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Nimona (2023)
A new hero takes shape.
Filmmaker(s): Troy Quane, Nick Bruno

A knight framed for a tragic crime teams with a scrappy, shape-shifting teen to prove his innocence.

Your Local Manager I came to this with kids, not knowing anything. The story is ordinary, with features borrowed from a familiar bucket. But it had energy, massive energy in more than one dimension. The title character, the city backgrounds, and most particularly the camera —...


Published October 19, 2024
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Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
The King vs. The King of the Dead.
Filmmaker(s): Don Coscarelli

Bubba Ho-tep tells the "true" story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his "death," then missed his chance to switch back. He must team up with JFK and fight an ancient Egyptian mummy for the souls of their fellow residents.

The Singing Detective For those who don't know it, 'The Singing Detective' was the only decent thing I know that TeeVee has produced. It was one of those longish movies they call a miniseries. It featured a man in a hospital who imagined himself to be...


Published September 28, 2024
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Man from Reno (2014)
The greatest mystery she's ever written. And it could be her last…
Filmmaker(s): Dave Boyle

A mystery outside of San Francisco brings together small-town sheriff Paul Del Moral, Japanese author Aki Akahori, and a traveler from Reno who soon disappears, leaving behind his suitcase and a trail of questions.

Shell Game Alas, I continue to find comments original posted to IMDB, deleted because of a complaint by an unseen adversary — and therefore lost. However, a re-viewing brings this later comment. Spoilers here. This is much like ‘Chinatown’ with some ‘Vertigo’ mixed in. Both noirs of...


Published September 20, 2024
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Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Did she do it?
Filmmaker(s): Justine Triet

A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.

Pairy Maison The framing here is a courtroom drama, very simple and straightforward. A process that is (mostly) inhuman with a prosecutor we want to hate. We never discover what actually happened, and the craft here is in taking a simple ambiguity — did this woman...


Published September 20, 2024
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Quantum Cowboys (2022)
Observation always affects the outcome.
Filmmaker(s): Geoff Marslett

Two hapless drifters, Frank and Bruno, team up with Linde to recover her land and trek across 1870's Southern Arizona to find an elusive frontier musician. The complex quantum time theory is blended with philosophical musings about art as the way we understand our history and memories, with gunfights, horses, dance halls, cacti, and saloons!

Overlapping Takes This a bit of a philosophical stew but with naive ingredients. I don’t know how many movies we’ll get with this notion of parallel universes, each of which are occupied, or can be. But set that aside and accept it as a useful trope. In...


Published September 19, 2024
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Love and Mercy (2014)
The Life, Love and Genius of Brian Wilson
Filmmaker(s): Bill Pohlad

In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson stops touring, produces "Pet Sounds" and begins to lose his grip on reality. By the 1980s, under the sway of a controlling therapist, he finds a savior in Melinda Ledbetter.

The Sergeant’s Retreat The scriptwriter’s obligation is to sketch a world that has enough definition for us to inhabit and understand the influences on the characters within. The default is to make that world simple so we do the least work in engaging. That’s what they...


Published August 22, 2024
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Penn & Teller: Fool Us (2011- )
Up to their new tricks.

Illusionists Penn & Teller throw down the gauntlet to aspiring magicians to perform their most mystifying trick - and fool Penn and Teller. Penn & Teller have no prior knowledge of either the performers or the planned trick. They sit in the audience just like everyone else, watching every move the guest magicians make. If any illusionist fools the professionals, they win a five star trip to Las Vegas to perform as the opening act in Penn & Teller's world famous show at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

Game Changing I think I have seen most of the episodes of this, all out of order. There really is nothing like it in my experience. It is reality TV, while being stage performances. It has several different personalities as focus, but shifts to our focus...


Published August 21, 2024
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Despicable Me (2010)
Some call him bad. They call him dad.

Villainous Gru lives up to his reputation as a despicable, deplorable and downright unlikable guy when he hatches a plan to steal the moon from the sky. But he has a tough time staying on task after three orphans land in his care.

Foreground/Background I see that I did not write a comment on this when it came out. I have since had kids and rewatched it recently, and am impressed by a couple key decisions. The first is the quality of the animation and choices made in the story....


Published July 7, 2024
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Inside Out 2 (2024)
Make room for new emotions.
Filmmaker(s): Kelsey Mann

Teenager Riley's mind headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone.

Lassiter Layers Decades ago, I had the charter to ‘study Hollywood’, ostensibly as a model for virtual enterprises, but that extended into my now serious study of folding in film narrative. One expression of folding is the play within the play, where you have narratives and narrative...


Published June 23, 2024
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The Fall Guy (2024)
Fall hard.
Filmmaker(s): David Leitch

Fresh off an almost career-ending accident, stuntman Colt Seavers has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job.

No Stuntman This film, and every comment I’ve seen seems to not be aware of 1980s ‘The Stunt Man”. That was a similar setup, but before the noir device evolved to the comedic. In the earlier film, the fact of the stunt guy being so was...


Published June 20, 2024
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