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You! *punch* Spend! *punch* Too much! *punch* Time! *punch* On the internet! *punch*

Watching again, like everyone else, after finishing Andor.

It's even more miraculous that Gene Hackman is running all over the place and up endless flights of stairs 18 years after the French Connection!

Love without H.R. departments. Mega yikes.

I missed the chance to see this on the big screen again at the BFI last week but watching it on the laptop screen helped me notice how it is, at least partially, Iceman's fault that Maverick and Goose flame out.

Watching this to falsify a friend's claim that Robert Redford is not handsome in it

There are lots of really good blended scotches!

The BAR should have had more screen time.

Dennis Miller doing small chunks of a standup routine at work is essential to creating this movie's sleazy aura.

TW: Persistent financial anxiety

I predict there will never be another movie that mentions both Fresno and Georgetown.

The surfaces and density of the equipment in this is very satisfying and creates an appealingly creepy 70s vibe

If John Wick was a nerd who blew people up with IEDs...

But the overall message is something bad like: dude's wife has to die so that he can spread his wings?

My maternal grandfather was an ornery crop duster in California who flew a Stearman biplane for a while, and I have camped out in Red Rock canyon a couple of times so watching this had a very comforting feel in spite of the paranoia and elaborate conspiracy.

After seeing the annoying trailer for this with the phone buzzing and buzzing, we were like "no way we're going to watch that". But then looking for something fun to see on a lazy Saturday afternoon, we were like, "sure, whatever". And it was fun! You do have to observe some of the most objectively annoying behavior of someone at dinner for like 45 minutes before everything goes absolutely nuts. Highly recommend watching it in a rowdy theater.

Ethan Nowak has incorporated a line from this movie that my wife and I say to each other into a philosophy paper as an example of how layered uses of language can be. It's from the scene where the women have invited people over to their railroad apartment for their first dinner party, and people are starting to arrive, and Chloe Sevigny's character is anxious because Kate Beckinsale's character is just starting to cook some frozen shrimp on the stove, and Beckinsale's character says "Don't worry, this recipe is extremely fast" as she dumps a can of congealed mushroom soup on it and starts to stir. My wife says this line to me whenever she is running behind and knows it's making me anxious, and it always cracks me up.

A reminder of ways that the 90s were much more progressive than the present

Charming, love the noirish but sunny early 80s SF. Described not inaccurately as “Pynchonesque” in Malcolm Harris’s Palo Alto.

Alec Baldwin as a Terminator who reads Artforum.

There are a couple of scenes with AB acting opposite James Gandolfini, and it's completely obvious who the better actor is (it's Gandolfini).

My judgment of this movie has softened over time; I used to not like it very much. But it seemed much more soft-hearted on this much more distant viewing and given the current context of billionaires wanting to live on Mars, the "Nothing Ever Happens on Mars" final number in Red, White and Blaine is newly relevant.

When Alonzo calls from his Bentley, panicked, he says "I'm gonna fall by the house and then I'm gone". "Fall by" is an unusual phrase—by Neil says it to Eady in Heat as well. Where does it come from, what kind of regionalism is it? There's an urban dictionary entry for it, but not much else.

Second bleakest war movie after Come and See.

Can we get a Du Jour prequel

Watched this for the umpteenth time. Questions on this watch: when Neil asks Eady where her family is from, she says something about coming over in the 1700s...which is a hilarious way to respond to that question. When she asks Neil the same question, he says he is from *the Bay Area*. Very implausible. Why does Neil hire Waingro? For the same reason he hires Don from the diner, because he is short staffed?

This is both really stupid and possibly the most realistic depiction of tech competition (I watched it because it gets referenced in the big Palo Alto book).

This is North by Northwest at the End of History; the Cold War is over but guys still have to be forced to change out of their gray flannel suits and put on some loose khakis, but now it's because they signed up for some corporate role play.

We watched this a lot in college, arguing about the significance of the Faust play, all the devil references, and the significance of Doc Holliday’s surprise at seeing his own feet before he dies.

This is very touching and also intimidating—better read more than just the first volume of In Search if Lost Time before you visit proust’s grave in case you are held to by a documentarian! I also was waiting to see if they showed the grave of one *Leopold Fucker*, right next to Max Ernst: 

flic.kr/p/8VMKXS

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 2, 2025.

I was having dinner with Norwegian academics and I was describing all the WWII Norwegian movies I had seen, and one guy (chair of philosophy at NTNU) said that Americans have superheroes and Norwegians have their resistance fighters in WWII.

Adds fuel to my fantasy (surely to be disappointed by reality) of taking a transatlantic cruise whenever I finally wrap up my British job, plus maybe getting shot off a catapult in an open cockpit airplane

Dang I wanted to see that 40mm bofors light up a JU88

Very fun. But everyone has to stop making London look so slick. It doesn't look like that!!

Watching My Dinner with Andre every 10 years or so as spiritual practice.

My maternal grandpa trained to fly B-17s but thankfully the war ended before he was deployed. Watched this at 36,000 feet flying over the north Atlantic and the thought of flying at 25-30,000 feet in an open unpressurized, unheated fuselage is nuts.

I never understand intense anti-work attitudes! Especially coming from someone who works in a restaurant. His hours would be even more insane.

Watched on Tuesday March 18, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 7, 2025.

I could watch Akerman listening all day.

The cooking scene was very suspenseful—I was worried that the young married woman was going to rinse the cooked rice after dumping it in the colander in the sink!

The Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd impersonations are pretty decent

I would like to apologize to the people sitting behind me on the plane who may not have wanted to watch this

Lots of pre-Matrix Matrix moments, like the subway tracks fight, jumping/flying across the rooftops, and more or less bullet time scene. And is Wesley Snipes's silent "what the fuck" in the final boss battle an allusion to this scene in Kentucky Fried Movie?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sknYSbXMwlA

"I've got a gun rack
In my Chevy
For when the surf and the flak is heavy"

I really should write down what I think a movie I've heard about for a long time is going to be like before I watch it, because I thought this was going to be more like a Witches of Eastwick kind of thing, not an Italian family comedy...but it was charming and Cher and Cage are fabulous. Caused us to go on a Dukakis deep dive and now may have to rewatch Naked Gun 33 1/3.

Considering replacing our shower with a stone bath you can stand up in

Our Valentines Day movie of choice

At this historical moment, and given his recurring presence in the movie, might as well quote Benjamin Franklin:

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

By pulling hard on this one weed and not letting go, a huge muddy mess of collaborators, fascists, opportunists, and "adventurers" is dragged to the surface.

• The Guns of Navarone
• The Wild Geese
• The Heroes of Telemark
• Where Eagles Dare
• The Dirty Dozen
• Operation Crossbow
• The Train

• Tora! Tora! Tora!
• Midway
• The Longest Day
• A Bridge Too Far
• Dunkirk