Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
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...
Nurse: Directed by Douglas Aarniokoski. With Paz de la Huerta, Katrina Bowden, Judd Nelson, Corbin Bleu. By day, Abby Russell is a dedicated nurse, but by night, she lures cheating men to their brutal deaths and exposes them for who they really are. This is a much different movie than I had thought it was going to be and while I loved the more salacious content the story was middling and the acting was just straight up not what I was looking for in a movie. I’m not 100% sure, but i’m pretty sure that Paz de la Huerta was...
Star Trek: Discovery: Created by Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman. With Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman. Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise, the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms as one Starfleet officer learns to understand all things alien. I know I said I wasn’t going to watch this season as it came out, but the seasons are so short and the show is so ephemeral that I stayed with it until the bitter end. The show never changed it’s course and stayed true to concepts of emotional self discovery that so many Trek fans...
The big day has finally arrived for Popeye & Olive, and everybody is showing up for it! A cute story by Peter David about the struggles of getting Popeye to the wedding table with some good story elements and fantastic art. Not my cup of tea, but I’m happy to have read it. Buy On Amazon!
In which I forget to check my mic.
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...
We Own the Night: Directed by James Gray. With Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes, Danny Hoch, Alex Veadov. A New York City nightclub manager tries to save his brother and father from Russian Mafia hitmen. I watched this due to some gratuitous scenes with Eva Mendes that were floating around the cybersphere and while those scenes were great they really had no bearing at all on the rest of the movie and in hindsight really stick out as being out of place in a grungy look at a family of cops that have a member that’s too friendly with the wrong...
