Irrelevant But Awesome

Alexa:  I’m a sucker for “making of” featurettes, and “Lost in La Mancha” is basically one long “making of” featurette with the caveat that the movie was never actually completed. I love seeing all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing a film to life, and “Lost in La Mancha” captures it beautifully. Though the movie at the heart of the documentary, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” actually had a small budget for such an ambitious film, “Lost in La Mancha” does a great job conveying the scale of it all. That’s what makes its fate so tragic. It’s common to hear about movies being stuck in “development hell,” that for one reason or another just can’t get off the ground, but “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is the rare example of a film being canceled so far into production. Terry Gilliam is a character, and I can see how me might rub some the wrong way, but his passion for this weird take on Don Quixote is pretty infectious. Incidentally, after 17 years of false sta...

Melissa McCarthy is a busy person. Last year she was in three movies, as well as making time for an appearance in the Gilmore Girls revival and her constant appearances this past year on Saturday Night Live as Sean Spicer. It’s not quite Rock levels of everywhere, but make no mistake, McCarthy is keeping busy. In the five years since Bridesmaids pushed her into super stardom, McCarthy has become one of the biggest names in comedy, which makes her next project so interesting. Cook-Off! , a movie set to hit theaters this November, isn’t the latest movie that McCarthy has been working on for the past several months. This is a movie that was actually made ten years ago back in 2007. For whatever reason, the movie was completed but never released. It’s only recently been picked up by Lionsgate who is releasing the movie later this year. What’s interesting is you have to realize that in 2007, McCarthy is not the star that she is now. At the time she hadn’t appeared in a movie ...

Alexa:  I remember vaguely hearing about the scandal surrounding “Twenty One” but knew little about the details until watching “Quiz Show.” I have to wonder if the revelation that a massively popular game show was fixed would have the same impact today in the age of “reality” TV, but “Quiz Show” still resonates for modern audiences because director Robert Redford and screenwriter Paul Attanasio do an impeccable job of conveying the story’s significance. A bit of the film’s 2-hour-and-13-minute run time drags in places, but overall “Quiz Show” captivates throughout. You really feel what a high-stakes operation this was for everyone involved. The film’s driving force is Ralph Fiennes as Charles Van Doren. He’s so clean-cut and charming that you can’t help but feel the same kinship with him that “Twenty One” viewers must have felt at the time. Fiennes infuses him with such heart that you sympathize with him even when he admits the major role he played in the show’s deception, but...

I think I’ve gotten to the point where I can say, I don’t enjoy working out, and at this point I don’t think I ever will. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy working out, I know that many people do. That’s also not to say that I think working out is a bad idea. It’s something that you need to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle, It’s something I will continue to do despite my decision to declare that I just don’t like working out. What I do like is having worked out. That feeling when your done and you can relax, but you feel good about yourself because you know you did something that was good for you and made the right decision. I enjoy having worked out, I just don’t enjoy working out in the moment. I say all that to say I feel that’s what watching Darren Aronofsky’s movies is like. Aronofsky usually makes really great films. Your mileage may vary on one or two of them, but for the most part he is considered to be one of the better directors working today. But the movies he ma...

My grandmother is a big Stephen King fan. In the 1980s she was the kind of fan who would get each new Stephen King book the day it came out, no questions asked. So growing up, I would often see a long shelf of hardback books, all written by Stephen King. Obviously, looking down that long shelf It was the book that really stood out. Such a huge book. And with such a small title, it was able to appear, giant, on the spine. Two letters that caught your eye at once staring at the bookshelf. “IT.” It, the book is huge. The last time it was adapted it had to be done as a mini-series to try and get enough screen time to adapt the story. This is one of the books that often appears on lists of “unfilmable” works just because of how massive it is. The new It movie approaches this issue by only attempting to adapt half of the book. It is the story of a group of kids who have to face off against an unspeakable evil that inhabits their town, and their return to the town as adults to finish ...

Alexa:  I’m typically a big fan of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s collaborations, and while I think “Sausage Party” is one of their weaker - and most bizarre - offerings, I have to say… I didn’t hate it. The movie certainly has its share of problems, chief among them that for a film billed as a comedy, it didn’t have strong jokes. I chuckled at a few moments throughout, but “Superbad”-level hilarious this movie is not. It’s often over-the-top obscene even for a raunch comedy. And that ending - it completely lost me there. But the premise intrigued me more than I was expecting. It wants to do for Disney/Pixar what “Avenue Q” did for Sesame Street. It’s nowhere close to being as masterful as that, but it does have a certain cleverness to it. The Disney-esque opening number was great (bonus points for actually securing Alan Menken, the king of Disney music, to write it). The “Saving Private Ryan” homage was pretty sharp. And never would I ever have expected a movie called “Sausag...

Alexa:  So… this movie was not at all my cup of tea. If you’re a horror person, maybe there’s something for you here, but perhaps not. Its dreamy, creepy vibe is a bit more akin to some of Guillermo del Toro’s works than typical horror fare, though not nearly as artful. Though the film is only an hour and 17 minutes, it dragged for most of its brief run time. The scenes of the actual ritual somehow both dragged and felt rushed. The building blocks for an intriguing story are there, but it falls short in its execution. I’m all for a twist ending, but this one was unnecessarily abrupt and disjointed compared to the rest of the plot. I will say it was beautifully shot and the music was great. Those two elements set the tone for an enchanting thriller, but unfortunately the rest of the pieces didn’t fall into place. Joel: One of the first things I noticed in the Netflix description of the movie was that this was a really short movie. Only 77 minutes long. So after I had been ...

Alexa:  Though he will probably always be best known for “This Is Spinal Tap,” mockumentary auteur Christopher Guest is in equally fine form with “Best in Show.” A national dog show is the perfect backdrop for his absurd brand of humor because it’s rife with offbeat characters made all the more hilarious by their intense passion for their pets. They’re essentially pageant parents to their furry children, each with their own strange motivations. Much of Guest’s regular band of actors is present here, and they’re all experts at navigating his quirky brand of humor. He always gives his cast a lot of room for improvisation, which in this case makes the talking head segments in particular feel distinctly natural. The characters are all fully realized down to every last comic detail (Parker Posey’s braces, Eugene Levy’s Norwich terrier baseball cap), which elevates them beyond caricatures into something more intentional, and the movie is all the more hilarious for it. After all, it’...