The Movie (and TV show) Watching Thread

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How dare you criticize one of Meryl's brilliant works.

Mamma Mia! was one of the most egregious cases of anti-Meryl bias that dominates the industry and makes her so criminally underrated. One of the 50 or so movies I would just watch again-and-again before my post-March 15 experimentation sessions. If you don't tear up with her skills on "The Winner Takes It All" then you have no soul.

(Of course, it's even better on Broadway! That goes without saying and cannot be pinned on Meryl. She does her best to help me relive those memories.)

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I despised the sequel, one of the worst movies ever in spite of my endless love for Cher. I know the first is done comically and is not genuinely great, but the Broadway nostalgia probably only helps it. The music is very uninteresting in the sequel except for Waterloo.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I don't comment that much when my opinions align with the consensus, but 5 of my recent viewings were supposed classics, and I absolutely detested four of them. Only Stairway to Heaven (1946) was enjoyable (and quite beautiful given the concept and when it was shot), and even that feels overrated due to the forced and not very well-written third act, only written to appeal to the goals of the money raised to produce it.

The one I could see myself getting pushback on is Kiss Me Deadly (1955) as the people who post here are really likely to get into that Cold War era paranoia, but I found it to be one of the dullest noirs yet. I could maybe revisit it, but the characters are really not that interesting to me. I'm not usually a stickler for acting - the most irrelevant part of a film - but I think this suffered bigly from the lack of a big name commanding the screen.

But most disappointingly of all, the two 1950s so-called "romances" (An Affair to Remember and All That Heaven Allows) are borderline irredeemable, and I don't think I will revisit those ever again. I do not understand how these despicable characters were perceived as sympathetic in pop culture. These were clearly a relic of the time that did not age well, and I have to think people saw this as a fantastical indulgence to peek at an impossible dream different from 1950s norms. Even if people then found it okay, it's more confounding that people reviewing today still view these as models. The latter at least has one good scene, but I was not at all moved by any of the dialogue or inspired by her ultimate inevitable choice.

Lastly, Fox and His Friends (1975) had a genuinely interesting idea for a film, and much as it was likely to not be made for me, I was still totally dismayed by the execution. For a film made as a study of competing character motivations and built upon a foundation of pretty decent acting, it felt like there were a lot of holes (notably, but far from exclusively, the insurance piece) that were not well conveyed and felt like cheating and that made it somewhat difficult to follow. I know this is not supposed to be Fassbinder's best as a director (still fairly impressive as an actor!) but I just don't know if I will ever feel any positive vibes in response to his subject matter if I couldn't enjoy this one.

On top of that, I opted to try a second-tier Stanley Kramer, which was an obvious mistake but not exactly noteworthy.

Hopefully I start making some better picks soon, but I can definitely recommend avoiding these four.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

When we were in middle school, my mother had us watch The Bridges of Madison County with her. We hated it, finding it to be a snooze fest that wasn't worth revisiting. And spent the last 15 years mocking her for hyping up such a film.

I had it downloaded from Netflix just in case I ever had a long haul ride, and that happened today. And I sobbed and sobbed in public. I've never really believed in soulmates (which makes me cringe in West Side Story, for example), but seeing an accidental 4 day adult romance naturally develop and become lifelong yearning has given me pause, especially as it plays out in context with the very real conflicts of competing desire, goals/values and duties.

I'm not sure I've ever had such a radical rating change. We've always faulted my parents for not introducing us to enough culture (ironically something that also frustrates the children in this film off-screen), but this is one rare case where we actually were exposed to quality but simply lacked the life experience to even begin to appreciate it as preteens.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Nathan Fielder's "The Curse" is better than most prestige television. I can't look away. Some of the best satire I've seen on screen.

You get this overabundance of shows and films about the idle wealth of distant billionaires (some brilliant, some banal) stroking envy of an unknowable lifestyle and not nearly as much about the much realer economic threats and concerns of different class interests in the same community.

It has the classic Fielder method of long game cringe for everyday subjects but also has something so much deeper to say that we haven't really seen from him often (aside from perhaps the self-awareness ironies of The Rehearsal finale).

Perhaps the most ironic part is that its biggest detractors seem to be suffering from short-term video affliction and can't endure really entertaining storylines while this manages to capture the short form trends perfectly. I think it's possible to dislike this, even without being generational target, but I thoroughly enjoy this format. So many intertwined and hilarious storylines.

Bonus points for multiple instances of representation for people with heterodox views. And Nathan Fielder really can act - the fight in episode 3 was outstanding. Emma Stone's performance is so brave and daring.