Rewatches December 2021

 This was another month bogged down in non-catalogue affairs, plus Christmas (more on that later), so not a ton to speak of, but plenty to say anyway...

The Stunt Man (1980) I don't think I'd even heard of it until I saw a special edition DVD at K-Mart, and then I kind of fell into the rabbit hole suggested by the accompanying documentary about the difficulties of the production.  Watching it again, now, obviously Peter O'Toole is always magnetic, which was most of the response it received on release (O'Toole received one of his non-winning Oscar nominations for the performance), but as with a lot of movies it now looks pretty dated, so that was distracting.  

Super Troopers (2001)

Super Troopers 2 (2018) The first is the breakthrough Broken Lizard production that became a cult classic, although I didn't see it until years later, and by that time I'd seen the troupe in Club Dread, which I loved, and so that was my Broken Lizard film (Beerfest was of course even more delightfully ridiculous), but as far as mainstream popularity goes Super Troopers remains the legacy.  So the belated follow-up finally happened, and I loved it the first time I watched it and loved just as much this time.  Just a lot of great Canadian humor this time.  Broken Lizard is never gonna be the American Monty Python, but the guys certainly tried.  

Syriana (2005) This was kind of the movie that convinced critics it was actually okay to like George Clooney (for a while), in which he participates in a grim assessment on the war in Afghanistan (Matt Damon costars).  I think it's predictably cynical.  Star Trek alum Alexander Siddig plays a prince looking to inherit the throne with grand ambitions for reform, so of course Clooney is assigned to take him out, because his brother is much better for American interests.  Clooney packed on the weight and grew a beard for the movie, and was rewarded with stellar notices for a few movies he starred in afterward, including Michael Clayton and Up in the Air.  

My Christmas tradition is watching Christmas movies and TV specials.  I've only recently added Bill Murray's Scrooged to the bunch, but it's become, actually, the one I most look forward to.  Also in the mix this year were the Jim Carrey A Christmas Carol; the Patrick Stewart version (which I've watched every Christmas morning for years); The Polar Express; Elf, Carrey's The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; Olive, the Other Reindeer; Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas; and the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas."  If you can't get a good sense of what I enjoy out of that, I don't know what to tell ya.

Rewatches November 2021

 I watched a lot of different things last month outside of the catalog rewatches, so there's not a lot to cover here except some movies that were well worth revisiting:

Solaris (2002) This is one of those movies I never understood how it got such a lousy reputation.  As near as I can tell, this only happened because critics and/or viewers were bizarrely protective of a book that has disappeared from the popular consciousness and a prior adaptation that was never in it.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, credits that in a previous era would have guaranteed acclaim rather than prevented it, this is the kind of movie that challenges and rewards viewer patience.  Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis are ample supporting actors in this Clooney spotlight.  I never understood why it always seemed so hard to just admit how magnetic Clooney is.  This was before critics finally agreed, for a couple movies at least (Michael Clayton, Up in the Air), that he was indeed a movie star, and so they were still supposed to resent his existence, regardless of the quality of the material he was appearing in.  This is a story about the toxic allure of believing a lie, even when you know a trap has been set.  It is another classic piece of work from both Soderbergh and Clooney.

Source Code (2011) This is a movie I loved on first viewing.  It's the second directorial effort from Duncan Jones (another inexplicable victim of a system that often seems to reject talent regardless of actual talent), a repeating day story about a terrorist attack a powerful new policing tool can help prevent, if only Jake Gyllenhaal can stop worrying about his real world problems long enough to figure out how.  Of course, his real problems are very real, and revealed gradually enough that they're themselves a compelling feature of the movie, but his repeating eight minutes on a train are great drama, and if you're not happy that he manages to be happy he spends most of them with Michelle Monaghan, there's something wrong with you.  Jeffrey Wright has one of his great supporting roles, but the real star is Vera Farmiga, who initially seems too dismissive of Gyllenhaal's plight, but finally becomes his savior, in an ending that elevates the whole movie and places it far beyond its reputation and very close to a classic.  I hadn't watched it basically in ten years, and it was as good this time as it was the last time.

Unoffically, Starman (1984) was part of this, but I was watching it for the first time.  When Jeff Bridges later costarred in K-PAX, that was a movie that wasn't supposed to be enjoyed because it was "too much like Starman."  The two movies are nothing at all alike, as it turns out.

Stick It (2006)  This will always be one of my favorite movies that I was probably not really intended to like at all.  It's a gymnastics teen drama.  Bridges costars, which was one of my early Jeff Bridges experiences, although the movie around him is so fun and lively, you don't need to watch it for him if you're worried he's the only thing you're going to like.  I kind of assume this is a movie that people weren't supposed to like because Olympic gymnastics is still the thing everyone's supposed to love regardless of what we learn about the coaches, and a movie that condemns the relentless judgmental nature of it shouldn't be condoned.  All the same, it's as awesome a movie today as it ever was.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)  It's very easy to assume that Will Ferrell made this movie believing it was his Truman Show, the movie Jim Carrey made almost a decade prior that thrust him in a more dramatic fashion while also trading on his goofy persona.  And it really, really wants to be that, but I think no one really knew how to nail it.  Ferrell is a man inadvertently living the life of an author's main character in her next book.  No attempt is made to explain how this is possible, except that it's a fact that eventually everyone just accepts.  Ferrell is as great as he ever is.  Everyone in it is fine, in fact, but the story, which is a story about stories, just can't figure itself out.  So you either accept it as is or you're left scratching your head, and settle for continuing to be a fan of Will Ferrell.  Which you should be.  He's been one of the best actors in Hollywood for two decades.

Rewatches October 2021

Safe House (1999) The lack of a real film career for Patrick Stewart kind of always baffled me.  Outside of Star Trek and X-Men, he doesn't have much to show for all his considerable talent.  Rewatching Safe House, it became a little more understandable.  I think either he just wasn't offered a lot of options, or he wasn't very good at making selections from them.  Safe House is a classic Patrick Stewart performance, filled with just about every quirk you've seen if you're familiar with his Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except the story itself can't decide if it's ridiculous or if we should be taking it seriously.  Stewart plays an ex-CIA DIA operative who in retirement lives a paranoid life no one around him understands.  Because the film can't decide what it is, Stewart spends most of it looking unnecessarily silly.  I'm left with the question, why waste his talent on something like this?

Screwed (2000) The death of Norm Macdonald hit a lot of people pretty hard.  I had been a fan who tried to keep tabs on his career post-Saturday Night Live, but eventually he sank into an undeserved oblivion (except for a vocal performance in The Orville, his last notable work).  He was one of those people, like John Cleese, who couldn't help but sound hilarious. Screwed is Macdonald playing a butler who hatches a crazy scheme with Dave Chappelle to stage his own kidnapping, with equally ridiculous results.  I love it.

Serenity (2005) This latest rewatch I finally just threw my hands up.  Joss Whedon developed a whole cult following thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which carried over into Firefly, the short-lived show Serenity continues.  Ironically, it wasn't until Whedon reached his career zenith as director of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron that people finally decided maybe they didn't like him as much as they thought they did.  If I could sum up the career of Joss Whedon in one word, it would be: self-indulgent.  He was never really one to question the logic of his decisions.  The results, more often than not, were far more ridiculous, and not in the good Norm Macdonald sense, than anyone ever cared to admit.

Serenity (2019) In recent years critics have kind of gone out of their way to discredit the kinds of movies that used to define the mainstream.  This Serenity was one of those victims, labeled a total disaster despite being anchored by compelling performances from Matthew McConnaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, and Djimon Hounsou, and an unusual story whose logic is spelled out despite what you might have heard, high concept, in the aftermath of Shyamalan and Nolan, having apparently become taboo.

Shazam! (2019) With the massive success of the MCU, the DCEU's relative failure tended to be explained as it lacking the sense of fun that pervaded, well, the successful MCU.  So Shazam! happened, and was actually less successful than the DCEU had been to that point.  I like it.  I don't love it (it doesn't help that lead character Billy Batson is outshined by two of his kid costars, Freddy Freeman and Darla (who hopefully has a vastly expanded role in the sequel).

Sicario (2015) Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to Prisoners, and to date his last English-language straight drama, powered by the doubt of Emily Blunt as she attempts to navigate the murky waters of Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) The follow-up, not directed by Villeneuve, is basically a repudiation of the first one, Brolin and Del Toro on the defensive, although it makes a strong case for the films best being understood as rare recent star vehicles for Del Toro, as this one ultimately hinges on his enigmatic foreign agent trying to find whatever justice he can.

Side Effects (2013) I can't really explain why Steven Soderbergh voluntarily shrank his Hollywood profile, perhaps feeling guilty over the glitz of his Ocean's trilogy.  Here he relies on Jude Law and Rooney Mara to navigate the tricky waters of the justice system and pharmacological drugs, with an unexpected twist ending.  I hadn't successfully watched the whole film previously (same as had happened with Prisoners), so it was a welcome discovery finding out what the actual film was like.  

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) I don't think this follow-up is as successful as the first one (which was full of fun performances).  This one is more about the general pulp noir feel, which itself is still fun to experience, and adding the likes of Eva Green and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the mix, plus increasing the size of Jessica Alba's role, creates enough new atmosphere to make it worth savoring.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) The paradox of the modern film era is that when CGI made anything possible, the very idea of movie magic seemed to become impossible to enjoy.  This early digital landscape came and went to little interest, although the results are still fun to watch, nearly twenty years later.  Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are a punchy duo in this version of something b-movies did all the time, but this one is just capable of doing it better.

2014 Capsule Reviews

 Interstellar

rating: *****

review: For me this was unquestionably Christopher Nolan hitting his highest note after The Dark Knight, and still his best film since, his most deeply piercing of the human experience, and the reason I personally became a big fan of Matthew McConnaughey.

Winter's Tale

rating: *****

review: Even before having recently having actually read a book by Mark Helprin, I fell heads over heels for this, which I saw because it stars my favorite actor, Colin Farrell, and costars two other favorites, Russell Crowe and Will Smith.  A truly transcendent fairy tale.

Locke

rating: *****

review: Back when there was still chatter of Tom Hardy being the best actor of his generation, there was a lot of interest in this hugely ambitious and yet incredibly simple movie: Hardy talking into a phone the whole movie, and that's it.  I find the results fascinating.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

rating: ****

review: Believe or not, but for those who are aware that Isle of Dogs later became one of my all-time favorite movies, I haven't really immersed myself in Wes Anderson's films.  This was very, very easy to love, and hits the kind of notes most other films don't even dream considering while employing Anderson's trademark all-star ensemble cast formula.

Miss Julie

rating: ****

review: Colin Farrell again, acting opposite Jessica Chastain in what is essentially a play staged directly to film.  I can't think of two actors I'd rather enjoy carrying a whole movie together.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's the movie that allowed everyone to love Michael Keaton again, a brilliant jazz case study of legacy and stage acting, filmed as one long cut.  It's hard not to be impressed.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's Ridley Scott waxing poetic about the sad lives of great men, on a biblical scale, but for me it's always been the showcase for Joel Edgerton's best performance.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

rating: ****

review: For a brief moment it really did seem that Jessica Chastain was going to be recognized as one of Hollywood's new giants, but that's not really how it's played out since.  This is arguably her greatest showcase, with an incredible three separate cuts with which to enjoy it.

Edge of Tomorrow

rating: ****

review: You may not realize this, but Hollywood really does go out of its way to try and make you hate its stars, after a while, and they'll do it in such a way that you think it was your idea.  Tom Cruise had already reached that point ten years earlier, and he had increasingly relied on action roles to keep his popular career going.  By the time this one came out everyone was tired of the act, but then enough people realized that it was actually pretty good that it deservedly became a cult hit.

Inherent Vice

rating: ****

review: Thomas Pynchon at last earns his Hollywood moment, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

The LEGO Movie

rating: ****

review: In what might have come off as a shameless plug for toys, it actually turns out to be one of the great Will Ferrell movies, among other things.  Everyone just assumes in animated movies these days it's a Disney Pixar world, but neither Disney nor Pixar is capable of something like this.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

rating: ****

review: Maybe you have to be the rare demographic that's familiar with both the western genre and Seth MacFarlane to appreciate it, but I found this hilarious, a spoof worthy of comparison with Blazing Saddles.

Noah

rating: ****

review: Russell Crowe brings so much weightiness to his performances it can sometimes seem difficult to justify.  I think this one does.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

rating: ****

review: I mean, sure, if you're worried so much about how the villains come off, you might worry about enjoying this one.  But everything else is literally amazing.  There are no better Spider-Man movies than the Webb/Garfield/Stone ones.

American Sniper

rating: ****

review: This is the last adult drama to top a year's box office.  It's probably Eastwood's last big statement.  And it's Bradley Cooper's biggest breakthrough.  This is the one that made him capable of doing whatever he wants.  He deserved it.  

Muppets Most Wanted

rating: ****

review: Everyone loved how the first one made the Muppets relevant again.  I love how this one just lets them be the Muppets again.

Monuments Men

rating: ****

review: Critics seemed baffled that anyone would waste time about making a movie around the guys who saved art during WWII.  I think the movie itself explains that, and does it entertainingly.  

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

rating: ****

review: I love these movies.  I'm still astonished they even happened.

John Wick

rating: ****

review: I admit I was pretty late to this party, so I'm still working at fully appreciating the results, but c'mon, this is Keanu Reeves finding a third defining film series.  Who does that???

The Zero Theorem

rating: ***

review: Terry Gilliam is sometimes just weird.  This is him being weird without really nailing the magic he finds in his best work.

Hercules

rating: ***

review: The good news is that this is far, far superior to The Scorpion King.  The bad news is that Dwayne Johnson doesn't quite find the Greek myth equivalent of the Avengers he might have been looking for.

Guardians of the Galaxy

rating: ***

review: It's very enjoyable, a huge breath of fresh air in the MCU, but it ain't quite Star Wars and it ain't quite Princess Bride, both of which it kind of wants to be.  

Dumb and Dumber To

rating: ***

review: Even though Jim Carrey is one of my all-time favorite actors, I confess one of the movies he's best known for I don't really know that well.  So this sequel is greeted, by me, as funny, but maybe not the best way to try and salvage his career at that time.

Snowpiercer

rating: ***

review: Greeted as an instant cult favorite, I caught it later and enjoyed it, but not sure it's quite the treasure everyone says it is.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

rating: ***

review: This kind of became the franchise where popular film careers came to die.  Undeservedly so.  This was another fine Chris Pine showcase with a fun supporting cast around him.

The Drop

rating: ***

review: James Gandolfini must have been a very confused man.  He received endless praise for his TV work (hey, Bryan Cranston has received the same treatment, by the way), but anytime he did a movie he couldn't find any love.  This is another movie worth considering to try and figure out why.  Tom Hardy, meanwhile, does another accent job.  A movie I personally need to revisit at some point, too.

Deliver Us From Evil

rating: ***

review: At this point I had such high expectations for Eric Bana movies, it was disappointing to see that he had reached his brick wall, from which he has yet to emerge.

The Theory of Everything

rating: ***

review: Kind of the opposite of A Beautiful Mind, this is the Stephen Hawking movie that kind of asks you to be okay with the way his marriage ended.  Colors my whole perception of the results.

X-Men: Days of the Future Past

rating: ***

review: Hugh Jackman had become bigger than the X-Men franchise from the moment he first appeared in it, but at the same time he also forever found it difficult to outlive.  This is the exact moment in which he began to succeed, and it's all the more impossible to care about anything else happening around him.  Except Quicksilver.  That was the second brilliant thing these X-Men movies did.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

rating: ***

review: I originally thought of this as the Nick Fury movie.  Then I thought of it as the elevator fight movie.  Now I guess I really just have to rewatch it, and I still think it's one of the better MCU efforts, but it's still tough to think of the whole movie as a distinct achievement.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

rating: ***

review: I actually do really enjoy the Hobbit movies, but Jackson's decision to have that one guy make truly ridiculous efforts to try and get away with being a terrible person, it gets in the way.  It's the main reason I haven't made an effort to rewatch the trilogy, which on the whole I think is better than the first one.

The Expendables 3

rating: ***

review: I love how this one commits to Mel Gibson being the villain.  If he can't be a Hollywood star like he used to, he ought to at least have interesting roles available.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

rating: ***

review: I love how these movies suddenly just dive into a dystopian future in this one.  

Let's Be Cops

rating: **

review: If Jake Johnson had significantly changed his persona from New Girl for this, he might have gone on to have an actual movie career.  Still enjoyable.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

rating: **

review: I always thought the Transformers were far too big in their movies.  And essentially it's difficult to love these movies for the same reason.  Only here, it just seems more egregious.

300: Rise of an Empire

rating: **

review: On the one hand, it's great to just let Eva Green be the lead actor, but on the other, it's kind of disappointing that they did make an effort to replace Gerard Butler, but they didn't really try.

Divergent

rating: **

review: I love how I really did hear people at the time praising the concept.  But this is strictly a cash grab attempt on the heels of the Twilight movies, and everyone involved knew it.  could have been better if they'd actually made a commitment.  Still more worth watching the complete series than the even less inspired Hunger Games movies, which are laughably just full of themselves.

Left Behind

rating: **

review: Kind of technically the last time Nicolas Cage was in something the studio actually expected someone to see while making it, a remake of a prior set of films based on the book series.  Too bad the whole budget was blown on Cage, although it's still interesting to think he made it at all.  In some alternate reality there're people who equally believe the whole series will be filmed someday, much like the Narnia books.

Selma

rating: **

review: Still one of my biggest cinematic disappointments.  Someone finally makes a movie about MLK, Jr., and it's barely even a movie.  

Rewatches September 2021

 I rewatched Jackie Brown and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (the latter because of its new, and very excellent, novel adaptation) from Quentin Tarantino.  In hindsight Jackie Brown is absolutely the beginning of Tarantino's mature career, when he wasn't just trying to be cool but make truly great movies, too.  The detour into Kill Bill led into a string of movies that truly went for the gusto.  There's no one who makes such complete statements as Tarantino, maximizing the skills of the considerable casts he assembles with the best storytelling and dialogue possible.  Visually there are better filmmakers, certainly, but Tarantino has been so consistent for so long and can do whatever he wants, and has.  And that began with Jackie Brown.

Also unofficial entries this month were Bram Stoker's Dracula (a highly underrated piece of Hollywood art) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (an undeserved poor reputation, though Robert De Niro again proves he's a great actor with a fairly limited range).

Now onto the catalog rewatches:

Red Cliff (2008-2009) John Woo's epic two-part meditation on the causes of war, including a defense of its necessity at times, is probably going to be very tough to top as my favorite Chinese movie.  I hadn't watched it since the first watch, so it was very much like watching it again for the first time, and again well worth it.

Rent (2005) In college the musical made sense, and in 2005 the movie did, too, but in 2021 it seems like a whole experience that was only possible from a community that only gazes back on itself, which at this moment feels too insular for me.  Still the right call to plug Rosario Dawson into a cast otherwise comprised of the original Broadway actors, including Idina Menzel before Frozen.

The Right Stuff (1983) I think even counting this one I have not technically stayed awake for the whole thing, which the filmmakers clearly saw as a potential problem the historic figures it chronicles couldn't figure out; the excellent cast makes them as lively as they can, but this is a long slog and most of it heads in a direction where the piloting skills that make these guys stand out isn't even necessary, so the story is one long effort to make the audience forget this.  But it's a worthy experience full of real heroes, including the guy who didn't even get to be an astronaut, Chuck Yeager, who drove an author and a director to distraction anyway, and rightfully so.

The Rocketeer (1991) After Tim Burton's Batman, comic book characters were seen as the next big thing, so Hollywood instantly sought whatever was available, and filmable, and the result was a decade that never once lived up to the potential, thanks in large part to relying on nostalgia acts with no connection to what people actually wanted to see.  Rocketeer is great, but it's exactly old-time movie serial material, with no effort at all to update it.  Indiana Jones it is not.

Russian Ark (2002) In the years since, Hollywood has been chasing the continuous tracking shot trick with increasing eagerness (Birdman, 1917), but this is the film that got there first.  Funny enough, it's exactly as Russian as you might expect, even going so far as to feel more like a Russian novel than a film, so keep that in mind (although in this realm you're probably more likely to be interested having it described that way, if you had any interest already).  For non-Russian, non-European audiences (read: American audiences) it's somewhat impenetrable.  But it's still a considerable achievement, and well worth experiencing at least once.  Like The Right Stuff, I still haven't technically made it all the way through, but this viewing left me more confident that I would be interested in doing so at a future date.

Rewatches August 2021

Moby Dick (1998) This is a TV miniseries starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab, with Gregory Peck, who starred in the 1956 theatrical version as Ahab, also appearing.  Stewart had, two years prior, evoked and quoted from the Melville novel in Star Trek: First Contact, which made it ironic for him to end up in this production (as Picard, he eventually realizes revenge is a poor motivator).   I haven't really watched it too many times, so it was worth revisiting.  Stewart makes the role Shakespearean, as expected.  Ted Levine's Starbuck is the real star of the production, however, a counterpoint to Ahab that eclipses even Henry Thomas's Ishmael.

Molly's Game (2017) Jessica Chastain is one of my favorite actresses, and the script is from Aaron Sorkin, so I always assumed I'd love a movie pairing them together.  The opening, in which Molly Bloom explains the irrelevant end of her competitive downhill skiing career, is basically the only time either the script or Chastain really shine, however.  The rest is a gambling tale about a person making bad decisions and endlessly rationalizing them, and that's not really something that interests me.  This is the second time I've watched it.  Maybe a third would change my opinion.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) A longtime favorite, but apparently one I really hadn't watched in a very long time, as this seemed like a pretty fresh experience with it.  All the classic bits, of course, but I found other things I'd completely forgotten about (I have more recent experience with The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is something I used to listen to a lot), so that certainly made this rewatch rewarding.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) This satire about Jesus Christ is pretty amusing and insightful, as Monty Python tends to be, but it isn't really, for me, as successful as Holy Grail, perhaps because it doesn't attempt to be nearly as silly, but rather as close to serious as Monty Python was ever likely to be.  For general historical satire, I guess I prefer Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part 1.

Moon (2009) It had been a long time since I watched this, too!  Sam Rockwell has turned into such a dependable actor, it's almost easy to take him for granted.  This was before "doomed astronaut" became a whole genre, by the way!  I also enjoy seeing the work of Duncan Jones when it still seemed everyone was going to love him forever.  But it turned out, basically, to be for one film.  Everyone loved him for one film.  (This one.)

Mrs. Miniver (1942) Since I'm still a home video kind of guy, my collection sometimes happens by adding movies because they're paired with other movies.  I spent a long time not watching Mrs. Miniver, so long I eventually completely forgot what movie its DVD was paired with, but now I can say I've corrected this oversight and that I quite enjoy Mrs. Miniver itself, starring Greer Garson in the title role, in a movie that apparently helped motivate the US into taking WWII seriously, which itself is a great way to sell the movie, as far as I'm concerned.  I still wish the title were different, though.

The Odyssey (1997) Another TV miniseries, a chance to revisit one of my favorite classics (actually, so is Moby-Dick).  The greatest takeaway this time is that Christopher Lee's cameo as Tiresias might as well have been an audition for Saruman (and for all I know, basically was).

Out of Sight (1998) George Clooney, once his career finally got into gear, ended up producing a lot of great material in a short amount of time.  This is the first of his classics, and it's just one of the many signs that we live in an age that finds it impossible to identify new classics that it still isn't recognized as such.  Costarring Jennifer Lopez before everyone decided she couldn't act because she decided to start a singing career.

The Perfect Storm (2000) I'm always on the fence as to whether this belongs in Clooney's classics list, but I'll always be a sucker for it, coming from Maine and loving seafaring adventures of one kind or another.  

Pete's Dragon (2016) I'm such a sucker for the director David Lowery, and am continually confused as to how difficult it is for his work to be appreciated, by both audiences and critics.  I loved Pete's Dragon the first time I watched it.  I love it even more now.  The most audacious and inexplicable live action remake of a Disney movie yet attempted.

The Pink Panther (2006) My dad loves the original Clousseau movies.  I'm partial to the Steve Martin versions.  I love Martin's Clousseau, who unlike the Peter Sellers version isn't just a sight gag machine but a lingual hilarity in on the joke of a Frenchman being played by, well, someone who isn't French.  Martin butchering the word "hamburger" is an all-time highlight for me, in and out of Clousseau lore.

The Pink Panther 2 (2009) I love the first one so much I was always uncertain about the second one.  This time I was able to cast aside all doubts.  I love this one, too.

The Princess Bride (1987) Another classic, and one that's generally accepted by most film fans.  I mean, I find it difficult to understand how anyone wouldn't love it.  In a lot of ways, a love letter to classic Hollywood (Cary Elwes is basically an ode to Errol Flynn as Westley, as Mel Brooks would later make all the more blatant in Robin Hood: Men in Tights), and as simple and pure a romance as was ever filmed, and a host of fantastic supporting performances.  My parents always dismissed Peter Falk because of something or other he did in his personal life, but I couldn't care less.  His framing scenes with Fred Savage are icing on this cake.  I later read the original book, which is just as rewarding an experience.

Prisoners (2013) The first time I watched Denis Villeneuve's Hollywood debut, I ended up falling asleep for most of it.  This is not, as many people try to contend when they fall asleep during a movie, a criticism; I fall asleep watching stuff all the time.  Turns out I missed a great deal of the movie.  This is an intricately designed movie, a classic that is yet another victim of the current inability to recognize new classics.  Villeneuve's later movies are absolutely reflected in the results, and I have renewed expectations for his Dune.  

R.I.P.D. (2013) In the years before Deadpool, no one really knew what to make of Ryan Reynolds, and so his work was easy to dismiss.  R.I.P.D. was dismissed as a ripoff of Men in Black, mostly because of the fairly similar premises.  But R.I.P.D. is very much its own thing.  Reynolds comes closest, pre-Deadpool, to finding the exact Deadpool vibe, but it's really Jeff Bridges getting to play his ornery cowboy act one more time that's the star of this show.  That and Marissa Miller.  (That whole bit got completely lost because nobody wanted to admit there was anything worth enjoying about the movie.  When the complete opposite is actually true.)

Also worth mentioning is that upon rewatching 2021's The Courier, I found that I love it even more.  I can't fathom how little appreciate this movie's gotten so far.  I just find movie reactions inexplicable in recent years.  Hopefully all this will even out eventually.

Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019) Review

rating: ****

the story: Survivors of an apocalypse living on the moon discover their best hope for the future is inside the hollow Earth…and all they need to do is defeat Space Hitler to obtain it!

review: Obviously I don’t review a ton of movies as described above (nor watch them!). I am not a fan of schlock cinema. I don’t make a point even to watch it if it’s the subject of sarcastic commentary. On the surface Iron Sky: The Coming Race is pretty much exactly schlock cinema. You can watch it with the expectation that the results are going to be ridiculous, and be happy with it.

I haven’t even seen the first one yet. I did see Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s first feature film, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a madcap Star Trek parody, and have remained interested in what he does next. When the chance to see Coming Race came up, I figured it was worth a look.

It was!

For those keeping score, it’s very possible to see in the results direct nods to another sci-fi franchise. There’s a spaceship culled from Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon, the kind of nod that has surprisingly taken a lot longer to happen (outside Spaceballs’ Winnebago, of course!), more than forty years in the making. In fact, the career of Vuorensola suggests that we’re getting that much closer to actual responses to George Lucas, rather than mere attempts to cash in (which was easy enough to attempt…immediately).

The movie, with its political and even social satire (the riff on Steve Jobs and smartphone culture, employing a surprisingly effective performance from Tom Green of all people, is more successful than evoking Sarah Palin, the part critics who just wanted to dismiss the results fixated on), knows when to take things seriously and when to just unleash expectations (Space Hitler’s abruptly hilarious fate!)

Surprisingly or not, comic books, and comic book movies, often seem like they want to be exactly like this, and too seldom manage to pull it off, despite considerable, sometimes painfully desperate, efforts. 

Anyway, it’s the kind of movie that seems unlikely on basically every level, including the ability to be legitimately entertaining. It pulls it off!