the groundhog day project

It feels like, however much I had things to say regarding the last film on the list ( Stand By Me 1381 1382 1383 1383 1385 1386 ), with each further movie on my "movie life" list, it is much more about commenting from the present than remembering from the past, because for some of them--like today's Crocodile Dundee , for example--they were so briefly what I've been calling fixtures, that their influence is negligible beside something bigger and more attractive to my imagination like Dune or Masters of the Universe or Willow ... Actually, Willow might be on the list. But, I'm not sure, say, Batman is, even though I saw that movie 6 times on the big screen, bought the VHS on the day it came out, listened to both soundtracks constantly, and went retro watching reruns of every episode of the 60s tv show and the '66 film, and when I started reading comics regularly a few years later, the Batman comics were on my pull list for more than a decade. But,...

Today, I am watching multiples movies. Not aiming to write about them. Just to enjoy them. The movies: The Cloverfield Paradox , I don't feel at home in this world anymore , Creep ... and maybe Creep 2 if Creep turns out to be good. And, you know what I want?

With action movies, it's easy. With courtroom dramas. Even with romances. If--and if they had, this movie would have probably been quite forgettable--they had gone ahead and filmed the scenes with Stephanie DeCastro , maybe it would have been easier. But, what makes Phil's situation so hard is there is not clear victory to be had, no simple solution. Chasing after Rita is not dictated by some Fairy Godmother or Magic Mirror. Phil's situation is both entirely his own doing and entirely not. It's simple. It's complex. It's unsolvable. And, eventually, it solves itself. Like life. If you're lucky. If the social and cultural and political and ethnic and racial rolls go in your favor and circumstance doesn't set you as an example for everybody else. The thing is, however silly bullshit American Dream lines feel all too often-- you can accomplish anything if you just put your mind to it , you can be anything you want to be and all the similar lies we tell...

There's a moment at the end of The Shape of Water that almost undermines a really nice (but subtly done) theme that runs throughout the film. Oh, assume SPOILERS. (Just skip the next paragraph because the film is worth seeing.) From the start of the film, we know that Elisa (Sally Hawkins) has scars on her neck--one of my lesser complaints is that the film never quite focuses enough on them (though it could easily focus on them too much ) and I didn't even realize until just before the potentially undermining moment happens that she has scars on both side of her neck. Early in the film, when Strickland (Michael Shannon) sits Elisa and her friend and coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) down to talk to them, we learn that Elisa was found as a baby near a river, her neck scarred. There's no doubt that these scars (and her having been found by a river) will come into play later. But, I figured on the amphibian man (Doug Jones) either 1) having been responsible for her injuries...

I remember thinking, at least the first time that I saw The Elephant Man , that Bytes' narrative about Merrick's origin (and that surreal bit at the opening of the film) was an accurate reason for Merrick's condition. But, we had a book about Merrick in our home and, while I never read it cover to cover, I browsed the text and looked over the photos. But, other than that initial confusion, I don't think I thought much of those Lynchian moments; they were distractions. I also didn't think much on the idea of exploitation ; Bytes was awful, Treves was nice--that's all I thought about that. What really mattered when I saw this film as a kid--and what absolutely shines through now--is Hurt's portrayal of Merrick. (And, primarily, he's got his eyes and his voice, and little else; the malformed head prosthetic doesn't move.) Humanizing the monster, so to speak. Something close to that we've seen in multiple movies in this childhood deconstruction so ...

Rudy Gerner (Chris Makepeace) may have a self-esteem problem, but he's got a great view on what he wants out of life... or at least what he doesn't want. Plus, you've got Tripper's whole rallying cry about it not mattering if you win or lose. And, I think some of what this movie instilled in little kid me is obvious. Outside of fiction--i.e. when I'm playing a game or writing a story--I have no interest in doing... well, evil. Doing bad things. Hurting people. That doesn't mean, in any exclusive way, that I don't do bad things. I'm not sure anyone really wants to do bad things. Some people just lack the empathy and understanding to realize the consequences of their actions. Some people, given power--and its corrupting influence--inevitably take advantage. And even the best person, in a moment of weakness, can do the wrong thing. But, there are no mustache-twirling villains in the real world. There are bullies, there are manipulators and power-hungry ba...

At the end of yesterday 's entry, I noted how in the Him version of the story Conor says that Cody had his eyes, and in the Her version of the story (by way of Them ), he says Cody had Eleanor's eyes. That got me to thinking about this sort of claim to ownership that comes with describing one's child in terms of the attributes he has taken from you. And, already, I want to take back phrasing. Ownership is not quite it. It's something more like a belonging, something like a legacy or a bloodline belongs to you. It is not, necessarily, proprietary. Obviously, there's a genetic component to it. We are naturally inclined (generally speaking) to procreate. We are evolutionarily inclined to put our genes out there into the next generation, and of course we are also inclined to be protective of those genes. And, how do we know they are ours? I mean without going on Maury. We recognize in the resulting child something of ourselves. But, there is something much more imp...

Got Life Itself playing again right now. Also watched 45 Years today--not a film for people who don't like it slow, but I loved it until it didn't seem to really end, it was just... not on anymore. #NoClosure Sorry for the hashtag, but I just spent a couple hours watching and livetweeting # JurassicWorld on the Groundhog Day Project 's Twitter (after livetweeting (though I didn't actually tweet much for this one) the State of the Union with my personal Twitter ) and hashtags were getting thrown around a lot. I considered just copying and pasting the tweets here as today's blog entry, but I realized I have not gotten to something I really wanted to get to when I watched Life Itself the first time . I used Roger's line about movies being a machine that generates empathy as my title and never really got to the empathy thing. Plus, the tweets are probably best enjoyed in the format in which they were posted. Click the link above and check them out. Blasco an...