Sunday, February 11, 2024

2023 Movies Viewed/ Ranked

Viewed/Ranked

  1. Oppenheimer 
  2. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant 
  3. Asteroid City
  4. The Creator
  5. Napoleon 
  6. The Flash
  7. Beau Is Afraid
  8. Knock at the Cabin
  9. 65
  10. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
  11. The Equalizer 3
  12. The Holdovers
  13. Paint
  14. American Fiction
  15. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
  16. Polite Society 
  17. John Wick IV
  18. Poor Things
  19. Killers of the Flower Moon
  20. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
  21. The Iron Claw
  22. Master Gardener
  23. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
  24. Barbie
  25. A Good Person
  26. Magic Mike’s Last Dance
  27. Blue Beetle
  28. Marlowe
  29. The Super Mario Brothers Movie
  30. Sound of Freedom
  31. Fast X
  32. A Haunting in Venice
  33. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
  34. Sisu
  35. Ant- Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
  36. Sweetwater
  37. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
  38. Chevalier
  39. Renfield
  40. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
  41. The Pope’s Exorcist 
  42. Creed III
  43. The Last Voyage of the Demeter
  44. Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken
  45. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
  46. Haunted Mansion
  47. 80 for Brady
  48. Butcher’s Crossing
  49. Plane
  50. Cocaine Bear
Other Notable Releases
Air
Anyone But You
The Boy and the Heron
The Boys in the Boat
Dream Scenario 
Elemental
Expend4bles
Ferrari
Godzilla Minus One
The Little Mermaid
The Marsh King’s Daughter
The Marvels
Meg 2: The Trench
M3GAN
Migration
Next Goal Wins
No Hard Feelings
Past Lives
Priscilla 
Saltburn
Saw X
Scream VI
Strays
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Wandering Earth II
Wish
Wonka

Saturday, January 13, 2024

The Creator (2023) review

rating: ****

the story: A vet in plunged into the endgame of a war between humanity and AI.

the review: Here's another movie I have no clue hasn't had far more praise than it's received.  It's damn near a work of genius.  It's close to a masterpiece.

I'm starting to implicitly trust John David Washington's instincts.  He's had a whole string of fascinating projects under his belt in recent years (Tenet, Amsterdam, and now The Creator), pushed himself well beyond dad Denzel Washington's shadow, and establishing his own definitive screen presence, not the calm cool of dad, not necessarily capable of more, but very much his own, and with the capability to fit in effortlessly into sweeping situations without being lost in them.

The Creator is more than Washington, of course.  It's Gareth Edwards' directorial follow-up to Rogue One, which is the leading candidate for Star Wars fans as best of the current cinematic era.  I personally was not a fan of Rogue One.  No, I was very much the opposite.  In context, now, however, it makes a lot more sense, since in a lot of ways The Creator is a response to and continuation of its ideas, which makes much more sense, to me, in this context.  The Creator itself also serves as that elusive concept Hollywood chased for years after 1977, a movie that evokes Star Wars without buckling horribly under the pressure, a thing that was almost impossible for twenty years.  (Incredibly, although I have no idea when I myself will be able to consider the results, 2023 potentially gave us two such movies, with Rebel Moon also clearly envisioned from the bones of Star Wars.)

This is familiar territory, whether you consider the classic I, Robot stories, the movie that eventually resulted from it, the Terminator franchise, the Matrix movies, or even current fears of emerging AI prominence (although The Creator features traditional robots, its was heavily marketed with the concerns sweeping through the culture at the moment, and viewed from that light by critics and likely audiences).  It doesn't matter.  You've never seen anything like this.

I even say this as someone who loved Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's Descender/Ascender comics, which have a number of parallels to The Creator, including a child robot destined to play a climactic role in events desperately sought by numerous figures.  Doesn't matter.  Visually the results are astonishing, exactly what modern filmmaking should be accomplishing (and not just an endless stream of superhero movies), but narratively, the results are equally assured, deliberate, and where all the critics complaining otherwise are coming from, I haven't a clue, since the central message is as relevant as it's ever been: the oppressed just don't want to be oppressed anymore, they just want to be free to live.

And that's really what's so great about The Creator, that it finally boils the robot story to what it really always was.  We keep dreading the robot apocalypse, and yet...why?  Why assume they're just gonna want to annihilate us?  When do we figure out the best solution will always be the one that benefits everyone?  That's what intelligence tells us, and the "i" in "AI" literally means "intelligence," so again...why?  

That's what The Creator answers.  That's what pushes it toward greatness.  

Along with Washington are a few name actors, Allison Janney representing the humans and Ken Watanabe the robots.  Isn't the presence of Watanabe itself an indication of quality?  He's another actor who's consistently selected great material, always unfailingly delivering quality performances in roles intriguing and relevant to the success of the films around them.

Trust Ken Watanabe.  Trust John David Washington.  There are built-in moments just waiting to be enshrined in the pop canon.  Help make The Creator a cult sensation at the very least!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) review

the rating: ****

the story: Indy has a chance for one last great archeological find.

the review: I now have my second favorite movie in the series.  And who knows?  It might even become my favorite.  This is not likely something you've heard about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before.  Certainly not with someone saying their favorite is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  I don't come to the franchise as a diehard believer.  I caught up with Raiders of the Lost Ark much later than other fans.  To me it's the first movie (and Temple of Doom is just another in the series).  I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, thought it was inconceivable that Lucas and Spielberg struggled to make what was such an obvious entry in the series (aliens) for the kind of careers each otherwise had.  But it took James Mangold to reach Dial of Destiny, which achieves its greatness in much the way he did with Logan.

By finally just doing the kind of story that should have been told in the first place.

Henry Jones is an adventurer.  But that's just the stories he finds himself in.  He's actually, in his normal life, a professor, a lover of history, who sometimes goes on archeological searches, which happen to blow all out of proportion.  But mostly a lover of history.  I think Dial of Destiny is the first time that's really emphasized.  By the time we reach the ending (anyone quibbling about what happens is perhaps forgetting about the leaps of faith the other entries ask of us), it's what he always wanted, the thing that he was destined to experience all along.

Mangold previously achieved this with Logan, as I said, the first and to date only Wolverine appearance from the X-Men film franchise to stop worrying so much about superhero adventures and just let the guy be himself, in his own life.  The Wolverine, which was supposed to be the one that fixed that, buried him in a moody superhero adventure anyway.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine tossed him throughout the timeline, and forgot who the villain was supposed to be (Victor Creed, not Deadpool, regardless of how he was portrayed).  Logan made up for all of that.  It told a complete story, and even played out symmetrically with the first standalone movie (by having Wolverine fight himself, it finished the story the first one abandoned).  It also let him by the hero in an X-Men movie, which the X-Men movies kept dancing around, even when it was clear he was the star.

Dial of Destiny throws the accustomed Nazis at Indy, enemies and allies to work off of, but for the first time it's not the adventure that drives the plot (as with a lot of modern filmmaking the screen is too dark anyway) but rather the awareness that Indy himself is the star, which is also why Last Crusade worked so well, because it put the focus on Indy and his dad (which is what inspired the National Treasure movies).  While Disney continues to marvel at the technology that allows it to de-age faces, it's the older Indy that fascinates, and he's still very much up to the task, incredibly, all these years later.  And at five films and a little over forty years, we've gotten to see a complete arc of the good professor's life.

What's most remarkable, perhaps, is that if you were to watch only one Indiana Jones movie, you could absolutely make the case for it being Dial of Destiny.  Partisans will always default to Raiders, while Last Crusade has its selling points, too, but Destiny has young Indy, and it has old Indy, essentially a complete arc unto itself, and a single story uniting both, and a story linking his teaching life definitively to his private life.  It's all there.  That's why it's easy to sell.

Rounding out the cast this time are Antonio Banderas (I confess to missing everything but a glimpse of him), Mads Mikkelsen as the obligatory Nazi, Boyd Holbrook (who was also a standout in Logan), and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a more youthful audience surrogate in case you're not that interested in seeing old bones revisited.  

They say this is the last one.  It should be.  What a way to go! 

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Films from cheap DVD collections

20 Classic Movie Collection: Leading Ladies

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
Biopic of Broadway pioneer Jerome Kern (best known today for the song "Old Man River") featuring Judy Garland (her spotlight song clearly evoking "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury.  Not exactly Yankee Doodle Dandy but worth a look.

Home Town Story (1951) Marilyn Monroe has a bit part in this film that's not quite Citizen Kane or Frank Capra, but tries hard to be.

Affair in Monte Carlo (1952)
Weird editing makes this movie's timeline confusing in ways the filmmaking doesn't really support, essentially the body is flashback to a present that doesn't have much to say.  

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)
The unorthodox editing works better in this one (in other words, just plain better filmmaking) featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Reed, Roger Moore, and Eva Gabor.  

The Groom Wore Spurs (1951)
A sendup of the classic celluloid cowboy featuring Ginger Rogers.

Midnight Cop (1988)
A horrible detective story featuring Michael York and Morgan Fairchild.

Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1975)
TV movie about Sally Field being a hippy who worries her family including Jackie Cooper (the Christopher Reeve-era Perry White) by dating and/or living with other hippies like David Carradine, who looks considerably different with all that hair.

Tulsa (1949)
A movie starring Susan Hayward (and the Ed Begley who's not Ed Begley, Jr.!) that took on new light after I saw and read Flowers of the Killer Moon, covering very similar territory from a much different vantage point.

The Deadly Companions (1961)
Sam Peckinpah directs a movie where people are crazy about Maureen O'Hara, with one good guy having to constantly defend her against all the bad guys he inadvertantly linked up with and prevent everyone from seeing the telltale clue about his past hiding beneath that cowboy hat he never removes...

Dishonored Lady (1947)
Overblown drama revolving around Hedy Lamarr, (part-time inventor).

Kill Cruise (1990)
Nonsense survival fluff featuring a young Elizabeth Hurley.

Nothing Sacred (1937)
Nonsense newspaper shenanigans featuring Carole Lombard, Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West!) and Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind).

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
An adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway story featuring Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner.

Road to Bali (1952)
The sixth of seven in the series featuring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour (in most of them).  Classic screwball comedy.

Mutiny (1952)
Ridiculous tale featuring Angela Lansbury.

Never Wave at a WAC (1953)
Screwball look at women in the military.

Jane Eyre (1934)
Adaptation starring the literary classic.

The Seducers (1977)
I watched through a lot of movies.  Some of them I did not watch very thoroughly.  Some of them just weren't worth the effort, okay?  When these things are being compiled through the public domain, they take what they can get.  

Katherine (1975)
Another darned TV hippy flick, this one starring Sissy Spacek in the role of the young future star as a hippy and Henry Winkler as the hirsute actor you'll struggle to recognize as the hippy love interest.

Power, Passion & Murder (1983)
Michelle Pfeiffer conveniently in the public domain, and also Hector Elizondo.  And Holland Taylor!

20 Classic Movie Collection: Leading Men

Constantine and the Cross (1962)
Cumbersome version of how Constantine converted himself and/or the Roman Empire.

The Night America Trembled (1957)
This right here was for me worth pursuing any of this in the first place.  A TV version of the famous Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds, featuring Edward R. Murrow, Warren Beatty, Ed Asner and James Coburn.

The Animal Kingdom (1932)
Puffle featuring Myrna Loy.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1958)
Clever musical version of the classic tale featuring Van Johnson and Claude Rains (Prince John in the classic Errol Flynn Adventures of Robin Hood).

That Uncertain Feeling (1941)
Nonsense romance shenanigans featuring Burgess Meredith.

Life with Father (1947)
Directed by Michael Curtiz (best known for Casablanca, but with a bunch of other standouts), but not worth much, a silly story about a dad played by William Powell (The Thin Man et al) and featuring Elizabeth Taylor.

This is the Army (1943)
Also directed by Curtiz (they couldn't afford any of his good movies), featuring Ronald Reagan in a movie that wishes it was White Christmas, with cameos from the likes of Irving Berlin, Joe Louis and Kate Smith.

The Amazing Adventure (1937)
Cary Grant tries to prove he can survive without relying on his massive inherited fortune...but kind of only succeeds because of his massive inherited fortune anyway.

Borderline (1950)
Fred MacMurray's the hero and Raymond Burr's the villain in this tale of uncertain identities pursuing justice.

A Bolt of Lightning (1951)
Another TV episode, a drama set during the runup to the Revolutionary War featuring Charlton Heston and very little to interest viewers.

A Tattered Web (1971)
Features Lloyd Bridges, James Hong (many small roles over the years!), and not much by way of me remembering anything about it.

Target of an Assassin (1976)
Features Anthony Quinn and another movie I don't remember much about.

The Bushwhackers (1952)
Features Lawrence Tierney, Lon Chaney Jr., and a third disc of the set that starts out with nothing much happening.

Royal Wedding (1951)
Fred Astaire to the rescue!  Featuring memorable dancing on walls, ceiling...anything at all, even dancing with a hatrack!

Made for Each Other (1939)
James Stewart and Carole Lombard can't save this.

Fighting Caravans (1931)
Gary Cooper looking so young it's like seeing a silent film version.

The Lady Says No (1952)
David Niven in not much to talk about here.

Behave Yourself (1951)
Lon Chaney Jr. in another movie I didn't spend too much time on that same day.

Port of New York (1949)
Gosh, had to pay attention to this one!  Yul Brynner's hairline makes it pretty clear why he ended up with the bald look...

David and Goliath (1960)
Orson Welles can't save this one.

I barreled through all these from October 2nd to the 29th.  It was an accomplishment of endurance and commitment when a lot of the material really didn't merit it.  Here we are finally writing this up, which was the main reason I did it at all.  Huzzah!

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Every 2023 movie I’ve seen so far

65
The more I thought of this one the more I loved it, an experience that’s worth it on a number of levels. Plus allows me to admire Adam Driver’s acting without much distraction.

80 for Brady
The cast is low energy but it would be a sin against my home country not to partake.

A Good Person
This was the year I finally understood the appeal of Florence Pugh. Another Zach Braff film worth savoring, another excellent turn from Morgan Freeman.

Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania
The problem with recent MCU movies is that they keep trying to be overly ambitious without necessarily understanding how to do it. It’s the reverse of Captain America: Civil War, the third one in that trilogy that was essentially an Avengers movie. Keeping this movie entirely contained with Ant-Man characters both robs it of  the Ant-Man storytelling from the two previous entries and makes Kang look infinitely smaller than he should. It’s one thing to contextualize Thanos, another to just use the villain and actually defeat him in epic fashion before he has a chance to be a threat worth bringing in other heroes.

Asteroid City
My gosh one of my favorite Wes Andersons.

Barbie
Yeah, it was fun!

Beau is Afraid
The director (Ari Aster) has been a cult favorite for a few years now, but ironically I find him most palatable when he’s at his most indulgent and not just trying to impress. A strange wonderful experience.

Blue Beetle
I loved this more in theaters than I did at home. 

Chevalier
Wanted to make one point and either intentionally or accidentally made another. Look, we have a black musical genius who ended up buried by history. Worth rediscovering. Not worth trying to sell the benefits of the horrific Reign of Terror in the process.

Cocaine Bear
I really wanted to like a big dumb movie. I ended up just sort of liking it. Desperately needed characters as outlandish as the premise. But the ‘90s sort of proved this was a very fine line to walk. So I get why it went in a different direction.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Basically an MCU movie set outside the MCU.

Fast X
I’ve been along for the ride since the second one. Of course I’m still aboard.

The Flash
I will always doubt public opinion on the face of it when it’s too universally positive or too universally negative, since it becomes clear most of it is just people deciding it’s easy to just agree. This would be one of those modern examples. I love the Barry Allens. I love Keaton’s return. I love Supergirl. I adore this depiction of the Allen household and crisis. Everything else is needless nitpicking.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
I love that we get the secret origin of Rocket. Everything else basically ignores Rocket himself, though, which is the basic problem of the film. If you have the heart you need it pumping.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant 
From April until July this was easily my movie of the year, a breathtaking set of journeys built around themes of duty, commitment, endurance, responsibility, humanity, all needful statements in this current age.

John Wick: Chapter 4
Watching it in the theater I wondered if it had, other than its ending, something valuable to add to the franchise. Watching it back later, I understood its merits better.

Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese has been chasing The Godfather his whole career. This may be his most complete response.

Knock at the Cabin
M. Night Shyamalan back to his classic roots after years of experimenting. 

The Last Voyage of the Demeter
As an addition to Dracula film lore, I’m glad this happened.

Marlowe
Liam Neeson is taken totally for granted these days since he “only makes mindless action movies.” This is a great take on a classic literary and film figure.

Master Gardener
A classic showcase for Joel Edgerton.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
This is the fourth stylistic reincarnation of the series, more playful, somehow more dramatic.

Napoleon 
Ridley Scott is the unchallenged king of historical epics. And this is probably his best work.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
It’s strange how effortlessly I’ve become a fan of Guy Ritchie in recent years, since for a long time I couldn’t have cared less. But these days he can do no wrong for me. This one’s popcorn enjoyable.

Oppenheimer 
Something would have to come out of nowhere to displace this as my favorite movie of the year. A career pinnacle of a career built out of pinnacles.

Paint
Owen Wilson doesn’t appear in Asteroid City, but in this film found something Andersonesque anyway. 

Plane
On Facebook I’m in a Lost group. Someone pointed out this was essentially a Gerard Butler version of the basic plot of the series. Which it is. Which is not necessarily the only way to enjoy it.

Polite Society
This year’s closest equivalent to Everything Everywhere All At Once is a delight not completely to that level but its own irresistible pleasure.

The Pope’s Exorcist 
Russell Crowe getting back into theatrical starring roles is a good thing as far as career statements go. This one wasn’t as good as it could have been. Almost. Still an interesting role and performance from him, though.

Renfield
The other Dracula movie (perfect role for modern Nic Cage!) is great fun.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
It’s not just Disney firing blanks with families this year. This is an entertaining movie that came and went with nobody noticing.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods
More confident than the first one. Still requires you to believe this is the DC alternative to everything you didn’t like about every other recent DC movie.

Sisu
One of those obvious cult classics in the making that it’s absolutely worth experiencing. A slightly more grounded John Wick. Slightly.

Sound of Freedom
Jim Caviezel has become a genius at finding projects for those interested in him from that time he got brutalized for two hours.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
A kind of postmodern superhero movie that’s less about the superhero doing anything super and more about the superhero plunged deep into superhero logic. Most comics are being written like this these days. I know this is the second one, but I found this one easier to watch. But still a snake eating its own tail.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Pretty much exactly what it needed to be. (So the exact opposite of that other attempt thirty years ago which thought it was Beetlejuice.)

Sweetwater 
The kind of movie that gets no attention these days but used to be studio and cultural bread and butter, explores the story of the first black player in the NBA, totally unknown today.

Other movies to catch up on, others yet to be seen…!


Saturday, September 16, 2023

Don't waste time investigating Billy Jack

Because a collection was at Walmart featuring the character's entire legacy, I finally had a look at Billy Jack (1971), a movie I first heard about when investigating historic box office results.  Until then I had no clue it existed, which is incredibly rare for a large box office hit, which is a phenomenon that happens because a movie makes a significant impact on the pop culture and will be referenced one way or another for years to come.  The Oscars are a completely different matter.  Most nominations are minor films featuring performances or production work Academy voters are keen for one reason or another to recognize, and it's always been that way.

Actually watching Billy Jack explained why this happened to it pretty quickly.  It's a terrible movie.  Its predecessor, The Born Losers (1967) is terrible.  Its sequels, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) and Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977; which doesn't fail because it's an almost complete reshoot of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but because it retains the same hairbrained production values as the rest of the series, which has as its dubious legacy forcing the blockbuster concept on the wide release schedule movies have been following ever since), are terrible.

I mean terrible.  The title character (which is itself terrible) is a macho hippy.  But a hippy all the same.  All his supporters are hippies.  The real hippies, not the ones the media has tried for decades to sell on a gullible public in the post-hippy era.  Basically the ones Quentin Tarantino features in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, only the Billy Jack hippies are presented as the counterculture heroes of legend, a huge emphasis on "heroes."

The most offensive part, for me, is that these hippies believe they make good music, but they seem fundamentally incapable of any such thing.  The whole series features, proudly, the anthem "One Tin Soldier" which, if you're keeping up with me, is terrible.  Just so completely convoluted it's difficult to understand how even one film, much less any audience member (it's described elsewhere online as iconic) could believe for a hot minute it isn't complete garbage.

Billy Jack himself is pretty awesome.  He's a dude who can't help but get into fights, and he pioneered martial arts as a cinematic way to do so.  He's worth rooting for, but nothing around him really justifies his actions except in the most cardboard way.  It's like the charisma of Steve McQueen without the cool.  Basically every successful Steve McQueen flick was all about selling the cool image.  It was the whole point.  McQueen went well out of his way to make sure he looked cool.  He had an ego.  In the right context, that's exactly all you really need.

Billy Jack desperately needed anything, anything at all to work.  The success of the films, such as it was, owed everything to guerilla marketing.  It worked.  For that time.  But no one in the Hollywood establishment respected the results.  You don't need that.  But you do need good filmmaking.  

So do yourself a favor, and don't waste time investigating Billy Jack.  It's not worth your time.  Unless you have morbid curiosity.

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Always adding physical media into the collection…

I never stopped buying DVDs to my collection. I only started buying Blu-rays a few years ago, when I finally got a player upgrade. Yesterday (and today!) was pretty lucky. I always like to check out thrift stores to see what they’ve got. A local community college had apparently purged its collection (because, y’know, streaming platforms fall all over themselves promoting classic film…), had even tried giving their stock away for free, and, well…I ended up getting to benefit. I certainly don’t mind!

Here’s what I picked up:

-As You Like It, one of Kenneth Branagh’s later Shakespeare adaptations. Haven’t seen it yet.

-Blow Out, a Brian De Palma/John Travolta classic I also haven’t seen yet, in a Criterion Collection edition, no less.

-Cloud Atlas, one of those supremely ambitious novels/movies with an all star cast headed by Tom Hanks in probably (several) of his most interesting performances, which I’ve been wanting to revisit for a few years.

-Dog Day Afternoon, an Al Pacino classic I’ve never seen.

-Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary on Banksy. Back in yon Borders days, I learned about the graffiti genius through a number of books we always had stocked. A few years back I saw a different Banksy doc on a plane ride.

-Frost/Nixon, which is another movie I’ve long wanted to see.

-A doc on Hemingway.

-The Madness of King George, a ‘90s movie that I’ve also been interested in seeing for years.

-The Man Who Would Be King, which I’ve been wanting to add to my collection for years. Great movie.

-Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a BBC production starring Gemma Arterton I’ve had in my collection before and am glad to add back in, also so I can watch it again.

-Whale Rider, which I’ll be very happy to see again.

-White Christmas, which is a big family favorite I haven’t owned until now.

-Leading Men/Leading Ladies, one of those collections of material that would probably have not sold much individually. By far the production I’m most interested in, here, is The Night America Trembled, concerning Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.

Dollar Tree is a surprisingly good place to find interesting things, including books and, yes, DVDs (and Blu-rays!). Today I found:

-Good Kill, a movie starring Ethan Hawks and Zoe Kravitz (which will probably be the first time I see her in something other than a genre performance).

-The Sun Is Also a Star/Everything, Everything, two adaptation of Nicola Yoon books.

-Killing Eve Season Two, a BBC series (Dollar Tree often has BBC programming, including generous helpings of Doctor Who) starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer (who stole The Last Duel from Adam Driver and Matt Damon). Haven’t seen the show yet, so this will be interesting.

-Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…, a TV series featuring interviews with and performances from a variety of interesting folks.

-Best of British, a box set of various documentaries and several facsimiles of historical documents, which was indeed an awesome find.