Koi Pond

Film: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes )
Format: Blu-Ray from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Ray Bradbury said in interviews that he has distinct memories of being not merely an infant, but of being days old despite being told that this is essentially impossible. I say this because it’s going to be relevant to Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique detubes in the original French). This is a story a very young child, essentially in utero until 3, from that child’s perspective. Little kids have been in movies before, and have even been main characters in movies before, but this feels like the first time that a film has been narrated from this perspective.

What this means is that our title character, Amélie, is going to have an adult vocabulary, but a child’s version of the world around her. Specifically, this means that she is going to be a solipsist for the bulk of the film, which takes place between her second and third birthdays. Amélie is difficult to like initially because of this. It’s not inaccurate, but it is frustrating. Amélie is entirely self-absorbed, which makes her a difficult narrator.

Last Rites

Film: We Bury the Dead
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There are times when I look at a film that a lot of the world outside of the film needs to be addressed. That’s definitely the case with We Bury the Dead, and it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie (although having the U.S. kill everything on the island of Tasmania certainly feels relevant). No, this is about the star of the film, Daisy Ridley. We need to take into account the toxicity of many an average Star Wars fan, who will reflexively hate anything Ridley touches for years specifically because they object to the character she played in some movies. We Bury the Dead is a great example of this—critic approval is almost double that of average viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and while that does happen, many times it happens because of people who have an agenda.

The idea of We Bury the Dead isn’t going to be immediately obvious, but we’re going to figure it out as the audience in the first few minutes. After seeing a bit of the relationship of Ava (Ridley) and her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), we find out about the inciting incident of the film. The U.S. has accidentally tested a new weapon on Tasmania, destroying the city of Hobart and killing everything else on the island. Clean up teams are sent in, and Ava volunteers, because her husband was on a work trip on the southern end of the island. In her orientation, we learn that some of the brain dead bodies are waking up—while disturbing, most of them are peaceful.

Dennis Miller? Really?

Film: Bordello of Blood (Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood)
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, and honestly, it’s been a few days since I’ve watched anything. I’ve been out of town for a bit and have not really had the opportunity to do much but yardwork and grading papers for the last week. May has really gotten away from me, and all of the progress I made last month catching up on the goal of 400 movies/year has melted away. So I’m trying to get back to it, and a short, goofy horror movie seems the best way to do it. And so we have Bordello of Blood. To give you an idea of exactly how goofy this is, it’s also known as Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood. Yep, it’s an extension of the Tales from the Crypt show.

There is something that you’re going to have to get prepared to deal with right off the top. There was a short period of time where Dennis Miller was post-SNL Weekend Update and pre-right wing conservative clown and Bordello of Blood falls right in the middle of that. What that means for you if you’re going to watch this is that Dennis Miller is going to be the good guy. Honestly, that fact played a lot better 30 years ago when this was new than it does now.

Welcome to the Loony Labyrinth

Film: Dave Made a Maze
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

You have to love it when someone comes up with a completely bonkers premise for a story and then pulls it off about as well as it could be done. Dave Made a Maze is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s marginally a horror movie, although the violence is clearly cartoonish and the blood is literally replaced with yarn and glitter. It’s a comedy because there is a lot of humor here, but it’s not really a horror comedy. The closest genre that it fits in is magical realism. We have characters who live in the real world but have an experience that cannot really be explained as anything other than magic. It’s just a hell of a lot weirder than the more standard magical realism films like Field of Dreams, Life of Pi, or Midnight in Paris.

Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) comes home from a weekend to discover that her artist boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has built a small maze out of cardboard in the middle of their living room. Dave has a history of not completing projects, and the maze that he has created for him feels like a genuine breakthrough. The problem is, as he tells Annie, that he hasn’t finished the maze and he’s lost inside it. This seems patently ridiculous, as the maze appear to be about 20 square feet of cardboard boxes. When Annie tells him to just come out, he refuses to destroy the work, and also tells her that he’s lost inside the maze and can’t get out. Adding to the confusion, when Annie shakes the cardboard exterior of the maze, she can hear machinery and more rattling inside.

What I've Caught Up With, April 2026 Part 2

I finished three shows in April. The first was just catching back up on The Lincoln Lawyer, one of those rare cases where the show is better than the movie (although, to be fair, both are based off a series of books). I also finished Luke Cage, after rewatching the first season. My minor physical issues have cleared up, so I managed to complete Evil (aka: Catholic X-Files) a couple of weeks after initially intended. The new workout show is The Sopranos, which I’m finally getting to a mere three decades or so late.

What I've Caught Up With, April 2026 Part 1

I watched 33 movies in April, which means that in terms of the goal of 400 movies on the year, I was exactly on track—one movie per day, plus three movies. So, while I didn’t fall behind on that goal in April, I also didn’t catch up any. Baby steps, though, right? Treading water is better than falling further behind.

Life Happens

Film: If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various players.

I’ve talked a little bit about what my life was like in 2025, but I haven’t really gone into a great deal of detail. It was the worst year of my life by a pretty good margin. When I had a conversation with my boss about what I had accomplished in 2025 with a look toward 2026, my answer was that my biggest accomplishment was that I hit all of my deadlines—all of my students’ papers and projects got back to them on time. There were a lot of times during the year where it felt like I was always on the edge of a complete breakdown—it was a combination of the events happening around me and the reactions of other people to those events in some cases. All of this brings me to If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, a movie I don’t think I could have made it through had I attempted to watch it last year.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (I’m going to shorten this to just the pre-comma part of the title for the rest of this) feels like a modern update of Diary of a Mad Housewife combined with the white anger film Falling Down. Linda (Rose Byrne, who was Oscar-nominated for this role and the reason I watched it) is a woman whose life is falling apart on every front. My situation last year was plenty bad, but I have nothing on Linda.