We’re Back (In School)

Happy September! August was all too brief, but a wash in terms of movies. Well, mostly. At least it was a wash to the good side.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t believe summer’s over. Well, I should rephrase that. Vacation is over, but the summer weather is still going strong. We’re still getting century temperatures in my neck of the woods, which is completely normal for this time of year and it’s pretty typical for warm weather to go on until October, and then it’s on to the wild and crazy fall and winter stuff. Lots of people have told me they’re ready for cooler weather, though, and I concur.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that we’ll be trying something new on the blog: A paid subscription service! I’ve been wanting to do movie-related recipes on here for a long time, but we all know that unscrupulous types with sticky fingers are out there, and I didn’t want to expose these recipes to everyone because most of them will be original or personal to my family. The first one will be up the day after the next Cooking With the French Chef post, so watch this space.

Now, I’m not sure how much the subscription will cost, but I don’t plan on doing tons of paywalled posts so it shouldn’t be too much (I hope). I’ll let you all know when it gets closer to time. Taking Up Room will still be completely free otherwise, but this will just be something extra, and since I have no idea what I’m doing, we’ll be experimenting together. We’ll see what happens.

All right, without further ado, here are my top theatrical releases for this month and one documentary. As usual, click on the images for the Substack review.

It Ends With Us

I hesitated to include this movie because although it was a bit surface-y and substandard, it was also a bit hard to watch. Boston florist Lily Bloom gets involved with a neurosurgeon named Ryle who turns out to be abusive, and this two-hour-plus-change movie deals with her efforts to get away from him. Fortunately, she has help in her high school boyfriend and fellow Boston transplant, Atlas, and her friends.

It Ends With Us means well, but the execution is sloppy because it fails to show how insidious abusive relationships can be, but for those who have been there may find themselves filling in the blanks. It’s not a fun experience even if it ends on a good note. Still, it does tackle an important topic that should get more attention and doesn’t.

On the bright side, it’s fun watching Lily carry off a very sparkly, studded wardrobe with aplomb, and that includes the fishnets.

Trap

The father-daughter dynamic is all over the place here, as M. Knight Shyamalan made Trap with his daughter, Saleka playing a singer named Lady Raven, plus the basic plot is a guy, Cooper, taking his teenaged daughter, RIley to a concert. Only the concert is a front for a huge manhunt, as Cooper is secretly a vicious serial killer known as “The Butcher.”

While the movie’s not bad, it’s not as good as it could be. In comparison to other films in the Shyamala catalogue, it’s way better than After Earth or The Last Airbender, but not as masterful as Signs and not as fun as The Happening. Hayley Mills makes a pretty meaty cameo as an FBI profiler, though, so that’s cool. And ironic coming from a star who made a name for herself in such films as The Parent Trap. See what Shyamalan did there?

There’s a bit of fatherly naval-gazing, too. Not only does Trap prominently feature Saleka Shyamalan, but when the FBI drives under an underpass on their way to the concert venue, a building in the background sports a banner for The Watchers.

The World’s Greatest Fair

This year is the one-hundred twentieth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase Expedition, the fair that people still talk about over a century later. This excellent documentary presents a very well-rounded survey of the event, from the food to the tech to the attractions to the cultural significance. St. Louis had seen the whopper of a fair Chicago had put on at the last fair and very much wanted to outdo them.

While it’s hard to say if Chicago was outdone, the 1904 fair was certainly impressive. The Ferris wheel, which was the first of its kind, was brought in from Chicago to grace the St. Louis fair and it was hugely popular, with a restaurant in one car and a wedding chapel in another.

The documentary also does a bit of mythbusting, namely with the foods served at the fair. Ice cream cones and iced tea, long claimed to have been invented at the 1904 World’s Fair, weren’t necessarily conceived there, as other sources show they already existed when the fair happened. Oh well.

Alien: Romulus

The original is still the best, of course, in my opinion, but the new one is still a straight-ahead summer blockbuster movie, and it’s got a lot of great moments. It’s fun watching the characters sneaking around on an old abandoned space station and wondering what bit of homage they’re going to let loose next.

Some things don’t quite work out, namely, the AI bit where the characters manage to reanimate an android named Rook, who looks remarkably like Ash from the original movie. Yeah, they did an AI version of Ian Holm. It’s not only a bit creepy and weird, but after a while it’s unclear whose side this guy is on.

Other than that, Romulus is pretty entertaining and not a bad pick for Movie Night

Blink Twice

Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut was by far the best movie I saw in August based on the creativity factor alone. Sure, it’s built around a premise that’s been done many, many times, but it’s filmed very deftly and thoughtfully. It also gets pretty violent and a little disturbing towards the end, so if anyone gets triggered by that sort of thing, well, you all know what to do.

The cast in the film is fantastic. We’ve got Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Geena Davis, Naomi Ackie, Haley Joel Osment, Adria Arjona and Alia Shaw, just to name a few, and everyone plays everything to the hilt.

Blink Twice only fumbles when it tries to relate itself to the #MeToo movement, which it doesn’t do explicitly within the film, but the filmmakers have said that’s what the film is about. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t need it. It should just stand on its own.

---

All right, that’s August. September might be a good one, but we’ll see. It’ll be varied and probably unexpected, that’s for sure. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you on Wednesday for a new Cooking With the French Chef post…

---

If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please subscribe to my Substack page, where you’ll find both free and paid subscriber-only reviews of mostly new and newish movies, documentaries, and shows. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday.