Category: 27 day film a thon #1

My 27 movie A-Z film-a-thon: Day 6

The idea is to watch and review 27 movies I would likely not have gotten to anytime soon. I am trying to knockout some well reviewed movies I am curious, but not overly excited, about.

My journey so far has been:

_ 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) – 9/10

_All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023) – 7.5

_Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) – 8.5

_Cold War (Pawel Pawlikosski, 2018) – 6.5

_Darby O’Gill and the Little People (Robert Stevenson, 1959) – 9 

This is one I had picked out from day 1. I was so sure I was going to like this. It seemed to be a little bizarre and bat crazy, usually my wheelhouse.

EO (2022) Review

For whatever reason, EO seems to drag on forever — which is odd, because it’s only 90 minutes long. I kept asking myself: Why is this so dull? It’s intriguingly filmed, but emotionally hollow.

The plot veers from one extreme turn to another, often stretching believability. Time and again I found myself repeating, “This is unlikely.” If this were a film about magical realism or something genuinely inspirational, I might have adored it. The one compelling thread is that EO, having once been a circus performer, has the temperament and training to keep escaping trouble. He genuinely likes people — and that’s what keeps him alive.

In that sense, EO reminded me most of The Pianist. Adrien Brody’s survival hinges on his exact combination of virtues, just as EO survives by possessing the right qualities at the right time. But whereas The Pianist builds its world with weight and consequence, EO feels more like a series of self-conscious flourishes.

That brings me to the style. Why is there a red filter over so many scenes? Why does the film periodically burst into epilepsy-triggering strobe effects? Do donkeys only see in strobing reds? These choices come off more like art-house affectation than anything rooted in the film’s themes or perspective.

I wanted EO to feel necessary or believable — ideally both. Instead, it offers implausible set pieces that don’t hold up under scrutiny. The football scene, where EO is brutally attacked by rival fans with metal poles, is particularly absurd. There’s no documented history of such animal abuse occurring after a loss, and the fans themselves don’t even seem that emotionally invested in the match to begin with. Then, late in the film, we get a cameo from Isabelle Huppert that leads to an unearned and out-of-nowhere incest subplot. It’s baffling.

The idea of EO excited me. On paper, it sounds like a children’s film with heart — a donkey’s odyssey across a hostile world. But it lacks the soul, wonder, or even plausibility to make that concept land. It’s not touching. It’s not believable. It’s just a beautifully shot, meandering series of affectations.

5/10

My 27 movie A-Z film-a-thon: Day 5

My 27 movie A-Z film marathon, day 5.

I am watching a movie for each letter of the alphabet I otherwise probably wouldn’t get to (anytime soon).

So far, my journey is this:

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) – 9/10

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023) – 7.5

Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) – 8.5

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikosski, 2018) – 6.5

The next one is one I was *hoping* I would enjoy, but didn’t think I actually would much. It’s the exact type of film this project was made for.

Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) – Review

I wish I had watched this on VHS instead of Disney+. The Disney+ version uses a widescreen 1.85 aspect ratio rather than the original 1.33 full frame—the image feels zoomed in, with the tops and bottoms noticeably cropped.

Nevertheless, I’m glad I finally saw this little-known Disney classic. Why I don’t watch it every St. Patrick’s Day, I have no idea. It’s wall-to-wall Irish charm: Celtic music, drinking, leprechauns… It’s a slightly altered Beauty and the Beast, only it’s the father who must remain instead of the daughter.

This movie ticks all the boxes for a holiday tradition: tall tales, improvised Irish pub songs, elaborate dance numbers, even a house cat chasing a leprechaun. It’s full of charm—the kind of film my grandma would’ve adored, smiling through the whole thing. It really is what so-called “classics” like White Christmas and The Sound of Music only aspire to be.

My favorite part is the music. Every minute is soaked in the very best of the era—it’s joyful and varied. The plot keeps introducing new ideas to match the melodies and movement. I love this for all the same reasons I love Singin’ in the Rain and A Night at the Opera. This might be my third-favorite feel-good movie.

9/10

My 27 movie A-Z film-a-thon: Day 4

Each day, I choose a movie that looked interesting but I was not planning on watching soon.So far, I have watched the following, with my rating.

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) – 9/10

All Dirt Roads Are Made of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023) – 7.5

Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) – 8.5

Day 4: C

I was deciding between Creed and Cold War, and wound up choosing the movie that seemed less like Blow Out. Cold War seemed different the rest of the movies previously, and I did not realize it got an Academy Award nomination for Best Director (Despite not Best Picture). I have thoughts about that, but maybe I will get to those 

Cold War (2018) Review
 

Wiktor comes to bed. His wife is awake, waiting for him.

“Were you out whoring?”
“I don’t have money for whores. I was with the woman of my life.”
“Let me go to sleep then.”

There are little bright moments that rise above the dull pretension of Cold War. The heart of the film isn’t bad. I was sold a story about a musician who uses his influence to help a young ingénue break out of the limits of Soviet-era Poland. In reality, he’s just a horny guy who sleeps with a girl who auditions for him. They sleep together almost immediately. He likes her enough to ask her to run away with him. She says no. And so begins their decades-long emotional standoff—a “cold war” of romantic indecision. That part of the movie works. It has some truth to it.

But Cold War is strangely passionless. I believe Wiktor and Zula when they say they’re in love. The film, however, does little to show it. Even the music—arguably the one thing that could tie them together—feels pushed to the background. The Parisian scenes brush against interesting questions about art and politics, but don’t do anything with them. They come and go like set dressing.

Despite the title, there’s not much “Cold War” in Cold War. I have strong feelings about Stalin and what it meant to live under his regime and the years that followed. This movie doesn’t share those feelings. It doesn’t seem to have any.

Instead, the film plays like a kind of revisionist history. Everyone, everywhere, feels roughly the same. Only the music tastes change. Paris is full of snooty people; Poland is a land of sincerity. The message feels less about telling a historical story and more about making a nationalistic point: Poland was always great. A 20-year-old girl with just a high school education can be just as worldly and wise as any of those smug intellectuals in the West. I don’t really buy that.

What’s more, every character feels modern, like they were written by and for people in 2018, not people shaped by the trauma, fear, or ideology of their time. This movie is made with characters who have more to say about now than about the Soviet era. I also can’t ignore the way it tries to frame Wiktor’s power over Zula as romantic. It wants us to root for a man sleeping with someone who looks up to him, and calls it love. That’s not just dated—it’s subtly two layers of gross.

6.5/10