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Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 27, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 9, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Great performance from house sparrows (HOSP).

Also the Vangelis-esque music over Amish country is cool, I think

Watched on Sunday March 30, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 21, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 14, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 14, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 9, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 7, 2025.

Cameron loves a parable! “Violence is relentless and spectacularly effective but ultimately dooms us to self-immolation” is more or less spelled out by the end, but more implicit, I think, is the collage of how that violence manifests— mostly via men, but and/or institutions and the state. It can take a visceral form, (guns, grenades), or something more pernicious (bureaucracy, gaslighting*).

Women can of course become actors in the cycle of violence— Sarah Connor embodies this by replicating the Terminator march across a character’s yard when trying to kill him (this is echoed in the movie’s penultimate death sequence). However, she’s then faced with a real, living family (the antithesis of violence here), then becomes human again and backs down.

So there isn’t much here that’s original, exactly— I think the value is in the theatricality: “Shape up or a literal massive fireball will annihilate us and our children.” If nothing else it’s a nice change of pace for me after a bunch of Mann and Friedkin etc.

*A good depiction of what gaslighting actually looks like!

Also:

• Always feels a bit uncanny watching movies featuring SWAT teams pre-HW Bush (and the LESO).

• This might be the perfect action movie.

• + 1/2 star for the T-1000 as a cop riding a satanic motorcycle up a flight of stairs. Comrade Jim?

Watched on Saturday February 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 15, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 15, 2025.

Watched on Friday February 14, 2025.

Watched on Thursday February 13, 2025.

We can fix society by re-introducing light shining through spinning industrial fans back into the media ecosystem

Watched on Monday February 10, 2025.

Watched on Monday February 10, 2025.

Watched on Thursday February 6, 2025.

People talk about “smartphone face”— young Lee Oakes has whatever the opposite of “movable type face” is

Watched on Saturday January 18, 2025.

Starting to think that the only “bad” movie is really just a lazy movie— Boorman really went for it here, for what that’s worth.

Although, based on reviews here, I was expecting way more psychedelia. It was… kind of weird? But the bar for wild, hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic filmmaking is so, SO much higher than Excalibur reaches. The Holy Mountain came out 8 years earlier. Donkey Skin came out 11 years earlier. I dunno, man.

Watched on Sunday January 12, 2025.

Watched on Saturday January 11, 2025.

But I never think about Rome, so

Watched on Thursday December 26, 2024.

Watched on Wednesday December 25, 2024.

Watched on Tuesday December 24, 2024.

Watched on Sunday November 24, 2024.

Watched on Sunday October 27, 2024.

And the moral of the story is: hurt people hurt people 😔

She should’ve talked to a lawyer

Watched on Sunday October 6, 2024.

Watched on Saturday October 5, 2024.

The best part was when Warwick Davis and his compatriot are sitting at a crossroads with an imprisoned Val Kilmer, waiting for someone to take a baby off their hands. I spent the rest of the movie fantasizing about what it would’ve been like had Lucrecia Martel written and directed it.

Great production design!

Aimless, weightless plot with far too many elements. Way too intense for children but too corny for adults. Wipe transition jumpscare

Watched on Saturday September 28, 2024.

Watched on Sunday September 15, 2024.

One of the best premises I’ve seen in a fantasy movie that unfortunately played out in a more or less expected manner. Excellence was just a couple tiny changes away— if you tried really hard, you could even interpret the last 10-15 minutes in a way that would redeem most of the rest of the film. But ultimately, a refusal to lean into the ambiguity of the magic system was its downfall.

I think this suffered, unfortunately, from inadvertently featuring a number of “for girls” elements— a little campy, a little overdramatic, a tragic love story featuring animal transformation, etc. My guess is that this is what led to a lukewarm critical reception and box office disappointment.

But I liked it! Beautiful cinematography and production design, timeless story, good effort by most of the actors. Music is sometimes ass but oh well.

Watched on Saturday September 7, 2024.

• A Knight's Tale

• Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
• The Green Knight
• Lancelot of the Lake
• Marketa Lazarová
• The Seventh Seal

• Arrival
• Call Me by Your Name
• Computer Chess
• The Fly
• Good Will Hunting
• Illumination
• Jaws
• Jurassic Park
• Mutual Appreciation
• Rushmore

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

Movies that have been influential to the faire set, generally speaking.

• The 13th Warrior
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• The Beastmaster
• Braveheart
• Conan the Barbarian
• The Court Jester
• The Dark Crystal
• DragonHeart
• Dragonslayer
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• (500) Days of Summer
• It's Kind of a Funny Story
• Ruby Sparks
• What If
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Eat Pray Love
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
• The Art of Getting By

• The Color of Pomegranates
• The Falls
• On the Silver Globe
• La Ciénaga
• Killer of Sheep
• Stalker