Category: Uncategorized
Beck: Volume 7 & 8
I’m never entirely sure how I should title these posts where I’m just linking to reviews I did for Cinema Sentries. I suppose I should research the best possible SEO way to capture Google searches or something. But I never was good at that sort of thing. Beck is a Swedish detective series that I apparently thought was pretty good. I watched it and wrote the review back in 2013 so my memory is sketchy at best. I’ve since read one of the books in the series and felt basically the same about it – ’tis good but not great.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
I often think that Ingmar Bergman is the reason most Americans don’t like foreign films. Bergman often made emotionally heavy, deeply symbolic, and frankly not all that easy to watch movies. He is the epitome of the intellectual, art-house type of filmmaker that I think a lot of Americans think of when they think of foreign language films. The fact that there are all kinds of films – silly comedies, dumb action films, etc. – being made in countries that aren’t American doesn’t matter. Foreign films = inexplicable movies that only smarty-pants film critics like.
Or something. I generalize. But it is true that when I talk to my friends who don’t like foreign films they seem to think that all foreign films are European art-house films of the kind that Bergman specialized in.
Which, is perhaps, a weird way of saying I actually love Bergman. I find most of his films to be utterly fascinating. Wild Strawberries is one of his best. Criterion released a Blu-ray of it a few years back, and I’ve got a review.
Detective De Luca
I love a good crime drama. There is something very satisfying about watching someone try to solve a murder or some other heinous crime. The conventions of the genre are somehow comforting as you more or less know what is going to happen (a crime will be committed, questions will be asked, and the criminal will be caught). The best stories find ways to subvert those conventions and do something interesting.
I also love that crime dramas work well all over the world. Just about every culture that makes movies and TV shows makes crime dramas. MHZ used to put out a lot of DVDs of crime dramas and mysteries from all across Europe and other countries. They might still do that, I’ve just lost touch with them. I know they do have a streaming service and I’ve been meaning to give it a try.
Detective de Luca is a cool little series of detective movies from Italy. I reviewed it several years ago and now you can read my thoughts here.
Band of Outsiders (1964)
Jean Luc Godard was one of the pioneers of the French New Wave. His films have been hailed as some of the greatest movies of all time, but he also has a reputation for being difficult, for making challenging, even obtuse films. So, I’m always surprised when I watch one of his movies and find them to be utterly delightful. Band of Outsiders is one of my favorites of his films (at least from what I’ve seen) and Criterion released an excellent Blu-ray of it awhile back. I wrote a review and you can read it here.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Every now and again the owner of Cinema Sentries will decide he wants to cover all the films in a series. When he does so he’ll ask all his writers to pick a movie in that series and review it. Apparently, back in 2013, he wanted us to cover the Star Trek movies. I say apparently because I have no memory of him asking us to cover Star Trek, nor me volunteering to review this film. I don’t even remember writing the review. Honestly, had I not just read my review of the film I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about it.
But now you can read my review and learn something about it, too.
With a Friend Like Harry… (2000)
My wife is a francophile. She speaks French fluently. Studied it in college. Has a masters in French linguistics. Lived in Montreal for a while, and we spent some time in Strasbourg. She reads French books and we sometimes watch French movies.
We watched this one in the theater when it first came out. We had no idea what it was about. It is a good one. I bought it on DVD. It is a freaky thriller with lots of good twists. You can read my full review here.
The Christmas Monkey
My brother-in-law, Matt, always buys my daughter a stuffed monkey for Christmas. This year he outdid himself. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts we are big Doctor Who fans in my house and this one is perfectly dressed up as David Tennant’s version of The Doctor.
I’ve already commandeered it for my office 🙂
Chronicle of a Summer (1961)
In 1960 two French filmmakers, Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch, basically invented inéma vérité and created this film. Criterion Collection released it on Blu-ray back in 2013 and I wrote a review of it for Cinema Sentries.
My Year in Movies: 2022
I watched 451 movies in 2022. That’s 763.7 hours of movies, or 37.6 movies per month and 8.7 per day. That’s a lot. Even for me. In fact, that’s an all-time Mat Brewster record. The previous record was 439 which I hit last year (which broke the previous record hit the year before that). Since the pandemic hit in 2020 my movie watching has gone way up, to levels never seen before. Even though we are now getting out and about quite a bit more than we were during the height of the pandemic, I’ve gotten used to watching movies every chance I get.
Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for that like there is something wrong with watching that many movies, but it gives me pleasure. Most people spend a lot of time doing dumb things, so why shouldn’t I do something I enjoy?
The first movie I watched in 2022 was The Thin Man (1934), a delightful comedy mystery that I highly recommend. The last movie I watched was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), a delightful comedy mystery that I highly recommend.
The genre I watched the most was Drama with 186 films watched. That feels like a cheat because a lot of films could be considered dramas even while they are also considered something else (Romance/Drama, Comedy/Drama, etc). Thriller comes in next with 156 films watched. That seems fair as I do like a lot of crime drama, mysteries, and the like all of which could be considered thrillers. Crime actually comes in fourth with 107 films watched and mysteries are sixth with 89 films watched. Clocking in at #3 is, you guessed it, horror with 137 films watched.
The bulk of the movies I watched were from the United States and in English with British films coming in second, followed by Italian, French, and Japanese. None of which are surprising. I watched 82 films in a language that is not English. I’d like to try and up that number this year.
196 of the films were made before I was born, with the 1980s being my most-watched decade coming in at 65 films, followed closely by the 1940s and then the 2000s.
As you can see from the visuals my most watched actor James Stewart. That was not intentional, I just happen to like him as an actor and apparently watched a bunch of his films. Bogart is a perennial favorite and I often seek his films out. Randolph Scott has become a favorite of mine over the last few years. He made a lot of great westerns and I always enjoy his performance.
I recently decided to watch all five Death Wish films which is what put Charles Bronson on the list, and no doubt the Halloween franchise helped propel Jamie Lee Curtis to the list. Her being the only woman on either list is a reminder to myself to do better in that regard.
The director’s list is slightly surprising to me. Dario Argento is a director that I love, but I normally don’t watch that many of his films. But this year I sought out some of his less-loved movies in an effort to watch everything he has made. Martin Scorsese’s absence is only because I’ve seen pretty much everything he’s ever directed and I rewatched a bunch of them in 2021, thus I did not watch a lot of his films last year.
Anyway, that’s enough of me chattering about my movie fetish. Did any of you watch anything interesting last year?
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