Woody Harrelson Film Festival

If you're not familiar with Andrew Lloyd Webber's seminal classic, Starlight Express,  it's likely we've never met, for hardly a conversation goes by in which I do not find the opportunity to bring it up. Under the unlikely circumstances that you are not familiar with the piece, I'll offer a brief description, and then, assuming that your interest has been suitable peaked, leave you to do further research on your own.  Starlight Express is a 1984 masterpiece from the mind of the one and only Andrew Lloyd Webber, creator of such hits as Cats , Jesus Christ Superstar , The Phantom of the Opera , and  The Phantom of the Opera' s sequel, Love Never Dies , which, naturally, takes place at Coney Island. Starlight Express  is the first musical which was ever performed fully on rollerblades. Why does every single actor in the show wear rollerblades, you ask? The answer, really, is quite simple—they're all trains! While Starlight Express wasn't a major hit in the...

People are always asking me, "Fiona, why, on your quest to watch every Woody Harrelson movie, are you including movies that you absolutely know you will hate, and that Woody is only in for two seconds, appearing as himself, in the last minute of the movie? Wouldn't it be easier to simply find clips of Woody's performances in these movies rather than subjecting yourself to the grueling two hours it would take to watch the whole thing?" I'd like to answer their questions with a few of my own: How will I truly understand Woody's performance in such movies if I don't watch the whole thing? Would a true fan of Woody Harrelson not subject themselves to the greatest pain to support him? How could I claim to be the world's foremost Woody Harrelson expert if I did not watch the entirety of every movie that he appears in? The answers to these questions are, respectively, "I couldn't!" "They would!" and "I couldn't!" So here ...

Before this, the only Adam Sandler movie I'd ever seen was Uncut Gems . I wish I'd kept it that way! Despite the fact that a rousing Stephen Sondheim number always has the power to trick me into thinking I liked a movie when I really didn't (it happened with Marriage Story , and I suspect it shall happen with Joker ), I do not intend on letting good old Steve and the worst song from West Side Story get the best of me this time. This movie sucked.

I assumed from this docudrama's title that it wouldn't be a docudrama at all, but rather a heist movie about stealing Seattle's famed needle. But docudrama it was, and I could not have been more pleased! As much as this fusion of entertainment and education might appall my 10th grade history teacher, I actually quite enjoyed it.  Very sad to see Woody like this! In this, the third movie where Woody has acted as a cop in my journey thus far, he's tasked with keeping protests against the 1999 WTO conference in check. These protests, which were meant to be peaceful, quickly spiral out of control once police officers begin inciting violence (very timely indeed!). Woody's character's wife is pregnant with a baby, and ends up getting absolutely smacked by a night stick and the baby dies. It's not until Woody has to contend with this personal loss that he starts to think that maybe, cops are... bad? It's nice that he comes to this realization, but one would hop...