✅ Godfather reference
✅ Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy reference
✅ Made by a real director of sight and sound with narrative focus to the story and not a million set ups for movies being pre-vis’d to death 3 years before a single crew member is hired.

The narrative might not have the payoffs Reeves thinks it does, but literally everything else about The Batman is done to perfection, unrivaled in this subgenre since the caped crusader’s spiritual predecessor of Bale…

I need you. And I love you.

While I still get caught up in the mafia politics, the character interactions and immaculate story construction, these last few watches I have thought more about the thematic element of America in these movies.

Of course it starts with the big speech, but I like how the theme of the Corleone’s assimilation into the country is woven in in subtle ways, with Kay, and Michael’s admission to her in the quote above, as…

Masterpiece.

"It's a door closing."

I haven't been able to get that small, throwaway line from Florence Pugh's character out of my head, because the brilliance of this film is in that inversion.

Perhaps the thing I love most about Oppenheimer is how Nolan spends so much of the film opening doors.

Doors that lead into and out of Oppenheimer's mind, forcing the audience to reckon with what he reckons with, compartmentalize what he has to compartmentalize, and due to…

Need to see it again before I grade. Until then I leave you with this:

“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result...I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised. I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things re contextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater…What I’m aiming for every time…