Well, I’ve reached 250 films for the year. I’m still a little ahead of schedule, which is good, because currently I’ve got an 8 to 5 job that’s keeping me from watching films at my leisure. Not to worry, I’m still cracking on and watching one a day (as often as I can), but it’s definitely a different landscape than when I started this challenge!

On reviewing this chunk of twenty-five, I saw quite a few new releases - people have been saying that this is the worst summer for movies in years, but I found many of them quite enjoyable. I guess it’s all about money though…

Besides the recent films, I’ve found inspiration from several different sources - I just subscribed to FilmStruck, and it’s like walking into a candy store, there’s so many great choices! Also, I just finished reading ‘Making Movies’ by Sidney Lumet, and the way he talks about filmmaking - well, it’s pretty incredible, and now I’m actively seeking out his films that I haven’t yet seen. And if you’re ever looking for some watching recommendations, I would suggest subscribing to the NYTimes Watching Newsletter - they send out great gems that are available on every streaming service imaginable. I’ve gotten quite a few good recommendations from them as well.

As always, I would love to talk about all the films I’ve watched - it’s getting harder and harder to narrow down my highlights each time. But enough chat - let’s get to the film discussions! As always, the full twenty-five are listed at the end of the post, and if you want to follow along day by day with my MovieADay project, you can view my list on IMDb here.

‘Atomic Blonde’ (2017)

Charlize Theron SMASH! Okay, but really, I went into this film just wanting her to kick everyone’s asses… and that’s what I got, so I shall call myself satisfied. The story was interestingly set during the final days of the Berlin Wall, with the whole Iron Curtain still hanging, but largely in tatters. There’s some murder, and some espionage, and a list of all the names of secret agents (Of the Brits? Of the West? Of the whole world? This is not made clear.) is up for grabs in Berlin - you just have to find the person who has it, and be the highest bigger. Or the best fighter, which, let’s face it, Charlize Theron totally is. Stylishly sporting an array of black and white outfits in a world that is anything but, she trusts no one, has her own agenda, and also has more secrets than were made fully clear in the film. 

That’s where it goes downhill a bit - there’s some sort of plot device about a possible double agent out in the world mucking up the works, but when the story finally wraps up… it’s unclear what exactly transpired in the last half hour. There was a lot of flash-back explanation, aside narration in form of an interrogation, and a lot of fighting and last-minute murders, but it all came out a bit muddy. And while the music was a fun eclectic mix of eighties music, it wasn’t quite as punchy throughout as the trailers were, which I think was a bit of a missed opportunity. (Pun not intended, because there was DEFINITELY a lot of punching.) So really, it was fantastically satisfying on the whole femme action front, but I think I want to see it again to fully assess if the end works or not.

‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ (2017)

I really really love ‘Fifth Element.’ And when I saw that Besson was back with a huge sci-fi odyssey that was the most expensive independently-funded film ever… well, I was excited. And then I saw the casting and I was a bit confused, but still willing. So I ignored the reviews and went in hoping for visual spectacle… and by George, I got it! This film is so. Damn. Gorgeous. It really is, you have to admit, whether you liked it or not, the visual scope was stunning. The imagination and execution of the concept really did come off well. I loved the opening scene of the gradually expanding space station, finally growing to the point of casting off into the depths of space. It really was stunning.

As for the story… well, the actual plot I was totally there for. Covering up war atrocities with a genocide; yeah, that sounds terribly human actually. And the little creatures that replicated whatever you fed them were fantastically adorable (plus I totally agree with Laureline, I’ve got to take one of them shopping). What I actually found the most distracting was the supposed “love” connection between the two main characters. It was so stilted! And I found him annoying purely due to his interactions with her - at a certain point his persistence was edging on whiny and douchey. That being said, I was fine with the characters individually, or even when they were acting as a team rather than a weird bantering pair of forced love interests. My one major quibble - why was the whole freakin’ movie named after him? She seemed pretty indispensable to saving the day. But overall I enjoyed the movie - it was a spectacular space odyssey with impressive visual scope, which was largely what I was hoping for.

‘Columbus’ (2017)

‘Columbus’ was a film I had marked for viewing at SIFF this year, but it unfortunately didn’t line up with my schedule. It came back to SIFF Cinema for its nation-wide release, and I made sure not to miss it. It was worth waiting for – this may be one of the most beautiful new films I’ve seen this year. The story is set in Columbus, Indiana (NOT Ohio like I assumed), which apparently is the home of modernist architecture in the US. I know pretty much nothing about architecture, but the way the buildings were incorporated into the scenery of this film was magnificent. The architecture functioned as framing and additional characterization for the soft, slow story that took place outside and within their walls. Many shots made more of the setting than the characters themselves – one scene was shot with a static camera pointing at a doorway and a wall with a mirror, and for most of the scene the characters were viewed purely in the mirror’s reflection. For a debut feature film, this feels like a triumph for Kogonada, who cites Yasujiro Ozu as one of the influences to the film’s style. Here, as scene transitions focus on the modernist architecture that provides the center of this film, you are given the chance to meditate on the buildings as the characters do.

The basic plot involves Jin (John Cho), a young man who finds himself in limbo in Columbus after his architect father falls into a coma. While waiting for his father’s death, or more unlikely, his recovery, Jin meets Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a nineteen-year-old who ‘architecture nerd’ who has stayed in Columbus rather than going off to college to watch over her mother. Through each other, they find kindred spirits who both comfort and challenge them, all as they wind their way through the town’s famed architecture, with Casey as Jin’s tour guide. Cho is lovely as always, but Richardson is a true revelation - the emotion and subtle expressiveness she brings to Casey was really moving.

The characters reveal themselves slowly, and the whole film rolls along with a languid pace that evokes a sense of tender melancholy throughout. There are deep scars here – both characters have struggled with their parents, in very different ways, and are sacrificing parts of their lives out of family obligations – but instead of falling into a weepy melodrama, Kogonada allows them to breathe within long shots and peaceful settings. It’s similar to ‘Lost in Translation’, two people adrift who run into each other at the right time, and find a bit of healing and hope.

‘Outrage’ (1950)

So I could not find this film anywhere - not even Scarecrow had it - when I suddenly stumbled across it on YouTube. That wouldn’t normally be my first choice (or ever a choice) to watch a film, but I’d read about this recently and really wanted to watch it, so YouTube it was. Basically, it’s a film about a young woman (Ann) who is raped, and it shatters her world, and the film explores the psychological damage and the aftermath of how she has to deal with it.

Now, this is 1950. And this film was directed by Ida Lupino, pretty much the only woman director working in Hollywood at that time. So it’s amazing that this film was even made, not to mention that this film actually explores the aftermath of rape in such an honest, brutally straight-forward way. It also addresses the cause of rape - specifically, the rape culture in society, as it were (and still is). Lupino points at society’s failure to stop rape, including the reluctance to speak about the crime, which leads more to shame for the victim than anything else. She does this literally - the word “rape” is never uttered in the film, and when the people around Ann speak of her attack, eyes are instantly averted and words chosen so carefully as to sanitize the speaker from any residual dirtyness of the crime. Additionally, after the attack, any attempts at courtship are seen more viscerally through Ann’s eyes, and display the casual privilege men take with women’s bodies - in one scene, her fiance is attempting to convince her they can still be married, he still wants a life with her, but as she refuses, he grabs her forcibly by the arms and shakes her, a frightening gesture in any case amplified by her recent trauma.

Lupino’s filming is exquisite - most visually stunning was the chase leading up to the attack, as she uses the creeping darkness and the angles of shadows and obstacles to slowly contain her lead actress in the frame until there’s no escape. Another beautiful shot is a dance towards the end of the film, where the camera crosses the dance floor and follows Ann as she is isolated, both physically and emotionally, from the happy revels occuring just in front of her. Basically, this film deserves to be seen, and it’s such a disappointment that you can’t find it on any streaming service or physical disc set that I have seen.

‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years’ (2016)

This was such an engaging documentary! The footage Ron Howard used really captured the feeling of being on tour, which was enhanced by the new techniques of colorizing black and white footage to an insanely realistic degree. In a few cases the colorization didn’t quite work, mostly because the quality of the original footage, but in most cases I actually was second-guessing myself whether the concerts were really shot in color or not. The film skillfully weaved recent interviews (with Paul and Ringo) with past interviews (John and George) that managed to sound as if they were addressing the questions of the movie, regardless of the fact that some interviews were done decades ago. Massive kudos to finding the right clips, and weaving a narrative that could incorporate them. Plus the additional interviews of those who witnessed the mania first hand, - whether as fans, journalists, or artists who followed in the spirit of The Beatles - were really great expansions on the time period. Fascinating things like the Beatles first tour of America where in their contracts they refused to play in “whites only“ venues, and almost boycotted a gig that was going to be segregated, so the Jacksonville Gator Bowl was desegregated for the first time in history. There were so many interesting details that Howard and his team uncovered that felt very new to me, which was great.

There’s a lot of ground to cover with The Beatles, and with the dramas that occurred in their later years as a group, sometimes it feels like the earlier days are skipped over. Considering The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, this really does focus on those three to four years when they were touring actively and creating the ‘BeatleMania’ that really transformed the music scene of the time… and really for all time.

‘Wind River’ (2017)

Taylor Sheridan is writing really great movies. ‘Hell or High Water’ was fantastic, and here he takes on directing in addition to the writing with another story that mixes bleak with a little ray of hope at the end. ‘Wind River’, as I understand it, is the second of his ‘Americana’ trilogy, and this time the setting is an Indian reservation in Wyoming where it’s basically snowy all year. You see that the life they have carved out for themselves from the scraps of land the government has thrown at them is cold and hard, and clearly taking its toll on the younger generation as much as the old. The story focuses on the discovery of a young girl’s body, and follows the case as a single green FBI agent comes on site and gets assistance from the tribal police and a fish and wildlife hunter.

It’s shot beautifully and brutally, and doesn’t shy away from some of the harsher moments of the story. The landscape, vast and lonely, feeds into the characters themselves, each of them dealing with their own personal losses and scars. It’s superbly acted - Renner is fantastic here - and all the actors balance the sparse dialogue with the grim emotional silences well. At its heart it’s a well-crafted thriller - the tension mounts even when the story is slow-moving. The chill of the snowy landscape finds its way under your skin, and as the final moments of the film slowly drift over you, you’re left contemplating the injustices that you can’t ignore anymore. Nor should you.

‘Logan Lucky’ (2017)

I’m glad Steven Soderbergh decided to not retire from directing. Or come back out of retirement, or whatever he did. Because this film was funny. And the filming was fun. It had the feel at times of Ocean’s Eleven, just more redneck (and not in a bad way). The humor was absolutely there - Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play just as well together as Clooney and Pitt. The only weak spots for me were a few scenes that felt like they were dragging - oddly, I thought that the fault was actually the music; for instance, the montage that was used to amp up the big car race used a less-than-raring song, which I felt like it needed. It would have made the montage champ at the bit, rather than feel a bit meandering.

But Daniel Craig was fantastically funny, playing very much against his James Bond persona that has taken over his “casting type” these days, and all the bit parts throughout the film were played with well-timed humor and laugh-out-loud dialogue. On top of it, unlike Ocean’s, these guys aren’t professional con men - they’re people who are trying to get by, and life happened to take a turn against them, and if life’s not fair, then why should they have to play fair? The side moments with family really drive that home - in the midst of the heist planning, Tatum’s daughter is getting ready for a Little Miss pageant, and his relationship with her really grounds the story into something a bit more than your typical slick heist film. For me, it was all set up in the opening scene where Tatum is telling his daughter about the story behind John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” song - it’s a sweet, father-daughter moment, played with a good deal of charm. (And the payoff later in the film from that moment drew some tears, I’m not ashamed to say.)

‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (1974)

Right now I’m reading ‘Making Movies’ by Sidney Lumet, where he talks all about the movie making process and gives real-life examples from his movies. It’s a fantastic book, and I’d highly encourage you to read it if you are at all interested in what goes on behind the scenes of movies. Anyway, in one section he talks about this particularly tricky shot that took a lot of time and man-power to set up, and then they had to get it in one take because they’d never be able to reset in time! It just happened to be one of the early shots of ‘Murder…’ and after looking at the cast list, I knew I had to check it out.

EVERYONE is in this movie. Seriously. Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Vincent Cassel’s dad… it’s a great cast. Lumet wanted an opulent, old-world elegance to the feel of the movie, and he pulls it off brilliantly, with soft lighting, extravagant sets that look authentically rich and expensive, and costumes that echo the lavish settings. There are fantastically subtle things he does with the filming as well to add the melodrama, especially in the final climatic explanation (that lasts close to 27 minutes - it’s pretty much the whole third act!) - for instance, during the story, Poirot interviewed all the passengers on the train. During his explanation of how the crime was committed, we are shown flashbacks to those interviews, but they are filmed differently - using a wider lens, and harsher angle, the telltale sentences of their interviews take on a more dramatic nature, as is fitting in a murder case - they seem far more suspicious than when they were first shown in the film. It unfolds beautifully, and this coming from someone who has read the Agatha Christie story and remembered how it all turns out. Fun fact: this was the only adaptation of her work that Christie approved of - she died 14 months after its release. Lumet really does capture the essence of the source material brilliantly.

A few fun tidbits: Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for her role in this. Not only did she pick her role (she was offered a different one in the film, but she turned it down), but the bulk of her performance in the film spans little more than five minutes. Impressive. Also, I mentioned Vincent Cassel’s dad before… because he’s in this film, and looks EXACTLY LIKE HIM. My brain short-circuited, because I was sure I knew him, but I was also sure that Vincent is too young to have been in this film. And finally, for you Gilmore Girls fans out there - behold, Asher Flemming, when he was much younger, and sporting a mustache that could be called Errol Flynn-esque.

A few other notes:

There were several weak films in this batch of 25, but none as truly awful as ‘The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond’ … Veronica Lake is totally enchanting, even when she’s just smoke in ‘I Married a Witch’ … ‘Chatty Catties’ is finally available to rent on streaming, and the cats are the stars of that show, in a good way … And I’m not sure why I’d never seen ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ before, but watching it now means it’s so early 2000s that it kind of hurts.

All Watched Films: 226 through 250

226. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
227. Atomic Blonde (2017)
228. Outrage (1950)
229. Ruby Sparks (2012)
230. Dangal (2016)
231. For a Good Time, Call… (2012)
232. The Finest Hours (2016)
233. Free Fire (2016)
234. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016)
235. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
236. Wind River (2017)
237. M (1931)
238. Haywire (2011)
239. Denial (2016)
240. The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)
241. The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008)
242. Logan Lucky (2017)
243. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
244. Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
245. Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)
246. Columbus (2017)
247. I Married a Witch (1942)
248. The Trip to Italy (2014)
249. Three Days of the Condor (1975)
250. Chatty Catties (2015)

On to the next 25! It’s already September folks, how scary is that. That does mean that college football has started - so I’m balancing Saturdays full of football with Sunday double-bills of films. It’s a pretty great weekend plan. As always, if you’ve missed any of my MovieADay updates, you can find them all here.