Matthew’s Letterboxd Watchlist
Sorry for the delay on this one, my usual extra-busy run up to Christmas hit as scheduled, including two work trips planned extremely late!
The Parallax View
A friend had recommended this on a few occasions so I decided to take the plunge. A really interesting paranoid thriller, but it seemed to be lacking a partner, colleague, or other person that the main character could interact with to keep us apprised of what was happening. A lot of it was about taking in what we saw and some of the recurring faces, which I will admit I missed one or two so ended up a bit lost for 20 mins.
Tango & Cash
Well, this certainly was a buddy comedy. The two leads were interesting tropey characters, but I felt like we had too much set up and then it was expected they’d hate each other, rather than coming up with a story reason.
Bandits
Hooray for Cate Blanchett. Is it me or are there a lot of Hollywood films over the last 30 years or so about how polyamory is a viable option?
The Fountain
Visually astounding, and a really good idea, but the execution fell down a bit because there wasn’t quite enough thread between the different stories to see why we got to see them all.
Rise of the Guardians
Celebrity voice actors aren’t always the best, and as interesting as the story was it’s not as good as Nightmare, the Santa Clause, or other similar things.
Best in Show
Incredibly disappointing. I rarely laughed at this, and it was just a lot of obvious jokes that were often cruel.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
We’re going into a lot of detail about this film on our Christmas 2018 episode of Pop Culturally Deprived. It’s a good film, but the songs don’t stand out except for one or two highlights, and the story is stretched too thin.
Queen of Katwe
This was a superb film. Some terrific performances, good tension, and what felt like an incredibly realistic take on poverty in developing nations. Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, it was fairly well hidden on Netflix but I’m pleased to have found it.
Girl Rising
This sounded really interesting – actors narrating stories about young women around the world. And it was done very well, but it felt like a series of infomercials for the charity than something you would sit and learn from. Perhaps that’s what it was?
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
Had they released this before the live action Jungle Book it could have been great, but they were beaten to the punch. Some of the changes made make sense and are even able to make it more interesting, but ultimately it lacks some of the grand story of Disney’s version.
Christmas Eve
Patrick Stewart in a Christmas film is always a good place to be. But this was an odd one. The overall idea and story was okay, but there were probably too many stories for any one to be done as well as it promised, and the point where the skeezy guy is taking photos of the woman despite her screaming no at him is a huge problem.
Let The Right One In
This had been hyped up to a great degree, and I think it lived up to it. It definitely didn’t exceed it, and in the end I have more questions than answers, as well as not being sure what I was supposed to take away from the story.
Intolerable Cruelty
That the Coen brothers try all genres delights me. Their rom com is a good film and a laudable effort, but I feel the movie makes some choices just to be different, which actually hurts it, rather than working with the genre conventions to be a shining beacon of something done well.
The Assignment
Where to start. It’s not offensive, which is good. It even does some interesting things. The lengths to which the film goes to show that Michelle Rodriguez’s character is an actual man in the opening 10 minutes, rather than a woman pretending to be a man, perhaps go too far. But the story could do some great things about how women are treated in the world, the differences between genders, the way Weaver’s character had to play at being a man to succeed in a male dominated profession… there were some real options. But it took none of them and was largely an obvious action film.
Josie and the Pussycats
I never watched this back in the day, despite being into metal, rock, and a lot of the stuff shown in the film. I was always worried it was a cash grab from a corporation trying to make money from my community. It was.
There Will Be Blood
I think I enjoyed this film. It’s really interesting how it was shot and styled like a horror film – the evil oil taking over one man and pushing him against everyone else in his greed. But ultimately it became a bit too dark and down to really be as strong as I think it could have been.
Working Girl
This is a fun film, with some very memorable characters. Ultimately Weaver is made to be too much of a villain, and I’d have appreciated Griffith’s character learning from her more but doing it all in a kinder and more honest style.
Holiday Inn
The channel that broadcast this in the UK cut the problematic scene. So ultimately this is a slightly odd romance musical where the only days that exist are those around US holidays. Some good songs, but I had no clue who to root for and what was going to happen.
Stronger
It’s not often a film makes me cry, but Stronger definitely managed it. The juxtaposition of pain and difficulty against effort was done incredibly well, and the two leads were sensational. I think The Big Sick did some of the relationship elements and feeling of debt better, but I’m very pleased I got to see stronger.
Milk
Seeing the real-life versions of the characters at the end showed how much the actors were working to channel people who really existed. It was done well, and it’s a good story that resonates to an okay degree now.
Self/less
What a very weird film. If they’d done any work to give Kingsley’s character some tics, habits, mannerisms, or other personality quirks that we could then see in Reynolds so that we knew it was the same person it would have been so much better. But once Reynolds turns up he just feels like Ryan Reynolds.
Chariots of Fire
This was a very different film to the one I expected to get. Much less about running and training than I expected, and much more about the religious situation of the two main characters. It’s interesting enough, but I don’t think it’s aged well and doesn’t speak to the modern issues of tribalism and bigotry.
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Almost everything in this film was done superbly. The performances from all concerned were impeccable, the way the story tried to present every version of every argument was something you don’t often see, and in the end the real-world situation of the actors helps make the finale resonate even more.
Girls Against Boys
A really bizarre horror film, it tries to be a lot more than potentially it is. The best description I can give is Thelma and Louise meets Fight Club, but even that doesn’t fully cover it.
Cloud Atlas
Similar to other films I’ve seen this year like the Fountain the different stories in this film don’t quite hang together well enough to feel like it’s worth having them all there. The structure of the book is so important to the revelations of each story that presenting them in a different order here has robbed it of some of the power.
Say Anything…
Yet another film where the protagonist is not really the central character of the story. The iconic scene comes and goes with nary a comment, and ultimately doesn’t really do much for the story itself.
Recommendation
Week 49 – Queen of Katwe is a terrific movie, filled with great performances and a brutal view of poverty that is countered by some incredibly positive and heroic characters.
Week 50 – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was a film I recorded not expecting to love so much. That the real world relationship of Hepburn and Tracy impacts the finale of this film only made it better, and I think it’s still as strong now as when it was released, especially with the story of Get Out building on this premise.