the groundhog day project

So, I'm watching Gringo at the the theater today, and it's not as bad as some reviews had me thinking, but it has some structural issues, too much going on, dragging a bit much for a comedy that in other scenes is quite energetic. And, it wants to be about something, with the pharmaceutical angle and the drug cartel, but it keeps not quite managing. But, the thing I wanted to say about it that is definitely not the case with Romancing the Stone is that Gringo lets characters disappear for too long at times. So, let's compare. Not that any of you have seen (or will see) Gringo , or that a lot of you have even seen Romancing the Stone (but you should see the latter because it's amazing). (Actually, it occurs to me that I just might hashtag Gringo in the tweet link to this entry so maybe some people interested in that film will happen by. Hello Gringo fans. I will probably not be talking about Gringo beyond the next few sentences; I actually had a planned topic ...

(We interrupt the planned programming here at The Groundhog Day Project --because my VHS set of Star Wars films didn't arrive and I don't feel like skipping ahead--to bring you a brief bit about mother! --because I saw it again today, and however much it is horrifying some people, I liked it even more the second time than I did the first time.) Honestly, you probably won't like mother! . I mean, statistically, most people won't like it. Maybe, taking into account the limited scope of this blog and the side of the Venn diagram of film aficionados who might come to my blog regularly, you're one of the few who will not only like it but love it. An Aronofsky fan, perhaps. A fan of divisive, provocative, polarizing cinema, maybe. Let's get some stuff out of the way right off. You know, SPOILERS. You're gonna get overloaded with imagery of violence, of gratuitous religiosity, of Jennifer Lawrence's breasts, of a newborn baby's half eaten corpse, and ...

So a few pet peeves. One about something that happens in movies. One about how people react to movies. And one about life. I'll be as brief as I can. One, and this one occurred to me watching 9 to 5 , is when a conversation is split over two scenes. The example in 9 to 5 isn't even the most egregious example--Judy waits until she is at the store with Violet to ask about Doralee, when realistically she would have asked, you know, on the way there. Some movies, though, it's like midsentence, or between question and response, and that is not how people talk. It's a cheap manipulation of the medium. (To be fair, it can be used well, to suggest a conversation that happens again and again. Because one character just can't let something go, for example. But, too often it's just cheap.) Two, and this one occurred to me watching The Mummy , is about how people measure a film too much by what they wanted it to be. In this case, so many reviews referencing the 1999 The ...

At the start of Bulworth , Senator Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty, also directing and co-writing) is in the middle of a crisis. His vote is expected by a particular lobby--something to do with an insurance bill--but he's... Well, he's over it. He's been up all night watching his campaign ads, and he's... He's depressed. Tired of lying, I suppose. He hasn't eaten or slept in three days. And, he's about to hire someone to kill him after making a $10 million deal with a lobbyist for his daughter. He doesn't get along with his wife (Christine Baranski, playing her coolest) but I suppose he cares about his daughter. We don't meet her, so we must assume. He's off to a junket in Los Angeles, starting with an African-American church, when one of those ads he was watching before was against affirmative action; I don't think we can assume that he has much support among the African-American community. For the record, I've seen this movie...

(A note, in case you are just joining the Groundhog Day Project : the phase 2 description above suggests that I am watching one movie seven times, but for this month, I am not doing that. Unless you count slasher films as one long film split into weird little chapters… which isn’t that bad a way to think about it, I suppose. But, even then, it is not seven times but 33 times this month .) Saul Bass opening titles—always a good thing. A specific date and time as we come into the window to find Marion Crane and her lover. The Final Girl was not a thing yet, but this movie lets us know first thing that this seeming lead character is not a virgin. There’s no hint of a killer and already some moral grey areas. The film, with its Saul Bass opening credits, it’s black and white (when color was an option, mind you), and the question of respectability (and morality) in the relationship on display, seems like a setup for a film noir more than the horror films that would borrow tropes from i...