4v291o

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Cool concept but the set up is a little too stupid for the whole thing to really make sense. Josh Hartnet does a good freakazoid trying to act like a normal guy performance. M Night's daughter is Not Good, though it's kind of a world historical dad move to come up with this idea to give your daughter a way to get a professional concert movie. Decent airplane movie.

Very bad

Visually stunning and has a bunch of great performances but I'm not sure that they figure out a way to connect Count Orlock's evil with Ellen's desire in a way that makes sense to me.

Ariana grande and Cynthia erivo are having a ball here which is fun. The movie looks bad and is way too long and the writing is whatever.

I fear the theater kids have become too powerful.

Instead of making "smart horror" or "elevated horror" or whatever try focusing on "good horror," where you make a horror movie that's actually good

Watched on Monday November 11, 2024.

Watched on Sunday November 10, 2024.

Watched on Thursday November 7, 2024.

Watched on Saturday October 12, 2024.

It looks amazing and is shot really well but is completely devoid of any interesting ideas. It's a workable horror movie because how effective the filmmaking is but outside of that it's basically just awkwardly stacking horror tropes on top of each other.

Also sorry but Nic Cage is doing the horror version of Jared Leto's performance from House of Gucci.

Watched on a plane which was a terrible mistake. I love the British cold war, dark, grimy aesthetic. Explores a lot of interesting ideas about institutions and their decline. Need to revisit on a better set up. Killer cast in this too.

Watched on Saturday June 8, 2024.

Watched on Friday May 3, 2024.

Watched on Friday April 19, 2024.

Watched on Saturday April 13, 2024.

Aesthetically this has some real juice to it I think. It's well shot, and it is genuinely tense. The war scenes are quite good as well; it really feels like you're on the front line. The sound design is really great.

This has got to be a contender for worst screenplay ever written. The entire thing is stocked with dull, one-dimensional characters. It's completely uninterested in its own concept. Why would you make a movie about a civil war if you don't give a shit about it? Why would you make a movie about journalism if you don't give a shit about that? I'm completely baffled about what possessed Alex Garland to make this.

Gestures toward India's religious and political issues without addressing them with any real specificity. Takes a little too long to get going and struggles to develop any compelling characters. With that said, the last half hour of this is absolutely excellent.

Watched on Tuesday April 2, 2024.

Watched on Saturday March 30, 2024.

Just fine. Decent gore, decent scares. Characters and story are incredibly underwritten. Sydney Sweeney is actually a decent scream queen, but her Achilles heel is routine dialogue. She really struggles to deliver her lines in a non-robotic way. Worse ways to spend a Friday night.

I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be considered "smart" in our society, who we apply that moniker to, and how it's basically the highest compliment you can bestow upon a person. Anybody who's good at STEM is automatically considered smart, but I've also noticed it's almost universally applied to people who make a lot of money, irrespective of the context of how they got it or the actual intelligence of their decisions. Being a tech founder is the convergence of these two things, so naturally our society became completely obsessed with the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world and their alleged genius. The thing is, being smart is incredibly overrated if you're not a nice person, which I think is an idea this movie really gets to. The idea that we have to tolerate Mark Zuckerberg being a shithead because he's a computer whiz is stupid!! You have to be nice to people! Being smart doesn't do you any fucking good and it's why he drives all of his friends away and ends up completely alone and hopelessly miserable. It doesn't matter how much money you have, you'll never be happy!

This also plays into the final club situation, which Zuckerberg completely misunderstands. Final clubs are full of old money whose great great grandparents went to Harvard a hundred years ago. He's from a completely different class; they would never accept him just because he's smart. You need to have connections to get in, which he can't make because he's an asshole who everyone hates! Seeing him stand in the bike room of the Porcellian in his hoodie and flip flops is such a powerful image because it's incredibly obvious that he doesn't belong there. He is completely out of place, and despite his genius intellect, he's incapable of understanding why that is.

Epic spectacle, looks incredible, great score, great costumes, everything feels massive, truly spectacular final battle.

I think the writing is a little weak though. I don't really feel like Paul Atreides is a very good character and the political angle is not fleshed out enough. Great theater experience though.

Most "smart comedies" have the same problem. They're not that smart, and they're not that funny. The politics of this one are actually incredibly fucking bleak if you think about it for too long.

True crime should be illegal

So fucking good. Impeccable execution top to bottom.

Every great director will eventually be drawn to making a movie about making movies, and I had always thought Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was Tarantino's variation on that theme, but now I think it's this? There are some pretty clear ideas about the power of cinema and art here, specifically as a force for social change that I think are pretty interesting. Shoshanna uses film as a weapon to literally kill Nazis and end WWII. Not sure I quite buy that but it doesn't matter. All-time banger.

Woof

Compartmentalization feels like an omnipresent part of modern life: sitting and watching as the world crumbles around us and everything gets worse and worse each day, but having to still get up and go to work in the morning. If Hedwig Höss, who is positioned literally on top of the Holocaust, can shield her mind from the horrors directly in front of her, each of us in the audience can certainly do the same, right?

Formally, the movie is challenging to watch. The cuts are excruciatingly long, with almost no score to speak of. There is very little narrative. The film never directly depicts any Holocaust imagery. Instead, prisons and chimney smoke loom ominously over the wall separating the Höss family home from Auschwitz. The sound design goes an incredibly long way in helping to achieve this effect, as otherwise silent scenes are permeated by gunshots and agonized screaming.

I understand why the choice was made, but I can't help but wonder about the decision not to depict the ideology at play that makes the entire thing function. Obviously, the point is that these are people just "going about their day," but it's important to that these are literal Nazis. Not only that, they have to be particularly zealous about the cause. When Hedwig's mother, also a Nazi, comes to visit, she cannot stand to be confronted with the atrocities at the heart of her own ideology and flees in the middle of the night. If the movie is supposed to be about the average person's complicitness in all this, it feels contradictory. These are not average people. They're not even average Nazis. The average person cannot handle this. It takes an incredibly deranged individual and an incredibly zealous believer in the cause to be able to handle evil on this scale.

Watched on Saturday February 10, 2024.

Probably the stupidest premise for a movie I have ever seen.

Jason Statham doing an American accent so bad they have to have a line of dialogue to explain it. Jeremy Irons basically not even trying to do an American accent despite being a former director of the CIA. Who casted these roles???

Anyway, Jason Statham goes on a rampage that leaves probably 100 people dead, which is morally and legally justified because Josh Hutcherson's Hunter Biden stand-in stole his grandma neighbor's life savings. The action is pretty solid and there's some decent kills, and Statham's 1v1 with the South African mercenary was pretty cool.

Each time they release a soulless, AI-generated Marvel movie watch this and it doesn't have to be this way! It's based off a fucking theme park ride and still slaps harder than basically any big budget action movie of the last 20 years. We have to go back!!!

Side note, world historical score on this thing. Every high school band in America in the 2010s was legally mandated to play this in concert and rightly so.

This review may contain spoilers.

There's a scene in the beginning of this movie where the Russian and American astronauts sit around a table, and all vow not to discuss politics. Based on the premise, I thought this was going to blow up in their face, as they would be forced to reckon with their own political beliefs as they figure out the best and most moral course of action as it relates to the directive the astronauts receive from their respective governments. However, no politics is actually the overall thesis of film. There's not really much more to it than that. The movie intentionally does not have a point of view. Ariana Debose's astronaut goes aggressively far out of her way to let the audience know that she does not have an opinion about what is going on around her. Most of the conflict that does happen is interpersonal rather than political. One of the Russian astronauts has a vague, one-off line about a sense of duty, but other than that, no character ever expresses an opinion about what is happening. The ending is the apotheosis of this, as one Russian and one American astronaut each return to earth in the escape pod together. The Russian wonders what will happen to them upon their return, and Ariana Debose replies "I don't know" and then the movie just ends, right before the film was going to be forced to confront an interesting political question.

Other than that, it's a serviceable action/thriller and has some legitimately suspenseful parts. Extremely disappointing as this is a great premise ruined by boring, milquetoast writing.

Watched on Wednesday January 10, 2024.

Very cute

Killer score

Overall pretty good. Decent rom, decent com. Some kind of weird elements, like having these people be the main character of two other characters' wedding. Or the movie's insistence on not addressing how rich every character on screen has to be in order for the whole thing to work. But there's some funny jokes and some sweet moments, so it works out.

Also, Sydney Sweeney is just not really a very good actress. Sorry about it.

The racing is excellent, particularly the sound design. I think it makes a nice double feature with Iron Claw as a sports movie about a past-his-prime patriarch who puts an unfair amount of pressure on other people to compete in his stead. Doesn't get to Enzo's essence as well as Iron Claw gets to Fritz Von Erich's though.

Also, you have got to be fucking kidding me with the Shailene Woodley casting. What are you doing!!!!

Basically everything is excellent but the original song from this has been stuck in my head for days

Watched on Friday December 22, 2023.

This review may contain spoilers.

A little overdramatic at times, and the big plot moments are pretty cliche and predictable. Godzilla's upper body is a little wooden also. The mayhem/destruction scenes are top notch even so.

Any Godzilla movie naturally draws comparisons to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the postwar setting of this movie feels like an active effort to move away from that idea thematically. The bombs and the devastation they caused are never addressed, and wartime damage is attributed to "air raids." In this movie, Godzilla is more representative of the pointless destruction and loss of human life caused by the incompetence of the Japanese government and war effort in general. The movie feels like it's an effort to allow the Japanese people to rewrite the narrative of the war by allowing them an opportunity to fight what is essentially a second war, completely devoid of political context, but do it in a more honorable way this time around, and without their government butting in. This s for damage done pointlessly to the Japanese people by its own government, but completely fails to take into the damage committed by the Japanese Empire to the rest of the world. Godzilla is eventually defeated (for now) by a kamikaze attack, but one in which the pilot ejects at the last moment, allowing him to return to Japan and live peacefully with his wife and child.

Simultaneously too long and too short, the classic biopic problem. Great set pieces. Didn't care for much else. Dialogue was low key kind of terrible. Also, Joaquin Phoenix was a bad casting.

Move over, baby shoes never worn!!!

Watched on Friday November 10, 2023.

Very powerful and poignant story that really demonstrates the psychology and tactics of grooming. A lot of highlights, but I really enjoyed how a lot of the most impactful moments of the film took place in complete silence, with Priscilla completely alone in the frame. Really drives home the sense of isolation she was feeling in those moments. Also, color coordinating your guns with your outfits is such a slay.

Watched on Wednesday October 25, 2023.

Another in Scorsese's continuing series of films about the ways in which the people at the bottom of our capitalist class hierarchy torture and brutalize each other in service of the people at the top, who don't do shit and reap massive rewards. The people at the bottom don't really even get that much out of it! Anyway, the first hour drags a little bit, but it serves to set up the world and lay out the stakes, which pays off at the end. Lily Gladstone and Leo have great chemistry and it makes the betrayals really hurt.

I thought Robert DeNiro was kind of whatever in this. Couldn't figure out his accent. Also the score wasn't terrible, but a little on the nose. Too much country western style slide guitar, like we get it we're in Oklahoma.

Watched on Friday October 6, 2023.

Watched on Thursday October 5, 2023.

About halfway through this right now but this stupid fucking movie is just as annoying as I knew it would be when I heard they greenlit the wallstreetbets movie. I've used reddit for 13 years now and if anybody tells you they regularly use reddit you should immediately dunk their head in a toilet.

Emotional beats and plot are sort of whatever but it has more good bits than bad so it's a success.

Ayo Edebiri will win an Oscar at some point.

Genuinely great as a sports movie. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill's chemistry is off the charts.

As a movie about the finances of baseball it's kind of a failure in its inability to address the role of ownership. We've seen multiple "small market teams" since this movie was made spend big in a way that this movie pre-supposes is impossible. The silence is particularly deafening when you take into what an absolute joke the Oakland A's are this year as their shithead owner intentionally ships off every player worth anything at all and tries to move the team to Las Vegas.