Tag: movie log

I watch a lot of movies, mostly kids’ movies and Hollywood action blockbusters, but in principle I’m willing to watch anything that isn’t horror. I’m keeping a list of the movies I’ve seen. Read these posts for my reactions and plot summaries, many of which are in the form of a beat sheet as described in Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat.

Anastasia (1997)

According to Wikipedia, there was a 1956 movie based on a 1952 French play based on the idea that Anastasia survived. Also, the phenomenon of people claiming/pretending to be Anastasia is real, and the play is based on the most famous of these. (The story continues to evolve: a 2016 stage musical included some of the same songs and characters, but substituted or added others.)

The rags-to-riches plot of this 1997 movie makes it feel like a standard Cinderella tale, but now that I think about it, the story may be more like Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady): a man fabricates an identity for a woman, then falls in love with her. That arc fits better with the 50s versions, though: in the 90s cartoon, the woman really was a princess all along. (Edit: It’s not my imagination… again, according to Wikipedia, they actually considered adapting My Fair Lady and deliberately took elements of Pygmalion. But I noticed the similarity myself.)

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Now You See Me (trilogy)

The three Now You See Me movies are heist stories where the criminals in question are professional masters of deception—and possibly also of petty theft, burglary, and extortion. But as it turns out, the “Four Horsemen” are stealing for an arguably just cause, rather than personal gain, although of course their primary motivation seems to be that they really enjoy fooling people. After all, that’s why they’re magicians.

That’s why, at some level, I don’t like them. But I still like these movies. (Go figure.)

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The Odyssey (2026)

As we’ve established elsewhere, I don’t much like tricksters, and The Odyssey is the story of the trickster Odysseus. But I would much have preferred the actual story of the trickster Odysseus to whatever you want to say Christopher Nolan gave us instead.

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Bambi (1942)

One of my favorite movies ever is Disney’s Lion King (1994). I know the music and the script inside out. So when I watched Bambi in 2021, and again when I watched it recently, I was struck by how similar Bambi is to The Lion King. Both movies follow a princely main character through the major stages of his life.

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Toy Story 5 (2026)

The devices. They’re everywhere. Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. We all need creativity and imagination, our kids most especially. Are we losing it? Yeah, apparently so. Do not go gentle into that good night, says Pixar!

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The BBC Jane Austen Collection (1972–1995)

Between June 2024 and June 2026, I watched all six of the Jane Austen adaptations in this particular box set, which includes:

  • Emma (1972)
  • Sense and Sensibility (1981)
  • Mansfield Park (1983)
  • Northanger Abbey (1987)
  • Pride and Prejudice (1995)
  • Persuasion (1995)

Most of these adaptations struck me as boring, fussy and strident like a stage performance, or terribly incomplete.

More on various other adaptations below.

Continue reading The BBC Jane Austen Collection (1972–1995)

Gattaca (1997)

The movie Gattaca combines many things successfully. For one thing, visually, it is a retrostylized future with buildings, clothes, and cars designed to look like those of the past. For another, the society has several types of advanced technology: rocket science, embryology, DNA forensics, and electric cars, which, well, we have too, just not as good as theirs.

But do we want biotech as good as theirs? I mean, look what they did with it: Gattaca depicts a dystopia where people with unfavorable “in-valid” DNA sequences are consistently excluded from social and career opportunities.

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Thank You For Banking with Us (2024)

When I’m on a long flight, I try to watch a movie or two from the entertainment system that I never would have heard of any other way, and this Palestinian black comedy is one example.

“When their father passes away leaving a large sum of money in the bank, two sisters put their differences aside and join forces against Sharia law, according to which their brother has the right to take double what they are entitled to.”

If you think it’s hard being a woman in general, try being a woman in Palestine… in this depiction, all the family and economic relationships are tilted against the women. The ambulance staff at first even refuse to state whether their father, who is lying in bed unresponsive, has died because no other male is present. I mean it’s like, a woman is still an adult, right?

In case you’re curious, the two sisters do manage to claim the inheritance for themselves; that’s not really a spoiler because it very much matters for the overall effect of the film how they try to manage it, and how they succeed… Do they enlist the help of someone’s boyfriend, husband, or son? Do they impersonate their dead father, or their undeserving distant brother, or some other male? Do they march into the bank with masks and a stolen gun and threaten the bank teller? Do they launch a protest campaign and achieve policy change? Do they just walk up to a series of ATMs and take out a thousand dollars 150 times over the course of a week?

The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021)

Underequipped but relentless Chinese soldiers fight Americans in North Korea during the Korean War in winter 1950, ultimately forcing a retreat.

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Early Edition (Seasons 1 and 2)

The news is always bad stuff, because that’s what competes best for our attention. And according to Rolf Dobelli’s book Stop Reading the News, we’re better off without it. I think that’s largely true. But, asks the mystical feel-good 90s TV show Early Edition: What if you got tomorrow’s news today? Would you try to change it? Prevent the bad stuff from happening?

Gary Hobson, a newly unemployed stockbroker, is kicked out of his Chicago apartment by his soon-to-be ex-wife and, while living in an old hotel suite, mysteriously starts receiving a printed copy of the Chicago Sun-Times a day in advance. The accompanying orange cat seems to want him to help people (rather than, say, place sports bets), so helping people becomes, well, not only his full-time job but his entire identity, his raison d’etre, like it or not.

Continue reading Early Edition (Seasons 1 and 2)