Author: tiki god

Days of Wine and Roses: Directed by Blake Edwards. With Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman. An alcoholic marries a young woman and systematically addicts her to booze so that they can share his “passion” together. Released in 1962 this is another emotionally draining and realistic glimpse into the relationship between two people and the booze they mutually love and the struggles involved when only one of them sees a need to cut back or stop completely. There’s a few scenes that strike home in uncomfortable ways, the first of which was when the lead actor began slamming...

The Lost Weekend: Directed by Billy Wilder. With Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva. The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout. Other than some period based phrases, this film could have been made yesterday and not in 1945 and there’s a surprising amount of content that I directly remember from my own experiences with booze. I never sunk to the level of self destruction this guy did, but when he’s out buying bourbon when he knows he shouldn’t and tells the store clerk “none of that barrel aged stuff for...

Inventing the Abbotts: Directed by Pat O’Connor. With Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Crudup, Will Patton, Kathy Baker. Two working class brothers court three wealthy and beautiful sisters in a small Illinois town. I had previously seen many of the key scenes due to the people participating in them but they were great to see again. I was pleased with how well done the story was, it’s been a fair bit of time since I’ve seen a solid coming of age story. I saw a glimmer of myself in the relationship between the two sons and even in the relationships among the...

Doom: Annihilation: Directed by Tony Giglio. With Amy Manson, Dominic Mafham, Luke Allen-Gale, James Weber Brown. A group of UAC Marines respond to a distress call from a top secret scientific base on Phobos, a moon around Mars, only to discover it’s been overrun by demons who seek to create Hell on Earth. I forgot that I had already seen this one and made it my choice from the ‘final’ selection of Universal rewards films and I fully regret that decision. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s not one that I was wanting to see again and there were...

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: Directed by George Miller. With Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne. The origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter and teamup with Mad Max. While this is a perfectly fine movie, I constantly had to ask myself why this movie needed to be made and why nearly everyone involved seemed to be winking at the camera asking “hey do you remember this person/place/thing from Fury Road?!? Here it is 20 years before you saw it in that movie! Isn’t that great?!”. There’s no major misteps, no majorly questionable decisions, but again...