I don't know why people hate this so much. It's exactly the original movie with some more glorious songs, inspired casting (not just the original broadway 2 but Ferrell and Thurman, jeez, perfection)… like as soon as Broderick does the blue blankie bit every bit as good as (what you thought was) inimitable Wilder… well that's when I give it the pass anyway. I think it's glorious personally, anyway, it makes me cry laughing. I can understand people thinking less…
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Fear Strikes Out 1957
When you watch Anthony Perkins in anything older than Psycho it really hurts. I actually watched this for Robert Mulligan but to be honest I think he was at the mercy of the standard here. It's a solid movie, just nothing massively special. It grew on me maybe more cos of my investment in those parties so I was trying harder but for most at best it'll be cheesy average…
*edit* when it all kicks off is pretty fantastic lol.
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An American Girl: Saige Paints the Sky 2013
"If I could just always believe in me."
"The balloon fiesta's gonna be a complete and total bust! I can't think of any more fund raising ideas! I can't ride Picasso in front of people! I can't do anything!"
There's a dinner scene in this that's almost on the level of the one in Before Midnight. It killed me on an ethereal level. I thought this was gonna be awful but consider me still on the American Girl train. This made me just as cosy as every one before it, the exact same vicarious devastating feeling. This made a beautiful mess of me.
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Donkey Skin 1970
I'm unreasonably hard on Jacques Demy cos Umbrellas of Cherbourg is so perfect to me, I know, but I have to start with that… but I more immediately liked this than I did the Young Girls of Rochefort at least. It's just as more difficult to connect to compared to Cherbourg, but the more I finally dive in and try to understand him beyond that frankly nostalgic and very personal fave for me at this point, it's a really great…
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Until They Sail 1957
"Dee… do be careful, you're terribly attractive."
"Anne's… not married…"
"This is different."
"It's always different, isn't it? If my father could read the history of his daughters-"
"-he'd understand.…"
"…and as they say to understand is to forgive… or is it… to understand is not to forgive? I can never remember."(That awkward moment when your first thought is "wow this is set in the same place and a decade earlier than the Parker/Hulme murder, which wasn't long before…
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Music and Lyrics 2007
"I… wrote. I… had a pen…"
"My face is in the butter!"
"Your heroes, Smokey, Dylan, would never allow this."
"They wrote dinner, I write dessert."Way too long since I saw this. Been thinking about it a lot since Adam Schlesinger died. I knew it was 15 this year but still had a moment midway when they say it's 15 years in the movie since Hugh Grant's character's heyday so when he's checking on the last copy of his…
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Return to Peyton Place 1961
I know that I watched this the other night and I thought I'd written about it too but I don't have a great memory of it. I may have passed out a little. Normally I wouldn't log it 'cos of that but I've no reason to expect it was particularly better than the first one (except for the presence of Carol Lynley, who I watched it for in the first place - I only watched the first one to get here)… so…
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Peyton Place 1957
"You're makin me blush all over…"
Everything I needed going into summer not to mention writing a shoreside story that borders if not relies on soapy mentality… something that makes me wish I could actually sigh like a 50s teenage girl… Long as shit but…
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Jubilee 1978
I remember watching this as a horny teen cos the TV guide handily told me it might have boobies in it but like 25 years later and 10 years after drunkenly watching it for the last jubilee, doing my softest attempt to counter the bs… I still have to say it makes me very happy to see Little Nell's Little Nells but even in the past 10 years I've come to a better understanding of the sexual politics of this…
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Desire Under the Elms 1958
"we both did wrong from the start but now it's our murder too… whatever happens I wanna share it with you… prison, death, hell, anything…"
It's hard to empathise with Anthony Perkins as a good guy so close to Psycho but this is stagey melodrama I can get behind, it had me at Elmer Bernstein doing the score. It feels too much like TV even for the time (even the image quality of whatever transfer the channel I watched it…
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Firestarter 2022
This is a non-movie. I feel really bad for the little girl in it. I loved her piece on the Drew show, how Drew embraced her. The movie doesn't deserve it or her, it's utterly bizarre how it entirely bypasses any sense of story or anything that resembles art. I'd say it feels more like a TV movie but that would be an insult to Rekindled which also came to mind watching this. I don't know what happened here.
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An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars 2012
Even before the drama twist, I've actually never seen a movie like this, the love it has for the world it's about. I adore the early American Girl movies but always imagined the later ones were more blatantly cash-in. The fact that this one was so contemporary always put me off pursuing the series. But they were always staring me in the face unwatched. I'm really sorry it took me 10 years to get round to this. It broke me…