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Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Theres been a tweet lying around in my head for weeks now where someone said they love Dead Reckoning because its the one that actually feels like its impossible. Final takes that and somehow makes the stakes higher. There are some bizarre pacing issues, and some really weird callbacks to prior Mission movies, but I can forgive it because of the following. 
These last two movies feel really personal for Cruise and Co. Its also the only Mission movies where I can say that its really commenting on our world and not just delivering an extremely emotional adventure flicks.
My other thing is a personal one, but I personally love these scenes where the cast just info dumps about the stakes and what needs to be done. Its done in such an effective way, and makes me so excited while watching the movie. It reminds me of the comic work of Jonathan Hickman. He works a lot with high concept sci-fi, and theres always pages of just people explaining, but its always done in such a way that it excites the audience and clearly defines the stakes. 
It’s a big movie with some (in my opinion, minor) problems, but it’s also the one with the most heart.

I’ve been watching twitter rip this one a new one for weeks so I thought it was about time I gave it a watch. I still think it rocks, sorry! The camera is a little too shaky for me, but I think it plays really well in the back half where Ethan is coming unglued and is just trying to protect the people he loves.

Its fun but its MCU-ified Crank.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

This thing has gained a pretty cringe spot in out culture. Its funny as hell, but not when your coworker is going “Very nice!” But what keeps it relevant is Borat’s own Rorschach like quality. You see yourself in what he says. You can either be Mike the driving instructor, or that rodeo man.

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

I got to see this in a movie theater, as well as introduce my friend to it, so this viewing was extra special. The theater also showed the movie back in 1955 as the Easter selection so the very thought of being in this room with a long history with the film is honestly really cool. There was a drunk man who was absolutely loving it, good for him.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

What a stupid movie, I love it.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Perfectly fun time, it was nice to learn who the silly Coen is.

I would wagger that the finale is up there as some of the best in all of sports movies. But this has its peaks and valleys, the jokes range from funny to dated and terrible. I liked it.

This would be a four star-er if the Ventress stuff was any good. I shouldn’t have to do research about a novel for your three episodes of a show to make sense. But that Cad Bane stuff is perfection. It’s exactly what I would want from something called Tales of the Underworld. 

I think this gets a little over simplified as “Groundhog Day but action.” It does a lot of really smart stuff with the writing and is paced in a way that keeps it fresh. Just when you’re getting sick of the loop it throws a new wrench into things.

I think this suffers from a really clunky first act, but my God is it refreshing for one of these to feel like there was an actual human behind it. Pretty much everything from this phase except GOTG 3 has kinda felt flat and unfeeling. Like blockbusters designed in a lab by executives that don’t actually know what the audience wants or likes. The movie is actually about something at it’s core, and not just punching the evil man into submission. The cast is great, and everything reminded me of the power the super hero movie can still has as a vehicle for stories about me and you.

Robert Mitchum is the scariest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.

Watching this  after the sequel announcement is very interesting. After reading Tarantino’s novelization of this, you can tell Cliff is his favorite character, even in the movie itself. He’s the only character with any backstory. Tarantino obviously thinks Booth is the coolest character he’s ever devised and is very disappointed he can’t do more with him because of the 10 movie rule he imposed. He could easily be Tarantino’s Parker, or some other character with an endless library of stories. Not saying I want this, it just seems like something Tarantino wants. 

I’ve also never been able to figure out how I feel about the Sharon Tate stuff before buy I kind of get it now. It reads to me like a criticism of the true crime boom. I’ll be honest, I know nothing of Tate’s acting, as the world has let the Manson family define her. The time Tarantino takes with her shows how kind and sweet of a person she was, and we can’t let that define someone. She’s probably the kindest character Tarantino has written since Fabienne in Pulp Fiction. Not sure what his intent was, but I like to think it was from a place of kindness.

I wanted to like this, I love the whole feel of it, but its meanders too much for my taste. Maybe the theatrical cut would be more my style, who knows. I’d like to give it another watch someday. When its great, I love it, but when its just vibes, it just doesn’t work for me.

I’m somehow even more floored than the first time. Theres probably a case to be made for how this is probably Spielberg’s best. American’s most well known filmmaker reckoning with himself. Beautiful.

I personally had no interest in this until a week or so ago. Watching Coogler say that this is his first movie thats really him combined with that video of him talking about different film formats is what sold me. Then all the positive word of mouth hit and that sold a ton of other people. I had to do something I haven’t done since Godzilla Minus One, I had to sit in the second to front row of my local Cinemark. Which I kind of forget is a seat that has its own merits. You feel like you’re being engulfed by the movie, its just you and the screen, and Sinners is the perfect movie for that. 

In short, I loved it. Coogler knocks it out of the park. The cast is locked in, Delroy Lindo I love you. There isn’t a wasted second in this thing. Immense build up for an incredible crescendo. I also just love it when actors play two characters in the same movie and B Jordan is sensational at it.

Some of the crowd clapped at the end, which I don’t usually get, but it was honestly kind of nice. The crowd was buzzing, they loved it. I go to so many empty matinees that I forgot how great a crowd can be. People are showing up in droves to see this big swing of a vampire flick, and I love it. The movies are back I hope. It was nice to see some Star Wars cosplayers there as well. The Netflix CEO said this week that movie theaters are outdated and people don’t like them. But, the fact that they’re showing up for an original movie and a rerelease of a 20 year old Star Wars movie just shows people want to go to the movie theater, they just want the studios to give them an actual reason to. Rereleases are cool and should be a bigger deal, and original movies can be financially successful when its actually good, marketed correctly, and given room to grow via word of mouth. Movies, I love em.

Seems odd to say but I was really looking forward to this. The original is so stupid and I love it. This is just as stupid but also entirely incomprehensible when it comes to the exposition. But Superman wears sunglasses and thats how you know he’s evil.

I love you stair fight.

This has much more in common with noirs like Red Rock West than I was expecting, a movie where things just keep getting progressively worse, but it had a fun twist to it. I very much enjoyed it.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

This is what musicals are for. Big emotions and sincerity. It’s also 70s in the best way. Jewison is just one of those really solid directors who I don’t think gets his due.

I somewhat enjoyed this cause it operates on the same kind of ridiculous logic the original  Roadhouse runs on. But its still only just fine.

Watchable, but when you compare it to Whannell’s previous outings, its pretty bad. The whole thing is a paint by numbers werewolf flick. Its watchable but it isn’t innovative and fun like Upgrade or Subversive as The Invisible Man. It’s already fading from my mind as we speak.

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Commits the worst sin an action movie can, its horribly boring. Davis is good, as always.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 7, 2025.

This movie seems like it absolutely sucked to make, but I’m glad its as good as it is.

Billy Chapel has to think about his whole life before he plays baseball. 

I’m a sucker for the mushy sentimentality of
baseball. I don’t even really like baseball, or any sport, but the Americana of baseball is irresistible. This has that, but also a half baked love story, but man, I love baseball.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

I’m still sitting with it but it’s pretty refreshing to see one of these not be afraid of making the subject look like an absolute tool. Not too familiar with any of the actual events depicted so I can’t speak to accuracy. However, I can say Edward Norton was my favorite part of the movie.

Took me a month to finish this.

I don’t know what I was expecting but I wasn’t expecting the puppet to fight facism.

Watched on Sunday March 30, 2025.

Theres a lot I love here, But I love how Ani feels like a real person that existed before this movie and has a whole story we’re not aware of. Madison is spectacular and I’m excited to see her again. I wasn’t expecting it to have a Safdie feel to it, theres some stressful stuff here.

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

Once you get past the digitally de-aged Hanks and Wright, you’re left with a perfectly fine, bleak as shit movie. It worked for me, mostly, but also I’m a sucker for Zemeckis and his fixation with integrating tech into his flicks.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

I think this is a pretty perfect Trek movie. You take two agents of chaos, Kirk and Khan, and throw them into a world of rules and protocol. Throw in those under tones all about human aging and you have a pretty great movie. I think I forgot that Shatner and Montalban are never in the same room in this movie. They communicate via coms and the big ol screen on the bridge, but they never truly come face to face. I think that works to the movie’s benefit. The world wouldn’t be able to handle the two standing side by side, mainly cause Montalban is truly giving this role his all and would eat Shatner alive.

Watched on Friday March 21, 2025.

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
3. Mission: Impossible
4. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
5. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
6. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
7. Mission: Impossible III
8. Mission: Impossible II

This is dedicated to my favorite thing about going to movies post-covid: the people who made the movie thanking me for getting my lazy ass into the theater to see the movie.

• Top Gun: Maverick
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• The Fall Guy
• Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

1. Sinners
2. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
3. Thunderbolts*
4. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
5. Companion
6. You're Cordially Invited
7. Drop
8. Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League
9. The Gorge
10. Captain America: Brave New World

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
5. Captain America: The First Avenger
6. Guardians of the Galaxy
7. Avengers: Endgame

   I wanna write a little something here about why this is above Infinity War even though IW is a half a star higher. I think pace wise,  IW is the better one, it crams a ton of stuff into a 2 hour and 30 minute run time and the stakes are huge.  But Endgame still sticks out to me more. The stakes are actually kinda bigger, the story is bigger, and feels a little more focused at times (I haven’t seen Endgame since its original theatrical run, so I’m basing most of this off memory). Emotionally too, its just so much better. If we don’t do this right, everyone in the whole universe is going to be miserable for the rest of time is kinda huge stakes wise. The Avengers essentially set out to correct their biggest mistake, it’s just so cool to me. It feels like something right out of a comic, only the comics now a days would be afraid to have our heroes lose. As a conclusion to a 10 year saga, it’s just a miracle it works this well.

8. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
9. Avengers: Infinity War
10. The Avengers

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Dear God help me

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Star Wars
5. Obi-Wan Kenobi
6. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
7. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
8. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
9. Solo: A Star Wars Story
10. Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi

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

1. Anora
2. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
3. A Different Man
4. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
5. Hundreds of Beavers
6. Flow
7. Conclave
8. The Substance
9. Juror #2
10. The Order

...plus 46 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Saw in Letterboxd socials that they’re doin some showdown thing for lists of your favorite long movies. I don’t care about the contest bit but I love a good long movie. Their definition of long is 150 minutes or longer. I’ll add comments in the notes eventually but its late and I’m tired. I love a long movie, its a privilege to be engrossed in a world, to let it wash over you. Thats what a long movie provides. I looked into some movies to see how long they were and I was shocked to learn some of these weren’t 2 hours long.

• Heat
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Casino
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Saving Private Ryan
• West Side Story
• Amadeus
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Ran
• Killers of the Flower Moon

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• It's a Wonderful Life
• Planet of the Apes
• Get Out

The year is coming to a close and, as always, I still want to see many more movie that were released this year other than what’s listed. To name a few for my own reference: Ferrari, The Holdovers, Poor Things, The Zone of Interest, Maestro, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Past Lives, Wonka, The Color Purple, Napoleon, Rebel Moon Part One, Napoleon, and May December. This was a huge year for movies, I’m still in disbelief a three hour long historical drama made 950 million at the box office, while super hero flicks go down the crapper. Hopefully I can see the rest of these fine flicks in a reasonable amount of time.

1. The Iron Claw
2. Oppenheimer
3. The Holdovers
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Godzilla Minus One
6. Asteroid City
7. Priscilla
8. The Boy and the Heron
9. BlackBerry
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

...plus 54 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I love sad old men, grappling with their mortality and life choices, and maybe getting into fights, this is a list of a bunch of ones that I think could fit that mold, Old isn’t necessarily age, but a mindset.

1. Casino
2. Ran
3. Heat

   De Niro isn’t old here, but he’s faced with a massive amount of loneliness in the plot, and there are some sad old man moments in this flick. 

4. Unforgiven
5. Oppenheimer
6. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
7. Skyfall
8. Up
9. The Irishman
10. The Royal Tenenbaums

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

1. Monsters, Inc.
2. WALL·E
3. Up
4. Ratatouille
5. The Incredibles
6. Soul
7. Turning Red
8. Toy Story 2
9. Inside Out
10. Coco

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

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
5. Rushmore
6. Asteroid City
7. The French Dispatch
8. Isle of Dogs
9. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
10. Bottle Rocket

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Spider-Man
5. Spider-Man: No Way Home
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Spider-Man 3
8. The Amazing Spider-Man
9. Spider-Man: Far From Home

1. The Fabelmans
2. The Batman
3. RRR
4. Glass Onion
5. Everything Everywhere All at Once
6. Babylon
7. Nope
8. Turning Red
9. The Banshees of Inisherin
10. Jackass Forever

...plus 55 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Evil Dead II
2. Evil Dead Rise
3. Army of Darkness
4. Evil Dead
5. The Evil Dead

• Catch Me If You Can
• The Terminal

I decided to start my 2021 ranking early this year and rank new releases as I see them. Hopefully all the stuff planned for this year gets released this year.

1. West Side Story
2. No Time to Die
3. The Beatles: Get Back
4. The French Dispatch
5. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
6. Bo Burnham: Inside
7. Spider-Man: No Way Home
8. Licorice Pizza
9. Pig
10. The Mitchells vs. the Machines

...plus 66 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Batman
2. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
3. Batman
4. The Batman
5. The Dark Knight
6. The Lego Batman Movie
7. Batman Begins
8. Batman Returns
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Batman Forever

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Django Unchained
3. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
4. Jackie Brown
5. Inglourious Basterds
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
10. Death Proof

Man, 2020 was rough, but some pretty good movies still came out. I haven't seen everything I want to see yet though, so I might be updating this throughout the beginning of the  new year. I still have to watch The Trial of the Chicago Seven, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Nomadland, Minari, and Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul, which will be getting their streaming releases soon. This will probably include everything I watched in 2020, that came out in 2020.

1. Minari
2. Nomadland
3. Shiva Baby
4. Wonder Woman 1984
5. Da 5 Bloods
6. Soul
7. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
8. David Byrne's American Utopia
9. Wolfwalkers
10. Boys State

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I still haven’t seen a lot I want to see like 1917, The Farewell, Parasite, Portrait of a lady on fire, Hustlers, and Little Women. I will update the list when and if I see them and if I enjoy them.

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Knives Out
3. The Farewell
4. Marriage Story
5. Parasite
6. The Irishman
7. Uncut Gems
8. Jojo Rabbit
9. The Lighthouse
10. Booksmart

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