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Kept forgetting to log this because I kept forgetting it happened. Monumentally fine.

Like 65% pretty good action, whomever is responsible for it. The rest is more snoozer Wick worldbuilding I no longer have any patience for.

Mostly harmless.

LIFE AQUATIC recapitulated as some absurd, Thurber-esque contraption. Perhaps a little remedial for Anderson but as usual endlessly lovely to look at and front-to-back hilarious.

Not remotely surprised that Jesse Armstrong decided to turn what was probably a Succession finale idea that got immediately shouted down in the writers' room into a movie Adam McKay would blame you for not liking. I'm as pissed as anyone that society somehow continues to reward these venal accelerationist tech pigs for deliberately dismantling civilization but it's somehow even worse to me that TV showrunners are endlessly allowed to get away with toothlessly "satirizing" the softest targets imaginable.

The Paths of Glory Lead but to the Grave

ittedly these movies do not have to work very hard for me to love them, and yet they work so, so fucking hard.

I think Cronenberg's late austerity completely flattens this, but at least it isn't quite as remedial as CRIMES OF THE FUTURE.

Tastes exactly like something that would have been dumped onto Disney+.

Mostly a feature-length version of one of Evans' own episodes of his pretty gnarly Gangs of London show. Sometimes bafflingly convoluted and overstuffed with interchangeable characters, takes its time getting to the action, then goes very amusingly nuts for an extended period of runtime. Fun movie.

Alarmingly weird and funny in a way that completely eluded the first one, still prime Dad Movie stuff. Basically zero ing though.

The roof is on fire, but you still can't let 'em in. And never put down your weapon.

Plays to Garland's strengths as its pure single-mindedness demands that nothing matters but what's right in front of your fucking face, and that's bolstered by the nicely stylized understylization. Less a brutal, baffling BLACK HAWK DOWN-ish ordeal than a survival horror experiential drip. Pretty dang good.

Corny.

I perhaps foolishly assumed that this had something to do with Billy and the Boingers.

Once again Soderbergh seems to be very amused with himself. This is immaculately constructed but it's also a pretty airless spy riff; sorta funny, a little sexy, but not really all that funny or sexy. Works on paper but since there's no reason to invest in the marriage and the spy narrative is underwhelming by design, it just felt like another Sodey exercise, and I might be getting a little bored with those.

Mostly an agonizingly dull TAKEN knockoff, but some of you might think that's worth it for the very amusingly bonkers last 20 minutes.

I was hoping to never have to sit through some corny Terry Gilliam-ass alleged satire like this ever again so I'm extra disappointed to see Bong picking up that particular football. Profoundly irritating.

Good close quarters fight choreo, very well cut. Relatively pretty funny especially compared to other recent similar stuff (I'm looking at you KILLERS GAME). Marko Zaror fights Josh Hartnett.

Very methodical, very German, ultimately a bit to its detriment. The shifting perspectives clash a little with the spareness of the narrative so the emotional landing doesn't really stick. That said there's a formal economy here that along with some truly terrific camerawork makes this feel a lot more exciting and novel than its mostly generic framework would lead you to expect. Good movie.

Honestly the perspective and its presentation is all that sets this apart from something Koepp picked out of his recycle bin, but it's hard to be mad about that.

Watched this and the SNL music one pretty close together. Questlove very apparently has this ability to embed genuine nuance -- sometimes pretty stealthily -- into what presents initially as conventional music doc formal structure. This one in particular might seem remedial to someone who knows a lot more about music (I know almost nothing) than myself but I also suspect that it's so engrossing that those folks don't really care.

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.” or "Give o'er the play!"

Achingly modern, entirely silly, a very pure work of ingenuity and intuition. The movie MEGALOPOLIS wanted to be. Should have been like 30 hours long.

PS: if anyone has a link to watch the full performance please let me know.

Their best film yet, a laser-focused audiovisual fetish board Franju Franco Bava Techniscope Eurospy movie, pretty much made exclusively for me.

"Just tell me to go away."

I the title being taken quite literally when I saw this thirty years ago, and while the drug dependency analog is certainly right there to be had, it's just impossible to recognize all those deeply pretentious references to philosophers or U.S.-perpetrated war crimes and not realize that the real killer here is power. Billy Corgan said once that the world is a vampire, and then Kathleen here says "My indifference is not the concern here, it's your astonishment that needs studying." We justify killing because it's the only way to forget that we're killers, and we need to believe that it's everyone else's fault that they're so weak.

Also, this is formally almost totally indistinguishable from vintage Joe Sarno. Great movie.

Yeah no this just really sucks.

Ross's image-making here seems to me to be deliberately turning this away from being a more "universal" story of abuse and into being a specific one of Black trauma -- physical, psychic, and political. The semiotics are unimpeachable, but I'd also be lying if I said I didn't find the POV thing distancing and distracting.

Needed this to be about 25% more rancid and at least 75% more exciting. It's mostly just sorta flat.

I hadn't seen this in over 20 years, but although the overall mid-apocalyptic vibe stuck with me all that time, what I had forgotten is that this might be the first (or at least my first) movie to really try to describe an intrinsic unease, this vague, almost inarticulable yuckyness -- not with the internet or its (now) very evident ability to disconnect us psychically or physically (which is clearly what's going on here) -- but with digital imagery itself.

Does an awful lot with relatively little.

It's not that the conceptual swing itself isn't interesting it's that that's all there is. The songs are mediocre at best and monotonously repetitive at worst. The entire exercise is about these people scrambling for some meaning in their endless guilt and relative privilege, which, a) who cares? and b) you get within about 8 minutes, and so you wind up with is a big fat So What.

"A doctor, who specializes in skin diseases, will dream he has fallen asleep in front of the television. Later, he will wake up in front of the television, but not his dream." -- Rusty Ryan

Exceptionally weird, basically a Japanese FINAL COUNTDOWN but also attempting something much more bizarrely soulful and ultimately pretty melancholy (not to mention really violent). Never bothers once with the mechanics of time travel and instead is content to relax while these modern soldiers descend into madness and depravity until the final forty minutes or so when they participate in an all-out feudal conflict. Tanks vs. horses, guns vs. archers, all of it played completely straight. Don't even get me started on the mournful and frequently outlandishly deployed soft-rock English language soundtrack. Good movie.

No longer just the great American western film but now also possibly the great media literacy litmus test.

Absolutely grating, just entirely for babies. Looks and sounds like it was produced for Nickelodeon.

"For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!"

"Just lay back, baby. Let it happen."

Bites off more than it can chew.

A diet DUKE OF BURGUNDY with a shot of TikTok Hashtag Girlboss. I mostly liked it!

Didn't hate this but it's not really much of anything. Every single scene constantly and thoroughly reminded me of Dreyer or Murnau or Herzog or especially Coppola, all of which are narratively or formally or thematically more interesting. Not sure why you'd make this movie this way.

Patiently directed and looks terrific, with lots of nice LA photography and deliberate frames, and feels pretty lived in with its grimy industry detail, but dude there's no delicate way to say that this is also boring.

First miss from Heller for me. Disappointingly basic, not remotely weird or challenging despite a bit of yuck.

This reminded me of like when you used to have to go to your guy's place to buy weed. Just imagine what this dude does to the DoorDash driver!

Gromit is Ethan Hunt and this is his DEAD RECKONING.

I guess I see dismissing this as merely McQueen's impeccably crafted EMPIRE OF THE SUN recapitulation but I found its digressions on the very real and not at all subtle gulfs between communities in the face of a common threat really fascinating. Frankly I think he belongs in genre-adjacent cinema like this.

Captivating, gorgeous, exactly the right amount full of shit. Awesome.

Wait was I supposed to give a shit about the people instead of the dogs?

Stale. I was not entertained.

This is really very good and Madison is as terrific as you've heard but Sean Baker is alas not quite Billy Wilder.

Just very sturdy, very classical stuff, a tale of moral suspense. Feels like it could have been made 75 years ago, in the best way.

Movies covered on The Suspense is Killing Us.

• The Star Chamber
• The Presidio
• Narrow Margin
• Presumed Innocent
• The Pelican Brief
• Consenting Adults
• Basic Instinct
• Sliver
• Body of Evidence
• Jagged Edge

...plus 185 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Since everyone else is doing it.

• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
• Rescue Force
• Sick-o-pathics
• Vampire Trailer Park
• Mikey
• Captain Ron
• I Start Counting
• Guarding Tess
• Fever Pitch
• The Specialists

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Thanks for following this year.

1. The Duke of Burgundy
2. Blackhat
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Sicario
5. Carol
6. Bitter Lake
7. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
8. The Hateful Eight
9. The Assassin
10. Magic Mike XXL

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Apollo 11
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
• The Souvenir
• The Irishman
• 6 Underground
• Dragged Across Concrete
• Dolemite Is My Name
• Little Women
• High Life
• Uncut Gems

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Popular or otherwise allegedly interesting films I thought weren't very good. In lieu of a worst-of list. Don't worry I'll probably make one of those too. Unranked. Comments will be rudely replied to if at all, because I don't care what you think.

• Hustlers
• Queen & Slim
• El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
• Joker
• Midsommar
• Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
• The Nightingale
• Captain Marvel
• The Beach Bum
• Booksmart

Since people have actually asked. Anecdotally my taste in these seems to be diametrically opposed to that of 95% of Bond fans. Keep in mind that I'm largely uncritical of them (like the top 15-ish here would get 3 1/2 stars or higher) and that I only consider the bottom two actively crappy (and I would and will still gladly watch either of those again too, pretty much whenever). I love them mostly for how different and the same they always are, the way their various plot beats and thematic and narrative ideas are reshuffled and recycled, and above all the technical craft (hence MOONRAKER, before you ask, a movie I'll defend till I die as a gorgeous analog achievement and a relentlessly entertaining bizarro artifact). SPECTRE (hopefully, probably) might get higher once I've seen it a couple more times, which without question I will.

1. From Russia with Love
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. You Only Live Twice
4. The Living Daylights
5. Moonraker
6. Goldfinger
7. Casino Royale
8. Licence to Kill
9. Skyfall
10. The Spy Who Loved Me

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

What I saw, ranked, from Fantastic Fest 2019. Includes screeners and rep.

1. Dolemite Is My Name
2. The Death of Dick Long
3. Pelican Blood
4. The Lighthouse
5. Knives and Skin
6. Sweetheart
7. Knives Out
8. Parasite
9. Jallikattu
10. The Whistlers

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Poll eligible and world premiere all mixed together I don't care about your rules man

1. Suspiria
2. the Girls
3. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
4. The Night Comes for Us
5. Revenge
6. Gemini
7. Knife+Heart
8. Holiday
9. In Fabric
10. Dragged Across Concrete

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You get the idea. No particular order. Comments will be addressed with sarcasm, name-calling, and argumentative gibberish.

• Roma
• Burning
• Annihilation
• Eighth Grade
• Hereditary
• Sorry to Bother You
• Can You Ever Forgive Me?
• Mandy
• Cold War
• American Animals

1. Suspiria
2. The Night Comes for Us
3. Knife+Heart
4. In Fabric
5. Holiday
6. The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
7. Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore
8. Donnybrook
9. Apostle
10. Overlord

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Unlikely that this will change in the next couple weeks, although ittedly there is a ton I haven't seen yet, so please don't ask where CALL ME BY YOUR NAME or whatever is. Not necessarily poll-eligible.

• Nocturama
• Personal Shopper
• John Wick: Chapter 2
• Blade Runner 2049
• Phantom Thread
• Lady Bird
• Logan
• Logan Lucky
• Let the Corpses Tan
• Revenge

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything I saw, ranked. To be updated as I plow through screeners of stuff I missed.

1. Let the Corpses Tan
2. Revenge
3. Gemini
4. Brawl in Cell Block 99
5. The Death of Stalin
6. Mom and Dad
7. World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts
8. Baasha
9. Jailbreak
10. Wheelman

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Love Witch
• Elle
• Nocturama
• O.J.: Made in America
• HyperNormalisation
• Arrival
• Cemetery of Splendor
• Cameraperson
• Paterson
• The Neon Demon

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

note: THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS would have been #4, NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR would have been at #19, and THE UNKNOWN KNOWN would have been at #24, but none of them are technically poll-eligible for 2013, which is why they're at the bottom.

1. The Wind Rises
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Computer Chess
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. Her
6. ion
7. Drug War
8. s Ha
9. Spring Breakers
10. The Counselor

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

New to me in 2015.

• Morgiana
• Cleopatra: Queen of Sex
• The Journey
• Road Movie
• Born in Flames
• Outlaw Blues
• The Fan
• Roar
• A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness
• Street Wars

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Unranked.

• Get Hard
• Kingsman: The Secret Service
• Ted 2
• Pixels
• Point Break
• Hitman: Agent 47
• Taken 3
• Everly
• R100
• Vacation

Ranked list of what I saw at Fantastic Fest 2015.

1. Belladonna of Sadness
2. Come Drink with Me
3. The Witch
4. The Assassin
5. Too Late
6. Stand by for Tape Back-up
7. Son of Saul
8. Green Room
9. High-Rise
10. Anomalisa

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ranked list of what i saw at Fantastic Fest 2014.

1. The Duke of Burgundy
2. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
3. John Wick
4. The Soultangler
5. Force Majeure
6. Kung Fu Elliot
7. Tokyo Tribe
8. It Follows
9. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
10. Man from Reno

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i certainly didn't discover these, but they were new to me in 2014. magically came up with a nice round 50 this year. unranked.

• Lustful Shogun and His 21 Mistresses
• The Erotomaniac Daimyo
• The Battle Wizard
• Fangs
• Curse of Evil
• GetEven
• A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era
• Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo
• Emma Mae
• The Fate of Lee Khan

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i thought these were not good.

1. All Cheerleaders Die
2. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
3. Stretch
4. The Expendables 3
5. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
6. 3 Days to Kill
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
8. Raze
9. I, Frankenstein
10. The Legend of Hercules

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i don't see anything infiltrating this from now until the end of the year, although i fully reserve the right to walk that statement back at any time, like a coward. poll-eligible only (technically THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY is the best movie i was lucky enough to see this year).

will not be seen by me until 2015: SELMA, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE

1. Inherent Vice
2. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
3. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel
5. Under the Skin
6. Only Lovers Left Alive
7. The Raid 2
8. Gone Girl
9. John Wick
10. Manakamana

i hated these.

just missing the cut: THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG and THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE.

• Kick-Ass 2
• Machete Kills
• R.I.P.D.
• The Hangover Part III
• A Good Day to Die Hard
• The Dirties
• The East
• Getaway
• Gangster Squad
• Wrong

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

new to me in 2013.

• Violent City
• Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
• Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge
• Cobra Thunderbolt
• I.F. Stone's Weekly
• Furious
• Lifeline
• U.S. Seals II: The Ultimate Force
• The Marine 2
• Motorway

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ittedly genre-heavy. i am what i am.

subject to change; not yet seen: TURIN HORSE, CENTRAL PARK FIVE, COLOR WHEEL, KID WITH A BIKE

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Zero Dark Thirty
3. Holy Motors
4. Django Unchained
5. Looper
6. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
7. Two Years at Sea
8. Cosmopolis
9. Dredd
10. The Master

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

films i loved that were new to me this year.

• Gabriel Over the White House
• The Cloud-Capped Star
• The Rescuers
• Hondo
• The Black Cat
• Starting Over
• Righting Wrongs
• The Fantastic Adventures of Unico
• Unico in the Island of Magic
• Badge 373

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

i agonized over this. there's no rhyme or reason, really. an unranked mixture of favorites and films i consider objective classics.

• Wavelength
• Seven Samurai
• Hard Boiled
• Only Angels Have Wings
• A Star Is Born
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Blow Out
• Solaris
• Chungking Express
• The Thin Red Line

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.