The Writer's Poke

After watching Part 1, I wasn't sure I'd be watching Part 2... but I'm a completionist. I needed to watch it, and to be fair, it was better... and not a horrible conclusion to the series.  1. Too many characters means no character development. They just become "The Amazon Vampires," "The Irish Vampires," etc.  2. Bella's narration. That's new, and I don't like. It's just a lazy way to give quick exposition for everything that's going on. Now, if it's Bella writing down the story for her daughter, I can almost give it a pass, but generally, that kind of voiceover is just weak. 3. Is it creepy that Jacob imprints on Bella's daughter? If he can't have Bella, and Bella's daughter grows up quickly, I guess it's okay. I suppose we should just ask Alice.  At least in Part 2, I don't feel like we're waiting for stuff to happen. The pacing has picked up, and so I was into the story for the most part... nothing dragg...

Is there enough to justify dividing Breaking Dawn into two separate parts? I really wondered this before watching, and after watching, I can safely say, nope.  The film is 2 hours long, but you can break it down into 3 segments -- the wedding, the honeymoon, and the pregnancy. Give each segment, say, 30 minutes, or even if you want to milk one of the segments, milk the pregnancy, I guess, an extra five minutes. But clock the film at 90 minutes.  Anyway, we end up getting a lot of weird shots of Bella (Kristen Stewart). just studying her face -- either we are, or she is, or both. Is she anxious? Is she stressed? Just what is going on in her mind? The camera, I guess, works to "tell us." It lets us know the things we can't hear the characters think. Sometimes the actions or dialogue tell us, too, but it's usually the length of the camera shot. None of those characters have any real depth. It's kind of funny when you watch Bella's "life montage" -- you ...

The movie is a little different: It has 5 strong female leads. Name another movie with 5 strong female leads. Katherine Ann (Julia Roberts) is the last-minute hire at a snobbish northeastern Women's College. She doesn't belong there, and the administration and students make sure she knows it. At the same time, Amanda (Juliet Stevenson) has somehow managed to be a lesbian and maintain her employment there for years... so if you don't quite fit in, you can stay. You just have to remain invisible and a non-problem. In Amanda's case, be a lesbian, but don't distribute birth control.  At first, it feels like Katerine Ann will likely try to "do things her way" while staying under the radar. She can teach to the syllabus AND add outside content. She can teach them what they need to know, as well as what she thinks they need to know. Basically, she can teach them how to think for themselves.  Throughout the movie, maybe she's still trying to figure out how to ...

If you watched Mary and Max and then watched Memoir of a Snail (2024), I wonder if you would know everything you need to know about the creative force behind these films, Adam Elliot. I like both films, and they're both quite similar -- the visual world, the characters, the humor. If Snail was a "brown" film, then so is this one. It's obviously a sad film. Mary and Max do have more people to call friends than just one another. They each have neighbors. Mary even marries her neighbor. Does he leave her? Sure, but he's not depicted as being a bad guy for it. Max's neighbor, too, comes off as a real friend, but if Max and Mary "dream" about each other and ignore other examples of human contact, maybe Elliot is commenting on the nature of distance, and how distance sometimes helps people open up in ways they don't to those around them.  What a fun experiment, to just pick a name at random and develop a friendship with a total stranger who lives thous...

What I liked about this one was the focus. Spike Lee is often somewhat unfocused in his films, and this film forced him to hone in. We are on a bus from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. The destination is the Million Man March. That's it. What can Lee show us within these limited parameters?  What sort of men are on the bus? Young, old. Rich, poor. Willing, unwilling. Gay, straight. Dark, light.  And with nothing but time, we get to hear them tell their stories. Mistakes they've made, lessons they've learned, what they hope to learn by going to the March, and so on.  Naturally, there's some conflict between the men -- their stories, backgrounds, beliefs. There's also some unexpected camaraderie. In fact, maybe they learn more about themselves and each other during that long bus ride than they would if they had even made it to the event.  They didn't make it to the event? Well, they came close, but Jeremiah (Ossie Davis) up and has a heart attack right as they ente...

It's 2026. Who actually reads blogs anymore? Take a blog like this. Are my readers humans or bots? Bots: Let me know you're out there. I want if I'm serving your needs.

The opening sequence is unintentionally funny and really takes me out of the rest of the movie: A woman is driving at night, probably faster than conditions call for. All of a sudden, a Detour sign pops up, and so she immediately freaks out and drives over a cliff. Miraculously, she doesn't die, but the only doctor in the entire world that can save her is Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi). At first, he refuses to help. Why? Is he retired? Just too evil to help? Did he get his feelings hurt by the other doctors? Whatever the case, when he learns that the other doctors say he's the only one good enough for the job, and he helps. From there, the movie seems to shift. Bateman (Karloff) enters Dr. Vollin's office, demanding at gunpoint that Vollin change his face. At this point, we don't know Vollin to be an evil man. But Bateman says something that attracts Vollin's attention: Ugly people may be more prone to acting in ugly ways. Vollin calls the idea "profound" and ag...