4v291o

"Get me out of this big bloody cornfield!" the clown said.

Makes me feel like a massive killjoy to be as down on this as I am; following how much I also didn't like Hell of a Summer or that first Fear Street (or even 5cream, or even even back to the first Halloween; hmmmm), maybe slashers just aren't really for me. Would guess that very few of the people enjoying this are stumping for the plotting or broad pacing, both of which exclusively thud, but I'm more disappointed just how inane the horror of it all is. So little of visual interest going on here (save for one invigorating moment when the stakes hugely ramp up out of nowhere, although even that rush eventually peters out), nothing really creative going on in of viscera or immiseration. Add in a conversation about how this is just like being in a slasher movie, and you could have hard cut to me in the theater with my arms in an X like the emoji.

Was not primed for success being inherently forced to jockey against Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, ittedly, any scene of which laps this 100 times over.

Plays a lot better at home than in a theater, in a way I probably could have guessed. Huge get for Netflix in that way, where it should get a ton of eyes out of pure casual curiosity and I'd guess will gradually accrue a little mythic reputation as the years go on. Very agreeably shaggy and spontaneous when something else in your life can catch your attention for a moment and you look back to find some sort of madcap tonal pivot has come from nowhere. ionately made, worth basically anybody's time.

Undeniably kind of extraordinary in basically every possible sense of the word, as such that, even if I feel like it does kind of lose a good bit once it fully embraces the high-concept, and it ends like four straight times, it's built up such a raw volume of identity, of panache, it could never really be undone. Almost every scene in the first half in particular has one absolute stunner of a moment or another, even things as mundane as a single line of dialogue with staggering resonance. So textured, so stupendously conceived. Not unlikely to kind of stick to me even more than I anticipate, we'll see if I come back to it soon.

Kind of bought into the conceit for a little while -- as a big War On Terror Bigelow guy it would be pretty rich of me to think this an impossible needle to thread -- when "depicting the raw reality of memory" involved drawing out unexpected and unconventional filmmaking decisions. Does a lot, especially, laying out the miserable uncinematic rhythms of time here, e.g. the first time they take on fire being followed by probably ten full minutes of dead air being ready for any possible further attack. Shots of dudes standing in rooms vigilantly, end on end. Does a sufficiently good job laying out the undergirding inhumanity present even in a mission like this carried out ostensibly humanely, too.

More or less totally lost me in the second half, which is probably by-volume at least half dedicated to experiential shots of how much it hurts and sucks to either have half your body blown apart, or to be party to someone whose body is half blown apart. It picks up an already-inauspicious runner earlier in the film, which sees things like Joseph Quinn wiping dust off a piece of furniture like he's about to start walking in a sunsetting windy field with his hand outstretched. I'm still not fully unsold on that kind of hypersubjective detailed stylization like some of my peers, but it's a disastrous mix here with the subject matter, at once somehow rendering the proceedings a little twee and fully overinsisting on undeniable gravity of what it's depicting.

Unabashedly a little slight, but Landon's clearly getting huge dividends out of his early films being immediate cult hits of a sort. The sort of thing where the trailer exposes the goings-on so much that it would have to be the little touches which elevate it, and they do. Fahy is steely and charming, but Sklenar really takes the cake as the engine that keeps the high-stakes date going -- you WILL believe this woman finds it so hard to poison this man to save her sister and son. Add in some explosively evocative, impressionistic lighting choices in spots, and a movie doing something at least abstractly interesting intermixing the ambient stress of online dating with the greater machinations of what kind of plot this turns out to be, and hey, I buy it.

I don't know that anybody's going to successfully make the case to me that I shouldn't hate how this is shot -- call me a philistine if you like, but I think the popular reputation Scott had gathered once upon a time holds up at least somewhat -- but all that really tangibly does is make it all the more impressive how enjoyable this is anyway. Real meaty stuff, probably too determined for my tastes vis a vis the class stuff but leavened somewhat by the decision to own up to both Will and Frank's interpersonal imperfections. Takes its time ramping up (would love to watch the movie many of my comrades on here described as "90 minutes of straight adrenaline" or derivatives thereof, as they must have had a straight up entirely different first third) but once it's going I was catching my breath the whole rest of the way. Probably the best Pine's ever been, and he and Denzel click together like gangbusters.

I know a lot of the attraction here for vulgar lifers is Scott's specific style, but for anyone who really attaches to the capital/class stuff, it's worth trying to catch Last Breath from this year. Very similar milieu, with different specifities which give it a tasty novel flavor.

Was always my least-favorite 90s Carrey vehicle, back when I was a kid and enamored with his filmography. Not hard to see why that might be the case for someone without much sense for dark humor; a little surprised to find that the needle hasn't moved literally whatsoever. I'm mostly inclined to lay blame at the feet of the screenplay I think. The situations engineered here are not very self-evidently humorous and are mostly pretty poor at digging comedy from their depths to boot. As arranged, Carrey's expected to do most of the heavy lifting it seems to me, and I find this one of the least enjoyable iterations of his greater persona. Having only the one straight man to his shenanigans, and that one straight man being a charisma void performance from Broderick, certainly ill helps. Seems the sort of thing where it would almost all work for someone, or almost not at all.

Just not a lot going on here that's not evident from the first back-and-forth where Ethel tries to ingratiate herself into the life of an ostensibly financially stable man in hopes of a better life. One could make the case that there's a noose-drawing-tighter quality to it, but, for as much as that is the phrase, I have to suspect you get most of the panic there is to get simply having the noose placed around your neck, anyway. In absence of other charms, this ends up playing somewhat more punishing and judgmental; not the worst thing to be I suppose but kind of trying at feature length. Would anticipate people who are more partial to noir rhythms getting a lot that I don't, as someone mostly ambivalent to them (would more proactively make the case that they have an excruciatingly hard time ing the mostly emotional story this is, at least). Crawford is pretty fabulous, though; hadn't seen her myself before, but she's so expressive. Look forward to more of her, at least.

or: Post Lives

Get the vague sense that I've explained this on here before, but I'll go ahead and prime you good folk again. I'm not deeply versed in anime as a medium, but from the couple of times I've gotten a little deeper into it, I've found that slice of life is my genre of choice. Typically arranged around lightly-stylized quotidian conflicts, most often set in a school or workplace so as to mine situations one might intuitively understand, I find it fertile ground in which to explore both comedy and drama and really needle on something genuine, honest, valuable, to me. My specific corner of it, though, is a loosely-defined subgenre thereof called iyashikei, meaning "healing" in Japanese. These shows typically even further minimize the role of conflict in storytelling, and funnel toward moments of beauty, moments of incredible significance for the characters.

Bob Trevino Likes It is probably the closest American film I've seen to what could be described as iyashikei. It's still maybe a little thorny to fully embody the idea, but that's primarily in the early-goings, which see Barbie Ferreira's Lily beset on all sides by a world which is at best indifferent, and often actively hostile. A sense begins building quickly that maybe this is going to be too one-dimensional, in fact, a torrent of miseries visited upon this one young lady, but Laymon is wisely able to dodge the concern within two turns. One, she's able to make other things out of that writerly impulse, including some great goofs when e.g. Lily is warned not to abscond with a decorated pen at a therapist's desk, or ultimately comes to comfort the therapist herself after explaining her many, many unprocessed struggles in her history.

The second is somewhat gestured at in that last sentence, which is to say Laymon arranges things so oppressively so as to have the cumulative effect of something like shooting the moon (I've alluded to this recently before too, didn't I?). Even people Lily meets incidentally regard her with some low-level disdain, much less anyone else closer to her who embraces a transactional element baked into their relationship. This hits such a phenomenally interesting tenor; at times you could imagine someone with rigid, sharp instincts turning this into an almost Brazil-esque farce, but by keeping it more grounded it feels more contiguous when, as is often the case, scenes in that tone eventually build into the most heartbreaking elaborations of these relationships.

This is all how it shapes up, then, until Lily unintentionally meets Bob, whereupon the rest of the movie is dedicated to, finally, being the iyashikei-esque experience to which I alluded. Aside from a small detour toward the end, almost every scene finds its way to locating another way in which one of them helps the other grow, become a more fulfilled and assured person. At the lowest level of efficacy, it's wonderfully delightful stuff, earnestly personally enriching in a way thousands and thousands of films aspire to but almost none manage. A lot of credit there is owed to Ferreira and Leguizamo, who are each interesting on their own, very emotive and bottled up all at once, jagged in ways bent by the things through which they've lived, but are magnificent together. Where there is healing to be found here, it is actively generated between their two performances.

At its best, it's no-reservations absolutely extraordinary. A risk one might assess in how this movie is constructed is to assess it as kind of shapeless; there is an arc at some level, but not really explicit struggles which are overcome over the course of the movie. Personally, I would much sooner describe it as thrillingly structureless, willing to divert and embrace the lifelike rhythm of things going in unexpected directions. I suspect this, at some level, is downstream of how this is a semi-autobiographical story, a remnant of the process of narrativizing real life. Laymon makes the marvelous play of leaning in to that quality, rather than out, and as such elements of the screenplay pay off so anarchically that the raw thrill of it heightens the closeness to tears. One scene right toward the middle of this is one of the best couple of the year so far, in a walk.

All of this, as I write it, feels as though it could come across very treacly, or cheap. There's no shortage of movies out of Sundance within this milieu which which one could compare some of the general ideas, tone, here. One of the things I like the very most about it, then, is that I think it simply accepts the possibility of that dismissal. As the movie goes, more and more the people that have tormented Lily (and Bob) are extended grace in small ways, an understanding of how they've experienced their own immense hardships which can be linked to the way they abrasively regard the world. Laymon, then, doesn't hedge the bet, doesn't try to make a movie which could be maximally agreeable. She rests her sentiment in choosing to be genuine, in being the movie that will mean the most to the open heart. She made a movie for the Lilys of the world, who need that little sweetness to carry on. I liked it.

Felt kind of insane assessing my rating here, because there's not a lot that's, like, really perturbing here. Biggest thing is probably the lighting, which also made me feel kind of insane for its bewildering servility to "versimilitude," which, in a dark summer camp, makes stretches of this straight illegible. Otherwise, though, it went down pretty smooth all things considered I suppose, but in part that's on of literally almost nothing of any interest happening. Full sub-mediocrity based on the sheer incapability of rendering anything compelling. The characters are all at-most one-dimensional and often even less than that, which can be worked with in a movie where the comedy is based on anything but reiterating the same character dynamics over and over; alas! No real horror chops to speak of either. Can't help but wring some laughs with all the spaghetti it throws at the wall, ittedly.

So, it seems the rising tides will be buoying most ships, at least (especially as I expect Evil Dead, which once struck me as oppressively and unpleasantly dour, to instead come across to me now as winsomely dour). I don't how the aggressive shift here played to me all those years ago, but the instinct to take the elements of this series and restage them into an id-driven macho wish-fulfillment medieval epic now hits me right in the pleasure centers of my mind; a rare thing to say, but a genuinely inherently-worthwhile premise and concept for a movie.

Could only sing as much as it does with the both small-brained and big-brained commitment Raimi and his collaborators bring to the table, though. Raimi directs the bejesus out of it even before it turns into an extended proto-Helm's Deep, with something as little as Arthur moving to point at Ash being given such insistence through a zoom as to be rendered hilarious. As it goes, Ash is dragged through the dirt through so many ingenious moments and scenes, so many you could truly spend a lengthy review just listing and drily describing them. Will give special shout to the mini Ashs and the Army of the Dead as both particularly well executed, absolutely exploding with personality the both of them.

The bravura turn, then, is to weave that sheer volume of vision Raimi had with a brazen embrace of inanity. Starts off literally from moment one, with yet another opening retcon starting on an intentionally-laid path of disregard for making this a seamless endeavor. From there, character motivations often fully flip from one scene to the next (or even within a single scene), stakes are set and completely undermined in the next moment, contrivances are invented and left for uselessness regardless. Altogether it has the effect of shooting the moon in hearts, so gleefully jettisoning good-taste filmmaking decisions pursuant of joy in the senselessness (almost proto-Hot Rodian, in a way). Incredibly difficult gambit to manage; Raimi does just that.

Ends with, well, multiple different endings. Excitingly, I think both kind of rule, in completely opposite ways, both for how they play off Ash's character as envisioned within this film -- confident machismo for whom everything inevitably falls into his lap. The theatrical leans all the way in, in lowkey maybe the most ridiculous escalation of them all, where the entire world has become a token or object through which he finds fulfilment. Majestic stuff, particularly riding the cart as he fires his boomstick. The originally-conceived ending, then, is more dour, and is a kind of cheeky thumbing of the nose from Raimi, dooming him to desolation at the hands of his own buffoonery. I presume the theatrical is what remains canon into Ash vs. Evil Dead, but a lucky film to have two great endings, when many movies have none.

Honestly, the odds are not that bad that Ebon Moss-Bachrach could genuinely run the New York Football Jets better than current ownership.

Very cute! VERY funny at its best. Basically exactly what I could have asked it to be, while not really being any more than that; not whatsoever a dig, really. More than a little clean and telegraphed (I don't know that I really wanted even one echoed-but-reversed conversation, I definitely didn't need more than the one) and runs aground in the entirely-mandated third act fallout where the conflict comes to a head. Really succeeds, though, at finding a sweet core here, mostly within the pretty great chemistry which Lawrence and Feldman have. Genuinely affecting late, for it. If Lawrence did basically all movies like this she'd be the greatest actress of the last 15 years and it would not be close.

I wouldn't be caught dead. And, if I'm caught at all, then catch me in dead red.

Bought in basically immediately, during a montage of a Thanksgiving get-together which so eschews context that its various feelings pack together like snow, into a first song I found a little overwhelming. It's not that hard to see where this earned some bits of its reputation, I guess, but I'm really not aboard the dismissive treatments they've broadly been given, personally. To wit: I think Ross is kind of extraordinary here. Easy to dunk on how she looks much more beleaguered than her age is stated to be, but if you ignore the one throwaway line, what you're left with is someone who brings the visceral fear of the world for which the character asks, and can nonetheless dance her ass off (there's a part where she and Jackson are trading turns swinging each other around; MADNESS that she's swinging him around while wearing heels).

Likewise are Lumet's instincts pretty curious, but I think in a way which serves a greater purpose than simply deeming them and a musical as incompatible. His desire to stay in the wide and stay focused on the money put into the production often denies easy glamor shots of the stars singing, but it's not hard to see the advantage he's left with in return. Take Ease on Down the Road's first appearance, staged so as to basically never see either Ross nor Jackson singing. Instead, they're always making progress down the road, dancing up and down its length, as we see the destination in the distance. I'd take the choreographed splendor of it all in a heartbeat, every time.

It's in that sort of thing where his fit with a musical is much more obvious, to me. If there's ever moments in this which are not as totally evocative as they could be, it's when characters are just singing into the camera. They're still pretty marvelous, typically, for the costuming, the performances (Nipsey Russell's introduction in particular was probably my favorite number up to that point), the physical locations in which they take place. Put a whole bunch of people in a huge, amazing set, though, and this is probably just about as good as any musical number put on film as I've seen to this point in history. There's a reason I quoted the track from Emerald City at the top here, an indescribably stunning trio of sequences, so stylish and thrilling.

If there's any one number that bucks that trend, it's Ross' last solo as she's getting ready to leave Oz. In that moment, the musical takes its many elements and manages to synthesize them into a lovely culmination. The ones noted already, but also an unspoken ode to the beauty to be found in 1970s New York. I don't typically hear great things about that era of the city (famously it's this which bleeds heavily through Taxi Driver, of course), and using that to inform Dorothy's reticence to embrace the larger world lets the movie get away with a lot of the shorthand plotting that goes on here. It all functionally elaborates the transformation of her mentality, and lets us glimpse some extravagance along the way. A golden subway platform, numbers playfully blocked by trash bags, living graffiti munchkins. Even a sweat shop, a stage to be made if you see it as such.

Have a hell of a needle to thread, because somewhat frequently here I felt like this was all a little too straightforward, too willing to follow in the footsteps of its other recent trauma horror forebears. Then, right toward the end, things start getting a little more abstract, and found the abstraction convincingly evocative (and, I suspect, just withholding enough to mislead some folks; the Wikipedia summary of the plot right now e.g. completely misinterprets the ending). If there's some core truth here, it's undoubtedly that the movie is just kind of both derivative and also interestingly frictive. I will say, off the bat, that the resolute place this arrives at, or really upon which the entire final sequence is predicated, is among the more steadfast depictions of despair I've seen any of these manage.

Up until that ending gestalt, though, this kind of vacillates between two modes, one of which has much more traction than the other but neither of which fully succeed. The less successful is the family drama of all of this. It might get a little more credit on revisit, but up until the movie thrusts its stake into the ground that it's not messing around, it all feels more than a little exploitative. Stuff like fraying mother-child relationships, a queasy understanding of the older son who's expected to be much more responsible but also isn't any more trusted than the kid he was immediately prior to the inciting accident. There's obviously stuff to work with there, but the handling here is so sensational that it feels tawdry up until it doesn't. Not helped by how much this material leans on Jackson's acting chops, which are still pretty limited.

The other, significantly more successful mode, is the horror. It's pretty bloodless and almost not at all scary, but that's mostly alright, because Collet-Serra has a blast shooting it nonetheless. Tons of really delightful stuff done moving the titular woman's shadow around as it interacts with corporeal space, lots of creative frames and pieces of blocking which keep her in mind, even if she hasn't even explicitly provided any threat in the past while and won't go on to do so anytime soon. Collet-Serra never found an angle he couldn't endutchen and the camera tilts all over the place here, delightfully so. More of an amusement park ride than I expected for a while, but it was working for me, honestly.

About halfway through, Ortega's Ridley comes across an old tapestry depicting what happened once upon a time when humanity attempted to exploit unicorns. All sorts of brutality is depicted thereupon, many a death on the part of the foolhardy humans. As these deaths are later reenacted within the film itself, a sense develops that this is sort of like a narrative feature adaptation of the A+++++ all timer tweet wherein a mysterious lady flips a tarot card that depicts the author in a hot air balloon crashing into some power lines. So, like that, except if that were grafted to a later depiction of this person doing precisely that, and this were all played for (mostly) dramatic horror.

If that doesn't sound like it would work, hey! You are right. Ultimately it's almost completely in line with a movie that is a deadly combination of too simple and too eager to show its work. The first scene is all one funny beat, and it's a good goof, but it explicates the entire father-daughter dynamic in literally one moment with almost the entire movie left to go. So does the completely worthless satire go, as well, nothing more novel than what you've gotten out of the trailer and premise. Of anything, the thing that gets closest to earning the time it's allotted is the straightforward Rudd-esque comedy with which this spends a decent amount of time, but there's only a handful of really great goofs to go around, and eventually it completely falls out of the movie.

Will give this one lone really unreserved bit of credit: this has a kind of wholeheartedly emphatic approach to the existence of something beyond this life, which is both enjoyably bracing for how little equivocating is done about it, and also mixes interestingly with conceiving a world where, natch, unicorns do really exist. Worth the acknowledgement.

Every time I say the word "progress," my tongue literally rolls backwards.

Absolutely wonderfully deliberate, musical, spiritual work. In some ways it's very simply-conceived, but only to its benefit, as it gives Mosese so much room to counterbalance that simplicity with cinematic vigor, deployed patiently. Between his predilection for slow zooms and pans and De Villiers' cinematographic aptitude for making incredible imagery out of limited lighting, this almost has the feel of something like Barry Lyndon at times. It's also, though, got such life to it, found in the community Mantoa is surrounded by, which emphatically exudes its tight-knit, the importance they all collectively serve in one another's lives. That extends, fascinatingly, to the dead, too, of the community who they've lost and as a result need their advocacy all the more emphatically. They can't speak for themselves, after all.

Somewhat entertained the idea that this might be of more cinematic interest than would its synchronized release with her album's deluxe edition imply, mostly for how deeply Grande is intent on lifting from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Follows on from the music video for we can't be friends (wait for your love), itself a small-scale retelling (and direct lift, often) of Eternal Sunshine which ultimately concludes that she was right to erase the memories of her partner, something which at once clumsily uncomplicates the artistry of the film but is still kind of bracing for the boldness of rebuking that movie's wisdom.

In reality, even aside from the elaboration on those ideas, there's nothing here that might compel a non-fan to check in. Worst case scenario was that this was going to be a few music videos stitched together with a frame and that is indeed what it is. Foregrounds the surreality with which those videos are explicitly meant to be speaking to her experience, and there's some sort of juice to returning back a year later to be like "No, really, I am indeed glad and have so much better to look back on in my life," but as filmmaking this hardly could really be said to come together as a work. The videos are intensely arch literalizations of these feelings and lyrics, handwaved early in a kind of self-justifying/defeating way, but play as even less inspired than the direct Eternal Sunshine pulls for it. New songs are plenty good though!

Y'all are bolder than I, enjoying a movie where the ostensibly bravura oner it begins with centers around a person named "Duckett" and at one point features the line "You're gonna break down me mum's door!"

Lots of talk about how this resembles Hereditary, which it does, but I actually think the more direct point of comparison is Smile (please do not level Boss Baby allegations at me). Smile, then, but way, way dumber, both significantly less claustrophobic and taut as well as much less fermented over the course of its length. Earnestly, a deathly serious prestige horror movie about the dangers of peer pressure is actually some of the most bewildering work I've ever seen. Do ittedly respect the decision to pair that with a deeply unpleasant main character who makes constantly poor decisions, but the foundations here are so inane and it doesn't ever find an interesting angle with which to escape them. Doesn't pull its gross punches at least, I suppose.

Absolutely diabolical spelling of the name Kerolein.

The oppositional head-to-head of an unstoppable force and an immovable object, a dynamic employed so as to give true genuine meaning to familial love being placed against literal divine power as the other half. In that way, both very moving, for good and bad, as well as abrasively irresolvable. Asks a lot of willingness to imagine the mindspace of these characters and only grows all the deeper the more you give over to the exercise, the more you try to conceive of what navigating this crisis entails on either the side of family or the four intruders. One of the earnestly very rare movies I would describe as thought provoking, for it. Very heavy-handed at times, as is the man's wont, but a worthwhile heaviness to take on.

The way this introduces Bautista from Wen's perspective makes him look like the tallest man who ever lived.

Starts off really strong when it's just Amy going through the ennui, feeling very specifically-arranged. Lots of witnessing her quiet desperation to feel in touch with the physical world, but it also really struck me how much of her early-goings is about taking advantage of the ostensible advantage of owning property of being able to be as loud as you want. In the context it plays as almost an attempt to fake it 'til you make it, drag joy out of the things that should be making life worth living. Quietly a little mordantly humorous too; I'm sure the insistence on restarting the record over and over drove some folks nuts, but I totally bought it and was giggling every time Seimetz returned to the shot.

Big, big issue for me is that I don't know that the infectious element here illuminates new things about these ideas, and instead has a kind of broadly deadening effect of drawing everyone into the same mental position and functionally an almost identical characterization. Dovetail that with how, really, the infectiousness reveals as the actual core here, and I was fully in the lurch by the halfway point and never unlurched. As I write that, there's obvious juice there to me which Seimetz simply doesn't capitalize upon by keeping this as dry and lowkey as it remains throughout. Not hard to see what might have been very intensely resonant about this to some folks in the throes of the pandemic, but this dread was never really a part of my experience personally.

Seemingly Wheatley's attempt to answer the question "Can I make a movie with a forest, a rock with a hole in it, and a vague concept of mysticism?" Shakes out as less than yes, but more than no. Ultimately almost none of this material sticks, the movie would be a straight upgrade with every moment of dialogue stricken (that movie would be insanely hard to market, but I expect Wheatley to know that's the goal here given Kill List), fully inane living-earth alliance-swapping nonsensery. Real winner, as almost always, is Wheatley the editor. Could totally see someone not buying into the stretches of psychedelia here, but I've always thought his primary strength is in his cutting and that's definitely the case again here. We're approaching a point where it's a problem more than a feature that he's so much better an editor than director, though.

In here, time stops.

Done no favors by how badly the music from Smile 2 is still stuck in my head, probably; I doubt that Weerasethakul made this film with the expectation we'd be meditatively observing Jessica sit next to Hernan in the grass while mentally running through "Doctor, I need a new brain/Lost in a spiral, keep making old mistakes again/OH oh" over and over.

In all seriousness, had thought maybe this would be the Weerasethakul film that really gets over the hump for me. In some ways it is; centering a film which employs his usual sedate style explicitly around sound design is a stroke of genius, which often pays off. The scene of Jessica and Hernan trying to recreate the sound is probably my favorite between the three of his films I've seen. Ultimately, though, ended up in just about the exact same spot as I did with Uncle Boonmee and Cemetery of Splendor. Certainly far from a bad thing, obviously, although both the consistency movie-to-movie and over so many years tells me I'm unlikely to get that much more than this out of any of his films soon. I'm not really as spellbound by his compositions as I'm meant to be, I don't think. Intend to revisit those two other films sooner or later, and see Tropical Malady. I would very much like to love his movies, so I will keep trying.

Started off on the wrong foot, slandering one of Monet's paintings he did in a set that includes my favorite painting of all time, a print of which hangs on the wall directly behind me as I write this. Awfully rude! Alas, it does get somewhere else, eventually, emphasis on the eventuality. My suspicion is that Oppenheimer misjudged by a healthy deal just how much time we really need spent with the weird stilted family/community dynamic in which this opens, not understanding that we'd still be exploring it once Girl shows up. An understandable foible in a first narrative feature, something that most people are not given as much carte blanche to conceive of as he was here. The wheels start spinning early, though, and don't get traction in the salt for quite a while.

Once it does, though, I think he was actually really onto something here. So much of this loops back into the self-mythologization of the wealthy and how it's only through resurfacing it for themselves do they even feel any joy at the end of the day, so divorced are they from conventional humanity. Hits a really potent strain, too, laying the gauntlet down at the feet of metaphor and greater art as mechanisms which obscure reality, or at least can be used to do so. This is what eventually, finally, makes sense of the tinny musical sequences, the End taking a swing at their artificiality and falseness ala something like Dancer in the Dark (one would hope for better music nonetheless, but we're not all Bjork, of course).

Kind of a shame that Oppenheimer already cashed out on this, as it's extremely easy for me to imagine a magnificent version he could have made after cutting his teeth in fiction a little longer. Can't accuse the man of not striking while the iron is hot, I suppose.

Kind of like a curious combination of Being There and Scanners, while (intentionally) being nowhere near as bizarre as that sounds. Would love to show this to somebody who accused Ani in Anora of being ill-defined so I could watch their head explode at just how aggressively Mona Lisa here resists definition or rationalization. I'm only just realizing now that not only was Jun Jong-seo the female lead in Burning, she was the out-and-out lead in Ballerina (a movie I just watched a couple weeks ago), a she applies here but somehow makes even more muted; its in the muting that she truly lets basically none of herself out through this whole thing, only starting to ease out right at the end here. Pretty cool performance in that regard in retrospect, although some scenes do feel the weight of her intentional stultifying state for sure.

I think all of that would be good enough for the most part for any given director (and ultimately it is good enough that I found this pretty rich and interesting, even if sometimes I worried maybe interesting at its own expense). Amirpour, though, I think is swinging well below her weight here, specifically with how she employs her camera. Best guess would be she really wanted to stretch her legs in this one, as its use of handheld and close up photography far outstrips either Walks Home Alone or the Bad Batch, and it feels all the amateurishness both of those lacked. Very ugly, poorly composed movie with more than a little frequency. At the end of the day, how jaggedly it exists and carries itself well more than makes up for it, though, and I'm glad for her to be trying new things (not that anyone could have accused her of spinning her wheels between her three movies, but you know).

Does your wife know whose home you stare into late at night?

Every so often a director I already like a lot puts out a movie where it feels like they're on some entirely new shit, as though they're blazing a trail into a whole new realm of their own filmmaking potential. Decision to Leave, which constantly puts our eyes on the other side of seemingly impermeable surfaces only to draw attention to their opacity (particularly the most common surface of them all), which visually conceptualizes Hae-joon's stakeouts as him silently wandering through the room he's scoping as the people speaking likewise make no noise (something which itself complicates as the movie goes), which stages Hae-joon and Seo-rae's tete-a-tete as doubled reflections and figures at odds through multiple different mediums e.g. through double-sided mirror and computer monitor, is just such a movie for Park Chan-wook.

I bet you thought I'm moving on; wrong! This shit is getting multiple paragraphs because I am not ready to be done gushing yet. He pulls off an effect during the scene I allude to there last where he pulls focus not from front-to-back, but from left-to-right (?!). And then mixes it with traditional focus pulling, so that of the two unreflected figures, and the two in the mirror, three of the four are in focus. Absolutely god mode directing. This shit never stops. Maybe it's a little insistent, but the material s it, all duplicity and conversations simultaneously said and not said. All the way through to the ending moments, which of anything most echo, to me, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fruitless, senseless, aimless flailing, having lost what once could not have been more in reach.

All that to say: Chan-wook has never been as in control of his craft as he is here, I don't think. Ultimately I still prefer Stoker, but I have not yet seen a better-directed movie this decade and don't necessarily expect to do so. It's more than that, though: everybody hit the pedal to the metal. Kim Sang-bum likewise is completely On His Shit here, his editing having been my standout element of Oldboy's filmmaking on my recent revisit. Might be slightly overstating it to say that for every shot or visual sequence there was a cut that made my jaw drop too, if only for the sheer volume this has of such shots and sequences, but at the very least there are cuts that made my jaw drop just as hard. The duo of composers do so much heavy lifting, too, weaving the intrigue and nascent romance together all on their own.

They all, alongside Wei in a performance personified by doe eyes and the many things they can mean (and obscure), and Hae-li giving one which dances on the knife's edge of reading too simple the whole movie through, build a movie about the gap between the intellectualized and instinctive self, their occasional overlap, and the violence as they pull back apart. Ultimately, the mysteries at play here aren't horribly deep, but they're not meant to be. They serve the relationship between these characters as they ebb and flow in understanding one another, in feeling understood. It's not all roses, anybody who's seen it knows of course. But I swooned a lot, here.

brb, learning the name of every lunatic on the Cannes jury that picked fucking Triangle of Sadness to win the Palme over this (and R.M.N. and and Crimes of the Future) and repeating them while I fall asleep. Full Arya Stark mode.

Did not expect that Jim Cummings would be so Kirk Cousins-coded (derogatory)

Gonna go ahead and hit this one with the big red rubber "No." stamp. Skipped Thunder Road back when, which I feel retroactively vindicated for as I understand this to be more or less a straight retread thereof. Speaks volumes to me that the first time I laughed at this was when John insists that the killer is a human and that he's going to be caught by the letter of the law, catching himself as he goes to say he's going to kill him. Speaks to me because, in a movie of almost nonstop inane shouting and bile, the only place anything comes alive here is in something not said. And that's the more successful this works within, as compared to dramatic. Riki Lindhome is really good though!

Hadzihalilovic's Evolution was one of my first real loves within a more experimental/abstract cinematic mode, a feeling I worried was perhaps lightning in a bottle upon watching Innocence and not being so overjoyed with it (though neither underjoyed, to be fair). I'm not fully back there for Earwig, but I got real close for long stretches that reignited my excitement to keep following her around. Everybody with an appetite for abstract cinema will have an individualized sweet spot for where they prefer to be hit in of opacity/clarity, and it's more clear to me here that she's happens to zone in on mine with a fierceness. In so doing, she made an achingly beautiful, wonderfully-ambling ecstatic encapsulation of the fear of being a widower raising a daughter and the way you consequently regard the world. Call it the Papadook.

There's no way I can justify returning to this super super soon, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm drawn back to it before films I ostensibly liked on first watch a lot more.

Really comes together as it goes, I was glad to find. In spite of the aggressive paralleling done early here between Sibyl's resparked interest in writing and this one new patient of hers in Margot, the connective elements eluded me for a good long while, all the way up until they didn't. It pays off too, not just the destination but forcing us, Sibyl, to wait to arrive there; only with the weight of the interference into Margot's life that we've seen her take and give as is useful to her can we understand the ugliness which has driven the impulse all along. She herself speaks to it eventually, but attempting to experience authorship, control, through this mentally fragile woman seeking her help, trying to exercise her regrets, both leads her to regrettable decisions, but more crucially is conceived of as the dehumanizing way of regarding other lives that it is.

Triet and Efira build a fascinating figure at the center of this, one whose mind is so consistently-yet-opaquely probed through her recurring memories. A complicated woman, neither irable nor fully detestable. Triet dances right up to the razor's edge on a post-screening party gone wrong, and impressively fully rehumanizes Sibyl right after; following (or, I guess, technically preceding) Anatomy of a Fall, it's clear that this dimensionality of the women at the center is a core focus of hers, and we're lucky for it. Margot and Mika are given slightly less robust conceptions, but a little cheating to serve the primary thrust here is understandable (Margot getting lost in the ion of the boat scene in particular seems a little much). Especially when it navigates to such a thorny ending, with a woman who seems to finally understand herself, and in so doing can finally articulately lie to herself that these impulses are in her past.

No more of this, please. I'm good. Da Doo Ron Ron innocent.

Basically the only thing of interest to me here other than the occasional bracing image is how the only genuinely rousing images Sammy captures are spontaneous, what amounts to documentary cinema, a filmmaking mode at which I don't think there's even the faintest chance Spielberg could muster.

Think about the tour.

Fuck the tour.

Kind of an abrupt way to start, but I cannot bury this lede. Cristóbal Tapia de Veer's score for the first film blew my hair back so hard that it still lingers as one of my couple favorite scores of this progressing decade, and dude was given license to go fully fucking buckwild here. Seems that was the order of the day in the production writ large, but whatever restraints were left on for the first Smile, throughout the production, nobody sprinted faster off the blocks without them like de Veer did. It's so interactive with the greater soundscape of the film, it's abstract and much more likely to zag over zig, somehow right at the perfect nexus of tailored for this film and self-evidently engaging. The best, I think, of the 20s so far.

It accompanies capital-T The achingly modern horror film of our time. I'd underline "The," but I don't know if that's possible through hypertext; regardless, understand just how absolutely serious I am when I say it. From its concerns (pop stardom and its inward and outward interactions on the subjects thereof), the means through which it goes about it (a songwriting sensibility which echoes Eilish a little, Lovato and Halsey even more so, and I would have guessed at least one of the up-and-comers even before I saw McRae cowrote one of Skye's songs), and even just the mechanisms by which we increasingly interact with the world. Never have I seen another film that so ruthlessly understands the tension of texts, of being directly confronted with things you regret saying to someone before you try to build something new.

Skye's phone is a constantly present figure in the film, even when it's not on-screen; you've seen a phone reflecting in an actor's eyes, have you ever so bracingly noticed it reflecting in someone's teeth? I hadn't. But Finn locates that image and lets it sink the hell in. The integration of cell phones in general is so rich here, really, especially if you contrast with another very modern film in this milieu like Trap. One could develop an entire thinkpiece contrasting the way that movie deploys en-masse phone flashlights in a moving scene at the concert, as compared to how this one does midway through Skye's spiral at a motivational speech, shining flashes the blaring alarms that she's being recorded in an increasingly horrific moment of her life.

This is all building to a point, which is that Finn pulled off the miracle of the first film again. Or, not quite. He deepened it even more. A quick refresher: in my opinion, Smile reads most enjoyably if you take it not as a straightforward allegory for grief/trauma/mental illness, but of the limits of that framework to a world full of things we cannot describe. Rose, in that film, would never have been helped by addressing her issues as ones of mental health, and indeed the mechanisms of doing so were only likely to put those around her in more danger. Smile 2 still trades in this contradiction, in this tension, but continues spidering out in bracing, gnarly ways.

Skye's position as a pop star here allows Smile 2 to examine both more deeply a greater society's interaction with a fundamental disposition toward mental illness, while in the process further deepening that paradoxical twist which this universe presents to it. All of those pop artist I alluded to earlier are the ones influencing the style of song Skye writes, but the persona herself is more modeled around two major stars of yesteryear, those being Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse. The Spears connection is obvious, especially with how this movie interacts with Skye's hair, but the Winehouse pull is a little more devious. The woman the crowd is shouting to at the end, though, is the one who stood up on that Belgrade stage, strung out, days before her body was discovered.

That's heavy shit to be playing with, and if y'all aren't familiar I am a big big Winehouse fan. I do not draw the comparison lightly. Smile 2, I think, earns the comparison, particularly through the characterization of Skye and her circle. Scott's Skye is neither fully selfless nor domineering, attention-seeking nor private, transactional nor a being of love at her core. She's all of them, in a moment of her life when she's not allowed to be any of them. She's supposed to be a friend, a child, to the people who also rely on her for all the money in their life. She's a larger than life idol who's there with you or me or any given person through their struggles, while only a subject of gawkery for her own.

This ugly tension simmers through the entire thing, but it's also what's at the root of any bubbles which rupture the surface. And this thing bubbles. Finn wisely understood that he'd have to work overtime to get more out of this premise than he did in the first, and he completely succeeded. There's tons and tons of completely ingenious, disgusting shit here, starting hot on a magnificent cold open straight through to Lewis' meeting with the weight through to the various fan frights all the way through to the surreal ending stretch.

That stage where Skye finds herself is what leaves me shaken here. All of these people, undoubtedly aware of her mental state, come to watch her play music which lays bare her soul. Which she has transformed into the art which connects her to the world, which has provided for the lifestyle and anybody she has any affection for lives. They come, knowing at some level the pressure that's on her. And there is a cruelty there. But it also, once again, just like the first movie, doesn't fucking matter. Because the chain of things which brought Skye here is so much deeper, so intertwined within itself. It's comforting to think she could have been saved. She couldn't.

I see the vision complaining about the needle drops here, but I think the best road out was leaning in harder, rather than leaning out. Hard not to imagine it would cost just a bewildering amount of money, but the best that they ever work is when Deena and Josh first walk into school and the music is literally inescapable, even as they bleed from song to song. Take that and really extend it through as much of the body of this as you can and you might be cooking with gas. Probably would both work best and be most affordable with deeper cuts than this ever catalogues.

Found basically all of this completely interminable. Awful as material, directed like garbage (both visually but especially in Janiak's attempt to get the performances she wanted out of these people), and worst of all edited like complete dog water. Lady who edited this has only three features to her name, these three movies, and in an ideal world it stays that way. So ponderous in its romance, although that's as much a function of how not-bought-in I was as anything; only excusing it so much since that disengagement itself comes from how terrible the breakup stuff is at the beginning. Still, the ponderousness comes from how seriously this takes its characters, which is something, I guess. Has basically one single moment of horror worth even half of a damn.

Spent a pretty healthy amount of time watching all of this series so I could be caught up before the movie came out in American theaters, right around a year ago, only to completely flake on actually going to see it in theaters. What a silly fellow am I. It was certainly far from a complete waste: I was elated to find that I thought the show was absolutely delightful, a kind of intense juxtaposition between brutish tension and tooth-cracking sweetness. Maybe just a little bit leant more to the sentimental side than would I arrange it if I had it my way, but a ride I'm more than happy to jump aboard as long as I don't. (An aside: it is likely my enjoyment of that fundamental strange mix that leaves Yor outright one of my favorite anime characters in a good few years, given her explicit embodiment thereof.)

Maybe not the end of the world that I didn't catch this in a theater, honestly, though. It's a nice little romp, but this is even more a few episodes repackaged into a movie than the average TV anime-related film, down to simply playing the hits ala Loid/Yor misunderstanding, Yor feelings of inadequacy, Loid learning to include the family, Nightfall's infatuation, Yor being a lightweight, etc. It's really undermined by the comparison in the opposite direction, too, as there's actually a four or five episode long arc in the most recent season which out and out mogs this in of juggled plotlines, action setpieces, little character moments, etc. Would have loved for the animation itself to at least be an elevating element, but there's really only a couple moments which swing above the average episode (those bits are pretty fab, though).

Still, if you're gonna play hits, at least Spy X Family has such good ones from which to draw. I typically think of the show as having atypically good action for TV anime, an assessment which very much remains alive here, particularly once everybody is aboard the airship at the end. Some real good comedy throughout, too, particularly the bit which sees the largest stylistic visual departure from the status quo. In some respects I think this is broadly below the level at which the show usually swings for how wheel-spinning it is, but they weren't going to majorly develop or advance anything outside of the show itself probably. This was a good excuse to just revisit some characters for whom I have a lot of fondness; good enough for me.

Above anything else, was immediately dumbstruck, breathless, by the score in the first scene. Could not mean that more seriously. "Ah ha!" I thought, "surely after my peculiar experience with the score in the French Dispatch, this is the Wes/Desplat collaboration that will finally, from end to end, match Grand Budapest for me, if not exceed it!" And then the only scoring in the entire film was small variations on that one piece!!! Why do you do me like this Alexandre!!!!!

Finds Wes more emotionally direct than he's been in a great many years (probably sinceeeeeeee Darjeeling?) and it's a comfortable, enjoyable space to be in once again. Maybe a little too comfortable, arguably, especially when we're talking about the director which could once conjure "I've had a rough year, dad," but melancholy and loneliness runs through this. Really, it's that which keeps this most clicking along, seeing Wes in stride otherwise. It's an enjoyable stride, but I did long for the restlessness and inventiveness of the Dahl shorts. Word is that his project due this year should be a fairly substantial departure, which I welcome; his rhythms are beginning to feel more like a restrictive rut, to me.

It shouldn't go unsaid, though, that it's far from without novelty, interest. Indeed, it's the scene which lands by far the hardest that sees Wes really try to capture something in an expressive, daring new way: when Schwartzman abandons the in-universe set during his break to try to more deeply understand why the story is arcing as it is, why Augie is arcing as he is, leading to the well-known line. Saw a lot of Twitter chatter about reading this reflexively toward Wes' art, which I think undersells its possible resonance pretty bewilderingly, particularly with the consistent gab regarding a higher power through the film. One could argue it's maybe one line, one scene, that it can only do so much for the movie on the whole, but it's really one of the most life-affirming single moments in his filmography. That can do a lot.

I try not to really really not be in the habit of noting this sort of thing bc it's so easy to come across unseemly I think, but: Hayley Atwell in this is actually one of the most beautiful people in the history of film, improbably entering into the echelon she already inhabited from all the way back in the First Avenger.

Finally truly had a reckoning all my own, watching the trailer for the film for the umpteenth time ahead of Ash last night: is there any real chance I'm not going to watch this in theaters, not watch what will completely inevitably be yet another seminal film of the year? Even if I think the series is mostly faff, both inside and outside the action? There is not, I concluded, and so it befell me to catch up on the one I hadn't yet seen. Never been a fan of McQuarrie's takes on these, which have seemed to me to always function basically exclusively off the backs of their practical stunts, something that has historically not impressed me intrinsically whatsoever. Realized partway through this, indeed, that I don't any sequence from Rogue Nation or Fallout other than the opera house (for which I didn't care that much) and the part where Cavill cocked his arms.

Hard to know precisely where to allocate the most credit -- Atwell is a live wire the likes of which this series has never ever had, McQuarrie finally arranges some sequences constructed with elements other than pure tension and awe, maybe he's just genuinely really maturing as a filmmaker as he accrues experience in these, the score is earnestly outstanding -- but wherever it's most due, for the stretch from the airport through the handcuffed car chase, this is the best the series has ever been, and it's not close. It's so fun and flirty and fleet and funny and it just really, truly clicks. For those for whom the memory of this is fading a little, please do note this is no mean feat, as that stretch of time encomes literally like 45 minutes. I'm going to watch it all again, immediately, as soon as I'm done writing this.

It's so confusing then, because for the most part otherwise this is still such faff. McQuarrie still can't write dialogue for shit, guest starring here an utterly bizarre expositional tick where dumps are handed between characters from line to line, but still written as one contiguous blob of information. Presumably at some point after the Final Reckoning, McQuarrie will make another movie, with every likelihood that it'll be in a similar sort of cinematic space; it is of the utmost importance someone be hired on standby to slap him in the hands every time he goes to type any words explaining the plot. Action setpieces are still not really that great either, gracelessly dancing between close ups and wides, featuring some of the most awful hand to hand choreography I've seen in a movie this acclaimed.

It ends on another one of its stronger beats, although even that is extended a train car or two too long, which beggars enough goodwill to really lean into how happy I am with that lengthy stretch toward the beginning. And, really, the movie organizing itself to be so centered around Grace, rather than Ethan, makes me hopeful for where this is all going. We'll find out in a month and change, together.

Dog, Bruce Campbell's stunt double was not paid enough for this, no matter how much he was paid. Actually, looking it up it seems that he did most of his own stunts, which is then to say: this is a more impressive feat than every Mission: Impossible combined (stay tuned folks!).

Having felt goaded into this set of rewatches by being so enamored with Evil Dead Rise, and then subsequently loving the first film even more than I once did, I was hoping I was witnessing a rising tide which just might go ahead and carry all ships. For a while that seemed to be the case! The material with Ash alone at the cabin toward the beginning is so immediately, winningly bought in on the new madcap tone. Raimi has a lot of good scene ideas to the time, Campbell is a rubber-faced phenom, and the pivot itself is expressive of a late-movie turn from the first film I really loved, that being Ash's fraying sanity in the face of this all. Spirit chase through the house, all the hand bits, the laughing furniture, it's all marvelous.

It really really fritters for me, though, once the greater group finally arrives (early appearances are already fairly portentous, as cutaways to them inbound to the cabin quickly introduce ruptures in the building tone). At that point, it's all-but-explicitly just a much, much worse run through the first film's beats, with most of its best elements more a garnish that a full course (chainsaw/shotgun stuff, Ash deadite, etc.). The effects remain fun, especially anything more ornate than simple face makeup, but even that's somewhat compromised. The facial makeup is broadly unflattered by the brighter lighting and 35mm, but the real tragedy is how awful all the projected stuff looks. Fetishize old filmmaking tricks all you want, I will be forever thankful nobody is trying to rear projection off as a useful technique anymore.

This second half is mostly fairly able, but it does kind of mystify me why the going through the motions doesn't seem to bother people more. Like I would defy anyone to put the scene where Ash goes into the cellar to get more shotgun shells from the first film, and the one where he goes to find the pages of the book in this one, side by side, and tell me the one in this is even 1/100th of the former. Ultimately, the way this kind of strikes me now is that it's sort of straddled between the film before it and the film that would come to be, in a way that doesn't particularly serve it on either front. That does kind of excite me, though, to what I might find with Army of Darkness. Looking forward to it!

You WILL believe Bill Skarsgard is drinking his own piss! Da movies baby!!!!!

Doesn't work particularly well in any of its various modes -- not especially tense the wide majority of the time for the aimless fatalism of it all, Skarsgard is actually mostly not that great for the majority of it as he's too put together to effectively channel haggardry, the political dialectics are always like one or two steps from really striking gold, not even that emotionally fulfilling as it bows out -- but still kind of an irable swing. Yarovsky gets a lot out of this cinematically, indeed sometimes too much. irably, he finds a lot of ways to dance around the interior of this car for well over an hour such that it doesn't get too visually inert; less irably, this is insanely objectifying of poor people on the streets via a leering lens. That it doesn't all work together is a shame, but that the filmmaking is so evocative makes me inclined to lean relatively positive; the flavors are strong, it just didn't come together this time.

Gotta it, I was really not anticipating quite so much George Michael. Not unwanted though! Man is right, Faith is one of the all time great songs.

Seems to be off to a kind of terrible start, writing in gags and then writing in a brutally unwise insistence upon them, an impulse which hits a nadir upon the several-times-over observation of how they named the strip club in the movie HPV. Soon thereafter, though, this hits its real stride, that being the lead duo trying to themselves off as gangsters with varying levels of convincingness. Some of it's pretty straightforward stuff that you might expect based on that premise, but some of it is pretty inventive and got some real good laughs out of me. Trades well on the rapport Key and Peele have, as one would expect; part of the reason I felt inclined to check this out was to see Peele more in his old element, as someone who pretty much only knows him for his directed stuff. Hope he decides to do some more acting too, someday!

Ultimately, it'd be hard to accuse this of anything too laudatory, but it was a nifty, if expectedly uneven, ride while it was around

There was a fun little rush for me here late when I, suddenly, realized I recognized one of the actors here, moments before it became entirely clear why they had been cast in this movie.

Had heard this was derivative of Alien, but in reality it's very, very derivative of one Alien movie in particular, kind of jumbled up. If there's any one big reservation I have, it's how that sense does indeed cheapen the proceedings for me, at least somewhat; the reminiscence was already pretty dense before a late-film sequence really hammered the nail all the way through the board, at which point you could credible fully call it an echo of the afore film. I don't think that's the worst thing in the world necessarily, especially as I love the way that specific Alien film comes together, but if that's something likely to bother you a lot, buyer beware.

Otherwise, I think FlyLo does a pretty fucking rad job extracting novelty from that framework; maybe not the most surprising thing in the world that he could really draw new life itself out of a remix, say. The woozy colors, the measured pacing, the thumping score, the great performance he gets out of Gonzalez, I was totally sucked in -- realized eventually I was gripping my phone in my hand so hard it was beginning to make my fingers ache a little. He does fabulous work drawing the distinction in implementations of the horror modes here, not only delineating their separate utilities but also digging something deeper out of Riya's psychology in the process. I'd say more, but no sense spoiling some of the fun here when this is so new.

It's his collaboration with Bryan Shaw, who edited the film, that draws out the most thrilling stuff for me, though. The film has a little bit of music video to it, a little bit of videogame, both qualities I would suspect it's FlyLo's instincts which lean toward. Shaw takes those specific timbres of imagemaking and helps FlyLo weave them into the texture of the work on the whole, making for something agreeable digital, uncanny. Meaningfully uncanny, really, as it goes. So much of this, and especially its specific novelty, arrives directly through Riya's mindspace, a thing that is almost entirely built through the editing.

Probably worth taking this fervor with some grain of salt, ittedly, as I realized here that editing truly is the visual art of cinema that I find excites me most. Still, to whomever it means something, e.g. there's a seamless fade here from blurring vision to a fogged bathroom mirror that will likely remain my cut of the year for a good long while.

Has always been my classic horror flavor of choice, and now I return to it having been shaped by that discovery probably approximately a decade ago. Having discovered it was the classic horror which most elementally appealed to me, and getting to spend all that time honing my appreciation for its pacing, storytelling, effects, instincts. I prefer a few other old horror movies, but typically for some otherwise specific reason -- the Slumber Party Massacres for their subversive tendencies, Psycho on of Perkins giving one of my very favorite performances ever. In of pure classic horror cinema, I don't think it was ever done better than this, for me (do still need to stop by Texas sometime, though).

Part of that is the obvious things, the stuff that made this an instant minor phenomenon, especially within the sphere of people already inclined toward the genre. The effects are so fucking good (really fond of the stop-motion stuff this go around), and escalate so well, up through to the cabin being a hostile organism all its own. The playfulness of the deadites was absolutely nailed straight out of the gate; if anything there's room to fit more in, although of course that's a great need for the sequels to fill. For as cheap as the movie was, too, every single dollar was made to count, and this looks just fucking amazing so much of them time, between the lovely frames this sets up during the lead up through to the evocative use of fog all through the nighttime siege. Big ups must be noted to the score, too, which entirely bears out the former jazz stylings of its composer, within a moody horror milieu.

What this really twists the knife for me, though, that draws me so deeply in, is the way this is restlessly inventive in unearthing evocative and interesting crevices of the human experience. It really struck me during the shot of a couple of the women unpacking the car with Ash toward the top, when they start eventually bombarding him for their own amusement, rather than ours. There's an interiority that lives inside this, even in the spartan characterization and runtime, where the characters pilot scenes organically (L O V E that bizarre tense scene of Ash pretending to sleep with the jewelry box on his leg). The mix of deadite glee (itself its own internally-conceived genuine expression of the demons) with this interiority really pays off as this hits its uglier strides. As violence against women, especially those close to the aggressor, is explored in heady, unsignposted ways. As Ash, toward the end of the night, is a man fully upended, Campbell giving every ounce of pathos he has to the rudderlessness, through to the masterclass final shot.

Feels like a movie made by someone who, as far as he knows, might never get to make another one. Reading how hard he had to hustle, how thin the margin was between getting this assembled and frittering away (very fond of the Wikipedia description, regarding this being set and filmed in Tennessee, as that having been done because "it was the only state that expressed enthusiasm for the project"), this is probably not by mistake.

Too eager to arrange itself in ways that overlap rather than which dig out deeper elements of the feelings at hand, both in writing and shooting. Great example is the panic attack on the boat: Ronan is already doing all the work for you, you don't literally need to run around her in a circle with the camera to convey her destabilized mental state. I'm open to giving it a lot of grace -- addiction stories hit somewhere tender in my heart -- but these insistencies and redundancies pile up a lot over its length. Ronan is absolutely able to keep it churning through the turge, though, rightly regarded as among the best performances of last year. If anything digs out e.g. the rambling inanity of someone surrendered to their drunken state, it's her line readings.

Had well and fully let go of my hand, though I was glad enough to keep iring it as it danced around temporally, and then out of nowhere this hits a fucking fantastic ending. Among all the ideas thumbed through here, the way this conceives as the path forward from addiction as finding something else that sparks the joie de vivre that your substance of choice once did is thought provoking, and building it entirely through how that sequence is edited is truly inspired. I can only give it so much credit, arriving so late and stumbling so erratically inbound to it, but it's a genuine thrill.

Ingeniously structured, absolutely gorgeous both inside the beautiful restaurant and in the rolling French countryside, absolutely absorbing as it digs into the specifics of what makes a day in fine dining function. And, in so being, illuminating of the things that all that money you spend goes toward -- food sources that are personally vetted, knowledge about your wants that you can expect them to have walking in, inventive and experimental dishes, people deg the experience with worldly perspective. Nobody else does it in the verite game like Wiseman; even movies I like pretty well like e.g. Daughters are so much more encumbered by knowing where to put the camera to keep people's eyes off the lens, and Wiseman/his operators do it over and over for hours and hours, all while maintaining clear and delectable compositions.

Maybe a little reiterative down the stretch, but that itself speaks to something about the rhythms of the average day at Le Bois sans feuilles, of course. Every day is both a lot the same and that little different, gradually evolving as it's shaped by the hands guiding it.

Will probably spend the rest of my life a little jealous of the people who got the Monster Hunter reveal completely blind, what a rush that must have been.

Don't know that I can precisely isolate one specific reason why, but above anything else just very easy to watch. The dialogue takes a minute to get used to, dense with industry terminology as it is, but once that clicks into place this is a fairly breezy ride given the length. If I were to credit it to anything in particular, I'd likely choose the writing of the characters, which parcels out a deeper understanding of basically all of its main figures such that every scene has something to pull from it. The long tail gives it plenty of time to gradually descend off the lofty pedestal upon which it begins, too, which is nice. It takes a few steps too far down in the process (big thumbs down to the scene with the accordion in particular), but they're only a couple scenes among a movie which is otherwise rich and dense.

Really struggling to figure out why it doesn't connect more deeply with me, then. One could maybe make the case that it's a little withholding, emotionally, along the lengthy road. In that vein, the specific plotting details it withholds likewise feel less as intriguing eventual reveals and more like a conspicuous constructing hand -- ditto the surrealistic touches. The opacity ultimately stops me from reaching a finer point with it, too, rather ambiently taking the greater work in while it sits in my mind as it all bubbles together still. Could make for the sort of thing where things ultimately really click, eventually, as a result. For now, a movie built up by many many little achievements constrained by likewise little frustrations.

"Badge is scarier than a gun" -> hrmmmmm; "Mind explaining that for me?" -> HRMMMMMMM c'mon man quit while you're behind.

So does this go, absolutely bananas inelegant from head to toe, internally within scenes and even worse as it moves from moment to moment. A handsome, winsome brick in a washing machine. Some polemics are expected given the subject matter, and honestly Kaluuya does great work wrangling it into a character, but this is simply not absorbing enough for its many moments running at subjects like an Olympic sprinter to not gradually have a deadening effect. It really is that greater shape that's much more a failure though, moving from event to event in this period of Black Panther history like a chair pushed down a set of stairs.

This infects even the bit of the greater aims here I found most interesting, frustratingly, which is O'Neal's whole deal. Found the way this conceived of him constantly mortgaging the future of the party for that slim sliver of stability to burrow pretty well into me, especially as it's paralleled by a later conversation Hoover blathers at Mitchell. Not fully equivocated by the movie, but all the more meaningful for how it's not fully equivocated. O'Neal's end-movie blubbering feels genuinely out of nowhere as presented in the movie, though. Stanfield, as good as he is generally and here specifically, needed to more cleanly integrate these halves of O'Neal to make this work. Instead, his last moment with Hampton toes the line of inadvertent hilarity for how committed he is to a bizarrely dysfunctionally-designed character.

The way this man frowns when he gets edged I swear to the good fucking lord

Think there's probably just some sort of inherent block to me in this brand of cinema (here another movie that reminds me of Phantom Thread and Challengers, and also finally really clarifies why I like the Duke of Burgundy so much more than any of the three) where erotic thrall is deployed as a meaningful counterbalancing lever of power. Kind of a cute conception of humanity, but cute in the same way a more family safe movie might see the day saved by the power of friendship.

Qualley is pretty good, Abbott is really good, they do a lot with a single hotel room (without ever escaping the sense that they're stuck with Just A Hotel Room). Fun and titillating in the early goings and periodically throughout, less invigorating as it attempts to glimpse something deeper. Definitely the better of the "Christopher Abbott in a hotel room with a lady in a terrible blonde wig go through a strange psychosexual power jockeying" duology.

Debatably a foolish impulse to have trailed Midthunder back into this having full-throatedly liked neither of the recent films I saw her in, but what can I say. She was really great in them. And she's good here! But unfortunately I think this really crystalized my feeling that Trachtenberg is a filmmaker with nothing to offer me. This is just hideous, still feeling so much like the fan films he made in his roots that the cheapness with which it carries itself is clearly inherent to his filmmaking at this point. The CG critters draw so much of the explicit attention of it, but it's all over the visual presentation of this. The plotting is so schematic too, everything is so neat, there's absolutely no life here. Some of the action's fine, some interesting brutality, but nothing especially compelling on either front. More than anything else I've seen lately, feels like a long episode of a TV show I would not have been watching.

Wields Shyamalan's inelegance as a weapon to tell the story of a genuinely partitioned psyche. I already had the sense that there was some sort of juice there for me as early as scenes like the Dreamer Girl backstage bit, which so expertly dances between the incredible joy of watching Riley thrive on stage and the nervous glances toward Dr. Grant just thirty or so feet away. The magic is not in the juggling of them, but how fully they coexist, how Cooper's joy isn't false pursuant of keeping Riley unawares but the real jubilation of watching your daughter make one of the core memories of her life, even as your mind is so fully elsewhere at the same time.

This all fully formed into an idea when Cooper directly addresses it eventually, and a slightly more elegant movie could maybe have found a way to not out-and-out put it in a character's mouth. The moment, though, is so ingeniously staged that it soars nonetheless. Hartnett gets the lion's share of the credit for it, as an extremely attentive and meticulous man who embodies his own familiarity with his mind being rattled by an unexamined mental fold. He's marvelous throughout, and if this ever even teeters toward not working it's basically always him that keeps his personae, the plotting, coherent and legible.

It doesn't really teeter, though, is the marvelous thing. Not for me, anyway. This is so digressive, so off-rails, and yet every time Shyamalan pivots hard here I found myself immediately buying right back in. A lot of it does simply come back to the decision to specifically make the plotting expressive of the character, rather than the concept. A moment like the oil explosion might have read as gratuitousness for its own sake in another movie given how nothing comes of it, but that it so vividly speaks to Cooper as a person on top of its crackerjack deployment as thriller cinema makes it so rich. I understand preferring the first half, but it's this jagged rhythm it eventually takes on that fully won me over. I'll gladly take the less-preferred second half off everyone's hands.

EXTREME Eric Dane jumpscare holy moly, my fellow McSteamies we are truly so back

(Will give a shoutout to start: end of this definitely has a whiff of transphobia to it. Enough plausible deniability that it didn't fully sink the movie for me, and it's wrapped up in something else I don't like very much about the movie anyway, but be warned.)

This popped onto my radar a few days ago when it hit VOD, and only lingered on my radar for word that there was a great scene related to Celine Dion, specifically a song people were real cagey about identifying. Had let it slip my mind a little, but earlier today ed to check if anyone had finally spilled the beans -- for one specific song, I would give this a try. Sure enough! So here we are. That scene fucking rocks, maybe goes just a little too far into something adjacent to whimsy but nonetheless one of the great scenes of the year so far.

That is sort of the order of the day, which you learn very early on into this. There's a scene where Nicholson is doing something akin to a Risky Business riff and it's already clear he does not have the juice, and when the movie is hoping he does it doesn't have the juice either, so if neither of them have the juice what are we drinking. So many scenes here are sunk by his inability to really unleashed something unhinged, or a fucking abysmal """"""""playful"""""""" score, or a wielding of his mental illness that feels super arbitrary and deployed as an excuse to generate some truly asinine scene premises. Weaving, to be fair, is not that much better, although that's kind of consistent with my personal take on her; she's so affectless, asked for and choosing to give nothing more than :| straight through to monotony, often.

And yet! Two things save this mightily, both equal partners in the saving. The first is an extraordinarily visual intuition from Warden, all the more so in his debut film. There's a shot of Sofia lighting a cigarette swathed in complete darkness that follows her up a staircase into a club that will be one of the greatest shots of the year even still at year's end. As the film goes, he generates huge amounts of suspense out of literally as little as the wind blowing, great moments of visual tension and reveal, magnificent use of reflections to deepen the frame. Not a kind thing to say, but in its way still meant as a compliment: if Warden ever gets someone else to write a movie of his (or, hey, if he just keeps honing his craft, of course) he will shoot one of the best movies of a year sooner or later.

The other is more impressive in a sense, that it can be an equal partner of the entire visual direction, that being Alba Baptista's performance. Early on I had the kind of glib thought that I would probably be head over heels for Nicholson's performance and character were he a woman. Lo and behold! The movie has a character to basically precisely prove me right. To be fair to my own predilections, Baptista has all the derangement I wanted out of the lead, paired with just an astonishing amount of screen presence. There's a look in her eyes that she has a couple times right toward the end of her stint in the movie that I will be thinking about for a long while. Every scene that she drives is like a vision into a film I'd be rating toward the top of the scale, in a heartbeat; almost certainly my favorite performance I've seen so far this year.

Seeing now that this is heavily inspired by an Almodovar I haven't seen and I can super easily imagine his sensibilities (and the language barrier) making this go down even smoother. Will definitely make time for that one.

Imagines a fantasy universe wherein one could be so lucky as to be followed around by Amber Midthunder day and night.

Sets up its payoffs to deliver so late that it's not surprising it pushed a lot of folks away by the time it got to them. For a while this is a little cheeky and pleasantly moody and scopes out some interesting corners of its compound setting, and then it's all of those things but a little less, and then a little less after that, all the way up until finally, with like 10 minutes or so left I would guess, it ruptures. Has kind of a dovetailing negative effect, where the wait has frittered a good amount of the mystique generated along the culty walk up, as well as making the shift that eventually happens pretty abrupt, to say the least. Partially this is also an undoing of the advertising, as describing this as a thriller does it no favors. Feels like this could pretty successfully be condensed down into a short without even having to shoot anything new, just sculpting down the movie as came to be without losing anything really.

The place this arrives at, though, is so interesting to me that it keeps my goodwill nonetheless. It's built patiently, through details like these awful shaggy dog jokes Moretti tells, the way his music is something like 1/4 the Weeknd and 3/4 Right Said Fred (purveyors of I'm Too Sexy, for anyone not in the know), the way nobody will say the C-word (cult, to be clear). The people Moretti brought here are beholden to the expected relationship between celebrity and press that they've helped create, all the while the shape of what celebrity now looks like has been shifting. The way this all funnels into something about open secrets in pop culture, widespread hunger to digest truly demented celebrity behavior, the way celebrities are increasingly looked to for explicit leadership kind of captivated me, honestly, thornier than any dismissive assessment will probably give it credit for being.

I don't know! I bought it, at least. Watch this and then go find a YouTube channel mostly about Diddy news now that was once upon a time about something frivolous like YouTuber drama, watch this and then Google "Taylor Swift/Angelina Jolie/Oprah/etc. for president." There's something here. And then also a lot of other superfluous fluff and time, too. But the something is still there.

As taut and breezy as d, but that's no surprise (to me, anyway; this marks my sixth-straight 4/5 movie from Soderbergh). Finds so much fun bouncing between characters, which is fortunate given that nearly the entire film is just characters talking. There are a few scenes with at least a little bit more at play, and those really crackle, but the order of the day is mostly just exploring these dynamics, especially the one between George and Kathryn. All to locate some genuinely romantic feelings and thoughts, improbably given the antiseptic handling, but that's a talent of Soderbergh's. I could wax rhapsodic about that all, but it would ultimately boil down into just saying "This works really, really well, functions very economically, is a great ride," which I'm not really that interested in elaborating on any longer.

What interests me instead are the things I find kind of lacking, which keep me out from feeling like this is the clear step up from recent Soderberghs as I've seen it commonly received. Mostly, I think this is so deeply unspecific in a way that's partially a casualty of the brevity, but either way this thing is so disinterested in their home as a space, in the agency itself, in any real specifics about their careers as spies, in how the shape of this comes to be. Functionally they could have basically any job and this story would work basically exactly the same (other than one bit at the end, ittedly), which speaks to a universality of the ideas, sure, but renders the high stakes of the affair kind of empty.

Part of that disinterest specifically arrives, though, via how much worse this looks than most of his movies. The framing is still sharp, the editing dances, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills a little to watch it and have heard no complaints about the lighting. The backlight washing out scenes is SO much worse here than it is in e.g. Wicked, and the scenes at their dinner parties are just as frustratingly underlit as any clip you'll see virally complained about on Twitter re: a more acceptable target of a movie to razz. So many spaces here are genuinely, specifically, unpleasant to look at. Had me thinking so fondly on the boat from Let Them All Talk, Kimi's apartment, the theater in Last Dance, post-war Detroit in No Sudden Move, or ESPECIALLY the house in Presence, just a couple months old.

As I'm writing this, I feel myself coming across more negatively than I intend and that's mostly for how off-guard it caught me to walk in thinking this might usher in a step into full adoration I'd been missing for a while and instead find by far Soderbergh's thinnest movie in over a decade. It's good fortune that the portion is so delectable if it's going to be so small.

Would be curious to understand how a lot of this was received contemporaneously, as so much of it seems in bad taste now that I'm kind of compelled by a broad against-the-current runner to it. Therapy-skeptical, unsparing to people who are victims of traumatic unbringing, broadly unconcerned with coming across misogynistic at the very fundaments. Not exactly as if those things were out of vogue in the 70s, I'm sure, but Cronenberg is doing a lot more examining of them than the average filmmaker. It all interacts with the themes in such interesting ways, and pivotally, also doesn't interact with them at all sometimes. Little details on the broodlings seem designed only for flavor's sake, rather than any allegorical or otherwise reason, which makes the entire enterprise feel a little less schematic than even movies I like more.

Pays off extensively, in a truly marvelous last 20 minutes, the crown jewel of Eggar's already-shining performance as Nola. It's funny to have this as a relatively-recent chaser for a Woman Under the Influence, a movie with which this feels deeply in conversation, and whose leading performance I would guess Eggar had likely seen before her work in this. Cronenberg finally really gets to stretch some of his more classic interests, too, in a magnificently revolting reveal and immediate follow-up beat. Definitely moseys its way to that ending a little much for my tastes, particularly given how not-frightening and not-threatening the broodlings are for the most part, but the undercurrent of anxiety about Candy's future can do a lot of carrying, especially with the excellent grace note with which this leaves us.

Happy birthday Mr. Cronenberg, here's to a fun year ahead of combing through more of your works on this and the other side of the Shrouds.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2025, or I would consider from the year 2025, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2025 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2025.

1. Seven Veils
2. Bob Trevino Likes It
3. Ash
4. Presence
5. Sinners
6. Black Bag
7. The Monkey
8. The Woman in the Yard
9. Drop
10. Nickel Boys

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2010, or I would consider from the year 2010, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2010 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2010.

1. Black Swan
2. Winter's Bone
3. Certified Copy
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
5. Shutter Island
6. Somewhere
7. The Social Network
8. Let Me In
9. Tangled
10. Toy Story 3

...plus 48 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, the conman of modern American cinema, Steven Soderbergh.

1. Unsane
2. Mosaic
3. Logan Lucky
4. Side Effects
5. Ocean's Eleven
6. High Flying Bird
7. Kimi
8. Let Them All Talk
9. Ocean's Thirteen
10. Magic Mike's Last Dance

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of my favorite films, upkept regularly and in order of preference.

1. Unsane
2. Black Swan
3. Welfare
4. Slumber Party Massacre II
5. I Am Keiko
6. Ballet Black
7. Daisies
8. Paris Is Burning
9. Anora
10. Perfect Blue

...plus 293 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2023, or I would consider from the year 2023, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2023 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2023.

1. Showing Up
2. Evil Dead Rise
3. John Wick: Chapter 4
4. Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros
5. No One Will Save You
6. The Boy and the Heron
7. Killers of the Flower Moon
8. The Holdovers
9. Five Nights at Freddy's
10. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2021, or I would consider from the year 2021, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2021 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2021.

1. Benedetta
2. The Matrix Resurrections
3. No Time to Die
4. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
5. Red Post on Escher Street
6. Spencer
7. Nomadland
8. Seance
9. Slumber Party Massacre
10. Bo Burnham: Inside

...plus 35 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2020, or I would consider from the year 2020, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2020 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2020.

1. Dick Johnson Is Dead
2. Sound of Metal
3. Inventing the Future
4. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
5. First Cow
6. The Rhythm Section
7. WHAT DID JACK DO?
8. Let Them All Talk
9. The Assistant
10. Tenet

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, a director I love and an editor I love even more, Ben Wheatley.

1. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead
2. Kill List
3. High-Rise
4. Free Fire
5. In the Earth
6. A Field in England
7. Sightseers
8. Down Terrace

A list of films I've seen from the year 2022, or I would consider from the year 2022, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2022 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2022.

1. Decision to Leave
2. R.M.N.
3. Nope
4. Smile
5. Avatar: The Way of Water
6. Crimes of the Future
7. The Banshees of Inisherin
8. Earwig
9. Kimi
10. X

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2019, or I would consider from the year 2019, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2019 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2019.

1. Us
2. The Cordillera of Dreams
3. Blowin' Up
4. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead
5. Ema
6. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
7. Little Women
8. High Flying Bird
9. The Edge of Democracy
10. Knives Out

...plus 64 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2024, or I would consider from the year 2024, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2024 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2024.

1. Anora
2. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
3. Wicked
4. Smile 2
5. The Shadow Strays
6. The Substance
7. Immaculate
8. Trap
9. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More
10. No Other Land

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, perhaps the most love-him-or-hate-him figure out of all of these lists (I, personally, would go with "love"), Wes Anderson

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
3. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More
4. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
5. Rushmore
6. The Royal Tenenbaums
7. Asteroid City
8. Moonrise Kingdom
9. Isle of Dogs
10. Bottle Rocket

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2016, or I would consider from the year 2016, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2016 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2016.

1. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
2. Evolution
3. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids
4. Cameraperson
5. Certain Women
6. The Whispering Star
7. Anomalisa
8. Graduation
9. 88:88
10. Kate Plays Christine

...plus 177 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, the first documentarian I'm listing, and someone who appeals to essentially all of my sensibilities within the genre, Frederick Wiseman.

1. Welfare
2. Ballet
3. In Jackson Heights
4. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
5. Titicut Follies
6. Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros
7. National Gallery
8. High School II
9. At Berkeley
10. Monrovia, Indiana

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Like a watchlist but for things I’ve already seen, so I can fill more space in my mind and digital footprint with things I should watch but am not watching.

• The ion of Joan of Arc
• Rebecca
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Sunset Boulevard
• Rashomon
• All About Eve
• Singin' in the Rain
• The Night of the Hunter
• Touch of Evil
• North by Northwest

...plus 38 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, Canada’s wonderful weirdo, David Cronenberg.

1. Videodrome
2. Scanners
3. Crimes of the Future
4. Cosmopolis
5. The Fly
6. Dead Ringers
7. The Brood
8. Maps to the Stars
9. Spider
10. A Dangerous Method

A list of films I've seen from the year 2018, or I would consider from the year 2018, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2018 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2018.

1. Unsane
2. The Wolf House
3. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
4. the Girls
5. Leave No Trace
6. The Rider
7. Over
8. Unfriended: Dark Web
9. Eighth Grade
10. A Simple Favor

...plus 107 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, a man who seems to have the most disparate moments of inspiration yet nonetheless turns them into fascinating projects time and time again, David Fincher.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Zodiac
4. Gone Girl
5. Fight Club
6. The Social Network
7. Se7en
8. The Game
9. The Killer
10. Panic Room

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The country whose output I’ve found consistently the most invigorating. Partially for contemporary perspectives on the 1973 coup, partially simply because the directors there who I’ve seen work from happen to be fascinating filmmakers. Ranked in order of preference. For the most part this will be Chilean directors making films set in Chile, but some will be Chilean directors who live elsewhere or non-Chilean directors who made films there.

• The Wolf House
• The Pearl Button
• The Cordillera of Dreams
• Magic Magic
• Ema
• Spencer
• Tyrel
• Too Late to Die Young
• No
• Cielo

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2011, or I would consider from the year 2011, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2011 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2011.

1. Melancholia
2. Miss Bala
3. The Tree of Life
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Meek's Cutoff
6. Guilty of Romance
7. The Skin I Live In
8. Take Shelter
9. Shame
10. Wuthering Heights

...plus 79 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2014, or I would consider from the year 2014, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2014 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2014.

1. Maidentrip
2. Phoenix
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel
4. The Babadook
5. Stations of the Cross
6. The Double
7. Two Days, One Night
8. Tokyo Tribe
9. The Guest
10. Interstellar

...plus 166 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2015, or I would consider from the year 2015, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2015 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2015.

1. Amy
2. Tag
3. Magic Mike XXL
4. The Pearl Button
5. Brooklyn
6. Mistress America
7. Crimson Peak
8. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
9. Welcome to Me
10. In Jackson Heights

...plus 186 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films I've seen from the year 2017, or I would consider from the year 2017, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2017 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2017.

1. One of Us
2. mother!
3. Nathan for You: Finding s
4. The Bad Batch
5. Mosaic
6. Long Strange Trip
7. Lady Bird
8. Alien: Covenant
9. Antiporno
10. Raw

...plus 112 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, someone who makes movies that somehow masterfully tick every one of the boxes inside of me as a film watcher, all within the same movie often, Sion Sono.

1. I Am Keiko
2. Tag
3. Himizu
4. Noriko's Dinner Table
5. Hazard
6. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
7. Love Exposure
8. Tokyo Tribe
9. The Whispering Star
10. Antiporno

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. In this, one of the most fascinating and perhaps the most fascinatingly-reserved American filmmaker working, Kelly Reichardt.

1. Showing Up
2. Wendy and Lucy
3. Certain Women
4. Meek's Cutoff
5. Old Joy
6. Night Moves
7. First Cow
8. River of Grass

One of the filmic milieu that, for whatever reason, grabs me ruthlessly. Ranked in order, and I sure hope to expand it.

• Black Swan
• Ballet Black
• Ballet
• Ballet 422
• The Red Shoes
• Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan
• Ballet Now
• Abigail
• Pina
• Ballerina

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

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Once my favorite, and undoubtedly one I'll always treasure nonetheless, here we have Darren Aronofsky.

1. Black Swan
2. The Wrestler
3. mother!
4. The Fountain
5. Noah
6. Requiem for a Dream
7. Pi
8. The Whale

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, my very first favorite director who I really should finally finish up one of these days, Martin Scorsese.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Raging Bull
3. Taxi Driver
4. Shutter Island
5. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
6. The Departed
7. Killers of the Flower Moon
8. Silence
9. After Hours
10. The Irishman

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

One of my favorite fake subgenres. I point it out basically every time I watch a movie to which this applies, so I figured I may as well make a list.

• I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
• Crimson Peak
• Spencer
• The Disappointments Room
• Presence
• Personal Shopper

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, perhaps the major comedy auteur currently working, Edgar Wright.

1. Hot Fuzz
2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
3. Baby Driver
4. The World's End
5. Shaun of the Dead
6. A Fistful of Fingers
7. Last Night in Soho

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, a pair of directors who, for my money, got much much more interesting all the while people liked them less and less, the Wachowski Sisters.

1. The Matrix Reloaded
2. Speed Racer
3. Cloud Atlas
4. The Matrix
5. The Matrix Resurrections
6. Bound
7. Jupiter Ascending
8. The Matrix Revolutions

A list of films I've seen from the year 2013, or I would consider from the year 2013, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2013 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2013.

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Stoker
3. Frozen
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. s Ha
6. The Wolf of Wall Street
7. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
8. Stories We Tell
9. The Wind Rises
10. Magic Magic

...plus 131 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, a man it seems I waited just a bit too long to finally start exploring but I'm thankful for what I have to explore, Abbas Kiarostami.

1. Close-Up
2. Taste of Cherry
3. Certified Copy
4. Like Someone in Love
5. The Report
6. 24 Frames
7. The Traveler

A list of films I've seen from the year 2012, or I would consider from the year 2012, upkept regularly and in order of preference. I define this as films that have their first wide-release in the world sometime during 2012 or have their biggest non-wide release in 2012.

1. Himizu
2. The Master
3. Skyfall
4. The Cabin in the Woods
5. Beyond the Hills
6. The Loneliest Planet
7. Django Unchained
8. The Land of Hope
9. Cloud Atlas
10. Return

...plus 88 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, a man who it seemed as though may be getting carried by Charlie Kaufman's scripts until he proved he most certainly is not, Spike Jonze

1. Being John Malkovich
2. Adaptation.
3. Where the Wild Things Are
4. Her
5. Beastie Boys Story

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. And, because at heart I still retain a lot of the dopey exuberance that drives this man all the same, here we have Quentin Tarantino.

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Django Unchained
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
5. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
9. Jackie Brown
10. Death Proof

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, the distinctly-abrasive Dane himself, Lars von Trier.

1. Dancer in the Dark
2. Melancholia
3. The Five Obstructions
4. Europa
5. Antichrist
6. The Element of Crime
7. Breaking the Waves
8. Nymphomaniac
9. Dogville
10. Medea

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. In this, someone whose every film so far has shaken up the way I see movies, Stephen Dwoskin.

1. Ballet Black
2. Dad
3. Dyn Amo
4. Chinese Checkers
5. Alone
6. Pain Is...
7. The Laboured Party
8. Central Bazaar
9. Outside In
10. Dear s (in memoriam)

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, still the only woman to win the Best Director Oscar and probably the most deserving winner so far this century as far as I'm concerned, Kathryn Bigelow.

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Strange Days
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Point Break
5. Near Dark
6. Blue Steel
7. The Loveless
8. Detroit
9. The Weight of Water
10. K-19: The Widowmaker

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, a man who I don't even know for certain has a feature film to his name, but is singlehandedly reformatting how I see short film, Norman McLaren.

1. New York Lightboard Record
2. Pas de Deux
3. Narcissus
4. Ballet Adagio
5. Begone Dull Care
6. Lines: Vertical
7. New York Lightboard Record
8. Neighbours
9. Fiddle De-Dee
10. Boogie-Doodle

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A few directors for whom I'm still digging into their filmographies but thoroughly expect them to be among my favorites when all is said and done. Here, the Polish director who probably had more music running through his veins than any other director I know, Krzysztof Kieślowski.

1. Three Colours: Blue
2. The Double Life of Véronique
3. Three Colours: Red
4. Three Colours: White

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. Here, probably the list for which it is the most tragic it'll never again, most likely, expand, Satoshi Kon

1. Perfect Blue
2. Paprika
3. Millennium Actress
4. Tokyo Godfathers

Part of a set of lists ranking the films from my favorite directors. As I am a film fan of a certain age, that is, naturally, bound to include one Stanley Kubrick.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. The Shining
5. A Clockwork Orange
6. Lolita
7. Paths of Glory
8. Eyes Wide Shut
9. Barry Lyndon
10. Killer's Kiss

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Figured I might as well put this on here. Especially as I bristle with excitement for Spectre.

1. Skyfall
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Moonraker
4. Casino Royale
5. Licence to Kill
6. Spectre
7. The Living Daylights
8. You Only Live Twice
9. Dr. No
10. Goldfinger

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.