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How MUCh though?

How MUCH cocaine?

To look away is criminal.

Letting yourself finally feel something can be like taking a huge poop you’ve been holding in, and then suddenly you’re a peach to everyone again.

The 90s really were the 70s part 2.

This review may contain spoilers.

The music needed to be good for this concept to hit, and boy was it.

Giving a half star for the oner and how it not only drove home the best ideas at play, but also made me turn to my friend and say “This is hard ass”.
Originality isn’t the main thing here but it shows itself in a groovy manner at the right times.

BUDDY GUY! What a way to incorporate a legend.

Watched on Thursday April 24, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

A quiet, measured lesson in storytelling that says a lot while doing very little. The restraint in the writing grounds the seedier elements in a gentle sense of normalcy—something, I think, most strive to pull off with their characters and stories, right? But it’s not always achieved and takes real talent, especially with such a lost puppy of a soul.

Watched on Friday March 14, 2025.

I’d imagine it hits harder without the spoilers in the marketing, even if the tone makes it slightly predictable.

The performances here are mostly pretty great! Josh Peck, where’d you go? I wish you’d kept doing indie movies when you decided to start gobbling pills on Nickelodeon. 

Some poorly edited (or written?) beats stalled the emotional weight for me, overall slightly deflating the experience. Why did the kids stay on the boat for so long? 

Still better than I expected. And very sad.

Watched on Tuesday March 4, 2025.

This is at least two full cups of my tea.

I can’t believe I’m finally watching this after being aware of it for almost 13 years.

Yes I love everything about Wes Anderson’s later, more polished movies. But it seems some of us are going to pretend this isn’t among his best writing? It was such an easy watch and somehow I was able to follow without every single action or cut being set precisely to the beat of a drum. The characters are given the responsibility of carrying you through this tale of generational trauma and family tension. The subtlety and rawness (which probably didn’t feel so raw upon arrival) beckoned my attention rather than demanding it.

A cute ass drama that made me more sad in the middle than Wes has achieved thus far.

RIP Mr. Hackman

Too often it is forgotten that unfortunately, our memories aren’t even real.

A24 went full Blumhouse. You never go full Blumhouse.

There’s a good amount to enjoy in the narrative, behind the archetypal mainstream horror style. It’s projecting a haunted house formula (which I called reductive to the subject matter within the first 6 minutes when they referenced “that South Park musical”), adorned with daytime TV continuity and the rest. They did the Hereditary tiny house model zoom out thing. It looked cool and then I got mad. I don’t hate it, because it surprised me a few times. But it sures The Substance in taking too many influences and not knowing what it is.

Went home after another glitchy Century 16 screening and rewatched some scenes on a shady stream site. The train wide shot soaks me up like a sponge.

I’ll be the fourth person in my circle to hop on Letterboxd, give this 4 stars, and say that the second half loses steam. Especially the meh-pilogue. 

The feeling achieved here though, is that of a reverent biopic which paid time and respect to a true story with delicate subjects e.g Oppenheimer. A huge feat for a fictional feature these days, especially when it comes to some of the big sets at play.

One of the strongest ‘24 best picture noms I’ve seen so far.

This review may contain spoilers.

What b_z_r said.(Click that)

Linklater punishes our hope for the duration of 3 movies with extra brutal reminders in the third, to be careful what we wish for. We thought we’d finally just get everything we wanted? 

Around the corner from every desire is a true balance between what’s wonderful and what causes suffering. The whole of everything is beautiful but we certainly favor some parts over others. Especially after we’ve settled into a world our eyes once gleamed at the thought of. 

The Before series binged more easily than any over-written Netflix or HBO formula. No other romance story has had me on my toes in this way.
Why did he make Boyhood? I feel like these pretty much covered it.

This review may contain spoilers.

😡

Oh COME ONN!!!!!

Watched on Wednesday February 12, 2025.

When I Told my ex-cop coworker about this movie, he rolled his eyes:
“Sounds dumb. Nobody dies from getting shot with a colt.”

This review may contain spoilers.

The seemingly sweet, certainly sour smell of shiny, snappy, secretly slimy, slinking, sinuous success. 
Shot with finesse and spoken like pros of the press.

I can’t help but think of Wolf of Wall Street. Not much violence but plenty of treachery. Bleak fates for our big dogs. Brutal performances, with quotable dialogue which stabs left and right. And similar still because it’s a little wordy, and could use more Susan. 

I noticed with it having been 1957, the ending here punched me harder than some of the earlier hays code victims I’ve seen during this stint of noir.

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

More darkness. More death. Om nom nom.

This proto-noir is, in both a visual and an auditory sense, so nice. The tenderness and ion of a French anti-war tale was a welcomed change of pace amidst the American toughies and crime mellers I’ve recently indulged in. Port of Shadows embodies alienation and a longing for love which can usually pull a tear from me, but in addition this poetic realism transported me to the eloquence and smog of a stylized ‘30s Le Havre, to have my heart confused and ultimately broken once more.

Oh, and those were probably the most romantic last words of all time.

This review may contain spoilers.

Dark Japanese Truman Show but the cameras are in your head.

🧠🤔🔥🫠💀

This review may contain spoilers.

One of the most forgivable victims of ’80s camp, Blow Out turns tropes we’d grow tired of—cop show music, hammy dialogue, dreamy neon lighting— into essential pieces of its atmosphere. Politics, Hollywood, and even sound design are built on fabrication. The film uses this theatricality to embrace the artificial world it critiques. The analog film motif perfectly underscores the fragility of truth and staging reality while time stamping the era, reminding us WHEN we are, helping to allow us to simmer in that surreal, carnival-like universe.

The deliberate melodrama adds a self-awareness that pokes the wound of the story’s tragic undercut. Sally feels like a mistreated teen from a John Hughes movie, caught in an unlikely friendship and desperate for solace. As a classic underwritten simple character next to a handsome, smart, self-exiled former cop like Jack Terry, her role is deepened, overall elevating the film’s climactic heartbreak.

The result is a Hitchcockian, neo-noir cult classic that has aged into a stylish ornament of ’80s suspense. While this decade often burries its best in the noise, Blow Out stands at the crossroads of New Hollywood grit and blockbuster flash. Zsigmond’s cinematography and De Palma’s flair for visual storytelling make it look better than any crime flick I’ve seen. An extra star just for that. So many shots that made me gasp, and I was lucky enough to see a 4k copy, highly recommended. 🫠 
I’ll be championing this one for a while.

Ari,
Thank you for doing nothing but working on your skill the whole time. Just keep going and don’t get anymore famous please. We have enough shallow arena comics and you’re perfect right here as “the least successful of all your friends”. 🖤

A milksop with a plan is still a milksop. 🤷‍♀️

The original Series of Unfortunate Events. These kids have no super abilities or advanced booby traps to turn to. In 1955, stories about the vulnerable didn’t always lean toward empowerment. John and Pearl’s only tools are to run and trust the protection of strange adults.

This was possibly the most invested I’ve ever been in a 90-minute movie. Dread is infused in everything with the southern gothic darkness, fairytale grimness, and signature impending doom of a great Noir. It demands a rewatch, especially before I can articulate any of the best elements. These are some of the most stunning shots I have ever seen. Every person working on this did 110% from start to finish. Besides the ending feeling slightly rushed, but I have heart eyes right now so I don’t care.

The Night of the Hunter is probably one of my new favorite movies. Did everything we know and love come from this? This guy only directed one film? Fuck off, that’s so rude.

Going to call my mom and thank her for keeping me safe.

I appreciate the realistic splash The Naked City brought to the game, pushing noir out of the soundstage and into the streets with one of the first wide-scale uses of on-location shooting in New York. There’s a genuine effort here to inject rawness into the genre, leaning on Italian Neorealism to create a documentary-like vibe. Hidden cameras in tinted vehicles captured countless unsuspecting New Yorkers, bottling the buzz of the big city.

But that push for authenticity came at a cost. The performances lack cohesion, with stagey, overly rehearsed interior moments that feel slightly jarring against the more naturalistic outdoor scenes. Maybe this approach was just too new, or maybe the cast didn’t quite wow me.

Still, it was a lot of fun and left me feeling smol.

Watched in a double feature with Sunset Boulevard, which has led me to this thought: While we complain that style often takes precedence over depth, it’s more forgivable when that style gains a conscience, dons the film itself like a pair of gloves and takes control of the viewer’s perception.

Here, I got all the tight, stark shadows I’d been craving. The performances—especially Jeanne Moreau’s—will play in my mind for a while. As will the masterful sound design and the deliberate use of both music and silence.

The love between Florence and Julien could’ve been explored more deeply. The narrative complexity suffers a touch, with suspension of disbelief called upon once or twice. But it’s fun! And isn’t that par for the course with noir? So far this month, I haven’t seen one without at least a trace of that behavior. Everything else clicks together like legos.

And those trumpets! Recorded in one night, before Miles was even Miles. This film is a treasure.

This review may contain spoilers.

More on how Hollywood is a heartless monster. But she’s pretty.

For a big Paramount blockbuster, these characters are just as surprisingly dark and layered as Norma’s big, decaying mansion. The almost-fantasy nature of her world and unraveling psyche serves as a strong vehicle to deliver heavy ideas to a wider audience. I’d be surprised if any blockbuster before this started with a body in a pool. The overall accessibility (obvious musical cues and heightened melodrama) softened it for me compared to the more understated, naturalistic films of the era. Still, the originality and audacity are undeniable.

Noirs often wear their grit on their sleeve as murder stories from the start. Sunset Boulevard sneaks it in, evolving slowly—from something oddly cute to deeply uncomfortable, to profoundly tragic. That deliberate tonal shift is one of its crowning jewels.

I’d have hyped it back then, and I hype it now. Maybe not as much as Letterboxd does.

All hail Johnson the Genre Bender.

The suffocation of loneliness is emanating from all directions. Like the meandering cinematography and bleak sets, with a vulnerable toughness in the performances. And the moody, minimalist score, subtly sewing together the classic-style dialogue which would commonly be too comedic when paired with a high school setting. Here it’s just cheeky enough, especially with JGL behind Brendan—This man is a pro. Brian and Joe should pair up again and release a triple box set of Noir fusion with this and Looper.

Holy smokes Batman, I feel like I’m there.

The animation shoves you into the muck, all close and personal.

The sound design is tingle-inducing.

The respective personalities and instincts written into the silent dynamics of these animals are on another level. 

I hate to directly compare works of art in a negative way, however if a certain robot flick snubs this in everything, I’ll be pretty cheesed. 

My two black cats are okay, I checked.

This review may contain spoilers.

Hollywood is a dream machine, where the hopeful go to have their blood drained by the rest.

I’d like to spend all my time watching stuff like this—movies that make me question whether they even exist.

Moral murkiness in the shadowed LA streets—crime and retribution, fragility, and a fatal muse…
Lynch weaves the archetypal threads of noir with his distinctly subversive style, delivering likely the most palpable take on “it was all a dream” we’ll ever get to see.

Still can’t believe he’s gone. It’s been 3 days, someone start releasing his secret movies already.

God this was done well. The narrative, the visual contrast, the far-beyond-Pixar animal personification….fuck.

Watched it twice in a row because I’m kinda drunk …and I guess this is a death themed cinema month, so why not pay double respect. 

Has nothing to do with movies and envy is for chumps, but I’m jealous of anyone who saw him live.

Ripblablabla

The BEST thing to immediately watch upon hearing of this crazy man’s death. Here’s to a person who did what he wanted and said a lot while doing it.

💔

This review may contain spoilers.

The truth is owed to no one. Not the cops, the crooks, or the omniscient viewer. This is a special punishment for those who love a good story and won’t break up with it, even if it smashes their hearts or withholds what they want. All I wanted here was to eventually know. And once I deal with the betrayal, I’ll be crawling back for a rewatch.

Accidentally watched 5 Noirs/Noir-adjacent picks in two weeks so I might lean into that for the following two.

Only true terror strikes pals sharing breaded chicken in the woods.

Funny how rural Wyoming, echoing with gunshots, feels safer than late-night LA with nothing but a cool dame. Maybe it’s the masterfully crafted sets and shots, suffocating one moment, alleviating the next. Tied up with a jumbled story—Each revelation of which baiting us to another in a briskly unraveling, hot and tangled yarn.

Misfortune begs for redemption in this post-classical noir, fulfilling the assignment with a shiesty smirk. I so wish the machine today would spit up filler flicks like this.

Love, but make it noir.
Put it under a magnifying glass where it turns razor-sharp. Where shadows don’t just hide truths; they reveal them.

The script whispers, carved from stone, with wry reminders: even in the darkest rooms, someone is often laughing.

Every glance between Bogart and Grahame is a question you’re afraid to answer.
Can you trust a heart that beats in the dark?
What lives here but suspicion and smoke,
and a man’s reflection he can’t escape?

Incoherent slog.

I’ve liked Melissa’s vibe and her story, but she’s had time to hone her stand-up. And she its in this unfortunately titled special that she didn’t take it. She then gives us a string of impressions and singing bits that didn’t get picked for SNL, which she also its. The rest of the material has a “working out short jokes and music gags at small clubs” vibe, which fit better in her set on season 3 of The Standups. So weird how little effect the quirky intro, sets and wardrobe had on the blandness and laziness of this name dropping extravaganza. Audience and I weren’t laughing, sadly.

Just went to Tubi and threw on an old Kubrick film. Didn’t expect such a banger, and a solid double feature with Thief. Everyone just wants another go at life.

Am I dumb for not knowing about this?
This was the most blind I could’ve been for a screening. Not only was I unfamiliar with Robbie Willaims, it was a “secret cinema” mystery sneak preview so I had no idea what would be showing. I at least expected it to be something I was aware of. 

Imagine my brain trying to decipher what genre this even was for the first 10ish minutes. I saw a british chimp being bullied in human school and calling people cunts, and thought it could be a raunchy comedy like Strays or Cocaine Bear. Then right before the title card, there’s a ionate vocal performance from the same chimp flipping me on a swivel. “Is this an original work? An allegory? A parody?” None of the above. It was a biopic about someone named Robbie Williams. And later I’d learn Micheal Gracey directed it. What a fun way to experience cinema.

I liked this movie! I’m sure I would’ve avoided it upon formal release. Respect to this theater’s strategy to shake up audiences and entertainment comfort zones. While the team behind Better Man didn’t fully break the mold of what approachable music bios have been, they did bend it. It seems Williams was able to bring some abstract, and at times dark, honesty to his story and its visual telling. The flow is strong, and some aesthetic choices really land. It’s probably not for musical haters. There aren’t too many full-blown musical numbers but whenever they happen, there’s an emulation of the awkward over indulgence that bogs down many musicals.

Edit: this was before all the marketing for this movie started.

Loved the stylish choice for the visual composition of the special. 👌

They don’t make comics like this anymore. Keep your Andrew Shultz’ and Brendan Shaubs. This poetic and painful realism holds a self deprecating and comfortable familiarity with the “good” and “bad” in one bed. Don’t just lay in it, roll around in it all messy like Stanhope does and set yourself free.

The epitome of “New year, new me”.

Watched on Thursday December 19, 2024.

While Robert Eggers may be polishing out some of his signature pioneering to widen audience, times are yet again changing - and here for the better - if this is what a bit of the mainstream is starting to enjoy. The 21st century has had some pretty dull eras in popular movies so far. This gothic choke hold on our hearts and our loins is calling to oollldd instincts that no modern society can help us fully suppress. Sounds like all renditions have. However Eggers and team icked, tantalized, and transported me so I was left to really inhale those ancient natural forces. In all their putrid, historically accurate glory.

This review may contain spoilers.

Drifted off to slumber on Christmas night with visions of Babylegs-ratu dancing in my head.

This feel good double feature was just the thing for takeout dinners in an unpacked new apartment while it’s 30 degrees out. Lust-inspiring food, great actors and good vibes with bubbly Latin music. What else do you need?

Unapologetically one of my favorite comfort movies. Chef truly sparked some dreams for me in 2014. This was my first viewing since leaving the culinary field and you already know I cried through the damn thing. So much ion for a hobby led Mr. John to some of his best work. No figuring out how to use Mickey Roarke as a supervillain or creating a sub plot for later films. Just “How can we make these happy people a little happier?” It’s honest about what it is from the start. The writing includes the most accurate kitchen dynamics I’ve seen represented in a film, and any dumb dialogue moment only plays into the idea that you shouldn’t dwell on the little things, while enjoying the little things.

Double featured Favereau’s best. Annie watches Elf all month every year so it goes back and forth between charming and played out. Still the timeless value is undeniable. Only Will Farrell could make this such a hit.

I know they’re not all straight Noir, no need to revoke the cute nickname. (To be fair, they all reach at least one of the sub or post genres.)

• Thief
• The Killing
• Nightfall
• In a Lonely Place
• The Usual Suspects
• The Naked City
• Brick
• Mulholland Drive
• Elevator to the Gallows
• Sunset Boulevard

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

• In Bruges
• Burn After Reading
• World's Greatest Dad
• Adaptation.
• American Psycho
• Fargo
• Being John Malkovich
• Heathers
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Anora

• Late Night with the Devil
• Young Frankenstein
• Coraline
• The Substance
• One Cut of the Dead
• Frankenstein
• House of 1000 Corpses
• Repulsion
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Bride of Frankenstein

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

• Jacob's Ladder
• The Babadook
• Nosferatu
• [REC]
• Under the Skin
• Evil Dead Rise
• Beau Is Afraid
• Friday the 13th
• Pearl
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers