I've Got 99 Cents & 1,000 Words

Thinking about the best way to get back into some sort of regular writing routine, I mean, it's been years, and trying to find a way to talk about the parts of pop culture that I love--books (also culture, culture), movies, and television, I've got a challenge for myself this year.

#1. Watch the Apple $0.99 cent movie of the week and then write a review. Maximum length: 1,000 words.

#2. If it's based on a book, read the book first. If it's a sequel, no need to have watched the previous films, and...

#3. Don't put a time limit on your reviews. One week I might write three reviews, I might go a month without writing any (and probably forget the film once I get there... mom brain).

#4. Try not to cloud my judgement by watching OTHER movies that week...

And see what happens. Are they good? Do they roughly appeal to my demographic? What themes appear? Will I care by the end of the year, probably not, and I'll probably give up halfway through, but it's a start.

Here we go.

Comments

Movie #3 - The Spy Who Dumped Me

I'd already rented The Spy Who Dumped Me when it first became available, I found the trailers infectious, and really enjoy Mila Kunis's comedy (except the second Bad Moms movie, and sort of the first, because it was really just kind of dumb). Overall, I'm not 100% sure this movie's effective--it's no Spy , but it had its own certain charm, mainly at the hands of Kate McKinnon, who is really hilarious. The plot's a bit thin, Mila and Kate get sucked into some sort of international espionage when her boyfriend, Justin Theroux and his eyebrows & abs, leaves her with a vital piece of information she has to deliver or the end of the world or something. Oh, it doesn't matter--they have wacky hijinks overseas, snack Sam Heughan joins them, there's a lot of funny one-liners, and some fun action scenes, and overall I enjoyed it. Worth a thousand words? Not really. But at least it's inching closer to a film where women are at the centre, and while

Movie #7 - Life Itself

I procrastinated watching this movie because emotional manipulation isn't high on my list of things to do for a Tuesday evening. And Life Itself purports itself to be "sensitive" and "poignant" but really it's essentially misery porn, and I am not down for it. In short, it's a story with no realistic timeline, characters being needlessly killed as a means to develop the "plot," and all driving to a maudlin ending where we're supposed to feel like all the needless tragedy turns itself around because "things happen for a reason." It's also punctuated by some of the worst writing I've ever come across in film, but that's besides the point as you're already so defeated by all of the "shocking" deaths and ridiculous coincidences that inevitably land the story in exactly the place where Fogelman wants it to be, and I don't understand if there's a point other than to be wholly and completely co

Movie #6 - Hereditary

Finally. After five long weeks of $0.99 cent rentals, Apple finally promoted a really good film. Hereditary is terrifying, bloody, and contains a scene where my husband had to pause the film so that I could walk around the house catching my breath. Yes, it's that scary. In short, it's a film about tragedy, it's punctuated by loss, and death propels the plot forward, but not in a slasher-everyone's-going-to-die-anyway kind of way, but more so in a scary-it's-this-close-to-real-life kind of way. The entire picture is shot in a grey-ish tone where even in the daytime scenes you feel askew in some way, that something just isn't right. Also, if Ann Dowd approaches you in any aspect of your life: RUN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. Toni Collette plays the mom whose family is under siege, Gabriel Byrne her stalwart husband. Great performances by Alex Wolff (Peter) and Milly Shapiro (Charlie) round out the cast, and overall, despite the fact that I really don't c

Worth A Thousand Words

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