Movie Details
| Title: | Hubie Halloween | |
| Director: | Steven Brill | |
| Year: | 2020 | |
| Genre: | Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.12.20 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Drillbit Taylor
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.12.20 | Netflix | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2020 Here's where I'm at with Adam Sandler movies these days. They are somewhere between junk food and frozen tv dinners: They are very easy, in some cases enjoyable, and have their place in the cinematic landscape. And there's nothing wrong with them as long as they're not the only thing you eat. This was a perfectly pleasant good time of a film... not particularly funny, not particularly original, not particularly anything except it's clear, as always, that everyone is having a good time and it's fun to hang out with these people. Not that anyone acted particularly well, but Julie Bowen could've used a lot more direction in a lot of her scenes. And why a cajun had 5 generations of ancestors in Salem, Mass. is a little strange... but really who cares. Halloween is fun, yabba-dabba gobbledy-goo Sandler is fun, all the usual suspects are fun, Steve Buscemi, as always, is the best part, and after sitting through a 130-minute Charlie Kaufman exercise this was both more than welcome and a fitting end to the fest. I'm glad I watched it. And that's a wrap on the largest DVRfest to date, beating out the second one by one Hubie Halloween. And that's with a shit-ton of more-than-two-hour running times. It's almost comical how difficult it was to carve out this time though, and that's with being off work during a pandemic where we're not leaving the house. It seemed like every day would bring some new distraction that needed to be taken care of and I don't think there was a night where I got to my second film before 8:30. Of course, that's with sleping in till 2pm so... whatever. What I'm trying to say is that finding just 4 days once a year is difficult. That's not to say I don't have more free time than, say, anyone with kids... but it is still a far cry from the glory days of 2006. I think maybe I'm also beating Peter Bogdanovich by this point? I no longer remember how long he kept his index cards but this marks my 16th year keeping this site. At this point, I doubt that I'll ever make a Last Picture Show, but I'm alright with that. I still love movies and love watching movies, even if I do far less of it these days. Speaking of, without a Fantastic Fest to pad my numbers, I bet 2020 will be an all-time low in terms of stats. That's not all my fault though. I do think there is a trend that's happening with Hollywood where there just aren't as many attractive movies coming out for me. The Streaming/television landscape is booming and I'm watching 30-60 minutes of grade-A content every day during my lunch break. It's just TV which this journal doesn't cover. I do still have quite a pile of unwatched old DVDs and there's always a world of choices out there just waiting for me to want to watch them, but the ease, quantity, and quality of long-format options has gotten me out of that habit. Maybe the winds will blow a new direction in at some point and modern films will get more interesting again, but the studios are in a bit of dire straits in my opinion. Even huge tentpole franchises like Marvel and Star Wars are moving to streaming shows so studios can get that subscription money. It's like the movie industry is finally learning from the gaming industry and going toward its equivalent of micro-transactions now that the home dvd/blu market is dying out. There will always be the surprise hits every once in a while but I can't remember the last time average week-to-week releases had any consistent quality. The numbers: 21 movies in the past week (3/day), 23 in the past month (0.77/day), 58 in the past year (ouch. 0.16/day), 3033 movies seen 3285 times since this site started (0.56/day). Two months (january & October(!)) had 0 films, 3 months only had 1. That's basically half the year I didn't watch movies. We are a long way away from the 2/day average I once held. Sobering. But whatever... enough bumming out. This last four days was quite fun. I liked nearly everything I watched, and most of it was relatively new. Even if Fantastic Fest doesn't come back or I stop attending, DVRfest will always be here. |
