I watched a dozen movies last week:
- The War of the Gargantuas does exactly what it says on the tin. Its charms are in the bad dubbing, the rubber suit monsters, and the wanton destruction of miniatures.
She-Wolf of London is fairly slight and a little silly, but June Lockhart’s quite good in it.
- Omni Loop is strange and surprising and more than a little sad, and Mary-Louise Parker is really great in it.
- Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) is maybe more about the second half of that equation more than the first, though it certainly never skirts around the amount that Sly Stone’s blackness impacted the arc of his own self-destructive behavior and career. The documentary is an interesting look back and some genuinely terrific music.
- In her review at the time, Janet Maslin reportedly called Rock & Rule “dopey and loud,” which describes the movie very well.
- I was surprised by how seriously and thoughtfully Crossfire tackled bigotry and the violence it inspires, and there are a lot of really good performances throughout.
- More American Graffiti is interesting, though it’s a little difficult to say what its disjointed narrative is really in service of, how these stories connect in any meaningful way to one another, much less the original film.
- Stage Door is just incredibly smart and acerbic, and all of the actresses in it (Hepburn and Rogers especially) are fantastic.
- Crank is as fast-paced and high-octane as you expect, which is honestly more than a little tiring after an hour and a half, especially with not especially likable characters.
- Tin Men is honest and straightforward and often very funny.
- Memoir of a Snail is a strange and obviously deeply personal film, in some ways a much less cozy, much more Ozzie flipside of Wallace & Gromit.
- The Brutalist is sweeping yet intimate, and if what it says isn’t always groundbreaking, how it does so, and the performances used to tell the story, are nothing short of fantastic.
I also re-watched E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which I haven’t rewatched in a few years but which remains just such an incredibly affecting film and genuinely one of Spielberg’s best.
