The Writer's Poke

Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) have a special friendship. Maybe it's because they're both writers. Maybe special friendships simply happen for no real reason. They just connect and they're inseparable. Eventually, a couple of things will separate them: A woman and a war.  At first, the woman doesn't separate them. Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) simply joins them. The film might be called Catherine, to be honest, because she is a force, and in some ways, she is the focus of the movie. The movie could also just as easily be called Jules and Catherine and Jim. It's interesting that they leave her name out of the title.  World War I pits Jules and Jim on separate sides. Jules actually happens to like serving on the Russian front, because there he knows he won't accidently kill Jim.  Jules and Catherine marry and have a daughter. Catherine, however, is not the marrying type. She lives her life as an experiment. Maybe she was curious to see what being a wife an...

Just to pick on something first: That ending. I'm not sure the movie has one, really.  At the beginning of the movie, we see the alien spaceship crash into Earth. We're then given the idea that it may have been buried in the ice for 100,000 years. Whatever the Thing is, it was able to wait for its moment.  When the alien makes it over to the American station, how did it know that the American station was there? That's one question. It took out the Norwegian station, but was it not happy being in its current form? Did it want to look human? If so, why? We'll never get to know, because this movie, just like the early Alien and Predator movies, never gives us any look into what the Thing is thinking. All we know is that it's advanced. It knows how to travel in space, and it knows how to mimic any lifeform it comes into contact with.  And it can stay frozen.  Humans cannot. Macready (Kurt Russell) has a plan, and that plan is to blow up the American station. How does th...

This is a pretty entertaining movie, but I'm not sure if it wants to be taken seriously, or if it's a satire on the "free love" culture of the 1960s. I viewed it more as a satire, but with a good message. Bob (Robert Culp) is a documentary film director. He and his wife, Carol (Natalie Wood), spend a weekend at a place in the woods called the Institute. As the camera swoops in from above, we see naked people lodging, yoga posing, and bathing outside on the deck. They're all naked. What kind of "new age" place is this? Bob and Carol spend their time inside, however, with a small group taking a 24-hour crash course designed to get them connected to their feelings. One of the group exercises is simple to stare and other members and "get to know each other" by looking. The idea being, we often don't take the time to stop and look at one another. We're too busy looking and thinking about ourselves. I mention this exercise because something s...

Into the Spider-Verse (2018) introduced us to four Spiders from other Earths, but Across the Spider-Verse opens it up and introduces us to, or at least shows us, dozens more. Spider-Gwen, who we met in the first movie, is the main Spider focused on from a different Earth. It seems like she and Miles, our Earth's Spider-Man, are more than friends, or they would like to be. There's only one problem, and it's not that they're from two different Earths. It's that a relationship between Spider-Man and Gwen never works out in the long run.  Even though there are all those different Spiders out there, we find out that the "canon" stories each of them follows generally have events that cannot be changed. Spider-Man and Gwen not working out is one of the canon events. Another is: Spider-Man cannot save the people closest to him -- be it, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, their father, etc.  Does freewill not exist anywhere in the multiverse? Miles cannot accept that. He wants t...

So, at the same time the Tom Holland Spider-Man franchise is going on, there's also this animated multi-verse franchise. The Holland Spider-Man works in the context of what's going on in all the other Marvel movies, and this one is its own separate deal. Of course, right now, the Marvel movies are in "Phase 9" or something like that, and they're all currently into the multiverse theme... but this movie came out in 2018 and I guess offered a sneak-peak at what the multiverse would look like.  This movie's Spider-Man is named Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). One of the ideas forwarded is that anyone can be Spider-Man. That said, the movie still features Peter Parker, but he dies. Then, the multiverse opens, and we get to meet a few other Spiders from other places -- including Spider-Woman (aka Spider-Gwen), Spider-Man Noir, and even Spider-Ham. To say that the movie is non-stop and fast-paced would be an understatement. I still remember watching this one in the th...

On the surface, Match Point seems like it's going to replay the Crimes and Misdemeanors script. Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a semi-pro tennis player who has decided he can't make it on touring circuit. As a result, he becomes a tennis instructor for the well-to-do at a London club. When we first see him, I think we're supposed to get the idea that he's playing the game -- not tennis, but social climbing. With a little luck, he can get in with a wealthy family. That's what ends up happening. He marries the sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), of one of his tennis club students, Tom (Matthew Goode). Does he love Chloe? Or does he simply accept that marrying into the family is what he needs to do to move up in the world? Chloe seems like a nice enough woman. She's by no means ugly, but I'm sure we're supposed to see her as plain, especially when she's compared to Nola (Scarlett Johanson). Nola is really the woman that Chris lusts after, but her problem ...