Some of the Tarantino films (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and to a lesser extent Inglourious Basterds) are very tightly structured, though, which is something I wanted more of from Sinners.
I’m like that with Gladiator. Once I catch it, I’m watching it through.
Starting Art Detectives on AcornTV tonight.
And now for something completely different:
1 Like
Seeking light fare, we watched the mildly entertaining flick Deep Cover with Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and the dude from Ted Lasso, who seems to be everywhere these days.
It was… mildly entertaining.
A couple more episodes of Such Brave Girls during which I kept falling asleep, which was def not the show’s fault.
Superman (2025) - dir. James Gunn
It is a bright new day in Metropolis. Gone are the desaturated, muddy tones and grim seriousness of the Snyderverse. Instead, we have a bright blue Superman, red trunks and all, who smiles, and jokes, and mostly just wants to do the right thing..
We open with some text catching up the 2 people left in the universe who might not know Superman’s origin, and then go right into Supes getting his butt kicked and landing in Antarctica, only to be rescued by Krypto the Suoerdog! Yeah, we are leaning HARD into the “comic book”-ness of it all, and it totally works. This genuinely feels like the best on screen Superman since the 90’s animated series, or the Donner/Reeves Superman of the 70’s.
David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan have genuine chemistry as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane. Nicholas Hoult makes Lex Luthor both irredeemably evil but also understandable. Even Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) is given an actual personality and figures prominently in the plot!
If you are a current or former comics nerd like myself, there is PLENTY to go through, find Easter eggs, enjoy little cameos and appearances and such. But you needn’t be to enjoy what is a genuinely good time. A film with a hero who makes mistakes but is always trying to leave the world better than he finds it, and a message about how EVERY person has worth.
Now, a number of very thin-skinned folks out there are stirring up online silliness about Superman being ‘woke’. And yeah, a character created by minority children of immigrants whose chief antagonist is a tech-bro billionaire is gonna make some points that make these same thin-skinned people ‘big mad’, as the kids probably don’t say. But it is NOT preachy, and it is NOT explicitly pro- or anti- any given party. In fact, a line near the end of the film is “If there’s one thing liberals and conservatives can agree on, it’s that Lex Luthor sucks!”
Indeed!
Even if you have been over superheroes for a while, this film is a lot like Krypto. Silly, a little corny, but impossible not to like. Go see it and let yourself be a 12 year old again. We promise not to force you to see Supergirl (coming next year!) if you don’t want to.
Extra bonus points for yet another fabulous Alan Tyduk voice role!
4.5/5 birds or planes mistaken for… a flying man? Really? These people must need glasses.
3 Likes
We watched the first two episodes of Too Much, Lena Dunham’s new (ish) series. I am on record as wanting to kill Girls with fire, but this was generally (although not entirely) inoffensive and has a solid cast. It’s basically “Kayla in London,” except less annoying than “Emily in Paris” because Kayla speaks the language, the language being English. I laughed several times.
1 Like
We just saw this yesterday and I concur with you about this. Gunn manages to bring a lot of Silver Age notes into this movie without turning it into something like the old 60s Batman series. Sometimes you can just have genuinely good people who care and want to do the right thing without it being cringe or cornball.
The only (very minor) quibble I have is that Angela apparently got her powers from Lex rather than her own application of knowledge (canonically, she receives the working notes from the first Engineer and injects herself with the nanotechnology, becoming literally a self-made woman). I hope they are able to shed further light on this choice if Gunn is actually able to bring The Authority to the screen (small or large). I also would have liked to have seen them maybe push back on Luthor “smartest guy in the room” shtick a little bit more via Mr. Terrific. Edi Gathegi was truly Terrific (in name and performance).
1 Like
I very much enjoyed Girls, even tho I often wanted to kill all of them, and I’ve been trying to talk my PIC into checking it out. Perhaps I get lucky tonight.
Oh, and I could not get through even 10 min of Emily.
1 Like
This is Spinal Tap (1984) - dir. Rob Reiner
I was 15, about to turn 16, when Spinal Tap was released in 1984. I vividly remember laughing hysterically at the absurd trailer for it, released the previous year, of a fake Danish Cheese Rolling festival, starring many of the actors, filmed exactly like an old grainy travelogue.
That trailer is played before current theatrical showings of the film, which has just been given a 4k restoration in preparation for a new Criterion blu-ray.
The film was absolutely mind blowing to me and my theater-kid/band-kid friends. It was like seeing a new form of comedy being born, a shock I wouldn’t feel again til Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat. I can’t emphasize enough just how hard the entire audience was laughing. We were all in tears. I’m pretty sure “These go to eleven…” utterly broke me. The film made numerous “Funniest movies of all time” lists (including Ebert’s) and was deemed important enough to be included in the Library of Congress.
If it’s still playing near you, go. This is one of those films, like Holy Grail or Young Frankenstein or Airplane, where it’s still hilarious even when you’ve memorized every line.
And be on the lookout for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues due out next year, I think.
5/5 deceased drummers.
(Note, the last drummer is named Joe “Mama” Besser. Joe Besser was the 3rd stooge, forced on Larry and Moe after Curly had a stroke and Shemp passed.)
3 Likes
Baron Haden-Guest is a documented foodie:
4 Likes
I thought the foodie was Derek Smalls and his fondness for zucchini. 
1 Like
There’s a rare DVD issue that had the cast doing the comment track–in character.
2 Likes
I believe the new Criterion will have both the actor and ‘in character’ commentaries.
Oooh!
“Not really”:
Puh-lease…dude carried a zucchini wrapped in foil. He had a fondness for squash, not an OCD incident failing to understand tiny bread! Okay…Derek really was a major sausage dude, much like the potus!
my only quibble [ various spoilers details re: The Engineer ]
I was unfamiliar with the character, so the variance didn’t register. For a while, I thought she was a variant of Mercy Graves, an assistant of Lex’s that originated in the 90’s Superman: The Animated Series
1 Like
I just finished watching the French series Carême on Apple TV. It’s about a celebrity Chef working during the Napoleon era, who is recruited by politicians as a spy for France. It’s very loosely based on a true story. The food sequences were well done.
The best part about Apple TV is that you can watch most foreign shows dubbed in English, so you don’t have to constantly read subtitles to know what is going on. It’s actually dubbed pretty smoothly. You barely notice the mouth moving after they finish talking 
1 Like
Watched the first episode of Ballard tonight. It’s sort of a spinoff of Bosch: Legacy by Michael Connelly. Looks like Titus Welliver will be in a few episodes. Like the Bosch series, it has a good base story line and it looks like some decent characters, though Maggie Q may not be as strong a lead as Harry Bosch. Too soon to be sure, but it’s promising.
2 Likes
