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Awards Season: Week 4
Another short update this week, if only because I've only got a few more hours to spare at work and I really want to get to my tags!!!
Christmas happened! There was church (boring), hanging out with my grandmother (cool), no presents or decorations or anything (kinda sad? but whatever), and more of the intensely mild temperatures that have characterized this entire winter (downright magical). Between all the running around to spend time with family and my period absolutely kicking my ass, I've fallen really far behind on a lot of things that matter to me, so here's hoping the new year will bring with it an opportunity or two to take a breath!
Also I've eaten nothing but junk food for like a week now and like... a lot of it? I feel a bit like a bakery dumpster! It's not a great feeling! Something else to maybe try to knock off once the holidays are in the rearview.
Still managed to watch a bunch of movies, at least!
Summer Stock (1950): On the surface, this was a pretty typical slapdash musical of the era, where the phoned-in premise is BARELY excuse enough to string together all the random songs they had kicking around, but then halfway through, there's this little moment where Gene Kelly perfectly explains to Judy Garland why I'm so goddamn enraptured by these movies:
“We're trying to tell a story with music and song and dance and... well, not just with words. For instance, if the boy tells the girl that he loves her, he just doesn't say it. He sings it.”
"Well, why doesn't he just say it?"
"Why? Oh, I don't know. But it’s kind of nice."
THEY'RE JUST KIND OF NICE. ;______; And then he like, pretty much seduces her with the smell of greasepaint, and all this 'we've got to put on a show in this lady's barn!' nonsense turns out to actually be a secret ODE TO THE STAGE and I just really loved it a lot??? Was kinda wild that the best dances for both leads WEREN'T together, though: Kelly's solo where he's just goofing on an empty stage with a creaky floor and a newspaper was brilliant, and 'Get Happy' was very much one of those '...am I actually bisexual?' moments.
On the Town (1949): Okay, I was pretty much instantly obsessed with this movie, at least once I stopped singing "Springfield, Springfield" over the entire opening number, it's just so good. It's got three female love interests to go with the three male leads, but they all have their own personalities and motivations that are fleshed out just as much as the boys??? Even the fourth date who first shows up for the laughs of being the ugly loser girl nobody actually wants to hang out with gets to have a fun night out and a quiet sendoff that acknowledges that hey, actually she's pretty okay and deserved better???? Every single song in this is a goddamn delight (we'll just look past the real racist one), and I immediately wanted to watch the whole thing over again as soon as it was over. But for the love of god, WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST TAKE FRANK SINATRA TO THE AQUARIUM?????
I Love Melvin (1953): This was a fun little romp (Donald O'Connor on roller skates! DEBBIE REYNOLDS IS A FOOTBALL????), brought down a bit by the fact that Melvin was the fuckin' woooooorst. Dude is the pits, why do you love him!
Give a Girl a Break (1953): The weak ass plot is pushed SO far to the sidelines in this one to jam in as many amazing dance numbers as possible, and it's just hypnotic. NOBODY PREPARED ME FOR ITTY BITTY BABY BOB FOSSE.
Brigadoon (1954): I wonder if Sean has made Terry watch this on Krakoa yet. Was nicely refreshing to revisit an actual proper musical I like as opposed to just... a bunch of songs with vague connective tissue. Time travel, drunken manslaughter, kilts, ridiculous accents, this one's got it all!
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949): HA HA HA I FUCKING CRIED WHEN I REALIZED THEY WERE DOING 'THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME', MORE THAN A DECADE AFTER SWING TIME. One last dance with Fred and Ginger. Absolute perfection. I just love them so much, and this was such a brilliant, perfect epilogue to their entire canon, it's baffling to me that it was originally meant to star Judy Garland instead. Also, watching Oscar Levant just sit there and absolutely murder a piano is every bit as dynamic and engaging as a dance routine.
Cabin in the Sky (1943): Problematic as hell (of COURSE the black musical has got to be the religious morality tale), but a really fun, Faustian time once you get past that. I am obsessed with Ethel Waters' EVERYTHING now, she's just made of MAGIC in this. I am almost as obsessed with the ADORABLE LITTLE HAIR HORNS on all of the devil characters!!! Look at them!!! Look at Louis Armstrong! I'm dying!!
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): OKAY, I FINALLY BROKE FREE OF MY GOLDEN AGE MGM MUSICAL SPIRAL, TIME TO FACE THE REAL WORLD AGAIN. Anyway, let's not talk about how my tween sexual awakening was definitely triggered, at least partially, by Cary Grant tied to a chair and gagged in this movie.
Burn! (1969): An excellent entry in the 'Marlon Brando hates colonialism' canon, this movie was messy and difficult and SUPER dark, even if his pants were REAL distractingly tight throughout. I don't think that's period accurate, sir!
Frida (2002): More interested in aesthetics over substance, but accomplishes what it sets out to do pretty perfectly. Julie Taymor shit talking Harvey Weinstein in the bonus features is also excellent.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): MCU rewatch continues! Everything makes me real emotional now!
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997): WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT AND WHY DID I LOVE IT SO MUCH??? It's the most beautifully bewildering episode of What's My Line? ever made. I can't stop thinking about it. I need to watch it again. I need to write essays about it. What the fuck. That dude loves naked mole rats more than I will ever love anything in this world.
The Fog of War (2003): Okay, so I guess apparently I just really like Errol Morris documentaries and never knew it! This should SO not have been my bag, just a talking head interview with a guy I've never given much thought to beyond 'old and dead/probably a war criminal?', but it's so fascinating and engaging and I hate everything about it especially the fact that so many of his lessons feel genuinely important and relevant to everyday life today. It's also real scary how much people can make excuses for, even as they clearly know what they did was wrong and have to grapple with that in the subsequent years. Gah.
Spectre (2015): It's been four fucking years and I still can't quite believe they went Full Blofeld. For as much as this movie is a hot mess (that last act, YIKES), it's still really comforting to me to know that, even with how successful and excellent the grim 'n' gritty reboot turned out, they'll never be afraid to take Bond back to some very silly extremes when the mood strikes. MAGIC DNA RING, Y'ALL. Fuck, I'm so pumped for No Time to Die now.
Freaks (1932): ONE OF US, ONE OF US
The Devils (1971): BOY, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY. Gets a little tedious in the torture porn aspect towards the end, like a much more entertaining Passion of the Christ, but man, this was some good shit. Watching slutty priest Oliver Reed so soon after discovering hot zaddy Athos was... problematic, though.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): THE DECEMBOND FINALE, I always save my favourite for last since it is, coincidentally, also a Christmas movie (and also that way I don't have to deal with the disappointment of going BACK to Connery for one more movie afterward, it leaves his run nice and unbroken). I guess next year I'll have to move it to Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve, and I REALLY don't know what I'll do when a 26th Bond film comes out!
I Walk Alone (1947): Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas had as much smoldering sexual chemistry as any actual romantic pairing from this era, good lord. This fizzled out a little in the denouement to make sure the good guy could walk away with his hands pristine, but it was all worth it for that blackout countdown shootout, SO GOOD.
The War of the Worlds (1953): In my head, I know that the ending of this story fucking sucks, but it still catches me off guard EVERY DAMN TIME when the aliens just fucking drop dead. Still, all the wanton destruction and brutality on the way there was ACES, and even all the goofy old special effects hold up well once you get into the right mindset. Fuck all those miniatures UP. I also really liked that one of the primary scientist characters was an older woman, for no particularly plotty reasons.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964): luv 2 immediately treat the first person i see after months of increasingly desperate loneliness like absolute dogshit, WHATEVER they were boyfriends by the end, it all worked out, THIS IS AN INTENSELY SILLY MOVIE, but damn if I didn't get completely swept away by all those Martian desertscapes. RIP Adam West, smushed by rocks too soon. Long live the hot dog plants.
HOW THE FUCK WERE THE LAST THREE MOVIES DIRECTED BY THE SAME DUDE. ONE OF THEM WAS VERY MUCH NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019): Eeeeeeeeh. I don't know if I liked The Last Jedi so much that this was always going to be a losing proposition, or maybe five movies in five years is just way too much Star Wars for me and I'm burned out? But ech, this just felt so soulless to me. It was fun to see the core trio running around together again, and wanting to know just where they were going with all of it kept me entertained for the duration, but the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, idk.
And then I fell down a Val Lewton hole for a while! Rapid fire reviews!
Cat People (1942): There is more atmosphere packed into any individual shadow in this movie than most films can manage to cobble together in at least an hour. I want to live inside those stalking scenes.
The Leopard Man (1943): Beautiful and horrible and way before its time. Clo-Clo had it coming to her, though.
Isle of the Dead (1945): "Fight death all your days and die knowing you know nothing." So quiet and tense and intimate, it straight up gave me ASMR.
The Seventh Victim (1943): I love how weird and circular the central mystery is here, it's messy and awkward and confusing right up until the end in ways that movie plots typically aren't? And that ENDING. OOF.
The Curse of the Cat People (1944): Christmas is for ghost stories! And weird quasi-sequels that only make sense as such once you've turned them over in your head a few times. Cat People was about marriage, this one is about parenthood! There are no actual cat people in this one, but Irena's legacy still looms over Oliver and Alice and comes to impact their daughter! It made sense at the time! Maybe it was all in my head, though! Just like Irena's ghost, maybe????? I wish the ending to Cat People had stayed as wonderfully ambiguous on the supernatural angle as this one did.
I Walked with a Zombie (1943): Gothic calypso??? Completely spellbinding, and I love how it peels back the exoticism of the colonial setting right from the get-go. Sir Lancelot should get to sing ominous songs about the characters in EVERY movie.
Bedlam (1946): Frustrating, but so, SO stylish. I really like that while Karloff is cartoonishly evil, and quaker boyfriend is cartoonishly pure, our actual protagonist operates more in shades of grey. She's not perfect! Also they totally Goldfinger a dude in this, lol.
The Body Snatcher (1945): MY BONES. THEY WERE SO CHILLED. When the carriage follows the street singer into the darkness, man, I FELT that. Also very cool to see Karloff and Lugosi share the screen!
Persepolis (2007): Such a faithful adaptation of the comic, it almost feels redundant? Still cried a lot!
I HAVE WATCHED 91/100 MOVIES. WITH ONE DAY LEFT IN THE MONTH, I DON'T THINK I WILL MAKE IT, BUT I STILL WATCHED AN AWFUL LOT AND HAD A LOT OF FUN.
See y'all in 2020!
Christmas happened! There was church (boring), hanging out with my grandmother (cool), no presents or decorations or anything (kinda sad? but whatever), and more of the intensely mild temperatures that have characterized this entire winter (downright magical). Between all the running around to spend time with family and my period absolutely kicking my ass, I've fallen really far behind on a lot of things that matter to me, so here's hoping the new year will bring with it an opportunity or two to take a breath!
Also I've eaten nothing but junk food for like a week now and like... a lot of it? I feel a bit like a bakery dumpster! It's not a great feeling! Something else to maybe try to knock off once the holidays are in the rearview.
Still managed to watch a bunch of movies, at least!
Summer Stock (1950): On the surface, this was a pretty typical slapdash musical of the era, where the phoned-in premise is BARELY excuse enough to string together all the random songs they had kicking around, but then halfway through, there's this little moment where Gene Kelly perfectly explains to Judy Garland why I'm so goddamn enraptured by these movies:
“We're trying to tell a story with music and song and dance and... well, not just with words. For instance, if the boy tells the girl that he loves her, he just doesn't say it. He sings it.”
"Well, why doesn't he just say it?"
"Why? Oh, I don't know. But it’s kind of nice."
THEY'RE JUST KIND OF NICE. ;______; And then he like, pretty much seduces her with the smell of greasepaint, and all this 'we've got to put on a show in this lady's barn!' nonsense turns out to actually be a secret ODE TO THE STAGE and I just really loved it a lot??? Was kinda wild that the best dances for both leads WEREN'T together, though: Kelly's solo where he's just goofing on an empty stage with a creaky floor and a newspaper was brilliant, and 'Get Happy' was very much one of those '...am I actually bisexual?' moments.
On the Town (1949): Okay, I was pretty much instantly obsessed with this movie, at least once I stopped singing "Springfield, Springfield" over the entire opening number, it's just so good. It's got three female love interests to go with the three male leads, but they all have their own personalities and motivations that are fleshed out just as much as the boys??? Even the fourth date who first shows up for the laughs of being the ugly loser girl nobody actually wants to hang out with gets to have a fun night out and a quiet sendoff that acknowledges that hey, actually she's pretty okay and deserved better???? Every single song in this is a goddamn delight (we'll just look past the real racist one), and I immediately wanted to watch the whole thing over again as soon as it was over. But for the love of god, WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST TAKE FRANK SINATRA TO THE AQUARIUM?????
I Love Melvin (1953): This was a fun little romp (Donald O'Connor on roller skates! DEBBIE REYNOLDS IS A FOOTBALL????), brought down a bit by the fact that Melvin was the fuckin' woooooorst. Dude is the pits, why do you love him!
Give a Girl a Break (1953): The weak ass plot is pushed SO far to the sidelines in this one to jam in as many amazing dance numbers as possible, and it's just hypnotic. NOBODY PREPARED ME FOR ITTY BITTY BABY BOB FOSSE.
Brigadoon (1954): I wonder if Sean has made Terry watch this on Krakoa yet. Was nicely refreshing to revisit an actual proper musical I like as opposed to just... a bunch of songs with vague connective tissue. Time travel, drunken manslaughter, kilts, ridiculous accents, this one's got it all!
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949): HA HA HA I FUCKING CRIED WHEN I REALIZED THEY WERE DOING 'THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME', MORE THAN A DECADE AFTER SWING TIME. One last dance with Fred and Ginger. Absolute perfection. I just love them so much, and this was such a brilliant, perfect epilogue to their entire canon, it's baffling to me that it was originally meant to star Judy Garland instead. Also, watching Oscar Levant just sit there and absolutely murder a piano is every bit as dynamic and engaging as a dance routine.
Cabin in the Sky (1943): Problematic as hell (of COURSE the black musical has got to be the religious morality tale), but a really fun, Faustian time once you get past that. I am obsessed with Ethel Waters' EVERYTHING now, she's just made of MAGIC in this. I am almost as obsessed with the ADORABLE LITTLE HAIR HORNS on all of the devil characters!!! Look at them!!! Look at Louis Armstrong! I'm dying!!
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): OKAY, I FINALLY BROKE FREE OF MY GOLDEN AGE MGM MUSICAL SPIRAL, TIME TO FACE THE REAL WORLD AGAIN. Anyway, let's not talk about how my tween sexual awakening was definitely triggered, at least partially, by Cary Grant tied to a chair and gagged in this movie.
Burn! (1969): An excellent entry in the 'Marlon Brando hates colonialism' canon, this movie was messy and difficult and SUPER dark, even if his pants were REAL distractingly tight throughout. I don't think that's period accurate, sir!
Frida (2002): More interested in aesthetics over substance, but accomplishes what it sets out to do pretty perfectly. Julie Taymor shit talking Harvey Weinstein in the bonus features is also excellent.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): MCU rewatch continues! Everything makes me real emotional now!
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997): WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT AND WHY DID I LOVE IT SO MUCH??? It's the most beautifully bewildering episode of What's My Line? ever made. I can't stop thinking about it. I need to watch it again. I need to write essays about it. What the fuck. That dude loves naked mole rats more than I will ever love anything in this world.
The Fog of War (2003): Okay, so I guess apparently I just really like Errol Morris documentaries and never knew it! This should SO not have been my bag, just a talking head interview with a guy I've never given much thought to beyond 'old and dead/probably a war criminal?', but it's so fascinating and engaging and I hate everything about it especially the fact that so many of his lessons feel genuinely important and relevant to everyday life today. It's also real scary how much people can make excuses for, even as they clearly know what they did was wrong and have to grapple with that in the subsequent years. Gah.
Spectre (2015): It's been four fucking years and I still can't quite believe they went Full Blofeld. For as much as this movie is a hot mess (that last act, YIKES), it's still really comforting to me to know that, even with how successful and excellent the grim 'n' gritty reboot turned out, they'll never be afraid to take Bond back to some very silly extremes when the mood strikes. MAGIC DNA RING, Y'ALL. Fuck, I'm so pumped for No Time to Die now.
Freaks (1932): ONE OF US, ONE OF US
The Devils (1971): BOY, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY. Gets a little tedious in the torture porn aspect towards the end, like a much more entertaining Passion of the Christ, but man, this was some good shit. Watching slutty priest Oliver Reed so soon after discovering hot zaddy Athos was... problematic, though.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): THE DECEMBOND FINALE, I always save my favourite for last since it is, coincidentally, also a Christmas movie (and also that way I don't have to deal with the disappointment of going BACK to Connery for one more movie afterward, it leaves his run nice and unbroken). I guess next year I'll have to move it to Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve, and I REALLY don't know what I'll do when a 26th Bond film comes out!
I Walk Alone (1947): Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas had as much smoldering sexual chemistry as any actual romantic pairing from this era, good lord. This fizzled out a little in the denouement to make sure the good guy could walk away with his hands pristine, but it was all worth it for that blackout countdown shootout, SO GOOD.
The War of the Worlds (1953): In my head, I know that the ending of this story fucking sucks, but it still catches me off guard EVERY DAMN TIME when the aliens just fucking drop dead. Still, all the wanton destruction and brutality on the way there was ACES, and even all the goofy old special effects hold up well once you get into the right mindset. Fuck all those miniatures UP. I also really liked that one of the primary scientist characters was an older woman, for no particularly plotty reasons.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964): luv 2 immediately treat the first person i see after months of increasingly desperate loneliness like absolute dogshit, WHATEVER they were boyfriends by the end, it all worked out, THIS IS AN INTENSELY SILLY MOVIE, but damn if I didn't get completely swept away by all those Martian desertscapes. RIP Adam West, smushed by rocks too soon. Long live the hot dog plants.
HOW THE FUCK WERE THE LAST THREE MOVIES DIRECTED BY THE SAME DUDE. ONE OF THEM WAS VERY MUCH NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019): Eeeeeeeeh. I don't know if I liked The Last Jedi so much that this was always going to be a losing proposition, or maybe five movies in five years is just way too much Star Wars for me and I'm burned out? But ech, this just felt so soulless to me. It was fun to see the core trio running around together again, and wanting to know just where they were going with all of it kept me entertained for the duration, but the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, idk.
And then I fell down a Val Lewton hole for a while! Rapid fire reviews!
Cat People (1942): There is more atmosphere packed into any individual shadow in this movie than most films can manage to cobble together in at least an hour. I want to live inside those stalking scenes.
The Leopard Man (1943): Beautiful and horrible and way before its time. Clo-Clo had it coming to her, though.
Isle of the Dead (1945): "Fight death all your days and die knowing you know nothing." So quiet and tense and intimate, it straight up gave me ASMR.
The Seventh Victim (1943): I love how weird and circular the central mystery is here, it's messy and awkward and confusing right up until the end in ways that movie plots typically aren't? And that ENDING. OOF.
The Curse of the Cat People (1944): Christmas is for ghost stories! And weird quasi-sequels that only make sense as such once you've turned them over in your head a few times. Cat People was about marriage, this one is about parenthood! There are no actual cat people in this one, but Irena's legacy still looms over Oliver and Alice and comes to impact their daughter! It made sense at the time! Maybe it was all in my head, though! Just like Irena's ghost, maybe????? I wish the ending to Cat People had stayed as wonderfully ambiguous on the supernatural angle as this one did.
I Walked with a Zombie (1943): Gothic calypso??? Completely spellbinding, and I love how it peels back the exoticism of the colonial setting right from the get-go. Sir Lancelot should get to sing ominous songs about the characters in EVERY movie.
Bedlam (1946): Frustrating, but so, SO stylish. I really like that while Karloff is cartoonishly evil, and quaker boyfriend is cartoonishly pure, our actual protagonist operates more in shades of grey. She's not perfect! Also they totally Goldfinger a dude in this, lol.
The Body Snatcher (1945): MY BONES. THEY WERE SO CHILLED. When the carriage follows the street singer into the darkness, man, I FELT that. Also very cool to see Karloff and Lugosi share the screen!
Persepolis (2007): Such a faithful adaptation of the comic, it almost feels redundant? Still cried a lot!
I HAVE WATCHED 91/100 MOVIES. WITH ONE DAY LEFT IN THE MONTH, I DON'T THINK I WILL MAKE IT, BUT I STILL WATCHED AN AWFUL LOT AND HAD A LOT OF FUN.
See y'all in 2020!
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at least he's rich at the end BUT HE DID HER SO DIRTY