After a summer of watching 90s movies and weeping over how young and beautiful Celine and Jesse were in 1994, I’m trying to catch up with new releases so that at the very least I can come up with a “best of 2020” list — though it seems that there is still a lot of debate in Hollywood about when the 2020 movie season will officially end.
I actually think it’s an interesting, volatile time for movies and streaming content and I’m curious to see how things shift over the next few months. Maybe I’ll even write about it . . . but right now I’m trying to finish a fourth revision of my novel and dealing with two little kids and a WFH husband. Like everyone, I’m pretty overwhelmed at the end of the day. I think that’s why I’ve gravitated toward movies I enjoyed as a teenager. One of my favorite retro watches this summer was Twister, a movie I remember seeing at the second-run theater with my sister and her boyfriend at the time. We threw popcorn at the screen, it was so ridiculous! But so much fun. Rewatching it, I was startled to see a young Philip Seymour Hoffman in a minor roll as one of the hurricane chasers. His character is so thinly drawn but you only realize that in retrospect because Hoffman seems to bring an entire unspoken backstory to every scene.
It wasn’t exactly a fun summer but I did start using my Criterion subscription, so that’s something. Before I move on, I wanted to catch up with the new movies that I managed to watch over the summer. . . Continue reading “Catching Up”
Thelma and Alice 