This Week in Tickets: 2 September 2019 - 8 September 2019

You may see a lot of empty white space on these pages; I see the weekend that I finally reached the bottom of the stack of comics that's been growing since I went to London for vacation.



(And, good gravy, is DC a disaster right now. It seems like they always are, but "Year of the Villain" is currently in the "re-reading the same beats in every series" stage, seemingly every idea Brian Bendis has for Superman is wrong-headed, the whole thing with Bane and Flashpoint Batman in Batman is awful. Who looked at these pitches and said "this will be fun and worth $4/issue"?)

It was, at least, a good week for baseball, or at least the two games I had tickets to. Wednesday was the result of me ordering in a kind of dumb manner - I didn't reallize that the ticket I got in a four-pack was also the Peanuts bobblehead game, so I bought a separate ticket for that, and then couldn't unload my original. A bummer, but I had a really nice seat for a game in which Mookie Betts hit the first two pitches he saw over the Monster (which also got me to the line-free King's Hawaiian barbecue concession stand during the game and out at the end with little fuss). Friday had me nervous - bullpen game against the seemingly-unstoppable-no-matter-who-gets-hurt Yankees - but they wound up winning 6-1.

But I digress from the entry on my movie blog that lists the movies I've seen in a given week. Those were seen on Sunday's excursion to Brookline, where I spent most of the day at the Coolidge. It started with Balloon, a German film that played Canadian theaters while I was in Montreal for Fantasia but which I didn't have time for. I'd sort of pegged it as a family movie at the time - it was rated G in Quebec - but it's not exactly that. There was apparently an earlier version (Night Crossing) made by Disney, but it wasn't well-remembered, and the makers of this one had to spend years negotiating with that company to get the rights to the story back (I'm guessing what the prominent thanks to Roland Emmerich in the credits refer to). After that, there was still a lot of convincing necessary, especially since the director was from Bavaria rather than the former East German and more known for comedy than thrillers. The film doesn't quite get to how, after reunification, some of the escapees were able to get their old house back and move back in, but that's neat.

(Aside: Thomas Krestschmann has played so many Nazis in international films despite being a tremendously charismatic guy that it's almost funny that he goes home and gets cast as Stasi.)

It wasn't a long wait after that for Official Secrets, which is pretty decent but not something I particularly regret missing at IFFBoston, even if there were some guests. It feels a bit like the filmmakers finding a story that makes a number of important points and seems dramatic enough but which only makes for a pretty-good movie rather than the great one you figure they'd gone for.

Hopefully a busier week for here and my Letterboxd page coming up, if only because there's a werid no-baseball Friday.

Ballon (Balloon)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2019 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Geothe-Institut German Film, DCP)

When I first saw the description of Balloon, I pegged it as a light family adventure, likely because the idea of fleeing a repressive society in a homemade hot-air balloon sounds fanciful, and the film didn't have enough red-flag content for the local ratings board to give it anything but the least restrictive rating. Of course, evading the Stasi while attempting to escape East Germany was no small matter, and that makes this movie a serious, no-nonsense thriller even if it doesn't have any harsh language or graphic violence. It's something of a throwback in that way, but that works for it.

It opens in 1979 on the day of the "Youth Dedication Ceremony" in the city of Possneck. Frank Strelzyk (Jonas Holdenrieder) is one of the graduating eighth-graders being honored as father Peter (Friedrich Mücke) mocks the presiding official to wife Doris (Karoline Schuch), despite the fact that they'll be giving neighbors Erik & Beate Baumann (Ronald Kukulies & Elisabeth Wasserscheid) a ride home, and Erik is a sort of mid-level bureaucrat with the Stasi. They don't intend to face the consequences, though, as the Strelzyks and their friends Günter & Petra Wetzel (David Kross & Alicia von Rittberg) have been working years on a hot-air balloon that will take them south, over the border to Bavaria, and the wind is right, even if the Wetzels have cold feet. The Strelzyks almost make it, but "almost" is a dangerous situation - it leaves enough clues behind for Lt. Col Seidel (Thomas Kretschmann) to pick up the scent, meaning they have to try again, except with weeks rather than months and the Stasi looking for them specifically.

Director and co-writer Michael Bully Herbig gets to that point, where the real meat of the film begins, fairly quickly, dispensing with a lot of what might be treated as important establishment of motivation. You don't really need to be told why anybody might want to flee East Germany, let alone why it's important for this specific group, so Herbig throws that in as details at the point where characters might actually mention it. Similarly, since this story involves the families doing a lot of things twice, it makes a lot of sense to just skip over the first time as much as possible rather than later feel like the filmmakers are spinning wheels or diminishing something's importance by doing a montage or not showing it later. It's a smart approach to this specific story and also just good storytelling in general - there's never a sense of anything important being left out or a filmmaker obviously trying to shape a story.

Full review at eFIlmCritic

Official Secrets

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2019 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)

Gavin Hood hasn't dedicated his entire directorial career to making films about the crimes and compromises behind the twenty-first century's Middle Eastern wars, but at three and counting, he's probably done more dramatic features on the subject than all but a few. If they ever become history people look back on rather than things that are still going on, those films will at the very least be an interesting set of commentary on the times as a group, even if some (like Official Secrets) are better as commentary than thrilling narrative.

The Official Secrets Act is the United Kingdom's primary law meant to protect national security, and in February 2004, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) went on trial for the events of nearly a year earlier, when as a translator of signals intelligence, she was forwarded a memo asking that any information that could be used to leverage United Nations delegates into supporting action in Iraq on rather flimsy pretexts. She gave a copy to a friend in the anti-war movement, via whom it eventually made its way to reporter Martin Bright (Matt Smith) of the Observer, a paper that had until that point been editorializing in favor of the war. Bright, Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode), and Washington correspondent Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans) must be careful running the information down - it's hard to prove the sender even exists - and when the story breaks and Katharine is discovered, her Kurdish husband Yasar (Adam Bakri) becomes a target and lawyer Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes) is hamstrung in what he can do to defend her.

There are times when Official Secrets seems almost too reserved and British for its own good, avoiding direct confrontation, short-circuiting a suspenseful stretch by having Katharine spontaneously confess, and making a lot of effort to repeat the details of what seems a convoluted legal strategy. But that's sort of the point; the film is about how institutions can smother people attempting to do right and how those in power arrange those institutions to make it more difficult. One of the most telling lines is almost tossed off, referencing how the law Katharine Gun has run afoul of was specifically amended when someone had successfully opposed corruption before. It's about crimes whose effects are devastating but diffuse, almost impossible to witness and report by design.

Full review at eFIlmCritic

This Week in Tickets: 12 August 2019 - 18 August 2019

The next time someone talks about superhero movie fatigue, remind them that the Brattle was able to program a whole series of films noirs celebrating their 75th anniversary this summer, and I don't know how many people were talking about "murder drama fatigue" in 1944.



Granted, there was a war on and people didn't recognize "film noir" as a genre yet, so there were probably other things to talk about. Still, it's been making for a fun way to revisit some nifty movies, with Tuesday's pair being Robert Siodmak's nifty Phantom Lady and Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear. Both of them, in addition to being solid little mysteries, are compact 90-minute movies.

The weekend started with Friday's Red Sox game, which was, thankfully, the sort of game you should be expecting them to have against the Orioles - the Red Sox score a lot of, the Orioles don't, and the whole thing never gets bogged down but still lasts long enough that you don't feel ripped off. This has not happened often enough this year.

Saturday was a cross-river double feature of Line Walker 2: Invisible Spy & The Nightingale. I liked the former a bit and the latter a lot, enough that I'm kind of surprised that it's really passed through the Boston area quickly, going from two screens to one small one and then gone at the Kendall and starting in the screening room and quickly reduced to sharing the Goldscreen at the Coolidge. It feels like it should be a hit, but isn't. I wonder if everybody (including myself) talking about how it's so violent and intense scared people off.

Sunday was another day split between two theaters, with a "Silents, Please" screening of The Woman Disputed at the Somerville and then Olivia at the Brattle. Both were interesting but not really my thing. Combine all that with the noir playing the next Monday night, though, and that's seven Academy-ratio movies in seven days, which is especially funny since the TV I've been watching is 2.35:1.

Falling behind on my Letterboxd page. Sorry about that.

Phantom Lady

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 August 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Noirversary, 35mm)

I find that Phantom Lady makes a terrific second impression, in that while it seems kind of all over the place and silly the first time around, it's very easy to discount those weird bits or find them charming later, and every viewing after that will have a viewer anticipating the good moments and letting the rest pass by.

The bulk of those good moments come from Elsa Raines as one of film's pluckiest amateur sleuths, a secretary obviously in love with the boss who has been framed for murder but not mooning over him, and able to both amusingly and believably capture how this is a thrill for her but also terrifying when she knows that she's in the middle of danger. She's a fun alternative to the usual clipped professionals or dour pessimists that lead this sort of thriller, with Franchot Tone gleefully diving into the sort of insane villain that has (happily) been kind of discredited by now.

It rolls, though. A lot of mysteries just seem artificial the second time through, badly-paced when you know what's going to happen, but this one is just more comfortable. It's the sort of thing where I'm torn between buying a disc or hoping it comes around on 35mm on a regular basis.

eFilmCritic review from 2015

Ministry of Fear

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 August 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Noirversary, 35mm)

One of the fun things about how I've been keeping this blog is that, even if I haven't actually found time to write up Ministry of Fear before, I can search the "Next Week in Tickets" entries and see that this shows up in Boston fairly often - indeed, this screening was behind schedule, as I have records of it playing 2012 (twice), 2014, and 2016. There are a lot of reasons to revisit it, and maybe the print is more available than some other things.

It plays as an odd little mystery that's got a bit of everything, from the Blitz to supernatural quackery to a dark secret that's not quite so dark as all that. I'm curious how some of it played when it showed up back in 1944; I tend to associate the bit with the medium with earlier periods of history, and the awkward bits of spycraft toward the start seem maybe a bit more surreal than they should - would someone who hasn't been in a mental hospital for a couple of years accept any of it? It's especially strange because the more realistic outlandishness of the air raids and hiding him away as a fugitive aren't quite the right contrast.

You've still got Fritz Lang behind the camera, though, and even if the script is said to lose a lot of the feel of Graham Greene's novel, you can't easily squander that amount of sheer talent. Lang has always done spy stuff well, and captures the sinister nature of what it's like to find oneself in the middle of this very well. I'm kind of curious about the odd lack of xenophobia shown in the movie - I don't know Lang's personal experience as a refugee at the time, but it's kind of curious that nobody seems to suspect the siblings with Austrian accents as being anything but what they say.

The Woman Disputed

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 August 2019 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, 35mm)

Thinking back on The Woman Disputed the better part of a week later, what it's trying to do is a little clearer - keep putting Norma Talmadge's Mary Ann Wagner into situations where people are able to think the best or the worst of her, such that even the man who loves her and stood up for her before is reluctant to believe her - and it's not entirely the film's fault that, 91 years on, its often less-than-feminist attitudes are just as eyebrow-raising as the decision to frame the Austrians as victims of Russian invaders in World War I (to be fair, WWI was a mess).

Even taking the whole product-of-its-time thing into account, though, the pacing is weird. It takes a while to get started, spins its wheels for a while, and then pushes the thing that feels like it should be the main engine of the film - will Mary Ann betray her fiancé to protect refugees and maybe help a spy get vital information out of the city? - is pushed toward the end with almost no time to deal with the fallout. It really exacerbates how even the people who say they love Mary Ann treat her terribly, and the end where Paul basically needs a man to publicly tell him that Mary Ann is a hero seems kind of egregious even for 1928.

The good news is that it's pretty easy to project Talmadge as recognizing that this is garbage along with the shame meant to be closer to the fore; she's got a scrappy charm that offsets the melodramatic woe nicely.

Olivia

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 August 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (special engagement, DCP)

The kind of distracting thing about Olivia is that star Marie-Claire Olivia looks right on the border of "too old to play a teenager", although given that it's a mid-century French film, it might just be filmmakers fetishizing and sexualizing innocence. That it's the rare film from that time and place directed by a woman doesn't really change that much, because it's queer as heck.

Indeed, Olivia (character and namesake actress) seems kind of peripheral to the really interesting story of two older women who are clearly each other's true loves but who had a rift develop sometime in the past that they've never been able to close. Mademoiselle Julie probably did, once upon a time, look at the young women in her charge a little too closely, especially the ones like Olivia who clearly like girls; another member of the staff has used this as a wedge to ingratiate herself with Mademoiselle Cara. It's the slow-motion fallout of an inciting event that itself doesn't matter. The students' devotion to one or the other of the pair feels like it could be a good way to represent this schism, but director Jacqueline Audry and the writers (adaptation of Colette Audry, dialogue by Pierre Laroche) don't make much of it.

It's still charming and often upbeat, enough to understand why the narration is sentimental despite a rather melancholy end. And given how unique a film it is for its time and place, a little imperfection or not connecting to people like me who are not its main audience is not something to worry about too much.

This Week in Tickets: 5 August 2019 - 11 August 2019

Back from Montreal, and London not long before that, and Hong Kong a little while earlier, and I'll often say the MBTA isn't that bad, but, yikes, while those places aren't perfect, there's a certain basic level of reliability to their public transportation that I kind of miss



Anyway, I'm leaving a gap here for Fantasia, and after getting my rest after the trip back, it was back to work and back to the movies on Monday, when I opted to catch Crawl because I'd heard good things online - which were pretty deserved; it knows what it's doing and does it well. And then, when I get home, there's a package with a new camera waiting, which is an ironic thing to get the day after arriving home from vacation.

The next night, I had a ticket to the Red Sox, and my encounters with the T went "the 350 bus is 20 minutes late", "the 350 bus breaks down and we wait by the side of the road for 20 minutes", "ten minute wait for the Red Line at Alewife", "two Green Line trains leave as I arrive at Park Street", and somehow I managed to avoid any more delays on the way to Kenmore (where it fortunately takes just a minute or two to buy some 35mm film for the camera). Once there, the game is not good; the Red Sox lose to the Royals 6-2, and I missed the first couple innings. What the heck happened to this team after last year, right?

Wednesday was for picking up a month's worth of comics (what the hell is DC doing these days? Who actually enjoys this "Year of the Villain" garbage enough for it to be in every damn book?), Thursday had me leaving work at a weird time, and then Friday's ride home just kind of wore me out and threw me off: I got to Alewife, and then actually got stuck in the tunnel between Alewife and Davis, eventually going back and moving to another train. I've gotta say, I kind of figured being on the train that held the whole Red Line up would be more exciting.

I briefly toyed with the idea of heading out to the Liberty Tree Mall to catch Nekrotronic, but guess I'll just settle for VOD after it took a few minutes longer than I'd allotted to get a haircut and I got cold feet at the times listed for transfers on Google, which could leave me all the way out in Salem and having to turn back. Instead, I caught Chinese firefighting adventure The Bravest early and then headed home, watched some baseball, and then caught Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 35mm at the Somerville, a reminder that film looks great and giving it up for the same of easier workflow was a mistake.

Sunday was laundry day, capped with Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Show on Assembly Row's Imax-branded screen. Not bad, but a little try-hard, and it's kind of crazy how weirdly big the spin-off from what started as a pretty modest series (and isn't nearly this grandiose) wound up being.

Sadly, my my Letterboxd page has fallen behind because I couldn't keep up in Montreal, but I'll do my best to keep it current while backfilling the festival stuff.

Crawl

* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2019 in AMC Boston Common #8 (first-run, DCP)

This movie does what it's supposed to do with no fuss and does it less than 90 minutes, which is something more horror movies should aspire to. It is a killer-animal movie that knows its job and spends just enough time building everything up to make everything that plays out extremely satisfying. It is the sort of thing you go into knowing it's a large alligator movie, where you spend the first act scoping out the terrain of the house and thinking about just what sort of trouble a corner will be when the reptiles finally appear, and still go "holy shit, gator!" when one shows up.

Around there, it's smart about knowing just how cranked up to be. Kaya Scodelario's Haley and Barry Pepper's father aren't stoic - they react to huge alligators in their basement during a Category Five hurricane with a believable amount of alarm - but they feel like people who can survive and won't exhaust the audience in doing so. The filmmakers are also pretty slick at getting the most of their effects - the CGI gators mesh very well with the practical ones (he says, assuming there are practical gators), and there's just enough gore the get the audience to react without getting to the point where it's taken for granted. They do a nice job of getting the light and sky to feel right, too.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 August 2019 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, 35mm)

Quentin Tarantino has always been more than a bit heavy-handed, but something about this movie makes me wonder if, for all the ways in which he is a terrible human being, Harvey Weinstein had a knack for reeling him in just enough. There are a lot of scenes that run just a bit too long here, and cameos that feel just a little too cute in part because people watching the movie know who his rep stable is. Maybe he could use a producer who knows how to say "this is great, but..."

Of course, the movie is great in a lot of ways - Tarantino's pure love of Hollywood and the movies comes through in how Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate seems to be radiating pure joy most of the time on-screen, even as a bit about not being recognized at the box office of a theater showing a movie she's in hints at how fleeting fame can be, for instance. He gives the audience a couple of men who have made complete messes of their lives and lets the audience wonder just how worthy of second chances they are even while acknowledging that they can't just stop living and working. I don't know that Leonardo DiCaprio is quite playing against type here, but he vanishes inside the tough-guy actor who is in truth a mess of insecurities in a way that he has seldom done before. It's a performance that's almost too funny and bombastic to feel good, but it nevertheless plays as authentic.

And it's gorgeous, between how Tarantino clearly shoots this to be seen on film first and foremost, framing shots wide enough that even 2K high definition is going to lose significant detail and making great use of twilight, and how the crew puts 1969 Los Angeles together, both via visual effects and in terms of design, with the occasional wink toward how filmmakers make the past feel contemporary without being anachronistic. It's fun to see Zoe Bell graduate to full stunt coordinator here; this isn't an action movie, but her and Quentin being on the same wavelength helps out a lot when the time for action comes. There's a great sequence in the middle that does a fantastic job of making the Manson Family the stuff of horror movies but also showing how people can dismiss it and the like until it's too late.

I'll still probably be happy to catch it again on 35mm while my local place is still running it that way, even if it's not quite up there with my favorite Tarantino flicks.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 August 2019 in AMC Assembly Row #1 (first-run, Imax digital)

There are credits for 3D conversion on this movie, nestled among an honestly absurd number of mid/post-credit scenes, but we don't get 3D in America, which is kind of a shame: This big dumb movie that just doesn't know when to scale back and never has any heft despite always cranking up the scale could not only use a bit of fake 3D, it probably deserves it.

(Yes, I checked the Hong Kong movie times app that is still on my phone to see if they got it in 3D - they did - and did you know there is a sequel to Minuscule and a new movie starring Simon Yam and Weathering with You playing there?)

Anyway, for as much fun as the Dwayne Johnson/Jason Statham team-ups were in the previous F&F movies, a whole movie is a lot of two puffed-up headcases bickering, especially since the intended counterweight is Vanessa Kirby just wanting no part of their stupidity. They're all trying too hard to be cool but never get tested in a way that makes them overcome it. Meanwhile, Idris Elba is given a potentially great true believer of an antagonist but the script makes him muscle rather than mastermind - apparently they're saving the alpha villain for a sequel - and the two cameos that could have actually served as fun complements to the very serious stars are trying too hard to be scene-stealers.

David Leitch is still pretty good at action even when he doesn't have people as happy to get down and dirty as Keanu Reeves or Charlize Theron (that Statham is less tied up in being an unstoppable force than Johnson tends to make him more fun to watch), but he's got a solid sense of how things move and tug at each other, from Elba's motorcycle that seems like an extension of the cyborg assassin and seemingly wants to be with him to the finale which, while shown plenty in the trailer, is still a genuinely terrific set-piece, even if it seems as deliberate in the world of the film as it does as part of a film.

It's fun, even if its old-school James Bond villains seem as far removed from the later Fast & Furious movies as they themselves are from the first movie's plot that involved stealing a few VCRs. It's a big, dumb movie, but probably wouldn't have worked smaller and smarter.

This Week in Tickets: 10 June 2019 - 16 June 2019

Weather both nice and bad kept the moviegoing to a minimum this week..



But first, two ballgames which did not go great - on Monday, the Red Sox coughed it up in the 9th, leading to extra innings and eventually losing it in the 11th. Unlike the last time, it was a crisp enough game that they got through eleven in the amount of time it often takes for nine. Tuesday, on the other hand, was kind of a sloggish butt-kicking, with Red Sox started Darwinzon Hernandez looking like a heart-attack style closer at the wrong end of the game.

Guys, you need to tighten the AL East up. I'm going to see the games in London next weekend and don't want the Brits laughing at us.

Lots of work trying to get ahead for that trip, which means I didn't get to the movies until Saturday, when I caught Men in Black: International in 3D, and, well, that wasn't much of a movie. Didn't stink, but didn't excite, either.

I planned for another movie after that, but they were showing the Red Sox game on the Common, so I planted myself with that, satisfying the twin impulses to try to be out in the nice weather and to just watch the game that are so often in conflict during these months, and it ended at a tricky time to see something else (well, at least that I hadn't seen). Then Sunday it was dreary, and a trip to the grocery store dissuaded me from going back out.

So, light week, and because I'll be away from the laptop for a while, updates will be on my Letterboxd page until further notice.

Men in Black: International

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 June 2019 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP)

It's fine. Like a lot of series built on whimsy, Men in Black is probably never going to match the sense of discovery and delight of the first installment, although the long stretches between movies have kept it from delving too much into mythology and backstory, because you can't expect people to easily pick back up where they left off. That's a plus. Still, without a genuinely creative story, it's slick and fun but not new and surprising.

The casting also just isn't the bit of genius it was back in 1997, where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones complemented each other perfectly. You're never going to go wrong putting Tessa Thompson in a movie, but she and Chris Hemsworth don't click like they did in Thor Ragnarock (where, to be fair, they were mostly individually great rather than displaying terrific chemistry), and the material just didn't seem to be there for Hemsworth to do enthusiastically dumb like when he's at his comedic best. His Agent H has to be taken a little bit seriously, and he doesn't quite make that work. For all that Thompson is reliably entertaining, she's let down a bit by a script that gives M a good backstory but isn't really sure what makes her tick. There's a story to be found in her reaching the end of her obsession, but the writers never quite figure out what it is.

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Then there is the matter of the villain, which is in some ways not the fault of the movie itself as much as how people interact with them these days. You kind of know that Liam Neeson's head of the London branch is going to be up to no good as soon as you see the poster - he's too good and too big a star to just be the boss (granted, so is Emma Thompson, but they're not sticking her front and center), and the attempt to redirect toward Rafe Spall just never has enough effort put into it to make the audience do more than shrug and wait for what's obviously going on. Neither is bad, but neither is interesting enough to make the outline of a story they've got work.



The film has fun bouncing around Europe and the effects guys design some nifty new aliens, but never really makes for much of a story, while F. Gary Gray just doesn't seem to have the light touch with the material Barry Sonnenfeld did. It still looks slick and has a couple decent moments, but it's nevertheless kind of a placeholder this summer, a thing to see if you like to see a new big fantasy every weekend.

This Weeks in Tickets: 27 May 2019 - 2 June 2019

Difficult conditions at Fenway this week.



On Tuesday, for instance, it was chilly and rainy and windy. I got there late enough to miss the start but early enough for a long rain delay. The game seemed to be going well enough, though, and then in the eighth inning the Red Sox pitchers absolutely forgot how to throw strikes and it just got miserable. No respect for how some of us weren't dressed properly or that the MBTA stops running sometime around 12:30am!

Although, I suppose, Fenway was worse off in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra converge on the park and then stomp around for a while. Did this at the furniture store, because giant monsters destroying your city should be seen in as close to actual size as possible. Shame no place had it in Imax 3D, though; there's some shots that look like they might be cool in third divisions.

The next afternoon was spent in the Somerville Theatre's main room. First up was Zaza, a rare DCP presentation in "Silents, Please" because the one print that exists in the Library of Congress is nitrate, and they not only don't let it out, but David doesn't sound eager to risk a fire in his booth, either. After that, a brief stop at Redbones and then back for Rocketman, which is pretty darn good, and I say that as a fan.

.. and that brings me up to what's on my Letterboxd page after a delay because my old computer finally gave up.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 June 2019 in Jordan's Furniture Reading (first-run, Imax laser 4K)

Think my apartment is still standing? I mean, it does take me an hour to get to Fenway on the T, so Somerville may be okay.

"Dumb" is kinds of a relative term in giant monster movies, and this one moves fast enough to get past that most of the time, although the result is that it feels really thin, and you can see the filmmakers hitting their targets. You need something human-scale, so there's a dysfunctional family in the middle of the action that we never really quite grow to like, while on the other end characters are killed off because the template calls for a noble sacrifice at this point, or they could only get a certain actress for a few days. The writers seem to have learned what radiation does from the same teacher as Stan Lee (radiation = energy = life!). The Monarch Group (which I remember more from Kong than the 2014 film) is way too pervasive and vaguely defined.

The action isn't bad, though, especially when the effects guys figure out how to get the giant monsters to feel like guys in suits, which is something that a lot of other CGI-intensive movies sometimes seem to actively avoid, which is a shame, because it feels right, if only because there's sixty-odd years of history there (shame they likely didn't make a miniature fenway to crush). The classic Godzilla music kicks in at just the right time - right at the tail end of a sequence that is one of the times you can feel the movie going "hey, why the hell not?" rather than trying to make this all serious or consciously funny.

It fills an IMAX screen pretty well, and I might watch it one moe time on the big screen to see how well the stereo guys did (there's some stuff that looks like it would be fun this way). It's missing the bits that would make it a great giant monster movie, but not the ones that make it a good one.

Zaza

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 June 2019 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Silents Please!, DCP)

Would I have noticed that the song in this movie (which an accompanist can't really ignore, as its name and sheet music are displayed on-screen) was adapted into one of Elvis's greatest hits if I hadn't been told? No, but it probably would have eaten at me.

It's a fun footnote to a romantic melodrama that probably seemed familiar a hundred years ago, with an entertainer falling for a rich patron only to run afoul of rivals and discover secrets. It deserves the bit of eye-rolling it gets at the end when someone gets an extremely unfair ending so others can get a nice one tacked on, a scene that ties things up too conspicuously neatly. You've seen this movie a lot and it seems too early to subvert. Gloria Swanson is having a ball, though, playing big and at her best when she gets to do some physical comedy. It's not a funny movie all around, but she and the filmmakers know how to make some of the sillier bits work.

This Week in Tickets: 8 April 2019 - 14 April 2019

You know what's kind of great? Weekends where everything you do for entertainment is actually pretty darn entertaining.



The work-week started with Dragged Across Concrete, which makes me ponder the calculus of movie-theater booking - it's got a guy who used to be a big star, but it's also coming out on VOD the same day, there's something else that doesn't need every showtime, it's 139 minutes and thus awkward to schedule… Anyway, I'm glad the Capitol picked it up, because even if it cost a bit more, it kind of benefits from being seen without distraction.

Tuesday was treated as a holiday, as it was the Red Sox' home opener, which was fun for the rings being passed out and such but later got out of hand scoring-wise and also very cold. Not ideal. Things got better on Friday, as the Red Sox won, it was moving at a good clip, and lots of fun things happened, including Jackie Bradley Junior making an amazing catch. The Sox have been bizarrely not good this year, considering how excellent almost the exact same team was last year, but baseball is fun.

After that, it was a pretty darn enjoyable weekend at the movies, because pretty much everything for the next couple of days was a solid example of its genre, and that much pretty darn good doesn't exactly require masterpieces. Saturday, for instance, started with Master Z: Ip Man Legacy finally arriving in North America, and it was filled with good screen fighters being put through their paces by Yuen Woo-Ping, and maybe it's the movie that makes Max Zhang a star rather than the guy the star fights. After that, it was time to head to Harvard Square where the Brattle had a double feature of Jackie Chan's Police Story and Police Story 2, where Jackie left no piece of glass unsmashed and pulled out a few just amazing fight scenes. There may be certain weak parts to these movies, but what he does well, he does very well indeed.

Sunday was another sort of split double-header, each half of which hit a certain part of my brain in a good way while indulging certain specific favorites. Missing Link, for instance, indulged my loves of animation (stop-motion specifically) and well-used 3D, while The Chaperone gave me Haley Lu Richardson as Louise Brooks, and that is pretty fantastic casting of one favorite as… well, maybe not quite another favorite, exactly, but an icon whose work I tend to enjoy.

That's a good run on my Letterboxd page; here's hoping for more before IFFBoston eats my life.

Dragged Across Concrete

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 April 2019 in Capitol Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)

I'm not sure which scene in this movie gets across where it's coming from most clearly - the one where a television in a convenience store runs a news report about two cops being suspended for behavior that doesn't see too far out of line, relatively speaking, while a robber cruelly and systematically kills everyone there? The one where their lieutenant warns the senior partner that he's becoming too cold but doesn't quite link it to the political correctness the roll their eyes at? The scene in a car where the two partners talk about how they can't make ends meet and are backing into a life of crime? Or another random murder of a relatively minor character on the heels of careful work to build her vulnerability up, the people around her understanding and helping with her brittle nature? It's a dark set of scenes even before it gets into a methodical bank robbery and low-speed pursuit that stretches out the rest of the movie.

It's weirdly hypnotic, though - filmmaker S. Craig Zahler stretches everything out a bit longer than many would, using the almost complete lack of a score to let the audience stew a bit. People draw out sentences, speak both a little more plainly and more elaborately than necessary, and feel a bit detached even when they're basically being decent and there should be a feeling of empathy. Zahler and cinematographer Benji Bakshi use spare compositions to isolate characters, placing them in empty spaces that make it hard to connect, the cast all seeming relatable but often just a bit off. It's like the people involved aren't quite human except for maybe the kids who have not yet been beaten down by the world, and it takes effort to push themselves in the right direction - and some have a hard time realizing it at that.

This one's never going to become a favorite and likely won't get a rewatch anytime soon, but there's something to its dissatisfaction and disconnection that plays as celebrating toughness on the surface but maybe some concern about how it can leave a person empty and going through the motions of doing right underneath. It's interesting, if nothing else, enough so to get me a little more interested in getting that copy of Bone Tomahawk off the shelf and into the disc player.

Ging chaat goo si (Police Story)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement, DCP)

I slept through bits of it at the Coolidge's midnight screening a couple months ago, and I think I might have missed different parts this time, but all together, it's clear why this is considered a sort of masterpiece; it's got some of the best action scenes ever shot, are the plot is kind of dead-simple but functional, and everybody is just chewing the appropriate amount of scenery.

Also, I couldn't help but giggle at how, in 1985, apparently a criminal enterprise was running on Atari 8-bit computers, with the big boss having a 64K 800XL on his desk (attached to a 1050 disk drive) while the witness printed out a SynCalc spreadsheet from a 48K Atari 800 attached to a model 825 dot-matrix printer. Not sure how many others in the audience would be quite so delighted, though.

It's a blast, and I'll probably hit it again when the Blu-ray arrives next week.

Liked it back in February, too

Ging chaat goo si juk jaap (Police Story 2)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement, DCP)

Jackie Chan kind of puts too much story and not enough action into this sequel, but that just makes it a bit of a step down from the first. It's still got a couple terrific fight scenes, a continued vendetta against any piece of glass that may find itself in Jackie's vicinity (down to the camera lens!), and a couple of the guy's best pure comedy bits.

Sometimes it feels kind of confused, like how it kind of doesn't know what to do with Ka Kui's girlfriend May, who is a lot of fun when she's giving as good as she gets but less so when she's bitter and issuing ultimatums. The finale is fantastic, as well.

And, three years later, they've upgraded to PCs!

This Week in Tickets: 1 October 2018 - 7 October 2018

Averaging a movie a day even with playoff baseball going on, the sort of schedule that kind of makes my scrapbook grateful they didn't send my a physical ticket.



It was a good week to catch up with some of the stuff that has been getting good reviews, starting with BlacKkKlansman, the new one from Spike Lee. I liked it quite a bit - not quite the live wire of Malcolm X (which played the Somerville's 70mm/Widescreen fest a week earlier), but covering a lot of the same territory and winding up another reminder that Lee is ambitious and with some art-house-y impulses but makes awfully entertaining movies. Tuesday night I was considering splurging for my birthday, and then the fancy theater goes and charges $5 a ticket for their deluxe screen. Not strictly necessary for A Simple Favor, which never really has a handle on how to be properly nuts.

Also this week: A lot of Agile sprint planning at work, which meant a lot of time listening to other people talk on the phone - and on top of that, it got shifted to central time at the last minute, pushing the day an hour later, making it harder to get to certain things downtown. Fortunately for me, the Imax 3D preview of Venom was at a convenient time on Thursday and I kind of liked it. Not a good movie by any means, but fun.

Friday night was for watching the first game of the ALDS on TV (win!), which set Saturday up for a sort-of double feature of Chinese movies about faking something for greed: Hello, Mrs. Money and Project Gutenberg were both worth anticipating and catching, though a comedy from the Mahua troupe and a Chow Yun-fat action-thriller are an unusual pairing. It's not really a double feature if there's two hours between the end of one movie and the start of the next, I suppose, but that's how AMC scheduled it. Kind of a nuisance, that.

The second let out just in time to get me to Fenway Park for Game 2, and, well, that one wasn't nearly as fun as Games 1 & 3 for a Red Sox fan (not going to jinx Game 4 as I watch it). Let's move on.

I actually had a completely different plan for Sunday than what actually happened, planning on a double feature at the Coolidge, but when I made it to Park Street, the next C train was going to be 12 minutes and that doesn't get me to the theater on time, so I checked out what was playing nearby and decided to check out Monsters and Men, which got better on the train ride but wasn't necessarily grabbing me in the room. It was short enough that getting out to Brookline for Free Solo shouldn't have been an issue, but either they sold out screen #2 or I was confused about which movie was playing on what screen when, so I turned around and decided I might as well see something else, going for The House with a Clock in Its Walls, which is kind of a blast, though I don't know if my nieces would go for it, since it's actually scary at points. I am enjoying this run of Cate Blanchett having fun in big movies.

Next week should be slower between baseball and a belated birthday party for my niece, but I'll be updating my Letterboxd when I do see something.

BlacKkKlansman

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 October 2018 in Landmark Kendall Square #3 (first-run, DCP)

Spike Lee does not have the patience for subtlety these days, if he ever did, and I wish more people were as entertaining when just laying it out there as he is. He makes this unlikely but based-on-actual-events story into a blend of police procedural and absurdist humor, because it almost has to be: Racists are dangerous and ridiculous in equal measure, and you can't confront them unless you acknowledge that.

For all that he hammers this home in the plainest possible terms, there's something just as impressive about the way he takes his time in some ways. He lets people speak even when the speech could be compacted, and lets other scenes play out to get a sense of who people are when their guard is down. There's pure beauty to Ron and Patrice and a whole club not just dancing but singing along, casual and heartfelt community. He ties a century and a half of white supremacist violence together, but resists making it monolithic. He's got style but isn't showy this time around.

It's interesting for me to see this just a week or so after Malcolm X, and not just because Lee was really smart to get Denzel Washington to clone himself right around that time so that Denzel 2.0 (going by the name "John David") can star in this one. There's a lot of the same thoughts kicking around both, and the flag motifs on the credits feel like bookends. Lee has maybe mellowed a bit in the intervening quarter-century, but he's still sharp and focused as anybody.

Venom

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 October 2018 in AMC Assembly Row #1 (first-run, Imax-branded 3D)

Venom is a pretty dumb movie, but maybe it's just the right sort of stupid. It doesn't over-complicate things, and that's a strength more often than it's a weakness. It's weirder and funnier than it might have been, and seems self-aware without being too winky and silly.

And it's got Tom Hardy, who may not be the surly Eddie Brock of the comics to the point where the characters basically just have the same name, but who makes this one a fairly likable loser and does some pretty darn good physical comedy. He's not necessarily as good as, say, Bruce Campbell or Jackie Chan doing the same sort of thing, but he'll remind you of them. It's not typical action/superhero material - and it's much more slaptick than this character usually given - but fits well with relatively modest ambitions and is always entertaining.

Somewhere along the line, the filmmakers decided to play the symbiotes as being kind of goofy rather than just dark and badass, and that may not sit well with some fans (you can feel the movie steering away from its horror potential fairly often). It works for me, though, especially since the effects guys seem to be consciously referencing Todd Macfarlane's art style at times, and that tends to come across as exaggerated and over-noodly now even if it was the height of cool back in the 80s and 90s. That seems to be the filmmakers' approach throughout, recognizing just how quickly this style of comics became self-parody and maybe not leaning into it so hard that the fans feel attacked, but letting the silly stuff get a laugh.

It's a bit of a mess, the sort of thing where it's almost certain that nobody involved really feels like they made the movie they wanted to make. It uses Michelle Williams too much and Jenny Slate too little, alternates delightfully goofy action sequences with others cut to ribbons trying to avoid an R rating. It's kind of entertaining anyway, somehow, and probably not in a way that could have been achieved deliberately.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 October 2018 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)

For all the jokes made about gorehound Eli Roth directing a kids' movie, The House with a Clock in Its Walls works as well as it does because he's not actually resisting all his horror-movie impulses as much as you might think. This thing has done genuinely creepy demons and disturbing moments, and that willingness to let his young audience have a nightmare or two is kind of terrific. A few genuine thrills are good for a kid, and I'm not sure anyone at a major Hollywood studio has really gone for it in this way since Something Wicked This Way Comes.

But, don't misunderstand, this is still a very kid-friendly movie, with Jack Black Jack Blacking it up in every possible scene, CGI creatures that allow for the cleanest possible poop jokes, and charmingly goofy fantasy and slapstick. It's got a wonderfully dry Cate Blanchett who both classes the whole thing up and plays directly to the eight-year-old kids in the audience. It never gets scary or self-aware in a way that leaves the kids behind.

It's a weird combination, enough that I may have to retire my jokes about what Takashi Miike directing kids' movies is like because a major studio has gone and done it, and rough in spots (Roth doesn't really know how to use effects for wonder as well as he does for action or scares). But it's fun, and things working when they really shouldn't only makes the more delightful.

This Week in Tickets: 24 September 2018 - 30 September 2018

They're doing a lot of renovations downstairs at the Somerville, and let me tell you: If they replaced the Museum of Bad Art with a kitchen so that I didn't have popcorn for dinner on weeks like this, I would happily accept the tradeoff.



But, in the meantime, they were showing the large-format film, and my schedule this week had me at the stuff shot big rather than blown up. Mostly. I gather Spartacus was in large part blown up because, as projectionist David Kornfeld pointed out before the screening, it kept getting cut down with each re-release until Richard Harris restored it from a variety of sources in the 2000s, including one scene without sound that required Anthony Hopkins to come in with a dead-on Laurence Olivier impersonation. I do believe this marks the first time I've made it through the movie in its three-hour entirety, not because it's dull, but because it always shows in the middle of a crush of things and keeps me sitting too long. Grabbing an extra candy bar at the concession stand and having it ready at the midway point is essential. Maybe not quite so much for Khartoum, which isn't quite so long but is rather more dry. Still, as the last thing shot in Ultra-Panavision before The Hateful Eight some 45 years later, it looks fantastic if nothing else.

Friday would be my last Red Sox game of the regular season, with all the expected mayhem of a season-ending series with the Yankees dispelled because the Sox were just too good this year, locking up the division a week or two earlier and not looking to really pad their record. They would wind up losing by a fair amount, but there was excitement, with a Steve Pearce grand slam and the Yankees' Zach Britton walking the ballpark in the 9th to the point where another looked not just possible but likely. Didn't happen, but oh well. Playoffs start Friday.

The 70mm schedule meant that the easiest way to fit a screening of Hong Kong action movie Golden Job in on Saturday was to go the the 11:30am screening, which is a bit early, but it turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. In some ways, basic direct-to-video action, but also an unabashed throwback to 1990s HK crime melodramas. Shame it's got no chance of sticking around.

It was short enough to get back to Davis for David's "70mm Odds and Ends" presentation, which was fairly educational and entertaining, if sometimes a bit technical. Faded as some of the clips and fragments he showed were, it absolutely hammered home just what sort of detail and clarity the format offers in the hands of people who know what they're doing, and it's a crying shame that the studios have chosen to change formats on the basis of cost control and easier workflow in recent years when the technology to capture and project the sort of picture even that new 4K televiion can't compete with is proven and robust. And that's without considering the examples of 30fps 70mm he was able to project, which was even smoother without having of the odd effects that the Hobbit movies and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk had at 48fps.

David talked with no small amount of irritation that, when facing competition from television in the 1950s, studios opted to go for something more spectacular, while the introduction of home video, cable, and streaming from the 1980s forward had them cutting costs to try and maintain the same profits. Though he obviously knows more about Hollywood history and exposition than I do, I think, there are other factors (as the studios used to own the theaters, they now own pieces of other channels and want to be able to easily repurpose media for all routes), but all the same - it's hard to look at things like that night's presentation of Patton and not feel as though they have given up a lot more in terms of quality for convenience.

On Sunday, they finally got to debut their new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which they commissioned last year but which was kind of held back while an "unrestored" version was released back in June. I missed that release, and was surprised to learn that there are apparently differences in the prints, although it's not a case where one is definitely better than the other in every area. The good news about that re-release is that apparently the sound mix from it was top-notch and the Somerville kept the DTS CDs in the hope that they would work with their new print. They do, and…. Well, I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of 2001 in Somerville in the coming years as they make that print pay for itself, and it will be worth it.

That would be a good way to wrap the week, but I was morbidly curious about the Sunday release of Fat Buddies. It turns out that the distributor wasn't trying to hide it from coverage but still get it out there; the 30th is a national holiday in China. I, well, I should probably have ended on a high note.

But, then again, weeks on a calendar page are arbitrary endpoints, and my Letterboxd should already show that I've seen good stuff since!.

Spartacus

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 September 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (70mm and Widescreen Festival, 70mm)

Spartacus is the only sword-and-sandals movie a lot of folks see, and will thus form their entire impression of the genre, eventually leading them to wonder why attempts to capture the same magic aren't as good. It's not so much because they don't make 'em like they used to as much as this one getting screened in part because it shows up on other lists aside from that of its genre, and maybe gives a better impression of the genre than it should. Most don't have Kirk Douglas, Stanley Kubrick, Laurence Olivier, and Dalton Trumbo to class things up.

This one does, though, and they attack this B-movie material with straight faces and utter sincerity, recognizing that the story isn't necessarily about Spartacus himself as much as the tenacity with which the powerful hang on to control. Douglas is charismatic and appealing, and turns in a fine lead performance, but it's the scenes with Olivier and Charles Laughton (with a comic assist from Peter Ustinov) that crackle with energy. They're smart and conniving, and since action needs some intrigue on the other side, they provide what makes it move.

Even when the focus is on the rebelling slaves, it's good enough to work, although I must admit, this is the first time I've made it all the way through - 3 hours is a lot of movie, and it's not exactly thrilling all the way through, especially when you consider that Spartacus doesn't show a whole initiative at certain points. The 70mm print looked awful nice, though.

Khartoum

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 September 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (70mm and Widescreen Festival, 70mm)

Khartoum is a good-looking but dry would-be epic that has aged poorly even by the standards of the genre, with Laurence Olivier's Middle Eastern caricature far more uncomfortable to watch than Charlton Heston as a supposed Brit whose own arrogance is a big issue. It was colonialist nostalgia at the time and plays much worse 50 years later.

Worse, though, it's boring, almost always pulling the perspective away from where the action is, right down to having characters dispatched offscreen without much build-up toward the end. The filmmakers often don't have a handle on how to portray the tensions of a siege, never making it feel like there is death waiting just beyond the walls or giving much weight to the far-off efforts to free them. There is some intrigue here, but the filmmakers are not great at transforming those intellectual issues into cinematic action.

(An aside: As much as we romanticize these Hollywood epics, it's worth noting that China and Korea in recent years have gotten these sort of battle/political intrigue stories down to a science, enough to make even the great classics look a bit primitive at times. If we could marry the choreography and court intrigue of a Korean epic with the gorgeous photography/cast-of-thousands of these Technicolor blockbusters, we'd really have something.)

It is great-looking, though, especially during the parts where the camera can just wander around Egypt and the Sudan. The 70mm Ultra-Panavision print was terrific, and as with IMAX later, part of the joy with these large-format films was just being able to look in the screen and see something that you are likely never going to see in person as if you were just looking out a window. On that count, at least, Khartoum delivers.

Patton

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 September 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (70mm and Widescreen Festival, 70mm)

To give Patton its due, the film plays as far more skeptical of its Asshole Genius than is typical. Part of that is just history - George S. Patton was passed over for promotions and sidelined at crucial points - but it's worth noting that the filmmakers almost always pass when given the opportunity to give him on-screen vindication: His promotion to four-star general happens offscreen, for instance, and after a certain point, the audience sees him beg rather than receive praise even when successful. That the film occasionally cuts to the Nazis seeming to have more admiration for him than the Allies is intriguing in some ways, a hint that this sort of leader is far more valued by those who do not regularly have to deal with him.

Still, the film seldom seems to truly be out of his corner, in large part owing to George C. Scott's performance. Scott takes Patton from dedicated hard-ass to entertaining eccentric, maintaining a thin veneer even when the screenplay explicitly has him revealing the monster who sees war as art (and himself an artist) underneath. The audience gets in that head, even if some part is horrified. It's a film that barely had room for anyone else, which probably makes what Karl Malden manages even more impressive: His Omar Bradley is positioned as sensible compared to Patton, which isn't always interesting or dramatic, but Malden is an impressive steadying force whenever he appears, exuding competence and fairness - the sort of fairness that can feel like a slap in the face to those used to accommodation - even though the audience gets to see him in action less than Patton.

And, speaking of action, this is as impressive a way movie as it is a biography. The fantastic 70mm photography makes this one of the most eye-popping films of the festival, but for all the explosions and gunfire, there's a smart sense of hollowness to the violence. The definitive part of a battle is seldom if ever shown, and the focus on mechanized divisions makes things feel impersonal at times, overwhelming at others: Individual soldiers are neither CGI blurs or too far in the background to register, but they are subsumed nonetheless.

That hollow feeling can make Patton a hard film to truly love, but there's nothing in it that you're supposed to love, even if the situation forces you to admit that wars and Pattons can be necessary.

2001: A Space Odyssey

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 30 September 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (70mm and Widescreen Festival, 35mm)

This is not the year where I really get into writing about 2001, but given that the Somerville now has their own print, it's entirely possible I'll see it again soon enough.

I must admit, we're spoiled by how much the local theater likes playing this in 70, as I did kind of feel like I was taking it for granted this week, focusing on certain details rather than just letting the film wash over me. Not that this is a bad way to watch the movie - I absolutely love the utterly insane attention to detail during the docking sequence that could drive others batty, and the technical craftsmanship deserves that sort of solitary attention at times.

Still, I was pretty detached at other moments, so I suspect that maybe I'll give it a miss when the festival returns in May, or maybe try and watch it with some folks who haven't seen it before, just to get new perspectives.

What I wrote three years ago

This Week in Tickets: 10 September 2018 - 16 September 2018

Man, this weekend did not go as planned.



The good news - Tuesday's baseball game was a lot of fun, a nice night, the score tight until it wasn't, the first game with Sale back from injury, enough 9/11 commemoration to be respectful but far from going overboard. Didn't even stick "God Bless America" into the seventh-inning stretch, and I'm wondering if maybe we're starting to see that sort of thing start to fade away as the ramifications of its excess start to sink in

I also finished Miss Sherlock during the week, and I find myself mostly fond of it but with reservations. The cast is great, especially Yuko Takeuchi as Sherlock - she's more manic than cold, taking a genuine delight in solving weird crimes and growing attached to Wato-san in prickly, believable fashion that leaves me hopeful this won't become the Cumberbatch/Freeman Sherlock redux - but I have to admit that I'm so used to a more active Watson readily accepted as Sherlock's peer that Wato-san seemed like something of a throwback. The show's take on Moriarty seemed like a bit too much as well, but what can you do? Doyle's "Napoleon of Crime" at the center of a web is just a gangster or a garden-variety conspiracy theory these days, and while I think this show was on the right track for how to update the archetype for the Twenty-First Century with radicalization, it seemed a bit on a Rube Goldberg set-up and played into the weak-Watson issue.

Am I still hoping like heck that HBO/Hulu Asia make another series? Oh, yes.

I had big plans for the weekend, but right around 4pm on Friday, something hit me like a wall, and the next day and a half was basically my body telling me that I was going to lie down and half pay attention to the ballgame and maybe, if it was feeling generous, it would give me enough mental energy to read a comic book. Not the greatest state to be in when you've brought some work home, have errands to run, and there were something like four or five movies that looked worth seeing over the weekend. Nope, you're not going to be up for that until Sunday night, when things had progressed to "mostly feeling okay but everything tastes terrible".

That served as a good enough excuse to check out the room AMC had upgraded to "Dolby Cinema" at Assembly Row. Unlike the one at South Bay, it's not really a big room, just a bit larger than average for that multiplex, with a screen to match - but it feels tony, with no pre-movie ad package, dim LED lighting, lots of black. I'm mildly amazed that black levels are the big selling point for Dolby Cinema, even more than the Atmos sound; it just seems so esoteric, not as easy a sell as brighter colors or the rumble you feel in the seat. I suppose it goes without saying that those blacks aren't quite as black as you might find with actual film, but pretty darn decent as far as digital goes.

Fair enough spot to see something like The Predator, which doesn't quite demand overwhelming power but is still a bit of an upgrade on standard projection, especially if you're paying the same because of Stubs A-List or the like.

Much busier week planned now that I'm feeling up to writing this from the RMV lobby. Follow along on my Letterboxd, or just wait for the blog to be updated.

The Predator

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 September 2018 in AMC Assembly Row #2 (first-run, Dolby Cinema DCP)

Predator had no business spawning a franchise at all, and yet Twentieth Century Fox keeps trying because, while there's nowhere to take it without losing the sheer 1980s muscle-headed appeal of the original film, it's just too damn merchandisable. So roughly every ten years the try again, and it's not like they don't give it their best shot, but digging deeper into the mythology behind a dumb action movie is something of a fool's errand. This attempt to do so is pretty capable, in a disposable-paperback way, but even by those standards could have been more.

It opens with one alien spaceship chasing another, the first taking damage as it escapes to Earth through hyperspace, crashing to Earth in the middle of an op where sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is in the middle of an operation south of the border. McKenna fares much better than most do when faced by one of these "Predators", but he's canny enough to know that seeing this has likely made him a target, and tries to get himself some insurance. Back home, his pre-teen son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) is being bullied for being on the spectrum, and Project Stargazer operative Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) is recruiting biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to investigate what McKenna has found. Oh, and speaking of McKenna, he was right to be worried about what the government would do with the only living witness to a UFO crash, as they've put him on a bus to a VA psychiatric hospital with a bunch of traumatized soldiers.

Though director Shane Black and his occasional partner-in-crime Fred Dekker are the only credited writers on this film, it's got the feel of one of those projects where a studio solicits a bunch of different pitches and then tries to Frankenstein the best parts of them into one movie. Any single one of these stories - the secret government agency, the team of traumatized veterans, the chance for some Black & Dekker holiday mayhem with a monster running around the suburbs on Halloween - could play as a new take on the Predator story, and given that the series has by circumstance never had much in the way of film-to-film continuity, there's nothing stopping the studio from just lining them up one after another, especially if they can be done on reasonable budgets. Throwing them all together like this, the plots wind up in competition to the point where the characters from the various threads are trying to kill each other for no good reason. It's not just frustrating in that none of the threads feel like they play out properly, but it takes some exceptionally dumb plot devices and Macguffins to hold them together.

Full review at EFilmCritc