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Grade A Disney. Spirited, sentimental, emotional, and absolutely hilarious. I forgot how much of a classic this was. Now time to be disappointed by live action…

This review may contain spoilers.

This was my first time watching this since 2019, and what a hot mess of a movie. There are storylines ham-fisted in here that maybe could’ve been cool if properly introduced in earlier movies, but the result is mostly ass. But “Ben” and Rey kissed I guess, nice. 

Also Kylo killed his dad and then makes his mom kill herself? Damn. Double homicide.

The Last Jedi is a film nowhere near as bad as the rabid dark side of the fanbase would have you believe, but also just not as good as the high brow critics try to press upon people either. If we’re being brief about it, it’s an absolutely gorgeous movie (perhaps the best Star Wars has looked) with some interesting ideas that ultimately aren’t fully fleshed out.

Luke—a legendary character fans hadn’t seen on screen for 34 years by 2017—as the stoic, apathetic, skeptic could’ve worked better if he was given more time to rationalize and redeem his new dejected state of being over at least two movies. Daisy Ridley’s Rey works reasonably well as an emergent Jedi prodigy, whether from nowhere or a Skywalker/Palpatine (yuck!) bloodline. But what falls flat in all 3 movies of the sequel trilogy is presenting her with any type of real foil to test her abilities, or put her in any type of palpable danger. Which leads me to maybe my most controversial take: Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren absolutely does not work as the lead antagonist of The Last Jedi, and the trilogy as a whole. 

I’ve seen others praise Kylo’s characterization as a fresh spin on Star Wars villains but I absolutely cannot stand him. Even the characters in-universe treat him frighteningly similar to his real life fandom. But this isn’t a boy needed to be treated with kid gloves, and by the time the audience sees him again in The Last Jedi, he’s pushing 30 and has committed intergalactic war crimes that make the Third Reich look like Super Weenie Hut Jr’s (and he killed his Dad). He’s a sniveling, whiny, overly emotional Vader wannabe without the sauce or the skill, and isn’t worth redemption. ittedly, there are seeds on an appealing character there somewhere, and given another go or two in his early conception could’ve built him up a lot more. But no amount of exposition can justify Rey falling for Space Hitler with luscious hair and a cool lightsaber. The only scenario where ‘Reylo’ works is if Rey at any point is seriously seduced by the Dark Side (she isn’t).

Finally, imo the movie’s greatest sin is its handling of Finn—a character with arguably the most compelling backstory of any main character in the Skywalker Saga—who is relegated to a silly C-plot amongst the plushy patrons of the garish Canto Bight. If you really wanted to have your cake and eat it too, a Jedi First Order defector awakening the force alongside the heir apparent to Luke Skywalker could’ve been pretty awe-inspiring. Even Finn and Luke rallying a resistance against the newly coupled Sith dyad of Rey and Ren could’ve been really intriguing and daring.

But that’s kind of just what The Last Jedi is: an inherently interesting, gorgeous bridge movie with some decent, undercooked ideas that could’ve been a lot more.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 24, 2025.

Josh Allen you better get down on your hands and knees and pray that Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld are truly just phenomenal actors and only that LMAO. 

Watched on Thursday March 20, 2025.

A dialogue-heavy slow burn of an espionage “thriller” that doubles as a somewhat introspective examination of marriage, and the lengths one is willing to go for their partner. Definitely enjoyable.

Watched on Sunday March 9, 2025.

I don’t like Star Trek much, but there’s always been an interesting debate about the science and philosophy behind getting “beamed up.”

Officially, the beam dematerializes your body into energy, then reassembles said body from that energy at the intended destination, along with your original consciousness. 

But some argue every time a crew member does this, they actually die, and a new perfectly copied version of the previous person is “transported”.

In Mickey 17, you can talk about a number of poignant subjects the film addresses. Ruffalo as the on the nose amalgam of Musk + Trump is actually pretty accurate. True lovers can see themselves in Naomi Ackie’s incredible turn as Nasha, who protects and cares for every single version of Mickey. Yeun’s Timo is possibly the grim final product of a consumer navigating hyper capitalism. Even relevant themes of settler colonialism are spotlighted by the cute cgi-creepers. 

But I was moved most by Robert Pattinson, who might be our greatest living actor right now. Mickey 17 is a result of the 16 Mickeys before him and—as far as he knows—the exact same person he’s always been (more or less), throughout the mundane cycle of death and experimentation. It’s not until he comes across a version of himself he doesn’t recognize that he starts to question what it is to truly die, something that had become as casual to him as sleeping or eating.

Sure, Mickey was repeatedly getting killed in the most gruesome and obscene ways humanly possible for the sake of “progress” and a nameless mega-corporation. But it was always him being reanimated right? Right!?

Watched on Saturday March 1, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 2, 2025.

Watched on Friday February 7, 2025.

Watched on Saturday December 21, 2024.

Watched on Friday May 3, 2024.

Watched on Sunday April 7, 2024.

Saw this with my girl the other night. She asked me what I thought of it and I said “I’ll give it a strong 6.5 outta 10, weak 7.” She said “See, that’s your problem. You start off giving every movie a 10 and deducting from there. Me? I give a movie a 0 and it has to earn my 10. This is a 3.”

I still wouldn’t go that far but yeah I do question why this movie was made, kind of the definition of forced and unnecessary. I was entertained but outside of a very good Denzel performance, there’s not much to go back to (Mescal is a bit overhated, he was perfectly fine but was no Maximus Decimus Meridius).

Also this movie is weirdly paced and edited. It’s been brought up that May Calamawy is more or less completely taken out of the film, and it really does feel like this movie is missing at least a fleeting or flirting love interest.

Watched on Friday October 25, 2024.

Watched on Monday November 4, 2024.

Watched on Thursday October 24, 2024.

Watched on Sunday September 8, 2024.

Watched on Saturday August 24, 2024.

Watched on Saturday June 29, 2024.

Told entirely through Jong-su’s (Yoo Ah-in) perspective, what starts off as a would-be romance between him and his childhood neighbor Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) carefully devolves into a slow burning mystery as Steven Yeun’s detached, playboy-ish character Ben suddenly materializes. 

The juxtaposition of Jong-su, a struggling writer who lives on a farm in the Korean countryside, and Ben is a really effective commentary on class. Jong-su drives a rickety pick-up truck: Ben drives a Porsche 911 parked in the garage of his downtown high-rise. Jong-su’s baggy, lived-in attire often looks out of place in the city or at swanky gatherings curated by the cool, casual and effortlessly fashionable Ben. 

Ultimately, Burning offers up an ambiguous yet fascinating character study of its protagonist, along with Hae-mi—a whimsical, dreamlike twenty-something, who is clearly mentally off—as well as Yeun’s Ben, who Jong-su likens to Gatsby, and continuously exhibits a cold and disionate disposition teetering on the edge of textbook psychopathy. 

TLDR; one of the most interesting movies I think I’ve ever watched. 

Watched on Friday December 16, 2016.

Watched on Monday August 19, 2024.

Watched on Friday October 11, 2019.

Watched on Friday August 2, 2024.

Watched on Friday July 19, 2024.

Watched on Friday March 4, 2022.

Watched on Friday March 1, 2024.

Watched on Sunday December 3, 2023.

Romulus is so good when you don’t have a pretentious film bro scared of IP in your ear telling you it isn’t. 

This movie is pretty much why we go to the theater: I was literally on the edge of my seat for at least 80 percent of the film’s 2 hour run time. Fede Alvarez views it as “a third world story…where… people [are] born in the wrong place, where things are collapsing.” How is this not about anything? How is this simply a rehash of what came before it?

The characters we meet are in poverty, at best as indentured servants and at worst as hopeless and desperate slaves to Weyland-Yutani: an insidious mega corporation functioning as the perfect paradigm of end-stage capitalism. You can feel their collective desperation through the screen, risking lives and limbs to make it out of their monotonous hell on a sunless mining colony in an effort to escape to the dreamlike planet Yvaga. 

Cailee Spaeny has been putting in work for a while now, but 2024 is the year she’s charted a straightforward path to stardom. Imo Rain instantly vaults up to the upper echelon of the final girl pantheon. David Jonsson is a revelation as the synthetic Andy, and both Isabella Merced and Archie Renaux shine as siblings who are just trying to make it out alive (Aileen Wu is great as well). 

The only thing holding this excellent horror movie back from true greatness is its insistence on using a long dead actor’s likeness and character to push a story forward that feels forced and unnecessary. At some point these studios will realize AI and cgi will never fully compensate for the real thing, but it will probably take a while to get there.

If I were a real one I’d give this movie a zero and it would deserve it. But Hugh Jackman is doing way too good of a job acting in this soulless husk of a film for it to go completely unrecognized. The man made me feel something when I otherwise should’ve been completely numb to this shameless amalgamation of bad and irrelevant IP, Dafne Keen too. ittedly, if the jokes were hitting for you, I could see how you might be more positive about the movie. But for whatever reason (multiple ones I guess), Ryan Reynolds in this movie was just someone I absolutely could not stand. 

Oddly enough I did like the previous Deadpool movies to an extent, but this one just felt so cynical and insipid comparably. Anyways, if you’ve been waiting to see Gambit on screen for years then I guess this movie is for you. If not, please just go and watch Logan.

Don’t care if it’s basic, or too simplistic, or carried by an immaculate soundtrack: this film is why we go to the movies. Gosling has never been cooler or more menacing in anything prior to this or since. Carey Mulligan could’ve been given more to do, but just her presence on screen makes you realize why the Driver throws all caution to the wind, situationship or not. I have no idea what Nicolas Winding Refn is currently up to, but rest assured my boy you cooked up a cinematic masterpiece at least one time.

Watched on Sunday August 20, 2023.

People really loved this film… I did not. It does have some really good things going for it, primarily the chemistry and performances of both Greta Lee and Teo Yoo. But this movie embodies such a surface level exploration of lost love that by the end it was hard for me to take it seriously, even with such a gut wrenching final scene. 

To be clear, not every movie has to be a full on inquiry of race, class, and culture. But if Nora ultimately ends up with this nondescript, by all s unremarkable white man over the literal love of her life (which is fine), why? What did her parents think of that? What did her sister think of it? What was it about Arthur that caused her love for Hae Sung to dissipate? Song invokes the idea of “inyeon”, this intense and beautiful notion of fate and cosmic timing, but at the same time this concept is used to ‘yada yada’ away an earnest connection of two people whose feelings for each other had them Skyping across several time zones for months (not an easy thing to do in 2012)!

I have more thoughts on this but for now, the tldr is this; there was a lot of potential there that’s just not engaged with at all, good performances though.

Watched on Friday November 27, 2015.

Watched on Friday March 3, 2017.

Watched on Friday June 8, 2018.

Watched on Saturday May 18, 2024.

Watched on Sunday August 18, 2024.

Watched on Friday July 12, 2024.

Real ball knower of Star Wars Cinema

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Star Wars
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
• Return of the Jedi
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi
• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
• Solo: A Star Wars Story
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones

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