Monthly Archives: January 2018

Paddington 2

Paddington 2 opens with Paddington settled into a nice life with the Brown family. His Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday is coming up, and he wants to give her a present fit for the occasion. Her dream had always been to visit London, and when Paddington finds an old popup book of London landmarks, he becomes determined to find a job, earn some money, and buy the book. Unfortunately, the book is stolen, Paddington is wrongfully blamed, and suddenly the loveable little bear is doing hard time in a British prison. But within days, the perpetually cheerful and optimistic Paddington has converted the prison kitchen into a fancy bakery. Seems a lot of the prisoners remember their grand mum’s recipe for one pastry or another. Hey, it’s a kid’s movie, and that’s simply the sort of thing that happens. Back at home, the Brown family tries mightily to find the real thief and clear Paddington’s name.

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Mary and the Witch’s Flower

When the celebrated Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, among many others) halted production in 2014, Yoshiaki Nishimura founded Studio Ponoc along with several Studio Ghibli veterans. The name is said to derive from a word meaning “midnight,” signifying the end of one day and the beginning of another. Mary and the Witch’s Flower, directed and cowritten by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie Was There) is Studio Ponoc’s first feature film.

It tells the story of Mary, a young girl sent to stay with her Great Aunt Charlotte in the country while her parents are away for some unspecified reason. Bored out of her mind, she follows Tib the cat into the woods and discovers a rare flower that temporarily gives her magical abilities. She activates a long-forgotten broomstick and finds herself transported to Endor College, a school of magic, where she is mistaken for a new pupil. She soon discovers some unsavory experiments going on behind the scenes. Continue reading →

The Room Far Exceeds its Reputation for Badness

Finding the theater packed with hipster millennials was my first hint that something was about to go terribly wrong. The fact that many of them seemed to know each other was an ominous sign. Then a clip of Tommy Wiseau doing a semi-coherent live question and answer session in front of a theater packed with adoring fans appeared on screen. Then a mashup video of what turned out to be some of the stupidest dialogue in the movie started playing, and the audience sang along. And then someone started passing out plastic spoons. I knew The Room had achieved something of a cult status, but nothing had prepared me for a theater full of millennials making a pathetically lame attempt to recreate The Rocky Horror Picture Show. More on that later.

The Room was released in 2003, and the numerous criticisms published since then vastly understate the magnitude of its awfulness. The basic idea is that Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) is a successful banker engaged to Lisa (Juliette Danielle). Depending on which section of dialogue you’re listening to, they’ve been together for 5 or 7 years. And no, 2 years do not pass over the course of the film. Lisa has inexplicably gotten bored with Johnny and decides to cheat on him with Mark (Greg Sestero). Mark is Johnny’s best friend. We know this because Johnny, Lisa, and Mark explicitly state this dozens of times. Johnny finds out multiple times and eventually decides to freak out about it.