MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE CLIMB (2019)

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(Hint: most of the posters will enlarge if you click on them.)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Friday, August 22, 2025

THE CLIMB (2019)

With a new film out (SPLITSVILLE/’25), multitasker Michael Angelo Covino earns a look at his best known previous work. Co-writing & co-starring with Kyle Marvin (Covino directs), CLIMB fits into the indie-Mumblecore/Cringe-Comedy movement, shadowing 30-something pals celebrating & rebelling against their bond at every opportunity. (The film opportunistic as hell.) Naturally, since he directs, Covino’s the Alpha male, always butting in on love & marriage, health & career with negative energy. Marvin pushes against him, but his actions prove helpless in a can’t live with him/can’t live without him hug of mutual co-dependancy. The thrust might be sadder-but-wiser . . . if anyone ever wised up. That’s the joke as breaking up individual growth (even love & marriage) is Covino’s modus operandi. Not even a near death experience sees a course change. Just bear in mind, it’s the type of film that plays infinitely better seen in the midst of film festival fodder as contrast to navel-gazing platitudinous sincerity and the painfully obvious.* Without them, Covino’s efforts come off as pretty small beer.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Kelly Reichardt brings award-winning seriousness rather than uncomfortable laughs to a similar relationship in her well received OLD JOY/’06 https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/old-joy-2006.html

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Friday, August 22, 2025

THE CLIMB (2019)

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