Last week, I watched 8 movies:
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- Dead Calm generates a lot of terrific tension.
- The Big Clock is fun, resting mostly on the performances.
- Flesh + Blood sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be bleak, amidst the gore and the violence, and I suppose I can understand why some critics at the time felt the movie needed a hero, or at least a guiding morality. But as Noel Murray wrote a couple decades later, “The rawness of it all fits into Verhoeven’s persistent vision of a world of mass delusion, where self-interest masquerades as good intentions—a hell on Earth where the poor die while the rich get paid.”
- Sean Baker treats even his sometimes unlikable characters with such empathy and understanding that Anora would probably be worth watching even without such a stunning central performance by Mikey Madison.
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- There are moments to enjoy in The End of the River, one of only two movies that Powell and Pressburger co-produced under the Archers imprint, independent of their own films. But those moments are scattered, and it’s difficult to say what exactly they add up to.
- Borderline incomprehensible, Bad Kids Go to Hell would like to flatter itself that it’s edgy, almost clever, but the movie is all smartass and no smarts, a largely unpleasant experience, with a bargain-bin collection of borrowed plot devices and ill-equipped actors.
- Questions over some of its historical accuracy aside, the biggest problem with Elizabeth: The Golden Age isn’t its dramatic license, but its lack of drama altogether. The film tries to cover too much, too many years of Elizabeth’s reign, to such an extent that sweeping historical events hardly have a chance to register on the screen. Despite the sumptuous production design and some strong performances, particularly Cate Blanchett in the title role, this is a weak follow-up to 1998’s Elizabeth.
- Larger Than Life is amiable but not particularly funny. (And there’s a good reason why A Time to Kill, released the same year, and not this, was Matthew McConaughey’s breakout role.)
I also re-watched Steven Spielberg’s Duel, which is arguably the best TV movie ever made.