Category: 4.0 stars
Pretty good.
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The Mummy (1999)
Alright, now we’re cooking! It’s taken roughly 10,000 years, but we’ve reached The Mummy movies that people have actually heard of. Sure, it was nice to see what came before and the origins of characters/names Mr. Stephen Sommers pulled from, but we’ve had enough of these movies taking themselves seriously. Show me some Brendan Fraser scaring the villain off with a cat!
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Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
You know what actor I absolutely love? Mr. Billy Zane. I think most people who recognize that name will know him as the bad guy from Titanic first, maybe as one of the guys in Biff’s gang in Back to the Future, and rarely as the titular hero in The Phantom. Hell, he even has a random cameo at the end of the lame Holmes & Watson as himself. But for me, my favorite performance of his will always be Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight.
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A Whisker Away (2020)
People who know me in real life know that I am 100% a cat person. Up until the death of my previous cat, I couldn’t remember a time where I didn’t have at least one fuzzball in my life. In fact, as I am writing this sentence, I have one (Willow) in my lap wondering why I’m ignoring her while she’s being so cute, and another (Xander) is thankfully silent, sleeping on the floor and waiting for me to go to bed. So when I saw that Netflix was coming out with a cat-themed anime movie, I was excited. And…
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Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
And we’re back with the second film in the Pioneers of Queer Cinema bundle, Mädchen in Uniform, AKA Girls in Uniform. This is a very lady power movie: based on a play by a female writer, this has a female director and I’m pretty sure not a single man appears in the film. Very rare by today’s standards, but this was made in 1931 so I guess there’s another reason our current world sucks. Anyway…
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Viktor und Viktoria (1933)
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that there have been more reviews tagged “queer” than usual lately. That’s intentional and in honor of Pride month! There are no pride parades or celebrations I feel comfortable attending this year, so it’s down to watching a bunch of gay movies. And it turns out others have the same idea! My local indie theater is participating in Pioneers of Queer Cinema, showing a trio of very old queer films this month, and that’s our theme this week. We start with Viktor und Viktoria, the 1933 German musical that inspired the 1982 Mrs. Julie Andrews…
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The Half of It (2020)
Last time I talked about Cyrano de Bergerac, and as promised, today’s film is heavily inspired by it, albeit with a more modern skin. In The Half of It our Cyrano is an Asian, lesbian high school student named Ellie, our Roxanne is Aster, and our Christian is Paul. But in addition to the queer theme, I say this movie is better because the characters are more fleshed out and real, but also because Ellie doesn’t die in the throes of delirium.
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Liza the Fox-Fairy (2015)
I’ve only ever seen one Wes Anderson movie (Rushmore, in case you were wondering). I’m not actively avoiding the filmmaker, but I just haven’t taken the time to watch a lot of his movies. But I do get the “Wes Anderson aesthetic” (or at least the version of it that has spawned a thousand memes)! So I will say that Liza, a rókatündér, AKA Liza the Fox-Fairy, is a Hungarian Wes Anderson movie. Just with a murderous lounge ghost.
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The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
I want to do something different for The Dark Knight Rises, so let’s get the summary out of the way now: 8 years after The Dark Knight, Batman is retired, Catwoman is never called that in the movie, Bane wants to destroy Gotham, he breaks the Bat, Alfred pulls a “Giles leaves Buffy in season 6” and I still hate it, we see society turning on the rich as envisioned by the rich, surprise it was Talia all along, Batman dies, but not really, Bruce and Selina are happy, and Mr. Joseph Gordon-Levitt may become the new Batman. Or maybe…
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Batman Begins (2005)
We started with cartoons, continued with a mix between gothic and campy, and now we have reached the Nolan trilogy. These are some of the most successful Batman movies out there, delivering apparently what people expect of the caped crusader. I’ll touch more on that another day, but for now, we begin with Batman Begins.
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Batman (1989)
Before we begin, did you see the GORGEOUS new banner art on the home page? I commissioned a friend of mine and it turned out so much better than I ever dreamed. Her Instagram is listed at the bottom of the home page, and I recommend checking her other work out. So the blog now has a better site identity! Huzzah! And now, on with the review.
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