Your house looked like heaven, high up there. That's how I began to hate you
A masterclass in blocking. Can't even call it influential because I can't think of another movie that even tried to copy this movie's movements, its rhythm. It's balletic. When have you ever seen 8 or 10 different faces at different angles, on different plains with different lighting that are all unique and giving you something. There is so much information coming at you in every moment. The club sequence is exquisite. Sixty-plus years later, it's inexplicable how Kurosawa could do that. It's like WEST SIDE STORY. It's unparalleled.
As if that wasn't enough, it's got an opening hour that is so completely satisfying and captivating with its moral quandaries and true emotional stakes, before turning to a gritty detective story that unravels with such pace and clarity. Contemporary film writers of crime please take note how Kurosawa unspools information, both through words but also through visuals. Sure, we have the cops all meeting and exchanging information as an easy conceit for exposition, but we also have them hitting the streets and gathering.
That said, this does end with a bit of a whimper, both literally and figuratively. Don't find the upstairs/downstairs, or in this case top-of-hill/bottom-of-hill motivation particularly compelling, but that's probably just my 2025 brain speaking, given how every movie is about late-stage capitalism and taking down the rich. But it just felt a bit simplistic and disconnected from the National Shoes plot that I assumed it would connect back to.
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Wendy, darling, light of my life! I'm not gonna hurt ya
The greatest indecipherable movie ever made.
That's because you can strip away all the theories of what Stanley Kubrick might want us to be thinking about (childhood sexual abuse, the genocide of Native Americans, which I literally wrote whole essays about in college, the bear blowjob and the skeletons) and you still have a masterpiece. This extends even to the shining concept itself. Kubrick forces you to give yourself over to the sheer force of this, to the performances, the mesmerization of the Steadicam, the deafening score, until you are weak in the knees just from his filmmaking and then hits you in the head with some of the scariest images put to screen.
And you can't truly understand this until seeing it on the big screen. Saw this in IMAX as part of the 45th anniversary and it practically puts you in a trance. And then it jolts you awake every five minutes or so with racist slurs, chopped up children's bodies and the scariest imaginary friend known to boy. Or when a character dies and you feel a gong being smashed but the gong is your head. That is the feeling this evokes, and somehow it leaves you giddy.
I've seen this four or five times and I still can't plug a theory onto it. You can think about it for years and not truly figure it out. You just keep thinking and thinking, you can't stop analyzing. That's the sign of a singular piece of art, even if I'm still not convinced how much of this movie's idiosyncrasy is purposeful.
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To be alone means to ask questions. To make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.
A pretty engaging tale of what it takes to be a great artist and how no one really knows you're making anything lasting until it's over. Follow your instincts wherever they lead you, break the mold, shatter norms.
Those ideas, though, are sometimes laid on so thick, the dialogue so hitting you over the head with a hammer that it's almost suffocating. There is no air sometimes to breathe. But at the same time, the movie's narrative -- linear and clear, unlike its source text -- is airy and light, moving through time with ease, though not the jumpiness of BREATHLESS. It's stunningly conventional for a movie about someone so unconventional, to the point that each day of the film shoot is punctuated with "Day 1, Day 12," etc. It doesn't want to leave room for interpretation, for postmodernism. It is what it is, and it leads you to the place you know you're going to go, and sometimes that can be satisfying.
It helps that unlike of the faux Netflix period pieces (looking at you, MANK), this really feels of its era. Almost documentary-like in its production design. Pretty impressive in a two-movie year for Richard Linklater.
Usually love Zoey Deutch but found her Jean Seberg pretty grating here. There's only so much weak accented French a person can handle.
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Cute and nice to see something shot on location. But couldn't get out of my head how horrible the opening credits were (if you know you know) and how much this fits the Netflix formula (i.e. characters saying the plot out loud to help those of us not really watching keep up). Make art, not content.
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Watched on Tuesday December 9, 2025.
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Almost enigmatic in that this rom-com lacks both compelling romance or genuinely funny, or even an attempt to have genuinely funny, comedy. But it's still charming. Sometimes the Christmas of it all just adds a fair bit of goodwill.
Even if these two seem like the worst robbers to ever even try to steal. The fact that they even think they could be successful strains credulity. Still, some of the twists do work, when they almost never do in this type of movie.
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Who told you you could eat my cookies?
For some reason, Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a normal dad named Howard Langston just didn't feel right to me. Can't quite put my finger on it.
The movie gets more ludicrous from there and follows the oldest storyline in the Christmas playbook: Parent waits too long to buy present and now it's sold out. And from there, it doesn't do much more with that premise. Sinbad, though, as much as I'm allergic to his sense of humor, his takes on consumerism are spot on.
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Every year when watching this classic, I forgot one setpiece. This time around it was the squirrel in the tree. This movies with such vigor, from iconic sequence to iconic sequence. It’s really a feat of editing.
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Why didn't our childhood ruin you?
Oh man. Honestly disappointing to come into a theater with the expectations of THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD and get this, something where the emotions feel so textbook and the messaging so obvious that it leaves no room for interpretation. When you need a montage of the three main characters' faces running over each other to make the point that this trio are all the same and of the same, then you're doing too much.
And when you need a contrived movie-within-a-movie conceit, on top of hacky and unnecessary flashbacks and voiceover, to tie your story together and make your point, then you need to take another swing at the screenplay. Especially when everyone talks about the movie as if it's handed down from G_d but what we see from it is an overwritten monologue and a finale that is so cliche to be beyond belief. But at least that movie seems to have ambiguity, where this movie is too suffocating to be ambiguous. These characters can't talk to each other, but the filmmaking is strong enough to make the one point this movie has. Which is a good thing! But there is no room for interpretation, and the filmmaking is only strong enough because that one point is so simple. We get it, you finally see each other. The boy says it in the beginning. Do you want me to hand you the hammer to hit me over the head with?
One small example of this is the Elle Fanning role. It is so obvious from the moment she is picked to play the Nora stand-in that she cannot play the role. Everything she says, every face she makes leads us to that conclusion. We're just waiting for the shoe to drop for an hour, and there is again no nuance there. She is obviously not right for the role. It's all so obvious.
That said, Joachim Trier lands the narrative plane here with a lovely and affecting final 20 minutes, but we needed more of the energy of Nora's backstage panic attacks and less of everything else. And while the ending is the best section of the movie, it's also clear from the jump that this is where we'll end up. It's all so conventional.
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Nora Krank, we're here for Frosty!
Pretty jankily put together with plot points and emotion dropped and picked up again almost at random, but it's got a great Jamie Lee Curtis performance (see: Hickory honey ham sequence), Dan Aykroyd chewing scenery and a somehow still-affecting finale that left me on the verge of tears. Par for the Christmas movie course!
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Seeing is believing
Undoubtedly some incredibly inventive kills, though I've only seen the first installment so not sure exactly how they stack up to the rest of the franchise. The opening sequence, the MRI machine and the tattoo parlor particularly stand out.
But we must address the scourge of absolutely horrendous CGI. That opening sequence is really hampered by not looking even close to real. It really takes out there and in other points of the movie, including the ending. If you can't make it look somewhat real, don't do it!
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We did everything right, right? Right?
Practically malpractice.
Begins with a bravura opening act. A nuclear missile is headed toward Chicago, destined to kill 10 million people, and nothing can be done to stop it. The only question now is how to respond. As one character puts it, it's a question of surrender or suicide. It's an astonishing moment one-third into a Kathryn Bigelow. The mind boggles wondering where we could go from here.
Well, so does the movie. Instead, it goes backward to tell the same story we just saw two more times from different perspectives. It gives us little nuggets that we couldn't see before, but nothing that makes up for allowing our narrative to idle in place. It even tries to act like what's happening has its own tension, but it doesn't. And this decision strangles the movie for over an hour, until it runs out of air with a sudden title card. This movie desperately needs cardboard to drive out of its self-inflicted snowstorm. How disappointing. How cowardly.
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We did not kill Jesus!
Seth Rogen in a Star of David Christmas sweater belting out Kanye's "Runaway" really has not aged well.
Rogen is really doing a lot of work to hold this together, even though he's far from the plot engine. He's the only one even trying to be funny, as the other two members of his trio are basically just wet blankets for most of the runtime. Him calling his wife to get rid of their baby will never not be funny, not to mention his meltdown at midnight mass, cocaine blood in Mindy Kaling's drink and texting about sucking his first dick. Good stuff!
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I know who you are. I know what you are.
Really helped to have recently watched THEY LIVE, also about a disbelieved outcast who believes he can see aliens that no one else can and sees their presence on Earth as part of a vast capitalist conspiracy.
It'll be hard to discuss this without getting in to the polarizing ending.
Yorgos Lanthimos is joining the murderer's row of Great Filmmakers to make movies this year specifically about our current moment, along with Ari Aster, Paul Thomas Anderson and Zach Cregger.
Here, we've got a conspiracy-obsessed man living in rural America in an aging home taking advantage of his cousin with autism to kidnap a pharmaceutical executive he believes is an alien and whose company happens to be the reason his mother has long been in a coma. This man has gone on a solo crusade to confirm so-called Andromedans live among us for reasons still unclear.
That premise is the nexus for many of the issues plaguing modern America. The male loneliness epidemic. Internet culture breeding conspiracy theories that turn to violence. Companies driven by profits over people. Environmental destruction and ecosystem collapse wrought by those companies. Childhood trauma following you for life. If that sounds like a lot, it's because it is. Sometimes this Will Tracy screenplay bites off more commentary than it can chew.
But on the surface, this one-on-one battle between Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons is sublime. It's a constant shifting of predator vs. prey until the film's final moments, with constant manipulation in all directions and a slow unspooling of information showing how these characters are more connected more than we understand.
The most obviously sympathetic character is Plemons' cousin, Don, who has been drawn into this mess and uprooted his life in his pursuit of any kind of human or family bond until he has nowhere left to go. His arc is genuinely affecting because he is unencumbered by our outside associations with these kinds of people.
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Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime
A prescient foretelling of average Americans' striving with every vain in their body for fame, 40 years before the TikTok generation.
Amazing how this guy is so intent on becoming the king that he takes these steps even though he's not actually very good, and is boosted more by the cult around his actions than the comedy itself. Cut-rate Rodney Dangerfield without the energy. He doesn't want to be an artist. He wants to be famous. He cares more about celebrity autographs than their work. He wants to have a cult of personality around himself. Comedy is just the avenue for getting that, not money, but the attention he so desperately craves. More attention than his mother telling him to shut up. No one has been able to pronounce Rupert Pupkin's name, but they'll learn it if it's the last thing I do.
Not so dissimilar from the psyche of Travis Bickle, another bumbling man whose brain is turned three degrees sideways until every social cue is a question not an answer. What a performance, but Jerry Lewis really steals some of the show. His presence is so exhilarating that you can see why Rupert wants to be him. But it also shows why he can never be him, because for Jerry this is easy and for Rupert it will always be hard. And that can be the difference in this cruel, cruel world.
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We should still be in Afghanistan and I don't know why we pulled out in the way we did
This is why men shouldn't try to have friends. Sure, we'd love to cure male loneliness, but this is the inevitable result.
I'm by no means a Tim Robinson person, having never watched any of his shows, but kinda dug the general perspective and pace of this. The dialogue is a bit stilted at times, but that seems to just be the universe this takes place in, where you have a bit more of an allowance to push the social envelope or be awkward than we do.
Laughed out loud a couple times, a rare achievement in modern movies, and also cowered in anxiety a few times, a less-rare achievement in our era of cringecore cinema.
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I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.
The culmination of 70s paranoia mixed 80s consumerism and greed. A cogent and still-potent statement on America, the way elites and businesses run every moment of our lives without us knowing, the way we are just puppets for profit. It's amazing the extent to which we've completely demystified selling out, that we've all given up and perpetually gone our knees praying to our god, the dollar, for salvation.
This is not without its flaws. For one, the Holly storyline just does not hold together one bit. Why would Roddy Piper trust her at all? She literally knocked him out of a window and works for the aliens. She could never be trusted.
And why the tuxedo man at the party would trust Roddy and Keith David is beyond me. Though his sequence is one of the best of the movie. He's so smarmy, and gets so close to being too unsubtle but his delivery is so engaging that it's allowed.
You can have a little taste of that good life too. Now, I know you want it. Hell, everybody does.
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I'm stuck between wanting to do something and not wanting to do anything at all
Really didn't expect Jennifer Lawrence to do so much crawling.
Didn't particularly care for this movie's flair for the abstract and non-linear storytelling. The latter didn't really seem in service of anything other than making sure the audience is paying attention. It almost forces you to think of this as a puzzle box when it's really much more straightforward, even if some of the decision making doesn't make much sense.
So much of this is hard to parse. The motorcyclist, for example, could be real or a figment of our protagonist's postpartum imagination. Same goes for the ending.
Jennifer Lawrence's central performance is one of her best, venturing into this depression in a way that makes it seem almost inevitable given her situation. It's not even that this is hard to watch, I actually wanted it to keep going to give time for the skeleton key to unlock Lynne Ramsey's style. That's rare for a movie I didn't love.
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I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it
What Marilyn Monroe has as a screen presence can never be matched. The feeling of watching her shine is like being so starstruck you can feel it through the screen, not just in person.
And I say this as someone who doesn't really jive with her musically until she arrives in Paris. The duet with Jane Russell where she really works the crowd -- and her body -- is when she really comes alive and can transcend the dumb-blonde dialogue she's saddled with. That's followed by "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" the kind of musical number that's worth the price of admission, that you could build a whole movie around, that has made the movie worth watching for 72 years.
But to me, Russell more than holds her own. She is so bewitching, the perfect mix of sass and trusting. The Olympic training sequence may stay with me more than "Diamonds." She is timeless.
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Now, let's go get your daughter
The prototypical Spielberg suburban story. ET without the extra-terrestrial.
It's the story of a generation's -- and the half-dozen that have followed -- relationship with the television, and the parasocial relationships we build inside it, of the post World War II Levittowns built without stopping to think, rapid growth over everything moral. There's a reason why Craig T. Nelson is reading a Ronald Reagan biography, and why the mother tells her daughter that static television will ruin her brain, only to change the channel to visceral war imagery.
All of this is played beautifully, dotted with iconic images for 85 minutes. The miniature ghost-hunter's speech is almost up there with Quint at the town hall. Then an unnecessary second climax tries to hit you over the head with some of these ideas, unfortunately.
The special effects are largely excusable for the era, except for the swirling items in Carol Anne's bedroom when Beatrice Straight's crew takes a look inside. That's some clown shit.
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I'm going to drown you, love
Really quite derivative of TALK TO ME. Like the Philippous debut feature, this has a child whose parent dies behind a locked door, leading to trauma that lasts the whole movie and a spiritual return of the dead parent that veers them toward schizophrenia. Not to mention a young possessed boy who cannot be contained. Not to mention this boy, for the first hour, feels like a near carbon copy of the tongueless child from SPEAK NO EVIL.
And still, the premise works. You do, in fact, have to hand it to the Philippous for being willing to follow their premises to their logical extremes, including when that means literally chewing on knives and wood tables. And again, they have a knack for how to open and close a movie.
Sally Hawkins is ingenious casting. You can't blame Wendy and Piper for trusting Paddington's literal mother. But by the end, she has devolved enough to get to a final shot that riffs on the SHAPE OF WATER poster.
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I let you in
Really impressive debut feature, with genuine scares, a high-concept premise that works, a trauma backstory that feels authentic and necessary, real style and pace, and incredible bookends with terrific first and final scenes.
That last point may be the most crucial here. So many horror movies falter as the film gets close to the end, needing to figure out a way to escalate its sometimes-great premise in a way that feels both genuine and compelling. This does that because it sticks to human stakes. Nine out of the other 10 versions of this would've veered toward the supernatural, making the movie feel less real. This amazingly can go supernatural and somehow feel more real.
This premise does have one real problem, though. When Sophie Wilde's Mia sees their mother, the pivot point in the plot. This doesn't quite land because the point has never been made that the hand connects you with real spirits you may know. It just seems random.
Wilde is great and all, but I want to see more of Zoe Terakes, who plays Hayley, and chews up any scene they get. Every time the camera captures their face is exhilarating. It helps that they are there at the best moments in the movie.
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No matter how much he cries, no matter how much he begs, never feed him after midnight
Pretty fun until Gizmo's children turn into gross terrorizers. But at least that beautiful boy remains to become our one character that we truly can't bear to have die cause he's just so darn adorable. Can't help but "aww" every time he's shown on screen.
It's an ET ripoff that has the guts to make that so abundantly clear with a blatant "phone home" reference.
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I can feel my mom out there
Pretty impressed by this twisty time-warp thriller. Was expecting a bit more frights, but happy with what we got.
It's surprising how well this holds together with its multiple timelines, even if it veers very close to tying itself too nicely by the end. But my partner and I kept pointing out what we thought were holes in the logic, only to figure out the answer or be given it later on. I would say there's one or two remaining that don't map out perfectly with this premise. Though not sure the environmental angle is well drawn, either.
And what this all allows for is something that can be genuinely touching if you give yourself over to it. And it's pretty exciting. The first time we realize what's happening is genuinely shocking, something that's pretty rare at the movies nowadays when everything has been done before.
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Grew slightly in my estimation on rewatch. Still don't feel like the supernatural stuff works, though it's a huge aspect of the second half. And the ending falls a bit flat. Not exactly SILENCE OF THE LAMBS with the misdirection.
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I've got poetry in me
Immaculately lush. The way Robert Altman uses candlelight is practically unmatched. The landscapes, the growth of the American West. Must've been a huge influence on THERE WILL BE BLOOD, down to the climactic church fire sequence. Truly beautiful.
And still maybe the most lush part of the movie is the lilting Leonard Cohen soundtrack. The opening song has left me inserting random lyrics over the melody for days. It is exquisite.
And yet with so much beauty, Altman's approach to violence here is fascinating. Unlike MASH, it's not funny. Not at all. But it is almost a fact of life, the danger is almost brushed aside, and consequences aren't even in the back of mind, the idea is nonexistent. We see a sex worker stab a john and she just continues to work. If dealmaking doesn't work, we move to violence. It's more than a little bit prescient.
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The message is clear: Free borders, free bodies, free choice and free from fucking fear.
It's hard to go into a movie with the weight of movie-of-the-decade hype hanging over its head. But this came as close to living up to that as it could.
The perfect Andersonian mix of genuine sorrow, fully-drawn imperfect characters (both male and female), constantly hilarious, propulsive with a curious but thumping score and beautifully shot setpieces.
And then add on top of that an immaculately salient opening hour that's both of this moment but also timeless. The conditions we see inside the immigrant detention center are simultaneously largely the same as they've ever been, but also have been spotlighted so heavily in the past nine months that it feels all too familiar. The type of political revolution depicted here is the tactics of the Weather Underground mixed with the backlash to the Black Panther Party. It's so refreshing to see our auteurs this year making movies about our current moment.
Maybe the most interesting to talk about movie, one that would be rewarded on rewatch, not because you're given clues that unfurl but because the themes and ideas could come into starker relief. Teyana Taylor's performance spurs a lot of this. What is the foundation of her escapade with Lockjaw? What is Willa/Charlene feeling in the final 15 minutes other than fear? What does the French 75 really accomplish?
Seen in IMAX.
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It's the kind of place nobody wants to go looking
How the hell did they do that?
Perhaps the best non-sci-fi practical effects ever put to screen. How anyone survived making this movie is beyond me. There's about half a dozen moments where I audibly gasped or told the screen "oh shit" in fear, not just for the characters but for the actors.
But this movie is so much more than its awe-inspiring setpieces.
It is exactly that, so much more. There is so much left untapped here. We start with four uniquely violent vignettes that all could fuel 120 minutes of their own. This skirts all of that, tells you exactly as much as you need to know and moves along. Modern Hollywood could never. It would try to tell you everything, last three hours and grind you into submission. This is a luxurious two hours with genuinely affecting moments. Roy Scheider stared into my soul. And then it ends on a truly shocking note, the last of those "oh shit" moments.
Granted, I haven't seen the French original so all of this may be rendered moot if what William Friedkin does here is only derivative, though there's no way it could be.
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I really don't like police stations, you know? They just kind of freak me out. I'm, uh... I'm phobic.
A thing I particularly love about this movie is the way it knows you are thinking through potential plot holes and knows the perfect time to dole out how those holes were filled. Wait, but Alex's parents met with police? Wait, but the police ransacked Alex's house? It could be accused of being too tidy, but it never feels contrived or meted out specifically to wrongfoot us.
This is about as strong as this tired premise could go. One person is able to control others and use them supernaturally to their advantage as the engine of a horror movie feels like it has been used a lot lately. But when you open with a sequence that feels like the even more chilling version of the "Layla" montage from GOODFELLAS, you can't complain.
For the first time in a while, I felt the audience actually kept up with the tone of a movie. I often feel like the only one laughing in a theater when what's being depicted is obviously meant to be comedic, even if the movie isn't a comedy. Here, folks laughed at Alden Ehrenreich's comedy of errors, thankfully. This shows Zach Cregger's command.
And despite the laughs and scares, the movie still feels emotionally involving. I could've cried at the climax, even if it went in a slightly different direction than expected in the final moments, a decision that lends ambiguity to a genre that wants to give you all the answers. This is the rare crowd-pleasing, high-concept thinkpiece of a movie that yields itself to discussion.
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Watch out for your goodies, Hawkeye! That man is a sex maniac; I don't think Hot Lips satisfied him. Don't let him kiss you, Hawkeye!
Can't imagine how hard this would've been to pin down in 1970 at the dawn of the New Hollywood. Even now, I wondered what I was watching for the first half-hour, waiting for the narrative momentum. You have to remember this spawned a sitcom, a genre not exactly known for its plotting.
Really hits its stride with the Last Supper "Suicide is Painless" sequence, Robert Duvall and Hot Lips over the intercom and the climactic football game. My favorite single moment may have been Elliott Gould worrying Robert Duvall was going to kiss Donald Sutherland like some sort of maniac.
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Do you always have cookies?
Imagine cheating on Antonio Banderas.
Very interesting paradox here because it has a lot of great components. Think about the milk scene, and the broader courtship where Harris Dickinson shines. The final couple scenes are pretty special, as well.
And those components combine for a coherent story of self-discovery, the way we use people and the power of advocating for what we want. It's obviously a big step up from the mindless BODIES BODIES BODIES.
And so if you have great component parts and the themes are compelling, then how could the movie still not completely work? Perhaps because the middle third where Nicole Kidman has given into Dickinson's charm is a lot of the same stuff over and over. If they're not interested in a relationship, which is a core idea of their dynamic, then how do you escalate whatever this relationship is? It leads to an obvious conclusion, but I don't feel like their intensity shifts from minute 45 to minute 100. So they're stuck in a bit of autopilot. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But deferred maintenance can cause you problems.
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Trouble is to a man like rust is to iron.
This can be a lot of fun and is Darren Aronofsky's most successful movie in years, almost by default. It's got Austin Butler's best performance since ELVIS, save for DUNE: PART 2, probably. It's got laughs and genuine shocks. The Orthodox Jews as "scary monsters" really got me.
But it also completely loses itself as the plot develops. Regina King's detective is the crux of the problem here. She becomes a crucial character but the motivations make little sense and her actions are so outlandish that they take you out of an already-absurd story.
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Nobody puts baby in a corner
Lives up to its iconography in that even knowing the beats intrinsically, they still make you feel something.
Even if this movie is about as paint by numbers as they come. It takes every convention and throws them all together. You basically know what is going to happen in every scene, but just watching the adorable Jennifer Grey and the sexy Patrick Swayze fulfill our expectations has value. Why we never discuss the elephant in the room that Grey’s Baby is Jewish and Swayze’s Johnny is a gentile is beyond me. It’s a little bid of modern Hollywood seeping in that we can’t say what is so obvious.
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Signora. Please stop being so sad. If you continue like this, I will be forced to make love to you.
Basically THE HOLIDAY before THE HOLIDAY.
It's got a bewitching down-on-her-luck woman in a foreign land trying to find love. And it's got that optimistic score that envelops you in the warm Tuscan sun.
Not enough can be said about Diane Lane here. What a lovely woman. She keeps this moving despite the glacial, nay melodic, pacing. And she sells the ridiculous conceit that only grows.
But perhaps the most ridiculous part is in the Romeo and Juliet-esque subplot of Pawel and Chiara. I don't understand how they turn her parents around to the point where they are glowing at the climax of their relationship. And I don't understand the idea of the flag throwing contest. If the whole premise is to impress Chiara's dad, then why would they plan for him not to be there? This detour is obviously the weak point of the movie. One happy ending is enough.
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I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen
I expected this Cameron Crowe debut joint to be utterly conventional, a FAST TIMES redux. But it really shocked me. Here's how:
For one, the iconic boombox-above-the-head playing "In Your Eyes" is basically immaterial, lasts like one minute and then the movie continues without much fanfare. The way it's been built up as legend, I thought it was the climax that leads to their rekindling.
And this movie may be more about John Mahoney and Ione Sky than John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler, despite what the first hour would tell us. The way their father-daughter relationship grows and evolves through the movie is what delivers the pathos this needs. The way she tells him about having sex with Lloyd, the way he reacts to hearing she may postpone her time in England, their climactic blowup. This is the emotional heart of the movie, and it has little to do with the romance.
It is this perfect distillation of what could be a cookie-cutter familial relationship that makes the final 30 minutes of this so perfect, and what makes the resolution so touching. Because it is not about Lloyd and Diane, but Diane and her father.
I have to believe FRASIER's producers saw this and decided that Mahoney needed to play Martin Crane.
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After this speech i'm going to sit down and listen
BEAU IS AFRAID was bold creatively, but largely unsuccessful. EDDINGTON is bold politically, and very successful. And it is in this premise that the movie creates an artifact of contemporary American life unlike any other movie.
Ari Aster seems to uniquely understand how the pandemic warped the brains of everyone, how it turned every moment of our lives into politics, from what we watch on YouTube at home to the restaurants where we eat. The pandemic created a society of haves and have-nots, those who came out with a firm grasp of reality and those with a not-so-firm-grasp.
He captures not only so much of the culture of that unique time that already feels memory-holed, but also the tone. It was so slow but so madcap, everything felt so important and changed so quickly. We had to tell ourselves nothing mattered or everything mattered. We had to be willing to do everything for our beliefs or we were cowards.
It is clear now that Aster is the spiritual successor to the Coen Brothers, able to approximate their madcap intensity and milieu. But also able to use that as commentary. The Coens rarely fixated on modernity, but Aster is a filmmaker clearly trying to help us understand our moment and how we got here. And then he takes it one step beyond our reality to show us what the not-so-firmers must think this country is really like.
But he does it filled with gags. My favorites include Brian's speech at the vigil, the Antifa private jet, anything to do with Joe Cross' mayoral campaign, naming the data center after a Pokemon and the mother-in-law's speech at the end. This is the funniest most prescient movie in years.
Understandably, most viewers aren't ready to view the pandemic era as escapism. But if you can hand yourself over, you'll be rewarded.
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Anyone can feel strong hiding behind a piece of metal. I prefer to know my own strength.
A lot of this just didn't work for me in ways that made it hard to get enveloped.
For one, I never really cared what happened to the characters or what was happening to them as it happened. Never a good sign.
The body horror motif is just an annoying addition that lifts right out and takes out of what is supposed to be an emotional, if ridiculous, story. The only exception to these first two points would be Kate O'Brian's transformation at the climax of the movie, which did make me laugh.
And I just didn't believe the O'Brian-Kristen Stewart relationship. Why do they like each other? We know why they like the idea of each other, but as specific human beings, what is the connection? The world may never know.
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What really matters is what you like, not what you are like
Listen, if you want to film a live reading of a book, you could choose a worse book. The adaptation style here is really grating, though it makes for some of the movie's best moments and lines, it constantly kneecaps narrative momentum in the present day and is used to clean up any missing connective tissue. Brian Cox in ADAPTATION would not be thrilled.
But the story it's used to tell is so endlessly charming, and ends with such flair and catharsis, I still couldn't help but hand myself over. Do I believe John Cusack was a club DJ? Do I believe he was 16 years old. The answers are almost -- emphasis on almost -- immaterial when he's used to such perfectly aching effect as he is here. This is really his perfect mode, a bitter down-on-his-luck romantic.
I could've beared to see more of Lisa Bonet in this movie, and more of Iben Hjejle in Hollywood productions. Her voice is oh so intoxicating, the emotions in her eyes so vivid.
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Holy shit, you got it, honey! You did it! The case cracker, me in the shower!
Has anyone ever been more divine than the aptly named Mona Lisa Vito?
Just a boatload of fun. The banter between Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei's Lisa are the engine that keeps this train moving and on the tracks. They remind you we're supposed to be having fun here as we ponder two young men dying in the electric chair. It made me want to see a sex scene with Joe Pesci for the first time. I don't think I can give a bigger compliment.
By about an hour in, the judge's southern drawl and snarl become tiresome, which is supposed to be a major driver of these comedic beats. But they're usually too predictable and bland to amount to much. That's why also having Tomei there for Pesci to play off of helps so much.
The two moments that probably got me the most are Pesci's walk with his magician-esque second-hand suit and the commotion he makes at seeing the picture of himself in the shower. I rarely laugh out loud at movies but these pulled it out of me.
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You want another answer, ask another girl.
The magic of this movie can be felt in a throwaway phone call scene where Harrison Ford rips his shirt off and starts mopping up his sweat with it in front of a window. On the other side is a legion of secretaries oggling at him. When he turns to see them spying, they all clap. Ford is this movie's superpower.
It speaks to the power of Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver and Mike Nichols that they can wait half an hour before revealing the charming sexpot that is Han Solo and Indiana Jones to the audience. His chemistry with Griffith is enveloping, if a bit fast-tracked. Do we really believe they love each other that quickly? Probably not, but it's a little movie magic we're mostly willing to let slide.
This movie does have its share of problems. How could Tess possibly get this far along on this Trask deal without anyone else at the firm catching wind? Why does Sigourney Weaver flip-flop in her stance on whose idea this is?
But we're willing to let that also slide for that sweet, sweet catharsis that closes the film. Thrilling picture.
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It's a bottomless pit, baby
Really wish I hadn't read the Hulu synopsis before hitting play...
The rare James Cameron misstep. The mechanics are set up haphazardly, sometimes with little sense of stakes, what we're doing or how things work. Cameron is usually a master of table-setting, perfectly laying out how everything works so when it all needs to be used, we get it. Here, he's moving too fast for his own good to explain anything in this alien world.
But that last 45 minutes, once we get rid of the military subplot (even if the underwater ship chase is pretty sick), is magical. It's emotional and triumphant in the ways Cameron's best movies can be. It's inventive and awe-inspiring.
You can really see Cameron working through the creature design that would eventually be morphed into the T1000. One of one, he is.
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Are you an angel?
Figured now was as good a time as any to close the loop on Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's rich history of collaboration.
And as expected, this delivered. It's as emotionally resonant as it is epic. Similar to ALIEN, it's anchored by a great cast of soon-to-be stars who die off in increasingly profound and mind-boggling ways every 20 minutes or so before they can't help but speed up.
Your mileage may vary on the third act as the promise of what the movie would be is corrupted and realized. As a new character comes into the fray and the filmmaking shifts to something that's actually a blueprint for the ingenuity of 28 YEARS LATER, the film fundamentally shifts. It's clearly the weakest section, but that's a high bar to reach as the moral dilemmas and their consequences of the first 75 minutes leave even the viewer queasy and show why space movies continue to be such a rich vein to mine.
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They're not real. Heads don't explode like that
Has clear issues at the beginning and end.
In the beginning, it's really hard to believe these guys would be friends. The chemistry just isn't really there. Sure, there's a little remove because they all have constant transactional ulterior motives. But there's never an explanation of how they became friends.
And the movie really ends with a bewildering whimper.
But most everything in the middle is golden SUCCESSION-lite glory. None of these characters pop the way a dozen people shine in Jesse Armstrong's triumph. But the action unfolding around them just sends you deeper and deeper into the chaos unfolding from the work of these men.
The directions this takes are genuinely shocking, even if Armstrong could've delivered with a bit more from them (see: Whimper).
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Remember we must die
The first 30 minutes of this movie are unlike anything I've ever seen. It's the switching of film stocks (the iPhone of it all), intense score, eye-popping gore and the engrossing eeriness. It is so disturbing and exhilarating. I couldn't look away. My partner couldn't look.
From there, it settles into a more traditional narrative structure. If you hand yourself over, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. It's got an incredible cameo that it builds up for an hour before pays off that background suspense.
And then it has another to close the movie in one of the most ludicrous and audacious final scenes committed to film. Didn't love it but admired how emboldened Alex Garland and Danny Boyle feel after delivering a masterclass in high-concept horror.
I will say the special effects of the Causeway are poor, and takes you out of one of the movie's most intense moments to end that masterful first act.
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Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist.
Seemed like as good a day as any to fire this one up.
Basically the peak of the 90s mega-blockbuster. Checks all the boxes. It's got thrills. It's got chills. It's got laughs. It's got tears. It's got defeat. And it sure as hell has triumph.
Especially love the way this just plops you straight into crisis. No 15 minutes of throat-clearing character foregrounding. Roland Emmerich gives you all of that character development during the mind-bending tragedies that unfold. And unlike modern blockbusters, it's not afraid to show calamity as a way to up the stakes. Looking at you FINAL RECKONING.
Maybe the only two of those storylines are the Randy Quaid segments, which lean too far into their comedic impulses at inopportune times and feels the least developed, and the solo Vivica A. Fox adventure. How the hell does Will Smith find her so easily?
But other than that, the characters are so drawn out that you can't help but cry when one dies and can't help but nearly cry tears of joy when Jeff Goldblum and Smith strut on those salt flats. And can't imagine not pounding my chest at the president's speech. Three decades on, the special effects aren't even that bad, though the flight sequences do take you out ever so slightly.
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Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em!
Even at just 90 minutes, this is still an exercise in fortitude, as we watch a drunk Richard Nixon try to explain away his crimes, fall deep into delusion and beg for his mommy in a tragically Freudian motif.
Created seemingly to delve into conspiracy theories that could help us understand why a two-term president would mildly betray his country, why he would set off a decade of broad government mistrust that would be irrevocable. All feels a bit quaint now.
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Nothing is written
The first two hours are an incredibly boring prelude to an epic final 45 minutes in a movie that gives you far too much time to think about the hilarity and thinness of its plotting.
We get a boring mask reveal, one of the hallmarks of the franchise's latest run. The Wolf Blitzer sequence may quietly be the best thing Mission Impossible has given us. There's really no action for long swaths as Christopher McQuarrie doles out plot like mud with hacky flashback montages that feel akin to the end of FURIOSA, in that they make us yearn for this franchise's better movies. Not to mention trying to pigeonhole the rabbit's foot, a famously unexplained MacGuffin, as actually meaningful is ridiculous revisionism.
What makes Mission Impossible so great is that the action is what makes you pay attention. So many other franchises are so much more interesting in their interplay between characters and then the action is an anesthetic. Here, what people say to each other rarely matters. We're here for the stunts we can't get anywhere else. This spends way too much time talking and setting the stage. The exposition dumps are constant and silly.
But when we get to the last few action sequences, we're still in. We want to see Tom Cruise diving 500 feet into the ocean, and wonder how he did it. We want to see him hang from an airplane in scenic South Africa, and wonder how he did it. It's electric and gives us a hopefully fitting end to the franchise, even though a part of me wishes it could've gone a little more south than Cruise would ever allow.
I hope, in time, you can see this life is not some quirk of fate. This was your calling. Your destiny. A destiny that touches every living thing. Like it or not, we are masters of our fate.
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Which says “take me with you” but not in a desperate way?
Couldn't give less of a crap about animated movies, but this is charming. Though, it's really weird that we've just accepted the Space Force as a normal branch of the U.S. Military.
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I’m a beggar for you
Really engaging in spurts. Actually thought all three members of the trio had their intoxicating moments. Never felt like Dakota Johnson was out of place here, as has been the conventional wisdom in this and basically any other grounded movie where she plays a normal person.
But when one of our three muskateers exits the narrative, you can't help but feel like the movie getting stopped in its tracks. The film is at its best with them, but then is just left to fizzle out when combined with another shocking plot turn that can't help but sap the movie of its energy.
This is not PAST LIVES, obviously. It is simply simpler. The emotions are not profound. Really, the whole idea is about how shallow these emotions are for these people focused on their material wealth. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the emotional heights here are rather low. And the tonal shifting is jarring, but not altogether ineffective.
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I'm still good meat! I'm perfectly good meat! I taste fine!
Holy mother of voiceover. The preamble here is basically sci-fi CASINO.
The mechanics don't always work. Not sure I understand, for example, how The Cycler works if they can make a new version of Mickey after he's assumed to have been eaten by a Creeper. And the idea that the Multiples can't figure it out amongst themselves to avoid being found out seems far-fetched and contrived.
And overall, it's probably a bit too broad for its own good. Mark Ruffalo is basically rehashing and updating his POOR THINGS turn as a one-dimensional televangelist Trump. Doesn't really feel like the characters' relationships with each other evolve much at all over the course of these mind-bending events.
But this is still indubitably Bong. From early on, we have the driving story of credit and how it drives people into desperation in a post-capitalist society. We have the humans invading a new land and pillaging the indigenous. And the design is basically just continuing what he found with OKJA.
That form of Bong is definitely not my favorite. I'd say this is more competent than visionary, but that's a high bar. Still, masters necessitate it.
]]>- One Battle After Another
- Sinners
- Weapons
- Eddington
- Bugonia
- 28 Years Later
- Black Bag
- Presence
- Sentimental Value
- Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Fargo
- Jerry Maguire
- Swingers
- The Daytrippers
- Scream
- Bottle Rocket
- The Birdcage
- Independence Day
- Hard Eight
- Mission: Impossible
...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Before Sunset
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Kill Bill: Vol. 2
- Birth
- Collateral
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
- Shrek 2
- Man on Fire
- The Terminal
- I ♥ Huckabees
...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Spotlight
- Carol
- Creed
- The Lobster
- The Invitation
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Brooklyn
- The Big Short
- Sicario
- The End of the Tour
...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Cinema Paradiso
- Die Hard
- Bull Durham
- They Live
- Working Girl
- Cocktail
- Midnight Run
- Mississippi Burning
- Heathers
- Mystic Pizza
...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Moonlight
- Good Time
- Lady Bird
- Uncut Gems
- Past Lives
- The Killing of a Sacred Deer
- Locke
- The Lobster
- First Reformed
- While We're Young
...plus 58 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Oppenheimer
- Infinity Pool
- Maestro
- Barbie
- Past Lives
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Killers of the Flower Moon
- Air
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
- Asteroid City
...plus 63 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Paris, Texas
- The Terminator
- Gremlins
- Romancing the Stone
- Broadway Danny Rose
- Footloose
- Beverly Hills Cop
- Sixteen Candles
- Secret Honor
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Dune: Part Two
- Challengers
- Anora
- Conclave
- Juror #2
- Civil War
- Gladiator II
- I Saw the TV Glow
- Twisters
- The Fall Guy
...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Erin Brockovich
- Sexy Beast
- Almost Famous
- In the Mood for Love
- O Brother, Where Art Thou?
- Traffic
- Final Destination
- Amores Perros
- Gladiator
- High Fidelity
...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- A Few Good Men
- Reservoir Dogs
- Malcolm X
- Glengarry Glen Ross
- Basic Instinct
- A League of Their Own
- My Cousin Vinny
- Sneakers
- Light Sleeper
- The Player
...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- There Will Be Blood
- No Country for Old Men
- Zodiac
- Atonement
- Michael Clayton
- Ocean's Thirteen
- Sunshine
- The Darjeeling Limited
- Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
- Eastern Promises
...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Full Metal Jacket
- Wall Street
- No Way Out
- Fatal Attraction
- House of Games
- Moonstruck
- Beverly Hills Cop II
- Raising Arizona
- The Untouchables
...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Arrival
- Hell or High Water
- The Lost City of Z
- Manchester by the Sea
- Paterson
- Jackie
- The Handmaiden
- 20th Century Women
- Deadpool
- Everybody Wants Some!!
...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Good Night, and Good Luck.
- Walk the Line
- Pride & Prejudice
- War of the Worlds
- Batman Begins
- The Family Stone
- Grizzly Man
- Wedding Crashers
- Breakfast on Pluto
- Saw II
...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Out of Sight
- The Truman Show
- Croupier
- Rounders
- The Big Lebowski
- You've Got Mail
- Run Lola Run
- Wild Things
- Rushmore
- He Got Game
...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Pulp Fiction
- Speed
- Four Weddings and a Funeral
- The River Wild
- Léon: The Professional
- Chungking Express
- The Hudsucker Proxy
- Mixed Nuts
- Little Odessa
- It Could Happen to You
...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Parasite
- Uncut Gems
- 1917
- Midsommar
- Marriage Story
- The Irishman
- Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Knives Out
- Queen & Slim
...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Nightcrawler
- Gone Girl
- Boyhood
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- While We're Young
- Edge of Tomorrow
- American Sniper
- John Wick
- The Trip to Italy
- A Most Violent Year
...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Moneyball
- Midnight in Paris
- Contagion
- Melancholia
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Warrior
- Limitless
- Margin Call
- The Tree of Life
- Haywire
...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Worst Person in the World
- Derek DelGaudio's In & of Itself
- Bo Burnham: Inside
- Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
- Red Rocket
- Judas and the Black Messiah
- Malcolm & Marie
- The Last Duel
- West Side Story
- Nightmare Alley
...plus 69 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Babylon
- The Banshees of Inisherin
- TÁR
- Till
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Armageddon Time
- Nope
- Barbarian
- The Fabelmans
- The Northman
...plus 94 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Fight Club
- Magnolia
- Eyes Wide Shut
- Go
- Election
- Notting Hill
- Any Given Sunday
- The Virgin Suicides
- Being John Malkovich
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Social Network
- The Town
- Incendies
- Inception
- The Fighter
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
- Black Swan
- Blue Valentine
- Somewhere
- Remember Me
...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Sound of Metal
- Dick Johnson Is Dead
- Mangrove
- The Trial of the Chicago 7
- One Night in Miami...
- Never Rarely Sometimes Always
- Another Round
- Minari
- Nomadland
- Palm Springs
...plus 59 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Social Network
- Se7en
- Fight Club
- Gone Girl
- Zodiac
- The Game
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Panic Room
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- The Killer
...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Inglourious Basterds
- Polytechnique
- Avatar
- The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
- An Education
- Daddy Longlegs
- Jennifer's Body
- (500) Days of Summer
- State of Play
- Public Enemies
...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Titanic
- Good Will Hunting
- Boogie Nights
- The Game
- Jackie Brown
- Face/Off
- Cop Land
- Con Air
- Men in Black
- The Devil's Advocate
...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Ocean's Eleven
- Y Tu Mamá También
- Training Day
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- Vanilla Sky
- Serendipity
- Ali
- The Fast and the Furious
- Spy Game
- Mulholland Drive
...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Schindler's List
- True Romance
- Sleepless in Seattle
- Dazed and Confused
- The Fugitive
- The Age of Innocence
- Jurassic Park
- The War Room
- In the Line of Fire
- The Firm
...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
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