Thursday, October 10, 2019

These Weeks in Tickets: 23 September 2019 - 6 October 2019

My job pays me money that I spend on movies, but on occasion gets in the way of seeing them, as when they send me to some Dallas-area parking lot with a building in the middle for the better part of a week so that I can sit in on three hours or so of meetings.

This Week in Tickets

This Week in Tickets

Not that this is why I've got a blank page for the 23rd to 26th; sometimes there's just not enough to see, inconvenient times for what does look interesting, and maybe some rain to get in the way. Then there's a bunch of smaller stuff that looks like fun, and I actually make a relatively rare stop at the Capitol for The Day Shall Come on Friday, which is good but not quite what I had hoped for.

Saturday, I wound up doing a double feature of Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles & Monos on Saturday, which is not necessarily a completely strange pairing; both have Spanish-speaking leads and animals dying in unpleasant fashion. I liked Monos more, and am glad that I finally got to it after having missed it at IFFBoston.

Sunday's movie wound up being Abominable, with the time more or less selected around when it was playing in 3D, which has really thinned out in Boston despite the fact that if you've got AMC's A-List, it doesn't actually cost more. That's a bummer, because DreamWorks tends to use that tool well and this particular movie is a perfectly nice, charming family adventure; hopefully the nieces and their friends will dig it.

Then it was home it was to rest up for the next morning when I'd have to be up early to get to Logan to get to Dallas to get to Carrollton, which is not exactly a fun town, but apparently Agile development requires these big PI planning get-togethers. There was "mandatory fun" all three nights, because who doesn't enjoy spending another three hours with their co-workers after being in the office and meetings with them all day? Especially if it means spending your birthday at TopGolf, which combines being a loud bar with stepping out into 90-degree heat to drive golf balls despite really not knowing how to swing a golf club well? It's just fantastic!

Still, the saddest evening was probably "casino night", where some folks from a local casino set up some tables at work and there was so-so food and mocktails with the chips representing not money, but raffle tickets for prizes at the end of the night. I bailed on that to see The Clmbers, wihch was only playing Imax theaters for the exact period when I would be in Texas, and you want the big screen for a Tsui Hark-produced movie about a Chinese team trying to summit Everest. The movie itself wasn't great, but the theater has become a Dine-In location since I was last in Frisco, meaning they brought a milkshake to my seat.

After getting in late Thursday, I was stupidly the only person not telecommuting on Friday, and while that should have been license to bail early - work grabs extra hours the first few days of the week, you get the last off, right? - I wound up not figuring something out until mid-afternoon and staying late, and thus not lined-up well for anything on a weekend where the big opening wasn't something I cared for anyway. Then a lazy Saturday wound up with some plans switched, sending me to Fresh Pond for a double feature of Dilili in Paris & The Parts You Lose, neither of which is very good although Dilili at least has the excuse of a horrible English dub.

So I wound up not seeing the new Takashi Miike, FIrst Love, until Sunday, and it was (as expected) kind of a kick. I hope this means Well Go is going to be distributing more Japanese films on top of just Miike's stuff, since aside from a few art-house names who get some attention (and have recently done European movies), what mainstream-ish stuff makes it out of Japan is mostly what can play a night or two for the anime crowd, and we could use a bit more Miike in theaters here.

I was then going to go back to Fresh Pond for War, but my stomach and intestines were warning me against a 155-minute Indian movie, so it was home with a quick detour for groceries. Maybe it'll be on my Letterboxd page later this week.


The Day Shall Come
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
Monos
Abominable



The Climbers
The Parts You Lose
Dilili in Paris
First Love

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