I was doing Movie Night stuff for awhile and writing up short thoughts, and I went on hiatus for a bit and then we're back to movies so I might as well think about movies again openly.
short version: god damn movies are pretty good
in loose alphabetical order from my list of stuff I have aired for people this year and also just watched separately once or twice, focusing on things that were new to me:
Birds of Prey: I am mostly weak towards Harley Quinn content, but I thought this was fine. Not amazing, fine-it's fun enough and I honestly love this flouncy-ass take on Black Mask. Handful of alright needle drops, fight choreography pretty good. I give it a "yeah I've felt that way about a breakfast sandwich" out of 10.
Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension: this movie rules because it feels like part 8 of a series that doesn't exist. A movie I didn't feel like I could look away from for fear of being lost in its tide, just constantly throwing new ideas out there while assuming that I was already involved with this utterly bizarre crew. Best end credits sequence in movies.
Everything Everywhere All At Once: well fuck me this was basically perfect. No notes! I went in not 100% knowing what to expect, and it turns out it was in the title, it was a lil' of everything.
Furiosa: This movie does a thing I really liked, which is that it doesn't 100% line up with some of the other Mad Max content out there (mostly the game). I love that-it makes it feel like this whole franchise is just stories about the Road Warrior and other people he crosses paths with, legends that get blurred a bit.
It's otherwise fine. It got some good action sequences-really good ones, in spots, but there's a few places where the effects were a little iffy and we didn't need the AI face blending.
Chris Hemsworth looks like he's having fun doing stuff that isn't just Thor. I'm glad for him.
I Saw The TV Glow: This movie is kinda the queer equivalent of having a truck slowly back over you. I say that complimentary! I adored it!
I think it is going to hit harder for some people then others-I watched it in a call with two other people and at the end all three of us just sorta sat there silently for ten minutes.
I happened to hit the correct size and shape of person that movie was aiming for. It's not my favorite movie out of everything I've watched this year, but it's damn close and I'm liable to get that ghost tattoo.
Kubo and the Two Strings: I wrote about this a bit earlier, but damned if this one didn't rip at my heartstrings a touch. It's absolutely beautiful and it very, very quickly lays out a very coherent and exciting world and history. I would've watched another hour of the origami animations easily. I should probably rewatch when I'm not tremendously ill but I suspect I'd still like it a lot.
La Chimera: holy shit please watch La Chimera
Out of everything I've watched this year, this might be my favorite. Just a fascinating and weird movie, the most dreamlike thing I have ever watched, with some rotating shots I'm going to be thinking about for years. I do not really have anything specific to compare it to, but I encourage you to go in without a whole lot of foreknowledge except that it's a slow-paced lightly-romantic drama about grave robbing. If that piques your interest, do not waste time, go check this out. This movie rules.
Monkey Man: I feel like this is an RRR situation where I simply do not have the geopolitical context for this movie's saying about politics in India, but simultaneously I certainly enjoy a movie in which a bunch of shitheads get their day completely ruined by a singular man on a mission. I maybe could've done with about ten minutes' less of buildup of "look at how much these pieces of shit are gonna get it" but it's fine.
There is a contradiction here where I am thinking more about how we have a lot of media-maybe nowhere more then my own home country-about how Violence Redeems, how there is a Good And Acceptable Violence, and how weird that is. A man getting stabbed two dozen times is honestly pretty fucked up! Even if it is a "bad" person getting killed by a "good" person. But also: I am a tremendous gore slut and I'm here for someone having a cleaver rammed through their jaw. S'how I'm wired and I am prepared to work around contexts for the thrills and chills and blood that spills.
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark: you'd think I would've gotten to this one sooner, but that is true also of the books. I didn't read 'em 'til I was an adult.
They put one of my favorite stories in as the big ending capstone, so I'm here for that. The stuff they did was mostly fine, but I do have one big point of concern, which is: that's a coward's ending for fuckers. "Hooray for the war! ALSO the people who died didn't probably." Show some goddamn spine.
That said: when I did get around to seeing this, it was when we were a few sessions into the Student Body, so the scene in which several hundred spiders crawled out of a woman's face had me doing the Sickos "YES! HA HA HA! YES!" while the people I was with had to maybe recoil a bit.
The Boy And The Heron: I think this was a fine movie, I think this was a really fun time as an anthropomorphic bird myself. But, honestly, I think it was also just a bit "hmm Miyazaki sure made another movie like this."
It felt like something of a greatest hits, in a way. Not a bad way, but.....well, like, I watched Spirited Away earlier this year for the first time in awhile and it still hit really, really hard. Moreso now, even, as I get more in tune with this Otherkin business-the opening sequence as Chihiro crossed over from one world to the other had me trembling. Boy and the Heron is genuinely good, but in a way that felt like I was retreading old ground. I love Miyazaki's work, always have always will, but it kinda felt like he was out of things to say here.
The People's Joker: Saying this up front: Of the two Gender movies I've watched this year, I think TV Glow is a little better, but I'm probably more inclined to rewatch this one.
It is funny, it has a clear love for what it's riffing on, it has genuinely solid designs of characters it doesn't own and is parodying. It had one or two little gutpunches in the way Drew interacts with her mother (I felt some of those exchanges pretty personal), but for the most part? This is a real delightful thing that understood how to allocate its budget in a great way.
The Phantom Tollbooth: This is a movie about how much the fae will jump your ass if you're not ready for us.
It's fun! I can't believe I'd never seen it, I loved the book as a kid.
Point Break: This is a very silly movie! I'm glad I saw it finally!
I did this via Rifftrax Live, in a theater. Theater was pretty full, multiplex was very full. That felt weird, after the last few years. It felt kinda cool, though. I sorta missed that vibe. It made me wanna do more theaters.
Anyway, silly or not there's definitely a lot of clear influences in here for things that came after, and it still has a lot of spots that look very, very cool. There's movies where MST3K/Rifftrax make it bearable at all for me, but I've since had a clean copy on as background noise, so I think they just handed me a film I unironically enjoyed this time out.
The Secret of Kells: I....hmm. Okay, listen, it's not fair. I had really high hopes for this one, as a fae otherkin. They have some incredible sequences in here, but it doesn't dive hard enough into either the "this big abstract monster's lair is really cool and eerie" or "check out how sick we animated this illuminated manuscript" stuff. I kinda expected a little more, it showed flashes of really wild and creative stuff but didn't have enough of it for me to really fall in love.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya: Watched this as a double-billing with the above. Both really, really beautiful movies, but I wound up liking this one way better. I'm not necessarily sure I have much to say about it beyond "dang if you want a lovely piece of melancholy media go check it out."
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Comin' up, I've got The First Slam Dunk on the docket for my own streams but nothing much else lined up after, and tickets for Blazing Saddles in theaters next month (which isn't new to me but IS new to the person I'm going with, which will be the real treat). Thinking about hitting some black-and-white films pretty hard as a themed month, though.