I fell in love with Punch Drunk Love, and by extension its director, Paul Thomas Anderson. Since I’d already loved Boogie Nights I re-visited Magnolia and found lots to love there too. Punch Drunk Love was the start of my affair with PTA, and also the end. I’ve seen and not really liked everything he’s done since: There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice. It makes me feel like a failed cinephile to admit my inability to get behind these movies and I was itching to break the spell with Phantom Thread. It currently holds a 92% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes and is being lauded for Daniel Day-Lewis’s committed (and final) performance, but no, Phantom Thread did nothing for me.
Set in London, 1950’s, Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) is a genius dressmaker whose fashion house is coveted by all ladies in good standing. His life is rigorously regimented 
and he turns out perfection in taffeta and the finest silk. His sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) runs his business and his home. Neither tolerate the slightest deviance from their prescribed lifestyle. BUT then a lovely young woman causes a disruption. Alma (Vicky Krieps) turns out to not be the meek muse that Woodcock first took her for, and his world is soon turned more inside out than the discarded gowns on a dressing room floor.
Is Daniel Day-Lewis quite good? Yes he is. His performance is measured and he puts you under his spell – almost. The trouble with Woodcock is that he’s thoroughly detestable. Alma is plain but transformed by his designs, made to feel beautiful and important, but it’s his attention that she desires and his alone. And of course he’s too fastidious, too devoted to his work to give it. But why does she want it? Women, to him, are basically just objects. They’re either housekeepers, muses, or clients – and he’s already got a housekeeper, and loads of clients. So Alma needs to find herself a niche, and she’s not afraid to carve one out herself.
Phantom Thread is undeniably meticulous in its execution, but I found it slow and I felt uninvolved. Not caring for any of the lead characters makes you feel so removed no matter how stirring the colour palette. The dresses were sumptuous and incredible really, but it felt more like flipping through the pages of a beautiful catalogue. The emotions are so inaccessible Alma may as well be a mannequin and not since Today’s Special has that been a compliment. The internet is filled with positive reviews for this movie but this is not one of them.
Of course, no one would make a movie about a guy just doing his part to make the world a safer place – not one called Hellboy, anyway. Those Nazi fucks are back, and their aim is to recruit Hellboy back to the dark side, where he belongs.
have been tampered with. What I thought might be an appeal to our inner 80s kid turns out to be just an extended pony play on words. The song plays as Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship (the horse community has a stunningly high proportion of royalty vs subjects), is preparing Equestria for a festival of friendship when the party’s invaded by a dark force, led by Tempest Shadow and The Storm King, who encase the upper pony echelons in rock and prepare to do some evil, conquery thing to the happy go lucky ponies.
Turns out, it’s Jack Black week around these here parts. Today’s instalment is Goosebumps, a movie written for (and possibly by) people a third of my age or less. And those damn tweens must have seen this one a LOT of times because a sequel is coming out this fall just in time for Halloween.
The FBI gets one whiff of this and feel it must be some sort of Ponzi scheme. They shut Jan down, but since he promises it was an honest mistake, and to pay back his investors, problem solved. Except, in order to pay back his investors, he ends up creating a second, bigger scheme.
The trailers for this movie set the bar so unbelievably low that I thought Jumanji could not possibly disappoint. The only surprise this movie has to offer is that it is a sequel not a reboot. Otherwise, it is completely by-the-numbers, including lots of CG animal stampedes and even more cliched character growth. In short, it is the perfect counter-programming for liberal propaganda like 
being in charge. She’d never had another job. She was naturally meek, and kind of nervous. She was surrounded by assertive men, some of whom weren’t crazy to have her among their midst and certainly didn’t see her as an equal never mind a boss, and none of whom were shy about voicing their opinions. She was, however, an accomplished socialite, which in the city of Washington, means she counted many prominent politicians among her friends – and the particular politician at the epicenter of this scandal was among her closest. These facts are not to diminish her but to illustrate just how courageous she truly was to take the stance she did.
because she spurns the favour of her childhood friend, a mild-mannered, handome doctor who cares for her (Charlie Hunnam) in favour of the mysterious badboy newcomer (Tom Hiddleston). Even the brutal murder of her beloved father doesn’t stop her from flitting off to England to a crumbling old mansion atop a mountain that oozes blood-red clay with new hubby Thomas (Hiddleston) and his wicked sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) as her only (living) roommates.
made more moody, more dramatic. Weeks and weeks were spent stitching an intricate detail onto one of Chastain’s dresses that gets a lot of screen time. And this being a haunting ghost story, every costume had to look just as meticulous from behind, for those eerie shots down darkened hallways.
In fact, music alone is not enough to save them. Turns out they’ve suffered a tragedy that neither has fully grieved, and singing about it is going to be very difficult since talking about it has been impossible for years. They’re still a broken couple, now they’re just putting all their dirty laundry on the stage for the consumption of others. A particularly ambitious dream of them getting a record deal never seems all that impossible because actually, their music is good, and fun (so long as you are currently in a good space with your loved one). Sean and I found ourselves communicating in that subtle hand squeezy way that some couples have when they are relating a little too well to the awkwardness on screen.
When Sean reluctantly fingered this title on Netflix, we did the math: I love Toni Colette + I like Katie Aselton + I hate Bridget Everett + I really hate Molly Shannon = an uncomfortable tipping toward the negative side. Not a great start. But the movie’s not a total write-off.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 