Rambling Film

OMFG Ray (Elle Fanning) wants to transition to the boy she was always meant to be. Her mother, Maggie (Naomi Watts) is understanding but reluctant to sign over the papers to make the big decision. She's getting pressure from her mother (Susan Surandon) and then faces another hurtle when she needs to get Ray's father, who's not in the picture's signature on the forms. This movie was originally titled About Ray and was supposed to be released two years ago. It was pulled a mere days before it's scheduled release. That's the first indicator that something is wrong, but that didn't stop me from watching. Holy shit, it's like I turned on Lifetime. There is so much damn melodrama in this film that I sat there incredulously wondering how this happened. This movie has good bones and a talented cast, who approved these writing choices? When Ray decides to scream at the top of her lungs to diffuse a fight going on between her parents I basicall...

Never let me go. An Australian tourist Clare (Theresa Palmer) meets local Andi (Max Riemelt) while exploring Berlin. They hit it off and end up at his secluded apartment building to hook up. The next day, Clare wakes up to find herself locked in his apartment with no way to escape. Andi has no intentions of letting her leave. Don't worry, it's not torture porn, though the premise makes it sound like it could be. I'm actually really torn on this film even though I'm offering it up as an Indie Gem. I think it does an interesting job of trying to show how Stockholm Syndrome effects people. Andi wants to make Clare into his girlfriend. Yes, she tries to escape many times, but then she also shows compassion towards him. When a family member of his dies, she comforts him. He brings home a puppy that she happily plays with. It's only when she gets glimpses of the real world that Clare seems to remember she needs to leave, and that is quite fascinating. It...

It's another TV week at Wandering Through the Shelves . This week I have to cheat a little. There are only two shows I watched with subtitles. One is Inuyasha, which I already chose, and the other is Attack on Titan, which I haven't finished, and probably need to completely start over since it's been so long since I started watching it. The following three shows I watched in English dubs, but they originated in other languages. 1) Fullmetal Alchemist I don't know if I've ever talked about how watching anime was considered social suicide in my high school? If you watched anime and admitted it, you were a dork. If you cared too much about what other people thought (like me) you watched anime on the DL. Fullmetal Alchemist was one of those shows I watched even though it was so fucking weird.  Years later when I went home for Thanksgiving and met up with a bunch of classmates for a beer, we somehow got into a discussion about anime and just about every singl...

A colossal military disaster.  In 1940, allied troops are stranded on the beach of Dunkirk, France with enemies closing in from the land, and picking them off from the sky. We follow three different stories spanning different times. The Mole , lasts one week and follows soldiers attempting to get off the beaches. The Sea takes place in a day, and follows a civilian Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) as he and other sailors respond to calls for help from Dunkirk. The 3rd story is The Air , which takes place in an hour and follows a pilot (Tom Hardy) as he attempts to stop the enemies from above.  I can't think of another movie where I had this sentiment, but character development barely matters here and Nolan spends no time on it. It works, because we don't need to know these soldiers' and civilians' back stories. We already sympathize with them trying to escape a desperate situation. We start right in the action and stay there the entire time. Anything else would...

That's a lot of pressure, right? To know you've been chosen to do something that's probably really dangerous and important. This week Wanderer asks us to talk about said chosen ones. We're about to get franchise-y up in here. 1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 The boy who lived, come to die. Words cannot describe how much the Harry Potter franchise means to me. This film is my favorite of the bunch. Mostly because Ron and Hermione finally kissed. 2) Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith Okay, so the Star Wars prequels were mostly awful but RotS was at least watchable. You were the chosen one Anakin, and look where you are now. Obi Wan kicked your ass. 3) The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Frodo finally brings the ring to Mordor. He never expects to make it, but he does. I love these movies too. I only re-watch the extended versions though, especially of this one. One does not simply exclude that Saruman death scene.

What I knew going in: I had seen parts of this film before, but never in order. We follow three boys in inner city Los Angeles. There's Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who is raised by his father "Furious" (Laurence Fishburne) to have a strong sense of character and his friends, half brothers Ricky (Morris Chestnut)  and Darren (Ice Cube) who are taking two very different paths.  For all the times I managed to catch this film on TV, I never realized that it actually started with our three leads as children. Another one of the many reasons I love the Blind Spot Series.  Boyz in the Hood still feels very relevant today with its commentary on racism and violence. It's well paced and even though you know something awful is likely going to happen, that's not the point. The violence in that place and time was predictable and that's the saddest thing of all.  Fishburne was the standout to me. Furious' name seems like it would come from what lies beneath. He...

Hail, Caesar Two years after hate filled Koba started a conflict between human and apes, that war is still raging on. Caesar (Andy Serkis) has hidden his colony of apes deep in the forest. When he shows human soldiers mercy, their Colonel (Woody Harrelson) repays him in kind by orchestrated a night time raid on Caeser's colony. Now hellbent on revenge, Caesar attempts to leave on his own to find the Colonel, however a few of his loyal followers, Maurice (Karin Konoval) Rocket (Terry Notary) and Luca (Michael Adamthwaite) don't let him go solo. I've really come to love the Planet of the Apes franchise. I've always enjoyed the movies, but in the past year or so I've really come to love them even more. I'd go back and bump up my original letter grades from B's to A's on each film if I believed in altering my old reviews. War does what I wish the other films had done more of: they focus on the Apes, the humans have even less screen time here.  ...