Apologies for the delay in this week’s article, but after finishing the Ocean’s trilogy and checking out DC’s new animated adaptation of Watchmen, the Film Vomit crew traveled to the beautiful town of Telluride to attend their very first film festival. Here’s everything we at Film Vomit watched last week:

'Ocean's Thirteen' Warner Bros. Pictures via MovieStillsDB

Ocean's Thirteen (2007)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

David: 7.5/10

Underneath the shimmer of their movie star glamour and their intricate plots, the Ocean’s trilogy is, above all else, an achingly beautiful depiction of male friendship. Perhaps it’s as simple as the camaraderie George Clooney fostered on set (with his trademark pranks) seeping into the celluloid, but the way the Ocean’s crew captures the essence of a real friend group is sublime. They speak their own language, share their inside jokes, and, most importantly, are there for each other when it matters. The impetus for the heist this time—balancing the scales for a member of the team, Elliot Gould’s Reuben—perpetuates the sly melancholy of the trilogy in touching ways. It also fully justifies the absence of Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones—it’s not their fight, after all.

Structurally, Ocean’s Thirteen is more in line with the first film, and as such, it was met with a warmer reception than the misunderstood Ocean’s Twelve, satisfying audience expectations by playing the hits. While this approach may not be as rewarding as Twelve’s meta exploration of the concept of a sequel, what is rewarding is the way Soderbergh (who shot this movie under his alias Peter Andrews, as he did the first two) gleefully experiments with the film’s visual style. You can track the fluidity of Soderbergh’s camera across the three films—each time the plot tightens, the camerawork becomes looser, and vice versa. Ocean’s Thirteen might be the best-looking of the three, with colors popping off the screen as if Soderbergh snuck into your house in the middle of the night and turned the contrast on your display way up. It’s visually stunning and, like the first two films, thoroughly entertaining.

There’s also a surprisingly ahead-of-its-time subplot about Danny and the gang having to contend with an AI monitoring the casino of their target. One might wonder if Soderbergh himself feels like what Roman calls Danny and Rusty in the film: an analog player in a digital world. That label has only become more accurate with each passing year, but God bless Soderbergh and those like him—there are damn few left.

If you loved the first two Ocean’s movies, or just love heist movies in general, you’ll love Ocean’s Thirteen—a strong capper to one of the most consistently delightful trilogies ever made.

'Watchmen: Chapter I' Warner Bros. Animation / Paramount Pictures

Watchmen: Chapter I (2024)

Directed by Brandon Vietti

David: 6/10

The reasons for a third direct adaptation of Alan Moore (or rather, "The Original Writer") and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen continue to elude me. Zack Snyder’s 2009 film Watchmen—while fundamentally misunderstanding the work it was adapting—came within striking distance of being the best live-action version of Moore and Gibbons’ seminal comic that one could hope for. The 2008 motion comic offers the most faithful adaptation, literally animating Gibbons’ panels while a narrator (Tom Stechschulte) provides the voices, allowing audiences to enjoy the story of Watchmen without the hassle of actually performing the pesky act of reading. However, what is fundamentally lost in every Watchmen adaptation is the fact that Watchmen is a comic specifically crafted to maximize the unique advantages of its medium over other art forms. By continuously returning to this revered work, we risk reducing one of the greatest comics ever written to nothing more than a storyboard for a feature film. With that in mind, what does Watchmen: Chapter I have to offer?

Directed by Brandon Vietti—one half of the duo responsible for one of my favorite DC Comics adaptations, the animated series Young Justice—and written by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame, Watchmen: Chapter I adapts the first five of Watchmen’s twelve issues, restructuring certain events to fit its desired narrative. Though the filmmakers made the wise choice to split this adaptation into two parts (Watchmen: Chapter II is slated to come out next year), every line reading feels rushed, with the cast (as talented as they are) racing through this truncated reconstruction. All DC animated movies suffer from their short run times, as the typical 80-90 minutes allotted to these films is never enough to properly adapt the stories they attempt to tell. However, this problem feels even more pronounced with subject matter as dense as Watchmen.

The animation, done by Studio Mir, is more polished than what fans of DC’s direct-to-video animated features have been trained to expect, but its 3D cel-shaded style evokes Marvel’s What If...? series on Disney+ more than it does Dave Gibbons’ beautifully intricate pencils. As a long-time follower of this series of films, I long for the days when there was a concerted effort to ensure that the comic artist’s style was faithfully translated to the film’s animation style. Katee Sackhoff is serviceable as Laurie Juspeczyk / Silk Spectre II, and Titus Welliver does his best Jackie Earle Haley impression as Rorschach, but the standout is Matthew Rhys, who proves to be an inspired choice for Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl II, effectively capturing the character's insecurity.

One would hope that an animated film would find a more seamless way to integrate the “Tales of the Black Freighter” portion of the comic than the live-action film did. While the story-within-a-story does appear in this adaptation, its implementation lacks creativity, failing to take advantage of animation’s potential to blend disparate styles for narrative effect. Instead of animating the “Tales of the Black Freighter” segments in a distinct style, we are treated to an almost first-person point of view as Bernie “reads” the static panels.

If Watchmen: Chapter I has one thing going for it, it's that it pays more visual homage to the fact that this is an alternate history than previous adaptations have. Dr. Manhattan’s preemptive invention of the electric car fills the city streets, while Blade Runner-esque zeppelin billboards float across the skyline.

While Watchmen: Chapter I is a functional adaptation, I implore everyone to just read the comic. It is not only one of the best comics ever written but also one of the greatest works of American literary fiction.

51st Telluride Film Festival

The Film Vomit crew made a pilgrimage to Colorado to commune with the mountains of Telluride for our very first film festival. Between huffing cans of oxygen to cope with the elevation, we watched Morgan Neville’s Lego-animated Pharrell Williams documentary Piece by Piece, Edward Berger’s rip-roaring papal thriller Conclave, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora, Ali Abbasi’s portrait of Donald Trump’s rise to power The Apprentice, Jason Reitman’s real-time depiction of SNL’s first night on air Saturday Night, Jesse Eisenberg’s semi-autobiographical dramedy A Real Pain, and RaMell Ross’ haunting adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel Nickel Boys. Reviews of all the films we saw will trickle out over the coming weeks, along with a recap of all the tips and tricks we learned from our first time attending the festival.

So, that’s everything we watched last week, but we want to know what you’ve been watching! Jump into the Discord and let us know if you’ve seen anything good lately.