Newish to Watch at Home: Crimson Peak, Trumbo, Grandma, Etc.
Monday, February 15, 2016 at 5:57PM 
Newish on DVD/BluRay
• The 33 Antonio Banderas / Chilean miner rescue story
• 99 Homes the other acclaimed housing crisis movie
• Black Mass the gangster movie with Johnny Depp, buried under alien makeup, plays a gangster. Watch out for great performances on the periphery from Peter Sarsgaard and Julianne Nicholson
• Crimson Peak from Guillermo Del Toro. Critics were divided or had many reservations but those who loved it really loved it. Here's a rabidly pro piece nicely titled "Ghosts are Movies".
LUNCHTIME POLL:
Would you rather...
- Be seduced by Tom Hiddleston?
- Gain access to all of Mia Wasikowska's money?
- Marry into Jessica Chastain's family?
• Girls S4 -I've definitely lost track of this show. Weirdly I quit with an episode I couldn't have loved more (S3E7 "Beach House")
• Grandma - Lily Tomlin gets her own well deserved star vehicle and drives it superbly
• Love the Coopers - Diane Keaton earns a paycheck
• Spectre -the first Bond I haven't seen in theaters in some time. It just kind of happened, the skipping of it
• Steve Jobs -the intense three act drama starring Michael Fassbender & Kate Winslet
• Togetherness S1 the highly undervalued HBO dramedy. Melanie Lynskey and the rest of the cast are just super
• Trumbo in case you'd like to discover why it did so well in the precursors
NEW TO STREAMING
Netflix added Dope, The Face of Love (a romantic drama misfire from The Bening), Open Season, and the 2007 Best Picture nominee Atonement (tomorrow) and by the end of the month they'll add Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny which looks terrible *sniffle* despite being something we've looked forward to for so long. Amazon Prime added Solomon Kane a fantasy action film starring James Purefoy, Max von Sydow and Rachel Hurd-Wood that Radius TWC buried in 2009 (never opened in the States but played elsewhere). By the end of the month they'll add Digging For Fire from Joe Swanberg.
Which of these will you be catching up with?
Reader Comments (19)
Nathaniel: You never saw Spectre in theatres? What happened? I thought you liked Bond!
OK, so Spectre isn't especially great, but even so...! :-)
I will take a look at 99 Homes, quite a few critics have praised it.
Crimson Peak was a real disappointment for me, I just never bought into it.
I wouldn't mind Mia Wasikowska's money, but I would go someplace nice and warm like Italy, not a big, crumbling place in England. (And she traveled without her own maid, no wonder she had problems.)
Hiddleston. Always.
Still don't understand the oversights of Lily Tomlin and Michael Shannon in the Oscar nominations. Watched both 99 Homes and Grandma again, and they both are wonderful.
Edward -- i do like Bond movies. I was traveling the week it came out and it just kind of got away from me being the heavy movie season and all.
If it means having to have sex with Tom Hiddleston, YES!!! That's a man-crush I want to be with while I would also like to be in a three-way with Mia and Jessica. The latter was seriously robbed of an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress.
Saw Crimson Peak and Spectre in theaters and probably won't watch either again but I'll definitely see Steve Jobs and Dope again, though. I'll more than likely give 99 Homes and Grandma a try; and I suppose I'll watch Trumbo. As for Girls S4; I pretty much missed everything after the season premiere, so I should probably watch it if I don't want to end up dropping another show (sorry Homeland, American Horror Story, New Girl, etc.). However, I hope it's still on HBO Go.
Spectre please. I saw Crimson Peak and it was ok, but not what I was expecting. Chastian really went for the jugular though. I would take Mia's money and just go. Hiddleston just doesn't do it for me and I would be afraid Jessica would constantly be trying to poison me. I can't live with that stress, no matter how beautiful it is.
^^I disagree on Chastain. I understood what she was trying to do in Crimson Peak but she fell way short. Others like Nicole Kidman or Eva Green would have been 100x more interesting in this type of role.
Mia and Tom were both much more successful at what they were doing here.
People who like the Craig movies do not like Bond movies.
And in any case, avoiding Spectre is the best one could have done.
Will: Your first sentence is too sweeping a statement. I know plenty of Bond fans who have got a lot out of the Craig films. For me, Casino Royale is a very clever (if a little overlong) refreshing of the series, Quantum of Solace is (in my unpopular opinion) a bold and moving depiction of Bond's emotional turmoil, and Skyfall, though slightly overrated, was the perfect 50th anniversary film. Bond fans can bend and sway with the series' ups and downs, no? And if the Craig films have also held appeal for non-fans, then that's not a bad thing. Besides, I'm not sure any Bond fan is getting all misty-eyed with nostalgia for Die Another Day!
Sorry, Willy, I typed "Will" by mistake. My apologies.
Of course one can get a lot - or rather, a little bit - out of the Craig Bond films as films. One just cannot be a Bond fan and a Craig fan at the same time, unfortunately.
And as far as the so-called "appeal for non-fans" goes, well, Bond has been a worldwide phenomenon for more than half a century now.
But since you mention the non-fans: Yes, they (the ones who don't like Bond and therefore love the Daniel films) are the main problem Bond boys like myself are having during the Craig era, because the non-fans naturally are people who either don't know what they're talking about (like our lord and master) or who have tried to diss (film critics) and ignore (Oscar) Bond for decades. No wonder that they're rejoicing at the destruction of the franchise.
Be that as it may, I for one don't know what Die Another Day has got to do with all of this. But I generously forgive you the typo.
Willy: I mentioned Die Another Day because that was not a Craig Bond film but was doing just as good a job as, say, Spectre in undermining the series' achievements and appeal. After that film, I think the series was lucky to recover (and I say that as a Brosnan fan).
I'm not seeking to play Devil's advocate here; I, like you, am a Bond boy, and I too have my misgivings about many aspects of the Craig films. I just also believe that there's good stuff in them - and the good stuff is something the filmmakers could build on for future films, as long as they can let go of the ridiculous aspects they've become overly fixated on (origin story, underused female characters, etc.).
SPECTRE opens with a stunning tracking shot you'll regret having missed on the big screen. I just ordered the Blu-ray.
I'm eager to catch up with Grandma and Professor Spouse is hot for Black Mass.
Willy, I'm active on several Bond fan boards, have been for years before Craig was cast. Many hardcore Bond fans are Craig fans. By "hardcore" I include major collectors, world travelers who visit and photograph Bond fan sites as a hobby, and book authors on the subject (myself included). I know people who have been fans since Fleming published his first novel, and remain fans, and love Craig.
Your statement is charmingly snotty, but utterly false.
Willy: Yeah, that's too sweeping. But everything I've heard confirms that Spectre pretty much is Die Another Day for the Craig era. Though Skyfall is pretty good, it also clearly breaks the continuity of it's own chapter of this franchise. Casino Royale: The backstory was he was a poor orphan who had to fight to be respected. Skyfall: But...but...but...Mansion Fight Scene. To that I say: Make it M's childhood home. M dies there anyway, so it not only doesn't break the canon but lends a poetic note to her death.
Deborah, by now I had to correct too many factual errors of yours to ever take you seriously as an authority on the subject again. As for the so-called "many" hardcore Bond/Craig fans, well, I don't care what people write or visit or collect, I only care about how much they know about the world of 007. And fans or no fans, snotty or not, you continue to confirm my usual experiences with the defenders of the Craig era.
Edward, once again: Of course there's good stuff in the Craig movies. The problem is that they largely ignore and/or distort the one thing that defines everything in Jimbo land: the Bond formula.
Volvagia (and Edward again), be sure that we all wish that Spectre would be the Die Another Day of Daniel Craig.
SPECTRE is nowhere near as bad as DIE ANOTHER DAY. It's not good, but, please, it's not DIE ANOTHER DAY level abomination.
99 HOMES... sigh. Such a good movie. Shame THE BIG SHORT got all the money and the big accolades.
"Diane Keaton earns a paycheck" - isn't that a genre all by itself these days?
DOPE is so, well, dope.