What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Oh shit, I saw that one too! The building that jumped to alternate realities. That was a really good concept. I'm blanking on the title but there is a really good novel about this stuff that really exhausts the premise. Some scientist builds a dimensional jumping black box, gets lost, and has to find his way back.

Last night I screened one of my favourites for my girlfriend and daughters Chariots of Fire. This is a film that people will know the famous opening scene of running on the beach but few people seem to have actually seen in it its entirety.

It is a complex film on English runners at the 1924 Olympics that you can really focus on varying themes and take from it what you really want, e.g. devout Christians may assume it is about service to God and God's love.

To me, I love this film because I feel it is all about looking at the motivations behind people's goals, and how that affects their experiences of their success or failure. The two main runners are motivated by love and hate. Abrahams is a jew who is always discriminated against and excluded because of his religion. He is tolerated because of his talent but never truly accepted. To paraphrase him, he says he will take his detractors on one by one and run them off their feet. In contrast Liddell loves to run but has other responsibilities and obligations getting in the way and preventing him from being free to pursue his goals.

And so in the end, I find the way both of them deal with their reactions to their races to be rather emotional and profound, and I find it is one of the few films guaranteed to bring me to tears. Probably because I worded everyone up they saw the same themes and the depth to the film.

To me it has always been a film that reminds me to do things for the right reasons, and I will always love it for that.

Chariots of Fire is flawless.

I got to see Riders of Justice with Mads Mikkelsen at the Belcourt in Nashville, TN during Memorial Day weekend. Mads was great as usual but there is a very entertaining supporting cast of characters around him as well.

I sat down to watch the new Mortal Kombat yesterday. I’ve seen the various reviews and knew it was “dumb but enjoyable.”

I got 35 minutes in, right after the fight with Reptile, and I turned it off. It was too stupid for me.

The French Connection was a little disappointing, up until the fantastic car-train chase scene. When I was a kid, my parents didn't let me see any R-rated movies until I was 15. But one of my close friends in grade school got to see a lot of R-rated movies because his dad took him. So I was regaled at an early age about this super-cop Popeye Doyle, but the reality was that he was a fairly realistic fictional cop, up until that amazing chase scene. And the outcome of the movie was pretty shocking, with a bit of casual but lethal friendly fire and then light prison sentences for all the captured criminals. This was probably the oldest movie that I have seen with either Gene Hackman or Roy Scheider, so I assume this was a breakthrough for both of them.

I tried to watch Disco Godfather, a blaxploitation kung fu movie about the perils of PCP. The disco scenes looked really good, with some decent dancing and the glamorous setting. But the rest of the movie had the usual bad acting, lousy production values, and weak fight choreography particular to blaxploitation. The lighting and camera work sometimes exceeded expectations, but I lost interest after about 45 minutes.

I am still gradually working my way through the entire MCU series again. I was reluctant to re-watch the worse ones, but didn't want to skip them due to the connections to the better movies. Specifically, I wasn't looking forward to the Hulk movie, Thor II, the first Guardians of the Galaxy, or Avengers II. But with the exception of the Hulk movie, I enjoyed all of these movies more this time. The slow parts were somehow more interesting, and I was better able to appreciate how all these movies fit together so well. I just finished Avengers II: Age of Ultron yesterday, and it was less of a mess than I remembered, and tied into several other movies.

Anyone a Bo Burnham fan?

I remember the first time I saw his Comedy Central special "Words, Words, Words" and it absolutely floored me. That was a long time ago in 2010 and he has gotten a hell of a lot more popular since. I was surprised also to see him in Promising Young Woman. Still haven't seen Eighth Grade yet

But I had heard good things about his latest Netflix special, Inside. I kept forgetting to watch it the past couple of weeks and came across it late last night.

Now, I had avoided reading too much about it as I'm the type of person that wants nothing spoiled in media. I wasn't prepared for Inside.

I wouldn't even call it a comedy special. It's more performative, scripted, and cinematic than standup.

I was honestly blown away. While I laughed out loud several times, I also was struck with sadness, grief, and wonder.

There are themes centered around isolation, performance, separating the artist from their everyday persona, the complicated relationship between the internet and society and what havoc it's wreaked on our youth.

Bo himself is represented by two different characters in the film which is interwoven throughout to reinforce these themes.

And it's all filmed in a small apartment, by himself with no crew. He wrote the whole thing and edited it as well.

This thing is brilliant and deep in ways I wasn't expecting. You could spend hours dissecting his use of lighting for instance. It's wild and anyone who has enjoyed Bo's performances in the past should watch this.

I'm honestly not sure if I've seen any media like this before.

I've already spent more time watching analysis videos than I actually spent watching Inside itself. May watch it again tonight.

Rented Chaos Walking. VERY weird premise, a colony ship lands on an alien (yet absolutely pacific northwest earth like) planet and the men suddenly gain the ability/curse of having their thoughts be broadcast like a hologram.

Cut to 20ish years later and another colony ship crashes on the planet and the sole survivor, a woman, discovers that only men are left and women are semi-mythic (at least in the mind of Tom Holland, a teen/adult born on the planet and the youngest person).

This flick is a classic example of wasted opportunity. It tries SO much, the lore is convoluted, there is substantial unreliable narrator going on, it just doesn't work despite the earnest efforts of Tom Holland, daisy Ridley, and Mads Mikkelsen.

I gotta think the book or whatever this is based on is a million times better, this feels like 3 seasons of an HBO show packed into 1 film. It is rushed, breathless, yet devoid of a clear understanding of the stakes.

The New Mutants was held up too long in post-production, and then released during the pandemic, so it was doomed to a dismal reception. But I think that it's better than at least half the Fox X-Men movies, and interesting in its own right for going for more of a creepy horror vibe. The casting of Anya Taylor-Joy as Magik is brilliant, and the same goes for Maisie Willaims as Wolfsbane. Really, the whole cast is decent, and the movie plays like a forgotten episode of the Doom Patrol tv show, complete with body horror and an asylum setting.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Penguin Bloom with Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln. I think it's available on Netflix. It's an "overcoming adversity" tale and I expected it to be familiar fare. And it is familiar fare. But 3 things stood out which were: The rock bottom really packed a punch; There was some really interesting use of dream imagery; The acting was superb including a great performance from a magpie. If you are looking for something, I think you will find this to be an engaging movie.

Nobody - When a friend at work recommended this action movie to me I was like "but it stars Bob Odenkirk?" because I never saw him as an action lead. Damn was I an ignorant fool. This was a very entertaining action flick right up there with the John Wick stuff.

ChristopherMD wrote: Nobody"but it stars Bob Odenkirk?" because I never saw him as an action lead.

He trained for a year and a half for this role, and the idea was borne out of a home invasion he experienced.

I'm waiting for the Venom 2 movie to come out. I love Tom Hardy's acting. Although many people didn't like Venom, I really like it and don't care what others think.

We went to the movies for Father’s Day, the first time since we saw Onward before everything collapsed. It was a little strange at first because the theater we usually go to has in just a year fallen into disrepair...weeds in the parking lot, broken neon, rust on the facade...inside was fine but we pulled up and it was like abandoned building.

Anyway, we saw Cruella and as many of you know that even though I am a totally anti-capitalist socialist I love classic Disney and I was super excited to see this despite it getting middling reviews. I thought the concept of setting a Cruella origin story in London during the 70s was inspired, and even though the track record of the live action reboots/reimagining has been poor it looked promising. I was also curious to see how they could possibly redeem Disney’s most genuinely awful villain.

I -loved- it. It’s punky and sneering, fabulous and flamboyant. Comparisons have been made to The Devil Wears Prada and that is a pretty good entry point into sorting it out. It’s a film about fashion, revenge, heists, rock n’roll, and dogs so I’m right in the target audience for it. It’s a lock for Costume and Production Design Academy Awards nominations - it looks incredible, from the recreation of a Liberty shop from the period to the Baronness’ workshop to Hell Hall...the clothes are just amazing as you would expect from Jenny Beavan, the costume designer of Fury Road. There’s a trash dress that just blew my mind. Emma Stone and Emma Thompson both are just delightful and their scenes together are so wonderfully vicious.

Was it necessary? No way. Really, it could have been about an all new character because this Cruella just is not the same character as in 101 Dalmatians. She is definitely “redeemed” into more of a sympathetic anti-hero so don’t worry, she’s not a dog-skinning psycho anymore.

Funnily, my biggest complaint is with the music. There are TONS of absolutely killer needle drops throughout- The Clash, Stooges, Nina Simone, Suzi Quatro, Black Sabbath, Stones, Zombies, Blondie, of course Bowie...but somehow the music director neglected to get a T. Rex song in there (I’d do “The Slider”), The Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” or “Teenage Rampage” were nowhere to be heard, and what a missed opportunity to use Sparks “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both Of Us” and even though the Queen cut is choice (“Stone Cold Crazy”), the entire film could have been soundtracked with “Killer Queen” because that is the whole tone of the picture. It feels like Roxy Music should have been in there too, “Editions of You” would have been nice.

But I’m a huge music nerd and I was just happy to see that my kids recognized a lot of the songs.

Anyway, great movie...lots of fun and well worth a trip to a destitute theater. If you go out to see it make sure you stay for the mid credit scene, it’s wonderful.

The Platform on Netflix is worth checking out. It's a low-budget, foreign-language, horror, prison movie with a message.

The premise involves a prison that's a vertical stack of cells, two people per cell. Once per day a platform full of food starts at the top, people eat what they can for a few moments, then it moves down to the next level. As you can imagine, things get rough when you're down at level 147. The other nice twist is that every month you randomly wake up on a new level.

The metaphor may be obvious, but they still manage to do interesting things with it. There are several nice twists. It can get a little graphic, so don't go in thinking it's just another Twilight Zone episode.