Spitball Army

watched Sep 11, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 5.6 [streaming, Netflix] Enjoyable but unoriginal. https://boxd.it/k1zwt

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watched Sep 07, 2017. spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 7.3 [blu-ray, Netflix] Well, this turned out to be a lot of fun. The creature effects were outstanding. So what if logic and reasoning were spotty…the title character is a giant ape as tall as the Eiffel Tower!! There were nods to the earliest Kong movies (Kong […]

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watched Sep 06, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 7.5 [blu-ray, Netflix] You have a pretty good idea where this story is headed once Tom Hiddleston’s character is warned not to mess around with his boss’s mistress. That his boss is an arms dealer masquerading as a philanthropist and that Hiddleston is an under-undercover spy infiltrating […]

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watched Sep 06, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.5 [blu-ray, library] Excellently-cast low-key rescue-mission Western that borrows tropes familiar from UNFORGIVEN and THE SEARCHERS until it descends into APOCALYPTO-style gruesomeness in the last act. Richard Jenkins is especially effective in the sidekick role, and has a memorable soliloquy about a flea circus. https://boxd.it/jTPLj

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watched Sep 04, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 5.2 [blu-ray, Netflix] There is humor at the edges of this paranoid fable. However, the sly satirical humor (mostly buried in the multitude of text messages that pepper the screen during the immersive social media scenes) don’t compensate for the shallow character representation and re-tread plot. Tom […]

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watched Sep 02, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.2 [blu-ray, Netflix] This is definitely a film that benefits from watching with context. I would recommend watching the supplements on this Criterion edition prior to seeing the film, particularly the interviews with director Mike Leigh and actor Tim Roth. Tim Roth is asked in his interview […]

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watched Sep 01, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 6.6 [DVD] Harry Baur, as Beethoven, communicates emotional torment so well, whether it be the pain of his yearning, broken heart, or the disoriented confusion of a man losing the hearing that is required to pursue his livelihood. Abel Gance made this “talkie” a solid decade […]

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rewatched Sep 01, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 8.6 [blu-ray, Netflix] Wonderful use of Brooklyn as a main character, and mad hot dog-eating skills by Charles Durning as the well-intentioned but ultimately foiled police captain. https://boxd.it/jKs1f

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watched Aug 30, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 5.4 [DVD, library] An early silent featuring Ollie in a supporting role and without Stan. The story is slight, but the sawmill setting provides the opportunity for a half-dozen WOW stunts – some of which must have really hurt! Funniest bit was not a gag, but was […]

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watched Aug 15, 2017, spitballarmy’s review published on Letterboxd: 7.7 [DVD, library] Fascinating to observe that practically every cultural shift detailed in this documentary of the year 1964 is mirrored in some meaningful way by a milestone in pop music history. I doubt we could see the same in our current tumult. https://boxd.it/jm1AT

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