I am still mostly watching series and listening to baseball and podcasts. And the less said about baseball, the better.
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
Saw it once a long time ago, and still occasionally in the mood for a noir. Good use of light and shadow in this one. I hated all the characters except Kay, her tomboyish younger daughter, and Ida, her confirmed bachelorette restaurant manager. Joan Collins is very beautiful in this one, but her titular character nearly as dumb at human relationships as I am. Very annoying.
Cast notes: I don’t understand how Butterfly McQueen didn’t get a credit; she had a lot of lines and was instrumental to the plot. Jo Ann Marlowe, who played Kay, left acting to go college and law school, became a US attorney, and was in a coma after an accident for 22 years before finally dying at her mother’s house. Interesting story; not enough conflict/crime/sex for a script.
The Godfather Part II (1974)
Paramount+, original English/Italian with German subtitles
Paramount+ suffers the same subtitle problem as arte: When you view a film in English, with English subtitles, there are no English subtitles when the characters speak a different language. Fortunately, I am better at reading German and hearing Italian than anyone should need to be.
Not quite as good as the first one, IMO, but I liked the flashbacks, and my inability to distinguish between Pacino and de Niro made the casting of Robert as Al’s father genius.
Speaking of actual human teeth, when Kay was screaming at Michael in the penthouse all I could see was the lights glinting off a metallic crown on one of her molars. And they were RICH-rich. We take so much for granted these days.
Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Paramount+, original English
We saw all of the lens flare reboots in 2019, but I wanted to watch Strange New Worlds and Mr Radish wanted to rewatch the reboots, so we compromised by rewatching the reboots. So much CGI and so many tedious, overly-acrobatic fight scenes. By the third one, I wanted to never to see a space battle ever again.
And what is this “Kirk was born in space” heresy?! Shatner himself says Kirk is an Iowan.
Ghostbusters (1984)
Netflix, original English
Not really a Karfreitag Film Festival this year, just the one banned film (story at the link, I’m too lazy to copy and paste it). Light rewatch alone in bed with a bad cough instead of pizza. Enjoyed as expected.
