The Big Chill

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....The Big Chill!

Original image located here. Accessed 29th March 2019

It has often been said that revivals happen in chunks of twenty years. And as Grease is the 70's tribute to the 50s, here we have the 80's tribute to the 60's.

That being said, i kind of get the feeling this movie was made for baby-boomers: The kind of people who grew up in the idealistic era of the 60s only to left in disappointment by being in a more materialistic era. But of course, both eras mean little to me (in the case of the 80s I was a little kid for most of it) so i was left alienated, let alone bored, by this movie.

I was indeed open to the possibility of this movie being a critique of revival movies in that showed the era of one's youth wasn't as good as people would like to think it was and/or the aforementioned disappointment with the difference of youth to adulthood but I never got that impression.
Still the soundtrack was pretty good

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story!

Original image located here. Accessed 22nd March 2019

I was interested in seeing this movie because it was sold to me as something of a contrast to Bohemian Rhapsody. Whereas a common complaint of Bohemian Rhapsody was that it adhered to the tried-and-tested tropes of the music bio-pic (often at the expense of the facts), Walk Hard however mocked said tropes, making them both stupid and hilarious at the same time. The ultimate irony is however that Walk Hard was a bomb whilst Bohemian Rhapsody raked in the cash.

Personally? I thought this was hilarious. The tropes are indeed all recognizable and are mercilessly mocked. Some of the cameos are a scream (the scene where Dewey meets the Beatles is one such moment), the personalities are similarly made fun of, the songs are great, and the contributions from real-life personalities are a hoot. Sure some of the jokes are incredibly stupid but it's my kind of silliness. But when the jokes do hit, they hit out of the park (witness the Bob Dylan parody and Dewey's multiple encounters with drugs through his drummer).
Plus it has Jack White (!) in scene-stealing form as Elvis (!!). Can't go wrong with that.

Captain Marvel

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....Captain Marvel!

Original image located here. Accessed 15th March 2019

In a way i wasn't looking forward to this. Prior to this movie we've had a build up which can only be described as a PR disaster with this being talked up as feminist film and the subsequent hostility from the misogynist crowd. Personally, i didn't want to be talked down by a movie that's falling over backwards to prove how woke it is - I just want to see Carol Danvers kicking arse.

Thankfully, that's exactly what i got (the latter that is).
It may be adhering to the Marvel formula with the action, humor and special fx we've come to expect, but there are some excellent character moments throughout. Ben Mendolson is in top form, Samuel L Jackson appears to be relishing the chance to be a major player in an MCU movie but in the end, this is still Brie Larsen's show and she carries the movie with flair. The various Nineties references were great too.

Do i feel like this was going out of it's way to talk down to me, the white-cis-male/scum-of-the-earth? Personally, I never got that impression. Perhaps I have a thicker skin than I realise but somehow the idea of getting back up after being constantly knocked down is indeed a universal one.
Ultimately, this may be adhering to the Marvel formula but for a series that supposedly winding down, this movie certainly proves there's some gas left in the tank.

As a side note, as someone who is a nephew to a woman called Carol, i find some degree of amusement with Monica's declaration of 'Auntie Carol!'.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau!

Original image located here. Accessed 8th March 2019

A few weeks ago, i watched The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? which chronicled a Superman movie that never got made. This time however we have a documentary on a movie that did get made - even if the finished product was nothing like what was originally envisioned. Seems that the potential of what of could've been is a remarkably effective selling point (Firefly anyone?)

I first saw The Island of Dr. Moreau went i was in high school. At the time I didn't think much of it but in the years since, I have learned about the horrors that went into the shoot that have grown to become the stuff of legend. When one considers instances of Richard Stanley (the original director /driving force) being sacked four days in, the replacement director showing little enthusiasm, Stanley sneaking back onto the set as an extra, actors behaving like children, sets being at the mercy of Mother Nature, extras having way too much time on their hand, a mutinous crew, and a three week shoot stretched out to six months, one would think they have a making of documentary to end all making of documentaries.

Based on what I already know, there is indeed some new information being presented here. Richard Stanley has a lot to say and he certainly come across as being a smart, if oddball, person. His original ideas are interesting, the conceptual artwork is impressive, and the journey to getting the film green-lit is engaging. But when the production starts and countless problems rear their head, then the flow of the narrative heads towards disastrous. There is no shortage of bad things said about Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer (who is, unsurprising, absent here) and there is certainly some horror stories related by the cast and crew. Not to mention a lot of frustration and lamentations on the loss of Richard Stanley on a project that, under his gaze, held a lot of potential.
But ultimately, the triumph of this documentary is that we have a making-of documentary that is more fascinating and engaging than it's parent movie XD

Atari: Game Over

And this week's Friday night movie has been.....Atari: Game Over!

Original image located here. Accessed 1st March 2019

Anyone heard of this? It's a documentary focusing on the video game that was ET that was on the Atari 2600. It discusses it's background, the backlash it copped, the urban legend of how countless copies of the game was buried in landfill and an excavation to unearth said copies to see if the legend was true.

While the parts involving the excavation were fascinating - not to mention the outcome - the real meat here is showing how Atari worked in the early eighties and what kind of environment it was. We get to meet hotshot designer Howard Scott Warshaw - and the documentary goes a long way in restoring his reputation - and shows just how much of a wild west the pioneering / pre-Nintendo console gaming era was.

While it is disappointing that the gaming crash is brief in both it's description and aftermath, this documentary does raise an interesting point about game preservation - and how easily things can be forgotten in an industry that moves so fast that it's difficult to keep up. Some say we may need a new Gaming Crash in order to ditch the dead wood that's clogging up the gaming industry But I am more interested in preserving classics: Far too many of them get claimed by history that would make the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria look tame by comparison.