Review – 1899

The parallels between this and Lost are too self-conscious to ignore, right down to the over-stylized trick of starting episodes with close-ups of eyes. It’s a meandering steamship in the title year rather than a crashed airplane, but it’s still a set of disparate characters up against situations that appear to have been designed to flummox them. Considering how nonsensical and repetitive the action becomes, it’s a good thing this sticks with one season rather than stretching to six. See if desperate

Review – Boston Strangler (2023)

A chunk of this movie is a typical grim, poorly-lit, disgustingly voyeuristic retelling of an all-too-familiar serial killer’s tale. The new twist here is that the protagonists are Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon), two newspaper reporters who battled early 60s sexism and the foot-dragging Boston Police Department to help uncover the Strangler’s identity and put a stop to his crimes. So a lot like Zodiac but with women in the lead. Mildly amusing

Review – Rango

The animation is good, especially for 2011. And normally I’d be a sucker for any story set in a world where small, anthropomorphic animals have made a town for themselves out of trash. But the “dumbass who lucks his way into becoming a hero” is just too hard for me to swallow. The cast includes a ton of familiar voices, including Johnny Depp as the title character, Ned Beatty as the main villain and Timothy Olyphant as a a thinly-veiled Clint Eastwood cameo. It’s also heavily peppered with blink-and-you-miss-it allusions to other movies. In more than one way this is an apt transition between Gore Verbinsky’s collaborations with Depp on the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movies and their disastrous turn in The Lone Ranger. Mildly amusing

Review – Valley of the Dead

This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed a very particular style of comedy used by European filmmakers trying to imitate horror movies from the United States. It’s somehow just off the mark enough that you wouldn’t mistake this for George Romero, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed the Spanish Civil War as a backdrop for Nazi zombie-making experiments gone wrong. The ensemble of characters got a little too cozy with the fascist side for completely comfortable viewing, and the plot had several king-sized holes in it. But for a dumb dead movie, it was fun enough. Mildly amusing