Everything I watched in the theater this summer

 I honestly hate how fast this summer has gone. I always say I need 3 Julys back-to-back before I'm ready for it to be August and this current summer has me feeling that more than ever. My psych program has relaxed a little lately in that I'm basically done with core classes, but my clinical practicums always overlap and I never really get a break from one to the next. This year was ideal because my placement was within walking distance of my house and during the summer I was done for the week by 3pm on Wednesday. This is still all unpaid, mind, so there's that challenge, but the upside is I had time to go on bike rides, read, rewatch Dexter and Twin Peaks, get an AMC A-List Membership, and play Guitar Hero Van Halen with my sons (they are so much better than me it's embarrassing). 

Anyway. I'm holding onto the last 2 weeks of summer, I guess because I have enjoyed how my time has gone. There is plenty I have NOT enjoyed, clearly. Most of what's been going on in this country is very upsetting and continues to be. I think I went to the theater as much as I did because it helped me to both escape and regulate. I cried so much that first month, sometimes even at trailers. Here are some very short thoughts on everything I went to at Southdale, starting at the end of May. 

1. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Favorite film this year. I had a good time writing about this one. Every setting so lovely; smart people + books + writing = wins. *****

Go to therapy. Please.

 2. Friendship

 Sad and not one bit comical, although as a production it was put together fine. ***

 3. Sinners

 Loved the story, loved the people, loved the music. *****

 4. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

I was enjoying this very much until I got a text from my daughter that said: Can you come get me? I can't SEE. I left to get her at school, where she had somehow flung a piece of wood from a stick playing pickleball into her eye. 

Her vision was fine in the end. 

5. Bring Her Back

Is this body horror? So much visceral grossness. I also can't handle horror premises around child abuse. Again, put together well but crossed too many lines for me. ***

Cousin Matthew as Hot Priest

6. The Ritual

Also visceral but somehow more tolerable. Oh those Iowa Catholics! ****

7. Thunderbolts

Fine, I guess. Early vomiting sound design did not need to be that realistic, tbh. ****

8. Materialists

Meh characters, meh film. However, Dakota Johnson is very aesthetically pleasing. ***

9. The Life of Chuck

Not nearly enough Tom Hiddleston but whatever. I enjoyed the message. ****

10. 28 Years Later

Not nearly enough Ralph Fiennes but whatever. I enjoyed the message. ****

11. M3GAN 2.0 

Not as scary as the original (or at all, really), but fun. Not fun driving home at 50 mph down side streets with Edina, Richfield, and Minneapolis all blaring their tornado sirens afterward. ***

12. Jurassic World Rebirth 

I kind of felt bad for the dinosaurs, tbh. They were clearly rejected and some of them were . . . a bit difficult to look at. How many of these films do we need, really? *** 

13. Ballerina

Fine, I guess. As with the John Wick series, I get very antsy with the slow, drawn-out deliveries. RED BULL! ***

He's a punk rocker, yes he is

14. Superman

This was good, although I wish I would have just enjoyed it in the moment rather than spending so much time trying to analyze it. The ending and song were the best combo they could have possibly picked. ****

15. I Know What You Did Last Summer

Fine. Not as smart as the first one but still nostalgic and fun. ***

16. Eddington 

It wasn't bad, I just couldn't stand to be in that world for that long. Left after an hour. 

17. The Naked Gun 

I laughed. A lot. Pamela is cute-funny; Liam is serious-funny. ****

18. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

I went back and really liked it. Claustrophobic submarine antics > Overlong plane chase antics ****

She may have forgotten her long legs but remembered her sticks

19. Weapons

Favorite horror film ever in a theater. Scary AND funny. Lost count of how many times characters and viewers together asked WHAT THE FUCK?, but it was a lot. I sat by some excitable 20-year-old and her boyfriend and we had fun being the easiest jump-scare targets in the place. Gladys (Amy Madigan) was immediately familiar to me as Chanice (Uncle Buck) and Sam's mother Mary Taggart (ER). YIKES.*****

No love for the honest man: Coriolanus

Coriolanus, 2011. Directed by Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain, Vanessa Redgrave

"A banished hero of Rome allies with a sworn enemy to take his revenge on the city." (IMDB).

This is a film for lovers of
-Shakespeare
-Ralph Fiennes
-violence

Lucky, lucky you are if you love all three, because it was quite an amazing production. The violence was gritty and disturbing. The performances (in verse) were beautifully inspiring. Hell, even the location titles (A PLACE CALLING ITSELF ROME, ANTIUM, CORIOLES, etc.) got me a little giddy. It just really came together well, and was actually quite well-suited for a modern adaptation. Colin Covert (Star Tribune) said in his review that Coriolanus (Fiennes) was a hard guy to understand, and used the word "bipolar," and maybe that's fair. But if you're able to see this man for who he truly is----a general who is extremely good at his job but has no desire to kiss ass or self-promote himself and who loves his mother above all else, his actions will make perfect sense. I saw him as a rare, honest, man who refused to play games; clearly, this does not make things easy for him and causes one hell of a lot of upset. Also impossible to ignore in this story is the mother aspect, which is played magnificently between Fiennes and Redgrave---it's pretty powerful. (MOTHER IS THE WORD FOR GOD ON THE HEARTS AND LIPS OF ALL LITTLE CHILDREN) Et, tu, Martius? Yeah, I'm a broken record.


The only real criticism I have is something minor, and more of a silly annoyance for me, personally----there are some hand-held camera segments, very wobbly, very close and jumpy, that are effective in illustrating the chaos and out-of-control feelings being experienced by the characters, but if you're prone to motion sickness or discomfort, just be warned; it gets intense and lasts for quite a while. Mercifully, when these shots end, they are immediately countered by long, wide, empty landscape shots, but the bad parts almost bothered me enough to want to either leave or close my eyes (having felt as though someone just beat the hell out of me while simultaneously slipping me some fast-acting rufies.)

Eye candy: I happen to think Ralph Fiennes is extremely hot, and always have. He's better with hair, and unfortunately he's bald in nearly all of this, but there are some cool, modern segments where his baldness and later, re-shaving of his head along with that ridiculous barber's chair become a sort of initiation to the guys on the other side who eventually wind up following him (at their own general's implied expense). Yeah, and speaking of the other guy? I'd only seen Gerard Butler in that stupid flick he did with J-Aniston, which is a shame, because he's quite decent, and damn, an extremely hot Aufidius. Bonus for accents and tatts.

See? All you have to do to get more people interested in Shakespeare is to get some hot looking actors to sign on. But aesthetics aside, it's very much worth seeing.

Coriolanus

Have you seen this? It never made it to Minneapolis on its first run but I see now that it's at the Lagoon. There's not much that I like better than Ralph Fiennes . . . except maybe his little brother Joseph, of course.

Wow.

the constant gardner

hmmmm. this was a very good film but a huge downer.
i have decided that i don't really like mass conspiracy theory/mass public health scare/political thrillers anymore as they
tend to put a damper on my optimism.

ralph fiennes has a very nerdy hotness about him, not as picture perfect as his brother joseph, of course, but nice.

rachel weiz is wonderful. she was in the mummy films? what the hell?!?!?!?