“Midsomar” wasn’t a comedy - but it sure was (intentionally) funny. “D’uh - a drawing of a bear being burned alive, and right in front of where I’ve been seated too, ain’t that somethin’.”

As much as the “It would have worked if not for the horror!” types? How about the “Piper Laurie thought she was in a COMEDY!” types?

It really does depend on the venue...there’s a local independent theater to which I had to always remember earbuds to block out the sound which was regularly so loud that it distorted dialogue and music.

It was a long-time dream project for Beatty, for some reason, so nobody but him was going to play it, but agreed; he was a great big zero at the center of the movie. His affectless demeanor and non-reactive reactions were great for a lot of things, but not Dick Tracy. Josh Brolin seems the obvious choice now, but of…

All that squawking about Halle Berry...morons. Eartha Kitt indeed!

Jan Hooks - god I loved her. Everything she did was gold: “Bitch shot me in the face!!”

I actually read the book first, before the movie was made. I was in high school and a voracious reader, and I remember thinking “Interesting; this is, I think, not a very good novel.” There are some details that have stuck with me though, like a character’s room being redecorated “like something out of a Sydney…

That’s an excellent take on the movie, thank you for posting it. I saw Joker last night and thought the same thing - lots of gritty, serious window dressing, lots of drab, lots of desperation, with zero point to it or illumination provided by it. At some point it just became ridiculous to me (for me that point was his…

I’d never even heard of the Margaret O’brien version, which showed up last Thanksgiving while I was at my sister’s. I thought it was great - they pushed the spooky, Gothic qualities of the story just enough, having her isolated in the mysterious house full of secrets. Then she found the garden, and it turned lush and…

I know, somehow that makes it even weaker - like, that’s the scariest thing the human mind can comprehend, a giant spider from outer space?

Exactly, and I hadn’t really thought of that from reading the book - that Pennywise actually had the ability to make you laugh. Tim Curry brought that to the role, which I was completely not expecting.

Really - I saw the mini for the first time right before Chapter 1 of this adaptation, and was just blown away by Tim Curry. Even though I knew how great he was in general, he was good almost beyond words in this - I was expecting him to be, you know, menacing and creepy and all those things, but somehow I wasn’t…

“Midsommar” did not feel like a particularly long movie at. All. Which was no mean feat.

“Giant cosmic spider beast” sounds a lot better than “giant spider from outer space”, which is how it always came across to me. Still - it’s stupid. 

Well jeez, I was underwhelmed by the first movie and had no real desire to see this before, but now I kind of do. It sounds like the kind of thing that Sam Raimi use to pull off so well - scary, gross, grosser, oh my god are you effing kidding, this is hilarious. 

“Typewriter”???

I must be crazy and wrong and deserving of my life.

It’s definitely a learning process, and accepting that some people just won’t like what you do is not easy - it takes practice not to internalize others’ opinions and actions, especially when the opinions are coming from inside. Even identifying and separating the internal voices from the external can be difficult,…

And lots of Love Boat and Fantasy Island episodes, as I recall. RIP, she was always a familiar and welcome face on the TV (seriously, for whatever reason I always looked forward to an appearance by her).

I’ll join the chorus - great piece, A.A., thank you for sharing it. I get it. If I had a dollar for every time an adult said they’d like to take me home...each time I was like “Yes, maybe this time”. If I never hear another relative tell me as an adult, with ponderous and self-important regret, “Well, you had a tough…