July 17, 1996
WALKING AND TALKING is the debut film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener (the warden in MI VIDA LOCA). Like the last movie I reviewed, DON’T LOOK BACK, it opens with its protagonists as little kid best friends, but this is a much more female perspective of the world, so instead of establishing their life long friendship with playing swords and becoming blood brothers the two girls are sneaking a peek at The Joy of Sex, giggling and calling it disgusting. Unspecified years later they’re still best friends, but at different places in their other relationships, which will create a strain.
Amelia (Catherine Keener, SURVIVAL QUEST) is the most outwardly messy of the pair. A while back she broke up with Andrew (Liev Schreiber right before SCREAM; this was released by Miramax, and they were really pushing him as their new product at the time). They’re still friends and co-workers, they even grocery shop together, but I don’t know, the smile she gives after telling her therapist (Joseph Siravo, CARLITO’S WAY) she’s totally over him made me think she’s really not. Either way, things fall apart when she finds out Laura (Anne Heche, MILK MONEY) got engaged to Frank (Todd Field, EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY). I mean they seem to have been together forever, they already live together, they’re all close and it’s great. But making it official like that makes Amelia panic. And right after she decided to quit therapy. (read the rest of this shit…)
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is the 7th motion picture starring Spider-Man (not counting unauthorized Turkish ones), the second Sony In Association With Marvel movie of 2018, and probly only the third biggest Marvel Comics movie of its year. But I honestly think it’s revolutionary. Not necessarily for super heroes – its story of colliding alternate dimensions is clever, but built on familiar comic book traditions – but for animated features. Somehow Sony, who had been considered so clueless about what to do with Spider-Man that they had to farm him out to Marvel, found people who knew how to celebrate the vast history, meaning and potential of the character in a completely new cinematic way.
SPOTLIGHT is another one of the best picture nominees. I’d already seen it anyway. It doesn’t seem to me like signs are pointing to it as a potential winner, but it definitely feels like your traditional perfectly-good-movie-that-wins-best-picture-and-makes-you-resent-it. Unlike 
Hey, have you guys ever noticed how alot of these so-called action movies they do now days make no effort to show any action in their action scenes? I think I might’ve mentioned something about that before, not sure.
