Category: film rants

Yawn.
I don’t really care about any of the movies opening this week. Hero looks like the only interesting possibility. So I will suggest alternative movies to rent for each new movie appearing in Austin this week.
Also, aGLIFF opened in Austin this weekend, which is probably an improvement on most of the mainstream stuff in theaters right now.

Continue reading movies this week: support your local video store

I’m writing this on Wednesday night, earlier than usual. That way, if I end up looking like Vincent D’Onofrio in The Salton Sea after I leave the doctor’s office tomorrow, at least I won’t have to worry about this one thing.
August is traditionally a cinematically lackluster month. The real blockbusters start earlier in the summer. August is a time for the Films of Desperation: the pseudo-blockbusters that studios hope and pray you’ll go see because they’re new and hyped and you already saw all the good movies. Or else they’re hoping you’ll go see anything to get out of the nasty hot weather. Even the selection of movies at the Paramount isn’t as good as the lineup in June or July.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can find a few good independent movies that couldn’t quite wait until the end of the year. Cross your fingers.

Continue reading movies this week: the early edition

William Goldman once wrote that all sequels are whore’s movies. I tend to agree with him for the most part — after all, how many sequels are made from box-office bombs? The bottom line obviously dictates whether or not to rehash the original material as a sequel. However, that doesn’t mean that all sequels are poor movies: The Godfather, Part II, Evil Dead 2 (and Army of Darkness), The Empire Strikes Back, and Aliens are all very good and entertaining sequels. Perhaps Mr. Goldman would call them courtesan movies.
Summertime is prime sequel-pimpin’ time, and this has been a better summer than most for enjoyable sequels. Spider-Man 2 was a lot of fun. I didn’t see Shrek 2 (I disliked the first one) but many people felt it was better than the original. The Bourne Supremacy is supposed to be a good solid action film.

Continue reading movies this week: Saturday the 14th

I can tell you all about the movies I bought on DVD tonight at Fry’s. They were on sale and I had some extra money so I went crazy: Cold Comfort Farm, The Cat’s Meow, and The Truth about Charlie. Before you all fall over backwards with shock about the last one, let me explain that the Truth about Charlie DVD also have Charade on it and the consensus from various review sites is that this is the best transfer of Charade available, even better than the Criterion DVD. Also, much cheaper than the Criterion DVD. I almost bought Junior Bonner but I want to find out about the DVD quality first because I am picky that way. For the sake of Steve McQueen, I assure you.
You don’t want to hear about any of this, do you. You want to hear about new movies, movies that are premiering this week. No one wants to know all the sordid details of my DVD collection (which is actually a lot smaller than you would think). No one wants to hear about the later films of Bogdanovich and Schlesinger. That’s fine.
This is all procrastination because I feel like I don’t have much of anything to say about this week’s movies. It must be some kind of summer movie slump. Or maybe it’s because I’ve had to work on Math Stuff in the office, and Math Stuff makes me cranky and edgy and less likely to show much interest in new movies. Also, I can feel a headache approaching. But I will try my best.

Continue reading movies this week: the migraine mix

I must say it has been difficult to follow in the footsteps of the creator of this type of entry. I feel rather like Dorothy Parker as she filled in temporarily as The New Yorker drama critic for Robert Benchley, while he was off in Hollywood for a few months. It seemed as though the minute he left town, the quality of plays plummeted, only to rise again when he returned. However, Ms. Parker at least knew that Mr. Benchley would eventually return and free her from her difficult task. And while we might reasonably debate the merits of Mr. Gallaga versus Mr. Benchley, Dorothy Parker could write me under the table, even when hungover and disappointed in love. Maybe especially then.
So I lag behind, intimidated by a standard of The Funny that I cannot quite reach, gathering up little bits and scraps of hints about movies that I have not yet seen, trying to form them into a brilliant pastiche, bursting with wit and cleverness and stylishness.

Continue reading movies this week: ode to parkbench

Here is a little story with a moral afterwards, a moral that you might not expect from the subject matter.
A song got stuck in my head at work today. Not one of the usual songs, but a woman singing “he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs meee” over and over. She sounded a little like Shirley MacLaine.
Oh, yeah. I remembered that sometime in the previous week, my boyfriend and I had heard that song while watching something-or-other, and we both thought it sounded familiar, but we couldn’t place the song. We agreed it sounded like a show tune, so it was odd that my boyfriend would find it familiar because he avoids musicals like the plague.
And I’d meant to find out more about the song, and had forgotten until it got stuck in my head. I decided to run some searches while on my lunch break.

Continue reading she needs it to stop

I’ve been way too busy watching two of the Season Four DVDs from The Simpsons to think about movies very much. Are there movies opening this weekend? Oh, yeah, we saw that trailer with Halle Berry in the leather catsuit, and everyone’s been swooning over Matt Damon. How could I forget?
I started having dreams in Simpsons-like animation so we had to take the DVDs back to the rental store. We still have three movies out from the mail-order rental service, though: Alice Adams (for me), On the Waterfront (for my boyfriend), and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (to watch together this weekend).

Continue reading movies this week: cats and Matts and cigarettes, dude

The movies opening in Austin this week are at extremes. At one end of the spectrum, we have a typical summer blockbuster film, complete with Will Smith and explosions and maybe even plummeting, and a twee bit of fluff aimed solely at giggly teen girls. At the other end, we have obscure art films that sound like they can transform 90 minutes into days. Days without end. Days populated with heartrending children and animals. I suppose I should like one type or the other, but instead I’ll probably stay home and watch early Katharine Hepburn films. Or early George Clooney films.

Continue reading movies this week: robots vs. camels