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PATRIOT ACT! PATRIOT ACT! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT

This review may contain spoilers.

The central relationship—a morally bankrupt criminal capitalist and his virtuous nun daughter who gradually become more ethical and less rigid (respectively) through their shared experiences throughout the movie—was so immensely moving and beautiful to me. The way they find their peace and balance in poverty and hard work—brilliant.

Around that molten lava core is a globe-trotting action-adventure entrepreneurial saga about billionaires constructing tunnels, canals, and mines to politically influence the Middle East… A corrupt billionaire who reckons with his actions in the afterlife during near-death experiences…. The most politically potent Wes has ever been with many real-world parallels. Astonishing performances by Del Toro and Threapleton. Wes is on fire—the most important American filmmaker of his generation.

Suffered through Andor s02, which I hated—really do not understand the praise for that series. I put on the movie because I found the finale infuriatingly anticlimactic. At least it provided the catharsis of the story. 

But also I haven’t thought about this movie at all in the 9 years since seeing it in theaters. There’s really not much going on that’s interesting. I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Neeeeed comedies like this back so bad bro

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

Make it 2005 again with science or magic or a complex series of Rube Goldberg machine-esque events

Umm call me when a movie titled Friendship is 100 minutes of yard sale girls

Sophie Thatcher girl I’m on your side but these projects….

Hmm… really disconcerting

Just extremely beautiful—all digital films should look this good.

The Dreiser novel is incredible. The film, while irably produced, feels like it speed runs the book. Which makes sense—there’s a ton of ground to cover. Olivier is fabulous as Hurstwood, but I think the movie fails in its intepretation of Carrie, who is not at all like I imagined in the novel….

I’m also in my martini era . Nothing like a martini w lemon twist nightcap

Love Alex Newell

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

This food is so fucking good Lois

Randomly loved this one. Directly related to current events in some uncanny ways. Bernthal & Affleck are legit great and I’ll take any action film more interested in character work than plotting. It struggles to find a good balance between the darkly comic and the serious drama, but when it’s funny it’s fucken funny. Bernthal really is so great.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Using Godspeed You Black Emperor as score goes so hard. Hope they’re in the sequel this year, very stoked for that — great trailer

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

TBH I love the conceit here. Really great idea. The movie fails in the bridge between the 2nd and 3rd acts — that iPhone video montage is garbage. 

Every time I watch a PlayStation movie I’m like damn I gotta get a PlayStation but I’m not really a gamer and definitely couldn’t play a horror game

Stray thoughts—

We need someone as melodramatic as George Lucas running Star Wars again

When I say Fuck AI I do NOT mean R2D2

This thing is lean and mean. Moves so fast compared to most of todays blockbusters.

The movie is like 15 set pieces in a trench coat—would be great if any other director not named James Cameron actually had an eye for CGI action. The lava saber battle? The order 66 montage? The opening battle scene? Just pure childlike creativity & imagination—feels like you’re watching a produced version of kids playing with toys. (Complimentary)

At the end someone in the audience said “so fun!” Meanwhile I’m in the corner crying

Watched on Monday April 21, 2025.

This is a movie that was very important to me when I was in high school—I still viscerally the emotional impact of my first watch when I was 16. I subsequently watched it maybe 10+ times over a couple years, but found it had diminishing returns with each viewing, so I decided to cool on it for… 12 years. It’s still very familiar to me, but plays super over the top and goofy—watching in such close succession with Short Cuts also does it no favors. It’s still very evocative and impactful, but I have to say I’m very glad that PTA grew up and stopped acting like he had to swing his dick around on screen to get respect.

It’s a dream palace

Emotionally unavailable gay guy who’s obsessed with birds and avoids conflict .. unrelatable

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Kinda like looking in the mirror 

Also I love that Smog song so much, great needle drop

Maya Erskine is so underrated

Idk big dogs it’s a 10/10 from me

White boy city 

Any single episode of The Pitt has better pacing, tension, drama, gore, character development, humor, and realism in workplace competence in a real-time setting, but, hey, I’ll take it! Evocative and visceral if often boring and too slack.

Still not sold on Joseph Quinn

I think it’s really cool that Alex Garland hired Ray Mendoza to consult on Civil War and then they connected and immediately made this personal, original film.

Watched on Monday April 7, 2025.

This is exactly what it feels like to be alive

Naomi Watts is the best actress of her generation . Let’s have that conversation .

Bookending the film with Christian prayer on the house floor says it all. The lack of verbal skill from ALL the politicians was stunning.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Still the best short film I’ve seen. A powerful experience

Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 30, 2025.

I have a soft spot for expensive, gaudy 1960s studio films—this one bolstered by Hepburn & O’Toole. Delightful

There are flashes of brilliance here, but they’re few and far between, and the rest is kinda meandering. Beautiful photography and the 4K restoration is stunning, though they should’ve been able to remove those cigarette burns.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Domestic Violence 1 & 2 are kinda the pinnacle of Wiseman’s career — exceptional duology . Thankfully part 2 is not nearly as upsetting as 1.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

Love Guiraudie—always on his wavelength. Check out his new film Misericordia in theaters now

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Like, this and Margaret are two sides of the same coin

Lovely film, great vibe. Dudes rock cinema. What Carson Lund, Tyler Taormina, and their group are doing in the indie sphere is very inspiring. Glad they’re seeing a lot of success right now, excited to see what these guys do next.

 Eephus reminded me a lot of that great Sopranos quote: “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” The inclusion of the young guys on the teams felt like an analogue for Lund, Taormina, et al in the world of cinema.

Sodie dropping two movies Q1 2025 that are better than almost everything released in 2024… that’s my goat 

Soderbergh & Koepp need to be top of the list for Bond 26

Pure kinetic cinema. Thank god we live in a world with Fury Road, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Furiosa, Resident Evil: Final Chapter, Resident Evil: Extinction, and In the Lost Lands. Jovovich has a face for the ages, and Anderson shoots every scene in the coolest way imaginable—one of the elite actor-director collaborations.

1. Accident
2. Adua and Her Friends
3. After Hours
4. After Life
5. The Age of Innocence
6. All the President's Men
7. America America
8. American Graffiti
9. Le Amiche
10. Another Year

...plus 287 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

New features released in 2025, ranked.

• The Phoenician Scheme
• Black Bag
• Presence
• Drop
• Eephus
• In the Lost Lands
• The ant²
• One of Them Days
• The Wedding Banquet
• Sacramento

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. About Endlessness
2. The Adventures of Robin Hood
3. After the Storm
4. Afterschool
5. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
6. Alice's Restaurant
7. Aliens
8. All Quiet on the Western Front
9. All That Jazz
10. All That Money Can Buy

...plus 748 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked list of films I watched for the first time in 2025, not including new releases

• Lancelot of the Lake
• Woman in Chains
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Equus
• The Devil Is a Woman
• He Who Gets Slapped
• Westward the Women
• Thirteen
• Domestic Violence
• Domestic Violence 2

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. About Dry Grasses
2. About Elly
3. Ace in the Hole
4. The Act of Killing
5. Adaptation.
6. Adventureland
7. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
8. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
9. After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
10. After the Thin Man

...plus 540 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 5 films each year 1920-2024

UPDATES

December 2024:
Hard Truths, #1 2024
Kinds of Kindness, #2 2024
About Dry Grasses, #3 2024
Misericordia, #4 2024
Furiosa, #5 2024

He Who Gets Slapped, #4 1924 01/02/25

The Devil Is a Woman, #4 1935 01/19/25

The Picture of Dorian Gray, #3 1945 01/23/25

Equus, #5 1977 03/31/25

1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
2. The Penalty
3. Way Down East
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5. Within Our Gates
6. The Phantom Carriage
7. The Kid
8. Destiny
9. The Sheik
10. Four Around the Woman

...plus 515 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Label in notes where applicable

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

  Kubrick Box

• 20th Century Women
• Aliens
• All the President's Men
• American Gigolo
• American Madness

  Capra at Columbia Box

• The Apartment
• Apocalypse After
• Asteroid City
• Avanti!

  Kino Lorber

...plus 186 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Recent additions: 
Dogfight
Happiness
Jeanne Dielman…
Le Cercle Rouge
Lone Star
Now, Voyager
Querelle
Rouge
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Walker
Written on the Wind

• 3 Women
• The 400 Blows
• 45 Years
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• 8½
• Ace in the Hole
• Adventures on the New Frontier
• Affirmations
• After Hours
• After Life

...plus 381 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Label in notes where applicable

Recent Additions Dec 2024:
Bones and All
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Capra at Columbia Box Set
The Deer Hunter
The Departed
The Fog
Last Year at Marienbad
The Night of the Hunter
No Country for Old Men
Pulp Fiction
Some Like It Hot

Tar

• Barbie
• The Batman
• Bones and All

  Shout! Factory

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

  Kino Lorber

• Casino
• Citizen Kane

  Criterion

• The Deer Hunter

  Shout! Factory

• The Departed
• Dirigible

  Capra @ Columbia Box

• Double Indemnity

  Criterion

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Alphabetical

• About Dry Grasses
• Challengers
• Dune: Part Two
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Hard Truths
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
• Kinds of Kindness
• Last Summer
• Misericordia
• Trap

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 2010s.

• The Act of Killing
• After the Storm
• American Honey
• Amour
• Another Year
• Arrival
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
• Before Midnight
• Beginners
• Beyond the Hills

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 2000s.

• About Elly
• Adaptation.
• Adventureland
• Almost Famous
• Antichrist
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Atonement
• The Aviator
• Away from Her
• Bad Education

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1990s.

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• After Life
• The Age of Innocence
• All About My Mother
• An Angel at My Table
• Barton Fink
• Beautiful Thing
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Birdcage
• Body Snatchers

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1980s.

• The Time to Live and the Time to Die
• After Hours
• Amadeus
• American Gigolo
• Atlantic City
• Blood Simple
• Blow Out
• Blue Velvet
• Christine
• Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1970s.

• Alien
• All the President's Men
• Aloha, Bobby and Rose
• American Graffiti
• Anna and the Wolves
• Apocalypse Now
• The Ascent
• Autumn Sonata
• Avanti!
• Baxter, Vera Baxter

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1960s.

• Accident
• Adua and Her Friends
• America America
• The Apartment
• Army of Shadows
• Belle de Jour
• Billy Liar
• Blow-Up
• Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
• Bonnie and Clyde

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1950s.

• Ace in the Hole
• All About Eve
• All That Heaven Allows
• Aparajito
• Apur Sansar
• The Asphalt Jungle
• Ben-Hur
• The Big Heat
• Black Orpheus
• Bonjour Tristesse

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1940s.

• All That Money Can Buy
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Bicycle Thieves
• The Big Clock
• The Big Sleep
• The Bishop's Wife
• Bitter Rice
• Black Narcissus
• Blithe Spirit

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 Edition of my 100 Favorite Films of the 1930s.

• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• After the Thin Man
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• The Awful Truth
• The Baker's Wife
• Blonde Venus
• The Blood of a Poet
• The Blue Angel
• Bringing Up Baby
• Camille

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Chronological.
Updated 09/14/2024

1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
2. The Phantom Carriage
3. Nosferatu
4. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
5. The ion of Joan of Arc
6. M
7. Fanny
8. Vampyr
9. Ninotchka
10. The Rules of the Game

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• After Hours
• Billy Liar
• I ♥ Huckabees
• Little Murders
• One, Two, Three
• Smiley Face

• Blood Simple
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• A Cottage on Dartmoor
• The Night of the Hunter
• Le Samouraï
• Veronika Voss

• Avanti!
• Clockwatchers
• Joe Versus the Volcano
• Muriel's Wedding
• A New Leaf
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

• Dressed to Kill
• Klute
• The Last Laugh
• The enger
• The Servant
• Stranger by the Lake

my favorite filmmakers, with their top 5 films

AKERMAN / ALMODOVAR / ALTMAN / ANTONIONI / ARAKI / ARMSTRONG / ASSAYAS / BAUMBACH / BERGMAN / BIGELOW / BOGDANOVICH / BUNUEL / CAMPION / CAPRA / CARNÉ / CARPENTER / CASSAVETES / CHAPLIN / COCTEAU / J. & E. COEN / F. F. COPPOLA / S. COPPOLA / CURTIZ / DAVIES / DE PALMA / DREYER / FARHADI / FASSBINDER / FORD / HANEKE / HAWKS / HITCHCOCK / HUSTON / KAZAN / KIAROSTAMI / KORE-EDA / KUROSAWA / LANG / LEIGH / LINKLATER / LOSEY / LUBITSCH / LYNCH / MALLE / MAZURSKY / MELVILLE / MERCHANT IVORY / MINNELLI / MURNAU / POWELL / N. RAY / REICHARDT / RENOIR / RESNAIS / RIVETTE / ROSI / ROSSELLINI / SCORSESE / SCHLESINGER / SILVER / SIRK / STILLMAN / P. STURGES / VARDA / VON STERNBERG / VON TRIER / WEERASETHAKUL / WELLES / WERTMULLER / WILDER / WYLER

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
2. The Meetings of Anna
3. News from Home
4. Golden Eighties
5. Je Tu Il Elle
6. All About My Mother
7. Volver
8. Talk to Her

   Pedro Almodovar

9. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
10. Bad Education

...plus 345 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A purely vibe-based list of various favorites that I associate with my personality, or: my taste, distilled.

• Accident
• Adventureland
• All About My Mother
• American Gigolo
• Amélie
• Avanti!
• Billy Liar
• The Birdcage
• Black Widow
• Bones and All

...plus 65 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.