Tag: film reviews

When your only tool is a hammer

On By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the CultureLeave a comment

I’m still not exactly sure what I want to say about Oldboy.

Let’s start at the beginning, I suppose. Some good long time ago, I hung up the 100 Movies Bucket List in my office and began very slowly working my way through the titles that I hadn’t yet seen.

And I mean VERY slowly. ‘Cos after watching and posting about Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, that was it.

And that was it because I kept looking at the next little square on my poster.

6 squares on the 100 Movies Busket List poster. 3 are all the way scratched off: Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, The Deer Hunter. 1 is halfway scratched off: Snatch. 2 are untouched: Old Boy and Leon: The Professional. The square for Old Boy is marked with a post-it flag.

It’s no great mystery why I was dragging my feet here. I’d heard the film was ultraviolent—which it is—and I’d heard it was disturbing—which it also is, though not in the way I was expecting.

It’s just the kind of film that is very much not my bag, and I couldn’t summon the gumption to watch it. Especially once 2020 became…. well, 2020.

And I know I could have skipped over this box and gone onto to something I was more in the mood for. Except I didn’t. Not 100% sure why. I think in part I was imagining that I’d keep skipping this one, again and again, until it was the absolute last film to scratch off my poster, and I didn’t want that.

So, once our library system opened up enough that we can get interlibrary loans again (woot!), I asked for the DVD to be shipped to me from Groton. And now I can say I’ve checked off this box on my poster.

Spoilers right below the jump!

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Black girl magic, holiday style

On By MezzoSherriIn Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Pop Goes the CultureLeave a comment

It’s the start of the weekend chez Mezzo. Not only do I have another 3-day weekend ahead, but I’m taking most of Thanksgiving week off, too.* AND Mr. Mezzo has tomorrow off so he can power through some more of his NaNoWriMo project.

So, even though we’ve been keeping a good habit of getting the TV off between 7:30 and 8 PM most nights, to support our separate writing habits—me here on JALC and him on his NaNo book—tonight we made an exception and kept watching later into the night so we could enjoy a movie on our “Friday night.”

A picture of 5 main characters from Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Story: Jeronicus, Journey, Buddy, Gustafson, and Grandma. The words "Netflix Official Trailer" are superimposed over the image.
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Four thumbs up: would recommend.

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First Amendment Protection

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Since our extra-successful weekend errand running finished up so quickly, I decided to use some of that time watching movies, as well as the reading I’ve already mentioned enjoying. And, with last holiday weekend signaling the end of May, I decided to start my film selections by taking a quick look at the HBO list to see what movies are about to drop off of rotation, in case I wanted to see any of them before I lose my chance. (You may recall that’s how I started doing film reviews on here in the first place.)

There was only one movie that jumped out at me form the “departing May 31st” list, but it was a film well worth seeing: Steven Spielberg’s The Post.

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Cool Rider

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Pop Goes the Culture, Self-AcceptanceLeave a comment

It all started innocently enough. They’ve been doing work on the floor above us in our office building, and yesterday’s noise involved stuff bouncing on the floor(1), and bouncing at regular enough intervals, that one of my co-workers posted on our Slack channel:

You’d think our upstairs neighbors would have invited us to the opening of their new bowling alley.

Which then prompted me—as a child of my generation—to ask:

Does anyone here remember Grease 2? “We’re gonna sco-o-ore tonight!”

And just like that, I’d ear-wormed myself.

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Horror Face x Infinity

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

As I backtrack to reporting out on the second film I watched over the weekend, I’m also taking a quick backtrack to my earlier fun of titling film review posts with emoji strings.

Because my initial response Abducted in Plain Sight cannot be summed up in any other way except with unending expressions of horror and the following declaration:

What the fuck did I just watch?

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Oscar Bait

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study1 Comment

I had such virtuous plans for my weekend: I was gonna clean the house, do more decluttering, do some private journalling, and begin building some reading momentum.

Instead, I spent most of yesterday in an exhausted blue funk. Not sure how much of that was just the build-up from a long week of work—both work work and my new side gig. Some piece of the exhaustion was just that, for damn sure. And the blue unmotivated feeling may have been as simple as my system reacting to a stretch of efforting and saying

I don’t care how virtuous and self-caring your Saturday goals are, we want a goddamn day off!

So mostly what I did with my Saturday was cuddled the dog, caught up on some DVR’ed stuff, and watched a couple of movies.

Including BlackKKlansman.

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On and On and On

On By MezzoSherriIn Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Pop Goes the Culture, Practicing in the HeartLeave a comment

Random point the first: I really think I’ve used this post title before, but I don’t have enough gas in the tank to go back and confirm. So apologies if this repetition causes any confusion down the line.

Random point the second: The course was challenging and rewarding in all the best ways, but I need more processing time before knowing what insights I want to share here.

So I’m onto a much lighter topic tonight: the most recent film I watched, on the train ride down to NYC from Boston.

And that exceptionally high brow piece of cinema? Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

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Achieving the Impossible

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study1 Comment

I took a wee break from writing over the weekend. I got some upsetting personal news Friday afternoon and spent that evening in bed reading and playing Make the World Go Away in an endless mental loop.*

Then, Saturday I caught up on not one but two big film releases from 2018 I missed along the way: Mary Poppins Returns and Avengers: Infinity War. Since I saw Mary Poppins Returns early in the day, I’ll write about that one first. I’m assuming I’ll circle back to Infinity War at some point, though there is a certain ludicrosity to me taking on either of these blockbusters so far after the curve.

But that’s where we are. And I have enough thoughts popcorning in my brain about Mary Poppins Returns that I absolutely want to mull over that for a bit.

(Since this is going to more of a critical meditation than a straight-up review, there may be plot details/spoilers that get spilled below the jump. Be warned.)

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Dog, Boxing Glove, Diamond, Pistol

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study2 Comments

I’ll admit, after coming up with such a fun string of emojis for my last movie review, I played around with the notion of continuing to create emoji strings for this and subsequent ones. Ultimately, though, I’m just not quite that creative, and there’s no way I could sustain that over the long haul.

Having said that, the emoji string for the next film on the reviewing roster—Guy Ritchie’s Snatch—came pretty easily, so at least I was able to make this a running gag of sorts. (Perhaps a jogging one?)

Anyhow: Snatch. Guy Ritchie. I remember when Ritchie hit it big with this film and its predecessor, but these sort of British gangster flicks aren’t my bag, so I kept Ritchie in my roster of “filmmakers I’ve heard of but not seen” until the Robert Downey Jr.-led Sherlock Holmes. I will also admit to having a guilty-pleasure sort of fondness for 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

But honestly, I probably never would have gotten around to seeing either of Ritchie’s early hits had Snatch not come up on that 100 Movies Bucket List.

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100 Movies Bucket List

On By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study3 Comments

I mentioned how my 100 Books Bucket List poster is part of a trio decorating my office, including a similar scratch-off bucket list poster for movies. The methodology for choosing movies for this poster is as haphazard as with the books one, but there’s a smaller-enough canon of films—both those artistically revered and those that expressed their particular zeitgeist—that there’s a much closer overlap between the poster’s list of titles and the films I’ve actually seen.*

Since I started out way ahead in my movies tally, as compared to books and albums, I haven’t been paying all that much attention to this particular “bucket list.” Still, every month or two, I try to check the next new-to-me title out of the library in order to continue building my film knowledge. So, assuming that those titles will now-and-again bleed into me posting film reviews here on JALC, it seems worth capturing the list for posterity.

(I will admit in passing that this also works as a sneaky way for me to come up with another post during this stretch of time where I don’t seem to have much else worth writing about.)

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