Movie Enthusiast Issue 22: Another Milestone Crossed
As some of my more ardent admirers know, I've been keeping journals of every movie I've watched since September 2011. I follow a pretty standard rule: each movie is allotted one page, in which I try to write a coherent review. In my first journal, I ended each review with a letter grade; I disposed with the ratings after starting the second journal because I realized that I had started to grade movies as I was watching them—a mental exercise that took away from the actual enjoyment of the movies themselves.
Last week, I reached the end of my second volume of movie journals, bringing my grand total of reviewed movies up to 431. This has been a strictly offline adventure, though today I figured it would be fun to share one of my oldest reviews—from, say, the winter of 2011—for the sake of showing how I used to approach film criticism. Looking back at some of my old reviews prompts all manner of cringing, chuckling, and quiet contemplation over my infrequently surprising insights. Now you, too, can have a glimpse at how I wrote and thought about movies back in the day:
The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: William Monahan
Scorsese's Oscar-winning, superslick Boston crime drama. You are obliged to read this review with a Boston accent.
As this was my first-ever Scorsese flick (DON'T HURT ME), I can only judge it against itself—and when you look at it that way, it's great. The cavalcade of stars here—Damon, DiCaprio, Wahlberg, Sheen, Baldwin, and last but not least, Nicholson—all have great chemistry and make the story fly. Sharp tongues, snappy cuts, and shocking violence all play their part here to create a perfect atmosphere.
Wonderful as it is for Boston to be featured in such a high profile movie, the accent work was a bit spotty by most—save Wahlberg (whose character happened to be my favorite). Well, I guess you can't have everything. But seriously though, I loved seeing places I recognized throughout (the “Hey-look-it's-______” quotient is only rivaled by The Town). And as is the norm, apparently, Walpole makes another brief cameo courtesy of our beloved maximum security prison. So.
The violence is gruesome and the body count high, but it's sparse enough at the beginning to be just barely endurable by the end. Or maybe that's just me.
Grade: A
Compare that with any of my more recent writing and I think you'll see some big improvements. (Or at least, I'd like to believe I've improved at this over the last half-decade!)
Articles, News, and Interviews
Marvel has come under fire for the whitewashing going on in Dr. Strange. Four critics sat down around the proverbial internet roundtable to discuss the duties of filmmakers and critics alike to be culturally sensitive and inclusive—or whether they even have such duties at all.
R.I.P. the worst movie theater in the world.
Bryan Singer is in talks to direct a Freddie Mercury biopic starring Mr. Robot's Rami Malek and written by the screenwriter of The Theory of Everything. The working title, obviously: Bohemian Rhapsody.
French actress and Elle star Isabelle Huppert on philosophy and method acting: “Most people act and you can tell they’re acting. I want to be as close as possible to what I think reality is. The twist is, reality is usually a very different thing to what people think it is when they come to act. Most acting is over-acting. In general, with our bodies and minds, we tend to do less than more.”