Finally! Part two of the Movie Bomb, just in time for holiday couch potato-ing??

Petite Maman – After some very strange alchemy, a woman staying in her childhood home finds her daughter befriending HER child self in the magic of the forest. Beautiful and contemplative.

Radiance – A photographer, slowly losing his vision, befriends an idealistic woman and creator of audio descriptions for the visually impaired. In their time together, he helps her “see” her words more fluently and see for himself, in a new way.

Relax, I’m From the Future – A lonely man from the 22nd century travels to the 2020s to gain an easy fortune from lottery winnings and sports betting. Unable to go it alone, he befriends a queer black woman to help him. All goes amok when attempting to change the unfolding of events, some catastrophic, and they are hunted by goons from the future. Fun and funny and Rhys Darby. His voice!!

See How they Run – Let me, before I get to it, tell you of my sincere admiration for Sam Rockwell. If he’s in it, I am going to watch it (him?), just because the man is magic!

This is an Agatha Christie style narrative, which includes her very own character in a murderous tale of molotov cocktails, adultery, blackmail, and poison! Let the games begin…

Self Reliance – A man, still reeling from the breakup of his long-term relationship, agrees to participate in a dark web survival game. If he can keep from being murdered(!!) for the next thirty days, he wins one million dollars (said with a Mike Meyers voice – IYKYK, but not really). The one caveat, for the killers, is that he can only be taken down while alone. So, he enlists the help of Craigslist strangers and a homeless man named James in the tip of the iceberg of absolutely unhinged goings on. Thank you, Jake Johnson. I LOVED it!

Society of the Snow – In October of 1972, a plane carrying a Uraguayan rugby team crashes in a remote mountainous area. This is their story, and boy, is it a doozy!

Sometimes I Think About Dying – Fran, great at her job (In Astoria, Oregon! Holla!), terrible with people, and with a vivid inner life envisioning her death in myriad forms, is jostled into reality when a new co-worker seeks out her friendship.

Spaceman – A solitary astronaut on a mission to explore a strange cloud of space dust befriends a telepathic spider who helps him recapture his humanity. Yeah, it’s weird, but also poignant.

Strawberry Mansion – In a bizarre future where dreams are taxed, a tax man travels to the remote Strawberry Mansion for a long overdue audit of an elderly artist. He stays in her home and slowly unravels the truth of the government and his own work, all while falling in love with the beautiful woman in the artist’s dreams.

The Civil Dead – A dead man, visible only to one living person and sort of friend, longs for connection, but the self-absorbed man with a wretched haircut really isn’t having it.

The Midnight Sky – George Clooney plays a scientist who ruminates on life, isolation, choices and their consequences in a post-apocalyptic life of polar frigidity.

The Paragon – This is another of my open in case of melancholy films! It is fun and funny and wholesome. Dutch, a self serving jerk of a man, has a near death experience and wishes to exact revenge on the person responsible for his disablement. Enter Lyra, an expert in psionic power, who is willing to train him to find the vehicle that struck him. Undisciplined and quite childish, he and Lyra are amazed when his abilities blossom, but are later thwarted by her evil brother Haxan. Together, they must unite against his ill intentions to save the day and the world!

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – Based, however loosely, on a real undercover mission to circumvent Nazis off the coast of Africa, a small band of fabulous fighters must sail, undetected, to save the day. Terrific fun!

Viking – A group of aspirational astronauts isolated in a remote area of the countryside mimic the lives of real life explorers millions of miles away as a means of problem solving. Life gets interesting when the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. Super inventive!

Yonder – After his wife dies tragically young, a man is given the opportunity to join her in a different reality.

Why, hello there. I uploaded the pictures for this post, and the one that will follow, two months ago, temporarily forgot about it, then had only intermittent movie thoughts, until now. Today is the day for the first movie bomb!!

All of Us Strangers – Let us begin with something on the strange side, which you know I love. A man returns to his childhood home, only to find his deceased parents, just as they were before they died. He has dinner with them and returns for multiple visits to heal his past. At the same time, a man from his building shows interest in him and they establish a rapport, but not everything is as it seems. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

Disappearance at Clifton Hill – After witnessing the kidnapping of a one-eyed boy near Niagara Falls as a child, a troubled woman decides to investigate as an adult: disturbing truths are revealed and all sorts of chaos ensues. Plus, for the woman who loved a little intrigue as a kid and always wanted a miniature bottle of invisible ink, it is used here. Huzzah!

Freaky – My favorite kind of Vince Vaughn film, a little goofy, a little menacing. A high schooler exchanges bodies with a violent serial killer and must trade back before she is trapped forever in his physical form. So much hilarity (Vince’s voice and body with a teenage girl’s mind!) and mayhem, also serious gore. Steel yourselves…

Frybread Face and Me – A young boy from the city spends the summer on his grandmother’s ranch along with his cousin, who the majority cruelly call Frybread Face. It is a fish out of water tale in which humanity and love are found in abundance.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin – A young man suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy enjoys a rich and complicated life via World of Warcraft, forming close relationships on the platform without revealing his personal truth. After his death, his parents reach out to the gaming community and learn his history. Gah! Have a box of tissues nearby, peeps.

In Her Place – A mother who feels trapped in a thankless marriage gains the luxury of living in the apartment of a woman on trial for murdering her romantic partner. It starts simply enough, accessing the home to retrieve clothes, and progresses by borrowing outfits, spritzing perfume, taking long afternoons, until she leaves her husband and sons for a sense of peace and autonomy, however temporary.

Into the Labyrinth – Not a popular fil-um on the review sites, but one I enjoyed nonetheless. A woman kidnapped and imprisoned in a below ground labyrinth escapes only to be forced into deprogramming via intensely psychological means. Nothing is as it seems!

Italian Studies – A woman loses her memory mid errand run and roams the streets of New York city in search of herself. Can you imagine??

Kajillionaire – Born into a family of heartless paranoid grifters, a lonely young woman yearns for the love and connection her parents are incapable of giving her.

Linoleum – A highly layered drama about an astronomer who aspired for the life of an astronaut but got a barely watched wannabe Bill Nye science show instead. An examination of a complicated family life, wrought in yearning, love, and sometimes, sadness. Some very pleasant surprises.

Ms. White Light – A father-daughter team helps the terminally ill and their families cope, and in some cases, radically fail, with the inevitable end.

Oh Lucy! Another layered tale of longing and depression, misunderstandings, mixed with learning English and travel to foreign lands. Vague enough for ya?

On the Rocks – A ridiculously wealthy smooth talker, serial philanderer, and fiercely loyal and protective father helps his daughter through a rough patch in her marriage.

Pagglait – After only five months of marriage, a woman finds it challenging to grieve the death of her husband, with whom she was not terribly close. Complicating the situation are his deeply grieving parents, who relied on him financially, an insurance payout meant solely for her, and a photograph of a beautiful mystery woman amongst his belongings.

Palm Springs – Hot damn, peeps! This is one of my favorite movies of the past few years, a rather fine open in case of melancholy type, as it brings me quickly to laughter. A couple at a wedding in Palm Springs goes through the stages of grief after learning they are trapped in a time loop together. Some excellent laughs, murder, and pandemonium here, also.

Perfect Days – A man leads a solitary, but not the least bit lonesome, existence as a janitor of some very posh Tokyo toilets. He reads books, listens to cassettes, has deep friendships with trees, nature, and people both known and unknown. An absolute stunner!

I am still very much a paper and pen or pencil type. I have never reached for my phone to make a list or take down an idea. Though I have some pretty luddite tendencies, this is not that. Frankly, I don’t think of my phone in that way (it’s me, not you…) I cannot pinpoint exactly why. I use it for phone calls and the calculator and the occasional internet search. I know it has a greater purpose. Half of the time, when I leave the house, I don’t remember to bring it, more if you count walking the dog. I never bring it then. I can’t tell you how many times Greg has called me when I’m at the grocery to hear the phone ring in the next room. To be fair, when I do remember to bring it and call him, his ringer is usually turned off. Aren’t we a pair?!

I am writing all this because I keep a list of movies written on a piece of paper. It goes from the living room, where I bring it after watching something good, then back to my office. I have shown you my messy desk, so, in an effort to keep it from getting lost, I put it off to one side on this very old wire coil of a file organizer that I’ve had forever. It is probably older than desk top computing and very handy. Unfortunately, I am not always consistent in my organization, and the list got lost in a pile of other business, which got shoved into a basket to be organized later. I finally unearthed it this morning, and for about five minutes thought maybe, just maybe, I should try the whole list on the phone thing. Probably a snowball’s chance and all, but you never know. After all this rigmarole, and hopefully a good chuckle on your part, I have some recent favorites.

Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off – Good gracious. For me, this was all the right things at exactly the right moment. I streamed it twice in two days – no guilt, no shame, all LOVE. The music, the best hair of the eighties, the story of Tony growing up and finding skateboarding (so many amazing photos and videos!!) and much, much later, really finding himself. It was honest and earnest and a pure joy to watch.

The Map of Tiny Imperfect Things – A high schooler gets caught in a Groundhog Day type loop, seemingly all alone, until a girl wreaks a little havoc where she hasn’t been before. Their friendship is fast, and he falls hard for her, but she, always aware of the time, holds back. Why? Fun, inventive, and sweet!

Brittany Runs a Marathon – This is a great transformational story, but not in the fairy tale sense. We meet Brittany and follow her as she begins running. She gets stronger, loses weight, makes good decisions and poor decisions, suffers the cruelty of others. It’s a big ol’ life sandwich – messy and funny and worth the time.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post: A lesbian teen is forced to attend a conversion camp after she is outed on prom night. What follows is both horrifying and touching, as the kids do their best to become “straight” at the direction of camp leaders while trying to understand and honor their true selves.

Our Friend – A young mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and a very dear friend comes to pick up the pieces for the family. He stays well past the point where nearly everyone else has abandoned the family out of discomfort and their own grief, until the bitter end. A tearjerker based on a true story.

Heavy Trip – Turo is a shy, death metal lover in need of a break. He finds it when his band, Impaled Rektum (right?!), is invited to a festival in Norway. It is the ultimate weird and wild underdog road trip story, also utterly implausible, but such good fun!

Pig – What we do for those we love. That’s it. Oh, and bits of Oregon. A treasure.

The Planters – The ultimate eccentric-style story that I L-O-V-E. Really and truly. How to describe? An orphaned woman telemarketer who also plants unusual thrift store items in the desert for money makes friends and enemies while selling air conditioners. Totally inadequate, I know. Watch it anyway. If it makes you even a tenth as happy as it did me, it will be a very good day.

Arab Blues – A Parisian returns to her native Tunisia to set up as a therapist. She struggles initially to find patients, then with government bureaucracy, ideas around femininity, sexuality, and grief. All the things!

The Sunlit Night – A struggling artist gets a job assisting a famous painter in Norway, where she meets a host of colorful characters, dreamers, and oddballs.

Maborosi – After her husband takes his own life, a young mother and their infant son attempt to move forward. She eventually remarries a widow, living a quiet existence by the sea, while still haunted by her first husband’s death. A meditation on grief and life’s unanswered questions.

Woman in Motion – All about the wonderful Nichelle Nicols, her history, and how she championed the integration of NASA. One of those glorious instances when I learn a person I hold in high esteem is even more marvelous (and funny!) than previously believed.