Irrelevant But Awesome

Alexa:  For a movie buff, I have a few pretty glaring holes in my film-watching history. Until this viewing, one them was “The Shining.” Naturally I’ve seen some of its most famous sequences referenced in other things, but beyond the fact that there are creepy twins and “Here’s Johnny” and red rum is murder spelled backward, I knew relatively little about the story. There is a lot to unpack in this film and I’m still processing it. I already know a repeat viewing will be essential to fully appreciating it and understanding it, but I can say with certainty that “The Shining” is a stellar piece of filmmaking. Stanley Kubrick has a knack for creating a strong sense of place, and he uses every sensory element at his disposal to achieve that here. The set design for the Overlook Hotel makes the resort look cozy and mancing at once, both cavernous and claustrophobic. I was most struck by the effectiveness of the sound design. The music is certainly haunting, but every noise feels un...

Joel:  Batman you guys. Ok, so Batman, at least in popular culture has pretty much been confined to the Christopher Nolan version of Batman in the past several years. And for the most part that’s fine. All three of his movies are impressive with at least one of them easily standing as one of the best comic book movies of all time. But just because there are great Batman movies from 2005 onward, doesn’t mean that we should disregard some of the earlier incarnations of Batman. In 1989 Tim Burton made an incredible Batman movie. It was easily the best comic book movie of it’s day and still holds up incredibly well all these years later. The dark twisted gothic noir of Gotham is beautifully stylized in a representation of how Burton would see that crime ridden city. The score is amazing. John William’s score for Superman is heralded as it should be but Danny Elfman did something truly spectacular with the music in this movie. And again, it’s difficult now not to simply cast Batm...