Jeremy_Urquhart

Swing Girls is just a very endearing movie. It doesn't feel like it was made for younger audiences specifically, but I reckon people of any age would enjoy it.

If you want to compare it to School of Rock, but Jazz instead, then I don't think that's entirely unfair (though it might even be better than that film).

It's fun seeing a group of people get better at whatever they're doing with each given scene. The characters are likeable and the film is just a comfy one to watch. It's also pretty funny when it needs to be.

Also, it captures the chaos of playing in a swing band as a high schooler well. I know from experience. This film feels very authentic, and scores extra points for that.

It's like, yeah, A Song of Ice and Fire is still a pretty imaginative series, but stories like the one told in Queen Margot do make me think George R. R. Martin has really benefited from a very violent history of well-off people at war, killing each other to be "in charge," whatever that might mean.

As a historical drama, this is very good on a technical front. It is a little confusing narratively, but I'm not sure how much is on the viewer to know a little about the history beforehand. I think it would help a lot. As for depicting the frenzy of this particular period of conflict, Queen Margot mostly succeeds. It's intense and at its best when it's not pulling any punches.

Maybe it's a little long, and has a few too many moving parts (I watched the rather stretched-out 160-minute version), but the bulk of this works. It's pretty good.

This title got Edge of Tomorrow'd, didn't it? The movie underperformed, they retitled it, and now online, this sometimes gets called Bound by Honor and sometimes gets called Blood In, Blood Out (the latter, though wordier, is better).

More crime films should exceed three hours in length. You've got The Godfather, Rocco and His Brothers (that one felt especially influential here), Once Upon a Time in America, and Heat (arguably). Blood In, Blood Out might not be quite as great as those, but it's still very good. No one seems willing to fund stories like this on such a scale, though, because even Gangs of New York (directed by Scorsese, who's kind of "the" director when it comes to crime movies) felt cut down; like it was supposed to stretch its wings a little more and exceed three hours.

Anyway, Blood In, Blood Out does stumble a bit in the final act, but I still like some of where it ended up. For at least two hours, I found it pretty engrossing, too. It's a big movie where most of the parts work in-sync with each other, and the end result is an impressive film. It's certainly underrated. It took me a while to watch, and maybe others are like me (daunted by the length), but it's worth it if you have three hours to spare.

Very odd message after the end credits, though. Felt like the kind of thing that would've been at the start of the end credits, if the filmmakers wanted it to be included. It felt studio-mandated, almost like a purportedly positive disclaimer. Very strange, but most people won't see it, so whatever.