I have to admit that I’m behind on writing about August. Luckily, I have already written about Whit Stillman, and he took up a bulk of August film consideration. I also tried a couple of the random comedies that were released earlier this year, went to The Moxie as always, and finished my last David Lynch film.
In order of viewing:
- Inland Empire
- Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
- Love and Friendship
- Metropolitan
- Barcelona
- The Last Days of Disco
- Keanu
- Damsels in Distress
- Blue Velvet
- Don’t Think Twice
Blue Velvet received a repeat viewing as The Moxie had a special screening of it for their Mondo Moxie series. Watching that film with in a theater with people is strange. It was slightly funnier this time, but I definitely didn’t find it near as funny as the rest of the audience.
Ranked:
- Inland Empire – 5
- Blue Velvet – 5
- Metropolitan – 4.5
- The Last Days of Disco – 4.5
- Barcelona – 4
- Love and Friendship – 4
- Damsels in Distress – 4
- Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising – 3
- Don’t Think Twice – 2
- Keanu – 1
I don’t really have to get into Lynch or Stillman because of my other blogs on those directors. I will say that I absolutely recommend that anyone goes through Stillman’s filmography, especially if you consider yourself a young person. Lynch, on the other hand, is harder to recommend because of the density of his work. Inland Empire has to be one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
With those two directors out of the way, we only have a trio of contemporary comedies; two blockbusters and one independent.
I watched the original Neighbors when it was released and remember enjoying it to a certain extent. I’ve really moved away from contemporary comedy this year, so my interest in watching Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising was to assess some claims that the film contained progressive themes concerning gender and sexuality. It tries. It really tries. It just didn’t have the magic and sincerity that a film like Magic Mike XXL had. The film occasionally handles it’s attempts at progressive themes with almost no grace at all. You have to wonder if a male director and predominantly male writers had any chance at knocking this one out of the park, or maybe the premise is just kind of dumb? Either way, thanks for trying Hollywood film.
People generally liked Don’t Think Twice. Much like sketch comedy, I just didn’t care for it. I laughed maybe twice throughout the film, and the “journey of the tortured creative” story didn’t resinate with me. Maybe I’m too young, or maybe everything was completely predictable. This is one that I must have missed something on, but I can’t imagine I’ll be revisiting it.
I like cats. I like Key and Peele. I did not like Keanu. I had to struggle to get through this movie. Again, I understand that it was supposed to be a look at stereotypical black masculinity, but it felt like a bad SNL sketch that was stretched to feature length. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t insightful, and I regret watching it.
August was a good month. I couldn’t be happier about stumbling into Whit Stillman and finishing David Lynch. September is shaping up to be the lowest film count of the year, so we’ll see how that blog goes.