Week 31: film festival winner
I probably scored this one too low (see below) because I wasn’t sure how much I was enjoying it in the moment, but if I revisited it, I’d probably notch it up a little, because a lot of this movie works. Turturro and Goodman are both great, the supporting cast rock solid, some great monologues here and there, and the themes of how the Hollywood system of the studio era chewed up and spat out talented writers, something that’s come back around just as hard in the IP era. Chris Terrio wrote a fantastic script for Argo, but then Ben Affleck asked him to help right the ship on Justice League, Disney asked the same for an embattled Star Wars saga, and now those are both millstones on his neck and I haven’t heard of anything he’s doing now. On the flip side, Barton Fink himself feeling he’s the voice of the common man but being fundamentally unable to write “a b-movie about wrestlers” (a perfect allegory for the 2010s’ superhero era written at a time when Hollywood was still trying to figure out how to follow Batman) is also a great arc… the voice of the common man, unable to “lower” himself to speak to their tastes.
Yeah, it probably deserved more than–
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 32: black and white film
And so I said to myself “It’s about time you watched Raging Bull.” And I was correct. This made my so-very-limited Letterboxd list “Biopics that are Good, Actually,” mostly through Martin Scorsese shooting this thing like it’s the last movie he’d ever get to make, and also through being willing to do what so few biopics are… depict its subject as absolute trash. Jake LaMotta sucked, prone to domestic violence and fits of paranoia over his wives that nothing could derail, and De Niro doesn’t hold back on depicting the ugly side of Bad Rocky, and how much his baser instincts eventually cost him.
Rating: 4/5
Week 33: a sequel
I’d just rewatched the original for Academy Vs Audience, was considering the legacy sequel that had just dropped on Netflix, and decided to watch part two. Which it turns out Kid Me had seen? Or at least been in the room with. The running gag of Billy being super into Rambo-style guns now and being told “Billy, we need to talk” felt very familiar. But nothing else did, so… still mostly felt like a new watch. And this is a sequel largely done right: the work of establishing Axel’s various relationships and how his vibe differs from Beverly Hills is done, so this one can just hit the ground running and get into investigations and hijinks. A fun time that demands little of you.
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 34: set during the Great Depression
Okay, so, the Great Depression doesn’t really come up, but the prompt was not “About the Great Depression,” was it. And once my AVA co-hosts and I found out that a movie starring Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, and the Three danged Stooges existed, but audiences had the audacity to make something else the top grossing movie of 1933 (let alone something from Eddie fucking Cantor), we were outraged. So, this seemed the time to check it out. I think I mainly had two problems with it. First, it felt like they were trying to do a Team Stefan/Team Damon (or Edward/Jacob if that’s your brand of vodka) thing with Clark Gable and Franchot Tone, in that maybe they thought we were supposed to gradually realize Gable was the better suitor, but that was clear from moment one. Not being into Clark Gable has historically been a character flaw the female lead needed to get over, and it was clear to me immediately that the rich jackass pursuing Crawford’s titular dancing lady was trying to ensnare her in an elegantly gilded cage. Tone wanted to possess her, Gable wanted to give her the world to see what she’d do with it. Begrudgingly at first, that was part of his bad-boy charm.
Second, I can see why the Three Stooges hit it big once they’d dropped Ted Healy. Or he died. Whichever it was.
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 35: book adaptation
I just needed a movie to watch with my mother while she was visiting, and this one turned out to fit the prompt. Go me. I wrote a play called Ungentlemanly Warfare, it was well received by those who saw it, but very different. Mine is purely fictional, if still based on Churchill’s black ops saboteurs, this one is apparently based on a real mission. If no doubt Hollywood’d up considerably. Mine (and a rival play that went up two years earlier and forced mine onto the backburner) was about an all-female squad, this one was not, but that’s on history.
Anyway it’s not peak Guy Richie, and falls into the Inglourious Basterds trap of selling itself on the squad doing fun violence but the main action is a cat-and-mouse game between embattled agents and clever Nazi officers which the killers are merely assisting, but hey, Superman, Jack Reacher, and Ralph Fiennes’ nephew kill a bunch of Nazis and that is a certified Good Time.
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 34: your favourite film
Okay sure twist my arm, I’ll watch Ghostbusters, heck yeah I’ll watch Ghostbusters. And I could have left it there, but I felt the urge to take it to another level… the full Spengler Saga.
(Nothing against 2016’s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, but I’m not made of time)
Rating: 5/5
Week 34: your favourite film Secret of the Ooze
Ghostbusters 2 is one of my prime examples of a sequel that tried too hard to recapture the exact alchemy of a big hit and got too obsessed with matching every detail. So the Ghostbusters had to start at the bottom, take a case for specifically Dana Barrett, do a high-profile ghostbusting and become celebrities, get shut down by a civic official (reliable character actor Kurt Fuller doing his best but coming across as store-brand Walter Peck), then be called into action by the mayor when the latest haunting hits critical mass. It was all a little too by-the-numbers and didn’t quite match the heart.
Like Die Harder or Men in Black 2 or Ocean’s 12, they had all the ingredients, but not the recipe. Still fun, though, they were indeed dusting off ghosts like true ghost dusters (thanks, Run DMC).
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 34: your favourite film Rises
I love this movie and I will not apologize. I think Phoebe is a great new lead, especially for younger audiences experiencing this for this first time (like my niece, about the same age as Phoebe at the time), I think they did a good job expanding the Gozer lore (including explaining exactly what the Keymaster and Gatekeeper are meant to do), the Spengler family dynamics work, I even like Podcast, the return of the OGs hits, and when Ghost Egon helps Phoebe with her proton pack, I tear up. It has the nostalgic touches and Easter eggs but doesn’t get lost in them; if you don’t know why there’s a Twinkie in the glove compartment of Ecto-1 you aren’t missing anything.
Okay, to be fair, these later sequels do not know what to do with Trevor, but I think it’s Hollywood Illegal to do a supernatural-themed 80s nostalgia project and not have a Stranger Things kid in there somewhere.*
Is it less of a pure comedy than the original? Sure, probably, but it is still very funny. If you do the math do you begin to have concerns about when exactly Egon left his family? Hey shut up let’s move on
Rating: 5/5, I’m not sorry
*Fine with the exception of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but that had so many side characters as it was
Week 34: your favourite film Ghost Protocol
Oh so first it’s “They forgot it’s a comedy” and then it’s “There are too many comedy characters,” I see how it is. Fine, yes, there are probably too many plotlines going on here. Winston’s ghost busting research center, Kumail Nanjiani needing to embrace his family’s legacy, Trevor and Slimer doing some Coyote and Roadrunner hijinks, it’s all a lot when Gary (Paul Rudd) trying to navigate his role with Phoebe when he’s sort of but not officially part of the family, and Phoebe lashing out at said family over reluctance to share what she sees as her legacy, and forming a friendship-question-mark with a ghost girl she meets in a park both hit on all cylinders. But Kumail? Funny. Patton Oswalt’s cameo? Good. The head of the library being the same guy from the original’s cold-open? Once again good but not intrusive. The same ghost still haunting the library? Um…
But Ray, Winston, Janine, Venkman, all well used. Venkman being a psychologist actually comes into play, giving him a useful cameo, Mayor Walter Peck was kind of a genius move to add tension… this one’s fun, and Phoebe and Ghost Melody’s relationship is moving.
Look I know they’re focussing on Netflix content with this franchise now, but given how hard Sony’s other franchise, the VenoMorbiverse, ate it this year, maybe we could continue giving me Spengler family adventures?
Rating: 4/5, I will not apologize, it’s a blast
Week 35 (finally): natural disaster
LA sure gets some lava all over it as 70s disaster movies begin to reinvent themselves for the 90s. Same large ensemble cast (with less idea how to use everyone, John Corbett just vanishes), same Noble Hero Tries to Save Who He Can (including just the dumbest kid ever, the sheer distance this kid wanders off to end up in lava-danger), bigger concepts.
Look they’re not all gonna be deep, they promised a volcano and they delivered one.
Rating: 3/5
Week 38: set in your location/region
There simply aren’t that many movies set in Calgary, and I’ve already seen Waydowntown, so that left movies about unlikely 1988 Olympians. And seeing the actual Jamaican bobsled team in action was a more pleasant day for Kid Me than trying to see Eddie the Eagle, the ski-jump ultimately not even happening due to the high winds that were making me so damned cold and uncomfortable I was having a full meltdown the whole time.
This one certainly has its charms, and plenty of John Candy to boot. It hits all the beats an underdog comedy needs to, so you can’t help but be charmed and cheer for these (largely fictionalized) knuckleheads, and be sad when a mechanical failure causes them to fall just short. Definitely more of the Rocky style “proved they can go the distance” sports movie but, like, their hands were tied, Jamaica did not win the gold, and fictionalizing to that extent was a bridge too far. This isn’t The Pope’s Exorcist.
Rating: 3.5/5
Week 39: about a composer/musician/ band/group
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back did not prepare me for a villain arc from Morris Day and the Time, and if we’re meant to believe that Prince’s The Kid isn’t wowing crowds until the title track debuts at the very end, maybe, and this was hard for Price… write a song that’s actually mid? I’m supposed to believe that nobody is jamming with Let’s Go Crazy?
Ultimately Prince tried too hard to be enigmatic, and it made this one hard to connect with, but the songs sure slap like a Stooges marathon.
Rating: 3/5
Week 40: foreign film
Where even to start with this except that it says something about a movie when a woman having sex with a car and ending up pregnant isn’t the most “out there” thing that happens. This movie is a ride of poor decisions cascading into each other, and not for the squeamish, but it seemed worth getting around to. I was probably right.
Rating: 3.5/5
Next page: time’s arrow flies ever forward, and 52 weeks must end
