She poured the dark liquid from the pot to the cup. Tasted it. Bitter and broken in her mouth, cool but not cold as if she put a snake that wormed and pooled and bit. The coffee had been in the pot for a while.
She poured out the pot and ran the water. It ran brown and the faucet shuddered. She turned it off and back on, more shudder and no water.
Historic dramas have always been money in the bank. Get some well known actor, cover him in old looking stuff, and tell a fake story involving true people. Drama ensues because that's what people make. Get two or more people together and they shit themselves with drama. Historic comedies, though, are super rare because nobody wants to make people important enough to talk about into a bunch of raging assholes, aka real people. Death of Stalin doesn't mind so much.
A group of criminals with a plan find themselves in problem solving mode when everything goes wrong. That's the definition of most heist movies. The leads are charismatic, the side characters are quirky, and the plot often leads with a slow clap. That's how they did it, you say, and walk from the theater thinking if only you could be that cool. Dog Day Afternoon is what would happen if you actually did try a heist.
It's really hard to keep a group of friends together, you know? You hang out all summer, working hard at that chicken finger job, and when school starts you all pledge to do it again next year. But really, look around. You're all a bunch of dipshits with no honor and your oaths mean nothing, unlike this episode of Game of Thrones where everyone's honor is held high and oaths mean everything.
When the Muppets came back with the big movie that won music awards and had Amy Adams in it, I had a hell of a lot of hope. They were my touchstone from childhood that over the years kinda became that thing I used to like. When Jason Segel and the crew came back, they filled it with heart and joy that I remembered from before Henson left us. Then those creative people left and we got the corporate mandated Muppets Most Wanted.
Horror often gets its balls cut off. Many of the entries in the genre are just this side of comedy, relegated even to jokes like the Chuckie scene in Ready Player One. True horror, the existential dread of life, seems to have been pushed aside in favor of jump scares and cheering when teenagers get hacked apart. Few movies contemplate a horror like the Autopsy of Jane Doe.
Most stories are about secrets being uncovered. They have an engine, something that drives the story that might be a secret all its own, but at the end of the day audiences are a bunch of nosy bastards who want to know all a character's secrets. Get enough characters together and a lot of hidden blood will be spilt.
There was a point while watching Boyhood when I stopped looking at my watch, but I can't tell you when that was. Clocking in at just over three hours and covering ten years of life, Boyhood works on many levels. That being said, I'll probably never see it again.
We have a lot of fun at the cinema, don't we? Go in there, relax in sorta comfy seats. The lights go low and some actor people put on a show for us. They tell the same stories, again and again, and we react. Then some nutjob comes along once in a blue moon and asks the eternal question: What if you robbed a federal money place during a hurricane?
I remember back in the day watching Angelina Jolie jump around and smirk with a fake accent and big boobs. Sorry. I can't help what I remember. I've moved on and so has Lara Croft. Ever since her new generation video game reboot, the Tomb Raider series has grown up a bit and put protagonist Lara Croft through her paces. The movie is no exception.
Little while ago while discussing A Wrinkle in Time, I talked about adapting things. All those expectations to live up to. Of course, I left out one thing: Steven Fucking Spielberg. Dude does not give a shit about your hopes and dreams for the thing you like, he just wants to make a good movie well told. Turns out, he's pretty good at it, too.
I said a lot of mean shit about A Wrinkle in Time (2018) and I meant every word. Especially the part about adapting a book to movie, tempering readers, studios, and viewers expectations. I still mean that with this book, but more with a shrug and an "attah movie, you tried hard." Perks of Being a Wallflower, adapted by the author, struggles to live up to the prose by giving it a voice it didn't need.
Filming a book is hard. You have to live up to the reader's expectations (which is impossible), the expectations of the studio (they have a known thing people like so it should do well), and the general expectations of your average Joe who doesn't want to waste ten plus dollars. Of course, the best creative things tell the expectations to go to hell. The newest remake of A Wrinkle in Time is not one of the best creative things.
Some days just suck, huh? Those days where you have to sit and ponder the great things in life like whether to say some shit you know ain't right or have your daughters brutally murdered. Or lie so you can kidnap a dude. Or trust a lady that your boo's homies probably raped with said boo's health. Just a hell of a day in Westeros in the penultimate episode of season one as we contemplate honor and lineage.
Back in nineteen eighty something, a blonde lady on the screen made me smile so hard my face hurt. She was screaming about something with Kurt Russell or in a dumb movie with Chevy Chase or in the army or coaching a team… You know, Goldie Hawn was in a lot of places for a long time. And she was brilliant. You know what? She's still brilliant. Snatched does not let that show, though.
People don't have exciting lives. Not most people. They gather, they laugh, they eat, they make little babies to gather, laugh and eat. We tell stories of extraordinary people to feel extraordinary and compete with each other in games so we can get the rush of living. Game Night is about those ordinary people getting to feel extraordinary over one crazy ass night with a postmodern nonsense senseibility.
What is it about bored rich white girls that makes you want to see them murder the shit out of people? Or get murdered themselves? Or are just a thing to be reckoned with? Mean Girls, Heathers, Sorority Massacre IV… All these movies exist to show us that the rich and affluent have problems, too, y'all. Can I tell you a secret? I love the shit out of them and Thoroughbreds might be the best ever.
What happens ten years down the line after the romance has faded, the kids are had, and the secret resentments toil and bubble? You can still make each other laugh, you can still work in concert, but that passion and spark is a warm glowing sameness. What's the thing about the frog in the pot? If you turn the water up over time you can boil the creature without a problem? Before Midnight is the conclusion to a romance at its boiling point.
Old friends are rare. Those friends that you knew long ago and for some reason separated from, that you see again and boom, right back. Old friends never leave you. They stamp their mark on you whether you knew them for years or hours. Before Sunset tells the story of a rekindling, a romance rebuilt because nine years before two lost souls became old friends over night.
What if I told you there was a movie about two people talking, just talking, that's probably one of the top romantic movies ever? No, I'm not talking about My Dinner with Andre. These people walk while they talk. And they're funny and smart and just damn likeable in a mid-90s stuck on a train in Europe kind of way. I hold up Before Sunrise as part of the best romantic movie of all time, the Before trilogy.
