4v291o
This blows, I'm ready to fight
Will Alex Garland ever be able to write a film?
]]>
Watched on Sunday June 8, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Sunday June 8, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Friday June 6, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Thursday June 5, 2025.
]]>
Obligatory 'there was no way he could follow up succession' aside, there's a really fresh tension between abstracted evil and immediate evil here
Fun fact about the trolley dilemma - plenty of people are willing to flip a switch to have the train kill one person to save the five. However, change the hypothetical to pushing someone in front of the train to stop it short, and far fewer people are willing.
Everyone wants to flip the switch, nobody wants to push someone in front of the train, even if the results are the same (five saved lives). This is because we aren't wired to feel abstract consequences, like, say, what comes from controlling the world from our smartphones.
The real brilliance here, besides the pitch black farcical tone (that will likely upset those hoping to find these four more lovable than loathsome), are the implications Jesse is driving at. We're monkey brained, we are not capable of fully perceiving our actions on a global scale. These billionaires joke about the deaths of thousands at their metaphysical hands but can't kill a single person with their real ones.
Any system which allows power to be concentrated so exponentially into human hands will always have this problem. One must have skin in the game to truly interface with the gravity of their actions. The capitalistic world is run by switch flippers, who have their soupers push people in front of trains.
]]>
Watched on Sunday May 25, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.
]]>
If you can ignore the unfathomable self flagellating narcissism of the concept, the sexist puddle-deep psychoanalysis of the script, the sheer cringe-dripping gall of Abel's performance, the atrocities committed by the dialogue... this is actually kinda sick?
Trey Edward Shults is a generational talent, in every cut you can feel him literally fighting for his life to make this a good movie. The coverage, edit, and music are all stupendous.
This is a really powerful example of how the spirit of a film is so much more important than its technical prowess - in a vacuum there is SO much to appreciate here, but it's constantly undermined by the flabbergasting individual this film exists to whip and worship.
Can someone watch this I need to talk about it more
]]>
Trauma emotionally crystallizes us, like a caterpillar who can never break out of its cocoon
This is so much more than victim and perpetrator, it's a startling reflection of two mirrors, an infinite regress of pain that leaves us unable to point fingers, unable to do anything but marvel at how many lifetimes it takes to stop the bleeding and the cutting alike
]]>
Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.
]]>
Kissing Anna Kendrick just once would ruin my life, too
This had an insane structure - sluggish 40 minute setup that could have been 15, throws out its premise at minute 50 and has a scrumptious bonkers crash out at the 1 hr mark, then regroups to amp up for a feeble anticlimax followed by the biggest shrug of a mentor speech I've ever seen
stuffed w/ wall-to-wall plunky mid 2000s indie acoustic score, maybe one inspired coverage decision every 20 minutes, but there's a lot of charm and specificity to some of the peripheral characters. I really appreciate that there were no easy outs for our protagonist's problem, at its best this really captures that adolescent sense of banging your head against a wall to try and change what feels unchangeable about yourself
you used to be able to win a prize at sundance + get a 4.5 million dollar budget (7.1 mil inflation adjusted) for this caliber of stuff. We're in a different world
]]>
Outstanding tonal shifts, solid coverage, incredible bits, nice wild swings with the music and the edit - I fucking love this, I love seeing comedies in a crowd, amen
]]>
Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.
]]>
Truly has nothing nuanced to say, I abhor disney/marvel but this was in the same voiceless + self congratulatory realm as the very corporation Jim's trying to lampoon
]]>
Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.
]]>
wow
]]>
Coverage honestly popping off here at some points
]]>
Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.
]]>
Two coexisting feelings
1. Jared has a lot more fun with this than most directors do when subjected to the studio machine
2. Culture is dead... brainrot shit tok hurts my tummy and eyes
]]>
Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday March 25, 2025.
]]>
Each successive episode elevates the depth and empathy of the story. It's incredible that something this mature, masterful, and technically accomplished is the most popular show in the world as I write this. There's hope for our industry yet...
]]>
Some brilliant sequences in here - satellite hack, polygraph, both dinner scenes
]]>
Watched on Friday March 21, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Wednesday March 19, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Wednesday March 12, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday March 11, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Wednesday March 5, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Saturday March 1, 2025.
]]>
:(
no...
Sadly this is a step down from Shithouse in every respect - I think the scope of this production lost us so much naturalism in the performances, and even elegance of visual language - this film is so cutty and overcovered, to what effect?
The script + characters are vaguer and less believable, the PD and score are utterly vanilla... there are glimpses of Cooper's heart piercing through this at times, which gives me hope that he got overwhelmed and crushed by the size of this production.
But I have another worry, and the two might not be mutually exclusive - this script really felt like it existed in large part for Cooper to prop up nice the boi Cooper image. Like, it's an incredible act of self-revealing when you make a vulnerable film with your friends about something close to your life experience, it's another to be given millions of dollars to make a film where Dakota Johnson tries to fuck you after she has a miscarriage?? Seriously?
]]>
This is so earnest, it had me in tears multiple times
I think this might have been a lo fi masterpiece if he cut the last 6 minutes but even that step too far is so gorgeously unabashedly romantic and sweet
I'm in tatters
I wish my upbringing was kinder and this was the stuff I made, this movie makes me feel like a bad person lol
]]>
The origins of Good Time
]]>
Watched on Wednesday February 19, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Wednesday February 12, 2025.
]]>
Pin drop silence in my packed theater throughout the entirety of the credits and our exit. This is crushing, damning, hopeful, beautiful, disgusting, so intimate and yet so universal.
It's structured impeccably, through a friendship, through the perspective of a single village's slow demise - the multitudes contained within this friendship, within the village, within the breathy smile of the settler who fogs up the lens taunting "go write an article"... this film is infinite.
Its pacing and structure seem designed to answer specific questions a Western audience with no foreknowledge might have at each juncture. This is the sort of film you can show to almost anyone with a heart and a brain and they'd walk out seeing israel as the criminal apartheid state that it is.
And what a shadow the genocide casts over the film, to watch it knowing that what we're seeing doesn't even cover the atrocities that followed...
Please see this film, please show it to people.
]]>
The light in this film personifies the magic of childhood, each frame is a complete delight...
]]>
This review may contain spoilers.
To , to record - the most powerful thing a victim of history can do
The film is laden with acts of recordation and recollection - we watch super 8 footage, comb through photo albums, witness the taking of countless family pictures, we see our protagonist positively beaming as she holds up the death certificate, her smile whispering "he was with us, he was taken, our pain is real, I am still here, I am still here, I am still here"
Also fascinating is the way in which our protag is, as a psychological survival mechanism, forced to turn her home into a small scale version of the military dictatorship she suffers under - she becomes all smiles, lies, information withheld, responding with violence against the daughter who flies too close to the sun in her pursuit of truth
]]>
Watched on Tuesday February 4, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Monday February 3, 2025.
]]>
Watched on Saturday February 1, 2025.
]]>
PS2 cutscene ass movie
]]>- Uncut Gems
- Barry Lyndon
- The Act of Killing
- Come and See
- Before Sunset
- Satantango
- 45 Years
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller
- TÁR
- Grave of the Fireflies
...plus 82 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>I'm still missing a lot so don't kill me - All of Us Strangers, The Iron Claw for ex
- Monster
- The Zone of Interest
- May December
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Perfect Days
- About Dry Grasses
- Poor Things
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Dream Scenario
- The Boy and the Heron
...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>Did not see yet - Seed of Sacred Fig, Furiosa
- Nickel Boys
- Challengers
- Nosferatu
- The Substance
- Hundreds of Beavers
- Anora
- All We Imagine as Light
- Conclave
- Riddle of Fire
- Queer
...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>