4v291o

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

basically impossible to not automatically start trying to do a michael caine voice every time alfred speaks. the samurai plot doesn’t do much for me, but it’s a fun way into Nolan’s world of gothic dramatic set pieces.

such a serious silly world. the gotham of batman begins is not unlike coppola’s megalopolis, down to the high wire monorails that all gather at the all-mighty wayne station, directly under wayne tower. someone i follow on here aptly described Wayne Enterprises as “woke Raytheon.” the (few) jokes are often just Batman saying something like “nice car.” but I’m laughin! can’t help but love Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. really good work to cast Christian Bale.

Watched on Monday May 5, 2025.

yes! it’s the weekend of my hometown bridal shower and i watched this at my childhood home with my dad on tcm. yes! i cried when joe gideon hugged his daughter goodbye in his death acceptance fantasia. maybe life is so precious because it is so fleeting. who can say. all i can say is i’m so happy to be here with all of you.

veda’s brain should be cut up and studied. love her crazy ass. imagine if one woman’s love for her daughter became her ultimate curse! also imagine everyone’s fab as hell! joan crawford throws her cheekbones into her performance as a high spirited entrepreneur who everyone’s in love with, her only flaw motherly devotion. eve arden is fantastic as ida, her right hand gal. i’ve discovered a new favorite in arden’s proto-joan cusack gait and sandpaper dry wit. and the drama of her outfits! the drama of it all!!!

just as gorgeously lit and composed as you’d expect from the director of casablanca. they just don’t do cinematic slaps like they used to. we used to be a country, etc and so on. loved the specificity in the text of a 40s Los Angeles — when glendale’s most beautiful woman tells her paramour to pick her up at the cross street of what will become the Americana at Brand mall, we gasped! if only they’d had waited 70 years, they could’ve met at the eggslut! maybe mildred’s daughter wouldn’t have been such an insufferable c*** if she’d had been able to look at the t shirts at hot topic or spend 8 dollars at a sprinkles cupcakes (rip)!

saw on a beautiful on-loan nitrate print shipped over from the British Film Institute’s collection, original to the 1940s. introduced by mario cantone and hollywood’s own ben mankiewicz, complete with a staged slap. the people at the TCM film festival are so kind. couldn’t stumble upon a lovelier bunch of people to chat with about movies while we’re all in line for concessions. sometimes people fall asleep in the screenings, other times they chortle with joy at lines of dialogue they’ve known for decades. it all feels right. just sitting in a dark room somewhere in hollywood, gasping and laughing, somewhere near where it all happened.

Watched on Friday April 25, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

extry extry… they don’t love you like i love you! kinda like if they made episode 4 of the ric burns new york documentary into a feature length musical (complimentary)

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 16, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

good casting, because i do believe meghann fahy could be this weird on a date and get away with it! meghann fahy beautiful!

looooove that this ultimately revolves around a crooked mayoral plot. no spoilers on this review marked for spoilers, but when they revealed the source of the “digidrops,” it made sense why the memes were so bad. digidrop is officially the word of the summer! we tried to digidrop a selfie of my friends and me to the other 7 people in the theater after the movie, but no one accepted.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

babe, wake up! a new juliet, naked just dropped!!!

charming ensemble about the music we connect to, about grieving the past, about being stuck on a vacation with people that bother you on an elemental level. characters grounded, carey mulligan excellent, scenery beautiful. not immune to a third act slump, but an excellent feelgood matinee picture all told. "hope you're listening, marie" had me crying at the mall, man.

spare and beautiful, unrelenting restraint and yearning. tonal masterpiece. i particularly related to the part where jack twist yells at his father-in-law to turn off the football game at thanksgiving dinner.

heath ledger was really on his way to being one of the greats. i don’t know if we have a call me by your name without a brokeback mountain.

got to watch with two buds who hadn’t seen it before and we were laughing and laughing. watched the dvd with deleted scenes and it’s a shame they didn’t include the extra fireplace cutaway gag that’s on there. if they’d have switched that joke for the german olympic team bit, we’d really be cooking with gas. 

underwater sequence remains one of my favorite cinematic comedic heightenings, right next to the house falling on buster keaton and that one scene in hot rod where everyone starts rioting. rest in peace gorgeous val.

Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.

watched after reading the novel, easily bumped up my rating for the deftness of the adaptation. having two feminist women at the lead of direction and the screenplay was simply a high skill move. highlights the satire, navigates tastefully around the more explicit grotesquerie of bateman’s psychotic plunge, while still ringing all the right thematic bells. harron, turner, and bale really cared about wringing something cogent and substantial from the source material. 

funny now to read about how polarizing certain groups found this particular totem of pop culture to be, for all its homocidal and misogynist zeal. in an interview, christian bale explained how easily he could shake bateman off at the end of the day, because he was never playing him as a real man. patrick can’t exist, he couldn’t. he’s a horror show personification of american capitalist consumption culture, desperate to balance on the cutting edge but also the status quo, overflowing at the brim. movie heaven for you, christian bale! you go, christian bale!

Watched on Sunday March 30, 2025.

the work is mysterious and important

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Sunday February 23, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday March 25, 2025.

found myself incredibly challenged by the toe cam. an indisputably ugly film, but easier to watch than The Father.

i didn’t know frames of jimmy stewart and duke ellington playing piano together existed in this world! ellington’s fab score, preminger’s comfortable pace, and the charmingly rendered ing characters make this almost 3 hour long court drama feel like a hangout movie. george c. scott is fantastic as the high status state prosecutor.

probably jimmy’s most impressive performance that i’ve seen. it’s nice to see the king of capra optimism enter the sexy world of morally ambiguous proficiency porn.

masterwork tbqh

goofy as all hell! they really let the boys get looney. a few more of these and i will finally be able to eternal sunshine Space Jam: A New Legacy from my brain. laughed out loud multiple times just from the 2d animation character modeling. beautiful and special!

an intelligent and sexy 93 minute spy thriller for adults…. cate blanchett bootsing the house down… these are the days we’ve dreamt about, boys

blanche is just a vibes girl in a cruel reality world

Watched on Tuesday March 11, 2025.

steve coogan greatest living physical comedian?

A love story from Bong Joon Ho!

currently reading the memoir of Betsy Blair, Kelly’s first young wife who made the move with him from Broadway choreographer to MGM stardom, so I threw this one on. following some smaller roles in B movies, this Columbia loan out was more or less the breakthrough for Kelly. there are glimpses of brilliance in the musical numbers, and Kelly and Hayworth are so fun to watch dance together, but its plot is a bit of a yawn. let Rita Hayworth be a star you losers!

great second screen content for a lobotomy

unlocked Led Zeppelin for me by explaining they’re a studio musician supergroup comprised of British boy geniuses. now I understand. good for them!

so you’re telling me all this time, meg ryan was doing a really great shirley maclaine? knew i would love this whenever i finally got around to it. modern and charming and ribald, simultaneously silly and arresting. jack lemmon is sooooo in his bag here. just a really delightful suicide comedy.

it’s my solemn duty to watch every low budget comedy feature starring alternative comedians and improvisers i idolized in high school and college. is it always rewarding? hard to say. much to notice, much to understand.

made my friends help me cross this off the watchlist on my 31st birthday. capra’s crooked government crisis film feels almost rote in our modern era, but his individualist appeal against cynicism still strikes a chord in this world weary heart. standing up for what’s right is important! rallying against people who suppress the free press is also important! calling jimmy stewart a tall drink of water with legs up to here is maybe the most important!!!

absolutely cackled at the montage of insane violence against the boy stuff publishers and distributors. now googling to see if boy stuff is hiring any freelance political writers.

Watched on Sunday November 24, 2024.

here’s to the fools who work!

Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2025.

Watched on Monday February 17, 2025.

I don’t want to hear about “how does this compare to Paddington 2” they made an Indiana Jones movie with the little bear that also made me cry and I think that’s great!

always rooting for bridget! always pissed off to see daniel cleaver

stupid (complimentary)! steve coogan bodies! roger ebert gave this 3/4!

how do i get a primary care physician who will give me the prescription of opening my heart to love

I watched this movie for the first time at the Egyptian Theater. A bit unmooring to walk out of the dramatics of Mulholland Drive and find yourself smack in the middle of the Walk of Fame. So far, it’s making me act different. I’m on YouTube watching video essays and BTS featurettes. I’m walking down the street of my East Hollywood neighborhood, antagonized by the buzz of the street light. I see the Hollywood sign from a Silver Lake precipice and feel distrustful. It makes so much sense that David Lynch, a man who somehow found balance in the beauty and heartbreak of Hollywood, made his masterpiece about the impossibility of holding both the dream and nightmare, and the undying allure of the illusion.

• Punch-Drunk Love
• Mulholland Drive
• Los Angeles Plays Itself
• Nowhere
• Rebel Without a Cause
• Boyz n the Hood
• Zabriskie Point
• Swingers
• Less Than Zero
• Chinatown

...plus 50 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

suggestions (from women) welcome

• Rosemary's Baby
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• We Are Your Friends
• Kingsman: The Golden Circle
• Superbad
• mother!
• The Slumber Party Massacre
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
• The Social Network
• American Psycho

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

grab your boards and information wetsuits, cause to learn what we’re dealing with in these films we simply gotta see a character surfing the web

• Twilight

  “quinila legend” “the cold one”

• First Reformed
• Brigsby Bear
• I Know Who Killed Me

  "stigmata"

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
• High School Musical

  “Gabriella Montez”

• The Amazing Spider-Man
• Adopt a Highway

  if you can keep a baby that you’ve found

• The Fifth Element

  "war"

• Yesterday

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

a list of movies where the house gets a little crazy. if i were in the movie i’d be like “get me out of this house!”

• Barbarian
• Annabelle Comes Home
• The Amityville Horror
• Suspiria
• House
• Sunset Boulevard
• His House
• Jumanji
• All of Us Strangers
• The House with a Clock in Its Walls

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

movies where it's hot, damn hot, the kind of heat that could drive a guy crazy

• Apocalypse Now
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Rear Window
• 12 Angry Men
• Cool Hand Luke
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Stray Dog
• In the Heights
• Do the Right Thing
• Top Gun

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

let me know if I’m missing any!!!!!!

• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
• Let Them All Talk
• Florence Foster Jenkins

just something i’m trying to figure out

• Lady Bird
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Wild
• Columbus
• Steel Magnolias
• Barbie
• The Meddler

this list will be biased toward the great state of iowa because that is where i am from and I know the people and they are like this. also sometimes the movie doesn’t even have to be set or filmed in the Midwest, it just is.

• The Music Man
• Cold Turkey
• Citizen Ruth
• American Movie
• Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep
• Nebraska
• Fargo

queens of rejecting the deep love and affection of (sometimes) all who flock to them

• The Philadelphia Story
• s Ha
• Little Women
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Lady Bird
• Hello, Dolly!
• Before Sunset
• Obvious Child
• The Queen's Gambit
• His Girl Friday

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

• Maximum Overdrive
• Cars

movies about the middle class

• Lady Bird
• s Ha
• Little Women

  ok so clearly the aunt is rich

• Brooklyn
• Lady Bird
• Little Women

a visual asmr experience

• The Lighthouse
• Knives Out

favorite! not best!

1. Sorry to Bother You
2. Roma
3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
4. Eighth Grade
5. Tully
6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
7. mid90s
8. Crazy Rich Asians
9. Incredibles 2
10. A Quiet Place

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Call Me by Your Name
• Lady Bird

All the movies that have lil squares on my beloved Fleur Cinema's walls.

• The Godfather
• A Bug's Life
• La Femme Nikita
• North by Northwest
• The Shawshank Redemption
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Gladiator
• Fist of Fury
• M
• 2001: A Space Odyssey

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