Here's what I watched and read last week....
MOVIES
Nuremberg (2025), directed by James Vanderbilt, is a good movie with great performances by Michael Shannon and John Slattery. But Russell Crowe’s performance as Hermann Göring is the highlight of the movie, and it’s frightening! I think Rami Malek was miscast as Douglas Kelley.
Out of the Past (1947), directed by Jacques Tourneur, is a classic noir. I love the cinematography and the labyrinthine plot. Great performances by Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. A must-see classical Hollywood film.
Yeast (2008), directed by Mary Bronstein. I caught this on the Criterion Channel. Yeast is considered a mumblecore movie. Criterion, however, does not list it as mumblecore in the description. Are they embarrassed by the term? Anyway! Mumblecore got attached to a bunch of indie filmmakers at the turn of the millennium. The Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg, Andrew Bujalski, and Greta Gerwig all came out of this cool, little film movement. Yeast’s minimalist plot, emphasis on character, and realism definitely give the film a mumblecore vibe. Although, at times, the film feels amateur, I strangely enjoyed watching it.
TV
Sebastian Maniscalco’s comedy special, It Ain’t Right, is really funny, especially his bits on Amazon deliveries and turning 50. It is streaming on Hulu.
Billy Idol Should Be Dead (2025). I was a little mixed on this documentary. I was hoping they would have gone more into the music and his band members rather than Idol’s drug issues. But then I should have known by the title of the documentary.
BOOKS
I finished reading The Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fischer and thought it was an excellent read. I’ve read a lot of books and articles about New Hollywood cinema, and this was definitely one of the best. I think Fischer’s book and Peter Biskind’s, From Easy Rider to Raging Bull, are great companion pieces on that era in cinema.
I read Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Lost City on Mars.” It is definitely one of the top stories in the collection, I Sing the Body Electric!, which I am almost done reading.
I also finished Dean Koontz’s, The Friend of the Family. It’s an excellent read and beautifully written. The story has a little bit of a Charles Dickens vibe. I highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment