High Fidelity has been on my list of movies that I've wanted to see since it was released in 2000. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't as crazy about it as many of the critics seem to be. The main character is one of the most unlikable protagonists that I've ever seen, and I can't really tell if the filmmakers intended the audience to root for this guy or to hope that he falls flat on his face. Either way, I've known people like this in my life and try like hell to avoid them.
Jack Black absolutely steals every scene that he's in. He and
Todd Louiso both deliver excellent performances that give the story the heart that is lacking in the overprivileged and hopelessly self-unaware Rob Gordon, played equally well by
John Cusack.
That Thing You Do was released on October 4th, 1996. The
title track from the movie soundtrack, which was a 60's style pop rock song with a catchy hook, was heavily played on television and on the radio for the latter half of the year. I was 16 years old at the time and firmly entrenched in my grunge / punk / alternative rock phase, and I rolled my eyes every time I heard it and wondered how long it would be before they'd stop playing it. Needless to say, I really didn't have much interest in seeing the flick that the song came from.
Fast forward twenty-eight years. I really don't mind this song anymore, and I actually kind of like it. It's not the sort of song that's going to find its way to my favorites playlist, but it makes me smile when I hear it. I've also come to appreciate
Tom Hanks quite a bit over the years, and after seeing
Here last month,
That Thing You Do got bumped to the top of my list because it's one of his movies that I had never seen before.
I managed to go all these years without the plot of this movie being spoiled for me at all. I knew it was about a fictional band who had a hit song that played on the radio all the time in '96, and I knew that
Tom Hanks was in it, but I didn't know anything about the story at all. Hell, I didn't even know that
Liv Tyler was in it, and I had the biggest crush on her when I was a teenager.
Hanks and
Tyler both delivered great performances, as did
Tom Everett Scott,
Johnathon Schaech, and everybody else in the cast for that matter. It's an incredible movie, and I found myself getting lost in the story and not wanting it to end by the time the credits rolled. I'm not sure if I would have been able to fully appreciate it back in 1996, but I wish I had given this one a shot a lot sooner than I did.
This movie felt like a bait and switch. For the weeks leading up to the release of
Werewolves, my local Regal kept playing the trailer for a werewolf movie that looked pretty interesting. I thought this was that movie, but as it turns out, the trailer was for a movie called
Wolf Man which won't be released until January 17th.
It didn't turn out to be a disappointing experience though.
Werewolves may not be one of my favorite movies of the year, but it's a solid horror flick. The story takes place in a world in which everyone in the world discovered one year ago that they are a werewolf. The transformation took place on the night of a supermoon, and it only affected people who were touched by the moonlight. Those who turned into werewolves became ruthless killing machines who caused widescale death and destruction, but they turned back into human beings the next morning when they were exposed to sunlight. The movie begins one year later. No one has transformed into a werewolf since the supermoon event, but there's another supermoon coming.
It's a different take on werewolf lore that felt a little bit like a zombie movie and a little bit like
The Purge, and it wasn't bad at all. If you're having a werewolf movie night, this would make a nice addition to the playlist.
I'm reluctant to say too much about
Get Away because it had a few fun twists that I didn't see coming and I don't want to spoil it for anybody. It stars
Nick Frost, who I remember best from his co-starring roles in
Shaun Of The Dead,
Hot Fuzz, and
The World's End. The film begins with he and his family traveling to a remote Swedish island that is preparing for a festival based on their dark past. The way that the story plays out made me think that the pitch for this film could have been "
what if The Wicker Man was part of the Cornetto Trilogy". I'd recommend this one to just about anyone who isn't overly squeamish.
The Craft: Legacy caught me off guard. I had completely forgotten that
Blumhouse made a sequel to
The Craft. It was released on October 28th, 2020 in the middle of the
Covid-19 pandemic; just a couple of months before the first vaccines became available to the public. I came across it while I was scrolling through
Kanopy looking for something to watch, and it was a pleasant surprise. You never know what you're going to get when it comes to legacy sequels, but this one was made with heart and it did a good job expanding on the first story. Its inclusion of a transgender girl as one of the members of the coven was done in a respectful manner that didn't hide or shame her character or the actress who played her in any way, but also without focusing so much on that aspect of her character to make her one-dimensional.
Cailee Spaeny,
Gideon Adlon,
Lovie Simone, and
Zoey Luna each deliver excellent performances as the coven featured in the film, and
David Duchovny nails it as the film's antagonist.
The end of the movie has a twist that I didn't see coming. It sets up what could be a pretty interesting third movie in the series, but I haven't heard any word that this is going to happen. I hope that it does, and that this movie finds its audience.
Y2K isn't the movie that I was expecting after having seen the trailer, and it was a lot less serious of a story than I've come to expect from an
A24 film, but it was still a fun movie with standout performances from
Julian Dennison and
Lachlan Watson. This film also gave me a new appreciation for
Fred Durst. I wasn't a fan of
Limp Bizkit at any point in my life and that has not changed, but this movie shows that Durst has a sense of humor about himself and you've got to respect that.
If we still lived in a world of video rental stores and folks watching movies on cable television, I would say that
Y2K would find its audience after it was released on home video and it would go on to become a cult classic. Movies are delivered primarily through streaming these days and their availability is shuffled between different subscription services like a game of three card monte, so I'm not really even sure if that sort of thing is likely to happen anymore. I hope that it does reach its audience though. It's not the kind of movie that I'd recommend to everyone, but it's blend of late 90's nostalgia and zany comedy is a fun experience.
was released in January 2012, and I was completely unaware of it at the time. When I look back on things, 2011 was by far the most hectic and transitional twelve months of my life. That whirlwind carried over through the first half of the following year, so I didn't really take notice of too many movies that were coming out unless they were too big not to see. I became aware of
The Divide over the past few years after hearing it mentioned on some of the
WhatCulture videos that I've seen.
The movie is about people in an apartment building who survive an atomic bomb by locking themselves in the basement and the ways that their humanity devolves as time passes. It's a premise that I usually find to be interesting. I don't mind a movie that's dark and depressing if it's done well, but this movie didn't work on me at all. After seeing it, I came across a review by Nigel Floyd who wrote that the film resembled "an indulgent actors workshop that has spun out of control", which is absolutely spot on. It's not a horrible movie, but I have no desire to see it again and I can't really think of anybody that I'd recommend it to.
