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Entries from November 2017

Screenings: Undercurrent (1946)

November 7th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 07, 2017 spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.3 [DVD, library] MELODRAMA!!! Crazy-great ultimate Hitchcockian ending scene, plus several uncredited appearances of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. There is a shot near the end of the movie with Robert Montgomery climbing a staircase a la Cary Grant in SUSPICION (though without the light-bulbed glass of milk) […]

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Screenings: Lonesome Lenny (1946)

November 7th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 07, 2017 spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 4.3 [DVD, library] I found this screwball animated take on “Of Mice and Men” (in which Lenny gets his “revenge”) to be in questionable taste, but then found myself wondering if I’ve become too politically-correct in my thinking. Still, this is slight entertainment, at best. https://boxd.it/lsckd

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Screenings: Traffic with the Devil (1946)

November 7th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 07, 2017 spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.0 [DVD, library] A public service short that begins with the friendly Los Angeles motorcycle cop describing his job and all its petty annoyances. He shares some very interesting driving statistics, spanning from covered wagon days through to the mid-20th century, while we’re shown some wonderful period […]

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Screenings: A Ghost Story (2017)

November 6th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 06, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 7.4 [blu-ray, Netflix] I found quite a lot to like in this film: the sparse hill country setting; the long stretches of quiet; the time jumps; the aging color inside the Instamatic framing; and, yes, the white-sheet device. And, as insufferable as Will Oldham is, and his […]

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Screenings: Colossal (2016)

November 6th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 06, 2017 spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.0 [blu-ray, Netflix] Witty and inventive in that indie film hey-look-at-this-clever-idea-I-had-let’s-turn-it-into-a-movie way. I couldn’t stop comparing it to BEING JOHN MALKOVICH while I was watching. https://boxd.it/lrLpP

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Screenings: 11/8/16 (2017)

November 6th, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 06, 2017 spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 7.5 [streaming, Netflix] This is the cinematic equivalent of one of those “A Day in the Life of America” books, where photographers set up at various locales and document a discrete 24-hour period through pictures. Except… This is a video document of about a dozen “average” people […]

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Screenings: Without Love (1945)

November 2nd, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 02, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 8.2 [DVD, library] The third on-screen partnering of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and very funny. Hepburn gets to clown around while wearing a Jules Verne-style submersion helmet, and Tracy gets to spend two hours being his hilariously droll self by constantly spouting isms, as when he […]

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Screenings: Swing Shift Cinderella (1945)

November 2nd, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 02, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 4.7 [DVD, library] Typical Tex Avery zaniness that wouldn’t float in today’s politically-correct society. All of the female characters are dames, and the male characters – taking the lead of the lecherous main fellow whose first name is Big and second name is Bad – are wolves. […]

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Screenings: Purity Squad (1945)

November 2nd, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 02, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 3.0 [DVD, library] A dry-as-a-bone fictional police procedural warning of the dispersion of untested medications. Most likely, this was shown in movie theaters before the feature and the cartoon. https://boxd.it/lkmiZ

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Screenings: The Dark Tower (2017)

November 2nd, 2017 · No Comments

watched Nov 02, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 5.3 [blu-ray, Netflix] This movie gets such a bad rap. Honestly, though, for what it is – a dystopian fantasy with YA leanings – it’s good enough. I haven’t read the books, so I neither have an opinion about their representation in the film, nor do I […]

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Tags: film · Screenings