Sometimes you just gotta rewatch Stalker every two weeks for six months straight

Saw this in an actual theater for the first time yesterday (@ the New Beverly), which reminded me that my first viewing was an illicit DVD screener played on a laptop. Holds up fine on the big screen!

This review may contain spoilers.

I was enamored with this one long before its conclusion, but the Monster Hunter convention reveal at the end launched me into the stratosphere

Dennis Rodman's arms dealer character invents a giant inflatable basketball for skydiving

Felt like this one had a little less of the Spielberg polish in certain moments and felt a bit more honest and raw because of it. The director Stephen Spielberg depicting his fictional avatar filming and gazing at a sexualized vision of his mother dancing, his ambiguous physical idealization of his rival in the ditch day film... it's just a little thorny at times, which isn't something I expect from a director so typically controlled as Spielberg. Yeah, it's schmaltzy, but that was always a given. I thought this one just had a little more texture to it, and I was really glad for it.

This one was basically pitching a perfect game until Wilford Brimley's "Cajun" accent showed up

It rocks that this movie clearly and solely exists to sell Guitar Hero and Applebee's. Everyone seems unhappy to be there, and I agree!

It's a controversial take in film circles, but this is my favorite Jim Belushi picture

Watched on Saturday January 21, 2023.

Sometimes you just gotta rewatch Stalker every two weeks for six months straight

Always a pleasure. Sure, it's a little fluffy, but it's still damn good at every level. Plus, it heralded Soderbergh's return from his short-lived "retirement" -- that's gotta count for something.

I watched Clifford again

Watched on Saturday January 14, 2023.

Watched on Friday January 13, 2023.

God, I love the way this one looks. It's a shame that Elswit and PTA have some bad blood between them these days, but at least they left us with this

Love that the guy who sat at base camp the entire time is unapologetically an all-time piece of shit. Good for him

Watched as a palate cleanser after Coming 2 America. Definitely feels like a film from another era not because it's showing its age, but because I truly can't imagine modern Hollywood spending tens of millions on a comedy this good.

Kit: (loading a gun) It's all my imagination, huh? It's all my imagination? So I suppose they didn't put a computer chip in LaToya Jackson's brain – she just acts like that, huh?!
Hal: What?
Kit: And I suppose Teddy Kennedy ain't one-sixteenth black, huh?!
Hal: Teddy Kennedy?!
Kit: HE'S NOT LIKE THE OTHER KENNEDYS! LOOK AT HIM, HE'S DIFFERENT!

That damn cinematography and voiceover in combo are perfect. It doesn't really have all that much of a plot, I guess. But did you look at the shots of the people? And the wheat? Fuck

A Woman Under the Influence is one of my favorite films, but I can only bear to revisit it once every few years. When I do, though, I'm left stunned for days, weeks, months afterwards.

Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes are among the greatest actor/director combos in film history and I think this is their finest work together. Watch it once and take breaks if needed-- it's fully worth the investment.

I gotta go now, because if I keep thinking about this film I might be tempted to watch it again. And it'll be a few years before I can actually handle that.

Thomas Pynchon's paranoia-fueled, manic prose double filtered through weed smoke and PTA's style.

It isn't the best from PTA or Joaquin Phoenix (that'd be The Master) and the book definitely isn't the best from Pynchon (that'd be Gravity's Rainbow), but it's a great film about the enduring sickness eating away at America told via a hilarious shaggy dog stoner neo-noir narrative.

The cinematography is sufficiently laidback yet utterly gorgeous (that sequence as Doc approaches Channel View Estates for the first time is worth the price of ission alone). Joaquin Phoenix's slapstick physical comedy and mumbling charm give this thing so much life; the ing cast around Phoenix is pitch-perfect (excepting Owen Wilson who always feels firmly out of place as Coy). The soundtrack and score are immaculate, balancing good times and harsh vibes in equal measure.

This film, like the book, at first seems like a tale of lost American innocence-- a brief summer of love tainted by Charlie Manson, the FBI, white nationalism, et al. But by the end of the journey, we realize the only thing lost is our naivete-- these forces have always existed, we were just having too much fun to notice. The fun ends, we sober up, and we can finally see the evil lurking behind it all.

Ultimately, I think this film posits that though the times we live in are perilous and maybe (maybe) hopeless, that doesn't mean we can't get stoned, have some fun, and put up our best fight on the way out. And maybe (maybe) there are enough real mensch like Doc out there to help us tear this world down and build a new one-- preferably one with equality, open beach access and plentiful, cheap weed for all.

'Under the paving-stones, the beach!'

Look, Coming 2 America isn't "good." But there are far worse movies out there right now (that movie is Tom & Jerry).

And Tracy Morgan hopping off the plane to Zamunda and immediately asking if they had crab cakes because he "needs some protein" rocked.

My wife left the room to grab something and when she came back in, I'd put this on (as a v hilarious joke). After a minute, she left to go do something else and I ended up watching the whole thing (the joke was on me).

This movie fucking sucks.

This movie was incisive, witty, supremely well-acted, and I only kinda liked it. Maybe I was in the wrong mood at the time, but I physically hated Walter Matthau's inept trust fund failson character so much that I mentally checked out midway through the film. I think that's the catch with masterful satire-- when a work really nails a depiction of an asshole, the audience is ultimately left spending a lot of time with an asshole. Sometimes it pays off completely... this time, I dunno.

While I appreciated the vision here, this one felt really thin-- it has all of 6 actors in it, so the film's shocking revelations about who's behind everything aren't exactly shocking. I guess the appeal of this one really hinges on how much the film's hallucinogenic climax grabs you on an aesthetic level. It didn't really grab me.

Like Thom Andersen, I call Los Angeles my home. I wasn't born here, but after living here for 16 years I feel a lot of ownership of this city that everyone on the planet seems to have their own opinion of. And if you live here long enough, you inveitably start to resent the industry that (despite being centered here) seems dead-set on reinforcing outdated and lazy cliches about this place.

Andersen's film seeks to document this laziness and explore why and how these cliches have been perpetuated throughout Hollywood's film language. In doing so, he crafts a work so singular and impressive that it actually makes a 3-hour 'video essay' interesting viewing. How the hell did he do that??

Imagine being exiled from Hollywood for a decade and then dropping this on them. This is one the best films ever made about Hollywood and one of Altman's best. Buck Henry pitching a studio exec a hacky "Graduate 2" cash grab is worth the price of ission alone-- that it comes as but one tiny part of a winkingly self-referential and masterful 8-minute long opening shot lets you know that you're in for something really special.

My gut tells me that a Sion Sono/Nic Cage collaboration should probably be more interesting than this. That said, there were sequences that blew me away. And I'll always give it up for a director who orchestrates large, Intolerance-esque set pieces. Cage seems almost hesitant here; Bill Moseley was the clear MVP and repeatedly stole the show.

Fitzcarraldo, but make it real and reflective of 21st century captalism's deep cruelty and even deeper absurdity. I love that this one lets the footage speak for itself, but found the meditative pacing had a dulling effect by the end. But maybe that's the point? Maybe the numbness that this quiet film evokes says something about our capacity to normalize and make mundane the absurd brand of horror that our current moment seems to endlessly supply? Or maybe the film's just too slow.

It feels wild to give a film this interesting and unique 3 1/2 stars, but I think that's a reflection of how ambitious a filmmaker Theo Anthony is. In both Rat Film and this, he doesn't seem content to simply deliver a beautiful, thoughtful film-- he genuinely probes deep within himself as an artist (and within us as viewers) to find truth. Or maybe not 'truth,' but honesty. Real, unadorned honesty. I don't know if this one manages to grasp all that it's reaching for, but it's fascinating and beautiful.

What's there to say? This is a perfect film. It achieves everything it sets out to do with dazzling technical mastery at every level. Toshiro Mifune conveys more with a single sideways glance than many actors do in entire scenes. And it's funny as hell to boot. I dunno, it's Yojimbo. You don't need me to tell you it's great, but... it is really fucking great.

The weakest entry in the strongest film franchise in the game right now. This one half-heartedly pretends at being a more traditional Hollywood movie (the Dafoe and Palicki sub-plots) rather than the singular, laser-focused action spectacles that follow (Chapter 2 and Parabellum). It's a slightly worse film for it. That said, it's fucking John Wick. It rocks.

This review may contain spoilers.

A doctor conferring with a medicine man and a leisure suit-clad fortune teller on how to defeat an evil spirit that emerged from a cyst on his patient's neck sounds cool. It kinda is, I guess? This movie's racist as hell by 2021 standards, but I'd be shocked if it wasn't. I can't tell if Tony Curtis was having fun or just grinning and bearing it.