Rambling Film

Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson) is about to be sent away to boarding school and she's not sure if she's ready to grow up. Lucky for her, her favorite bedtime story is brought to life when Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) comes to her home and sweeps Wendy and her two brothers off for an adventure. There's plenty of versions of Peter Pan out there and not all are great. The animated Disney one will always be a classic. The 2003 version is much better than anyone gives it credit for. There's Pan and Hook and everything in between, but now we get a version that sees Wendy as Peter's equal.  This version of Peter Pan is out to make good on the things that haven't aged well from the original. Tiger Lily is no longer a damsel, but a fighter and friend in her own right. Tinker Bell isn't petty and jealous, Wendy herself doesn't even know if she wants to be a mother when she grows up, and we get more diversity with the Lost Boys. "You're not all boys" ...

This week's TV theme at Wandering Through The Shelves are shows that had very lukewarm second seasons. There's plenty of those to choose from, and here's what I came up with. I made it a point to avoid anthology series, because it's hard to compare completely separate stories.  1) Heroes - As there ever been a show that crashed and burned between it's first and second season as hard as Heroes? That show was HUGE when it first came out, and I feel like everyone universally hated the second season. I didn't even finish it.  2) The Wire - Now, I came into The Wire late, and I still stand by the fact that season 5 is the worst season of the show overall, but there's no denying season 2 felt like a dud compared to what came before and after it. Since I was binging it all at once, I didn't feel it as much as I imagine those watching in real time did, but it's very noticeable. I blame Ziggy. 3) Westworld - For what it's worth, I never stopped liking W...

A Danish family (Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch and Liva Forsberg) meet a Dutch family (Fedja van Huet, Karina Smulders, and Marius Demslev) while vacationing in Italy and they hit it off. The Dutch couple invites them to their home in The Netherlands for a weekend and what starts off as a normal visit turns into something wildly uncomfortable. I'm not sure how I missed this film last year when it came out, but it resurfaced against on Film Twitter when it was announced that James McAvoy would be starring in an American remake of this. Of course, that queued many "this doesn't need a remake" and "they're probably going to change the ending" discussions and that was enough for me to check it out. The only work of director Christian Tafdrup I was familiar with prior to watching was his short En Forelskelse , which was a well acted, but uncomfortable watch. That's what I expected here too. Speak No Evil plays out a lot like the Japanese film Audition ...

Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) is an anxiety ridden man on his way to see his mother, though the world is hellbent against that happening. Director Ari Aster has a lot of hype riding on this movie. His last two films, Midsommar and Hereditary were received with plenty of acclaim, and the idea of a weird fever dream with Phoenix sounds like a great idea. Sounds Beau is not only afraid, but he serves no purpose. It's a three hour anxiety attack that's all metaphors and no answers. Every time something resembling a structured plot starts to happen, we take a detour into "weird for the sake of weird" territory. And I expected weird. You can't have seen any of Aster's previous work and assumed that wouldn't be the case, but what I was expecting was everything to at least tie together. The film leaves you on a truly perplexing thought and I was just thankful it was over at that point. I was not expecting to have such a miserable experience watching this movie. It pract...

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is Count Dracula's (Nicolas Cage) lifelong familiar. He tends to Dracula's needs so that he can return to full power. Renfield's been doing this for a solid century and finally realizes he's in an abusive relationship and longs to get out. A chance meeting with dedicated cop Rebecca (Awkwafina) might give him the push he needs. Nic Cage as Dracula is going to be a huge selling point but for me, Hoult is what got me the most excited for this film. He's a fantastic comedic actor. He just came off one of his best performances to date in The Menu , and I'm glad to see him leading another comedy like this.  Half of the time, Renfield is here to bring us gory over the top horror camp and that's when the film is at its strongest. Hoult is a great lead and his scenes with Cage are tremendously funny. Cage is in it quite a bit more than earlier reviews suggested in my opinion. It's not simply a glorified cameo. Unfortunately Awkwafina...

  Eleanor (Shailene Woodley) is a police officer in Baltimore who is on the scene when a gunman murders dozens of people on New Years Eve. When the FBI's chief investigator, Lammarck (Ben Mendelsohn) takes over the case, he sees Eleanor's potential despite her lack of credentials and makes her his liaison to the Baltimore PD. Along with Special Agent Mackenzie (Jovan Adepo) they work together to catch a killer. The opening scene in this film is straight up horror. With the insane rate of mass shootings in the U.S, I found a lot of what is shown in this film very hard to watch because it seems so plausible. I can see this being a bit of a hard sell because of that, but what I found with To Catch A Killer was a very riveting thriller with characters I very much cared about. One thing this film touches on is the inter-department competitiveness that happens in investigations. It's a fresh viewpoint that you don't often seen in movies that are operating with under 2 hours o...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves are those sexy, sexy erotic thrillers. Fitting since I've been listening to You Must Remember This podcast's new season focused on the erotic 90's. Truthfully I haven't seen a lot of the big erotic thrillers of the 90's, but I did mange to think of 3 films that would qualify. 1) Eyes Wide Shut - Sex, cults, failing relationships, this one has it all covered. 2) In Secret - I watched this movie solely because I wanted to see Elizabeth Olsen and Oscar Isaac's sex scenes. It might be light on the thrilling part, but the erotic part checks out. 3) Plush - I just have to talk about this mess of a movie. Look, I love Emily Browning and Catherine Hardwicke has a ton of talent but the erotic punk rock thriller they were going for her was just...not it. 

Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) is a runs her family's small stir fry restaurant in Bangkok when she's invited to join a high end cooking team, Hunger led by the very famous and very short tempered Chef Paul. ( Nopachai Chaiyanam) Hunger is like Whiplash but with chefs. Chef Paul is a genius but a massive asshole. Aoy is ambitious and is put through test after test to prove herself. Instead of bleeding over a drum kit, she's burning her arms over the open flames under her wok. Aoy is humble, a word that's thrown around quite often in this film. The elite world of luxury clients is completely foreign to her.  Chuengcharoensukying is a great lead. I wasn't familiar with her prior to watching and per her IMDb, she only has 8 credits to her name before this, but you could never tell. She feels like a seasoned veteran. She has great chemistry with everyone she works with in this film. The film to me could've used a bit more editing, but full transparency - I en...

Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are two Brooklyn plumbers who are sucked through a pipe beneath the city and sent off to different kingdoms. Luigi lands in the dark land and comes face to face with Bowser. (Jack Black) Meanwhile Mario lands in the much friendlier Mushroom Kingdom where he teams up with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) to stop Bowser from destroying everything. I've never been a huge gamer with the exception of Mario. Those were my games. My husband loves them, my son now loves them too, so we were obviously going to see this no matter what. While it might not stray much from the source material, we had a ton of fun watching it. Honestly, I was not expecting anything particularly well written or different from what you'd get in a normal Mario setting. I'm not sure there's much you can do with this property. It stays firmly in its box and that's fine. It works. There's plenty of things for fans to recognize (though not enough King Boo,...

  What I knew going in: Not a whole lot! Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) starts out as a country bumpkin running for a county seat. Followed by journalist Jack Burden (John Ireland) He eventually goes from hick to pawn to a rich politician, the very kind he was running against in the first place. For the longest time, I kept getting the title of this film mixed up with All The President's Men. Even after seeing Presidents (which is amazing) This title was always on the tip of my tongue, so it was time to knock this one out too. So much of this movie ended up being unintentionally hilarious to me. I feel like one of the things I harp on the most in my reviews is a movie's pacing, and All The King's Men was like "I got you." This film moves so damn fast you'd think someone was holding director Robert Rossman's family hostage unless he finished in exactly 1 hour 50 minutes.  I kind of hated every character in this movie, but not to the point where I hate...

  Magdalene (Chantel Riley) is an artist moving to a new city with her young son, Monet. (Trae Maridadi) She is colorblind, a trait she has also passed down to her son and urges him to keep it secret. She tries her best to teach her son the harsh realities of the world while also encouraging his curiosity and things are made even more complicated when their racist landlord Walton (Garry Chalk) comes into the picture.  A lot of love clearly went into making this film. Director Mostafa Keshvari was moved to write this story in the wake of George Floyd's murder. He employed color scientists to make sure that colorblindness was portrayed accurately. The majority of the cast and crew is BIPOC. In his own words he "acted as a vassal" to get this symbolic story about colorblindness and racism out there. And because all that hard work went into it, it pains me that I didn't like this movie. It's very heavy handed with its symbolism. It's to the point where the majori...

A computer programmer in the former U.S.S.R Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) creates a video game in his spare time that quickly sweeps the nation. While at a video game show, a Dutch-American programmer Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) comes across this game - Tetris - and is immediately hooked. What follows is a thrilling chase to secure the proper rights.  I never knew the history behind Tetris so I went into this very blind. I'm sure plenty of liberties were taken to make this into the sort of espionage thriller it wants to be, but it works! Tetris the film moves at a brisk pace. It's almost like Argo for video games at one point. One of my favorite things this movie did was incorporate some 8-bit graphics into the film. I know it was done to save budget but it was fun and got plenty of laughs from me. As far as the characters go, some are more interesting than others. Efremov was the standout to me. Taron Egerton I normally like, but I'm not sure he was right for this rol...

March was a GREAT month of TV, and April looks to be the same. Some of my favorite shows started again, an amazing one ended, and I found a few gems. Here's what I had going on last month The Last of Us - The final few episodes were some of the strongest of the series. Bella Ramsay and Pedro Pascal just nailed it from start to finish.  The Mandalorian - Mando's back! I know a lot of people are down on season 3 so far, but I'm loving the world building going on. Yes, Mando has taken somewhat of a backseat for partial episodes, but I found the entire concept of the "Imperial re-integration program" very interesting and I look forward to seeing where that goes. I love Bo-Katan playing a larger role as well. And Zeb made an appearance! If I see Hera, I might die. Daisy Jones and the Six - I never read the book this was based on, nor do I plan to, because I'm very happy with the series. It started off pretty slow, but once Daisy finally got with the Six, it never...