Where’d you find these kids, Joe?!

Final fifteen minutes is some heartwarming 90s music movie fusion synergy.

At times, this feels like the indiest of indies. A result of the interior lighting shots, the distinct shadows running across the frame, the camera moves, and the grainy film look. Jarmusch, Cronenberg, 1970s cinema—these all feel like influences on the filmmaking and the performances. The meta-textual quality of the storytelling is much more of the zeitgeist, and it’s what makes A Different Man so clever. Combined with the aforementioned style, it’s also what makes this film uniquely its own.

50 Cent manages to botch every possible acting moment, even when he’s asked to just look at something and nod. Love it!

Love a good bank heist, and this movie has lots of those. The most glaring flaw of Hell or High Water, however, is its compulsion to let you know that is a movie set in Texas. In every way possible, it reminds the audience that this is a Texas bank robbery film, and, well, isn’t that just neat?!

I definitely get the impression the filmmakers had a No Country for Old Men fetish and used some of that film’s quirky Texas dialogue as a blueprint for their own. That’s not such a bad thing, but there’s a more graceful version of this movie that I would have enjoyed much more.

Stylish thriller that will definitely remind you of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That film was more conventional in its storytelling and characterization, giving the audience an explanation for Lisbeth’s rage and motivations. Red Rooms does no such thing. We aren’t sure why the lead character—an attractive single woman with a penchant for hacking and online poker—is so interested in a grisly murder case involving the dark web. We aren’t really sure why she befriends an annoying woman who also attends the murder trial each day. 

I appreciate the choice to let the audience form their own conclusions, but the degree of uncertainty here proves unsatisfying, a condition of genre expectations established in the opening courtroom scenes. About thirty minutes into the film, it becomes clear that those expectations should probably be cast aside, as the focus becomes Kelly-Anne and her brooding techno universe, and less about the actual courtroom proceedings. 

That’s all fine and good, but ultimately I’m not sure what this film wants to say about its characters and the shocking events at the center of everything. Humans are depraved? The dark web is, indeed, quite dark? Style will only get you so far, and while Red Rooms has lots of it, it’s likely to leave you wanting something more.

Den of Thieves says L.A. is the bank robbery capital but The Town says it’s Boston. Who’s right?

Love it when Jon Hamm says, “Close the fucking bridge!”

Big Boi should have been in more flicks.

Hadn’t seen this since…whenever it came out when I was in middle or high school. Since that time I’ve moved to and from Atlanta, so it was fun to see all the location shots here. None more so than Cascade, where I went skating once and never felt more out of place in my life. Lanky white bro who can’t really skate…I stuck out. Luckily I didn’t fall.  

ATL has a lot to like—all the skate sequences, the two old man performances from Keith David and Mykelti Williamson, everything Big Boi is doing, the Twins, the soundtrack. The opening is dumbed down more than it needs to be with T.I.’s narration, and the ending just abruptly happens, with an equally dumbed down (but satisfying) epilogue. Very solid airplane movie.

Architecture as a conduit for artistry…but also pain.

There are two pieces of dialogue that best sum up what The Brutalist is about. The first is Brody’s speech about the cube, a scene that knows it is thematically significant, that reaches for importance, and manages to get there all the same.

The second line is from László’s wife, who says “this place is rotten.” It’s an indictment of the American Dream myth, and it’s one of the many moments in the film where PTA’s influence on the filmmaking feels undeniable. The rhythm between the pacing and the score is another area where I kept thinking about There Will be Blood and The Master. 

The ending is a misstep for me. It relays important information but tonally it’s a strange detour in an otherwise great film.

I ❤️ Romanian cinema.

The gold standard for formulaic biopics. Hits the hits, finds a dramatic arc, knockout performances.

Oscar Isaac nails the stone faced bit.

Because the music sounds good, A Complete Unknown finds a way to win our hearts. It doesn’t attempt to say anything new about Dylan, to foreground some dramatic arc in his biography we haven’t already been exposed to. It’s more interested in transporting the audience to a time and place that yielded the creative flourishing of one of the greatest American artists. 

Mangold knows the music in his film is good, which is why so much of its runtime is musical numbers. Chalamet sounds like Chalamet doing Dylan, but somehow that works and it doesn’t take long to start bobbing your head to his songs. Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, has a stunning voice. She’s easy on the eyes, very easy on the ears, and watching her and Chalamet duet is certainly effective in tapping into whatever emotional or historical connection an audience member has to this music. 

The film has a story, and the center of it can be found when Dylan sings “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at the Newport Folk Festival. During that scene, the camera cuts to different onlookers as Chalamet delivers the iconic chorus. The lyrics take on new meaning for each one: for Sylvie/Suze, she knows Bob’s newfound fame means their relationship won’t last; for Pete Seeger, he knows Bob won’t remain tethered to the folk tradition that initially brought them together; for Bob, he knows he’s about to set the musical world on fire. It’s all a bit obvious, as to be expected from Mangold, but still an effective way to ground the seemingly transcendent within the context of this particular story. Which is: in the 1960s a funny looking dude arrives to Greenwich Village and he sings and smokes and fucks and fights. Amidst all that, a turbulent history marches on, and somewhere in the mix musical genius emerges.

Jude Law—still a very good actor. 

I have some notes, like the classic complaint in cop movies re: backup, letting the bad guy get away, and a few other nitpicks…but the performances, entertainment value, breathtaking vistas, pacing, and filmmaking style in general are enough to overwhelm those flaws. This had me locked in.

Kind of like Heat, but in Idaho.

Feels like a movie that got chopped and screwed in post production. Judging on some of the directorial choices though, The Iceman was probably never going to be all that great. For one, David Schwimmer. Bad casting decision, bad hair, bad mustache. What the fuck! Two, the washed out, gray-on-gray cinematography is just not interesting. We get it, the subject matter is dark. And finally, this is one of those movies for which a documentary predecessor already exists. From what I’ve seen of the doc, the fictionalized version doesn’t do much to set itself apart, never rising above the status of “contract job.”

Smarter than I expected. A Most Wanted Man is a brooding, grounded spy flick about a man who’s been overwhelmed by the bureaucracy surrounding him and the moral ambivalence charting his path. He wants to make the “world a safer place,” but we can sense he isn’t sure what this means anymore. PSH is such a complete actor that a goofy German accent doesn’t matter all that much for his performance. He’s able to convey his character’s place in this world by the way he drags his cigarette, or how he trots across a tarmac struggling to tuck in his shirt under his hefty gut. It’s another in a long line of PSH movies worth watching for him alone.

Rob Riggle steals the show.

The Booby Miles storyline gets me every time. This is the best sports movie.

Just atrocious. Did not finish.

A showcase of technical bravura, no doubt. The lighting is precise, each frame seemingly manicured with a very specific cast of darkness. The creation of Nosferatu himself might be my favorite thing about this film—Skarsgård is completely and utterly unrecognizable, and his voice is both terrifying and kind of funny. 

Eggers’s technical update on the Dracula story is not enough to elevate Nosferatu into the discussion of the year’s best films, since the material is so well-trodden and the script more-or-less hits the same notes as Herzog, Coppola, etc. That might seem like a cheap shot but I don’t think it’s unfair to expect some bigger swings from Eggers. Ultimately, he seems more interested in using the vampire legend as an exercise in technical—rather than narrative—innovation. I would have liked to see him blow it all up.

A shameless Die Hard knock-off. I don’t think I’ll ever accept Jason Bateman as a dramatic actor, let alone an evil villain. Did you see him throw that kick in the bathroom? Gimme a break!

If you really try to imagine the perspective of Téa Leoni’s character during Nic Cage’s climactic speech, it’s all quite hilarious. She would be deeply disturbed and concerned for this man! Maybe that’s why she got coffee with him?

As conventional as this is, Nic Cage found a way to humor and charm me throughout. Damn it, Nic!

Solid procedural, but I had trouble not seeing it through the lens of Eastwood’s politics. Like when the two black jurors happen to be the main antagonists to Nicholas Hoult’s plan. Or thinking that the white dude being wrongly accused of murder is a stand-in for the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world. 

Ultimately, Eastwood seems to be saying something about the exploitability of the American justice system, the capacity for individuals to change, and the primacy of family in the hierarchy of human motivation. Nothing too unsavory there politically, so I was more or less able to brush past some of old white man-ness of it all and enjoy this one.

Not my favorite Guadagnino.

Honestly, a depressing slog of a movie!

Killer score/soundtrack though. Lots of ~choices~ and I enjoyed those.

Decadent in all forms. Many films have shown a love for the art of cooking, but the way the camera moves here expresses that admiration like I’ve never seen before.

Fenian pride!

Confinement is the dominant theme here. I’m reminded of Half Nelson, where Ryan Gosling’s character finds himself stuck in the tight spaces of addiction and inner-city Brooklyn. All We Imagine as Light cramps its story in the megalopolis of Mumbai, where cultural norms throttle the ambitions of two nurses moving their way through love. It’s a film that recognizes the power of romance to challenge social mores, the power of geography to dictate our fates, and how those two competing dynamics may coexist.

Popcorn spectacle done right…mostly. The sharks were a terrible idea. Pedro Pascal’s performance was a dud, but he wasn’t given much to work with. Connie Nielsen: also not great here. 

Denzel however…Denzel dazzles! The movie doesn’t really get going until he shows up, and his character has more tricks up his sleeve than I expected. Paul Mescal begins competently and ends convincingly. I enjoyed his performance. Like other characters though, his arc is replete with question marks. None bigger than his eventual acceptance of his mother’s decision to send him away as a child. One second he’s furious with her, and the next he’s committing his mission to her protection. The path between those points is very murky, and, like the CGI sharks, it took me out of the action.

Ultimately, I went to see Gladiator II for epic fight sequences and spicy political machinations. In that regard, Ridley Scott delivers, even if the ceiling for this movie feels significantly higher.

Kieran Culkin is great, and deserves all the buzz he’s been getting, but I think Jesse Eisenberg is the standout performance here.

Followed up Gosford Park with Mona Lisa Smile, which feels like paint by numbers in comparison. Competent work but painfully simple.

A+ for the cig discourse.

Maggie Smith and those cucumber slices…what a sight.

Certainly not a boring movie.

A tough hang. No thank you. Ms. Beard was pleasant though.

Somehow both daring and predictable. It didn’t help that the version of this film that Amazon Prime is currently streaming only offers Spanish dubbed audio. Not sure why, since this is a French movie and my settings should be set for English language preference. Anyway, dubs really suck and it zapped a bunch of energy from these performances, but Cotillard is a transcendent performer so no matter.

I had a pretty good time hanging out with Leo, and Tilda Swinton elevates anything she’s in, but the final act of The Beach completely lost me. I was willing to meet the film on its turf and accept some of the outdated stylistic choices up until the story really goes off the rails. It just didn’t need to do that…

An ode to the 90s childhood. A film more about sense memory than any defined story. It’s a special one because of the precocious kid at the center of it.

The Claire Danes subplot is an unnecessary appendage to an otherwise entertaining Grisham courtroom drama.

They filmed this movie near my preschool in Memphis and apparently we had indoor “pizza parties” for a couple weeks so we wouldn’t be running around at recess while they were filming down the street. The studio paid for the pizza, of course.

I liked this election better.

Would have been much better if it was more courtroom drama, less biopic. And far less Courtney Love.

A comic tragedy, or maybe a tragic comedy. Anora feels spiritually linked to Uncut Gems, and not just because both films take us on an anxiety tour of distinct cultural pockets of NYC and its outer boroughs, but because we’re ultimately presented with a bleak vision of the world and the forces that govern it (read: capital). Both movies play with the audience’s expectation that a resolution—likely involving some huge pile of cash—is awaiting the protagonist. I won’t give away how that expectation is eventually handled in Anora, but I will say that I left the theater stunned. Like Uncut Gems, this one will prove to have serious staying power.

Pleasantly mediocre. Baldwin and Demi steamed up my TV.

One of those movies that’s a tough sell for me after seeing countless horror films that came after it. Scene in the movie theater is great though.

Absurd, but also pretty funny. I always wonder what kind of direction Shyamalan gives his actors, typically because the performances in his films are…not for me. We get that same brand of odd duck acting here, but it serves a discernible purpose at least. 

The scene where Lady Raven uses the power of going live to save someone. That cracked me up.

Mockumentary conceit is a severe misstep.

I appreciate the stylistic flourishes—the stream-of-consciousness cross cutting, nifty flashbacks, floating dialogue—but a more straightforward delivery would have served the story better. Soderbergh is less interested in story and more interested in state of mind here, but I can see another version of The Limey that moves away from the Terence Stamp character’s POV and includes more Luis Guzmán—an “unlikely acquaintances” dark comedy flick. 

Regardless, lots to like. Soderbergh rocks.

We see two Donald Trumps in The Apprentice. In the first half, he’s a silver spoon kid beginning to break into New York’s most elite stratosphere. He still balks at obvious misdeeds, and doesn’t quite know how to commit his own in pursuit of the wealth and status he so badly covets. He learns how to be bad from Roy Cohn, a closeted big shot right-wing lawyer with a penchant for head bobbing. We watch Trump watch Cohn as he blackmails powerful people standing in their way. It’s entertaining, especially Jeremy Strong’s performance, but Sebastian Stan’s “early Trump” isn’t very interesting to observe. His character is more of an empty vessel waiting to be filled with the toxins he’s now famous for, and that’s not the fault of the screenwriters, but just the reality of spending time with Trump. He’s a soulless brat with severe insecurities about his physical appearance. We all know this. What else is there to say? 

The biggest flaw of the film is that Trump’s transformation into full blown villain happens off screen. The second half of the movie is ushered in with some montages and a news segment about Ronald Reagan, then Trump appears, no longer hovering behind Roy Cohn, but strutting around spinning to the media and facing off with Ed Koch as he unveils his plans for Trump Tower. Somewhere between the 1970s and 80s Trump put Cohn’s advice to use to become this monster, but we don’t really see the process. For a film seeking to provide an origin story for our most notorious boogeyman, we’re not given much insight. If there’s no insight to provide, is it a story worth telling?

I guess I’m a sucker for the found footage horror flick. Blair Witch, Open Water, Paranormal Activity—they all freak me out. I had to turn on a Sopranos episode after this one to escape the dread created in that horrible bedroom. Speaking of which, I’m not sure an open door has ever been such an effective scare tactic.

A vehicle for mood with a cool soundtrack. Obviously, the filmmakers don’t view it that way, and like any film aspiring to art, I Saw the TV Glow is intended to be a vehicle for important ideas. What are these ideas? I’m not sure, but probably something about television consumption, loneliness, mean dads, and gender. Because the story never bothers to create an internal logic the audience can use to access these ideas, and because the lead performance is as flat as the “gloomy” emoticon that it represents, we’re simply not left with much to feel about I Saw the TV Glow. And without feelings to transport us to whatever place the filmmakers want to take us, we’re left with only vibe, a mood. 

Also, might be the worst ending ever? Wow I really don’t get the hype for this one.

Still packs a punch, but not nearly as effective as the first time I saw it (over fifteen years ago?). Everything in this film is exaggerated to exploit the audience’s fears about drugs, sex, race, consumerism, hospitals, and…the deep south. I wouldn’t have such a problem with this approach if Aronofsky’s work since this film had found other ways to engage with his viewers. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. Everything is big and scary and cautionary and near-humorless all the time, from Mother! to The Whale. Beginning to think he’s a hack with an artistic vision best described as “narrow.” I couldn’t divorce that perception from my viewing of Requiem this go round. 

And yet! He’s a hack with some neat tricks who knows how to reel in great actors. I heard he’s making a 90s NYC crime story with Austin Butler and Matt Smith. I’ll probably go see it. Sigh.

The Vick’s on Da’s chest scene crushed me.