Why this film?: Because Sid Vicious seemed about as far from Winston Churchill as you could get, and the prospects of seeing Gary Oldman this early in his career and Chloe Webb’s critics prize winning performance were two equally tantalizing points of interests. The film: When Sid & Nancy opens, Sid Vicious is staring off…
Category: Where Were They Then?
Where Were They Then?: Hostiles (17, C)
Why this film?: Because oh, Timothée Chalamet had another movie released in 2017? Let’s go three for three on this one. The film: There are two major reasons that Hostiles is not remembered as part of Timothée Chalamet’s breakout year. The first is that it barely got a proper rollout, getting the kind of unfathomably…
Where Were They Then?: Short Cuts (93, B)
Why this film?: My original choice was Aeon Flux, purely because I wanted to see McDormand in a ridiculous getup that made her look a lot like St. Vincent (can you believe her other collaboration with Charlize Theron in 2005???) but that stopped feeling like a worthwhile reason pretty quickly. I’ve already watched the Coen…
Where Were They Then?: Submarine (10, C-) – Originally completed 7/24/18
Why this film?: Because I didn’t want to watch a Mike Leigh film that featured Leslie Manville in an even more prominent role than it did Hawkins and had already seen Happy-Go-Lucky and Vera Drake. The crime thriller Layer Cake, where Hawkins plays a gangster’s girlfriend going by the name Slasher was the definite runner-up,…
Where Were They Then?: About Time (13, B-) – Originally completed 7/16/18
Why this film?: Because I’d already seen Wolf of Wall Street, wasn’t about to watch Z for Zachariah, gave Mary Queen of Scots to Saoirse, and wanted to pick something fun after Dark Matter. The review: In retrospect, it is not surprising that About Time was written and directed by the same scribe behind Love, Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral. As much as About…
Where Were They Then?: Dark Matter (07, D+) – Originally completed 6/29/18
Why this film?: Because for all of Meryl’s non-nominated films, successful or not, this was the one that seemed to have almost no reputation among her fans from my cursory investigations, even though its negative reviews were known to me. The unusual matching of Streep to such a politically heavy topic and a foreign director…
Where Were They Then?: Conviction (10, C+) – Originally completed 6/23/18
Why this film?: Because even people who weren’t psyched by Rockwell steamrolling the televised awards spoke fondly of this performance, and since I trusted those people, this seemed like the place to go. The film: Conviction is the kind of film that makes you root for it, makes you want to root for it, even as you…
Where Were They Then?: I Heart Huckabees (04, A-) – Originally completed 6/13/18
Why this film?: Because I’ve heard too many good things about Huckabees to pass up the chance to watch it for a project, though I might have gone for a different film had I known about the smallness of Jenkins’s part beforehand. I’d like to say Flirting with Disaster, Let Me In, and Bone Tomahawk were the runners-up, but it was…
Where Were They Then?: Rampart (11, B+) – Originally completed 6/9/18
Why this film?: Natural Born Killers and The Edge of Seventeenwere tempting choices, but everything I’d heard about Rampart’s politically rich storyline and ambitious execution made this an easy choice right off the bat. Plus, a character actor like Woody Harrelson in a lead role feels like the kind of treat more films should offer, especially when they’re…
Where Were They Then?: Tom & Viv (94, C+) – Originally completed 5/31/18
Why this film: Because it lined up so perfectly with this month’s Smackdown! So how could I not? The Film: Who exactly was the predicted audience for Tom & Vivback in 1994? I don’t mean this exclusively as a dig on the source material or the finished product, but it’s hard to picture that the story…
It's Just Like The Movies 