutality.  I really think someone could've taken a second stab at this script. It remedies the main problem with Halloween Kills in that it brings Laurie back to the center of the story, but unfortunately the bulk of it falls on Campbell and Madichak who are just not that...

This week's horror theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is a new home. There's plenty of movies where an unfortunate family moves into a haunted house, so let's get started. 1) The Amityville Horror (2005) - I stand by the fact that this remake is actually good. It also includes a nice thirst trap of pre-Deadpool taking over Ryan Reynolds entire personality.  2) Beetlejuice - We can't always be scary around here, we have to give credit to this fun flick as well. 3) The Conjuring - One of the best horror films in recent memory. Your butt cheeks remain clenched throughout.

Ani (Mila Kunis) is successful and she wants you to know it. She's about to marry well, she's about to get a promotion that she's been manifesting for quite some time, but Ani is also the survivor of a both a horrific sexual assault and a mass shooting at her high school, the later of which is being brought back to the public eye via a documentary that Ani is set to give an interview for. Like everyone else back in 2015, I read Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, who also penned the screenplay. Unlike most, I hated it. Ani is a frustrating person to follow because she's such an asshole throughout, and not an interesting one. The best written chapter in the entire novel is the one that details the massacre at her prep school. I felt weird about liking the violent chapter the most, but it's also one of the few times Ani is forced to be a human. I wanted to watch the film version because I knew they would be able to approve upon the thing that bothered me the most a...

  In 1933, three friends who originally met in Belgium during WWI, Doctor Burt, (Christian Bale) Lawyer Harold (John David Washington) and former nurse Valerie (Margot Robbie) find themselves entwined in a murder mystery that is far larger than they expect. I have a weird relationship with director David O Russell. Weird as in, I think the guy is a mega douche, but I almost always enjoy his movies. I'm more shocked when I don't like them. He has a style I just enjoy, even though he's an abusive asshole and I have no idea why I still give him money. Maybe this was my wakeup call because Amsterdam, while not terrible is nothing to write home about. It would make for a fine streaming watch at best. It made me realize that not every actor is great at narrating a movie and acting in it. Some of the characters speak like they're narrating the entire time. It leaves the dialogue very stilted. Christian Bale is acting circles around everyone, probably because he's used to t...

This week's Halloween theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is the final girl! We love a queen that makes it until the end. Laurie, Sydney, Sally, Nancy, the icons are on a first name basis. Since I went with very popular picks last week, I'm going to try to avoid using those icons and use ones that I think deserve icon status alongside them 1) The Cabin in the Woods - Dana deserves final girl status for a variety of reasons. Not just because of the horror she survived, but because of her humility. She apologizes for almost shooting her friend to save the entire world while sharing a joint with him. We love someone who can admit they're wrong. 2) Ready or Not - Grace got the in-laws from Hell and came out on top in this hilarious horror-comedy. This film had no right being as good as it was.  3) Hush - I hate home invasion films. They make me very uncomfortable but Maddie, a deaf woman being terrorized by a crazed psycho felt fresh. It made me rethink my judgmental-n...

We're in for another Horror themed month over at Wandering Through The Shelves. This week we're talking about iconic horror movie themes/scores. I'm not even going to bother trying to think outside of the box with this one because I have my favorites and I know they're popular 1) Halloween - How can I not go with John Carpenter's iconic theme? This is one of the most recognizable pieces of movie music anywhere and I love it.  2) Suspiria - The soundtrack of this movie is practically a character in of itself. It's one of my favorite horror films and I especially love watching it around this time of year.  3) Rocky Horror Picture Show - Another very popular one, but how can you not love singing along to this? I still love going to midnight showings of this.

Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his wife and First Lady Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall) are attempting to re-open their mega church following a scandal Lee-Curtis found himself in. With a documentary crew in tow, they will do anything to get back to the top. Religious mega-churches are NOT my thing at all, but when I saw the mockumentary style trailers for this, I knew I wanted to see it. Unfortunately, the film doesn't fully commit to the mockumentary style. Which ends up making it a bit tonally uneven. The scenes that the documentary crew catches are the best, but the ones where they are not present, and the film takes a more dramatic route don't really mesh well with the rest of it. I understand the dilemma director Adamma Ebo had here. The more heavy stuff between Lee-Curtis and Trinitie couldn't possibly be captured by the crew. She finds herself between a rock and a hard place. Even though it's not perfectly executed, I think she did the best she co...

Blonde  gives us a look into the traumatic life of Marilyn Monroe. (Ana de Armes) The big word here is traumatic.  I don't think you can escape the discourse surrounding Blonde on the internet right now. It's a widely hated movie and I completely understand why. I didn't like it either, but I also didn't end up hating it as much as I expected to. This film wants you to know that Marilyn had Daddy issues with a capital D. Her absentee father is a lingering thorn in her side. She calls all her lovers "daddy" which is exactly as cringy as it sounds. Nearly every single scene Marilyn is in, she cries. It's depressing. There's no happiness to be found here. If Marilyn isn't crying, or calling someone daddy, she's being forced to have an abortion, or a miscarriage, all while we get CGI fetus shots to really hammer it home. It's foul.  On the flip side, it's technically very well made. The cinematography, the editing, the beautiful score, thos...

This film follows the events of the Dahomey Kingdom in the 18th and 19th century, particularly that of their all female warriors - the Agojie. Lead by General Nanisca, (Viola Davis) we meet a young woman given to the warriors, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) for training. She's taken under the wing of Izogie (Lashanna Lynch) but it's really the General she must impress. We're long overdue for films about the vast history of the various countries in Africa. Most historical epics are centered in Europe or the Americas, so I hope The Woman King kicks off a trend where we hear more of these stories. I never learned about the Agojie in school. I only knew the name because they were the inspiration for Black Panther's Dora Milage.  I enjoyed this film quite a bit. The actors of course are fantastic. Viola and Lynch I'm very familiar with but Mbedu is an absolute star. She carries this film and matches up well with the veteran actresses. I loved Viola's casting in this. We need mo...

Another month has gone by and we've officially entered Halloween season! I normally change up the look of my blog for this but I've been traveling a lot for work lately and will be well into October. So it might just stay as is. But for now, here's what I've been watching on the small screen last month! House of the Dragon - I'm in full Game of Thrones nostalgia mode and have been really enjoying this so far. As of me writing this, we're only one episode in with the cast switch so we'll see how this goes. I'm really going to miss Milly as Rhaenyra. She was wonderful.  The Rings of Power - Can we give this show credit on their lighting? I can actually see what's happening during their night fights! I hope the people making the Star Wars series take note of this. I'm glad some of the stories have started to consolidate so we can spend a bit more time with the Harfoots. They get put on the back burner but I'm so intrigued about what's goin...