Let’s see if we can’t more than double that this week! 😉 If you know the song and artist, guess in the comments below, it’s just that simple. Good luck!
“Sail on, silver girl”
“Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin'”
“And the sky was made of amethyst”
“Flambeau dancers light the walkway to Jean Pierre’s”
“I wonder how the old folks are tonight”
“Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now”
“Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox”
Hamnet is a wonderful, often excruciatingly beautiful exploration of grief. It takes quite a while to get there, though I can’t decide if that’s by necessity, if that last hour of grief and loss would work as well if you didn’t frame it within the larger love story. The movie has some genuinely incredible performances, not least by the child actor playing the title role, and some of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen, especially in that final hour—so much so that I can forgive it for feeling like it’s just waiting for that hour from its very first one.
I don’t know if I kept waiting for Smiles of a Summer Night to become more, or less, like A Little Night Music, the musical which was based on it. Still, it has several playfully fun scenes and performances, even if there’s nary a clown to be sent in anywhere.
Oh, Nighthawks is bad. Some of that, I’m sure, is the editing, which chops out whole characters and scenes, but what’s left is so boring and dumb that it’s difficult to see how the movie might have worked even in its original cut. The movie doesn’t even make a compelling case for its title. The Washington Post movie review at the time reportedly panned the movie by calling it “what The Day of the Jackal might have looked like if filmed by the producers of Baretta.” Rutger Hauer is only occasionally compelling, Sylvester Stallone is almost purposefully not, and everyone else gets lost by the wayside.
Dust Bunny could do with a little more inventiveness in its story and characters to match its production design, but there’s a fun visual flair through most of the film. It’s hardly the best of Bryan Fuller’s work, but he at least acquits himself reasonably well in the transition from TV to movies.
Pete Hujar’s Day isn’t necessarily profound, beyond finding profundity in the mundane, in the simple act of two people talking to one another, its glimpse of a brief moment of 1970s New York.
Videoheaven makes a number of interesting observations, but none that it doesn’t belabor or support with too many clips. You could easily sharpen the film’s focus by editing out a full hour of the film’s three, without sacrificing any of its history, connections, or critical appraisals.
I can’t really recommend Lady Frankenstein—it’s a shoddy mishmash of the Mary Shelley story and some Italian gothic horror—but if you are going to watch it, you could do a lot worse than the version hosted by Elvira.
I saw 7 movies last week. There was something of a theme until the very end:
Upon seeing Angel’s Egg, Hayao Miyazaki reportedly said it was “not something others would understand.” I’m not sure understanding is what the movie wants or expects, but he wasn’t wrong. It’s intriguing, often stunningly animated, but I could not for the life of me tell you what it’s supposed to be about.
After the Rehearsal feels like a meditation on sadness and the end of a life—I know, a shock for Bergman!—with bare staging and three compelling performances.
What makes It Was Just an Accident remarkable is not just its harrowing depiction of the cycle of violence, or what it says against the Iranian regime, or how it was filmed in secret, but its humor and humanity in addition to all of that.
The costumes and special effects in Planeta bur never rise above classic Doctor Who level, and its grasp on planetary science is questionable at best, but it’s an intriguing glimpse into Soviet-era science fiction filmmaking.
As with his appearances in other films, Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot character in Mon Oncle usually elicits more bemused smiles from me than full-on laughter, and yet there is a lovely and meticulous craft to Tati’s films, as well as a knowing lampooning of the characters and the society they have built around them.
There’s a loveliness and real sense of longing in Babette’s Feast.
Some impressive late-game costume and makeup work notwithstanding, The Boneyard is largely terrible, dull and confused for most of its runtime and a mishmash of tones that are ridiculous when they should be scary, creepy when they should be funny. There’s half a half-baked idea in the mess—and it could have been much worse, given what was obviously a very low budget—but I very much did not enjoy this.
Is this fun for anybody else? Is anybody but the very small handful of people guessing an equally small handful of lyrics the last couple of weeks even reading this? Who can say. Only a few lyrics were guessed last week…
…but maybe this week the throngs of silent readers will fare better. As always, the rules are simple: below are 10 random lyrics. Guess the song and artist in the comments if you know them. Don’t cheat by looking them up.
“Daylight is waiting for you”
“Wolves” by Down Like Silver
“They beat a Valentine drum”
“Counting Back to 1” by Beautiful Small Machines
“We’re gonna chug-a-lug and shout”
“After Midnight” by J.J. Cale
“Dammit Elvis, don’t you know you made your mama so proud”
“Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” by Drive-By Truckers
“You gonna take away my energy”
“Jive Talkin'” by the Bee Gees
“The actors and jesters are here”
“If Everyone Was Listening” by Supertramp
“Young hearts can go their way”
“Time Has Come Today” by the Chambers Brothers
“The radio reminds me of my home far away”
“Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, guessed by John
