Movie review - "Anaconda" (2025) **1/2

 Starts strong - I loved the filmmaking stuff. Doesn't quite manage the shift to killer monster movie. It's no Piranha, say. Paul Rudd and Jack Black have a high old time. Thandie Newton and Steve Kahn feel underserviced as do the baddies. 

Movie review - "Possession" (1981) ***

 Balls to the wall insanity with Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill going toe to toe. He's a spy, she's his wife, she leaves him for another guy, he goes nuts, she goes nuts. Hard to follow. Mostly interesting.

Movie review - "Spirited Away" (2001) ****

 Bold, imaginative, gripping, all that stuff.

Movie review - "Minecraft" (2025) ****

 A wonderous movie full of imagination and genuine flair. The spirit of Terry Gilliam in the best way. Some of Hollywood's top hams - Jack Black, Jason Mamoa, Jennifer Coolidge - having the time of their lives.

Movie review - Maisie#4 - "Maisie Was a Lady" (1941) **1/2

 MGM offered up a blockbuster cast for this one, which has a strong idea: Maisie has to go to work as a maid for a rich family, where the heir (Lew Ayres) is a drunk and the sister (Maureen O'Sullivan) is engaged to a love rat (Edward Ashley) and the butler is played by C. Aubrey Smith.

The best thing  is the plot about O'Sullivan, who is excellent as a woman driven to suicide. 

But other plots the film doesn't lean into the potentials of its concept. Ann Sothern clashing with rich boy Lew Ayres should be fun but Ayres does his Holiday drunk act which is wearying. I didn't want them to get together. Ayres should have had a woman after him and be a snob and Sothern should impress him. Aubrey Smith should be a snob who melts but he isn't. The dad Paul Cavanagh is neglectful and comes back.

So mixed batch. 

Movie review - "Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues" (1972) **

 Annoying. Dull. What's the point. Is it a comedy, a drama? Not much story.

The highlight is Barbara Hershey taking her top off. But she's a manic pixie dream girl. Robert Lyons is one of those early 70s leading men who got chances because they looked counter cultural. 

John Lithgow is fun as a drug dealing Harvard musical theatre director. 

Perks up at the end when corrupt cop Charles Durning comes in and Cubans and violence. 

Utterly weird Michael Crichton co wrote this original novel but he was actually a little counter cultural around this time with his pro Choice Case of Need and X rated Extreme Close Up. 

Movie review - Maisie#3 - "Gold Rush Maisie" (1940) **

 Maisie gets dropped into a not terribly interesting world - a ghost town in Arizona. Maybe if crooks/spies had been there but it's just grumpy Lee Bowman, another imitation Clark Gable.

The most fascinating thing about it is the presence of some dust bowl refugees courtesy of the lefty screenwriters.  But the movie lacks pace - and villains. There's no love triangle for her to bust up or even romantic rival. She's not even into Bowman going off on her own at the end - which is feminist but feels unsatisfactory.

Maisie digging for gold, literally, should have been fun - colourful characters, conmen, thieves, rogues. But there's none of that just grump Bowman and these perfect peasants. The girl who sang in the cafe instead of her should've been a rival. It needed a murder. Dull.