Nothing else to say
What was particularly curious to me about Turning Red was not the subject matter of the film so much as when the film takes place.
Halfway thru, I finally discovered that the film’s director, Domee Shi (her full length feature debut), was born around the same time as the film’s protagonist. This makes the intimacy of Turning Red only more personal and profound.
We are coming up on nearly a full eight decades since the caped crusader first appeared on big screens (thanks in part to serials of the 1940s).
Since then, we have had a ton of contributions to the character over the years. From grappling hooks to gravely voices to batarangs to shark repellant to bat nipples, Batman is a character that is as full of depth as any fictional being out there. Adding the grammatical article making the newest installment The Batman just scratches the surface of what the new installment adds to the lore.
The undisputed magic of the Uncharted video game series was that it was the closest thing one could do to feel like they were Indiana Jones (outside of the original Tomb Raider games or being Harrison Ford).
The individual plots of the games were not entirely as memorable to me as the gameplay. Like the Indy films, the physics behind the action was ludicrous, yet still seemed plausible at the same time. I can’t speak for many video games in the present day (I watch too many movies to have time to play them), but some games like Uncharted seem so well suited to the video game world that they are cinematic on their own terms, and don’t require a film adaptation.
Being that I saw the original Scream around the ripe age of 11 or so (it was all the hype in fourth grade), it took me some time to understand the “meta” aspect of the film.
Eventually (after seeing Scream 2, the only sequel I would see until now), I would get the references in the original as I would have seen most of the movies the characters have talked about. Thankfully, one does not need to see any of the other sequels to understand the newest Scream film (technically, “Scream 5”).
Unless I had some sort of personal connection associated with a certain game, my interest in football has mostly been minimal at best. That said, Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday has still held a unique place in my heart as a movie of certain first’s.
I remember seeing it in the theater at the ripe age of 12 with my dad, older brother, and grandpa. It was the first movie I would see for many of the actors (most notably Al Pacino), the first Oliver Stone movie, and (most of all), my first R rated movie in the theater. Looking back at the experience, what I remember most (aside from my dad essentially pay money for me to see a grown up movie which included swearing and sexuality) was the mood of down right intensity.
From The Little Things to The Tragedy of Macbeth (Denzel bookends), I rounded out my amount of movies seen at seventy.
Even with that amount of movies, there was a fair amount of films I did not get to in time (especially, sadly, Foreign Language films). These include The Last Duel, The Green Knight, The Card Counter, Drive my Car, The Worst Person in the World, Stillwater, and The Tender Bar.
We are getting to the point in our country where everyone will have either been a witness to a mass shooting or will know someone who has (or worse, known a victim).
If you don’t believe me, well you will, because I was at NIU on Valentine’s Day in 2008 when a shooter killed five students before taking his own life.
While I admit to not seeing all of his films just yet, it does not take much to realize that director Paul Thomas Anderson is indeed what one could call an acquired taste. It is a lighter affair this time around for Licorice Pizza, but it does not at all make it less fascinating.
The COVID-19 pandemic is approaching two long agonizing years of existence. I am fortunate to say that, while some in my family have caught the disease, none has passed away. I am aware others have not been so fortunate.
That said, a last minute COVID diagnosis has cancelled my family holiday plans for the second year in a row, so I am rather upset. Therefore, I am transferring my anger in a healthy way to my current separate anger at the worst movies of 2021.
Part of me wants to go the coward’s way, and not even review Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Easily the most anticipated movie since Avengers: Endgame, I will do all I can to be sure not to spoil anything for anyone, provided they have at least seen the two trailers for the film (and while this may be too little too late, stay away from the movies IMDB page).
Nothing else to say