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Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

Kore-eda is so good at building up the first half of his movies to be a beautiful collection of the quieter periods of lives where the bigger moments might occur off-screen or never arrive, but then slowly fills up the second half with one big moment after another that just have to move you. Now that might be directly linked to me still being close with my three sisters, but either way it had me #emotional.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

enriched so much by what comes before in andor on a thematic level about collective work & sacrifice required by countless people, that i can look on some of the more clunkier moments. As by the time the third acts comes sweeping in, there is so much beauty to be found in the tragedy of burning oneself for a better future that'll never get experienced.

“They will never meet again”

wasn’t the least but surprised when the credits roll and it was lubezki that was behind one stunning composition after another. final moments stunned me in showcasing just how fleeting some of the most meaningful periods in life can be. I want to run it all back, man.

diop finds an invigorating way to link the past & present of the looting & repatriation of these artefacts without directly giving a voice to colonisers. as by personifying these historical figures, those affected by diaspora are able to identify with the anxiety of returning to a home with no familiarity. the perspective is then switched through to the eyes of some very articulate students, where we’re able to listen to both sides of a debate on how meaningful or how much of a goodwill gesture this really was, which left me with some words that really struck a chord.

“The simple fact of having to ask is the problem. They came and tore and that from us. And they conditioned us never to think we can tear it back by any means but diplomacy, behind-the-scenes deals. And you have no idea what’s been sighted away. So to me…we are still stuck in the pattern mapped out by the colonisers, claiming that things have evolved…No! We need a revolution! We need mobilisation in Africa, widespread mobilisation so everything is given back to us.”

hilarious hangout of a movie that builds a world full of colourful characters and real stakes within just a couple streets. reaches another level every time John Witherspoon is on screen and did love the very few & deliberate times ice cube would break the 4th wall.

good, funny outing from soderberg that modernises the espionage world by having it grilled through the perspective of faithfulness in relationships. cash money every time marisa abela taps into her vulnerable side & quickly replaces it with vindictiveness.

for a film that is fragmented by reality, dreams & time the decision to have the characters speak in broken english is one i'm really a big fan of.

Humans will always find a way to communicate & connect with one another no matter the barrier, so the broken English of it all lends to a naked honesty which has a sort of charm & awkward sincerity around it but also means feelings such as regret and melancholy can’t be hidden. damn you hong, i still can't choose whether or not to read the ending as quietly devastating or wrapped too neatly lol.

deals with the trope of the family man committing crimes for the betterment of his loved ones, but Idrissa Ouédraogo focuses less on the before & after of it all but instead, on the liminal space being Samba's village & the day-to-day. So we find bouts of beauty & appreciation in the rural & humble settings as well as the mundane in contrast to the riches that Samba starts to provide in order to stave off his guilt. But consequences are indifferent to all the good deeds that are done in the time between, as Ouédraogo rejects the ends justifying the means prior to the chickens coming home to roost.

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

good cautionary tale about when susceptible young boys are met with neglect & unmonitored access to the internet. Ep 3 easily the standout as with every explosion of rage the boy has, it’s evident what’s replaced the innocence that was lost.

Do believe however once the show delves into the devastation that follows after something so tragic with the final episode. Which for me was where the one-take method really shines as it’s clear how laborious it is to deal with this type of grief, constantly swinging from suppression to outburst and then breakdowns. It comes off quite distasteful that we never see this from the viewpoint of Katie’s family as having to live with losing someone to beliefs & motives that the perpetrator wasn’t fully cognisant of would’ve been equally interesting.

The much better film about the financial crisis as there are no fourth-wall breaks, no cuts to Margot Robbie in a bath but just pure cynicism, apathy & greed dominating the atmosphere as those closer to the top of the ladder wrestle & come to with everything is about to fall apart from something that was never in front of them.

Impending doom from “nothing” but will be felt in every way imaginable.

Watched on Friday February 28, 2025.

encapsulates so much of a city’s history and present-day through so many avenues I gladly stopped keeping track and let it wash over me. 

you’d think an album like gkmc couldn’t get more any more evocative until sing about me starts playing and the first couple frames consists of entering a morgue.

Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2025.

started off my morning the best way possible. can’t stop smiling. every musical number was sheer delight in motion & sound. gene kelly the godfather of musicals.

Felt like I would see such an innovative, all-timer composition and then 10 minutes would and it’d get outdone again 

fought a few tears on the way home.

Just as pervasive as white supremacy & racism is, hope/resistance will always be just as much of a transference. Oscillating between nickel & the outside world a striking choice too because my heart shattered seeing how much the world was changing and then feel how it had all just stayed the same.
 
Was stunned 4 to 5 times throughout this but was mostly infatuated with the quieter, tender moments as even by just letting the movie breathe instead of getting thrown right into the next thing is a beautiful & generous act of granting dignity to those always under the thumb and lends itself to exist outside of a history lesson and be something that can be enjoyed on rewatches.

never thought the eerie feeling of walking in on your mother/guardian talking to themselves about you while being in their presence would be captured in a film.

much more of a fruitful experience as heat is no longer being riffed off and even the tender moments aren’t as jarring as before. more emphasis on mood & world-building which leads to real stakes & an ALL-TIMER heist sequence.
tigers can change their stripes after all!

Simultaneously displays the strength & fragility of the human psyche as it can be shattered by the awareness of the sexual fantasies & desires of others around them, as well as be powerful to conflate what really is reality as our protagonist is haunted by something he never sees in front of him.

Nicole Kidman’s delivery strikes such a cord, Kubrick didn’t even need to accompany it with those dream sex sequences, the power in those words linger over the movie & anytime bill has time to himself.

Blocking in the pool scene is just the cherry on top, man. In awe of just how the camera decides when to close in on bill & pull away as victor decides to finally close the distance to let bill know it’s over.

Burying yourself deep down in order to fall in line with tradition and still apologising decades later for taking a pithy look in oneself again. Gut-wrenching when Owen looks into the camera with pride about the wife & kids. But, there is still time.

so achingly close to being untethered by loneliness with brief moments of intimacy that inevitably makes it that more devastating when the pendulum swings back.

halfway through you get the feeling almost every single character is going to be in that apartment simultaneously by the end and it's just so much fun watching it all come together.

Watched on Thursday January 2, 2025.

if you pretend die hard 2 don’t exist, this up there with the hardest sequels ever. and lemme not downplay just how funny it is, city getting blown up every hour but mclane gotta remind us just how bad his hangover is lol.

up there with the best one-location films and just how many striking images it could achieve out of it. pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. festive banger in my books

auld lang syne ringing out with fran disappearing to run through the streets back to baxter, sorry man but this right here is my favourite movie around the holidays

Watched on Sunday December 8, 2024.

and the cycle continues. maybe what’s most devastating about this picture is seeing the dehumanising & humiliating tactics by the state make a person veer from rehabilitation, backslide into their impulses & start to slowly corrupt those around them. Harry dean Stanton, that’s it.

"You idiot! You can never balance the scales of their suffering!"

Watched on Saturday November 16, 2024.

almost feels as if you're not only witnessing the perpetrator return to the scene of the crime but re-take the very same steps that eroded all the lives they had previously come to know intimately, with absolutely no clarity gained. ambiguous ending works because we know this is going to end just as how it had all started out.

Watched on Sunday November 10, 2024.

“If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?"

50 years on and we've actively become more complicit in becoming surveillance states, only there won't be any moral reckoning in how much of our humanity as been sacrificed in doing so, no ripping out the wires frantically and conscience that becomes haunted. amazing twist at the end that really flips the movie on its head.

Watched on Friday November 1, 2024.

Duality is something in Twin Peaks that Lynch loves to return to over & over, whether it be black/white lodges, real/doppelgängers, light/darkness, good/evil, pasts & futures, dreams/reality, even in how he approaches small-town America in his works, where his affection & mistrust of the people in these surbarban towns are so woundly tied together. Some of these contrasts are more easier to live with others, For Cooper after his comeback in Part 16, there’s a belief in being able to get rid of evil and change the past if he “kills two birds with one stone”. But this insistency on trying to solve the Laura Palmer case & close the book on it, doesn’t address on what causes such evil acts to occur and how it was allowed to fester in this sweet, small town.

In Part 8, which is one of the greatest hours to have come out of television, Lynch pinpoints an evil beyond comprehension birth at the Trinity Test which led to the travesty that was the Hiroshima bombings, and that all these evil spirits among them BOB, were almost a sort of form of reckoning & consequences for an American society that cheered on one of mankind’s deadliest sins. The monsters were no longer lingering in their dreams, but now among them in their woods, and in their homes. But for evil to be able to fester, there have to be willing participants, whether it be businessmen that facilitate sex trafficking through their enterprises, henchmen that drug & abuse the women, or fathers that were abused and allowed the trauma festering in them as a reason to down their suffering to the next generation.

For Cooper, it is more comforting in believing that one would be more successful in eliminating evil spirits such as BOB/JUDY, rather than confronting the hard truths of the evil men are capable of, that a father had abused & brutally murdered his own daughter, and succeeded with the help of a town that would sweep all forms of pain/abuse in exchange for the facade of harmony & normalcy. Because saving Laura on that night in 1989, means that Ronette and all the other girls are all being trafficked through the business of the Horne Brothers, Shelly is still suffering at the hands of Leo, Bobby is going down the path of a murderous drug dealer, etc.

Something I came across while reading more about Twin peaks, was this quote from the log lady about being at peace with certain occurrences in life, that serves as antithesis to Cooper’s way of thinking

"We are born into this world, not another one. It’s not perfect, but it is what it is. This world presents some simple, certain truths. It helps us grow if we accept them, but many of these truths seem to trouble or frighten us. For instance, there is no light without darkness—and this troubles many of us—but without it, how else would we tell one from the other? We spend half of every day in darkness; surely we should make our peace with this.”

And as a result of Cooper’s inability to be at peace with the darkness in his world, Laura Palmer who had found solace in death and finally seeing her angels, is now doomed to relive all of her suffering.

pulls you in so many directions and throws so much shit at the walls, but somehow by the sheer ambition of it all, it moves you by the end of it.

has anything ever or go on to, come out the gates as great as this?

one of my favourite performances ever as sheryl is able to radiate laura somehow still being full of love & the horror of being failed by a community & its locals. Her realisation the angels had never went away and that she was saved after death, is so achingly beautiful.

love it for the quieter moments it allows the characters to stay in and choosing to ask in the aftermath of all that, what survival means to everyone. some answers are beautiful, some not so much lol.

leaves a good portion up to your imagination and still reaches quite visceral & raw levels in the collapsing & coming together & collapsing again of these relationships. pulling this out after 37 years since the graduate is quite the feat lol.

it just all falls apart spectacularly, man.

Essentially the trials & tribulations of developmentally arrested young black men. gets a tad too melodramatic but singleton's empathy and sincerity shines through as well as belief in there still being agency to do & be better for the disadvantaged. big fan of the swings singleton takes with dream sequences, and man is he always on point with the needle-drops.

Two opposite ends of a spectrum, searching for purpose by manipulating the lives of others, on one hand and ignorant on the other, in favour of comion & love until they both eventually meet in the middle and the realisation of their purposes sits with them. Greatest thing to come out of the superhero genre.

Still got IT.

builds tension & suspense not through exhaustive investigations of the crimes but by using the serial killer case to fill in more colours about the fractured flashbacks and the momentum just keeps propelling until it’s all too much for Harker to handle. horror aspect really works in police procedurals for me, like the combo of detectives completely out of their elements and the unthinkable crimes having no rhyme or reason to them. now I wanna rewatch cure (1997) lol.

haunted by the past and the consequences of your vices going hand in hand with being unable to believe in starting over, the contrast of the opener being people of Oslo joyfully reminiscing on their past with the city, and anders in that cafe imagining all those strangers futures' trying to find despair in them. flashes of renate reinsve giving me similar feelings of seeing fabregas pictured with the invincibles, right on the precipice of similar greatness. wow, wow, wow.

nihilism has never been so colorful.

Watched on Sunday August 4, 2024.

• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• Shithouse
• Weekend
• The Souvenir: Part II
• Floating Weeds
• Tokyo Story
• The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
• Daughter of the Nile
• Blood Simple
• Burn After Reading

...plus 43 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Drive My Car
2. The Worst Person in the World
3. Titane
4. C'mon C'mon
5. Dune
6. Spencer
7. The French Dispatch
8. Bergman Island
9. The Matrix Resurrections
10. No Time to Die