Book Club (2018) was An Experience. A cracktastic experience.
So the basic premise for this movie is “Four friends’ lives are turned upside down when their book club tackles the infamous “50 Shades of Grey.” From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter.” (Thanks, Google)
That…that does not really capture how incredibly bonkers this film is. Because this film is absolutely B-O-N-K-E-R-S. Like it’s two bananas short of a banana split.
How I came to see this film since it had not been on my radar at all. Well, Spice #3 texted me and went “So I need you to watch this movie with me” which was both very suspicious and very intriguing. Anytime one of the Spices tell me “you gotta see this” it is always either going to be mind-blowingly awesome or mind-blowingly shitmazing. There’s no in-between.
It has an amazing cast, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Andy Garcia, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, and Don Johnson are most of the main cast and it’s wonderful in the way that I snickered hard enough to strain muscles watching this movie.
I straight up cannot believe this movie got made. This is the kind of movie where you have Very
Sincere Doubts that anyone involved in the writing was sober by any metric. This is visual crackfic and I know crackfic. I “came of age” during the wild west fandom years – I have read crackfic and written crackfic, I can tell you what quality crack from non-quality crack is.
This was glorious crackfic of the kind where it took me back to the LJ days pre-Strikethrough and it was amazing.
Okay, yes, I can see some of you already clutching pearls that I went 30 years without ever having seen this movie. I’m just going to put up a mental sign that says “I grew up weird and not totally on this continent” and just leave it at that, alright?
Anyways, Tim Curry is the best. This is known. This role was perfect for him and it was hysterical watching him run around like a mad thing and dragging everyone with him.
I spent most of the film believing Leslie Ann Warren was Susan Sarandon. I apparently cannot tell them apart in this specific role.
It was sort of amusing to watch them all devolve into complete bonkers. I have now also seen the scene where one of my favorite gifs of all times comes from. Mrs. White FTW. It was entertaining for a movie based around a popular board game.
Though I do feel some kind of way about the gay man being “gifted” the lead pipe and then later on, when it’s revealed it’s actually queerbaiting and he’s a secret straight plant – I know, I know, the movie is 37 and stigma and society and blackmail and all that.
It’s believable and that’s the problem. That thing happened. It happened probably more often than we will ever know. To see it here in a movie that’s a comic mystery movie…I just wish they’d chosen something, anything else for that character’s background. It left a decidedly sour taste in my mouth.
Glad I watched it, I get why people love it, but I’m not likely to rewatch it.
Top Gun Maverick 2022 – one of the more talked about movies in several friend groups I inhabit. AKA It’s COOL, Totally FINE, didn’t need THOSE EMOTIONS and also WHOO DOGFIGHTS movie.
I watched this one directly after watching the first one (for the first time) which was An Experience. I am un-endingly glad I did not see this one in theaters. It was intense enough on my living room TV, watching it in the theater would have been bad for my nerves and senses.
I came to the conclusion that much like with Star Trek (2009) and Zachary Quinto – Top Gun Maverick needed to wait until Miles Teller was old enough to star in it. The casting there placed against the casting of Anthony Edwards in the first one was absolutely stellar – especially visually. Like that scene with the piano? The nostalgia tipped spear of feels that gave me was really visceral. That was only the beginning too.
Val Kilmer broke my heart and I was in a glass case of emotions for all of that. OW. This is supposed to be an action movie, it’s not supposed to rip out my still beating heart and show it to me as well.
I will admit a lot of the impetus for me to see this movie originally (and also providing the push needed to finally sit down and watch the first one) came from having read a spectacular crossover fanfic that got me super curious about the source material.
I love the Mav and Hondo relationship – it’s the best. Overall, this was a good successor to the first one. Just enough callbacks to the first one and it was its own movie with its own plot. It wasn’t a copy-paste New Generation remake of the first one.
10/10 would rewatch (but not on a huge screen. I’m old and my heart can’t take the pressure).
Top Gun (1986) – the movie that broke box office records and became not only an iconic hit but also a culturally relevant one, landing itself in the National Film Registry.
It was also, up to Jan 2023, a movie I’d never seen before. Despite seeing every other single action and war flick known under the sun because of my father – somehow this movie missed the cut.
It wasn’t until people in my friend circle started sputtering when I told them that I hadn’t seen it that I realized I should probably rectify that. Also, the sequel had just hit streaming and that one looked fascinating.
Upon asking my parents about why I’d never seen it with them, the answer I got back was that there was some trauma around the movie and someone in their friend circle on base using a lot of Top Gun references with the guy they were cheating on their husband with around the time it was released.
My initial two reactions to this film were as follows:
Okay so Tom Cruise has just always been Like That.
Oh hey I know that song/actor!
All joking aside, I was entertained by the film and I can definitely see the nostalgia bits that everyone loves. I’m a sucker for a good action flick and this one delivered.
This is one of my favorite movies, I won’t lie. I often put it on as background noise if I’m not watching or listening to something specific. It’s essentially my favorite kind of story – adventure, curses, found family, and hijinks. A kind of happy ending that gives me resolution while also leaving it open for future stories. However, one of my favorite parts of it is the characterization of the main protagonists. Specifically Jonathan Carnahan.
Jonathan occupies a really important role in the movie, serving as comic relief that is actually comic rather than stupid and who also serves as a valuable plot mover. He comes off as the incompetent buffoon except while the buffoon part could possibly be argued for, Jonathan is anything but incompetent.
So let’s review what we know to be true from the film itself. Jonathan can read Ancient Egyptian, even if it is not to the same degree his sister can. He’s clearly interested in archaeology to the point of being on digs himself – which would have required extensive schooling to qualify for those kinds of permits. The “dig down in Thebes” line alludes to that and Evie clearly believes him when he tells her where he found it.
Jonathan also doesn’t miss when he shoots and he clearly has some boxing experience. Given the timeperiod of the movie, he’s the right age to have fought in WWI (So’s Rick and the French Foreign Legion did fight in WWI but that’s a different post) and that makes everything about him make so much more sense.
Jonathan, much like Phryne Fisher in one of my favorite period mystery shows, hasn’t taken anything seriously since 1918 and for pretty much the same reasons. He’s exactly the sort of soldier who got disillusioned from seeing what he did and since it didn’t actually kill him, he’s jumped from that into something slightly less dangerous. Archaeology was dangerous, not necessarily from curses, but just from people with guns shooting at you. He’s living it up when he can and trying not to give in to those darker impulses.
Evie: Have you no respect for the dead?
Jonathan: Of course I do, but sometimes I’d rather like to join them.
John Hannah, who plays Jonathan, conveyed all this perfectly on screen. He didn’t have to spell it out for us, just the hints of it existing were perfect.
Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022) is the latest MCU film out in theaters. Hotly anticipated because it was touted as the first real “Marvel horror film.” It’s directed by Sam Raimi and was overall roundly entertaining but like so many Marvel movies in Phases 2-Current, it falls apart if you think about it for longer than two seconds.
I wanted to like this more than I did. I wanted this to be cleverer than it was. I am absolutely thrilled we got some of the new characters we got and seeing some others getting pulled in. There was one of the post-credit scenes that put me over the moon. However, this was a lot like Endgame, in that it was a lot of fun scenes very lightly tied together by a kind of plot through-line sort of. Also I kept calling it Dr. Strange and the Mountains of Madness which would have been a much different sort of movie (though a fascinating one, I won’t lie).
A more spoilery review will go up on my Patreon, if you’d like to read it there. Let me know what you think in the comments – preferably with little/no spoilers!
Black Widow was a movie. Choices were made. Not entirely sure I liked all of them, but still, at least we finally got the movie that’s been promised forever. We finally stopped getting jerked around by the studio. We got something we’d been asking for pretty much since her intro in Iron Man 2.
The film itself was okay. There was more than one point that the movie startled a laugh out of me. I really loved the vibe of it and getting to see more about Natasha here in the MCU. I loved seeing Alexei and Malina and Yalena and all their interactions. The science-y bits were kind of cool, if absolutely terrifying in both scope and practice. Ray Winstone, the bad guy was a snooze-fest and I’m still kind of pissed about what we learned about Budapest. Rick Mason was amazing and I love the actor they cast for it and I hope we get more of him. I was also amused by Valentina’s cameo.
Here’s where I got angry. This movie was treated, in large part, as an afterthought. It should have had a bigger emotional impact and it didn’t. Like it made me laugh a little, but other than that, it fell flat. . The major reason it fell flat was because I already knew what was going to happen to Natasha ultimately and just having that knowledge, robbed this movie of a lot of its strength and emotional impact. We should have gotten this movie before Infinity War at best and definitely before Endgame. It would have had a much bigger impact on the fans. Because they didn’t, we got cheated out of what would have been a much superior experience. We got cheated out of any kind of sequels with Natasha in them.
That makes me angry. I was already furious about Natasha’s end in Endgame and seeing this movie just made that anger worse. I didn’t think it was possible for me to get more livid at Endgame. Then I watched Black Widow and discovered there were still depths to descend in the anger escalator of Endgame feels.
So yeah, it was A Movie. Choices were made. I just wish that those choices hadn’t been at the expense of the legions of Natasha fans or the character herself.
54 days into self-isolation/working from home because yours truly is a fine upstanding member of the high-risk group and therefore getting C19 would be very very bad for my continued existence on this fine planet. The city is slowly phasing into a full re-open which is not ideal but also not as bad as it could be. We’re lucky to have the Mayor we do.
I’ve been defaulting to my comfort films a lot lately with some of the work stress that I’ve been under. And while your mileage might vary, I figured I’d put up my short list of comfort films here in case it helps anyone else:
The Mummy (1999) – because this is pretty much a perfect self-contained movie. It has an engaging plot, tons of action, a romantic subplot that is pretty much one of the best ever- it feels both authentic and developed naturally. That’s not easy to do. The cast is great, the effects are awesome and it’s got a banging score. The worldbuilding makes sense.
Pacific Rim – also pretty much a perfect self-contained movie. The worldbuilding and cast are phenomenal, the writing is excellent, the score is one of my top ten favorites, and while the plot isn’t that complicated, the level of details put into this makes it a movie that I could roll around in for days and never get bored. It makes internal consistent logical sense and just yeah. Also – there is a deep awesome relationship portrayed that doesn’t have to be read romantically and that was nice.
The 13th Warrior – An oldie but a goodie. I’m a historian and specifically a Crusades historian and I love this movie so much. I know it’s based off a Michael Crichton book but the man could spin a hell of a yarn and the translation from book to movie is well done. I LOVE that it is from Ibn’s perspective, I love that we get to find out about this completely foreign culture from his viewpoint. I love the cast, I love the storyline, and I really really love the battles. Pretty sure this movie is also responsible for my love of mead.
Stargate – There is no universe where I don’t love this crap out of this movie. The storyline, the characters, the plotline, all the hilarious one liners and so many reasons why you REALLY NEED the humanities in addition to STEM. They get a lot of the details right and it’s one of my oldest comfort films.
Jupiter Ascending – We have covered that I am a sucker for really interesting good worldbuilding yeah? This movie has that in SPADES. The cast is good, the visuals are breathtaking, the worldbuilding is great, the heroine is badass and gets to save the day herself as well as hooking up with the genetically altered space rollerblading werewolf-angel hybrid. This movie is everything the 14 year old inside me ever wanted and had never gotten until then. Haters to the left, this movie is GOLD.
Rogue One – Quite possibly the Prisoner of Azkaban out of all of the Star Wars films. I love the casting and the views we get of the settings and how much deeper it lets us go into the story and worlds and mythologies and histories of the Star Wars universe. The music is gorgeous and the whole movie is about unyielding hope.
Holes – probably the single best book to movie translations ever. If you have never read or watched this, please please do yourself a favor and fall into this world of awesome. Stanley Yelnats and the Green Lake Camp and then Kissing Kate Barlow and “I can fix that” and yes. So much yes. It’s so good. Eartha Kitt is in this movie ya’ll.
What are some of your comfort movies? Share in the comments!
[NB: Originally this was going to be posted months ago, but I’ve only just gotten the files restored to me from a sudden laptop crash, so I’m posting this now. There’ll be three parts, each looking at a movie in the Maze Runner trilogy, based off the books by James Dashner. Also spoilers!!]
Everyone has things they do for the people they love. Between me and my best friend/roommate, this often translates to “you’re coming to this movie with me, I have already bought the tickets.” My best friend dragged me to see this movie when it hit theaters and she’d already made her way through the books. I’d decided not to read the books until after all the movies were out, because that way she gets to see my reactions to things as they come and without the foreknowledge of what happens in the books. It’s not something that happens often, I’m generally the one who’s read all the books beforehand.
Official Movie Poster (taken from the Maze Runner Wikia)
So we go to see this movie (I’m on my fourth or fifth rewatch and we’re watching it and Scorch Trials before we see Death Cure opening day. She has the tickets and I’m nowhere near emotionally prepared for this, but hey, that’s why we carry tissues and sit in the back of the theater) and I was then and am now continually blown away by parts of this movie.
My first impression was that this was someone for whom Lord of the Flies made a deep impression on. And on the surface, there are a lot of similiarities between Golding’s book and this movie. Group of boys in a secluded place, no actual adults, having to figure out how to survive. The themes of nature vs nurture and order vs chaos are heavily seeded through both works and both of them deal with the concept of the loss of innocence and refuting the idea that ignorance is bliss.
That’s about where the similarities end, because Maze Runner goes places that Lord of the Flies doesn’t. Lord of the Flies gives us a very small isolated view of a single set of incidents with a single group. Maze Runner starts there and like an umbrella expanding outward when you release it, takes that single group and those single set of circumstances and unfurls them outward into a universe that gives us both context and depth for why this even came to be.
There’s a lot to unpack in the movie.
We’re introduced to the world through the eyes of Thomas, who we first meet in a box ratcheting up somewhere, with no way to know how he got in there, where it even was, or why. We get the partial answers to these questions slowly throughout the first ten-fifteen minutes of the movie. There’s a maze, it’s all boys, there are two rules for the society there (do your share and never hurt another Glader), etc. You get your name back after the first day or so. Oh yes, in case you forgot that you were in a science-fiction film, the memories of the kids in the Glade have been taken away. None of them remember life before the Box and the Glade. They are a blank slate, allowed only to keep one thing from their previous lives.
Their name.
Names are essential to personhood. They’re allowed to keep the one small cornerstone of themselves that keeps them viable subjects. Because no matter how much they look like people, the movie also slides in hints here and there that they aren’t. People have rights. Subjects in experiments only have what they are allowed to have. The Gladers are lab rats, subjects to be studied and poked and prodded however the experiment requires them to be.
Some of the clues about this being one giant science experiment are subtly placed, some very much aren’t. The Maze itself, for example is a huge glaring indicator-it looks exactly like the mazes used in science films and clips about all kinds of scientific testing, using rats as the subjects.
The Glade itself looks a little idyllic. They’ve made the most out of a strange and confusing situation. They’ve got crops and shelters and everybody does their share. They get supplies from the Box, but clearly the supplies are there to supplement what they’ve got going on now. Also, there’s no mention of seasons either, of actual weather. We know it rains on occasion but there’s not a single mention of winter or putting stores away for the cold weather. So there’s another hint about the overall setting of the movie – clearly something has happened to where the climate has changed so drastically that the normal weather patterns are a thing of the past.
We come back to shades of Lord of the Flies when Alby mentions that there were dark days in the beginning and they had to work hard to get where they are now. There’s the loss of innocence theme again, Alby was the first one there and then once more kids started coming up in the Box, things changed. Dynamics changed, had to be revisited and revised. We don’t know how these kids got there or why, though from the memory loss, we can speculate at this point that these kids weren’t consulted about their participation in this experiment at all.
Thomas, like the audience, isn’t satisfied with just Alby and Newt’s explanation, he’s curious and needs to know more. His continual drive to get the answers and know more and understand is the chief catalyst for literally everything to do with this franchise. So we hit one of the central themes of the movie, that knowledge/understanding isn’t free and there’s a cost to pay for it. You can’t go back to who you were before your eyes were opened to the knowledge and understanding you’ve acquired, even if you want to. Knowing things comes with benefits and consequences and sometimes those consequences don’t always hit you, sometimes they hit the people you love. Sometimes that means losing people you love, sometimes that means you lose the safety and security of the life you were beginning to have. So the question comes down to “is it worth it?” For Thomas, the answer is yes. For some of the other Gladers, the answer is no.
Going back to the idea that this is one huge science experiment: Thomas’ appearance in the Glade is the beginning of the end for the peaceful existence of the Glade. He’s a variable placed into the Glade to see what happens. His appearance is a sign that the experiment is wrapping up. The daytime appearances of the Grievers, Thomas’ rash decision to go after Alby and Minho, the killing of one of the Grievers and then the attacks on the Glade itself are all signs of the endgame here, none of which might have happened if Thomas hadn’t shown up. Another variable is in what Minho and Thomas learn from the Griever corpse – the opening of a doorway that will get them out if they don’t all die first.
Teresa’s appearance in the Glade, which gives us another divergence from Golding’s book. Lord of the Flies had no women or girls on the island. Here, we see an additional set of variables in Teresa’s arrival, she’s the last one coming up in the box. There will be no more supplies or additional Gladers after her. She has two vials of the antidote to the Griever poison in her pocket. She also has Thomas’ name. So we know straight off the bat, that she’s different, there’s something else about her. The experiment is ratcheting up the number of things thrown at the Gladers. Clearly, the whole stay and wait it out in the Glade idea is no longer an acceptable course of action for the people behind the screens. One way or the other, things will change for the Gladers.
Thomas’ main antagonist in this movie is a fellow Glader, Gally, who while he is definitely an antagonist and you are supposed to dislike him on that front alone. I can’t. Gally, for all that he comes off as a jerk, is someone who actively cares for the Glade and his fellow Gladers. Almost as much as Newt and Alby care (and they are the Dad and Mom figures for the rest of the Gladers). Thomas is a threat to him and to the Glade and he reacts appropriately to that assumption. Gally’s criticisms of Thomas aren’t really off-base either, there is some merit to them, which is why I can’t hate him. He’s doing exactly what he feels he needs to, in order to protect what he sees as important.
So they have to fight to get out. And it’s in this fight that we really get a small glimpse at what’s behind the curtain, what on earth could have possibly led to these harsh conditions being necessary. Because as harsh as the Glade was, the outside world is worse by several orders of magnitude.
The performance put on by Ava Paige and WCKD (the World Catastrophe Killzone Department) is masterful. The idea that these kids who have just fought their way out of the maze, only to find that they were being surveilled and treated like rats in a maze are being told that it was all for a purpose. That this all happened for the greater good. We also find out a little more about the world outside of the Maze. She flat out acknowledges that they tampered with their memories here as she’s telling them about the sun scorching the world and then the Flare virus taking over. The Maze Trials were only the first step in trying to find out what makes the Immunes different from the regular uninfected humans (what’s left of them). She warns them against the potential enemies that WCKD has and reminds them that WCKD is “good.” A speech designed to inspire them with the idea that this was for a purpose, that they were trying to save the world and that they (the Gladers) are very important. It’s amazing use of propaganda.
Then right after that, we have the whole thing with Gally showing up, injured and out of his mind with the poison from the Grievers as a clear sign that there’s no going back to the Glade now. They can only go forward. The well has been poisoned, it’s time to move on.
Chuck dies and Gally is breathing his last when the “rescue” ‘copter shows up and the strange men with black gear and weapons come to shove all the remaining members of the group that came with Thomas out of the maze base and into the ‘copter.
“You’re all safe, kid. You’ll be alright now.” As the camera pans out and we see just how staggeringly large the maze is and then our first actual glance of the wreckage the world has become, your breath catches. A cold sort of dread starts to seep in as we see Ava Paige, hale and hearty, at the board meeting, talking about Phase Two. That dread that steals in as you realize the movie is over, but the danger isn’t done yet for these kids. That this thing, this project, is so much bigger than you might have originally considered.
It’s the perfect tee up to the next installment, The Scorch Trials. Stay tuned for that review post coming up soon.
