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 #5 - The Happytime Murders

Straight talk today. I watched fourteen minutes of this movie and turned it off. I barely made it passed a puppet cow prostrate while an octopus "milked it" in a shady puppet "pr0n" house. I'm becoming very disappointed in the movie selections so far, and wanted to go back to watching Happy Valley , but I'd binged both seasons last week and therefore have no more of it to return to. Sure, entertainment needs highs and lows, but the kind of sexist, formulaic nonsensical, stereotypical storytelling that I found in the first ten minutes of Happytime Murders made me simply sad. The characteristics of noir aside, the issue with the premise of this movie is that it's just out of date, out of touch and juvenile. Let's count the stereotypes, shall we? Ball-busting female detective, check. Sex-addicted femme fatale, check. Down on his luck PI, check. The police sergeant who doesn't actually have a clue, check. The wise-cracking secretary, check. And on...

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 #4 - Mile 22

Mile 22 is a vehicle for Mark Wahlberg--but it's a derivative, idiotic, and honestly bananas "film" that makes very little coherent sense. Marky Mark's character is some high functioning "gifted" "on the spectrum" low-rent version of Affleck in The Accountant crossed with an attempt to be John Wick or Jason Bourne, who knows, but he monologues a LOT and basically leaves testosterone everywhere on the screen. #yawn. He's accompanied into the "ops" by Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead , Rhonda Rousey and another guy who gets killed. They are a super-secretive CIA black ops group that goes around murdering "hostiles" so that they can find some codes that will stop the world from ending. Whatever. #yawn. I can barely function casting sentences for this nonsense. The plot: some random cop has the codes to the key that opens the files that tells them where the nuclear material is, it's all time sensitive, and he wants to...

Worth A Thousand Words

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