Movies I Watched in July, Part 2

Seeing as how August is almost over, I figured I'd might as well finally finish recapping what the hell I watched in July.


Watched it again (this time on Allie's new Blu-ray) and enjoyed it again, but like I said before, while "The Force Awakens" is certainly well-made and entertaining, it's never really surprising and doesn't provoke any gasps like the other "Star Wars" movies did. (Though, admittedly, the gasps that came during the prequels were about how godawful they were.) I really like the new characters, especially Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron, but I'm more excited about what they might do in future films than anything specific they do here. One more thing: What the hell is up with the scene where Han and Chewie chase those CGI monstrosities around their ship? It feels like it came out of a completely different movie, and frankly, I wish it had stayed there.



Watched this 2012 HBO movie for an episode of our Out of Theaters podcast. It's good, but not great (in the vein of most HBO movies) with the highlight being Julianne Moore's uncanny impersonation of political oddity Sarah Palin. Like I said in the write-up for that episode:

“Game Change,” to be honest, isn’t a great political movie. It lacks the subtlety of “The Candidate,” the wit of “The Ides of March” or even the go-for-broke nuttiness of “Primary Colors.” HBO insists it’s not TV, but this is, at it’s heart, your basic TV movie, with a simplified storyline, clearly defined heroes and villains (it’s pretty obvious that Schmidt and Wallace were the real-life sources for the authors — they come off as unappreciated geniuses. Director Jay Roach (who also brought us the “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Fockers” movies) doesn’t bring much flair to this one, though it certainly looks professional enough, if about as dull as a CNN segment (which, given the subject matter, just might be the point).

Read the whole thing here. Or, better yet, listen to Billy Kulpa and I talk about "Game Change" on the actual podcast episode at the same link.


Now this, this is a movie. Having spent the greater part of my adult life in a newsroom, I've got a natural fascination with newspaper movies, especially those focusing on the good ol' days of shoe leather journalism, with crusty editors barking out orders and young, go-get-em reporters risking their lives for tomorrow's front page scoop. Well, they don't get much better than this 1952 potboiler, a Humphrey Bogart should-be-classic about a great old newspaper trying to get the dirt on a local crime boss before it's driven out of business. The combination of an old-fashioned story with the surprisingly timely angle of a newspaper's dying days makes for a winning, fast-paced drama, and the script cleverly manages to involve all the newsroom departments -- sports, editorial cartoons, society columns, photogs, etc -- in the plot to put away the powerful mobster. Bogart makes a great boss, and it's a shame he didn't spend more time in a (celluloid) newsroom, because he feels right at home. The highlight for actual (or former) newsroom folks will probably be the wake the staff throws in a bar when they learn the paper is being sold. It's almost shockingly prescient, with Bogart and his fellow bitter (and drunk) journalists complaining about how newspapers have sold out with gimmicks and happy news to attract new readers -- in other words, exactly what's happening today, only to a degree Bogart could never imagine. It's a great, corny old movie, and it's great because it's corny, and not despite it. The ending, with Bogart yelling "It's the press, baby, and there's nothing you can do to stop it!" is one of my all-time favorites.

By the way, after years of being mostly missing from home video, "Deadline USA" has finally been released on a crisp new Blu-ray, complete with commentary from movie export Eddie Mueller. Definitely worth picking up.