Very charming and sweet look at a very small, tight knit community. The documentary shows the daily lives of a small town with a population of 218 people, explores pivotal moments in the town's history, and ruminates on its future and (by extension) the future of all small town American life.
Digital screening as part of Indy Film Fest 2021
Welcome to Monterey
As a piece of film history and a look at some epic John Ford filmmaking, The Searchers works well enough. There are some absolutely breathtaking shots of open landscape and horse riding. But the story is a drag for me and & although this is regarded as one of (if not the) best John Wayne performance, he and the character don't really do much. In particular, the characterization is just dark without a convincing redemptive arc.
Enjoyed the violence. The editing of the fight sequences was a bit too erratic and cross cutting among 3 or 4 different match ups felt a bit too chaotic. But there's some cool violence and action.
The visual effects and destruction/battle sequences were really fantastic and looked incredible. Suffers from too many under developed human subplots and eye rolling logic I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief for. Still quite a bit of fun.
Podcast review on The Obsessive Viewer will come out probably tomorrow.
First time seeing it since the theater and I'm surprised to find I liked it quite a bit more than I remember. Solid monster movie.
Rewatched to record a commentary track for my Patreon.
I was pretty forgiving of this movie the first time I saw it. While I still respect some of the visuals and jumps into surreal visions, as an overall movie, it just didn't really hold up that well.
I love the concept (and dig the novella as well), but the movie takes this confused "lost in supernatural nature" concept and rides it pretty hard into slight convoluted territory.
For an hour and 40 minute movie, it also takes far too long to get moving.
Still, it has some cool visuals and a couple slightly fun moments.
Really liked the time period, the location, and just the overall scale of Kong. All of that was really eye popping. Pretty solid all around.
First time seeing it since it was in theaters. I appreciate it a bit more this time. It's jaw droppingly gorgeous at times and the monster fighting it really cool. Surprisingly, in a movie with so much darkness, it doesn't feel like it's using dim lighting to skimp on visual effects. Instead, it uses it to conceal and put some cool lighting effects to good use with monster reveals and action.
But the biggest drawback for this movie is the…