So the other day was Halloween and like most middle-aged clods I was endlessly scrolling social media looking at people's costumes. These scintillating images included: Zoomers and Millennials posting their dirty party pictures, Gen Xers trying to one up each other with clever pictures of their kids in costume, Boomers doing stupid Boomer things, Pandemic candy chutes are apparently still a thing (I wish I could go to a candy chute that just shoots Prozac and Xanax out of it),…
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The Straight Story 1999
A tough guy's Nomadland with 10,000 times the potency.
Watched this on an airplane coming back from Florida yesterday and was blown away at how much harder this hit at age 45 vs. age 25. Don Draper used to say things need to be "simple, yet significant" and that statement defines this film in every way. Richard Farnsworth induces tears with nearly every quiet gesture and self-effacing declaration. His world is plain and unadorned on the surface, yet cavernous in…
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The Power of the Dog 2021
Who would have thought a shot of a simple hula hoop would be the cinematic image that defined this calendar year.
A few days ago I read one of the many missives on the Oxford shooting already jettisoned out to the country like so much ballast. It was the usual hullabaloo that an adolescent mind is not a fully formed mind. Our mind does not take its final form and shape until we reach the ripe old age of 25.…
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The Beatles: Get Back 2021
20 some odd years ago my Mom came to visit me in Minneapolis, she had convinced me to go see Ringo Starr's All Starr Band at the "Taste of Minnesota" on the State Capitol Grounds. In fact, that limey bastard was actually playing on the Capitol steps if I remember right. I was 24 or 25 I think and for some reason I was heavy into the albums Rubber Soul and Abbey Road. I had listened to the Beatles since playing…
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Cop Land 1997
Original grade: 4 stars
Rewatch grade: 4 starsYou can look at this film in two ways:
A pseudo-indie film experiment which imploded under the weight of its slumming superstar cast....
Or you can look at it as a kick ass slow burn neo-western in which James Mangold slyly subverts and toys with the underdog Rocky persona...and then eventually celebrates the vengeful forgotten man persona of Rambo.It would have been really interesting to see how this film would have…
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Oblivion 2013
Oblivion is a film you may or may not remember from about 7-8 years ago. Tom Cruise is in it playing a man on a post-apocalyptic Earth. There isn’t much to know about the plot other than Cruise bombs around in a cool looking spaceship (and sometimes a futuristic motorbike) looking for damaged drones to repair. He has a partner in a high tower that helps him find these things, and in between missions he finds tchotchkes from “old Earth”…
