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

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

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?

O beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on

OTHELLO

1995

Written and directed by Oliver Parker (based on the play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare)

Spoilers: presumably inapplicable

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

Middle-age wolf

WOLF

1994

Directed by Mike Nichols

Written by Jim Harrison, Wesley Strick, and Elaine May

Spoilers: moderate

Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.

MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

1994

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Written by Steph Lady and Frank Darabont (based on the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley) 

Spoilers: inapplicable, right?

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 high—and I'm kind of serious, it's not one of the ones they make you read in high school, you know?

And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

1992

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Written by James V. Hart (based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker's Bram Stoker, Bram Stoker)

Spoilers: high?

Auld acquaintance

PETER'S FRIENDS

1992

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Written by Rita Rudner and Martin Bergman

Spoilers: mild

Karmically, self-defense is quite cool

DEAD AGAIN

1991

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Written by Scott Frank

Spoilers: moderate

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

Kill all Ken

BARBIE

2023

Directed by Greta Gerwig

Written by Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig

Spoilers: high

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?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's elementary

ELEMENTAL

2023

Directed by Peter Sohn

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

Spoilers: moderate

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

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)

Note to the electrician, desert light is neither cool nor hot, but it is always clean

ASTEROID CITY

2023

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: We'll be all alone in that big house—let's be alone together

EMMA

1932

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Frances Marion, Leonard Praskins, and Zelda Sears

Spoilers: moderate

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

What a disaster: Get on the bus

THE BIG BUS

1976

Directed by James Frawley

Written by Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman

Spoilers: moderate

It's an almost vanished way of life, not easy to hold onto... and terribly expensive to maintain

FITZWILLY

1967

Directed by Delbert Mann

Written by Isobel Lennart (based on the novel A Garden of Cucumbers by Poyznt Tyler)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: Anything's easy for a woman

POSSESSED

1931

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Lenore J. Coffee (based on the play The Mirage by Edgar Selwyn)

Spoilers: moderate

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

Galaxy's edge

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3

2023

Written and directed by James Gunn

Spoilers: moderate to high

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

You'll bury us all

WHAT A WAY TO GO!

1964

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Written by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Gwen Davis

Spoilers: moderate

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")

Cardboard Science: I was a teenage arachnophobe

EARTH VS. THE SPIDER

1958

Directed by Bert I. Gordon

Written by Laszlo Gorog and George Worthing Yates

Spoilers: moderate

Always be closing

SUZUME

2022 Japan/2023 USA

Written and directed by Makoto Shinkai

Spoilers: moderate

Yeah

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4

2023

Directed by Chad Stahelski

Written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch

Spoilers: moderate

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

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?

Cardboard Science: More like bore of the colossal beast, amirite?

WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST

1958

Directed by Bert I. Gordon

Written by George Worthing Yates and Bert I. Gordon

Spoilers: moderate

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

Atlas shrugged

SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS

2023

Directed by David Sandberg

Written by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan

Spoilers: moderate

Getting punchy

CREED III

2023

Directed by Michael B. Jordan

Written by Keenan Coogler, Zach Baylin, and Ryan Coogler

Spoilers: moderate

What in the world could make a river red turn blue?

FULL RIVER RED

2023

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Written by Chen Yu and Zhang Yimou

Spoilers: moderate

Well, if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't have "volunteered"

SNIPERS

2022

Directed by Zhang Yimou and Zhang Mo

Written by Chen Yu

Spoilers: moderate

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

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 do—complaining about them—and 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 before—consider it a lark, please—because 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.

American Gothic Week: The waves have now a redder glow—the hours are breathing faint and low

WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP

1965

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Written by Charles Bennett, Louis M. Heyward, and David Whitaker

Spoilers: moderate