🎬 “He’s invisible, that’s what’s the matter with him.”

What a week! After more than five years, yesterday was my last day working at Vox Media. I’m going to try to take today off (maybe watch a movie or two), but I’m working on something new that I can’t wait to share with you. Watch this space.

Shakespeare in Love is a passable fictionalization of how William Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet, but its triumph at the 1999 Oscars is reflective of Hollywood at its most corrupt.

This is a blandly directed, extremely unsubtle movie. It has a killer cast that includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Colin Firth, and Geoffrey Rush, but none of the actors — save for Judi Dench, who plays Queen Elizabeth I — are able to elevate the predictable script. I could recognize, while watching this movie, that it wanted me to enjoy its many gettable references to Shakespeare’s plays, but instead, it left me feeling like I’d watched a mediocre episode of Family Guy set in early modern Europe.

(How does an adequate movie like this win Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan? Blame convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein.)

Let’s end on something nice. Uh … the costumes are good! Skip this and watch West Side Story again instead. ★★★

I watched Shakespeare in Love on DVD, but it’s currently streaming on Starz and DirecTV.

Filmed in gorgeous black and white, Ed Wood is a tribute to Hollywood weirdos from one of our most popular weirdos working today, Tim Burton.

A very young Johnny Depp plays Wood, full name Edward D. Wood, Jr., who made the exploitation film Glen or Glenda and the so-bad-it’s-good sci-fi Plan 9 from Outer Space. Much like The Disaster Artist and Dolemite is My Name, this is a meta-Hollywood movie that mines a cult entertainer’s career for universally relatable truths, and it succeeds admirably.

The cast is stacked: In addition to Depp, you have Bill Murray, Sarah Jessica Parker, and — most importantly — Martin Landau as frequent Wood collaborator and former Dracula star Bela Lugosi. He is really good. I loved the sympathetic eye with which Burton captures Wood and Lugosi’s loneliness and the contrasting ways the two men try to find some solace in a world that doesn’t understand them. Recommended. ★★★★

I watched Ed Wood on Apple TV, and it’s not currently streaming for free anywhere. But you can rent or buy it here.

The Invisible Man has surprisingly good effects for 1933, and a lead performance by Claude Rains that reminded me at times of Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker from The Dark Knight. For that performance alone, this movie is worth seeing.

Based on the H.G. Wells novel, it starts off a little silly — there’s a loud family that runs an inn in rural England, a clueless cop, a mad scientist who’s been missing for a month, and a doting woman waiting for him to come back. The descent into darkness, which we’re told is what’s happening to Rains’ mental health, is quick and brutal.

I didn’t get especially invested in William Harrigan’s Professor Kemp or the other side characters here, but I didn’t need to. More than Dracula or Frankenstein, which I appreciated more than I enjoyed, The Invisible Man actually feels like a menace. Recommended. ★★★½

I watched The Invisible Man on Blu-Ray, but it’s currently streaming on Peacock and IndieFlix.

(new additions in bold)