Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Follows Riley, in her teenage years, encountering new emotions. Pixar has long been able to provoke extreme emotional responses from me and Inside Out 2 continues that painfully delightful trend with an expansion of their concept of “what if feelings had feelings”, with a progression of our main character another year further into her more frustrating but formative teenage years. They stay away from the physical aspects of puberty (that “Turning Red” covered so well!) and stays in it’s emotional lane with the addition of some obvious but still interesting elements that result in a movie that I highly recommend...
A sweet blonde goes to the police looking for her missing husband. When it turns out her husband is both a murder victim and a bachelor – and that the blonde is suspect #1, tough cop Butch Saunders comes up with a scheme to crack the case. I think this may be one of the earliest films I’ve seen with a scrolling info dump at the beginning and this one is distinctly similar to the Law and Order series, which is fantastic to see. Also fantastic to see, Ms Glenda Farrell! She’s playing a background recurring character that steals all...
A Special-Ops commander leads his team into the Nigerian jungle in order to rescue a doctor who will only join them if they agree to save 70 refugees too. It’d been a while since I’ve watched this and while I remember liking it, it was so long ago that I wasn’t sure if it was the rose colored glasses or if I would still feel like it was a solid movie. Other than some Hollywood-funny casting decisions (Monica Bellucci as the wayward doctor requiring saving? ok!) this is still very much a solid film, with a solid and basic premise...
In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds. I did watch this when it first came out, but apparently I wasn’t doing movie logging at the time, but I do remember being distinctly let down by the final product, a feeling that I no longer feel. Buy On Amazon!
Blonde: Directed by Andrew Dominik. With Ana de Armas, Lily Fisher, Julianne Nicholson, Tygh Runyan. The story of American actress Marilyn Monroe, covering her love and professional lives. I love Ana de Armas and I loved Marilyn Monroe’s film work, but the two of them don’t work very well. Ana gives it her best, but this lurid tale of sex, death, and obsession is just too morbid for my tastes. Buy On Amazon!
Ascend from your shelter. Ruin everything. Escape the wretched island. ⚔️🔨🎣🌱🌵🍰 Explore. Fight. Level up. Survive. Gather. Craft. Harvest. Hunt. Build. Farm. Solve puzzles. Fish. Cook. Live. Enjoy the bittersweet post-apocalypse. I started this thinking I was going to just try it out and see how it looked, but the game loop of breaking stuff to level up to move to a new area to break more stuff to level up more to move to another new area became so addictive that I became obsessed with breaking everything man made in the entire area I was in before moving onto...
Following a freak summer storm, David Drayton, his son Billy, and their neighbour Brent Norton join dozens of others and head to the local grocery store to repl I’ve seen both versions of the film, both the happy ending and the not so happy ending, and I’ve read King saying that he was happier with either of those endings than he was with the ending he came up with and I’ll have to agree with him on that point. The rest of the novel is pretty well written, as most of Kings stories are, and he managed to write the...
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...
