About halfway through the month, I lost all enthusiasm for movie watching and movie writing, and just started listening to podcasts about archaeology and re-watching Psych for the seventh time instead. I’m just gonna leave some stuff here in case I need to refer back to it in the future.
RadishFlix on YouTube
2024 on the IMDB
Oh, God! (1977)
tubi, original English
The first of a series of movies featuring George Burns as God, who has come back to Earth to get some poor suburban schmuck–John Denver, who is supporting a family in California as the assistant manager of a grocery store, which in 2024 gives it a foreign-film feel–to remind the rest of humanity that He is real and He is here.
The casting is really good (Paul Sorvino as a televangelist), the situations are believable (if you’re familiar with the state of communications technology of the time period; young people may be confused). I enjoyed watching it.
Pale Rider (1985)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
WARNING: DOG MURDER.
Who knew Michael Moriarty was such a badass? I didn’t.
The dog murder in the first scene put me in a bad mood I couldn’t dig myself back out of, but if you’re OK with that, it’s a decent Eastwood western.
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Cable (sat1), Deutsch
Please see previous notes, and never watch a movie on German commercial TV.
The Slammin’ Salmon (2009)
tubi, original English
I saw this on DVD many years ago and wasn’t really impressed, but I watched Tacoma FD over the summer and decided to give all the Broken Lizard movies another go. I found it funnier now, particularly once I realized “Dick Lobo” was a satire of Dick Wolf. Over the top, of course, and maybe too many named characters, but I laughed quite a bit.
Monpti (1957)
arte Mediathek, Deutsch
Frequent RadishFlixxer Romy Schneider plays a very young woman who wins over a young starving Hungarian artist in Paris, played by Horst Buchholz, by completely misrepresenting herself. There is also a subplot that follows a rich, 30ish woman cheating on her husband that doesn’t get any mention in the reviews, but provides an interesting contrast. Spoiler alert: One of these relationships ends in tragedy.
But not for Napoleon, the duckling, who was sold to be fattened up for dinner but kept as a pet until he slipped out of his leash and swam away. He’s the only part of this movie that I actually enjoyed.
I hate you for that, Montpi.
The Jesus Rolls (2019)
tubi, original English
John Turturro made a whole film about his character from The Big Lebowksi. After he’s released from prison, he hooks up with a friend, and they go on a crime spree, and they start a love/sex triangle with a hairdresser, pick up a hitchhiking suicidal female parolee. Ugliness after ugliness, and then it ends poorly. Approximately two of the 87 minutes of runtime involved bowling.
My post-watch research revealed it was a remake of a French movie that I was kind of surprised I hadn’t been tricked into watching on arte. And then I didn’t watch any movies for three weeks.
Lines of Wellington (2012)
arte Mediathek, original French with English subtitles
This is a Portuguese movie I was tricked into watching on arte–I got it confused with a different 19th-century British army movie that was no longer available–but since I don’t know much about the history of Portugal or the Napoleonic Wars, I watched the whole thing. John Malkovich reprises his role as An American Big Name Hired To Get The Pic Into North American Film Festivals (see my review of Klimt), and his Wellington is self-absorbed, arrogant, and annoying.
The bulk of the movie was about the effect the defeat and retreat of the French army had on Portugal. We follow the stories of soldiers, villagers, whores, refugees, nuns, and nurses, and from all walks of life from petty aristocracy down to a non-verbal orphan (one of the only recurring characters who doesn’t get killed; the aristocrat takes him back to his estate, which has been destroyed). Almost none of their stories end well. The horrors of total war are very clearly illustrated.
Really excellent sets, locations, and costumes, Malkovich aside this is a very good historical epic film, serious and respectful. But it’s the sort of movie I can only see once.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Netflix, original English
Not as good as the first reboot, but I enjoyed it, and the cameos/flashback footage, and it was exactly what I expected for an evening of light entertainment.
Now I have some context for the frozen pizza.
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990)
arte Mediathek, original English
They sucked me in with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward working together; very young Kyra Sedgwick and Robert Sean Leonard didn’t hurt, either. We follow the lives of the title characters–rich people who live in a big house in a swank neighborhood in Kansas City, with Black domestic help and rich friends–from the 1930s through the 1950s, as their children grow and move on and the world changes around them. The screenplay is a compellation of two romans à clef, allowing the audience to experience the events and relationship from both perspectives.
Excellent attention to costume–handmade felt Boy Scout patches, for example–sets, and styles, but there wasn’t an identifiable plot, just a series of vignettes. There was finally some drama in the last scene, but instead of seeing a resolution, there was just a narrator informing us that it turned out just fine. Until that narration, I was wondering if I was missing the point, but that ending convinced me there wasn’t a point there.
The Matrix (1999)
Netflix, original English
If you can believe it, this is only the second time I have seen this film. And I’m having the same reaction: interesting concepts, could have been half an hour shorter because all the fighting/shooting felt unnecessary (German Netflix labeled this a “martial arts” film, and it sort of was). I’ll see what I think again in 2049.
(I did not remember that the glich in the matrix was a black cat, and now I am having thoughts about the programmer of my own simulation here.)
