This is one of those mild Japanese family dramas that I feel like barely exist in English, at least in North American cinema. In so many North American films, some kind of plot would need to be introduced, or there would need to be more histrionics, or something. Here, there are emotions, but they are …
Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (1970, Elio Petri)
I’ve long been familiar with the English title to this film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, due to the Fantômas cover of its theme tune. But I had no idea what it was actually about. And, well, it’s a weird one. I’m really not sure what to do with it. SPOILERS
Madame Web (2024, S.J. Clarkson)
What is this movie? Is it a prequel to a movie that doesn’t exist yet? Is it Sony’s attempt at a kid-friendly Birds of Prey only with way, way, way less humour and zero 4th-wall breaking? Am I supposed to have watched some other film that briefly featured one of these characters to know why …
Rebel Ridge (2024, Jeremy Saulnier)
I gave Hold the Dark a higher rating than I probably should have, because of my fondness for Blue Ruin and Green Room and because of fond, albeit distant, memories of Murder Party, the first three feature films Jeremy Saulnier made. But Hold the Dark felt like it was a little out of Saulnier’s wheelhouse, …
Иван Грозный [Ivan Grozny]) (1944, 1946, 1958, Sergei Eisenstein)
This is a bizarre, epic film that is both hard to separate from its origins in Stalinist Russia (during World War II no less) and from the apparent difficulty Eisenstein had from moving on from silent film. I haven’t seen Alexander Nevsky, but this is one of those talkies from a prominent silent filmmaker that …
Falling Through Time: Music from the 1300s (2022) by Joe Gore
So I had no idea who Joe Gore was even though I’ve heard him play a bunch because he’s played on a bunch of records I’ve heard. But I watched this great interview with him about his work on “Goin’ Out West” from my 2nd or 3rd favourite Tom Waits record, Bone Machine. In that …
Rack (2024) by The Jesus Lizard
I was unable to find Blue, their final album before the reunion, anywhere so I never listened to it. I mention that because it’s considered their worst album and it’s supposedly the only album where The Jesus Lizard deviated from their formula.(Though I don’t know how much they actually did.) When reuniting, it seems they …
Unrigged (2024)
It’s easy to be cynical our society: how our city/town works, how are province works, how are country works. I’m definitely cynical at times, maybe a lot of the time. For much of my adult life I believed that humans were stupid and we couldn’t rely on humanity to make much if any progress.
Shot (1996) by The Jesus Lizard
The ’90s were a weird time. Major labels went crazy signing all these bands that had very little in the way of commercial prospects. And nearly every time it happened the fans of those bands got mad about their favourite bands getting paid.
Down (1994) by The Jesus Lizard
This is generally regarded as their weakest album to date and I think there are a couple of reasons for it:
The King Tide (2023, Christian Sparks)
This is a great thriller-tragedy with a strong sense of place that suffers from what you might call a “realism hole” (rather than a plot hole) that is likely a fatal flaw for some people. It’s the kind of thing I would nit pick to the point of distraction in a different film, one that …
The Fall Guy (2024, David Leitch)
This is a reasonably entertaining movie based on an ’80s TV show I’m not sure anyone remembers. (We learned it was based on a TV show from the credits. I was a child when it was on but I’ve also literally never heard of it.) The good news is that, if nobody remembers it, the …
Barbarian Queen (1985, Héctor Olivera)
This is a bad ’80s fantasy movie that is extremely brief but, as a result, never boring. (Some bad movies are truly boring.)
Mighty Jack (1968, 1986, Kazuho Mitsuta)
This is a “film” that I watched in two parts over the period of well over a month so maybe I can’t judge it fairly. But it’s fair because the actual “movie” is actually two episodes of a 1968 Japanese TV show, released in the US in 1986 because reasons, which were combined together out …
Head (1990) by The Jesus Lizard
Goat is one of my favourite albums of the 1990s but yet somehow it took me years to listen to another one of their albums and more than a decade, if I’m not wrong, to make it through the whole discography. As usual, listening to a band’s entire discography after you’ve listened to one or …
Too Big to Fail (2009) by Andrew Ross Sorkin
This is an in-depth play-by-play of the 2008 financial crisis in the US from the perspective of the executives and the Treasury and Fed officials involved. It feels exhaustive in its coverage of the individuals involved even if it really isn’t, as that would require a much longer book. Reading it this long after is …
Sullivan’s Travels (1941, Preston Sturges)
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Preston Sturges movie but, of those I’ve seen, I’ve rarely been impressed. My memory is that I’ve usually found them tame after years of reading about he was the great satirist of his age. But this one mostly worked for me.
Phantoms (1998, Joe Chappelle)
This horror movie has an interesting conceit and a few pretty good moments but is ultimately unsatisfying and probably a little dumb. SPOILERS
Giochi erotici nella terza galassia (1983, Bitto Albertini, Luigi Cozzi)
Alternately titled Escape from Galaxy 3 or Star Crash 2 (due to its apparent liberal use of footage from Star Crash), and titled Erotic games in the third galaxy in Italian, this is a terrible science fiction/fantasy film that was rendered all the more terrible by either the transfer or the print the transfer was …
The English Surgeon (2007 Geoffrey Smith)
Occasionally I see a film that makes me think “What have I done with my life?” Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon who has been traveling to a foreign country (Ukraine) on his own dime to help people for 15 years as of this film (and at least 30 years as of Wikipedia) is one of those …
Catching Hell (2011, Alex Gibney)
This is an affecting look at Steve Bartman, and, to a lesser extent Bill Buchner, that looks at how baseball fans and the media can’t help but scapegoat people from game 6s (not even game 7s) instead of understanding what actually happened. It came out 5 years before the Cubs won so it’s very much …
Top Gear/Grand Tour Specials
I have created this post because I want to track my consumption of Top Gear/Grand Tour specials. (And now the standard format for The Grand Tour.) I have little interest in the normal Top Gear format but enjoy the specials where they travel and do stupid things. Normally I classify TV shows as to whether …
De Lydløse (2024, Frederik Louis Hviid)
This is an interesting film about a real-life heist in Denmark which has some really cool aspects to it but also is a little confusing due to its commitment to a particular style of filmmaking. The best part of it was really great, unfortunately it was also the opening scene.
My New Food Network Show
I find the celebrity chef obsession with San Marzano tomatoes to be extremely bizarre. As part of the ridiculous over-representation for Italian food on the Food Network, we are told regularly that we cannot use any canned tomatoes other than those that are truly from San Marzano (and certainly not any tomatoes that are pretending …
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024, Embath Davidtz)
This is an affecting, compelling coming of age drama about a white girl in Zimbabwe during the 1980 “Southern Rhodesia” general election.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023, James Wan)
I did not like the original Aquaman. But watching this sequel, I think I might have underrated it, at least in comparison to this film.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023, Francis Lawrence)
Has Hollywood become so reliant on IP that they need prequels centred around the early lives of the villains of their YA movies? Did anyone who watched the original series think “Wow, you know what this series really needs, a 2 1/2 hour movie about Donald Sutherland’s character’s college years.” I understand this is a …
Riley Goes to Iceland Day 10: Tuesday, September 3, 2024
We woke up at 5:20 Iceland time (so 1:20AM ET) but I had been up for a bit already, as I often don’t sleep well before a flight. However we soon found out that our flight was delayed by an hour. The upside was that, at least this way, we’d get to eat breakfast for …
The Lawnmower Man (1992, Brett Leonard)
When I was a teenager my brother and stepsister used to watch Viewer’s Choice trailers when they couldn’t find anything else to watch. (I probably did this too but in my memory it was entirely their fault.) For some reason, one of the movies I remembered from these trailers, but which I never watched, was …
Riley Drives the Iceland Ring Road Day 9: Staðarsveit to Reykjavik, Monday September 2, 2024
Given how good our weather had been on Saturday and the first half of Sunday, I was really hopeful it would be good again when we woke up but today but it was awful. So we went and had breakfast and it was insanely busy. It felt like almost everyone in the entire guesthouse was …