Jamie Lammers
Stories (150/0)
Casanova Review
This review comes straight from my Letterboxd profile, a place where I review every film and limited series that I happen to watch. This was one of the first reviews that I wrote for the website, and it was one of the first times that I remember feeling confident in my ability to actually review movies. Check out my profile if you're interested in more reviews like this and to see the actual order in which I write them, since I'm posting them to my Vocal page completely out of order.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
Billie Eilish: The World's A Little Blurry Review
This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I write reviews like this of every movie I see. I got a free trial of AppleTV+ just for this documentary, okay, don't judge me! It was so worth it! Now listen, I actually originally didn't want to see this film. It wasn't because I don't like Billie Eilish -- on the contrary, she's one of my favorite artists to listen to currently and one of my favorite currently working artists (I love when the swapping around of words brings two entirely different meanings). I love pretty much every single one of her songs (although there are some I just find less interesting than others), I adore her live performances (yes, including her Oscar performance), her brother Finneas is a genius when it comes to producing and songwriting, and come after me if you want, but in my opinion, she and Finneas earned every single Grammy they've been nominated for. So why didn't I want to see this movie if I'm such a big fan of Eilish? Because in general, the marketing made it seem like another run-of-the-mill artist-struggles-with-fame-and-touring documentary that, sure, is entertaining to watch once but doesn't really have any lasting impact beyond that. There's been a pretty recent trend of these films lately, and I don't know, I just got burned out from how many came out at once even though I admittedly haven't seen that many of them.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Beat
Stargirl Movie Review
This comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I write reviews of every movie I watch. There's a particular reason why I wanted to see this film when I got Disney+. Stargirl, as a book, means a lot to me. I don't remember many specific elements from the book, but I remember the plot generally enough. It's the experience I had with it that really made it memorable for me. It was my sixth-grade year, and our LA teacher read this book to us for class. I was so invested in the relationship between Leo and Stargirl that I remember being annoyed when I found out I had taken a sick day when my teacher read the chapter where their relationship actually initiated. There was something about this fictional relationship (and fictional relationships in general) that stuck with me, probably because I was so focused on wanting my own relationship and dreamt that I would immediately find someone like that and have an incredible relationship with them and all that nonsense. Of course, that's not how middle school or even high school relationships go, but that's how my brain saw it. In fact, in a lot of ways, I think I'm still struggling with the fanciful ideas of being in a relationship vs. the actual reality of how one begins. I could go on for hours about all of this stuff, but that's not what you came here for. Even though they're related to my thoughts on both the book and the movie, they're not the point of this review. You want to hear my thoughts on the movie, so let's talk about the movie.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Review
This review is for the theatrical cut of the movie released on the 2003 limited edition DVD set of the trilogy, which I happen to own. I may review the special edition contained on that DVD at a later date, but for now, here's my review of the original theatrical cut, which comes from my Letterboxd profile.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Futurism
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile Review
This review talks about things that happen throughout the film (including the ending) but does not go into incredible detail about what exactly happens in these events. Because of that, I am going to give a warning for minor/somewhat major spoilers for this review.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
Close-Up Review
This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review every film I see. How in the world do you describe something like this? It's pretty difficult, to be honest, but Close-Up is unlike any film I've ever seen. I suppose the idea of a film that combines real footage with reenactments isn't something that's not all that new in concept, but when even the reenactments are portrayed by the real people who experienced these events, the film takes on a whole new meaning that other documentaries like this wouldn't be able to nail. It blends together these reenactments and the real footage so seamlessly that I genuinely couldn't tell which scenes were re-shot or not until after the end of the film when I looked it up. Sure, I could have made a good guess at which ones were real and gotten it right, but even the scenes that in retrospect I can tell are reenactments still feel so authentic that it never feels like they are. This film captures this event in such a raw, palpable way. It covers everything from inherent attachment to art to self-identity to the ways we express ourselves to the grey area between legal and moral and even human nature as a whole. It does that by constantly allowing each principle player to explain their side of the story, even when it's flawed, even when it doesn't always add up. There are exchanges of dialogue in this movie involving the making of movies and acting and bringing a film to life that I think in literally any other context might come across as some of the most pretentious dialogue ever put to film. In fact, there are so many ways in which the ideas in this movie are assembled could have come across as pretentious, narcissistic, and completely hollow -- if the entirety of the movie was reenactments and only SOME of the real people played themselves, if certain scenes that were written as reenactments were slightly altered in dialogue to get a point across, etc. However, not only are the majority of the scenes that involve some of this dialogue COMPLETELY UNSCRIPTED and therefore completely genuine, the scenes that are reenactments never feel like they condescend to the audience's intelligence. This is a movie where you can get away with exposition by just having the characters say it, because not only is it a real trial with real people talking about their real motives, but even in the reenacted interviews, the aspects of the individual that every person talks about in this movie is something that no one would want to get across by making it complicated or filling every one of their words with symbolism. They would want to explain their thoughts to the point, no dodging around it, this is how they feel and this is what they know and it never comes across as anything but authentic. Not once.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
The Midnight Sky Review
This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review every movie I watch. You know what, looking at all of the reviews for this movie, I honestly expected it to be liked a lot more than it is. I gotta be honest, this film is probably more of a three-star movie narratively than a four-star one. The green screen is laughably noticeable at times, the narrative is pretty predictable when you really start to think about it, and there are definitely some intricacies between the character interactions that are kind of glossed over here. However, I honestly have to say that I really didn't hate a single choice that this film made, and I even thought quite a few of the choices it made were fantastic. I absolutely adored the exploration of this dystopian universe, seeing the different technology that exists during this time and how it so naturally integrates into the character's lives. I frankly think the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and the atmosphere of this movie is really palpable throughout -- you can feel the cold of the poles and the peace of the night sky as it envelops itself around you, and I just adored that feeling.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Geeks
The Witch Review
This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I write reviews like this for every movie I see. So, funny story before I get into this review, in order to watch The Lobster, I had to sign up for a 7-day free trial of Showtime through Amazon Prime. You better believe I'm utilizing those 7 free days to the best of my ability, so you're gonna be seeing a spike in reviews from me over the next couple of days as I skim through Showtime's catalog to see what I've been wanting to watch for a long time and now can because of this free trial. Man, to think all of this started because of my confusion over a Dua Lipa music video (check my previous review if you want to read what I'm talking about). Okay, enough funny business, on with the serious review.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Horror
Star Wars: A New Hope Review
This review is for the theatrical cut of the movie released on the 2003 limited edition DVD set of the trilogy, which I happen to own. I may review the special edition contained on that DVD at a later date, but for now, here's my review of the original theatrical cut, which comes from my Letterboxd profile.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
Hereditary Review
This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I write movie reviews like this for every film I see. With the reputation this film has received over the years, I assumed that Hereditary was going to be a film that purposefully confused you from the first scene, never concretely explaining its twists and turns to you and forcing you to figure it out yourself. It might require some individual thinking time after seeing the film or it might require a second watch, or even a third or a fourth. I've found those kinds of movies more and more fascinating over the years, and since I've been hearing great things about this one for three years, I wanted to finally check it out. In my opinion, this film is not a purposefully confusing film. For the majority of the runtime, the sequential events that occur in this film felt natural to me, even though they were consistently unsettling. It wasn't until the last 40 minutes or so of this movie where the meaning of the entire story starts to take shape that I realized that this was yet another unconventional horror film brought to you by the independent geniuses at A24 that continue to greenlight and distribute original and unique films like this.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans
How My Amateur Footage Got Into a YouTube Documentary
You never know what random opportunities can come from browsing social media. I stumbled upon one of these opportunities in the summer of 2020. While I was browsing Instagram, an ad popped up that caught my eye. It was from YouTube, encouraging people to film their lives for potential inclusion in a brand new documentary film, Life in a Day 2020. The film is a direct sequel to Life in a Day, released in 2010. The original film was distributed by National Geographic, released on YouTube, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Kevin McDonald, and also includes Ridley Scott as the executive producer. Now, after the insanity that resulted from COVID-19, the creators of the original film wanted to come back and create a time capsule from a single day in the life of the world: July 25, 2020.
By Jamie Lammers3 years ago in Humans