Oops! Shakycam even when the camera isn’t moving?

Now we got real shakycam!

*phew* Shakycam gone — I guess they were using it to be all dramatic and stuff.

It’s not that I have something in principle against using shakycam — I just get physically nauseated and have to stop watching if it’s too excessive.

Oh, yeah, I got this movie because I rather liked Cold Souls (by the same director). This looks extremely different, though.

Hm… she didn’t get to direct a movie for a decade after this one, so I’m guessing it didn’t set the box office on fire?

Indeed.

And… I kinda see now why. The protagonist is bored, so it’s necessary to show her being bored, and that’s er you’re not going to believe this quite boring.

Her husband is a doctor, and he has patients with disgusting conditions, and we get to see them, too.

I.e., the ultimate date movie.

Finally! The love interest!

Oh! It is The Flash! They’re very young here.

Oh deer. This feels so… I bet when she starts to have affairs she finally gets a new frock, because that frock symbolises being all staid and corseted up and stuff. That is, this movie feels like if the director has mapped out a couple of symbols (corsets and cobwebs) and is existing on them to a degree that feels frankly risible.

It’s just tedious.

Oh, The Flash wasn’t the love interest — this guy is.

Scarlet woman!

Well, more orange, I guess.

Brutal.

It’s been years since I’ve seen a Madame Bovary adaptation — there’s like a dozen of them? — but I seem to remember the character having more… vigour? She’s so passive here that whenever she actually does something (like buying new curtains), it’s almost shocking.

I haven’t read the novel, though.

Hey! It’s Paul Giamatti!

*gasp*

This is like… first she’s dull, and then she grows more and more unpleasant, seemingly at random. It’s an extraordinarily unsympathetic figure to carry a movie. It seems like the director is saying “that Bovary bird? she’s well ‘orrible”. (I’m not sure why the director turned cockney in this scenario, but she somehow did.)

Flash! Ah-aaaah! Saviour of the universe!

Man, this is bad.

But the cinematography’s quite nice, so let’s go with:

Madame Bovary. Sophie Barthes. 2014. ⚁

This scroll continues for 90 seconds while a guy reads it out loud (presumably for people who can’t read).

Oooh, production value!

I’m not sure how I came to buy this bluray — perhaps it just popped up on a list of “New Sci-Fi In 2K” or something? It’s from the mid-90s, and I’ve never heard of it before.

Hey… this doesn’t look bad. It’s not upscaled VHS or anything…

But that makeup job was not done with high resolution in mind, so was this straight to video thing?

Lemme pause while I google.

Nope:

It premiered at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 1995. It was released in the United States on January 26, 1996, by Columbia Pictures.

[…]

The film earned about $5.7 million in the United States and Canada, on a $20 million budget. It was moderately popular in France, Japan, and the Netherlands. Worldwide box office was approximately $7 million.

OK, so that’s why I haven’t heard of it — it was a massive flop (but on a decent budget).

This looks pretty good, actually.

OK, that’s bad green-screen.

Gnarly!

Subtle!

Hey! It’s Robocop!

That guy looks familiar!

Must have seen him in Caroline in the City, I guess?

That’s some nice source code.

This is a very odd movie. They’ve basically got all the plot for a standard corporate-soldiers-on-an-alien-planet-that-the-company-might-be-trying-to-kill-off movie — and that’s a good plot, which is why it’s used so much — but it’s got no rhythm. The patter between the action stuff just sounds off? It’s like they haven’t actually heard any Humans talk before when they wrote the lines?

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

It’s a relief to know that they still have plenty of hair gel in the future.

Nice tats.

It’s a Buenos Aires standoff!

OK, this movie is kinda boring, even if it has a 29% tomatometer.

Sponge bath time!

This film was originally in 1.85:1, but for this bluray transfer they cut it down to 1.77:1, so we’re missing bits to the left and right. Whenever I put on a bluray and it’s 16:9 I immediately go NOOO HOW DID THEY CUT THIS TIME, because no real movies are 16:9. (Well, some Netflix movies are, but even there it’s not the norm.)

I’m still kinda sure that the twist I was expecting ever since they started talking about various types of robots is still going to happen, but I guess they’re saving it for the very last scene?

Nice.

(And the twist I was expecting didn’t happen. Kudos.)

But it’s still a really boring movie, and it really seems like a movie where they didn’t really have a real script, so it’s kinda choppy.

Watching the documentary now… Robocop wanted to get involved with doing rewrites, and the director is saying that Weller is so smart etc, but you can see his frustrations.

Screamers. Christian Duguay. 1995. ⚁

Hey! Isn’t that the guy who played Bob Hope’s man in Nothing But the Truth? Hm… Yes it is! It’s Willie Best! Well, that movie was from 1941, and this is from 1940, and both are from Paramount, so perhaps he wasn’t so much specialising in playing Bob Hope manservants as being on a contract.

He did 124 films:

Mitchell Leisen, who directed Willie Best in Suddenly It’s Spring, described him as “the most natural actor I’ve ever seen.” Comedian Bob Hope similarly acclaimed him as “the best actor I know”, while the two were working together in 1940 on The Ghost Breakers.

Oh, that Bob Hope. He’s so punny.

State of the art special effects.

Hope and Best make a good comedy pairing. The get the repartee going — they’re playing very similar characters.

Heh. Just like in Nothing But the Truth, the Willie Best character saves the day.

OOPS SPOILERS

This is so likeable — it’s such an enjoyable film. It zips along, never letting the fun stuff grow stale, with good performances and very Studio cinematography etc. However, there could have been more jokes? And better jokes? I smiled the entire time I watched this, but I didn’t laugh out loud once. So I guess I should go with ⚃, but let’s do this instead:

The Ghost Breakers. George Marshall. 1940. ⚄