Pather Panchali - ★★★★
It really is as lovely a movie as people say, and the work that went into recreating it for an HD version is pretty inspiring. There isn't a whole lot to critique, but I couldn't help but feel that it tries to do a
little too much. All of the characters are interesting, but because they're all so compelling, the time spent trying to juggle them hurts the movie just a tiny bit. This isn't actually that noticeable of a critique, until you see
Aparajito.
Aparajito - ★★★★½
Yeah, so far 2/3 of the
Apu Trilogy watched, this is hands down my favorite. It's like the quintessential coming of age story, but done in such a simple, beautiful, meditative way. I loved almost everything about it, and I think it's now become the standard by which I'm going to judge other coming of age stories.
Vertigo - ★★★★
So maybe my expectations were too high after years of seeing this top the Greatest of All Time lists put out by polls of producers, directors, critics and other industry people. Don't get me wrong, it's still really, really great. But on a first viewing, it's not something that I found myself thinking belonged in my pantheon of Top 3-5 movies. It's definitely something I'm open to revisiting though, because Jimmy Stewart did seem quite sensational, and it's the first time I've ever seen him in something where he's not an unambiguously "good" guy.
A Grand Day Out - ★★★★★
I vaguely remember watching these Wallace and Gromit shorts as a kid with my grandfather, but besides some fond but nebulous memories of hijinks involving cheese, a spaceship and penguins, I didn't have any particularly firm memories of what they were like. I saw someone I follow on Letterboxd write a raving review though, so I decided to revisit it. I always worry about revisiting childhood movies since you often discover that it doesn't quite stand the test of time, but this little short passed with flying colors. It might be the most perfect 20-something minutes ever put to film actually. I can't think of a single thing I dislike about it. I love the colors, the voices, the cozy spaceship that they design, the resolution and the general upbeatness of the whole thing.
Thunder Road - ★★★★½
If
Thunder Road looks familiar, it might be because you watched the
original 12 minute short that came out back in 2016. Turning a tight short film into a feature length film is a pretty dangerous proposition, but it absolutely works here. Perhaps even more incredible is that it's directed by, written by, starred in, edited by, and soundtracked all by
one dude. There's a pretty amazing depiction of grief, middle American families and parenthood in here, and it's a terrible shame that it basically came and went during the awards season and got zero attention.
The Wrong Trousers - ★★★★★
This doesn't
quite reach the highs that
A Grand Day Out reached, but it's still a spectacularly fun and well-paced short. Nothing is wasted, nothing is drawn out, it's just 30-ish minutes of absolute fun. Again, I was super pleased that this held up and was as much fun as I seemed to remember having way back when I first saw these during summers with my grandfather. As a kind of broad aside about Wallace and Gromit, they have that excellent quality of being absolutely friendly to kids, but not in a way that makes them unfriendly or boring to adults. This is 100% all-ages entertainment that everyone should be able to enjoy together.
Blindspotting - ★★★★
Look, I don't want to relitigate the Oscars too much between my comments about
Blindspotting and
Thunder Road, but it's truly bizarre that something as milquetoast as
Green Book could win awards, but this doesn't even get any nominations. I get that this is a pretty rough movie for most people to handle in terms of the message it's throwing in your face, and I'll even say that I found some parts pretty silly (the climactic scene is almost laughable in terms of what the main character does, and the circumstances of him happening to be in a position to do it). But it's a really thoughtful, funny and deep movie, and it's a bummer that more people won't even bother to see it.
Æon Flux - ★½
This movie is simply a
gigantic piece of garbage. I've never seen the TV show, so I have no idea what the source material is like, but this is just the worst. To its credit I suppose, it did keep me engaged almost the whole time, but not in a "this is so good!" kind of way, but more like in a "wow, look at this train-wreck unfolding right before my eyes!" I actually found the terribleness kind of nostalgic, because it reminded me of the kind of movie I'd have spent my afternoon watching in senior year study hall, many years ago.
Empire Records - ★★½
Maybe this is unfair, but the record shop setting had me hoping for some kind of teen-oriented version of
High Fidelity (one of my favorite movies of all time), and it is most certainly NOT that. It has a charming enough cast, but it has zero of the self-awareness, insight and depth that
High Fidelity had in its depiction of relationships. But let's be real, me expecting a
High Fidelity, simply because it shared a mere location setting was pretty stupid. But even so, taken on its own merits, it's still not that great. It's filled with lame cliches, melodrama and a ridiculously fantastical ending of the little guy winning against "The Man," but in a resolution that's completely inane. I don't begrudge anyone for liking it, but in terms of teen drama, you can do a
LOT better
The Edge of Seventeen - ★★★★
Speaking of both coming of age movies (as mentioned with
Aparajito) and teen dramas (as mentioned above with
Empire Records), here's a really solid one. I can't say that my high school experience exactly mirrored Nadine's in this movie, but there was a lot of drama and genuine angst that I found familiar. Not to be too much of a prude, but I found it a little excessively vulgar at times (although I suppose that might have been the point), in a way that was hamming up the vulgarity of high school a little too much, and beyond what I recognized from my experiences. But even so, it's pretty cool that someone created a movie that (similar to
The Spectacular Now actually), where the main character's struggles are depicted both compassionately, and reprovingly at the same time. We often see people getting into semantic debates over someone's "bad behavior" and if their "explaining" the problematic behavior is actually an excuse. And in the case of
The Edge of Seventeen, we have a movie that's sympathizing and explaining a girl's behavior, but not necessarily excusing it. It's a really human depiction of high school and particularly of a high school girl, in a way we almost never get.
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