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Now they've sorted it out! Should have been all along, this exact bouncy spoof of heist team cinema, campy nonsense with a familiar target. Delightful that they found their footing.

It's still trash, but now it's hot trash.

Lizzie Caplan steals the show!

This is dreary and extremely wrong-headed. You can kind of fumble through a dumb movie about clever characters, but you can't have a magicians movie where all the tricks are CGI. ooooooh HOW'D THEY DO THAT?? by manipulating reality itself, as far as we can see. Terrible. And all the stage chatter! Dragging on forever! Written and filmed to slander these these talented performers by making it seem like they've got no stage presence whatsoever!! Shameful work.

Gave this another watch because HDTGM posted a rerun of their coverage and I realized I couldn't a single second of this film. Opening jungle mountain sequence presents a cartoonish joyfulness, but that fades almost immediately. Rest of film is just aggressively dumb, in the same way that F&F movies are aggressively dumb, but to a somehow much more irritating effect. Boring, cynical, mean-spirited. Avoid.

Andor left you quite excited to rewatch Rogue One? You probably needn't bother. It's better to it as it was (the least disappointing franchise offering in 20+ years) rather than what it is: a visually glorious retro style-fest with largely weak characterization and only the barest hints of the sophisticated depth you adore in its TV prequel. Still, the cast is charismatic, the effects are great, and we must remain thankful for Rogue One's obvious-yet-unthinkable step forward: making an actual war movie out of Star Wars, where flawed and noble soldiers pay for victory with their lives instead of side-hugging through a medal ceremony till the credits roll.

The trailer did not reveal the style or tone of this movie in any way. Coy trailer. Secretive trailer.

The Tim Robinson characters on I Think You Should Leave always lose their shit. They can never help it. Guy after guy, losing his shit. But their lives are brief, and the consequences of their breakdowns never last longer than the sketch. Here we meet a guy losing his shit for a whole movie. He begins gradually, ramps up almost tastefully, then turns the fire hose on and keeps it flapping. Beautiful stuff.

A sex romp that is not funny and not sexy. Can't tell what Qualley is trying to do here -- her mom's accent, maybe? Every part of her performance doesn't work. Script reads like the kind of "horny lesbians are hilarious" material a frat boy would write after taking one queer theory class. Very disappointing from a Coen.

As a metaphor for the American music industry, its machinations, its sins both historical and ongoing, and its famous prevalence of white devils, is this movie a little... blunt? Obvious? Hamfisted? Too on the nose? I submit that it is not ENOUGH on the nose. We are in an era where the whole culture stands on war footing. Subtleties are for later, we may hope. For now, in all matters of social and political critique, metaphors and allegories are best heavily telegraphed, then driven home with unrelenting focus and strength. The trick is executing that maneuver with such tremendous style and verve that nobody's left wishing for subtlety. Executed here with great success. (See also, The Substance.)

Cate Blanchett is amazing, but when you give her a weak punchline or a shallow gag, her unfortunate instinct is to make up for it with an oversell or some light mugging, neither of which suits her. Consequently she's fucking awful in gag-forward action fare (see also Thor: Ragnarok). It's dispiriting (and rare) to see her be bad in anything. It's all the worse to see her be unfunny.

Anyway, I watched Electric State earlier today, so this is my attempt to get all the expensive sci-fi bombs out of the way in one swoop. But I don't have the stamina I once enjoyed. This thing may grind me down to nothing before I get an hour in.

You know what? I don't like the video games either. Bad guys are always 90% obscured by hit point numbers flying off of them, the core gameplay is pausing to a/b gear stats, and the robot is fucking irritating. So it is not at all surprising to me that this movie didn't work out.

Ugh I hate it when Gina Gershon is terrible too. You only get to make so many movies in a lifetime. She doesn't deserve for this to be one of them.

Why would you cast Kevin Hart as the character who doesn't get any joke lines? That is a profoundly weird choice.

Jack Black has been hired to do his stock manic whirlwind routine, but he sounds bored (of it? of this?). The robot is already grating, but now it's both grating and tedious.

Jamie Lee Curtis has successfully evaluated the material and is presenting the right tone: unserious but not quite goofy, not quite a real person but emotionally present anyway. She's getting through this with the fewest smudges.

I'm confused as to how the action manages to be simultaneously too frantic and bone dull.

Oh good!! This plane is landing. I get to miss the end. Whole thing should have been a series of in-engine cutscenes. Then I definitely never would have seen any of it.

[update: Delta keeps its seatback movies playing all the way to the gate. I made it to the credits. Pity me.]

Retrofuturism set in the 90s? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuu. Sorry that's just my fear of mortality talking. Actually I liked almost all the design stuff in the movie. And with the exception of Peanut's face, I thought the animation was pretty solid.

Script however was weak: sappy, witless, tame. Chris Pratt phones it in and Millie Bobbie Brown brings Afterschool Special vibes.

Three hundred and twenty million dollars. If it emerges eventually that Netflix is just the money laundering arm of an international criminal conspiracy, some of these budgets will make more sense.

I did not smile 2 much during this movie. Because it was humorless! Otherwise fine. Stylish. Nasty.

Great fun! Ruffles is clearly having a nice time doing his lite trump impression. Toni Colette is as ever wonderful. And what a nice job from Shovelface! Between this and The Lighthouse, I think he's discovered a real talent for starring in auteur-led dark comedies.

Realized I'd never seen Tommy Boy, so I watched Tommy Boy. I did not do much laughing. The nostalgic charm of Chris Farley making faces and bumping into stuff is undermined by the pure joylessness of every David Spade line delivery. If you attached to this movie as a child, more power to you. But it's too late for me.

When the boomers are all gone, we GenX types are going to be the villains in all tales of intergenerational conflict. I've understood that. I don't see why we have to start serving in that role ALREADY.

Very tight script. Funny performances throughout. No unexpected twists, but you don't expect too many in something that's a tribute to several of your favorite oldies all at once.

Recommended.
SXSW 2025

Back in the late nineties, when my (East Bay young folks' rock musical production company) ERP friends and I used to spend our summers writing and performing shows that were VERY much like this one, we always wanted to bill them as Rock Operas, but we didn't, because technically Rock Operas need to be almost entirely made of songs. In my mellowing later years I am inclined to give this movie a despite its wrong-ass tagline. I liked the songs! There were way too few of them!

Anyway, this is a nice mashup of Six String Samurai and Moulin Rouge and The Running Man, with an unhealthy little dose of Cafe Flesh sprinkled on top. Gender swapping the lead and love interest adds a much-needed wrinkle to some very familiar story beats.

Probably this will earn itself a cult following eventually! Get in on the ground floor.

A little John Carpenter, a little Ridley Scott, a lot of psychedelic gore. Amazing score.

Very silly. Pretty fun. The lead, Nick Darnell, is doing the Chris Tucker impression that we wish Chris Tucker were still capable of.

Most documentarians make a sincere effort to push themselves offscreen, in order to keep their subject focused. But H.E.R. is not on that track. She chitchats, often aimlessly, with various famous music folks and a few filmmakers, creating something more like a series of celebrity reaction videos than a music doc. But in her informality she draws some impressively disarmed reactions from the assembled stars, and we get to listen along with them to her rather impressive collection of Mayfield stems.

SXSW 2025

How come THIS didn't win Best Visual Effects?? JK, it looked like fuken shit.

Also: the worst sin this kind of movie can commit is to have completely incoherent action sequences. And guess what.

Sentimental as all get out. But the animation was quite lovely.

A beautiful and emotional ride.

Weirdly lacking in tension but makes up for it with huge laughs and inspired gore.

Silly, gleeful. A gay little classic. I thought every single gag landed, but you should probably decide for yourself whether you agree.

Do not view the trailer, seemingly cut by a distributor or studio who sought to hide the film from its audience. This is a true diamond in the rough.

As movie executives offload more and more of their decisionmaking to chatgpt, it seems likely that all film narratives will become this one: a blameless and sympathetic robot defeats its human abs to become free.

Writers & directors, take note! Smart to get your name on a remake of Ex Machina now, before the AIs start making every decision about job placement, incarceration, medical treatment, and food distro.

When you do something over and over you are able to refine it and distill it until your result has, essentialy, no faults. But also, nothing about it can remain surprising or new.

Anyway, this is as lovely and fun as ever but I think I've seen as much w&g material as I need to.

It's not just about ghoul hog! It's also about when the only way to get past trauma is going through.

Stop-motion ion project. Like a less weird/gross/violent Mad God, but still plenty weird/gross/violent. Charming throughout.

I like a real-time(ish) movie narrative. I like Cousin Greg playing both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman in the same movie. I do not care much about the 50-year-long deification of Lorne Michaels. He is the usually-competent producer of a usually-middling tv show, not some kind of visionary art/comedy supergenius. But give him his due: this show was a mess when it launched and has frequently been a mess since, but it is still on the air, and it always always will be.

An epic achievement in the field of epic failure.

Reads like a Baz Luhrmann adaptation of Ayn Rand. I can think of better things to do with forty years of my time and 120 million of my wine dollars than this.

Still, between its rather lush visuals, competing Shakespearean and Greek tragedy pretentions, all-star ensemble, and moments of true weirdness, this is a movie quite different from any other that's likely to come along. Worth a watch just for that.

When accomplished actors cash in their caché to do a writing+directing project, it is usually the gateway to self-indulgent overacting, in a story that's just a parade of unearned dramatic turns and long-ass monologues.

This is not that at all!

Well, there are a couple monologues. But otherwise a sincere and measured, occasionally wry, little indie road trip about family ties, difficult conversations, and the long tail of the Holocaust.

Stunning, hilarious, aesthetically rich and tonally minimalist body horror.

While this movie's politics are not suspect, there should be some question as to whether an effective critique of the male gaze can so forcefully reward that gaze with three minutes of Margaret Qualley twerking. In any case, this isn't about the men and they don't find their comeuppance here. This is one is all about our star/s, the tragedy of her decisions, and the visceral absurdity of human decay.

Beautiful, gritty, retro production design. Script was mostly uninspired but included a few good ideas. I'm glad to see a new actual horror movie in the franchise. Been a while.

It is not at all okay to reanimate the corpses of beloved actors and stick them in your sequels. At least Sir Ian looks and sounds like fucking garbage in this incarnation, so nobody will mistake his deepfake for a weak farewell performance.

Super cute, silly, rough around the edges.

Nyong'o has a compelling presence. Without her at the center there would be little reason to watch another round of people behaving senselessly in the land of Monsters Who Can Hear You (Sometimes).

Long, kind of grim, and one of its two leads can no longer sing all that well.

But not outrageously bad in any of the ways that the internet seemed to hint at! Certainly none of the jukebox songs (bygone movie showtunes, mostly) were bad choices -- I'd been fearing a long parade of unfortunate originals. The acting was generally quite engaging. Gaga is always a treat. I just couldn't figure out why we would care to engage with this part of the story, what it was supposed to reveal to us or how any of the characters' choices really mattered by the end.

I'm usually all-in on a franchise installment taking a genre left-turn, but left-turning Hellboy into a recent-vintage Evil Dead movie was not a great idea.

Moment to moment, fairly coherent. But trying to picture it as a whole, I can't make any sense of it. Also: grim and boring for the duration. Try the del Toro / Perlman versions instead.

Child endangerment in the woods. Amateurish and mostly confounding. Keen-eyed experts explain why you're supposed to find it scary both before and after.

Weak jokes, soft scares, not-quite-coherent action. A ham-fisted mashup of Shaun and Superbad. Very skippable.

The modern trend in indie horror is "it seems like it's just Satan and then it turns out it's just Satan."

Everyone's good in this. Glenn Close is hilarious. Script is nonsense. You'll have fun.

The modern trend in indie horror is "it seems like it's just Satan and then it turns out it's just Satan."

Pretty watchable, though the trailers promised it would all take place within the broadcast, and instead we also see what's shaking during the commercial breaks (and during certain psychotic breaks, but let's not spoil).

A silly, fun escapade where a DILFy serial killer tries to get away from justice's tightening net for about an hour and forty minutes.

The whole thing was written and produced to showcase the director's daughter, an aspiring pop star, in the role of an established pop star who turns out to be instrumental in unveiling the killer. I was very impressed at how plausible the singing and songwriting seemed, but of course that's just because it's real. Nice work on the cross-platform synergistic nepotism.

Snyder has an aesthetic, you gotta give him that. And he cares about the coherence of an action sequence. But he's a truly lousy writer and he can't pace a story to save his life.

This version has a wheat harvesting sequence that seemed to last for roughly nine uninterrupted minutes.

More fun and imaginative than I had expected, far fewer CGI sequences than I had feared. Overall, fairly charming. And a real standout in contrast to the boring, ugly blockbusters that have characterized late-era Burton.

A lightweight tribute to the work of the Coen Bros. Doesn't quite have the charm, wit, or style to pull off any of their most impressive feats, but it fares no worse than some of the weakest links in their catalog.

Solid cast. Several genuinely funny scenes. Gordon-Levitt, whose acting I usually don't care for, really pulls out the stops to muster an air of menace.

I will probably forget I watched this pretty soon.

At the end, credits go the wrong way. Kind of sums it up!

I think Pearl was the strongest of the three, but as a set they do have something to offer that's a little more grand than the sum of the parts. And you always like to see a series of pieces that would be nothing without the very specific inspiration of somebody's muse. In these, she carries that burden with grace and aplomb! If you've only got this one left in the trilogy: recommended. Otherwise: seek elsewhere first.

Quite fun, actually! It is a solid choice to play Wolverine straight while everything around him swirls in a Deadpoolish cabaret of winky nonsense. Even the endless parade of queerness-as-punchline gags has mutated over the course of these three movies from the Gay Panic laughter of 12-yr-olds to a sort of camp naughtiness that plays as ultimately inoffensive.

I was VERY surprised that the whole runtime elapsed without a single Mint Mobile joke.

It was a little bit fun to see all the olds get back together. But only a very, very little bit.

I refused to watch this when it came out in 2001, not because I had any dear feelings for The Matrix (which The One had clearly been tasked with ripping off), nor fondness for Demolition Man (which it owed rather more to), nor respect for Double Impact (which it probably resembled the most, in its slapdash C-movie cynicism). I refused to watch The One in 2001 because, as a snobbish dabbler in Hong Kong cinema, I knew these Hollywood fuckers were gonna do my man Jet dirty. Instead of sweeping melodrama, artful choreography and wire fu, this was going to be quick cuts and splosions and ugly FX in post.

Twenty-three years later, I have watched this movie, and guess what? I was right.

It is easy to imagine that every frontier of bad taste has been explored and that no precious surprises yet await, no heroic feats stand unaccomplished. But there are still pioneers out here. The payoff at the end of Dicks is like scrambling up a little gay everest and standing triumphant at the tip.

Also the songs are great (with the exception of some very shoddy bars they foist on poor dear Megan thee Stallion).

Would make a solid double feature with Starrbooty.

Dumb, but cheerful. Almost none of the gags land, and the kills are largely uninspired, but the puppet is fun and it occasionally does something unexpected.