Movies

[Rusty]

229 - Dynamite (1929) - 7/10 - A spoiled heiress finds out that she has to be married on her 23rd birthday or she loses her inheritance. She wants to marry a man named Roger, except that his wife hasn't granted him a divorce yet. She comes up with a scheme to marry a convicted murderer who is about to be executed, but the plan goes awry when he is discovered to be innocent just before the execution. The acting is a bit stilted at times, though this is an early talkie so it isn't that unexpected. Overall, it's a decent film with a mix of comedy and drama.


230 - Flower Drum Song (1961) - 7.5/10 - Mei Lee and her father arrive in San Francisco illegally to meet Sammy Fong, a nightclub owner whose mother set up an arranged marriage. However, Sammy is in love with one of his singers and Mei Lee soon meets someone else as well. This is a decent musical and I'm glad that they used a mostly Asian cast for the film.


231 - Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007) - 7/10 - The early life of Genghis Khan is shown here in this biopic. I'm sure they took plenty of liberties, but it was entertaining.


232 - Incendies (2010) - 8.5/10 - When their mother dies, French-Canadian twins Jeanne and Simon are given envelopes from to be delivered to the father that they thought was dead and the brother they didn't know existed. They travel to the Middle East to track them down and learn who their mother was and what she went through before emigrating to Canada. It's an excellent film.


233 - Daddy Long Legs (1955) - 7/10 - Fred Astaire stars as an extremely wealthy bachelor who travels to France as part of an economic mission. While there, he becomes enchanted with an 18 year old orphan (Leslie Caron) and he decides to pay for her to come to college in America, all expenses paid anonymously. A couple of years later, they meet and fall for each other, even with a 30+ year age gap. I enjoyed the film, though it is a bit too long. Some of the dance sequences could likely have been cut or shortened.


234 - To Forget Venice (1979) - 6/10 - A man visits his sister in the countryside and brings along his younger male lover. Also at the house are the lesbian niece and her partner. The past is also explored through memories of childhood for the man and the niece.

[Rusty]

235 - La venganza (1958) - 7.5/10 - Juan returns home to his Spanish village after 10 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. His sister makes him swear an oath to kill the man she thinks is responsible for framing him, but later regrets that oath when she falls in love with the man. This is a nice film with pretty good acting overall.


236 - Against All Odds (1984) - 7/10 - A professional football player (Jeff Bridges) loses his job due to injury and goes off in search of the girlfriend (Rachel Ward) of his gangster friend (James Woods). He finds her in Mexico and the two fall for each other, but their troubles are far from over.


237 - Youth (2015) - 8/10 - Michael Caine is a retired composer and conductor who is vacationing in the Swiss Alps along with a film director friend (Harvey Keitel) and others. An emissary of the Queen wants him to conduct a special performance, but he isn't interested. His daughter is also having some marital problems. Caine gives a very nice performance and I certainly enjoyed this a lot more than the other Sorrentino picture I watched recently, The Great Beauty.


238 - Sandakan No.8 (1974) - 7/10 - A young Japanese reporter befriends an older woman that she meets at a cafe. She accompanies the older woman back to her home where she is introduced to neighbors as the woman's daughter-in-law. The older woman eventually tells the story of how she was sold into prostitution in Borneo when she was a child and was forced to work at a brothel known as Sandakan No.8.


239 - Bewitched Love (El amor brujo) (1986) - 7/10 - Candelas is haunted by dreams and visions of her violent former lover, Diego, who seemingly died recently. Antonio is in love with Candelas and tries to protect her and free her from the visions. It's a decent drama with good music and dancing.


240 - A Simple Story (1978) - 8/10 - Marie is 39 and is divorced with a 16 year old son. She finds out that she is pregnant about the same time that she has decides to leave her current partner, seeing no future with him. The film follows Marie and her friends and family over the next few months. It's a very nice film.


241 - The Time Machine (1960) - 7.5/10 - I liked this adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic. The special effects were a bit primitive in places, but it was decent overall.

[Rusty]

242 - Dear John (1964) - 8/10 - This Swedish film focuses on the brief romance between a seaman and a young waitress in one of the ports. The waitress also has a four year old daughter from a previous relationship and the three spend a day together at the zoo. Much of the story is told in flashback and it is pretty well done.


243 - A War (2015) - 6.5/10 - A snap decision while under fire in Afghanistan leads to charges against a Danish commander. It's not a bad film, but there is a long period of setting things up before the action that leads to charges. We also don't get much payoff for the way the older son was behaving while the father was away.


244 - I Am Love (2009) - 7.5/10 - Tilda Swinton stars as a Russian woman who married into a wealthy and influential Italian family. She had three grown children and they all gather at the start of the film for her father-in-law's birthday. She falls for Antonio, a chef who is a close friend of her eldest son. The film is beautifully shot and the film is a pretty good romantic drama.


245 - Live for Life (1967) - 5/10 - Yves Montand stars as a tv newscaster who is married, but is continuously unfaithful to her with a series of young women. She knows he is cheating, but he lies about it. He becomes involved with an American woman named Candice (Candice Bergen) and it becomes a bit more serious, at least for a while. I found this movie to be pretty disappointing. I enjoyed Claude Lelouch's earlier film, A Man and a Woman, but didn't care for this one really at all, except for a few bits here and there.


246 - House of Flying Daggers (2004) - 8/10 - in 9th Century China, the government is trying to destroy the rebel group known as the Flying Daggers. A blind dancer is thought to be the daughter of the former leader of the Flying Daggers and the government wants to use her to find their leader. This is a pretty cool martial arts romance and I enjoyed it a lot.


247 - The Family (1987) - 7.5/10 - The film follows 80 years in the lives of an Italian family with the entire picture taking place at their very large family apartment in Rome. It starts with the birth of Carlo before the first World War and stops at different points over the years as Carlo and his family age, get married, have kids, etc. It's a nice film that kind of meanders through and we get to see the changes in the family along with some of the high and low points along the way.

[Rusty]

248 - The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) - 7/10 - Anthony Quinn plays an Archbishop who has been in a Siberian labor camp for 20 years. He is suddenly set free and sent to Rome where the Pope makes him a Cardinal. When the Pope dies, the Cardinals are deadlocked in the election of a new Pope and settle on a compromise candidate. I enjoyed the movie, though I thought it could have been cut down a bit more. There were some nice scenes, but also some that kind of dragged a bit.


249 - War and Peace (1965-1968) - 9/10 - Sergey Bondarchuk's masterpiece does justice to Leo Tolstoy's classic novel about the Napoleonic War. It's beautifully shot and has great battle scenes. The acting is very good and the long runtime allows the film to cover a lot of ground. It's broken up into four parts with a different emphasis in each and Bondarchuk himself plays Pierre, one of the main characters. My favorite part was the one that focused on Natasha Rostova. I think it was very deserving of winning the Academy Award for foreign film, though it had very good competition with The Firemen's Ball, The Boys of Paul Street, Stolen Kisses, and The Girl with a Pistol (all of which I liked and in that order after War and Peace).

[Rusty]

250 - The Lost Daughter (2021) - 6/10 - Olivia Colman stars as a woman on vacation at a beach resort who helps find a lost child. She also has a number of interactions with the people there. The movie is more about the woman's journey raising her two daughters. Colman and Jessie Buckley (who played the woman at a younger age) both gave good performances, but I didn't really enjoy the movie very much. The slow pacing and somewhat meandering story didn't really work for me. I didn't find the supporting cast very interesting either.


251 - Don't Look Up (2021) - 7/10 - A Doctoral student discovers a comet heading toward Earth that could be an extinction event. She and her mentor are invited to the White House to discuss the matter and are essentially blown off. They try a newspaper and a talk show with little success. It's a satire based on the world we live in and I really wanted to like it more. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are pretty good in their roles, but I didn't care for Mark Rylance or Meryl Streep here. Rylance in particular was very grating whenever he appeared. Good premise with enough decent material to make it worth watching, but also a bit disappointing.


252 - Luca (2021) - 8.5/10 - Two boys from under the sea turn into humans while above the surface (as long as they don't get wet). They spend the summer in a small Italian town, making friends and hoping to earn enough money to buy a Vespa. It's a Pixar movie so you somewhat know what to expect, but it is very good with nice voice acting, visuals, and story.


253 - The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002) - 8/10 - The Thornberrys are documentary filmmakers who specialize in wildlife and are currently living in Africa. Their younger daughter Eliza has the ability to talk with animals, though she can't tell anybody about it. When a cheetah cub is taken by a poacher, Eliza goes in search of the poachers to try and rescue the cub. I'd heard of the tv show, but didn't really know anything about it. The movie is fun with plenty of humor and adventure plus a decent soundtrack. I don't know if I'll ever watch the tv show, but I enjoyed this one.


254 - The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) - 7.5/10 - Excellent black and white cinematography and a nice performance from Denzel Washington. The rest of the cast was pretty good as well.

[Rusty]

255 - Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) - 8/10 - During the summer of 1969, a series of free concerts were held in Harlem and the tapes sat in a basement for 50 years because nobody was interested in televising it at the time. I was born the following year, but grew up listening to many of the songs and groups that are shown in the film. There are lots of familiar names - Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, an so on. The film mixes in cultural information for what was going on elsewhere at the time and interviews concertgoers and musicians. I enjoyed it quite a bit and enjoyed both the music and the commentary.


256 - Cruella (2021) - 8/10 - I wasn't really very interested in watching this film, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Emma Stone kills it as Estella/Cruella and Emma Thompson seems to be having fun as the Baroness as well. It also has excellent costumes, makeup, etc.


257 - Being the Ricardos (2021) - 6/10 - The film chronicles a week in the life of Lucille Ball in which a story about her communist ties might be published, she discovers she is pregnant, there are rumors of Desi being unfaithful, and so on all while prep work for the latest episode is underway. The movie was almost painful to watch early on, but I did think it got better in the second half. The scenes with the radio show and meeting with the CBS executives were pretty good and there were other things I did like.


258 - Writing With Fire (2021) - 7.5/10 - Khabar Lahariya is a newspaper in India which is run entirely by women. This documentary starts at the time when the paper shifted almost entirely to digital. It shows some of the learning curve that the reporters had and follows several of the reporters as they report on rape cases, politics, and other issues. They also face some difficulty due to their gender or caste. I thought it was pretty interesting and the reporters seemed to be doing a good job.


259 - Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) - 8/10 - A young teacher in Bhutan has another year left on his government service before he can (hopefully) leave for Australia to pursue his dream of being a singer. He is assigned to teach in Lunana, the remotest school in the country. It is an 8 day hike through the mountains from the nearest city. He doesn't want to be there, but finds himself changed by the children and the community. It's a nice and enjoyable film.

[Rusty]

260 - Coming 2 America (2021) - 7/10 - I ended up liking this more than I expected. It's an unnecessary sequel and not in the same class as the original, but it has enough fun moments in it to make it worthwhile.


261 - CODA (2021) - 8.5/10 - Ruby is the only hearing person in her family and she is always having to interpret for her parents. They make their living with a fishing boat, but Ruby loves to sing and wants to go to college. I've seen a couple of other films with similar situations, but this is really well done. Emilia Jones does an excellent job in the lead role. The parents are pretty inconsiderate toward Ruby at times, especially the mother (Marlee Matlin). I thought the film was very entertaining and there was certainly plenty of humor mixed in with the drama.

[Rusty]

262 - Four Good Days (2020) - 6/10 - Mila Kunis plays a 31 year old drug addict who is trying to get clean with the help of her mother (Glenn Close). Since becoming an addict at 17, there has been a lot of lies, false hope, theft, and so on. Will she finally get clean this time? It's not a great movie, but it's watchable. The resolution near the end seemed a little too neat.


263 - Attica (2021) - 8/10 - This is a very good documentary about the Attica Prison Riot in 1971. I'd heard of it, but didn't really know very much about it. They have interviews with former inmates, observers, and relatives of hostages along with archival footage. It paints a pretty bad picture of conditions at the prison before and after the riot.

[Rusty]

264 - Ascension (2021) - 7/10 - This documentary takes a look at average Chinese citizens. It starts with people being recruited to work in factories and then shows people working in a number of different factory settings. We also get to see people undergoing a variety of training sessions, creating social media videos, and much more. There is no narration so we get to hear what people are talking with each other about and draw our own conclusions. I thought it was interesting, though it can seem much longer than it actually was without a narrative thread.


265 - Spencer (2021) - 8/10 - The movie takes place during a visit to Sandringham House over the Christmas holidays in the early 1990s. You definitely can feel the suffocation and isolation that Diana is feeling. She's trapped by all of these royal protocols, eyes constantly watching her, and struggles with her mental health. Kristen Stewart does a pretty nice job in the role and it makes for a good psychological drama.


266 - Drive My Car (2021) - 9/10 - Yusuke Kafuku is a well known stage actor and director who is brought in to put on a Chekhov play in Hiroshima. He is assigned a driver for the duration of the play who will drive him whenever he needs to get around. This is a beautiful film with excellent acting. It's nearly 3 hours long, but didn't feel like it. It's now my favorite film from 2021.

[Rusty]

267 - The Batman (2022) - 8.5/10 - The film probably could have been shortened a bit, but overall it was a very good film. Pattinson was really good as Batman and (a damaged) Bruce Wayne. Zoe Kravitz nailed it as Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Jeffrey Wright made a pretty good Jim Gordon and the rest of the cast wasn't bad. It will be interesting to see the Penguin tv series. Very moody and kind of slow, but well worth watching.


268 - Licorice Pizza (2021) - 7.5/10 - A 15 year old child actor strikes up a friendship with a 25 year old photography assistant on school picture day in 1973. The acting is good and the movie is pleasant enough to watch. I don't think it reaches the heights of greatness, but it is a nice film.


269- The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) - 7/10 - Jessica Chastain is excellent in this biopic as Tammy Faye Bakker. Andrew Garfield is okay as Jim Bakker. It's a decent film carried mostly by Chastain's performance throughout.

[Rusty]

270 - Cyrano (2021) - 8/10 - Peter Dinklage stars as Cyrano with Haley Bennett as Roxanne in this version of the classic tale. The music is great and the two leads give very nice performances. Kelvin Harrison, Jr. is also very good as Christian, a guard who is in love with Roxanne, but doesn't possess the words to woo her properly. The film also has nice cinematography and moves at a very nice pace.


271 - House of Gucci (2021) - 6/10 - I thought the acting was good for the most part. I thought the story itself was kind of boring, though. I don't think the soundtrack helped the movie. Some might like it, but I didn't think it fit the movie very well and lessened any impact it might have had. I also thought some of the choices that they made, such as leaving out one of the daughters, were a bit odd.


272 - The Hand of God (2021) - 7/10 - Paolo Sorrentino's semi-autobiographical film is a bit odd in spots. There are a lot of mean jokes and pranks in the first part of the film. It's shot and acted pretty well, but I didn't really engage with the film at times. Overall I enjoyed it and certainly liked it more than The Great Beauty, but it could have been better.

[Rusty]

273 - Parallel Mothers (2021) - 7/10 - Penelope Cruz stars as Janis, a woman in her 40s who unexpectedly gets pregnant. While in the hospital, she befriends her roommate Ana (Milena Smit), a much younger woman who is also expecting a baby. The movie wasn't bad and the acting from Cruz and Smit was good, but I'd rate it as my least favorite of the six Almodóvar films that I've seen so far. The side plot with the mass grave from the Franco era seemed a bit out of place even if it did tangentially relate to the main story.


274 - Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) - 7.5/10 - Egon Spengler's daughter and grandchildren move to his farm in Oklahoma after his death. I thought the movie was a lot of fun. It may have reused elements from the first film, but it did so in an entertaining fashion.


275 - The French Dispatch (2021) - 6/10 - I've enjoyed the other Wes Anderson films that I've seen, but I found this one to be mostly boring and uninteresting. It is certainly visually stylish as expected and I did like the animated sequence toward the end plus scattered bits throughout the film, but overall I'd call this one a miss for me.


276 - The Worst Person in the World (2021) - 8/10 - Julie is a young woman who changes her mind about her major, her career path, her boyfriend, etc. with some regularity. Eventually she meets Aksel, a successful comic strip artist who is a bit older than her and more settled in what he wants. The movie is told in a number of sections and the acting is very good. I think that there are many people like Julie in a number of ways who find it hard to stick to one career plan because they don't really know what they want yet.

[Rusty]

277 - Pig (2021) - 8/10 - Nicolas Cage is a reclusive truffle hunter who lives in a cabin deep in the woods of Oregon. When his pig is stolen by a couple of junkies, he sets out to recover it with the help of his one contact with society. The film is nicely done and features a very good performance from Cage.


278 - The Suicide Squad (2021) - 8/10 - I think this version is much more consistent and fun to watch than the 2016 version. The 2016 film isn't as bad as its rating on IMDb and Letterboxd suggests, but it definitely had its pluses and minuses. This one was lighter in tone and came with less baggage than the earlier film.


279 - The Last Duel (2021) - 6.5/10 - The film tells the story of the last judicial duel in France in 1386. A knight (Matt Damon) and a squire (Adam Driver) were once friends, but now are rivals. The knight's wife (Jodie Comer) accuses the squire of raping her while the knight was away from home. I enjoyed the first part of the movie, but the movie is told (and retold) from three points of view. The differences between the parts were minimal in some areas and I don't think the film needed to be 2.5 hours long. I think it would have been a better film if told in a more traditional fashion and incorporating and differences between the different sections.


280 - F9 (2021) - 7/10 - This film cranks up the action (and the ridiculousness), but I thought it was a lot of fun. There is a lot of humor and plenty of crazy stunts as Dom and the gang have to deal with his brother Jakob (John Cena) who Dom hasn't seen for 25-30 years. Jakob is now a spy working for the 'wrong' side.

[Rusty]

281 - Turning Red (2022) - 7/10 - A young girl discovers that she now turns into a giant red panda when her emotions get out of control. It causes problems, but also creates opportunities. It's a decent Pixar film that gets more fun as it goes along. I'd put it below Encanto and Luca from last year, but it's entertaining, though fairly predictable as well.


282 - The Adam Project (2022) - 7/10 - Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) travels back from 2050 to 2022 and teams up with his 12 year old self to try and keep time travel from being invented. It's not a great film, but it's a decent movie to just sit back and enjoy.


283 - Booksmart (2019) - 8/10 - It's the day before graduation and two of the top senior girls realize that they have spent all of their time studying and should have had more fun while in school. They set out to find the huge party that is happening that night, but it is harder to find than they thought it would be. I thought it was pretty funny and I could relate to a lot of it.


284 - Leave No Trace (2018) - 8/10 - A 13 year old girl (Thomasin McKenzie) has been living deep in the woods in a Portland, Oregon park with her father (Ben Foster) for the past four years. He is a veteran suffering from PTSD and he has been keeping up her education while in the woods. They are discovered by authorities and brought in for testing and assessment. McKenzie and Foster are each very good in their roles.

[Rusty]

285 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - 8/10 - Near the end of the 18th Century, a female painter is hired to paint a portrait of a woman to be sent to her prospective husband. However, the subject is reluctant to be painted. This was well acted and an interesting film. Choosing to go with natural sounds instead of a soundtrack seems like it was the right decision.


286 - Red Notice (2021) - 7/10 - Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot star in this film about thieves looking to steal three elaborate golden eggs from ancient Egypt so that they can sell them to a billionaire for a huge payday. Two of the eggs are in collections whose locations are known, but the location of the third egg is unknown. It's not the deepest film, relying a lot on the chemistry of the stars, but it was a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours.


287 - In a Better World (2010) - 8/10 - Anton is a Swedish doctor who splits time between his home in Denmark and a Sudanese refugee camp. He is separated from his wife and his older son Elias gets bullied on a daily basis. Christian is an angry young man who moves back to Denmark from London after the death of his mother. He ends up in the same class as Elias and stands up to the bully who torments his new friend. The two families are each going through tough times, but the friendship between the two boys can make matters better or worse (or both). It's a well acted drama for the most part.


288 - Salaam Bombay! (1988) - 7.5/10 - Krishna lives on the streets of Bombay, working part time for a tea seller and doing odd jobs to try and save 500 rupees so that he can go home. His friends are the other street kids, a drug seller, and a couple of the local prostitutes. We get to see the daily lives of Krishna and some of his friends. Krishna becomes infatuated with a new young girl who is brought in to the brothel. It's a pretty good movie and I thought the acting was also good.


289 -Jungle Cruise (2021) - 7/10 - Dwayne Johnson plays Frank, a riverboat captain on the Amazon in 1916 who is hired by a British scientist (Emily Blunt) to travel in search of a legendary tree whose leaves have healing properties. There are a few adversaries including a German in a submarine and Spanish Conquistadors who have been under a curse for almost 400 years. I thought it was fun.