Archive for Movies
I watched the movie Red, White & Royal Blue last night, and enjoyed it a lot. It’s a romcom. Sweet and funny and a bit larger-than-life, with no particular uncertainty about how it’s going to turn out. But I enjoy that sort of thing when it’s done well, as it is here. (Content warning for […]
I’ve been thinking about heist movies lately, and it occurred to me that the kind of heist movie that I like has a bunch of pretty specific traits. So here are some attributes that heist movies and TV shows that I like tend to have. (Doesn’t have to have all of these attributes for me […]
Kam and I almost went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once last night. We’ve been hearing great things about the movie—in fact, such extremely great things that I’m having to discount them to set my expectations lower, because if I go into a movie with too-high expectations, I generally enjoy it less than I […]
Movies and TV shows often show us a view of the main characters through a window (say, looking through a window into a lighted living room from a dark outdoors), or from behind a tree, or otherwise at a little bit of distance. And frequently, when I see such a shot, I interpret it as […]
I watched about 65 movies in 2021, including rewatching about 15 that I had seen before. Of the ones that I hadn’t seen before, here were my favorites, in approximate descending order: 1. The Milagro Beanfield War (1988). Lovely, funny, charming movie full of great character details. Liked it a lot. 2. In the Heights […]
I’m thinking about what the difference is between an amazing major revelation late in a story (I’ll call this a Big Reveal) and an annoying Surprise Twist Ending. Here are some of my thoughts. Some examples of good Big Reveals of the sort that I’m thinking of (no specific spoilers here, but I suppose that […]
A lot of people don’t have the same ideas that I do about what constitutes a romcom. To me, romcom (also written as rom-com) is a genre, with such strong genre conventions that they border on formula. It doesn’t just mean a movie that has some romantic or comedic aspects. (I’m intentionally using the term […]
Kam and I watched the new Mulan, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s very clearly intended to be a wuxia movie rather than a musical for kids. I don’t know enough about wuxia to be able to judge it as an example of that genre, but I thought it succeeded as a movie pretty […]
Back in 2010, I posted about classic works of literature reworked as movies set in a modern high school. Comments on that post led me to expand my definitions a bit, and I’ve seen a couple more such movies since then. So I thought I would post the updated list: Movie Year Original What I […]
I enjoyed the vid party at WisCONline last week. Here are half a dozen of my favorites—some sweet, some thoughtful, some angry. “Come ’Round for Tea” (2014), by Garrideb Showing female friendships in Marvel comics, with all the words in word balloons replaced by hearts. (song: “Baltic Sea,” by The Social Services) (2 min) “Pipeline” […]
Books! Free to a good home. Let me know if you want any of these. Also some CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. (All at the end of this post.) This list contains 100+ more books than the previous list I posted (a couple months ago), so even if you’ve already looked at the other one, […]
In 1989, I wrote a story (titled “Absences”) about a kid and her brother who had survived an alien invasion. Part of the core idea of the story was that the invading aliens were super sensitive to sound; humans who made too much noise got killed, and the protagonist’s brother was deaf, so the protagonist […]