Rewatches January 2022

I made a concerted effort to tackle more of the catalog movies to start off the year, coming up with a whopping seventeen (two bonus, but I'll explain).

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) This is easily one of my favorite movies, and my favorite Will Ferrell, in which (and he had a whole string of sports movies at one point) he plays a NASCAR driver dueling an evil Frenchman played by Sacha Baron Cohen.  It's one of Ferrell's John C. Reilly movies, too, and is one of Amy Adams' breakthrough appearances.  

They All Laughed (1981) A Peter Bogdanovich film (good timing, since he just passed away) in which John Ritter and Audrey Hepburn, among others, are involved in unlikely romantic pairings.  Included in the DVD release is an interview between Bogdanovich and Wes Anderson, in which I suspect Anderson was most interested in talking with a guy who knew Orson Welles, one of the few people who put as much effort into making movies as Anderson himself.

Thirteen Days (2000) Kevin Costner's second JFK flick revolves around the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for me is a prime example of Kennedy's brilliant leadership.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) Martin McDonagh finds mainstream success with this cautionary tale about social media logic starring Francis McDormand as one of her iconic Midwestern roles (see also: Fargo, Nomadland), plus Sam Rockwell being Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson in what seems like it's a villainous role, but isn't.

Three Kings (1999) David O. Russell's breakthrough movie, George Clooney's second classic (after Out of Sight), and the first classic movie based on a war in Iraq.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) I'm convinced a large part of what's wrong with the culture today is that there are too many idiots who are getting to control the narrative.  This movie was one of the early victims.  Adapted from a bestselling book (which I didn't read until later; I saw the movie originally because Eric Bana was one of the leading stars of Hollywood at that time, and I was a big fan), viewers found it creepy instead of romantic, that little girl in the field finding the naked time traveler being interpreted in exactly the manner you would if those few words are all you know about it.  But it's a classic book, a classic movie, and that's that.

To the Wonder (2013) The final movie Roger Ebert reviewed before his death, it was also the movie other critics chose to decide Terrence Malick was no longer someone they wanted to enjoy.  Their loss.  Unlike Tree of Life, which I found riveting, I couldn't make it through the first time.  This time was easier.

Tomb Raider (2018) Another movie that didn't deserve total instant dismissal.

Tomorrowland (2015) The movie that proved Disney was no longer capable of generating its own hits, quite undeservedly so.  Criticizing the continuing impulse to complain without actually doing anything, this was one of several high profile laments over the apparent death of the space program that happily has finally gotten back on track.  Also another George Clooney movie needlessly dismissed.

Topsy-Turvy (1999) I originally saw this in college as part of a world cinema series.  It's the story of Gilbert & Sullivan's production of The Mikado (which later popped up as a favorite of Grissom's in CSI), which in the grand Hollywood tradition of movies about making movies, is instead a movie about making an opera.

Training Day (2001) Denzel Washington, reaching an acting crescendo in the final moments of a brilliant performance.  I'm not sure he's found material worthy of it since.  Similar, but never of comparable challenge.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) Bogart drives himself crazy trying to justify a wasted existence.  The gold becomes just an excuse.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story (2006) Based on the book (which I actually read, although I was greatly distracted by Uncle Toby, much as Steve Coogan is so paranoid about), one of the great movies.  It really is.

True Romance (1993) One of two scripts Quentin Tarantino did not direct himself (the other being Natural Born Killers) is grounds for a Christian Slater performance that at its best transcends his Nicholson act, and features one of those trademark Tarantino moments, in which Dennis Hopper very inappropriately tricks Christopher Walken into killing, rather than torturing, him.

Under the Silver Lake (2019) Released the same year as Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Andrew Garfield stumbles into a weird cult phenomenon of his own, including a bewildering revelation about an old songwriter that's the best scene in the movie.

And, in Tampa, January means Gasparilla, the pirate festival, which means I watched two additional movies, out of the regular catalog, filed by franchise:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) The fourth in the series, revolving mostly around Jack Sparrow, Blackbeard, and the Fountain of Youth, featuring Sam Claflin before I later caught back up with him in Every Breath You Take.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) I admit, at the time I had little patience for the fourth and fifth films, because they violated what was a key draw for me with the first three: Jack Sparrow is balanced by an equally compelling costar or two.  Penelope Cruz is the replacement costar in Tides, but there really isn't one in Tales.  Orlando Bloom does return, but only for glimpses, in it (with an even briefer look at Keira Knightley).  Fortunately, like the later Claflin role that caught my notice, the replacement costar in Tales, Brenton Thwaites, ended up back on my radar in the TV show Titans, making it easier to revisit.  Claflin's role is incredibly minimal, by the way, in Tides, where Thwaites, playing the son of Bloom and Keira's characters, is in effect taking Bloom's spot.  The whole thrust of Tales is revisiting the feel of the first one.  

So I will have to officially include both as worthy installments in the series.  I enjoyed them.