In a sane world, this would be the last Beethoven movie. Sure, in a saner world there would would only have been the original movie and none of these sequels, but either way that's not the world we live in. No, when both The Land Before Time and Air Bud franchises have 14 movies each, we clearly live under the oppressive boot of capitalism, taking your nostalgia and trying to wring as much profit out of it as it can. So here we are with Beethoven's 5th, the film that feels like a Scooby-Doo episode. Maybe that's why I didn't completely hate it?
2003
Lost Lake (2003)
I will admit that I have trouble deciding what to review here. I want to find the right balance between the extremes of "no one has ever seen this movie" and "everyone has seen this movie." I don't always do that well, as is the case with today's film, Lost Lake, which has only one watch on Letterboxed: my own (this is also the case for A Windigo Tale, a story of the trauma residential schools do, which is... sadly always relevant). No one has heard of this movie! Why should I take the time to talk about it? Well, how else are people going to learn about the sheer madness that is the alternate--and true--ending of this film?
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
I would like to start this post with a bit of a public service announcement: The Matrix Revolutions is the third film in The Matrix trilogy. I know this may be pretty obvious to some, but I hadn't watched these films in nearly two decades, and since Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded both came out in 2003--albeit 6 months apart--I was confused as to which one came first. So if you're finding this post and haven't read the one on Reloaded, there's nothing I can do to force you to go back, but I do build off stuff I talked about in that review. We good? Welcome back to Pride Month, which I am celebrating once again by talking about a movie that followed a very queer coded film, but is predominantly straight. Oops.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
I honestly considered not reviewing The Matrix sequels during Pride Month. The original film is now widely accepted as a trans allegory--no doubt helped by the creators, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, coming out as trans women in the years since. But my goal was to at least try to watch them with a queer eye, so Pride Month is as good a time as any. Did I find overt queerness in The Matrix Reloaded? Well... not really. Drat.
Darkness Falls (2003)
Given enough time, horror movies will try to make everything creepy. I've seen a horror trailer where the "Happy Birthday" song is sung menacingly, and I gotta say, I was not impressed. But more relevant to today's post, Darkness Falls is about the Tooth Fairy killing people. I just... really? You thought people would be afraid of the Tooth Fairy? At least they had the good decency to come up with a somewhat creepy title, instead of being lazy and just calling this film The Tooth Fairy.
Hulk (2003)
February is almost over, so now would be a good time to announce that March is going to be another event month! Every weekday I will be talking about a different movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it's MCU March! I'm kicking off this endeavor with a little prologue: 2003's Hulk movie, which is not actually a part of the MCU as it was produced by Universal Studios before Iron Man started the franchise rolling, and 2008's The Incredible Hulk is a reboot for the character. But it's an infamous Marvel movie I hadn't seen, so let's fix that!
X2 (2003)
Movie trilogies often follow a pattern: the first is fine, the second is superb, and the third is terrible. The X-Men trilogy is a wonderful example of this, in part because X2 (later retitled X2: X-Men United) is one of my favorite movies, and quite possibly my favorite superhero movie. This is the high point for the X-Men films; it’s all downhill from here! Well, except maybe for Logan and Deadpool, but still.
The Room (2003)
I think we all knew that I would review The Room at some point. I own two copies of it because I lent a copy to a friend, forgot, bought a replacement, and then she gave it back. I’ve seen it well over two dozen times, both with the RiffTrax (the guys from MST3K providing an audio file you sync yourself) and without. I’ve read The Disaster Artist, the book Greg Sestero wrote about what a nightmare making the film was, and I’ve even seen the solid 3 out of 5 movie adaptation of that book. So I feel a bit of obligation to review this.
The Mummy’s Kiss (2003)
Dear reader, I want you to know that I have standards for this blog. Somewhat high standards! The kind of standards where once I find out that a movie I’m watching on Amazon dot com has been severely edited, I go out and search for the intact version. And for this movie, that happened to be Pornhub, so I guess my standards aren’t all that high…
Dreamcatcher (2003)
Movie adaptations of Mr. Stephen King’s books are really hit or miss. Some like The Shining become classics, while others like The Langoliers have flying walnuts with teeth. I feel like Dreamcatcher is closer to the latter, mostly because the aliens here are fungal dick snakes with vagina dentata mouths that burst out of your ass.
Chwineka Watches 