4v291o

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 21, 2025.

Indefensible use of trauma and also bespectacled child actor

Watched on Tuesday April 8, 2025.

Gerard butler: one of the most visceral performances in a movie I’ve seen in a long time. Almost cassevetes level of smoking and drinking and looking like shit.

Watched on Saturday March 29, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

Pure cinema

Sort of good in spite of itself

Michelle pfieffer giving one of the best performances of the 90s in this?

Great movie for fans of tuna (me).

A silly movie that takes itself too seriously.

Some good yelling in this.

Watched on Sunday March 2, 2025.

That’s a really horny guy

Watched on Friday February 21, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2025.

Watched on Friday February 14, 2025.

Hell ya

A part of me wishes this went full spoof, but as is rly fun

Schumer…she’s kind of undeniable

This one isn’t even trying to make sense

Watched on Wednesday February 5, 2025.

Watched on Sunday February 2, 2025.

Pretty average movie that I’m totally in the bag for

Totally satisfying. Inspired casting (topher grace as a feckless morman)

Underrated thing about lynch…the man loved boobs

At times comically French

Great Adam Goldberg movie

Watched on Monday January 13, 2025.

Watched on Sunday January 5, 2025.

Kidman rly is her best in pulp

For someone so mysterious you know exactly the type of guy Dylan is in this doc

Sorry to say but this would’ve been better as a woody Allen movie

Tough to start a movie with the best scene because the rest is inevitably downhill…flashes of undeniable brilliance and I appreciate the scope of and commitment to the swing, but there were too many scenes where I found myself wondering what PTA would’ve done differently, in that his movies are always stranger, less blunt, with dialogue that consistently surprises and delights (some of corbet’s feels, at time, artless). 

Still it’s a movie I’ve been thinking about since I saw it, in particular the awe-inspiring sequence in Carrara, the fervid closeups of brody, and the epilogue - which I found grating in the theater but have come to think is grating for a reason.

Not a great movie but pure pleasure…chalamet is electric (pun intended etc)

Watched on Friday December 27, 2024.

First time I’ve watched this having seen merrily we roll along. Casts it in a different light—less coming-of-age, more time-comes-for-us-all.

Anyway, it’s that rare perfect movie. Every part is the good part.

Fascinating, challenging, knotty, with layers that both build on each other and reveal one another as it goes on. the first half is sort of necessarily slow but the surprises keep coming in the second half, and you can't help but watch with nightmarish glee as the thing unravels. this is a meta movie that never feels "meta" because there's so much behind it, directed by someone who incriminates and questions his own work -- "appropriation" feels both accurate but inadequate for what's explored here -- without coming across as self-aware in that annoying preening way. it's an incredible movie about identity - not in the modern sense of the word, but in the ancient sense, the spiritual or philosophical one. how what we expect might change us bumps up against what's immutable, which is always more slippery, a blessing or a curse.

the only ding on this movie is renate reinsve - good actress but miscast in a part (and character) that should be a talky New Yorker.

Really good '90s woody - full of ideas about the artist vs. the man, how the artist creates his own moral universe, rob reiner is a pleasure, and diane wiest is fantastic.

even better the second time around, given the framing device wasn't as distracting - convinced this is a masterpiece

truly and absurdly of our time

Watched on Monday December 9, 2024.

ittedly i couldn't get through ham on rye, but i loved this one. a little slow in the beginning but the second half is sort of magical, with shots and sequences full of intrigue and longing, the generations diverging but cinematically connected in clever ways - the daughter looking up at the sky transitioning to a shot of her mother looking down at a model of a town, the uncle donning a conductor hat juxtaposed with the train whooshing behind a cluster of naked trees. motion feels integral to this movie - both stylistically and thematically - a kind of whiplash from the adults considering what could've (or has already been) and a forward velocity for the teens, as totemic moments of their youth by in real time.

there's one indelible sequence in this movie - a cataloguing of tics, gestures, and expressions of teenage couples in steamed-up cars in a parking lot, always on the verge of making out. it reminded me of one of those norman rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers - a series of the same boy making different faces. and it has something of a Wet Hot American Summer attention to the rites of adolescence, mined here more for sincerity than irony.

watching this movie feels already like watching it 10 years from now.

• Smiles of a Summer Night

  first bergman film i've seen...was sort of surprised by how stark the difference was between this and an american one from the same time period, in of sex, etc.

• 1917
• Unstoppable
• Joshy

  achieves a tonal balance b/w comedy and drama that's rare for this kind of movie--it could easily have veered into melodrama but never does. incredible chemistry b/w Adam Pally and Jenny Slate.

• Most Likely to Murder
• Holy Motors

  constantly defies your expectations. a movie about movies (and acting) that never feels cute or overtly meta. melancholic and mournful--about being used and being useless. the final scene is so artful and funny and oddly poignant.

• Trust

  Def a movie that's operating in its own ...an incredible first scene with the dad dying of a heart attack...feels like the most gen-x movie ever, presaging reality bites, etc...about family and making the same mistakes our parents did and a sort of genetic/generational baggage (resentment, obligation, etc) ed from parent to child.

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Atlantics
• Lost in America

...plus 93 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.