#2,364: The Verdict

Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse - ★★★★★
I've been to a couple of festival screenings of the movie.  We had one at the San Diego Comic Fest and another at a festival here in LA that doubled as a cast and crew screening.  I still like seeing what parts audiences enjoy.  The LA screening was unusual because there was so many cast and crew in attendance that the audience was a little too hot; their laughs stepped all over jokes the regular audiences enjoy.

Alien - ★★★★★
Watched alongside reading the book of production designer Roger Christian, Cinema Alchemist. The movie remains a classic. The book was badly in need of an editor.

Doctor Strange - ★★★½☆
On a rewatch, I was really pleased with how much more filmic, more cinematic, Dr. Strange is than other, similar movies.

I was wrong when I originally guessed that it would be set in the recent past (in order to make it make sense when he's name dropped in Winter Solider), but I'm going to try again by predicting Strange gets into it with Star Lord about when some song from the 70s charted.

The Verdict - ★★★½☆
Man, Lumet, Mamet, Newman.
You know that ridiculous trailer for House of Games, where "David Mamet writes the way people speak" (even though nobody in that movie sounds anything like a human)? It's movies like this one that got all that praise. Plus, I like the way they slow play a reveal so long that you might start to think it's not coming. I feel like the pacing is more a product of its time, but if you did it today it would seem deft.