Lazy Sunday CXVII: Cinema

27 August 20232 August 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

The cinema is either making a major comeback, or it’s enjoying one last gasp of box office dominance before fading into obscurity. Either way, it’s a great excuse to look back on some past posts about the movies!

“The Future of Cinema” – I wrote this bad boy back in October 2020, during The Age of The Virus. Theaters had started to reopen, only to shutter again as the dreaded Delta variant scared journalists and schoolmarms everywhere. I mused that the magic of seeing a flick on the big screen would, even in some altered form, triumph over streaming.
“Supporting Friends Friday: The Cinematic Compositions of Mason Sandifer” – Robert Mason Sandifer is a young composer with whom I had the opportunity to work for a couple of years while he was in high school. Since I wrote this post back in 2021, he’s gone on to compose a great deal more.
“The Return of the Cinema” – Is moviegoing back? I certainly hope so. It’s been a big summer for the movies, and it’s good to see theaters and lobbies full of the unwashed masses again.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Monday Morning Movie Review: Death Game (1977)

21 August 202331 July 2023 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Yours portly has, admittedly, pretty trashy tastes in movies. Thanks to a subscription to Shudder, I’ve watched some pretty gnarly horror and suspense films over the last couple of years, not to mention plenty of sleazy exploitation flicks.

Even yours portly has his limits, and recently endured one insufferable exploitation flick from 1977, Death Game.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

14 August 202331 July 2023 The Portly Politico6 Comments

While I was visiting my older brother in Indiana in July, he took me to see the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), on an IMAX screen.

I did not go into the film with high expectations. Everything I’d heard about the movie was negative: Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character was obnoxious; Indiana Jones’s advanced age is played to denigrate the character; the whole thing is another one of Kathleen Kennedy’s wish-fulfillment films (in which she casts an unlikable British brunette to be a stand-in for herself, an unlikable feminist studio exec).

Perhaps it’s because I went in with such low expectations that I actually found the movie to be not that bad. Was it good? Not really. Should it have been nearly three hours long? Absolutely not. Was it as bad as critics made it out to be? Well, that depends.

The Return of the Cinema?

2 August 20231 August 2023 The Portly Politico19 Comments

After years of declining box office totals and the closures of The Age of The Virus, it suddenly feels like moviegoing is back. Four major releases seem to be driving folks to theaters in droves: Barbie, Sound of Freedom, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and Oppenheimer. Even with relative flops like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the woke Pixar flick Elemental, everyone seems to be flooding back into theaters, almost out of nowhere.

To be fair, box office receipts for Summer 2022 were up, likely on the strength of Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Perhaps I didn’t darken the door of a theater in 2022 as frequently as I have in 2023 (there’s something about being single and dating that drives me to the movies frequently), so my admittedly anecdotal observations are skewed. But, dang, it sure does feel like folks are flooding back into theaters. In my mind, that’s a good thing.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Sound of Freedom (2023)

31 July 202324 July 2023 The Portly Politico17 Comments

Before beginning this review, let me state that you must see Sound of Freedom (2023). It is likely the most important film of the last decade, if not this century, so far. If you’d like to contribute to help others see it in theaters, Angel Studios has a pay-it-forward program. If you are financially strapped but want to see it on the big screen—and, trust me, you want to see it on the big screen—Angel Studios allows you to claim free tickets (well, tickets, other folks have paid for). Lead actor Jim Caviezel compares the film to Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which President Lincoln (apocryphally) claimed “started this great war” (the American Civil War) because of the impact it had on the burgeoning anti-slavery movement in the United States. For what it’s worth, I think Caviezel is correct: Sound of Freedom is waking people up to the terrifying realities of child sex trafficking. —TPP

If cinema does one thing well, it is creating an experience for the audience. We’ve grown used to watching big-budget, CGI-infested foolishness that overloads our senses and shuts down our brains—an experience in and of itself—but the real power of film is to make something beyond our personal experience real for us. Sound of Freedom (2023) has that effect in bringing to life the real-world tragedy of human trafficking, specifically child sex trafficking.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

24 July 202318 July 2023 The Portly Politico22 Comments

In an era of declining box office receipts and regurgitated intellectual properties featuring race- and gender-swapped protagonists to appeal to “modern audiences,” it seems the only surefire way to make a smash hit is to attach Tom Cruise to the project. Last summer’s smash blockbuster was Top Gun: Maverick (2022); one year later, it’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023).

Unwieldy title aside, Dead Reckoning Part One is an excellent film. Cruise returns to portray super spy Ethan Hunt, the most resourceful asset of the mysterious Impossible Mission Force (IMF). What makes the flick so compelling, and not just another rehash of past M:I films, is its antagonist: a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) called “The Entity,” an enemy that is “everywhere… and nowhere.”

Monday Morning Movie Review: Guest Post: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

17 July 20236 July 2023 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Good old Pontifex Maximus has returned from self-imposed exile with a trio of posts, all of which I’ll be posting throughout this week and the next. The first of these is a dual movie review of two remake/sequels of the 1995 classic Jumanji, a flick that was both fun and terrifying to a then-ten-year old yours portly.

The film was remade/reimagined in 2017 as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and followed by a sequel in 2019, Jumanji: The Next Level. Ponty gives both films a thorough treatment, and readers will be pleasantly surprised to know that, unlike many reboots of classic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s, these films don’t flounder.

With that, here are Ponty’s reviews of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle andJumanji: The Next Level:

Monday Morning Movie Review: Bloody Oranges (2021)

26 June 202322 June 2023 The Portly Politico7 Comments

I’m not typically one for “trigger warnings,” but this week’s film is hard to watch. I’ve seen some pretty foul stuff in all the crappy B-grade horror flicks I consume, and I have, perhaps sadly, become immune to most shocking material. Just writing that sentence made me feel convicted… dang.

But my crushing Pentecostal guilt can wait until after this film review. This flick, the 2021 French black comedy Bloody Oranges (or Oranges sanguines in French) possesses some truly difficult scenes to endure. I found myself watching through my fingers at a couple of points in the film.

It’s an incredible movie, a movie I will heavily discourage most readers from watching. My parents, my aunts, Audre—don’t watch it. Read some reviews if your curiosity is piqued, but don’t watch it. Ponty, you could probably handle it, even though I know how much you hate the frogs.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Calvaire (2004)

19 June 202318 June 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

When I was young ~~I thought that life was so wonderful~~ that foreign films were snooty, arthouse affairs, the kinds of flicks pretentious people only pretended to like in order to look sophisticated. That’s probably true of some foreign films (and most modern art in general), but I’ve found that the opposite is frequently the case. Some of the best movies I’ve watched lately were foreign films.

Koreans and Spaniards (of various derivations) make some of the best films. Much to my surprise and delight, the French make some excellent films, too.

To be clear, some of the crappier stuff I’ve seen have been pretentious French flicks. My beloved Shudder has a whole collection of French films that are, let’s say, experimental garbage.

But the frogs do get some things right now and then. One of those is 2004’s Calvaire (alternatively Calvary or The Ordeal).

Monday Morning Movie Review: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

12 June 202310 June 2023 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Horror streaming service Shudder is on a werewolf kick this month, flooding the platform with lycanthropic treats. Werewolves don’t get the same love as vampires, but they’re an interesting creature. Watching various werewolf flicks over the past week or so has demonstrated that the “rules” governing them are as versatile as those that govern the bloodsuckers.

Perhaps the best modern werewolf film is 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. The brainchild of writer and director John Landis—the man behind the “Thriller” music video—it takes the established mythology of the werewolf and expands upon it. The film even references the classic Universal Studios film The Wolf Man (1941), drawing upon that film’s contribution to the modern werewolf mythology (it doubtlessly helped that An American Werewolf in London was also a Universal Studios production, giving Landis full access to earlier Universal properties).

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One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: movies