April Come She Will

(and come she did)

.

I started the month by having already blown it. The first three movies here were part of the dystopia unit I teach; each class voted on a different movie. Blocks one and two respectively chose 12 Monkeys and Children of Men and class ended March 31 with plenty of minutes left for April 1. I had to sub third block and used that time to post March’s movies, knowing I wouldn’t be watching anything that evening. But! I failed to consider that Strawberry Mansion is significantly shorter! The credits started rolling about 45 seconds before the bell! School dismissed! And so, technically, it should have been a March movie. But we’re not done with it and it belongs with those other two movies, so I don’t feel so bad.

Feel free to shake your head in disappointent, but I’m afraid April began eight and a half hours early this year.

ELSEWHERE
Hoopla

Strawberry Mansion (2021)

First, I like how Birney isn’t afraid to connect his movie through reusing props or even characters which making no attempt to suggest this is some sort of shared universe.

Second, I love how deleriously weird it is and yet students don’t hate it. I’m bummed we finished right at the bell. I should have intentionally started it twenty minutes late so conversation could pick right up as the movie ends, but I trust it’ll go well tomorrow. People were mostly saying good things as they left the classroom.

Also, so nice to have some pink after starting the day with 12 Monkeys and Children of Men. This might even have a happy ending! Maybe!


ELSEWHERE
our dvd

12 Monkeys (1995)

I don’t know why I’m not a bigger Terry Gilliam fan. Feels like his aesthetic should appeal more to me. I’m almost a hundred pages into Gilliam on Gilliam right now! But I don’t love any of his movies. It’s kind of a bummer.

But I did like 12 Monkeys on this rewatch. I’ve seen La Jetée several times since watching 12 Monkeys the first time circa 2003 and so this time I didn’t really need to figure out what was going on. Or so I thought. I did not pick up on the identity of that woman in the final scene even though the subtitles identified her as Astrophysicist. Thank goodness I have students around to explain things to me.

Anyway, I like that there’s this ambiguity about his sanity but the movie never really takes that seriously. We have empathy for poor confused James Cole but we largely only believe he’s confused because the movie insists on it. There’s nothing in the storytelling that makes us doubt him.

It gets into the tragedy of time travel’s inherent, paradoxical nature while being a fun mid-to-low-budget star vehicle.


ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Children of Men (2006)

Arguably the most acclaimed dystopian movie I haven’t yet seen. A mid-apocalyptic film. No baby’s been born, anywhere in the world, for over eighteen years. What governments are left are autocratic nightmares, rounding up refugees and doing nothing good with them.

And then: hope.

I don’t watch a lot of war films so keep that in mind when I say this film gave me more sense of death is entirely out of my hands and anyone could die before this scene is over than just about anything else I’ve seen. But this time, the baby!

It’s beautifully shot. The famous long shots aren’t showy in context. The accidental bloodsplatter works great but I’m happy it was an accident.

Look forward to someday watching it again and glad I own the novel!


ELSEWHERE
YouTube

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

This is a terrific verite making-of. It’s fascinating to watch Terry Gilliam at work.

The title of this doc comes from one scene with a hamster in the background which, if you’re like me, you probably have not noticed, which brought production to a near halt until they could get the darn thing to work.

You wonder if Terry Gilliam would be happier if he’d stuck with animation and put together a Don Herztfeldt–style career.

But then he gets a happy ending—his movie opens at number one in every country it opens in. But can he be happy? Doesn’t seem like it....

There’s probably a lesson in here for us. Maybe it’s on this tshirt his editor wears.


HOME
Peacock

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

First time watching this since 1998 in a Bakersfield theater where I also saw As Good as It Gets (the new Bond film was sold out; I suspect I liked what I saw better than I would have 007; anyway, otherwise I wouldn’t have ended the night a Greg Kinnear fan). I really liked it. Lightning enlightening the Red Sea remains one of the most awe-inspiring movies I’ve ever had in a movie theater.

But I haven’t seen it since then and remembered very little about it. For instance, it’s a musical! I didn’t know that! Even as it went on, the only music I recognized was the priests’ playing-with-the-big-boys-now number and the final flourish before it cuts to credits.

It’s a beautiful film, still. Some of the cg doesn’t slide in perfectly smoothly, but the mix of 2d animation with clear computer elements (I know: it’s all cg, actually) largely looks great. Whoever animated Moses’s face is a terrific actor. Whoever animated Rameses’ face is an expert at transformation. Zipporah’s face always seems a little out of time, however. But Miriam and Aaron are great!

It really is a slimmed-down and modern-friendly adaptation, but it’s still seems daring for the time and hard to imagine existing today. I think this is the last great Bible epic? Unless you include Passion of the Christ has there even been one to achieved broad popularity since 1998? I’m not doing any research, but I can’t think of one....

In the end, it’s quite good. And I think my favorite cinematic Moses. It’s a well structured film and it gave me meaningful feelings. A fine thing for Holy Saturday.


THEATER
Grand Lake Theatre

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Happy to say I really liked this. I don’t knowy why people were complaining about act three (just that they were) but I would be willing to agree the pacing was a tad off. Lady Steed thought the ending had a tad too much Hollywood cheer. I’m fine with it although, on reflection, perhaps Ryan Gosling should have looked older.

For some reason, my review of the book was in the top two or three most popular posts on Thubstack for years. Why? I don’t know.

Al my complaints about the book are still true but so is all my praise. I enjoyed the book a lot and the things that bugged me about it I don’t remember (or didn’t until just reviewing my review). The movie loses a lot of the fun intellectual-puzzle aspects of the novel, but it’s still just a lot of fun. Sonthree cried a lot, I cried a little, we all laughed a lot. Ryan Gosling’s a movie star. Not everyone can star in Cast Away. Even with a costar that can emote better than Wilson.

(It was fun to listen to the audience react to Rocky.)

Anyway, he probably won’t but I hope he gets awards considerato in at the end of the year. And I can’t wait to see what Lord Miller does next.


HOME
library dvd

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

A charming and lovely film. And so different from The Green Knight. Same writer/director—nice to know there are still eclectics in the world.

Great cast and a simple story about taking joy where you find joy. Takes all types, I suppose.

I liked the moment where the brakelights flushed Sissy Spacek’s face. It’s the little things, you know?

(Also, the special features were so great. I challenge everyone to make their cut scenes so beautiful. Sad I cannot also log “Everything Else We Shot” and “Prison Cats” on Letterboxd so I could then praise them in more detail.)


HOME
our dvd

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Here are some things this movie does that movies just don’t do anymore and it’s a shame.

1. Make liberal use of charming and hilarious old ladies. The world is filled with aged actresses who can light up the screen. Why aren’t we still doing this?

2. Innocent romance. The first kiss between Luthor and Alma is so sweet and pure and simple that I count it among my favorite movie kisses. (Even though Don Knotts is 42 and Joan Stapley is 24.) (It’s a shame Don Knotts wasn’t being asked to make movies like this in his twenties.) (His first credit came at age thirty.) This is sufficient romance for a kids movie, thank you.

3. Goofy scores in kiddy horror comedies.

4. Nutsy mysteries that don’t care what Cinema Sins says, the just offer a fun excuse for jump and gags.

5. No-apology silliness.

Where this level of dumb fun in 2026?

We watched this because the 9yrold wanted to watch something and I sent her into the dvds to find something under 100 minutes. Then there was a bit of a narrowing-down process but we arrived here and we had a great time.

Although the 18yrold refused to join us. Being scarred by this movie is a treasured memory for him.


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our dvd
(don’t ask me where they all come from)
(I don’t know)

A Few Good Men (1992)

A couple things haven’t aged well (the score, the credits) and I’m not totally convinced the movie would enjoy its current reputation if it appeared today, but it’s still pretty great. Such a cast and who doesn’t love an explosive conclusion to a courtroom drama? That’s what we crave! Even if it’s not in the courtroom proper (eg 12 Angry Men), we gotta have that moment. And this one is, I’ll grant, particularly earned. And the explosion is particularly explosive. And the risk Tom Cruise’s character is taking makes the whole thing particularly fraught.

You know what? I think I’ve talked myself into it. It’s better than just pretty great.


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our dvd

The Fighting Preacher (2019)

Objectively, this isn’t a great movie. But it features comic scenes that are perfectly executed. It has moving scenes that are very effective. It has bits of dialogue and character work that are excellent. And in between those are shots and blocking and other choices that are so obvious as to be inadvertently funny, and egregious fan service. (Only instead of, I don’t know, Spider-Man, it’s Gordon Hinckley. That sort of thing.)

In other words, it’s a very T.C. Christensen movie. I end up really liking it, even though my better judgment has written a long list of reasons not to.