Weekly Watches
Good morning guys. Weekly Watches is back for another week! This is a weekly post (every Saturday) that recaps every movie that I have watched this week. Last week was A LOT, I think close to 20 movies because I had the week off of work and a ton of time. This week has a lot less than that, only six, which overall were much better than last week’s as well. Overall this week was a little stressful for me between my personal life, what’s happening in the world, and also coming back from vacation (that’s never fun). Needless to say, I needed my two hours with a movie and tea and I am sure you do too, so let’s get into it!
Hounds of Love (2016)
This first film I actually watched as I wrote last week’s post. It is about a teenage girl who is kidnapped by a couple in Australia. As she is living as their prisoner she is repeatedly assaulted. The wife of her abductor is mostly passive and enables the situation to continue, but later we learn that there is a reason for that which the girl then uses as leverage to try and escape. The movie kind of plays out like a long Criminal Minds episode with no federal agent scenes. It’s exploitive in that way and borderline torture porn but there ARE some genuinely great moments too. I’d say probably skip this one but I think I am in the minority there.
Nofinofy (2019/2020 US)
I wrote a whole review for this so I won’t go into detail here. This Madagascar documentary is great though and certainly worth watching.
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
This film was absolutely beautiful. I watched it because it had been on my watchlist for a while and it was vying for a spot on my Top 100 of the 1990s. I loved every second of being on the island with this group of women. The story is a zeroed look in on an island of the coast of South Carolina that was home to the Gullah culture. It’s set in the 1900s and shows the struggle of identity and leaving home, as well as a culture that I am not very familiar with (and I’m sure most people reading this aren’t’ either). In a lot of ways it reminded me of Portrait of a Lady on Fire: the craft of building a strong atmosphere of an isolated setting that’s thriving in its isolation, the intense attention to details, the way it’s just us, the audience, peering into a corner of the world that so few people actually see. Both are so powerful. A treasure of American cinema, I’m glad I finally got to it.
Secrets & Lies (1996)
This is the second Mike Leigh movie I’ve seen, Naked was the first and I hated it. This movie however was really good! It’s about a black woman in London who seeks out her birth mother and discovers that she is white. Eventually, through the weaving of different family members’ storylines, we start to put the puzzle of all the characters together. The movie is a little too long and drags in places but the dialogue is so honest and the movie is worth watching.
Looking For Richard (1996)
Okay, most of you won’t want to watch this film because most of you don’t love Al Pacino the way that I do. Basically this is a weird half documentary half filmed play that was a huge Pacino Passion Project. He is a well known Shakespeare fanboy and embarks on a way to make Richard III, Shakespeare’s big boy epic, more palpable for general audiences who don’t normally like the playwright. I’m actually perfect for this because I am a little pretentious but I don’t actually enjoy Shakespeare very much (but I want to). After watching it I decided I probably do want to read it eventually because if anyone can make me interested in Richard III it’s either going to be a 1990s Al Pacino or George RR Martin.
Black Rain (1989)
This Ridley Scott movie, about two American cops (Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia) who go to Japan and lose a major mob boss and have to work with Japanese law enforcement to retrieve him. It’s racist guys. It’s really racist. Also, I mostly only watched it because I like Michael Douglas and love looking at a 1980s/90s Andy Garcia but Douglas phoned it in and Garcia…doesn’t get enough screen time. I love cheesy mid-budget cop movies from this era, but there are way better ones to choose from so skip this and watch Internal Affairs instead.