Black Mirror + The Ring = Unfriended

Unfriended appears to be the type of movie that you hear about or watch the trailer for and immediately have to begin mocking. "Oh wouldja look what Hollywood has done now? They're making a "there's a ghost in the internet" movie, oh how stupid." That's totally fair. It's fair to kind of hear about Unfriended and think "That sounds like a stupid movie" but I hope you like being wrong, because you are wrong because it's the opposite of stupid (i.e. "smart").

We Are Still Here, I Am Still Bored.

I remember watching an interview with Nicholas Roeg where he talked about studio executives giving him crap about the titles of his film, their point was that his titles, such as "Don't Look Now" and "Bad Timing", gave critics way too easy an "in" for mocking the work. I was thinking about that while I was watching "We Are Still Here", specifically thinking, "Well I know the audience didn't say that." And Rotten Tomatoes somewhat backs me up and actually gives a little kindling to a pet theory of mine regarding our current state of interconnected mutual media massages and the "everyone likes everyone so nothing can be bad" groupthink that has replaced real community interactions among artists.

Cat's Eye

I had one of those "I don't know what I was expecting" moments while watching Cat's Eye. I'm a cat lover and thought, "Well, it's called 'Cat's Eye' but I bet that's just like, you know, a clever thing. I bet there really isn't much about cats or anything in it." Well at least nothing happened to a cat's eye. That's a positive.

"Gonna Shoot Some Pigs"

“I don't know whats happening to me. I get funny ideas.”

Targets (1969) is the first film from Hollywood renaissance man Peter Bogdanovich and it doesn't show at all. At least not in the sense that one would expect from a first film. I didn't even know it was his first film until it finished and I started looking for information on the internet about it. Hard Eight by Paul Thomas Anderson feels like a first film. Even Reservoir Dogs at this point looks a bit clunky compared to the films that Tarantino has grown into making. Maybe not “clunky” but some effects definitely seem a little, well, like the film devices of a filmmaker finding his voice.