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SOME DAYS YOU JUST CAN GET RID OF A BOMB

Perfectly adequate. Doesn't navigate the PED discussion particularly well (McGwire sorta surprisingly is the most intelligent and reflective of everyone) and has way too much Maris Jr. 

But also it does capture a certain moment and era of the sport which, as much as MLB and the HoF try to shove it down an oubliette, was foundational for a generation of fans.

One of those things where I can't help but compare this to both other takes on Macbeth and Kurosawa's other takes on Shakespeare. It's very good but not my favorite in both departments.

The film looks fantastic though with all that fog* and the sense of being lost/confused both physically and mentally. It's such an important character note in that explains so much of what tips Macbeth into madness.** Isuzu Yamada is also fantastically creepy as the real ambition behind it all.

*I kind of want to rewatch Hedgehog in the Fog now.

**I love Slings and Arrows lost Macbeth understudy take.

A feast for the eyes in of the colors, contrast, lighting, and texture. Also a very well-acted and, for the first two thirds or so, extremely taut and crisp piece which manages to make all the discussion and intrigue not only interesting but engrossing. 

And then there's the final act which feels like a different movie collided with the production. Still some beautiful scenes and dialog but it really feels like it lost faith in what it was doing and panicked about not having a proper ending.

Bumped this up to five stars after sitting with it a bit. It's so elegantly directed that it feels deceptively lightweight and breezy.  And it definitely those things in a feel good way. But it is also able to acknowledge and address the seriousness of the emotions that the characters are going through without moralizing or going melodramatic. 

It's a stroke of brilliance to craft parallel stories of the daughter, mom, and grandmother as they all have to contend with the newfound independice that comes when a child gets older and you're forced to figure out who you are beyond just the familial relationship. All three actresses are more than up for the task with Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Fortson in particular turning in fantastic natural performances where they communicate so much without having to say a word. 

Lots of fun to watch with the kids and see them see themselves. And lots of fun to recognize my current experiences as a latent in there too.

Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.

Still as good as it was when I first watched it two decades ago even though some of the early 2000s editing is extremely early 2000s. The cat and mouse action and the tautness of the script though remains perfect. And it also just looks fantastic.

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Kind of a weird one to rewatch. Last time I watched this was over 25 years ago when the Wes Anderson™️ brand was new fresh and exciting and we still thought that sociopaths could be redeemed. 

Now? The freshness has been replaced by how fun it is to see the seeds of what Anderson would become. And it's much much less interesting to see a man and a boy fighting over who gets to possess a woman. So yeah while there are lots of things I still enjoy there's a lot more which I don't. 

The soundtrack though is of the best of the era which did soundtracks better than any other era.

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Didn't plan to watch this in memory of Hackman since we picked this up for cheap at the used record store months ago and only just got around to watching it. But it works out that was since he's an absolute joy here playing a pretty horrible character yet manages to make Royal into a charming funny sympathetic guy.

Fun to revisit this in general as it's been quite a long time since I last watched it. Really interesting to watch now given how twee Anderson has gotten in the ensuing decades. While this is unabashedly a cartoon, it still has one foot in reality and wonderfully subtly underplays the over-the-topness of everything.

Also this is one of those movies where the score lives deep inside me and I know the musical cues better than I know the script.

I mean come on. Animation plus live action kittens? What's not not love.

So I love the character animation in this. And some of the light effects are beautiful. But so much of this feels like all those CG tech demos I grew up watching in the early 1990s in Silicon Valley before Pixar developed a plot department.

Very well done sports documentary which kind of lucked into the perfect lead thanks to all the wonderful threads that make up her backstory from her family's history in Cambodia to the Japanese American youth basketball league in LA which deserves a dedicated documentary itself.

Being Asian in basketball is definitely tough but being poor immigrant Asian in a world of rich kids is a very different kind of tough.

Hard for this to be bad given the inherent drama in the games themselves. But the way the game footage is edited feels like it's trying to copy the way movies are edited around actors being unable to play the sport. Meanwhile the interviews are fine but are basically the Bill Simmons, Kevin Millar, and Curt Schilling show.

Watched on Saturday March 8, 2025.

1. Totally gonna treat this as a prequel to Home Alone and how the McAllisters met.

2. Holy moly does Scorcese direct the hell out of this. Such an active camera which contributes so much to the sense of suspense and absence of control. You're put on notice with literally the first shot of the film and then at the end under the credits the literal last shot is even more audacious. 

3. Love the idea of the "Yuppie Nightmare Cycle" as a defining theme of the 1980s. Couple it with the "stuck in the city and can't get out" genre and you've got a perfect description of how the cities felt to suburban America.

4. Super grateful that for being a "stuck in the 'wrong' neighborhood" film it never went for racist or homophobic jokes or stereotypes.

As a man of about this age this hits a bit too close to home. The movie itself is one of those shorts which feels more incomplete than a proper vignette.

It's been over two dozen years since I've watched a Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival and this is the closest I've come to recapturing that WTF feeling of enjoying a truly dark, twisted, funny, and fucked up animated short.

Did not know that a Samuel Beckett approach to Toy Story was what I wanted but here we are.

Cute. Not my jam animationwise. But fun enough and has its heart in the right place.

Mixed feelings on this one. On one hand it's beautifully made and ends way too soon; I want to spend another 30 minutes in this world. On the other hand it feels underbaked and almost cravenly designed to win awards by looking the part rather than being the part.

In any case this has me wanting to rewatch Michaël Dudok de Wit's work.

Cute and funny enough for what it is. Sort of feels like it's trying to be a Pixar short and absolutely nails the "telegraph the ending halfway through" aspect of that.

Okay I want to rewatch Enter the Dragon now.

Strong Pirates of the Caribbean 2 vibes where Chapter 1 is proof of concept and Chapter 2 is just going hog wild expanding the universe and visual language of the film. Lots of eye candy here with light.

Definitely refreshing to see continuity with the bullet usage not just in of the number of bullets used but in the number of clips used. Really nice how they use reloading as an opportunity for some ma within the action too.

I'd forgotten that this, as with Incredibles 2, has a huge monologue from the antagonist which really feels like a rant coming straight from the filmmaker.

Watched on Friday February 21, 2025.