Monday, December 16, 2024
Harris Dickinson Nine Times
Friday, December 13, 2024
Do Dump or Marry: The Nosfera-Dudes
Kaiju Criterion Attack!
Barry Keoghan Thirteen Times
Today's Fanboy Delusion
Today I'd rather be...
Five Frames From ?
Thursday, December 12, 2024
The Critics, We Choiced
Pics of the Day
Good Morning, Jonny
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Kraven the Hunter in 450 Words or Less
But that doesn't mean there's not a good helping of true WTF fun to be had out of Kraven the Hunter anyway. Yes, Sony's latest and opposite-of-greatest stab at the genre somehow manages to make the glory days of Madame Web feel fonder. But none of these actors are to blame. This troupe of thesps know what they're up against and dammit they keep fighting the fight, one camp whisper to another, winding through the marauding CG mayhem. Leading man slash abdominal billboard Aaron Taylor-Johnson is ultimately done in by the movie's frankensteined incoherence, but our boy tries his damndest to yank it together with every one of those big beautiful muscles of his. He does not succeed! But he's having fun most of the time, and he manages to get some of that across whenever the movie lumbers out of his way for a split second.
Did You Know I'm Utterly Insane
Pics of the Day
I attended the premiere of Sony's latest stab at superhero dominance Kraven the Hunter last night here in NYC and above are a few photos I snapped of the film's cast introducing the film -- that includes MNPP faves Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alessandro Nivola, and Fred Hechinger. (If only Christopher Abbott had shown and given me a full quartet of crushes.) Not the greatest quality snaps since I was in the balcony but better than they have any right being -- the latest iPhone camera really is a wonder of modern technology. Anyway Kraven is finally out on Friday, and I suppose I'll have some words to share on the movie itself before the week is out so stay tuned...
Good Morning, World
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Ed Tom Bell: I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."
A wise movie knows that you give Tommy Lee Jones a monologue to deliver and then you just sit back and listen to Tommy Lee Jones deliver it, and No Country For Old Men is a wise movie, perhaps the wisest, because it does this twice -- at start and at finish. I was torn between which speech to quote honestly -- I do love his retelling of his dreams that closes the film -- but the above one, from the film's opening, just feels a little too meaningful to this moment in time not to highlight it here on the day that Criterion has blessed us with the Oscar-winner on 4K blu.