Nooo! It’s cropped down to 16:9! From 2.39:1!

Damn you Apple! Damn you to hell!!!1!

Oh, this is one of those movies. I mean, the protagonist is dying.

Huh, this only won the Oscar for best writing… It feels like Oscar bait, but low budget, so perhaps the right amount of Oscars.

OK, I’m enjoying this more now. It’s just really choppy — the scenes don’t seem to connect with each other. It’s one scene after another… but I guess it’s a budget thing. It’s in the uncanny valley between a stage play and a movie.

So it’s not just me!!!

There’s fun scenes here, but the big dramatic ones are risible.

Gods and Monsters. Bill Condon. 1998. ⚂

Hey! It’s one of the Skarsgårds. Er… it’s the one from that vampire TV series? Er… True Blood.

Wow, this is weapons grade silliness.

Well, that’s another familiar face — I saw Hard Candy the other week.

I like the performances here, and it’s got the right look. But the story is a bit *rolls eyes*. So it’s about… an environmentalist Manson family thing? Perhaps it’ll get better.

Process note: I’m watching all the movies Queery are recommending, but I’ve skipped more than a couple. Because I’m not watching the documentaries (and there’s a surprising amount of them) because I hate documentaries sooo muuuuch, and I’m also skipping movies that I’ve seen before recentlyish. Like Ben Hur. So I’m already halfway through their list! After just a couple of months.

OK, carry on.

Oh such moral quandary!!! It turns out that the it’s not just Manson and his cohort that’s bad!

This movie is growing on me. The mood’s good. It’s got a moody mood.

It’s just… that whenever something’s happening, it’s kinda annoying? The scenes where nothing happens work, but the action scenes just aren’t very watchable. It’s like SO MUCH DRAMA with shakycam and shouting and arguing, and it just doesn’t work.

Man, the third act is so bad.

The East. Zal Batmanglij. 2013. ⚂

Wow. They’ve gotten the perfect child to play a young Bette Davis.

And… they’ve cropped the movie down to 16:9. *sigh*

Heh. When the opening titles started, they switched to windowboxing (so that the text isn’t cropped), presumably to make it less obvious that they’re cropping the rest of the movie… CLVR.

But you are, Blanche. You are!

This movie is properly nightmarish! But it doesn’t… really make that much sense? I know it doesn’t really have to make that much sense, but… Blanche could just shout out the window to the neighbour? And then the movie would have been over after ten minutes?

Which is why she doesn’t, of course, but…

Wow. This is pure genius.

(Except for a couple of scenes that aren’t.)

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane. Robert Aldrich. 1962. ⚄