Annoying / endearing British character actors lining up for a seat at the table, though a few gags do admittedly land. The little bear’s voice like butter melting on toast!
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American Sniper 2014
Eastwood manages to unearth beauty and inspiration from the tragedy of war and the horrors of its aftermath. The machinery of war chewed up Chris Kyle and he dedicated his life to ensuring its victims weren’t left behind.
Insanely moving <3 God bless the troops and God bless America 🇺🇸
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Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point 2024
“Terrorists win! Democracy has fallen.”
Not my cup of tea, even if I find its attempt to excavate a kind of Bush-era pre-Obama ontology from the traditional American Christmas movie incredibly admirable.
Its structure - pointillist and elliptical - is going to make or break it for you. I think because my family is super tight-knit and we’ve never once had a Christmas like this I just spent the whole film faintly befuddled at how awful a time this looked…
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Joker: Folie à Deux 2024
Tries so hard to be all clever and self-deconstructive that it just winds up feeling a bit plodding and mean-spirited. A Hollywood humiliation ritual for both Phoenix and those who earnestly emphasised with Fleck in the first film. How mean :(
It’s funny that their $190 million sequel is just a gentle rehash of the events of the first film, but not funny in the way Field and co. think it is. They should’ve escaped from Arkham and gone on…
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Sing Sing 2023
Absolutely at its best in the rehearsal sequences, where the camera - gently, giddily agitated throughout - chills out and just lets these people play the situation. Paul Raci as Brent, the external director, is by far the most interesting character because he feels like only one not beholden to some wishy-washy empowerment storyline.
Still, it all just feels a little bit too neat, too tidy. It strikes me as weird that it waits till the end to tell you…
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Blue Is the Warmest Color 2013
Best film ever or the worst: Kechiche observes this young woman’s life intimately and frankly - it always devastates me how, in a moment of profound distress, Adèle binge eats from a stash of chocolate hidden from her parents - but these characters feel unmoored from any meaningful social context. The working-classes eat spaghetti, the arty hipsters carry tote bags. That’s about it.
Kechiche tries to put us inside her head, a tactic undermined by how fervently he lusts after his protagonist; the film ultimately just devolves into a series of relentless close-ups, background blurred. Or voyeuristic shots of her asleep, which undermine the whole aesthetic.
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Midnight in Paris 2011
An insanely beautiful late masterpiece from the goat WA. So formally playful yet intellectually rigorous. If this was made by anyone else we’d get a two hour moral lecture on how racist and anwful all these people were, Woody just lets ‘em shine. I love how beautifully-drawn everybody feels, how evocative the screenplay and performances are. Corey Stoll is so gorgeous as Hemingway and I love Alison Pill’s wounded howling as Zelda. Just such an amazing time even if the…
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Dredd 2012
Within the first few minutes of this a man happily listening to music dies violently when a car runs over him. Because of this, we can correctly assume it takes place across the Birmingham locales of Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath, Moseley and Kings Heath - but in the future - where urban decay has led to widespread crime, societal disillusionment and bad driving / parking. Fortunately for its citizens, Prime Minister Donald J. Trump's first act in power was to implement…
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The Apprentice 2024
So ceaseless in its simpering and so unfaltering in its whiny delusions that it inadvertently winds up being an incredibly alluring and evocative portrait of one of the most important cultural and political figures of our era. I can't figure out if Ali Abbasi is a total genius or total hack - either way, this is genius.
I'm obsessed with Trump. He fascinates me. I want him to run for Prime Minister. I feel oddly protective of him; the fact…
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Will & Harper 2024
Supremely awkward yet simultaneously incredibly smug and self-congratulatory. I have no idea why this exists, especially when Ferrell hasn’t had a hit in years; one could, if they were feeling cynical, view this is a sneaky attempt to revitalise a floundering career. The film clearly has no idea what to do with Harper’s unabashed love of the American heartland and almost Jeffersonian affection for truck stops and dive bars, but they’re quirks which enrich the experience of hitting the road…
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Small Things Like These 2024
“Life is full of little mercies like that, not big mercies but comfortable little mercies. And so we go on…“
- Tennessee Williams, Summer and SmokeA little bit too slow and a little bit too portentous, but when this hits its stride about an hour in it attains a kind of existential rage that’s astonishingly affecting. Very glad I saw this in the cinema: Murphy’s face has a mountainously weathered face, worn down from guilt and sorrow that a…
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Trap 2024
Really powerful stuff, not as silly / daft as I thought it was going to be. I can’t remember the last time an actor portrayed so well powerfully the desperate love a parent holds for a child than Josh Hartnett does here.
A fun Matryoshka doll structure: the city, the stadium, the concourse, backstage, a house, a kitchen. People have compared it to the Hitman games but they’re wrong: those games are wide and open, this is increasingly confined and…