🍿 Meet the Parents (2000) is the kind of lowbrow entertainment one needs after a long day at work. Sitcoms used to fill that niche, but the old ones we’ve watched several times over and the new ones are either too high-octane or too unfunny.
🍿 Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) showed yet again that more is not better. There are too many characters, too many plot lines, too many Serious Things Happening, and not enough heart. If there is a third — and Phoebe is too good of a character for there not to be one — they better tone it down.
🍿 The Shining (1980) came out many decades ago, but from the opening I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-drone bird’s eye views through the masterful tracking shots of the Overlook Hotel to the anxiety-inducing stills of Jack Nicholson and his eyebrows it beats any and all of the modern-day perfectly-shot too-slick-to-be-real CGI trickery. I have been rewatching the movie several times over several decades and the cinematography is getting comparably better and better — quite damning for Hollywood.
This time around, however, I could better appreciate what’s truly scary about the movie: not the blood-filled hallway, or the hag soaking in that bathtub, or even the haunted twins*, but rather the ease with which a middle-aged man becomes bitter and starts blaming his family for holding him back. Not everyone is capable of extinguishing a star.
The Beatles wanted to do a LotR movie, starring:
McCartney as Frodo, Starr as Sam, Lennon as Gollum and Harrison as Gandalf. The Beatles' choice of director? Stanley Kubrick, fresh from making 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But Tolkien didn’t like the idea of a pop group being associated with his books. I am not sure about that cast either, but just imagine Kubrick’s Lord of the Rings. In the style of Barry Lyndon, perhaps? (ᔥMarginal Revolution)
🍿 The Incomparable podcast recently had a series of episodes dedicated to the Back to the Future triology so of course I had to see them all again. My favorite is still Part 1, but with time Part 3 rose up to the number 2 spot and the accompanying episode of The Incomparables has nicely outlined all of the reasons why.
🍿 Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) was fun, and I’ll pat myself on the back for being only 3 years late to this party.
Now, instead of jumping straight to the sequel we’ll check out the director’s 2008 live-action debut which I’ve never heard of before but my oh my does it look promising.
🍿 Finding Dory (2016) was a disappointment. For perspective, I have seen Wall-E and Ratatouille dozens of times beginning-to-end, but it took me 8 years to finish this over-plotted under-baked mess which managed to omit everything that made the original Finding Nemo so brilliant. Quo vadis, Pixar?
🍿 Casino Royale (2006) is one of the better Bond movies but has a little too much fun shooting on location and ultimately, at 144 minute run-time, overstays its welcome. Still, not having every scene be obviously green screened was refreshing. It’s strange to think that Daniel Craig may become our kids' idea of 007 but hey, it could be worse.
🍿 Paddington 2 (2017): even better than the first. It doesn’t look like Paddington 3 is in the cards, but what a fun set of movies this has been. Just compare it to what we had back in the day.
🍿 Paddington (2014) is the perfect family movie to which we were 10 years late, but it was worth waiting for every family member to be able to appreciate it. Too sappy and twee for adults? Perhaps. But did it make our kids laugh and cry? Also, yes, and you don’t often find the crying bit in movies like this any more.