What I've Caught Up With, January 2023 Part 2

I've done a little re-arranging, adding a new page here for movies that aren't on any list but that I've watched because they were recommended. I'm still working on that and it should be finished soon. I've got so many recommendations for the last few years that it felt like I needed a separate page for them. This only applies to full reviews, not the ones I've posted on recaps like this one. Anyway, here are the last few I picked up in January.

What I’ve Caught Up With, January 2023 Part 2:
Film: The Doors (1991)

I’m not in the right generation to be a huge Jim Morrison fan. Both of my older brothers were at least marginal fans of The Doors, though. Try as I might, though, it’s hard for me not to see Jim Morrison as a handful of pretentious bullshit. Couple that with the overblown style of Oliver Stone, and you’re going to get something that wants to be a lot more meaningful than I think it is. Val Kilmer does a solid job as Morrison, and the rest of the band—Kyle Maclachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, and Kevin Dillon as John Densmore—are also good. Meg Ryan as Morrison’s longtime girlfriend Pamela Courson feels like a strange cast. Ultimately, this feels like a lot of bombast.

Film: The Way Back (2020)

I don’t always like Ben Affleck as an actor, but there are times when I have to admit that he can still do the work. The Way Back is an instance of this. Former basketball player and current ironworker Jack Cunningham (Affleck) is a functional alcoholic dealing with a crumbled marriage, a son dead from cancer, and a dead end life. He is offered a job coaching at his old alma mater and reluctantly takes the job as a sort of redemption. The Way Back starts out as The Bad News Bears and ends up being something much deeper, darker, and far better. Suffice to say that what would be the end of a lesser film is just the end of act two in this one. This is better than I expected it would be.

Film: Sky High (2005)

I’m old enough to remember when Kurt Russell was Disney’s go-to live-action star. It’s nice to see him back working for Disney in this pre-MCU superhero/coming of age movie, albeit not as the star. It’s hard not to make an immediate comparison to the Harry Potter movies. After all, this is a movie that is literally about super-powered kids in high school. It’s extremely predictable, but that’s okay. It’s a fun film with some great casting—casting Lynda Carter as the principal of the super high school is genius. This won’t be anyone’s favorite movie, but it’s hard to find someone who would seriously object to it.

Film: The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

There is a weird fascination with incorporating famous people in period dramas, making them “normal” people, and I’m not entirely sure why this is. There are multiple movies where Edgar Allen Poe is a character, most recently The Pale Blue Eye, where we have Poe (Harry Melling) as a cadet at West Point during the investigation of a suicide that proves instead to be a murder. Poe assists local detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), who attempts to discern not just who the murderer is, but why a rash of grisly murders are now stalking the grounds of the school. The romantic idea of Poe is a dandy idea, but the execution leaves a great deal to be desired. There’s a lot of untapped potential here.