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- Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
- It's not a sequel to Knives Out, only Daniel Craig reprises his role as master detective. While he solves a murder mystery in 5 minutes during a weekend getaway of a circle of friends, solving the inevitable real-life murder takes a bit longer. As the name implies, a few layers have to be peeled to finally see the heart of the matter. The movie is excellent entertainment, funnier and more focused on Craig's role than Knives Out, and weaves in lots of cameos as well.
- Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
- A fantastic documentary on the music and life of WikiPedia:Leonard_Cohen -to which many of his friends and acquaintances contributed- and in particular his best-known song, Hallelujah. Just like Cohen's life, the song took a rather curvy road, becoming well-known mostly through cover versions, before eventually circling back to him. Cohen seems to have been a very thoughtful, well-spoken and gracious man. I'm glad to have seen this, especially as I discovered his music only after his death in 2016.
- Local Hero
- Continuing with movies that made it onto my watch list years ago, I can't sum this one up better than IMDb: An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected. A bit strange in places, but then, the village isn't exactly average, either, and Burt Lancaster is rather different than in any other movie I've seem him in.
- Der Nachname
- Sort of a follow-up to Der Vorname, this time the family's mother marries her adoptive son and takes his name. And that's just the start of truths coming out about everybody's interpersonal problems. While the major part of the film is the sort of embarrassing fun you would expect, the end is bungled with a rather preachy "live-and-let-live" message.
- See How They Run
- The successful theater run of The Mousetrap is about to spin off a movie adaptation, when the director is suddenly killed. An unlikely detective team played by Sam Rockwell and a fantastic Saoirse Ronan takes up the case of a whodunit within a whodunit and brings it home. Those who know The Mousetrap will delight in allusions to its ending (without giving it away for those who don't).
- The Mouse that Roared
- A movie older than myself - they do exist! Once again it's Peter Sellers in multiple roles showing how a tiny country can declare war on the USA, fully intending to lose quickly (hoping for Marshall Plan-like help later on), yet then accidentally win. The atomic bomb humor isn't quite on the same level as in Dr. Strangelove, but the campaign of the plucky underdog is still fun to watch.
- Glengarry Glen Ross
- Finally got around to seeing this 30 year old movie - the great cast (principally just Jack Lemon, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Al Pacino and Jonathan Pryce, as it based on a theatre play) have aged since, but here they hurl insults and accusations with the best of them, all the while just trying to make a living. Lemon's desperation in the face of losing his job especially shines, but it's a great ensemble cast.
- The Good Boss
- An unusual Javier Bardem, who tries to steer his company through whatever happens and doing, not whatever is necessary, but whatever is compatible with his own image as a father figure to all. Sometimes that works, sometimes not so much, as his ways are solidly old school. But the increasingly hemmed-in boss is entertaining to watch, as much to see what works, as what doesn't.
- Clueless
- Prompted by the current brouhaha about Netflix' Persuasion adaptation, I saw this earlier adaptation of Emma. The opportunities of match-making in a modern day high school are very different than in Austen's time, but the arising complications and unforeseen consequences are much the same. And high school life in general has potential for much hilarity, which is brought out to good effect here. Enjoyable and funny, although some teenage behavior is as hard to bear as it's been in Austen's times.
- Hold the Dark
- It's not just dark, it's violent, over and over again. The movie apparently leaves out much information that's in the underlying book and which makes parts of the plot understandable. As it is, much is left in doubt. Some of the characters apparently run with the wolves, and the viewer is asked to run with the plot, but too much of it just doesn't make sense. I consider violence in a movie to be neutral - by itself it's neither good or bad; but here, it's just bad.
- Jurassic World Dominion
- The saga comes to an end, with dinosaurs and humans needing to accommodate each other on planet Earth. While it's still solid action and entertainment, by now it feels that various elements from earlier films in the series get recycled, so it's probably a good time to call it quits. Not before various and sundry baddies get there dinosaur end-of-life treatment, though.
- Stasikomödie und Auswärtsspiel - Die Toten Hosen in Ost-Berlin
- Whereas Stasikomödie is a really funny take on how the DeWikiPedia:Stasi might have tried to subvert the East-Berlin art scene in the Eighties, Auswärtsspiel is a documentary that shows how they did exactly that (amongst many other things - the film is more about the music than the attention it got from the authorities). Seeing both films so close after one another, it's eery that what makes you laugh one day, gives you the creeps the next when you realize it used to be real. So watch the former for hearty laughs, and the latter for a reality check and some German punk music.
- Against The Ice
- Chronicling a Danish Greenland expedition trying to find remains of an earlier expedition, this Netflix movie develops into the story two men trying to achieve that goal, and later just to stay alive against the difficulties the Arctic stacks up against them, from food shortage and treacherous ice, to polar bears and the mental consequences of loneliness.
- Edward Scissorhands
- Not the kind of movie I would have watched when it came out, but Tim Burton's films have grown on me since then. It's an amazing world where everybody accepts Edward as he is, and everybody tries to take advantage of him. Except for one young woman who realized his true self, and tries in vain to help him. So it's a mixture of the astonishing and the predictable.
- The Mummy Returns
- My review of The Mummy said More action and comedy than horror, even though death comes via the undead (or rather, the reawakened dead) and flesh-eating bugs. It's a bit predictable who gets it, but still fun to wait and see how so, and how the others get away. Good summer fare. All still true, just substitute flesh-eating bugs by scorpions.
- Eingeschlossene Gesellschaft
- 6 teachers are trapped by a father who wants to force them to give his son a better grade. Lots of discussions ensue about who gets to judge whom, and how, and who is least morally compromised to do so. Turns out none of them is, and personal shortcomings are dragged into the light in greater detail than any of them wants to. Bottom line: this particular school -certainly many of its teachers- are thoroughly stuck in the past.
- The First Great Train Robbery
- Based on the true events of the WikiPedia:Great_Gold_Robbery, Sean Connery and my favorite Donald Sutherland go about stealing gold from a running railway in 1855, the first time ever this was attempted. While in the movie they got away with it, in real life they weren't quite so lucky. But it's an entertaining movie that mostly focuses on the detailed planning and the execution of the plan.
- Meet the Fockers
- The sequel to Meet the Parents, this one pits buttoned-up Robert de Niro against freewheelin' Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. More of the same, really, but still funny, and sufficiently different to make it worthwhile watching.
- Meet the Parents
- I had originally skipped this one, as I'm not a big Ben Stiller fan, but watched it now - and it was funny indeed. Stiller always seems to plays the same character (basically himself, one suspects), but as a hapless future son-in-law to a suspicious Robert de Niro, it works.
- Central Intelligence
- A comedy that unfortunately thinks it can transport serious issues along the way, but only manages to get preachy and soapy. Luckily, the action sequences have plenty of humor to save the day.
- Notting Hill
- Romcom where some of the usual parts of "they met, they fall in love, they lose each other, they get together for good" (her being a famous actress, him being a rather less-known bookshop owner) get rather short shrift. The "com" parts are provided by the family and friends of him, not so much by the "rom" parts.
- Toy Story 4
- Venturing out into the great wide open, there are lots of opportunities for toys to get lost, but naturally, by sticking together, it all goes well in the end, and Woody can finally let go of the other toys to pursue his own life. The film would have benefited from cutting a few minutes that get too sappy towards the end.
- Toy Story 3
- Andy's off to college, so some hard decision about what to keep and what to chuck need to be made. But things go wrong, and the toys need to scramble to stay together, and fight off a gang of toys gone bad at the local daycare.
- Don't Look Up
- IMDb labels this one as comedy, drama and Sci-Fi. To me, it's a comedy, although it's probably meant as a satire, but it hits my funny bone. It's all rather over the top, and in the end, Earth is actually destroyed. Pity Leonardo Di Caprio's character who just can't understand how to deliver important messages in an elevator statement; these days, how do you become a tenured professor without that skill?
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