34 Movies I Watched in August 2022
I watched a whole lot of movies this month! Thirty-four (34) of them, in fact. I can’t remember the last time I watched this many in such a short period of time. About halfway through watching all these movies, I decided I should keep a list of them all and write them up here on the Content Bash. All of them are/were available on the usual streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and/or Amazon Prime, and almost all of them were first-time viewings for me. If you want to see or buy the movies for yourself, click on the link! Full disclosure: we may get a modest cut if you buy anything through these links, which we’ll use to keep our lights on.
The 5 Best Movies I Saw in August 2022
Licorice Pizza (2021). Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Such a good flick I watched it twice. It is hard to call this the best P.T. Anderson movie when There Will Be Blood is like the best American movie of the 21st century so far but it’s probably the most enjoyable. The scene where Sean Penn runs into Tom Waits is an absolute gas.
Wind River (2017). Directed by Taylor Sheridan. The second Taylor Sheridan flick I’ve seen after Hell or High Water, and the second of his so-called neo-Western American trilogy that he has also screenwritten. Sheridan has already demonstrated a mastery of the genre while depicting the new American west of the 21st century. You would need Paul Bunyan and a goddam sledgehammer to cut the tension in the stand-off scene.
Room (2015). Directed by Lenny Abrahamson. I’m so out of the loop that I had no idea about the plot and I didn’t catch on until like 15 minutes into the movie. I thought they were just like really really poor! Gosh what a sad fucking movie. There are moments in Room that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Get Low (2009). Directed by Aaron Schneider. Boy, I really really liked this one. Robert Duvall is a hermit in 1930s Tennessee who wants to throw a funeral while he is still alive, and Bill Murray and Lucas Black are the undertakers who help him. Duvall so beautifully encompasses a lifetime of shame and regret and yearning and mourning, and Sissy Spacek is tenderly and heartbreakingly superb. Bill Murray is his usual pithy self and brings levity, but also knows better than to try and steal scenes from the master Robert Duvall.
First Blood (1982). Directed by Ted Kotcheff. Holy shit why didn’t anyone tell me the first Rambo is an anti-cop and pro-mental health movie?? Loved it! Five (5) stars. I am not sure I have interest in the sequels, though, given the about-face they reportedly have.
Here Are 4 Biopics I Saw
Cadillac Records (2008). Directed by Darnell Martin. Rock-n-roll biopics are good for the music, and this is no exception. There’s also no shortage of great performances from actors sinking their teeth into icons. Jeffrey Wright, Beyoncé, and Mos Def are obvious highlights, but the criminally underutilized Eamonn Walker steals every scene he is in as Howlin’ Wolf. What a talent that guy is, and I don’t know why he’s not a star.
Get on Up (2014). Directed by Tate Taylor. Shit man. What a talent Chadwick Boseman was. What an actor. What a career we missed out on.
King Richard (2021). Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. This movie will almost certainly be forever tainted because of the Will Smith incident at the Oscars, which certainly overshadows (to put it lightly) the win he scored for Best Actor. Aunjanue Ellis, Demi Singleton, and Saniyya Sidney are all fantastic in their supporting roles and I hope Hollywood doesn’t forget them.
I, Tonya (2017). Directed by Craig Gillespie. Biopics are pretty much always problematic and flawed. It’s hard to condense a person’s life into two hours and there’s always a bias, no matter how hard the filmmakers try or how much they insist there isn’t one. The fourth wall is broken here as Tonya Harding and her ex-husband present dueling points of view while presenting themselves as unreliable narrators. But the problem with biopics — however well-made and well-acted they may be — is that they’re always unreliable narrators, even if they want to be cute and self-aware and acknowledge that. And how comfortable are we with great actors using tragedy and trauma as source material for Oscars? Allison Janney is a queen who absolutely deserved the statue, no doubt, but should abusive people and serial killers and war criminals really be used as inspiration? Regardless, I find biopics endlessly interesting, whether they’re teaching me the story or I’m finding conflicting details in stories I know about, and there is no reason to discourage you from seeing this one. Anyway, check out our list of Facts About I, Tonya.
10 Other Worthwhile Movies Worth Seeing
The Public Enemy (1931). Directed by William A. Wellman. I finally get James Cagney now. I had never seen The Public Enemy or anything he’s been in, really, and now I understand why he was a star. Plot-wise, the movie isn’t anything special but much of the acting is excellent, and even nearly 100 years later, the on-screen charisma and personality of James Cagney is magnetic as hell. You may also remember this movie as the one that gave Tony Soprano a whole lot of feelings in the episode “Proshai, Livushka” from Season 3, Episode 2.
Menace II Society (1993) Directed by the Hughes Brothers. This movie is unflinching, as it should be. It’s something of a companion piece to Boyz N The Hood — which is equally fantastic but remains optimistic despite its tragic ending — but there is nothing optimistic whatsoever about Menace II Society. If anything, it was supposedly tamed down from the Hughes Brothers’ original vision, which at one point included Tupac Shakur before he was fired after fisticuffs on set.
Grey Gardens (1975). Directed by Albert and David Maysles. Finally saw this oft-celebrated documentary. I found it sad and exploitive and hard to watch. Researching after I finished watching the movie, I ended up super interested in the Marble Faun handyman that appears in a few scenes named Jerry Torre. He ended up parlaying the experience with the documentary into an in with the Onassis family that led to a gig as a gardener for the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. Jerry then drove a cab in NYC for 20 years while sculpting on the side until one day after a chance conversation with a customer carrying a camera, he discovered that the director had been looking for him for a long time. Jerry then discovered he was something of a cult figure, and interested was sparked in his artwork. In 2018, Jerry Torre released his memoir The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens: A Memoir of the Beales, the Maysles Brothers, and Jacqueline Kennedy.
Click on the book to buy 
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Directed by Robert Altman. It’s amazing how this movie — based on a 1976 play about 1955 Texas — can be so progressive in its portrayal of a transgender character while also having the character racistly describe the witnesses to their trauma as “Mexicans at a cockfight.” There is also the problematic choice of words Sandy Dennis uses to talk about her special needs son. Still, this Altman flick has legends galore, with Cher, Kathy Bates, Sudie Bond, and Karen Black all supporting the delusional Sandy Dennis character.
Land (2021). Directed by Robin Wright. I’m interested in anything Robin Wright is in so it would stand to reason I’d be interested in her directorial debut. She plays a woman dealing with her trauma by going full Thoreau off the grid and roughing it in isolation somewhere in Wyoming. It’s a very sad movie, and a very good one, too.
Nobody (2021). Directed by Ilya Naishuller. John Wick franchise creator Derek Kolstad penned this gas of an action flick starring Bob Odenkirk as the title character who is revealed to be an ex-government assassin with very John Wick-like skills. Like John Wick, it’s pretty much non-stop action-packed hustle and bustle, and Christopher Lloyd and RZA as his family make it especially fun.
Brooklyn’s Finest (2009). Directed by Antoine Fuqua. This is a heck of an action flick that crams a lot of action and plot lines in 132 minutes, following Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Richard Gere as three NYPD officers with their own different motives and storylines. It’s pretty ambitious yet not super great, but plenty engaging, especially if you like action movies. Above average for the genre.
The Laundromat (2019). Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Something of a companion piece to Adam McKay’s The Big Short in that it “cleverly” helps explain how corporations like to do dirty shit that fucks the rest of us over. In this case, it’s the Panama Papers instead of subprime mortgages. It’s Soderbergh, so you know it’s tight, and the all-star cast doesn’t disappoint. Except for Meryl Streep, who does a character in brown face. Yikes!
Good Morning (1959). Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Cute, sweet film from the auteur of Tokyo Story, which is considered one of the greatest films ever ever made ever. The premise is great: two small kids who go on a silent strike because their parents won’t buy them a television set and create drama amongst the neighbors by appearing rude. The title refers to one kid’s fantastic rant about how adults who participate in meaningless niceties like “good morning” and “how are you” every single day is total bullshit. It’s also wonderful to look at — Yūharu Atsuta did the cinematography and I am copying that name here to remember.
Michael Clayton (2007). Written and directed by Tony Gilroy. A tight, taut, tension-filled legal thriller starring George Clooney, who often pulls the neat trick of being the world’s most relatable handsome bastard. Tom Wilkinson secured one of the film’s many Oscar nominations for his performance (but lost to Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men), which he absolutely deserved for the scene where he goes off his meds and buys a dozen baguettes to carry under his arm.
10 Movies I Watched for the Actor or Director
The Card Counter (2021). Written and directed by Paul Schrader. This is not an easy watch, especially if you are triggered by Abu Ghraib stuff. It’s also not super necessary viewing, unless you’re a fan of the Taxi Driver creator and/or Oscar Isaac. It raises questions for me: how “good” is a movie if you don’t exactly enjoy watching it despite being well-made by people who are excellent at their crafts? I’m not exactly sorry I watched The Card Counter but I do not ever need to see it again.
Above the Rim (1994) and Gang Related (1997). Directed by Jeff Pollack and Jim Kouf, respectively. Bunching these two together because of Tupac Shakur. These movies are not great (though the latter has some fun casting choices that act as plot twists), but Tupac’s presence in both is absolutely magnetic. What charisma he had. What a star.
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991). Directed by Simon Wincer. As a big Mickey Rourke fan, boy, what a big disappointment. Even the stars of the movie did not care for this, and Rourke is on record as saying this movie was the beginning of his decline. If you’re looking for the guy from The Pope of Greenwich Village or Barfly or Angel Heart or Diner, you will only see hints of him here. A very young Giancarlo Esposito and and his sidekick Big John Studd are highlights.
Lords of Flatbush (1974). Directed by Martin Davidson and Stephen F. Verona. A coming-of-age greaser flick where nothing much at all happens, but remains of interest because of early appearances from Henry Winkler and Sylvester Stallone, as well as Mean Streets-esque low-budget New York City film aesthetic. The blueprint for The Fonz is here in this movie, and Richard Gere was fired during rehearsals! Sylvester Stallone has a writing credit for “additional dialogue,” probably from the scene on the roof where he is obviously riffing and improv-ing and trying to pump some much-needed life into what’s a very flimsy film.
Colors (1988). Directed by Dennis Hopper. Cop movies are not exactly my favorite kind of content these days, but I wanted to make an exception for the guy who made Easy Rider like 20 years before. If this 35-year-old movie feels contemporary, it’s because nothing about how the police police communities of Black and Brown people has changed. Raise your hand if you knew Don Cheadle was getting third billing in major movies in 1988, though. I sure didn’t.
Savages (2012). Directed by Oliver Stone. Taylor Kitsch’s star sadly continues to plummet after John Carter and Battleship and that awful season of True Detective. Even the lesser Oliver Stone flicks are usually entertaining enough to justify their running time but neither Salma Hayek nor Benicio Del Toro cannot salvage Savages.
Sexy Beast (2000). Directed by Jonathan Glazer. This bored me. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be so great about it. It’s possible my stilted viewing of the movie that took place over a few days with other movies in-between influenced in my opinion but this dragged for me. Ben Kingsley scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination here, but I can’t help but suspect it may be because people really like hearing British actors swear colorfully.
St. Vincent (2014). Directed by Theodore Melfi. Old man Bill Murray is practically its own genre right now, and this one fits in neatly next to Broken Flowers and Lost in Translation. If you like that genre, then you will find plenty to like here.
Willy’s Wonderland (2021). Directed by Kevin Lewis. Nicolas Cage is trapped inside an abandoned and haunted Chuck E. Cheese-like entertainment center and has to kill the animatronic characters to survive? Sign me up! It is exactly what you’d probably expect, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing if those expectations are in check.
The 5 Other Miscellaneous Films I Saw
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991). Directed by Stephen Herek. I’ve seen this plenty of times growing up, and thought to revisit this after seeing a Twitter thread of people who found this movie empowering when they were young women. Indeed, the protagonist Christina Applegate gets her shit together and more than holds her own in Corporate America, with Joanna Cassidy as her mentor and boss giving her all the support in the world. The movie holds up in that regard, and it’s enjoyable to watch an early Eurotrashy David Duchovny try to chew what little scenery he can get his hands on.
The Big Chill (1983). Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Kevin Costner played the dead body.
Wanderlust (2012). Directed by David Wain. I wrote this down on my list as a movie I watched and I keep having to look it up to see what it even was. Completely unmemorable. A comedy that is not very funny despite the presence of many funny people. Even a “bad” comedy can have great laugh-out-loud bits but I am straining to remember a single thing here. Maybe I should start taking notes while watching the movie.
Reign Over Me (2007). Written and directed by Mike Binder. I kinda knew what I was getting into here, but I’m a sucker for Adam Sandler movies: the good, terrible, and mediocre. This one falls pretty close to terrible, mostly because of an overwritten screenplay that includes the inappropriate and irrelevant presences of Liv Tyler and Saffron Burrows, though through no fault of their own.
A Cry in the Dark (1988). Directed by Fred Schepisi. Oh boy. Has the meaning and gravity of any movie been so efficiently and effectively ended from an oft-quoted bit like “The dingo took my baby!”? What a terrible thing to have happened to the Chamberlain family but I couldn’t take this movie seriously at all because all I think of was Elaine Benes.
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