Spoilers. I sincerely hope that we’re not as abjectly unprepared for some apocalyptic geopolitical event as depicted in the movie, strategically or temperamentally. People just yell at each other, crumble at the smallest setback, and don’t project the kind of professionalism and nerves of steel we…
I saw this with my Dad twenty-nine years ago. He thought it was Hitchcock’s greatest movie. I’d forgotten all about it until Catherine and I were trying to find something to watch and consulted the AFI’s 10 Top 10 list for the best mysteries (of course). I’ve read that people love rewatching it and…
Heard this on my favorite movie this year, Black Bag. The movie’s composer makes a cameo as the DJ who plays this song in the opening scene.
Stylish and polished spy caper from Soderbergh and Company. Not a single wasted moment: witty, engaging, lavish, taut, nothing more, nothing less. About as lean and efficient as the spies it features. The soundtrack’s by David Holmes, a longtime collaborator (did the Oceans trilogy with him, for e…
This is yet another $JASON_STATHAM_MOVIE. He’s in construction now and a beloved foreman and leader of people (of course). And they still won’t leave him alone. What’s different this time: There’s this whole John Wick-style Russian criminal brotherhood involved here. I really didn’t give a shit…
Towards the middle of this movie, I imagined Hitchcock building one of those 1/120 scale models of railroad towns1 most meticulously, and then taking sheer fiendish delight in terrorizing it with a toy Godzilla or a sandbucket avalanche. Wasn’t too far off (surprisingly). It was his favorite movie…
Saw with KL, UE, and friends. I’ve never written a screenplay and would be laughably shit at it but I genuinely feel that I could’ve knocked this one out in a few days. There’s a new Captain America who’s trying to find his footing in the MCU following the very dignified and demure exit of Steve R…
Saw with LD at the theater (on the last day it was playing!) and am really glad I did. I saw the 1922 version in college and have been mesmerized with it since. People are pretty surprised, like I was, to hear that the story is an unlicensed Dracula knockoff. This is a really immersive movie. It’s…
Best I’ve seen in recent memory. Features the poem “Boots” by Rudyard Kipling, read with this bone-chilling pitch and cadence by a chap named Taylor Holmes in 1915. Here’s the track by itself. Sounds like it was taken from a record; the noise doesn’t help with the chilling of the bones. Update…
This is $JASON_STATHAM_MOVIE and I absolutely love it1. It’s familiar, there’s no pretense, you’re a 13-year old, and it feels really nice spending your evening watching some evil-looking people get their (highly improbable) comeuppance from a single and very determined operator. It’s like huddling…
Saw with LD. A (really dark) teenage space adventure that made me feel like I was 14 and was watching “Alien” for the first time on our family TV (a 21" Belson). They tugged at every dormant heartstring from our childhood. Graininess, floppy drives, joysticks, lots of CRT displays, and clunky…
Perhaps not as incredibly astounding as this overlay of Spectre1 on the opening credits of the movie but this one of How to Disappear Completely over a few scenes from Lost in Translation just fits somehow.
From the comments: “It was a wise decision to go with Sam Smith’s Writings on the wall. A mediocre movie deserves an equally mediocre theme song. Radiohead’s Spectre is just fantastic.”↩︎
Tidy, as usual, when it comes to his movies, but total rubbish. I imagine that I would get this shit if I guided ChatGPT to generate a parody of his most indulgent excesses. Meat for the most hardcore of his fans and a (meticulous) waste of the sheer amount of talent involved. How this has a 75% on…
Decent background-watch. Whoever did the ‘visions’ knocked it out of the park. A waste of Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, who play clairvoyants whose powers wax and wane in service of the utterly predictable plot. Like Next1 but slightly better. Which is a fantastic fucking movie if you love Mr…
A giant, disjointed fucking mess. Tried to pay attention but I zoned out twice watching it. I couldn’t even tell you what this movie is about.…
Saw with LD. Revenge flick set in Scandinavia in 895 AD. LD thought that the ultraviolence was a bit gratuitous and didn’t serve the plot very well. I don’t know what one would expect from a story about a beefy Viking beserker hell-bent on revenge. Lush, beautiful, amazing visuals from Eggers and c…
Tedious “I can make longass movies like Marty too!” stuff from Ridley Scott. Fascinating and tragic story in real life though. Adam Driver is reserved. Lady Gaga is outstanding. Jared Leto is a fucking clown and is either trying too hard or doesn’t give a shit anymore. Al Pacino is in this movie a…
Adrien Brody is a great actor and I love watching him act. I absolutely love good, easy revenge flicks. So this was an easy pick. Mr. Brody channels his inner Travis Bickle (for the most part.) This was Taxi Driver meets Taken meets John Wick, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Brody produced, wr…
Saw with LD on Christmas Eve. I thought it was well-done millennial nostalgia porn. Nothing wrong with that. I loved the humor and digs at techbro culture and co-option of “red-pill” by the far-right (which led to my favorite set of Tweets.) Thought it could be a deconstruction of the original Matr…
Absolutely beautiful work by Nada Maktari 🔥 Here are a few others for the Dune that didn’t get made.…
Yeah, Nic Cage brings the same intensity to almost every role he does. If it’s not a very good role, it’s gonna stand out as being bad. To put it another way, imagine a boxer that is very good at knocking people out. That’s impressive. Now imagine he accepts fights against children as well, and…
"Robert Pattinson said to me before agreeing to this, ‘I don’t want to make a movie about a magical lighthouse. I want to make a movie about a fucking crazy person.’” Jess Joho, “What the hell did ‘The Lighthouse’ even mean?”, Mashable Saw with LD. Noir, Jung, myth and mythology, Proteus…
Fun little quiz! Did not do as well as I thought I would……
I love this ring as much as I love Mr. Stanley Tucci. It’s from The Devil Wears Prada and is an aqeeq ring (which “means quartz in Arabic, and agate in Turkish”) which was a pretty common sight on older hands when I was growing up. I looked far and wide for a replica and found this on Etsy1. Th…
I cannot help rewatch this powerful scene from “Margin Call”. A masterclass in acting by the great Jeremy Irons. Every sentence, glance, and gesture projects complete and menacing presence, power, and finality, and is done to absolute perfection 👌…
Saw with BE and NN. Eh. Clear messages about creatives’ struggles and temptations, and the importance of continuing to tell past and present stories of horrific pain and suffering. I suppose I just lazily wanted to watch a well-made scary movie without actively engaging with it, without searching…
Academy Award-winning Helen Hunt is a pharma-stunned alien who doesn’t enjoy any screentime in a disjointed plot that prioritizes misdirection over coherence. Great cinematography. I loved the background score by William Arcane.…
One of the best black comedies I’ve seen. Amazing attention to detail. Watched with LD. Reese Witherspoon was just perfect. Indeed, it was a breakthrough role for which she won a bunch of awards. Learned that Jessica Campbell who was also perfect as the angsty Tammy Metzler sadly passed away in Jan…
Between takes of 2001: A Space Odyssey…
Shit. Stallone wrote it. Background-watched because it looked revenge-y and Netflix listed it as a Top 10 movie in the US. Jason Statham is B+ as Jason Statham. This time, he growl-mumbles through this shit movie as an undercover DEA agent (with Special Forces training of course) who speaks with an…
Absolute garbage. Another self-indulgent snooze-fest. A total waste of Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin’s talents. Makes you mad at yourself for finishing it.…
Via CO. Succinct, timeless.…
Absolute rubbish but I enjoyed the heck out of it.…
Watched with CK. The plot doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But very, very entertaining. Anyone who claims to understand what’s going on after the first 32 viewings is a damned liar. A perfect one-line review: So suit up […] for what may not be Nolan at his best, but is definitely Nolan at his…
Entertaining. Thought the alternate ending would’ve been more likely (the highly-trained armchair psychoanalyst that I am 😆) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwO0gb2gIYA…
Watched because Denzel and Revenge. Not sure why I bothered finishing it. Absolutely awful. The cinematographer appears to have borrowed the ghastly verdigris-like palette from this terribly photoshopped poster, and keeps twitching the camera with the giddiness of a raver who’s taken two of them Mi…
Well this was certainly most unexpected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z64XvPERZ50…
Michael Keaton and Christopher Lloyd were excellent. But Peter Boyle steals the show as “Jack McDermott. Christ fixation. Megalomania.” BILLY Hey, Doc, isn’t it true that if even one of those tiles were to come loose, millions and millions of gallons of water would come pouring down on us and squ…
. I mean yes, Denis Villeneuve and all that. But please don’t suck.…
About as predictable as it gets. Chadwick Boseman is excellent.…
Am a sucker for a good revenge story. This one was very slow and kinda haphazard. But I didn’t think it was bad enough to deserve this: The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, having the worst wide opening weekend of all-time, the biggest drop in theaters, and i…
Ireland. Liam. Mick. Belfast. Mary. IRA. Patrick. Belfast. Liam Hennessy. Sean. Sinn Féin. “You should try a real whiskey. Two Jamesons, Single Malt.” Belfast. Belfast. Also Jackie Chan. But watch for Orla Brady 🇮🇪…
Saw with PLG. Plan on doing things around the house to the soundtrack. When they hand him his second Oscar, DiCaprio should just stare at the glitterati, play the trailer scene, and walk away 💯 🙏 🙌…
Finally saw this with PLG. Daniel Day-Lewis’ best performance IMO. Astounding, really. Mr. Day-Lewis’s outsize performance, with its footnote references to Huston and strange, contorted Kabuki-like grimaces, occasionally breaks the skin of the film’s surface like a dangerous undertow. The actor…
The last 15 minutes are the best depiction of old age, loneliness, and isolation I’ve ever seen committed to film. Two masters at their very best. I love all the memes about its length but (a) the pacing was brilliant and (b) I am someone who grew up watching 200-minute family-values extravaganzas…
Why? This travesty should make it very clear that Guillermo del Toro loves and paints his monsters better than anyone else in the business.…
Excellent stuff again from Jordan Peele. Thought the first half was about slavery and lost identity. Wisecrack has a great video on the movie’s various interpretations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDMgFplACaQ…
Watched because “Sherlock Holmes.” An awful, unnecessary, ghastly shitshow.…
The first two-thirds are brilliant. As for Olivia Wilde and her riveting performance: [. . .] it’s still good to see a cunning and capable actress rise above her usual projects, such as stupid fodder like Tron or Cowboys and Aliens, or labels like “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.” After E…
I don’t understand the ratings and the hullabaloo over what was affluence porn with a tired Bollywood plot (Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham came to mind but I’m sure there’s something else that aligns better with CRA.) Might be a satirical, over-the-top take on new and old money in Singapore, though I won…
A slasher version of A Quiet Place except The Monster gets you when you open your eyes (but only at key moments that further the plot.) Snoozefest after the first half. Had no idea that the lanky, highly tattooed extra is a famous rapper. A few plotholes that bugged me: What exactly constitutes a…
Recommended by Uber driver. Watched since I love a good revenge flick. Terrible. Had a good nap, though.…
As wonderful as the first one. Could not fucking stand Sarah Silverman’s cloying Vanellope von Schweetz, which I suppose was the intended effect.…
Venom goes from evil alien mastermind who wants to take over the planet to Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” in about five minutes. His new motivations make no sense whatsoever. But in the case of Venom, the action follows nothing. There’s no reason for Venom to risk his life because he…
Watched with LD. Clever, clever! Loved all but the last 15 minutes.…
TL;DW? Denzel Washington is Liam Neeson from Taken (with a lot of that movie’s tropes.) Over on Reddit, an essential discussion of who would win a fight. Features my favorite hipster-henchman, Tait Fletcher whom I last saw in The Accountant. Loved the first half of this song: https://www.youtube.…
Dan Fogler is as awesome in this one as he was in the first. A role he was born to play: Did you feel like you had an advantage while auditioning because you’re actually from New York? I think I brought some real authenticity to it. I grew up in Brooklyn. When I read the part, I thought, “Oh, ma…
As if I needed another reason to fall in love with Tilda Swinton Swinton penned a phony IMDb biography to keep the secret, and wore fake genitalia, created by makeup artist Mark Coulier, while in character. (“She did have us make a penis and balls,” Coulier told the paper. “She had this nice, wei…
Deeply upsetting. One of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker on what gives it its potency Should you want to measure the psychological disturbance at work here, try comparing “Hereditary” with “A Quiet Place.” That recent hit, for all its masterly shocks, is at b…
😴. Watch for Tom Cruise being a stuntmaking beast (esp in the helicopter chase scene.)…
Watched with Catherine. Dark, tense, predictable. Uashamed to admit that I thought Logan Marshall-Green was Tom Hardy for the duration of the movie (even after watching “Upgrade” … must’ve been the hair.) Excellent stuff by Lindsey Burdge.…
Eh. Some amazing camera work and a great soundtrack.…
Michael Cavna at The Washington Post with a roundup of the cultural appropriation controversy around the movie. Steve Rose at The Guardian: Some critics are barking “appropriation!” on Twitter and online, but where Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange (and there are many more) took a Japanese st…
Too much Ryan Reynolding but hey, with a ~900% ROI, whatever works 🤷♂️…
The 1.25s interval between each ‘tick’ in the background score of the water planet scenes1 in “Interstellar” indicates the passage of a single day on Earth. #theydidthemath See also: thalassophobia↩︎…
Jesse Plemons steals the show even though he has very little screen time. In my book, he is no longer Todd from Breaking Bad, and is never to be referred to as “Meth Damon” or “Discount Matt Damon”…
A mother in suburban Chicago breathes a huge sigh of relief this week, as she was reunited with her 8-year-old son Kevin, who was accidentally left at home alone as the family went on vacation to Paris. Apparently no one had noticed the boy was missing on their drive to the airport and through air…
Saw this with SC. Doesn’t let go for 90 minutes. Jim from The Office is killing it these days. MS: “This is what happens once you get away from a toxic workplace.” 😂…