Sunday, September 24, 2023

Turtles all the way down


TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM

2023
Directed by Jeff Rowe (co-directed by Kyler Spears)
Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Jeff Rowe

Spoilers: moderate

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

And they would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling mustache!


A HAUNTING IN VENICE

2023
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Written by Michael Green (based on the novel Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie)

Spoilers: moderate, though if it's arguably on the higher side of moderate, I'm still not talking the details of ultimate solutions or anything

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all


HAMLET

1996
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh (based on the play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare)

Spoilers: hey, remember that time Norway conquered Denmark?

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Monday, September 4, 2023

Why must the show go on?


IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
aka A Midwinter's Tale

1995
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh

Spoilers: moderate unto high

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Sunday, August 27, 2023

My dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?


MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

1993
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh (based on the play by William Shakespeare)

Spoilers: moderate unto highand I'm kind of serious, it's not one of the ones they make you read in high school, you know?

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Auld acquaintance


PETER'S FRIENDS

1992
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Written by Rita Rudner and Martin Bergman

Spoilers: mild

Friday, August 4, 2023

Doctor Manhattan


OPPENHEIMER

2023
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan (based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin)

Spoilers: N/A

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous, the name of Agincourt


HENRY V

1989
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh (based on the play The Life of Henry the Fifth by William Shakespeare)

Spoilers: N/A (why's there no play about the Siege of Orléans?)

Sunday, July 23, 2023

He's a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos!


MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-DEAD RECKONING, PART ONE

2023
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Written by Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie

Spoilers: moderate

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Digitally release the kraken


RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN

2023
Directed by Kirk DiMicco (co-directed by Faryn Pearl)
Written by Pam Brady, Brian C. Brown, and Elliott Giuseppe

Spoilers: moderate

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: Those magnificent men in their flying machines


NIGHT FLIGHT

1933
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett, John Monk Saunders, and Wells Root (based on the novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Spoilers: moderate

Sunday, July 16, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: How about a little Service?


LOOKING FORWARD

1933
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Bess Meredyth and H.M. Harwood (based on the play Service by Dodie Smith)

Spoilers: moderate

Saturday, July 15, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: Hey, that's pretty progressive for... oh


THE SON-DAUGHTER

1932
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by John F. Goodrich, Claudine West, and Leon Gordon (based on the play by George Scarborough and David Belasco)

Spoilers: moderate

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: But we are together, aren't we? And I doubt that you will scream, or alarm the neighbors


LETTY LYNTON

1932
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Wanda Tuchok and John Meehan (based on the novel by Marie Belloc Lownes and the play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes)

Spoilers: highish, inasmuch as I refer to the details of the real-life criminal case and the copyright infringement litigation resulting in this film's unusual legal status
Update 7/15/2023: I was way off on certain details of another film's legal status, which I have now corrected, though I find my initial error incredibly embarrassing

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Who knows, in a thousand years, even you may be worth something


INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY

2023
Directed by James Mangold
Written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and James Mangold

Spoilers: severe, and I'm also going to let it run a little long

Tuesday, July 4, 2023

It's elementary


ELEMENTAL

2023
Directed by Peter Sohn
Written by John Hoburg, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hseuh, and Peter Sohn

Spoilers: moderate

Sunday, July 2, 2023

Smells like teen spirit


TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES

2018
Directed by Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath
Written by Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath

Spoilers: moderate, or high if you don't already know who Deathstroke the Terminator is

Saturday, July 1, 2023

For want of a can


THE FLASH

2023
Directed by Andy Muschietti
Written by Christina Hodson, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and Joby Howard

Spoilers: moderate (unless cameos are spoilers to you, you loser)

Sunday, June 11, 2023

2099 problems


SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

2023
Directed by Jaoquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson
Written by Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Dave Callaham

Spoilers: moderate

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Monday, May 22, 2023

Saturday, May 20, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: My mother was a saint


THIS MODERN AGE

1931
Directed by Nick Grindé and Clarence Brown
Written by John Meehan, Sylvia Thalberg, and Frank Butler (based on the short story "Girls Together" by Mildred Cram)

Spoilers: mild

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

The Encyclopedia Brown: Ace attorney


A FREE SOUL

1931
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by John Meehan and Becky Gardiner (based on the play by Willard Mack based on the book by Adela Rogers St. Johns)

Spoilers: moderate

Sunday, May 7, 2023

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Towering with you


THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS

2004
Written and directed by Makoto Shinkai

Spoilers: moderate (also discussed, Shinkai's early short films, 1999's "She and Her Cat" and 2002's "Voices of a Distant Star")

Monday, April 24, 2023

Monday, April 10, 2023

Yeah


JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4

2023
Directed by Chad Stahelski
Written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch

Spoilers: moderate

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Cardboard Science: You didn't get paid to be eaten by prehistoric animals, did you?


THE CYCLOPS

1957
Written and directed by Bert I. Gordon

Spoilers: as the film would have it, high, but practically mild by the standards of anyone with the intellectual faculties of a six year old

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Cardboard Science: I brought the atom bomb, I think it's a good time to use it


KING DINOSAUR

1955
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Written by Tom Gries, Al Zimbalist, and Bert I. Gordon

Spoilers: high, I guess, but who could possibly care?

Monday, April 3, 2023

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Cardboard Science: Little men come when anything goes


ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE

1958
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Written by George Worthing Yates and Bert I. Gordon

Spoilers: moderate

Friday, March 31, 2023

Atlas shrugged


SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS

2023
Directed by David Sandberg
Written by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan

Spoilers: moderate

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Getting punchy


CREED III

2023
Directed by Michael B. Jordan
Written by Keenan Coogler, Zach Baylin, and Ryan Coogler

Spoilers: moderate

Saturday, March 18, 2023

American Gothic Week: Fragments as our universe must needs disown


DIE, MONSTER, DIE!

1965
Directed by Daniel Haller
Written by Jerry Sohl (based on "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft)

Spoilers: moderate

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Reviews from gulag: 2022's junk drawer, part 3

So on the eve of the Oscars, we're still cleaning up 2022, which I suppose isn't that new here at Kinemalogue, and of course halfway through March there's still a fair amount left from the previous year that I want to see.  It's entirely possible I won't be "done" with the year, then (though one is never done with a year, like, what does that mean, I'm never going to watch any other movie from 2022?), until April, which is of course a bother because newfangled release patterns means that these days we're already starting the new year in earnest by late winter, and there's already very important stuff I'm missing in theaters (Creed III, for example).  Yeah, I say this, as if I actually felt like leaving my house.  But whatever, here's a mess of semi-mini, semi-new reviews that shall at least begin to close the loop on 2022: Utama, The Woman King, The Menu, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, and Women Talking.

UTAMA

It kind of makes sense that, prior to this feature debut, Alejandro Loayza Grisi's been a cinematographer, and not an especially veteran cinematographer, at that, with his biggest deal being Planeta Bolivia, what looks like a tolerably cool travelogue documentary miniseries.  It explains several things about the movie.  One of them is, unfortunately, why Utama isn't edited very well.  It's not, like, edited terribly or anything, but it's full of images just bonking into one another.  For instance, we will eventually arrive upon a very long shot of our protagonist, Virginio (Jose Calcina), a Quechua llama herder and potato farmer living in the Bolivian Qullaw highlands; we see him cresting a roadside from long down the road, and this swings 90 degrees and several thousand feet to bonk into a very close axial shot of his face.  Grisi may also be a cinematographer who was never asked the question "where is the horizon in this painting?", though a one-clause aesthetic philosophy is for the birds anyhow.  "Being a TV documentary cinematographer" probably also explains Utama's extremely "nature doc" videography, which can be distractingly (sometimes unpleasantly) smooth, though, to Grisi's great credit, it's color graded for naturalism, and despite the overriding goal being a sort of poetic realism erring on the side of just plain realism, no doubt a well-attested mode in Latin American film though what Utama makes me think of is early Fifth Generation Chinese cinema, he even manages some rather interestingly narratively-weighted lighting set-ups inside the family cabin.

Oscars Fun 2023


I honor the Oscars as most people docomplaining about themand I rarely discuss them in any systematic way, and I won't be changing that now.  But I will do something I've never done beforeconsider it a lark, pleasebecause for whatever reason, the silly idea, "whom I personally would nominate and award, were my will in command of the collective mind of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences," has been percolating in my brain for a while.  Maybe it's just because I actually saw a non-trivial number of movies from the foregoing year for the first time in a while, and 2022 turned out to be a reasonably great year overall for cinema, so I wanted to celebrate that.  Or I got tired of reviewing documents at work.  In either case, this is the absolute last possible moment of even marginal relevance for it, and while I'd have liked to have seen all the (actual) Best Picture nominees, at least, rather than just 80% of them, and while this kind of locks down my top five even though I'm not done yet, for this particular game, it's now or never.  So with no further ado (except to say, "yes, they're in order of preference" and "part of the fun will be to see if I remember all the categories"), here's what and whom I'd have picked were I the dictator of industry circle-jerking.