This episode, we’re getting a little antsy while talking about those giant invasive species from 1954’s Them! We’re celebrating the film’s 70th anniversary by taking a look at the era of 3-D glasses, communist paranoia, and giant monsters borne of the atomic bomb. There’s also plenty of talk regarding the Wilhelm scream, the legendary stock sound that was used in Them! as well as countless other later films that caused it to become one cinema’s most prolific easter eggs. Continue reading
This week on The Pick, we’re going back to the ’90s (again) and back to David Cronenberg (again) by taking a look at 1999’s eXistenZ (which is not pronounced how you’d think). Yet, despite the familiarity inherent in this episode’s Pick, it’s far from a run-of-the-mill movie, even if it does feel fairly par for the course in Cronenberg’s bizarro filmography. There’s lots of talk about game pods and bioports as well as Cronenberg’s liberal interpretation of what video games are. We even do a little bit of a look at where video games were at when this movie was released, while Sean offers one of the more unusual Little Picks. Continue reading
We are, once again, back. We’re also back on our bullshit reviewing a movie with a cult following and a strange cultural footprint that we’ve been meaning to get to the bottom of. In honor of its 30th anniversary, we’re taking a look at Cabin Boy, the first and only big-screen collaboration between Chris Elliott and fellow Late Night co-conspirator Adam Resnick. We dive into the movie’s abysmal reception when it was released and why it has been reassessed by comedy nerds over the years. Also, we couldn’t let the release of Dune: Part 2 go by without talking about it, so we forgo our little picks for an in-depth discussion of the year’s first big blockbuster.
The 92nd Academy Awards (2020)
Nominations: 11
Wins: 2
I was thinking about this the day I watched Joker (because I was also thinking about Vampire Weekend announcing their first album in five years), but 2019 really was a different time. Covid hadn’t happened, we’d started to (sort of) adjust to Trump being president, and superhero movies were at the peak of their popularity. The latter two of these things of course coalesced in the movie Joker, melding Batman’s greatest foe and incel culture. So like many cultural moments of the Trump era, there was a lot of Discourse around it.
Now, with a new Joker movie coming out later this year and the benefit of a few years of distance from the film’s release, I wanted to try and revisit this movie without all of its cultural baggage and take it in more on its merits as a film, which apparently there was enough of to earn Oscars. Though that’s going to be a little hard, since its messaging (or lack thereof) is still a little hard to separate from what this movie is doing within the confines of its own vision of Gotham City. Continue reading
The 65th Academy Awards (1993)
Nominations: 9
Wins: 3
For a brief period in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it seemed like the films produced by Ismael Merchant and directed by James Ivory were a bit of an Oscars juggernaut. Granted, none of these movies ever won Best Picture, and they only occasionally get talked about nowadays, usually as an obligatory example of a staid British period piece. But they seemed important at the time, even if they haven’t remained all that accessible. So I’ve had a vague interest in watching at least one of these movies, and the best place to start seemed to be Howards End, which is probably the most acclaimed of the Merchant-Ivory productions. Luckily it turned out to be pretty compelling and full of ideas that still ring true, even if it may appear a bit stuffy on the surface. Continue reading
Whenever we do these weeks or months around a certain theme, it’s all about finding the different connections that pop up between disparate films. Today’s entry has a few of those, since for the second day in a row, we’re reviewing a Burt Lancaster movie where he’s part of a larger ensemble, but also like the last movie I reviewed, happens to feature a score by Alfred Newman. Considering the 31-year difference between Wuthering Heights and Airport, it’s not all that surprising to learn that this would be Newman’s final film score. The presence of Newman and Lancaster illuminates the fact that Airport is a movie very much catering to a 1970s audience, but also has its roots in old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment. Continue reading
The 12th Academy Awards (1940)
Nominations: 8
Wins: 1
Welcome once again to Oscar season here at Mildly Pleased! This is the time of year when we spend a tasteful two weeks looking back at Oscar nominees of years past as we eagerly anticipate (and in some cases dread) what will bring home the gold on Hollywood’s Biggest Night.
This year, the approach I took was reviewing two movies that are stuffy period pieces and two that are decidedly not. The first of which is Wuthering Heights, a movie that I’ve been interested in after reading Emily Brontë’s novel last year. It’s a movie that seems to exist in that netherworld of being a classic, but not an unimpeachable classic, since it was on AFI’s original 100 Years…100 Movies list from 1998, but was bumped from the updated 2007 list. That feels fair for what this movie is, as it’s a well-made production from perhaps the studio system’s greatest year, but can’t help but pale in comparison to other sweeping romances of that era with a similar vibe. Continue reading
