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Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

This is a weird one for me. I wouldn’t call it great and it’s a real mess and even annoying sometimes, but I couldn’t help but be shocked that despite this being the same director/co-writer and same cinematographer as JURASSIC WORLD (2015), that this flick is, despite itself, somehow far far more watchable than that film. I don’t know if those individuals took some time to reflect and grow as artists in the interim or what, someone pulled them aside and explain how film works or what, but they managed to turn in a more entertaining product here one way or another.

Again the fandom itself flipped about the plot, in this about the fact that a part of the plot involves giant locusts who are threatening the food supply, and while this may just be a mechanism to find a path to squeezing in characters from the original movie, on another level it also just kinda feels actually Crichton-Esque? To have a plot that doesn’t just concern “look at that awesome monster,” but some degree of attempted science-fiction actually moving the plot forward and manifesting a meaningful antagonist in Dodgson, recast with Campbell Scott because the original actor turned out to be like, a child molestor . And you know, as silly as it is, I find this very satisfying as a soap opera beat!

The film just looking a lot better than JW1 goes a long way for me, and this film is helping me articulate to the point that, this movie here is still transparent in its nature and what it’s selling, but it at least visually manages to clearly be a movie, where JW1 actually started feeling to me to be the rather ultimate example of a “theme park” overtaking actual cinema, with the content perceived to be acceptable by itself without any sort of authoring as a vision.

All and all it’s not really a film I could recommend to anyone except Jurassicheads and dinoheads, but I enjoyed it well enough.

okay so here we have the first ever Jurassic film this is *not* worse than all preceding Jurassic films subtracted from one another. And in fact it’s actually pretty damn good, ittedly I’m extra enthusiastic about it because I watched it the night after I watched JURASSIC WORLD (2015) which is such a stylistically void and nauseously transparent piece of work that it makes FALLEN KINGDOM feel like it was directed by Terrence Malick

Absolutely love the opening sequence in the rain it reminded me of like an old 90s Jurassic Park video game

It’s sad seeing Isla Nublar go, and this chapter could have been played a little straighter but they definitely managed to commit to it by the sequence’s end.

I recently discussed my love for KRAVEN THE HUNTER WITH MY DAD AND THE AMOUNT OF DIFFERENCE THAY CAN BE MADE HAVING A MEMORABLE ANTAGONIST(S), THERE ARE MANY ACTION FRANCHISES STRONG GOOD ACTION FRANCHISES IN FACT WHICH BOAST SEVERAL INSTALLMENTS FAILING IN THIS REGARD. KRAVEN HAS 3 ARGUABLY FOUR MEMORABLE ANTAGONIST CHARACTERS (ALESSANDRO NIVOLA, RUSSELL CROWE, CHRIS ABBOTT, AND ALSO KINDA FRED HECHINGER) AND SO YOU COULD ALSO SAY FALLEN KINGDOM IS IN POSSESSION OF UPWARDS OF FOUR WORTHY BAD GUYS, RAFE SPALL, TED LEVINE, TOBY JONES AND INDO RAPTOR.

Toby Jones really is so gross in this I love him.

Bryce Dallas Howard actually gets to cash in on an arc that she actually was doing reasonably well executing in the first film despite having no help from the rest of the production

the concept of Blue the semi domestic raptor is actually made to work here, whether it’s the direction simply catching it better or definite improvement over the CGI, Blue feels both like an animal and a character here, as opposed to the stilted plot device in JW1. They make a little action hero of her here and it’s delightfully stupid. The reprise of Raptor themes from THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK is super satisfying

All I know is when a franchise fandom like this gets really annoyed and belligerent with plot points in a film and descends into cinemasins level critique, it’s probably a good sign for the movie’s actual quality and this is no exception.

so I’ve been a hater on this movie for some time, despite enjoying it initially in theater, to the extent that I found myself surprised at just how much of this film that I don’t hate and kinda works for me. As the first act begins assembling all of its moving parts there’s a lot of ideas here I actually like! And somehow Chris Pratt isn’t even annoying me all that much!

The problem arises when things start happening and it becomes unavoidably clear that Trevorrow, having turned in this able utilitarian story, has absolutely no style or sauce whatsoever. In of film language this flick feels punishingly flat, there’s one single shot I could point out as being memorable and that may only be in the context of how desperate I was to see something that looked good; it’s the scene in which D’onofrio and BD Wong are talking over the phone the camera is viewing D’onofrio through a thermal imaging weather screen. Nothing special, but that’s the one shot in the film I could point out that actually felt like a creative decision was being made by artist.

Possibly even more damning for a film of this nature, a nostalgia fueled soft reboot legacy spectacle; something that I should be a very easy mark for, is that Trevorrow cannot fucking understand that nostalgia on the part of the audience is not an existing element within the story.
There’s a scene in which the two moron kids with divorcing parents are off the reservation and end up exploring the trashed and overgrown front lobby of the original Jurassic Park, and Colin has the nerve to start playing that stupid fucking Teaser #1 soft piano reprise of the original theme, as these kids with divorcing parents survey the wrecked room, as if they fucking kids were even a sperm of their dads vagina when the original park was… almost ready for public consumption?

and then, let’s talk about the climax, which I’ll it worked on me when I first saw it back in theaters (I was hurting for sources of happiness back in 2015) but man do I have a bone to pick now. The idea of Claire going to uncage and lure Roberta to come fight the Indomitus, is on paper such a cool idea, but heres the thing; this is a desperate and horrifying situation. Claire and Owen and the kids are all at risk of being eaten alive by a man made abomination that seems insurmountable, and their only idea to change the odds is for Claire to bring a bigger animal into the mix. We, the audience, love Roberta, and this is a fan service moment. But it should still be horrifying to the characters, this should be a “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING” moment, an insane last resort that we don’t know will even work.
But fucking Colon cannot HELP HIMSELF but blast HAPPY HEROIC music as Roberta charges into the fray. And suddenly the ensuing kaiju fight feels entirely weightless. astounding shit tbh

So basically this could have been a fair-to-awesome movie if it had a director

Okay so, I’ve seen a lot of people in my life stand by this film being better than The Lost World perhaps by sheer virtue of it being so much shorter, and it feels absurd to me because even that aspect just reeks of a pervasive cheapness here. I could work with this script and a more scaled down adventure but it’s hard to get into when every scene that isn’t dinosaur scene is staged and blocked like a bad sitcom, and every element of the film feels like it’s rushing to get to the credits.
It’s got cool memorable moments, the Spinosaurus is a cool one-upping monster for the franchise, the raptor trap on Udesky is sickening as hell and gave me nightmares as a kid, and the birdcage scene is undeniably eerie. Sam Neill is beautifully in character here and I can’t help but wonder if it works so well because maybe he had a similar feeling to being on this set! I really like Nivola in this too, and I think they deserved more screentime together.
Also, John Williams score here is kinda incredible there’s lots of bits in this movie actually lowkey wish he had used in the previous films.

All in all it’s not the worst 90 minutes and it’s got some memeable moments but it feels very weighed down by its limitations

As a child, we had this on VHS right alongside the first one, the nostalgia I possess for the first is pretty much equal, I do really love this movie, but it’s definitely uneven in its qualities compared to how tight the first one. This one manages to play up the horror element a little bit more I think which is a worthy direction! I love the idea that John Hammond is sincerely trying to redeem himself but even that has to be facilitated through a shitload of people risking entirely horrific deaths. Pete Postlethwaite is so fucking cool in this movie, I wish he had more screentime in this (he has a deleted scene which characterizes him a bit more and this scene actually gets reinserted n some televised screenings) and I feel like this is probably one of the films that that actually used him the most and even it seems to deflate a bit for me once his character exits the stage, painfully underutilized actor may he rest in peace.

I may have seen this film more than any other, it being one of my VCR IN UTERO films, the absence of which my conscious life has never known. Watching this film feels like coming home. And it feels rare and special that such a devastating nostalgia is matched by an authentic appreciation for nearly every aspect of its craft.
It’s genuinely hard for me to think of something about this film that I don’t love. I’m sure I probably could as an exercise if I squeezed really hard but I’m not here for that and that’s not what I do.

I love how the film looks, how Cundey shot it, I love how it sounds and feels with Williams score. The direction of the pacing is kinda my favorite thing ever because I just love how the film is portioned out between build up, hang out, and action. The characters stop to catch their breath right alongside us, and the thoughts don’t get lost in the spectacle.

I love the curmudgeon Alan Grant, I love the overqualified Ellie Sattler, the math pervert Ian Malcolm, and of course I love the lumbering MVP Roberta herself, that’s right I’m not calling her Rexy it’s a stupid fucking nickname, take your sensitive ass back to Night and The Museum, fuckbuah. All the dinosaurs here are belligerent Trans icons.

I can’t really say it’s my favorite film of all time, but it damn well kinda feels that way while I’m watching it.

“Always the bravest of us… but you could never make the hard decisions.”

“You have a very trustworthy face, you remind me of an Asian Colonel Sanders, a face I can trust.”

14 years on, I’m still saying “holy shit” out loud every five minutes at age 30. Of all the Iive actions films this contains the most Generation One per square inch and integrates the references as such so it just feels effortless to the point of near coincidence (I’m looking at you Bumblebee and ROTB you patronizing fucks) and all of this culminates at the end with a scene that just had the fandom at large FUMING.

Yeah, I’m sorry wholesome chungus Optimus didn’t wanna play Santa Claus with two genocidal maniacs who violently slaughtered his old friends and countless possibly even innocent lives in Chicago. (The opposite outcome I know for a fact would inevitably be equally shat on by the invocation of the names Jazz and Ironhide)

Whats whack is this jarring outcome actually feels earned because the invasion of Chicago comes off somehow more horrifying of a domestic nightmare than anything in CIVIL WAR (2024), just massive loads of bystanders being ashed in plain sight, buses and trains filled with corpses, they let you sit with this “it’s so over” sight as a status quo for a time before Bay delivers a profoundly satisfying “we’re so back” moment in the form of a massive shell hitting the concrete ejected from Prime’s ion blaster.

And I wanna talk about the effectiveness of this pacing, by comparing to a negative example, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there’s a scene in which the principle cast of Han, Chewie and Finn are all surrounded and pushed around by a garrison of storm troopers, and it feels like no more than 10 seconds before they look to the sky and a squadron of Resistance X-Wings arrive to show off their aerial acrobatics and defeat all the bad guys in sight.
This scene feels like a failure looking back because such a sight could be so much more satisfying if only we the audience were allowed to soak in the fact that our heroes were in fact in deep shit before it happened. In addition to the aforementioned tone shift of the Autobots return, There’s a similar scene in the third act of this film in which Bumblebee and Que and other autobots are rounded up with guns on them, and they are laughed at by the Decepticons before they throw Que down and blow him to pieces, Bumblebee quietly says goodbye as he’s lined up to be next as Sam Witwickity looks on helplessly trying to make his doohickey work. Are we actually worried Bumblebee is gonna die, perhaps not, but it works in its emotional context because Bay is a master of rhythm.

Shia LaBeouf’s performance in this film is kinda singsular, it’s like you can actually see his mind snapping in real time, from the first part of the film having to navigate average adulthood and jobhunts and emasculation and other men being creepier than he is, to having a torture wristwatch cutting into his skin to having to march his ass into Occupied Chicago with no Autobots.

I’m also in love with the texture of this film, you can really feel the humidity in the image much like in Bad Boys II. That could probably be applied to all of these films but it occurred to me here. I love how blue the sky gets in Bay’s saturated world until it’s kicked into being white by the angle and the dust and moisture in the air.

Also it’s cool to see several midwestern spaces taken through this wild lens, all over Chicago of course, the highway chase on Cline Ave, but also the Milwaukee Art Museum where I went to prom!

In regards to its place in the sequence of films, here the Autobots continue their ingratiation to the American military industrial complex, lying down with dogs and getting up with flees, being trapped with the human species after eons of war extracts a heavy moral toll on our heroes, and very soon they will pay an even more terrible price…. Which we’ll get to!

Frankly woe to all and any who don’t see this for the action masterpiece that it truly is.

Really commanding visuals in this, felt like I was a watching a Tarsem Singh dungeons and dragons movie or something.
I think the POV shot of a minion with the infrared cycloptic lens getting his neck turned 180 degrees to see Riddick in thermal vision is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Oh so that WAS Katt Williams, me here second guessing myself like “No that’s not Katt Williams and you need to do better.”
Quite a funny and brisk movie, I like the woman calling everyone BITCH with a capital ‘B’

Was never a big sports person, though my father is. I did a little T-ball as yungun and went to a few Brewers games with my father through my adolescence. Ive brushed up enough against the practice of baseball to have respect for what it can mean to people, in some form or another. Even if I can’t always fully understand it as others do.
The way this film captures failing light of evening was jaw-dropping to me, in context it very nearly reduced me to tears. Just men trying to see a final ritual to its end, as life, by some means or another (a belligerent Wayne Diamond) culls them from the field to other supposed duties or occupations. All of the men feel a different degree of obligation to this structure, some are sentimental, some even very quietly mournful in their way, and some are just tired and ready to go home and or go get drunk. There’s no heroes here, no dramatic monologues on the nature of existence. Just dudes trying to finish a game and give a proper farewell to a space that brought them all together for so long. And in that effort, I think they reach something sublime even if not a single one of them really recognize it.

Will this space these men? Will children walk to the bathroom in the new school and see an apparition of Keith William Richards in the hallway, mitt in hand?

The fact that that ending can still hit in full sincerity despite of all that we the audience have just witnessed in the preceding two hours is some sort of miracle. The entire film does feel nearly elegiac in the metacontext; though we know the show will go on, there is a sense of mortality and finality here as if death has finally come to collect the toll after a lifetime of defying it.

Godspeed you! Crazy Ass White Boy

As a neophyte in FAST lore, I can say I recognize FAST FIVE as a sort of likely formal peak, and a sincerely impressive sort of “it’s all coming together” moment for the franchise, but I can’t help but feeling I *might* have come away from this one a little more satisfied, and that’s no easy feat. The foot ain’t come off the gas in regards to fully converting this to soap opera, and the idea of the Fast Famiglia coming head to head with a warped twisted cracked mirror version of the crew (which Roman specifically acknowledges) is a hell of a lot of fun.

For some time now I’ve been in melancholic consideration of the spiritual deficit that comes with living in my misbegotten homeland, and I can say in all humility that my own efforts at music, however rudimentary, however vulgar, are if nothing else an attempt to ameliorate that alienation. So to make the act of music itself (to be clear, actually competent music) essentially a key point in the interplay of characters emerging from wholly different origins, really struck a chord with me, and how this folds into this film’s take on the seductive ethos of vampires, almost making it less of a predatory law of the jungle and closer to a sort of Third Impact philosophy of personal connection, is really fucking graceful and impactful.
Kino of a high order

I mean, it could only be five bags of popcorn total for this out of a possible five bags of popcorn.
It’s funny how Fast Five would suggest there are like five really cool dudes they gotta assemble for their gang in an abridged Seven Samurai trajectory, but there’s like, way more than five guys on this team, and it’s all for the best.

It’s funny that, while I’ve enjoyed the preceding features to various degrees, it’s always felt that a proper antagonistic force is somewhat lacking or at least undercooked, and making the Rock Johnson the heavy for this feels a hilariously on the nose antidote for that shortcoming.

Love seeing so many moving parts from preceding installments coming together. Folks who were previous movies and now they are in THIS film. reminds me of some other sort of franchise I can’t quite my finger on.

Some really jaw-dropping moments here, occasionally some really fascinating choices made for a debut film. I feel like there may be something missing something holding it slightly back but I frankly can’t articulate it and I can’t really fault it at all because the film is otherwise so unflinching and uncompromising. I have the slightest awareness of Irish history and culture and I’m sure more informed individual could thoroughly dig into the political implications of the story and the nature of the bitterness and simmering spite that is on display.

So I waited a while on this one because I had heard how much had been cut (including May Calamaway) and hoped Scott would continue his trend of directors cut releases, but apparently he has said that isn’t happening for GLADIATOR II, so, here we go.

To be clear I like the first film but I do not hold it on any sacred pedestal as some others do (looking at you Ralphie) so there was no biblical expectation on this one for me. And the fact is, I probably enjoyed this one about equivalent to the first.
It has kind of a rough flow wherein you really feel that this 2.5 hour film has another .5-1 hr missing from it. But what we have here is regardless quite a feast of spectacle. Love Mescal, love Pascal, love Washington, love Quinn and Hechinger and that stupid fucking monkey

The FUCK you all know about some turtles. Just a little guy.
Not me crying like a bitch at the end this movie. Something about those kids running against chaos and through rubble in collective selflessness just had me entirely undone. Fantastic terrain-motivated set pieces between two monsters who aren’t quite the same scale.
This is a bittersweet picture not only being the last Gamera feature to date but coming even later in the timeline than GODZILLA FINAL WARS in respect to suitmation Tokusatsu. Hard to imagine a better sendoff nor a finer display of all that is simply irreplaceable in this artform.

Seeing this film with my father back in 2005 is one of my most cherished cinema experiences, so I’m grateful I was able to see it once again on the big screen, what a grandiose baroque piece of work this is. My theater was nearly empty save for one couple in before me and a quadrumvirate squad of jar openers who entered after and for some reason left like, well before Utapau, even? No Bruce Spence and Grievous fight, that’s an L. I do hope they’re alright. Anyway I was surprised but relieved to not have to listen to a load of sithposting clowns repeating every line like it’s Rocky Horror.
I’ll spare you layman reflections on how relevant the film still feels, but suffice to say this is a franchise film in possession of palpable weight. A massive blockbuster space fantasy epic in which the situation has so eroded that nearly every principle character is some degree of arrogant asshole, and the cognitive dissonance on display is effectively a tangible occurrence within the atmosphere of the plot of Sidious. War makes blind and belligerent machines of people and here is where the purest of evils comes to bask and feed.

Some astonishing composition and editing rhythm in tandem with John Williams at his peak make this a practically musical experience. So don’t give me any guff about people not talking like real people.
Ian McDiarmid deserves his laurels, he manages to be cartoonishly hilarious yet actively repellent, he looks like he could be a libertine in Salò. Hayden and Ewan find themselves a rhythm here, in place of the tell not show expository dialogue of ATTACK OF THE CLONES, there is enough action establishing not only their camaraderie but their quirks and their friction. These were friends until they weren’t.
Jimmy smits

Perhaps my second favorite Star War?

Historically your average espionage thriller will follow protagonists whose actions are motivated by the overall objective of “making the world a safer place,” typically a fun romp in pro-hegemony propaganda.
Here the agents of said hegemony are rather disabused by such notions, though they recite it to one another as though a means to self-soothe.
A safer place for who?

The Fast and The Furious
but for Gooners

Dom Toretto Will Grahaming the crash site by observing the skidmarks is absolutely unhinged.

I’m seeing this one called a low point in the franchise which frankly only excites me for more of this bullshit

Twelve years in Leavenworth or eleven years in Twelveworth.

Aqua assault Ewok village set

25 minutes into this, I pause, and rub my head.

“Was Godzilla: Final Wars a comedy this whole time?”

Macon Blair… that’s my little guy

Some of the most insane, profound spiritual courage you will ever see captured on screen.

Frankly I don’t know what the hell the plot of this movie even was but I was paying attention, I’ll tell you that. Many numbers, large numbers. I don’t know why I spaced on the fact that Affleck is actually a great actor lol I was in the discourse wars pre-BVS.

I shied away from this film for a long time, frightened of its matter. It’s one thing to be vaguely or exhaustively aware of the gargantuan evils that go unpunished in our world; it’s another to spend two and a half hours hanging out with them. To see that these perpetrators still have human faces much like yours. They eat like you. They sleep like you. They love the movies like you do. Their back hurts like yours.
What purpose could such an exercise serve? Well, a rather crucial one, in fact. It’s understandable to be uncomfortable with the premise, but it would be objectionable to be dismissive of the sheer logistical and psychological and emotional hurdles it took on the part of Joshua Oppenheimer and company to bring this project to fruition.

Broadly the sentiments of these men are unanimous in pride and contentment. They are the victorious; right and wrong have no context in their book. They hold the power. They make the definitions. And yet you can observe around the fringes this is a perspective that has taken work to maintain; they boast of their evil; and yet it is said that they must do so, because to not be prideful of these crimes would make them vulnerable to the spirits of their victims. They express alternating hopes and concerns for what the existence of this film will mean for history’s perspective of their actions. (What a tight rope Oppenheimer must have had to walk to earn the trust of these individuals, allowing some of them to believe that this film would show them to be heroes.)

At the center of this is Anwar; a person who for better or worse I will never forget for the rest of my life. A man said to have murdered upwards of one thousand human beings by his own hand. Among men who celebrate and gallivant about the utmost depravity of their youth, Anwar its he is haunted by his actions and has trouble sleeping. There is contention among the audience; whether his final scenes in this film exist in sincerity or contrivance. In the immediate wake of all we have witnessed; it’s understandable to be both deeply cynical and distrusting.

And yet I can only remark these are men who had nothing to hide, and nothing to prove. Oppenheimer has remarked that Anwar was brought to tears in viewing the final film, an “honest and true film” and told Joshua over phone that there was nothing left for him to do in life but die. (Anwar has since ed)

For my own considerations: I do not believe the dry-heaving was fake. What this could possibly say about the soul of Anwar Congo it is not my place to say.
But this, if nothing else, is the spiritual power of Cinema.

Can’t help but ire the bizarre novelty of this film as a third entry in a franchise; featuring no returning characters and focusing instead on a southern fish-out-of-water in Tokyo. Hysterical ing 2006 Lucas Black off as being seventeen years old. The action filmmaking here is frequently breathtaking, I’m glad to know Lin has directed several installments going forward

while not the first piece of work to ask questions on this matter, hard not to think of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, THE BAD SEED, or MILDRED PIERCE preceding, nonetheless the narrative that is shaped here is effectively cogent regarding how the stakes of parenthood and childhood have evolved in the wake of the internet and the boundless influences that pour through in conjunction with inevitable cruelty of children. Heartbreaking.

“If you think duplicity is such a virtue,

I want you to teach our son how to lie.”

A feverish record of collapsing facades and shattered mirrors

For all of Abel Ferrara’s commitment to urban grime in his early days, the cityscape he paints in this film is undeniably gorgeous. And Walken’s Frank White, for a Ferrara protagonist, is pretty well likable! The cops in this movie played by David Caruso and Wesley Snipes are bunch of dorks. This feels like one of Abel’s most Hollywoodesque outings, but the performances he pulls out of this stacked cast nonetheless preserve his earthy tangibility.

Thank you Abel, that was wack as fuck.
I hope to revisit this again in better quality but I can’t deny the rip I watched on YouTube really elevated the seedier elements of the piece.

The visual style is so distinctly garish and of its time as to set it apart from a zillion other films with basically the same plot. I was like “wow Cole Ha in 2000 hadn’t aged at all since Dazed and Confused”. Yeah that’s cuz it wasn’t actually shot in 1978 asshole

Huge for catholic-coded bitches like myself. Operates with a faith-based Rorschach test similar to Gamera 3. Went in blind to a stacked cast on this one which really added to the mystery experience.

This review may contain spoilers.

Blown away with how much I loved this on rewatch. I saw it first a decade ago, and loved much about it, but found it so depressing all the same. [the children in the engine is one of the most viscerally upsetting things I’ve seen in a major motion picture, and it’s right at the very end] I’ve often described the shift from the hair-raising torch sequence to the subsequent events as one of the most most chilling tonal shifts from “We’re so back,” to “It’s so over.” A decade later, things being what they are in our world, I adore just how dour this film was allowed to be and in hindsight any ending more uplifting than this would feel ill-fitting and disingenuous.
Zero subtlety, 100% effectiveness.

Fuck Wilford, fuck rich people, fuck trains. (Well maybe not because we need to reinvigorate public transport and push away from automobile dependency)

Frankly I was overwhelmed by the circumstances to the point that I lost track of what was actually going on, but I was never frustrated by that. Very cool that a movie like this doesn’t completely collapse under that post-John Wick aura, THE SHADOW STRAYS manages to carve its own path.

Why don’t you Diabolique my balls, Michel

Flying Lotus competently delivers a budget Prometheus through a Panos Cosmatos-styled lens. The story is derivative, but its presentation has a few curveballs that make for an intriguing 95 minutes. It probably could have used 30 more?

This review may contain spoilers.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?

gotta say, Paul Walker’s physical reaction to jumping his car onto a boat is without exaggeration one my most favorite moments I’ve seen in a film in a awhile. This crazy ass white boy carved himself into my heart a little here

This deserves more nuanced discussion but there’s a lot of really thoughtful reviews on here I cannot meaningfully add to,

so I will just say never in one bozillion years will I ever forgive the British

The hell is this shit, Harm, making me spend 80 minutes standing in front of a TV eating berries and shit out of a bowl trying to deduce whether or not I’m having a stroke. The soundtrack by Burial absolutely goes and does a lot of the heavy lifting here. If AGGRO DR1FT was some sort of portrait of GTA-esque video games then this felt like a feature length immersion of a game on your phone. Be it more traditionally narrative or not,
I kinda wish Harm would have pursued more of the horror of the home invasion element blended with the inexplicit shock of the invaders having baby faces, I was never alarmed by the film, only puzzled.

I could see this being a cautionary tale about giving your kids phones with games on ‘em too early.

William Friedkin you beautiful bitter motherfucker. William Peterson is a rabid dog in this film, approximately as disgusting as James Woods in COP, not anymore likable than the criminals he’s hunting. Robby Muller’s photography makes a painting of every crime.

My first Malick!
Im an absolute sucker for landscapes, and the majesty of the photography, and story paced out so methodically, the reverence of the natural world, entirely disarmed me by the time the violence began. I’ve seen a few western war films in my day and I’m having a difficult time recalling one that frightened me the way this one did. The absolute helplessness and thoughtless pragmatism of militarism just filled me with such despair and disgust. And yet you feel this pain and this fear is not the grand destination that Malick has in mind either; those are just the facts of the matter; but there is more to this world than what we can bend to our will. I’m reminded of an exchange from William Friedkin’s SORCERER I shall paraphrase;
“He was just a soldier.”
“No one is just anything.”

What can I say. I just feel so blessed and so grateful to have been able to enjoy all six of these films free of irony or pedantry. after how much I enjoyed AFTERLIFE and RETRIBUTION, I was expecting somewhat that this finale may fumble. I don’t know what I materially expected from the plot, but I was shook by what this film was able to deliver for Alice as a character and the series in culmination.

It’s actually kind of interesting based on the title I expected this to be much more of a “genre” offering (what does that mean?) when the real film actually ended up making me think of Mike Leigh’s latest masterpiece ‘HARD TRUTHS’ crossed with ‘WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF,’ in its depiction of a weathered marriage of two people broken by themselves and each other, having finally reached some sort of breaking point the implications of which we may never fully know. The story will carry on after the credits roll leaving us primarily speculation.

solid train movie fr

Not only does this film fully live up to its reputation of forward gnarliness, it also resonated with me quite deeply by the end. What could have been cheap and exploitative and forgettable not only makes the most of its central conceit being a horrific scenario for a human being to endure in any position, but also designs it as perimeter within which personal morality and agency and identity can be studied.

Sorry Paul and Wes, but I think this officially makes PWSA the superior Anderson brother!

My favorite summer movies

• The Swimming Pool
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Do the Right Thing
• Twister
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
• Transformers
• The Suicide Squad
• Jaws
• Snack Shack
• Bad Boys II

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films to scratch the itch of convoluted crime sagas, poetic tortures, and Rube Goldberg mechanics

• The Abominable Dr. Phibes
• Se7en
• The Batman
• Hard Candy
• Hellraiser: Inferno
• Cube
• I Saw the Devil
• The Collector
• Death Note
• Death Note: The Last Name

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. In a Violent Nature
2. Stress Positions
3. Queer
4. Blackout
5. Trap
6. Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire
7. Rap World
8. AGGRO DR1FT
9. The Brutalist
10. The People's Joker

...plus 55 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

At age 30 I’m still intimidated by the prospect of watching these films, with the qualifying factor that I am actually interested in seeing them

• Wake in Fright
• After Life
• Fat Girl
• Amour
• Johnny Got His Gun

• The Piano Teacher
• Stress Positions
• Under the Skin
• In a Violent Nature
• Depraved
• Love & Pop
• The Great Yokai War: Guardians
• Zëiram
• Biutiful
• Queer

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Cosmopolis
2. Crash
3. A History of Violence
4. Videodrome
5. The Fly
6. Dead Ringers
7. Crimes of the Future
8. Maps to the Stars
9. Eastern Promises
10. Rabid

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All of these movies are good if not exceptional so don’t have a cow

• Alien
• Alien³
• Aliens
• Alien: Romulus
• Alien: Covenant
• Prometheus
• Alien Resurrection

He also gave me a vinyl copy of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Song to a Seagull’

He had been a teacher and a coach. Despite several physical crosses to bear in his final years he was both kind in demeanor generally and very stubborn in his self-sufficiency.

Rest in Peace, GM

• The Verdict
• An Officer and a Gentleman
• The Untouchables
• Creed II
• Stealing Beauty
• The Man with the Iron Fists

No memory before these films, no first watch recollection, they were always there. Forever.

Forever

Forever

• Jurassic Park
• Twister
• The Aristocats
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
• Star Wars
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Return of the Jedi
• Godzilla vs. Gigan
• Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
• Terror of Mechagodzilla

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Beau Travail
• In a Violent Nature
• Miami Vice
• AGGRO DR1FT
• Skinamarink
• Lamb
• Enys Men
• Godland

When the sole remaining agency lies in oblivion

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Thelma & Louise
• Terror of Mechagodzilla

• Cure
• On the Silver Globe
• Julien Donkey-Boy
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah
• Silence
• Vagabond
• The Iron Giant
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• Funeral Parade of Roses
• The Night Porter

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The best horror films I saw for the first time this year, in no order

• The Wicker Man
• Martyrs
• Angst
• Excision
• Stage Fright
• Eaten Alive
• Pulse
• Targets
• Antiviral
• Dead of Night

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• I Saw the Devil
• Hellraiser
• Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
• Malignant
• Eaten Alive
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah
• Bug
• The Hills Have Eyes
• Halloween
• Martyrs

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Great genre films I find befitting this particular time of year when the leaves fall and you need a sweater

• Cure
• The Exorcist
• Pumpkinhead
• Day of the Dead
• Noroi: The Curse
• Possession
• Onibaba
• Lake Mungo
• The Exorcist III
• Creature from the Black Lagoon

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Halloween
• Halloween Ends
• Halloween II
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch
• Halloween Kills
• Halloween II
• Halloween
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
• Halloween
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Mandy
• After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
• Burning
• Sanctuary
• Blue
• Belladonna of Sadness
• Eraserhead
• Malignant

• Miller's Crossing
• Brawl in Cell Block 99
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon
• The Departed
• Tenet
• Hatchet II
• John Wick: Chapter 4

• Pig
• After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
• The Card Counter
• Infinity Pool
• Midnight Mass
• Godzilla vs. Kong
• After Yang
• Blonde
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Avatar: The Way of Water

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The music of my favorite band, Have a Nice Life, provides with their expertise in obscure history, esoteric texts and general lamentations of mortality and vulnerability, a cultivated stream of tangible thematic imagery, from starving peasants to the hazards of industrialization, from bloody bathtubs to massive suffering golems leveling the Earth, and incomprehensible visions of humanity’s desolate future.

• The Emigrants
• An Elephant Sitting Still
• Black Rain
• On the Silver Globe
• Stroszek
• Hard to Be a God
• The Third Part of the Night
• The Ascent
• Daimajin
• Mad God

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Matrix Reloaded and ROTK represent their respective trilogy as a whole

• Dead or Alive 2: Birds
• The Proposition
• Death Sentence
• Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends The Movie
• Black Dynamite
• Lady Vengeance
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• The Matrix Reloaded
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• First Reformed
• Silence
• Shame
• Hard to Be a God
• Uncut Gems
• Transformers: Age of Extinction
• An Elephant Sitting Still
• Mandy
• An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

• Blonde
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• After Yang
• After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• RRR
• Barbarian
• Nope
• Decision to Leave

A collection of exciting Japanese films culling influence from old folklore. I haven’t seen all of these yet myself but exciting to put them all in the same pool with all their overlapping elements

• The Mad Fox
• Kwaidan
• Onibaba
• The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch
• Kuroneko
• Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters
• Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare
• Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts
• Daimajin
• Return of Daimajin

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Silence
• Cure
• Vagabond
• Onibaba
• The Devil
• Female Trouble
• Multiple Maniacs
• Pink Flamingos
• The Toxic Avenger
• Red Angel

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• On the Silver Globe
• The Seventh Seal
• Julien Donkey-Boy
• Silence
• Son of Godzilla
• Vagabond
• The Iron Giant
• First Reformed
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• The Night Porter

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Batman
2. Batman Returns
3. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
4. Batman: Under the Red Hood
5. Batman
6. The Dark Knight
7. Batman Begins
8. Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
9. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
10. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.