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I’ve loved this thing since I was a kid, and it’s always moved in waves in my estimation. Parts are goofy, like the extended “karate” fight, a few too many coincidences, and Janet Leigh’s superfluous character.

But GOD there is some crisp, paranoid photography here. Lansbury sizzles, Laurence Harvey really holds the center as the cold, arrested development rich boy. The political thriller boom of the 70’s owes a lot to this.

The Porco Rosso romp to Black Narcissus’ Spirited Away dreaminess.

New movie core memory: showing two noobs this and watching them freak out as it flips the switch to being a horror movie and Kathleen Byron becomes a horror icon in real time.

The actual “101” part of this is my least fave, just running puppy hijinks, but sheesh this thing has a ton of flair in the first half. That sketchbook, bohemian art style, the dog narration, the jazz, the matching dogs and owners. Anita is my number one Disney Princess.

And like, genuine story about community and people coming together to help strangers. Almost teared up when the collie was unbelievably *decent.*

Did a double feature with Malcolm X. I firmly believe this is its spiritual sequel in so many ways. Ridley doing Spike. Doesn’t reach those transcendent heights, but man it feels familiar in a great way, all the way down to the Joe Lewis stuff in both. This is really one of the boldest film choices Ridley made and we don’t talk about it.

One of the great performances.
The greatest biopic and it’s not even close.

This is just one of those ones where nothing about it is for me, despite iring the effort and recognizing the time it came out. Lots of dodgy late 90’s CG, awful awful, *broad* jokes that I could guess while they were happening, basically no surprises at all for me. But the adventure genre is probably the number one hardest to pull off with budget, scope, and writing scripts based on travel and mcguffins. It’s hardly the worst of those, and it’s really not fair that Raiders and Star Wars are some of the only ones to really hit it out of the park. Still another writing on these jokes and less reliance on CG would’ve worked wonders.

Shining, ecstatic moments of music and design, compelling character actors, sprinkled among an unfocused and slow story. The inciting incident of the film comes much much too late in my opinion, and the fun of a getting the gang together sequence could’ve been truncated without so many scenes that simply gave more information and back story (a real personal peeve of mine in place of good character behavior). 

It’s overstuffed with themes, and I can’t help but feel that if it picked one it could’ve hit a lot harder. Out of all the topics it’s covering, music seems to be the entire reason they made the film, and the look at genetic music memory and appropriation was always when I was vibing with this the most. I was really starting to lose faith until The Shot, and as the roof came off the house my own head caught fire. Ludwig Goransson really is a co-author here, more than he ever had room to do in the bigger studio films, and seeing guitar flourishes synched up to a match being lit, or drums matching body blows in a brawl, I finally got what this was going for, and wished that the whole thing had been this way. There are TWO stunning dance sequences, the second lead by the electric head vampire, whom I also wish was in this more.

And let’s not forget Ruth E. Carter, still crushing the costume game decades later, shamelessly and deservedly calling back her Love/Hate knuckles from Do the Right Thing in the post credits scene.

The DeNiro watch. Upgraded to my full favorite performance of his, no asterisk for late period or ing role. That he agreed to do this and trusted the material to be Sam Jackson’s loyal dog following him around, only barking and biting once his friend is betrayed. Just having him in the background watching TV while the sting is going down, what a gift.

Special edition CG rant, but it’s so crazy the animators made the dewback and ronto models and then put them in twelve shots a piece. Really fleshed out the world, there, George.

You can do a whole watch of this just looking for children at play in the shadow of the war machine.

This is a cool double feature cousin to A Serious Man. Spooky music box Carter Burwell score, existential crisis amidst a well of tradition, and mythic, larger than life tale-telling.

Dummyball

This was so cool right after 2001- we’re still obsessed with big black rocks, shots with split gravity, and the ways we communicate.

Frank’s automated neck rest goes way too high and twists his neck like crazy. The guy does a whole scene like that instead of telling Stan there’s a problem.

Did this as a double feature with His Girl Friday to track the lineage of journalism love triangle rom coms, but in actuality they just both have a judge from a Miracle on 34th Street.

Hildy talking to Williams in the cage is for me what Silence of the Lambs is for the rest of you.

I’m certainly not the target audience here, but it was fascinating to see where the landscape was for raunchy and relatable heroines at the time. Trailblazing in some ways, so regressive with the body image stuff, and very stuck in 2001 with its music.

A lot of the jokes bugged me with their logic leaps just to show a crazy thing on screen, but the core cast is very charming and I can always spot a Richard Curtis quartet of friends that I’m not sure has ever existed but is always welcome.

Everyone’s body is breaking down. Synecdoche wishes.

Watched on Monday April 7, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

So weird to revisit this after you know what good movies look like, so much is shot like shit and is hacky. The plot with the underage kids being either persistent creeps or exposing themselves to older dudes is insane. And yet Gosling is a ton of fun, his chemistry with the other two is great, and honestly, actually one of my favorite twists in movies.

Hans Zimmer doing a Randy Newman Pixar score for some reason, something I’ve never heard him do since. Is this movie mostly responsible for Toy Story?

I’ve been watching this as a kid and always connected to it- I think I was drawn to the tenderness between the men well before I knew what that meant. Today it sings. Intense smoldering masculinity from an all-timer collection of stars and hunks, yet they love each other so much.

I’m ready to say this is Deakins’ best photography and the best the sky has ever looked in movies.

I’ve seen this so many times but somehow this watch still blew me away, I noticed so many new details.

The Tommy Lee Jones part is built for the rewatch.  At first you see a smart every man and his evil opposite in a cat and mouse, but it’s his third role that makes this rich. If Bardem is the devil then Jones is the wise old prophet that keeps the mystical tone going.

And what is that missing floor in the building? This thing is so grounded but so haunted and magical.

Once in a while I like to try a movie I know pretty well in black & white to see how it changes things, how the photography holds up. Pleased to announce this becomes a charming blend of Good Night, and Good Luck and s Ha.

And in any level of saturation Holly Hunter in this is my number one crush.

This has never been one of my Wes’s, I love it for launching him to a bigger stage and letting him craft his first bigger bottle world, it just felt a little colder than his later ones. That said there’s a lot great in here, really moved by the Luke Wilson and Stiller performances in an era where they didn’t get to do this kind of thing much, and the montage when Royal runs around with the grandkids is the best. What a dude Hackman was.

Sharing my improv half of this with two theater kids freaking out at their half was a dream.

This time around I really paid attention to the road trip portion. Those middle of nowhere gas stations are devastating. Hedlund’s James Dean-type smoking against a wall and the silhouette of Goodman’s hat, cape, and crutches were like a Wyeth painting. Is that the guy? I don’t know art.

I honestly think this blows E.T. away and becomes the peak version of this kind of story. I still can’t believe what they’re able to do with the character body language and voice acting, people and Giant alike. Hogarth is Spider-Man.

Watched on Monday February 24, 2025.

Worth checking out to see the origins of my beloved Sorcerer. Found it overlong and the beginning section had a very stilted narrative and editing style but once it gets on the road it’s really cool, and you can see why a great action thriller director would take a stab at it. I also see Jaws in this.

Watched on Monday February 17, 2025.

Watched on Monday February 17, 2025.

Finally checked out this legendary piece of concert filmmaking. The one barrier I was just never gonna get over was that I didn’t grow up with this band and the sound often really isn’t for me.

But the craft is undeniable. I see it in conversation with movies. Starts on the bare, bones and all stage like All That Jazz. I’ve heard the David Lynch comparison, and man, the disembodied woman singing during Heaven is pure Club Silencio. Even see an Andrew Scott energy in Byrne. I’d love to rewatch with a fan of the band to get that extra missing piece.

Every rom com copied this formula, yet none of them have the tight story structure, or my god, the jokes. There used to be little jokes like a secret service agent getting yelled at for enjoying music on duty. Or the visual gag of a princess waking up to a dusty old boiler on the ceiling after going to bed underneath angels. 

Both leads have a perfectly satisfying and heartbreaking turn at the end, too. A fully human, evergreen two-hander.

I’m never really into 90’s action but this script is just so tight. All the small personality beats like the downturned photo setting up genuine thriller tension and consequences later. The cop kid shooting stuff is the pill you’ve gotta swallow obviously, what a wacky choice even then.

Man I really didn’t click with this the way the rest of the world seems to. It’s great on vibes but I like, hated the script. I had seen every beat of this kind of boarding school story before, down to character moments like the old nerd offering to purchase these gentleman a beverage and the waitress translating “buy you guys a drink.” I could tell it was the kind of movie that would mosey along until a character had a confession about their past or an emotional breakdown, and all three characters did. Then it ended like Dead Poets.

Write a new comment on this for the sixth time? No problem! 

You can do a watch of this just noticing the transitional set up lines and themes between each time jump back and forth. It’s not just cutting to be cute, it’s all lined up to move each character forward in past and present simultaneously, by little chapters on a theme. Triumphant adaptation.

Watched on Friday December 6, 2024.

This is the movie I’d point anyone to when they want to know what cinematography is. Yeah the huge vistas, the mirage and sunrise shots, but the way sun, shadows, point of view shots, all convey meaning and power. Nothing looks like it.

I love the whole ride, but the first chapter or two of this is stunning.

Didn’t hold up like I hoped. This should be great given the material but so many things positively *creak*. Lot of ADR, clunky pace to the jokes, can’t quite balance the danger and fun. Not the best uses of its leads either.

Cinderella’s features float around her gummy face, she’s legit cross eyed at a key moment, but they knew to dump their budget into that weathered oak of a stepmother face.

I’ve loved this on some level with every watch, but this time solidified it as one of the great satires for me. Takes the fun dialogue of similar screwball comedies but follows the logic all the way down the road. These are awful people in corrupt systems moving the average people around like pawns. The interview scene by the cage with Hildy has always given me chills, and this time around I *really* appreciated the Bruce performance. Having watched other movies from this period recently, the lame fiancé role is really hard to do well without being cartoonishly wealthy or cruel. He’s the right level of fully earnest in a way that just doesn’t fit this world.

I’ve just never liked it. I love drunk Jimmy Stewart, I’ve got eyes and a heart, don’t I?

The rest is so catty and nasty, and not very fun to me. Hepburn is fully unlikable, Grant seems asleep, and it’s so weird that the two barely interact besides two arguments, then reunite at the end, in love.

And why in the world is every scene a casual conversation in an empty studio set? When did the wedding setup take place, where are the servants, attendees, centerpieces? Right at the end you see a room full of seated guests and it’s the first time it feels like a wedding. You’d think you could get so many comedic set pieces out of dodging your ex and reporters while telling caterers where to put chafing dishes and ice sculptures. 

There’s sparky dialogue but the rest doesn’t come together. Except for Jimmy, Jesus, get him another drink.

This time around it was a little cute for me- didn’t hit like it did when I was 18, but god damn the Ulrich Mühe performance is one of those deep, soulful ones you only get so often. We lost him too soon. Embodying both the chilling questioner and the man falling in love with art for the first time. One of my all time fave performances.

Stellan’s yellow-lit castle is such a cold scary world. You even see the tiny yellow windows in the distance when they first point it out on the hill.

Fun one. So strange that on paper a lot of the jokes are my least favorite kinds- people deliberately misunderstanding things or loads of happenstance. Yet in execution this felt like an early triumph for actor improvisation. So many little delivery moments, Hepburn especially, are delightful and surprising. Plotwise did not need a leopard at all, those real cats were stressed out.

This review may contain spoilers.

Impulsively rewatched as a double feature with Sunset Blvd. Always been a private irk that this won best pic, and the intense actress performances and Hollywood setting seemed even more apt for comparison.

This is a weird one, I’m way off consensus on this thing, and I’ll try and vocalize why, but this really doesn’t work for me. The Sunset pairing helped contrast. That film, while being specifically old Hollywood focused, *looks* timeless. The direction really tells a story- which characters are in shadow, or trapped and diminished, all come across in any still frame. Norma’s little silhouette with sunglasses peering through distant blinds. 

I think while having a terribly clever script, Eve is just so amateurishly directed. Or just maybe in an outdated style. Sunset looks like the start of the more daring 50’s, this looks like it was made in the 30’s. Flat coverage of the actors standing in rooms, stilted transitions, a painful room tone crackle. I notice the room tone especially because the score and when it decides to show up is *wacky.* When the narrators, whom I’ll get to, reminisce in voice over, this sentimental, childlike music plays as if it’s a warm childhood flashback in A Christmas Story. But it’s not, the VO is leading to a drunken hostess embarrassing herself in front of her guests. All the musical moments sound like a 30’s family drama.

The bad music heightens my biggest problem, the Eve character and performance. I’m trying to leave room for how revolutionary this must’ve seemed at the time. I have no idea how often real sociopaths were shown on screen, and the reveal must’ve been great. Today it reads tough to me, Anne Baxter is so sticky sweet to everyone she talks to in a way that must read as cloying, it would have to, yet everyone is so taken with her. There are multiple scenes of her telling a childhood story or pouring her hopes and dreams and that same romantic music plays the room watches rapt, like watching the Sermon on the mount (why is Christ on my brain so much.) To me her sweetness seems fake or foolish, and it reflects badly on the rest of the characters that they buy it. Baxter doesn’t really get to have wicked fun until the hour forty-five mark where she starts to get caught in lies, lash out. It’s kind of what I wish the whole thing was, and I still think there were just not many other acting examples of this kind of character. Today we have Nightcrawler and Succession and all these other magnetic examples. So it’s another role that I have to appreciate as more of a stepping stone.

Lastly the biggest wasted opportunity for me was a structural one. If this is the promised two-hander cat and mouse you’d hope for, I think it’s so strange that there’s a cast of six equal weight main characters that all share voice over and plot time. Bette Davis has scenes and dramatic tension more often with her friends than she does with her title rival, and often comes to conclusions about Eve’s manipulations away from her, sharing more with her boyfriend instead of confrontation. When Eve starts to get found out and lectured, it’s by the best friend character and the reporter, whom I found dramatically useless. The guy gets equal VO for some reason while hanging around for two hours, until he finally catches Eve, blackmails her, and bullies her into tears. Why doesn’t the other main character have the final fight when it all comes out, it’s why we’re here! Letting them push each other, spar, dramatically power each other, I think this thing would have an irresistible duel dynamic at the center, where instead we see them talk to everyone else about their troubles. 

These are all why it felt like a 30’s film to me, just had an off pace, and didn’t seem to know how to focus its themes and narrative flow. That said, the framework is so interesting, you could remake this movie with dozens of cool new twists. Davis is really fun and fiery, and I love her little housekeeper friend. A lot of the lines made me chuckle. And all in all a really cool experience to double with Sunset, the themes pairing well, and All About Eve showing me the past that films are coming out of.

One Hundred *Favorites*

Quality is subjective, anyway, and these are ordered as best I can to keep updating as I go. I hope to find many more  new favorites to keep bumping things off.

1. Little Women
2. Fargo
3. Thelma & Louise
4. Nashville
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
6. Inglourious Basterds
7. Parasite
8. Sicario
9. Black Narcissus
10. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You get it

• Dune: Part Two
• Asteroid City
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• The Green Knight
• Emma.
• Little Women
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Phantom Thread
• Moonlight
• Sicario

...plus 97 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Just a lil wishlist.

My wishes granted so far:

Thelma & Louise
No Country for Old Men
Sorcerer

1. Raise the Red Lantern
2. Amadeus
3. Little Women
4. Moonlight
5. Brokeback Mountain
6. The Lives of Others
7. The King of Comedy
8. Contraband
9. Midsommar
10. Fargo

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Come on, let them do their art or their talent or their shtick, *then* you can haul them off to wherever at the end.

• The King of Comedy
• Sunset Boulevard
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
• The Apostle
• Warrior
• Glengarry Glen Ross
• The Sound of Music
• Strangers on a Train
• The Sting
• The Blues Brothers

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

There’s no multiverse in which I get asked to contribute, but I like a list. Ten greatest of all time!

1. Jaws
2. In the Mood for Love
3. Nashville
4. Fargo
5. Inglourious Basterds
6. Parasite
7. Spirited Away
8. Beau Travail
9. Moonlight
10. Do the Right Thing

*Best*

If someone’s missing, maybe I don’t like them enough.

1. Hot Shots! Part Deux
2. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
3. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
4. Argo
5. Pain and Glory
6. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
7. Nashville
8. The Others
9. Phantom Thread
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel

...plus 264 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

What an exciting experience for me. Some of these are so hard to dig up it felt more like the old days pre-Netflix. Some of them sort of deserve to be lost, some are these gems that should be in the classic canon. I’m so in love with his camera and his voice- even in the ones that, for whatever reason do not work, there’s something watchable and energetic. I’ll never really get why the same guy can shoot the red well in Do the Right Thing and also animate swimming sperm with Anthony Mackie’s smiling faces, but the guy constantly tries genres, moods, themes in such volume that there’s a lot to love.

1. Do the Right Thing
2. Malcolm X
3. He Got Game
4. Mo' Better Blues
5. Summer of Sam
6. Jungle Fever
7. 25th Hour
8. Chi-Raq
9. Clockers
10. BlacKkKlansman

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This time around things inverted a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever like Pulp as much as I did as a teen, while Jackie and Bill vol. 1 have soared in my estimation. I think I like different things from films now. Seeing tender little scenes like Beatrix and Honso discuss sushi or Jackie and Max in the car are my new thrills. Still never know where to rank H8. The first third could be in my top 3, the back half is at the bottom.

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

What a year.

1. Little Women
2. Parasite
3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
4. Uncut Gems
5. Midsommar
6. Pain and Glory
7. Marriage Story
8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
9. Knives Out
10. The Lighthouse

• Jeremiah Johnson
• The Silence of the Lambs
• The Hurt Locker
• No Country for Old Men
• Nightcrawler
• Porco Rosso
• Zodiac
• District 9
• The Witch
• Parasite

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

My favorite guys. The catalogue is so big and varying you can find most genres, lose track of hidden favorites, and spot at least ten full on masterpieces. They have three movies in my top ten alone.

I differ with the public on a few. Don’t click with Lebowski and Arizona- Burn is my favorite of their wacky ones. The Man Who Wasn’t There almost poetically gets forgotten when it’s maybe their best looking movie. Buster Scruggs doesn’t seem to have made a big splash, but two or three of the shorts in that are just as good as most whole movies.

The recurring work of Deakins and Burwell on the projects makes such a comforting familiarity, even if on completely different genres. Same with seeing your favorite character actors keep coming back. 

Serious Man is their best but Fargo is my favorite.

1. A Serious Man
2. Fargo
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. Burn After Reading
7. The Man Who Wasn't There
8. Miller's Crossing
9. The Hudsucker Proxy
10. True Grit

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Master, a Thread with my Hard Eight

My early experiences with PTA probably mirror many- I don’t get this but it’s beautiful to look at. After several rewatches I’ve settled into a place of trust and excitement for whatever he brings, even though a few still leave me unmoored. I was glad to know he always had it, as far back as his first, but I’m really glad he eventually traded the multiple storylines of rock bottom for his chess games between two dynamic figures and actors.

1. Phantom Thread
2. The Master
3. Boogie Nights
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Hard Eight
6. Licorice Pizza
7. Magnolia
8. Punch-Drunk Love
9. Inherent Vice

Films with a fantastical or just metaphorical spiral of guilt and penance. One stylized world, maybe with deepening levels, or continuous rooms. Maybe everyone is going through the trials together. Maybe it’s redemptive, or maybe they’ll never get out.

• In Bruges
• Annihilation
• Sorcerer
• All That Jazz
• Spirited Away
• Wristcutters: A Love Story
• 25th Hour
• Synecdoche, New York
• Groundhog Day
• The Sixth Sense

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

My favorite soundtracks are the ones to create a one-of-a-kind atmosphere for their film. Almost their own kind of weather that creates a sense memory.

The Village strings sound like crisp fall air to me. The piano of Road to Perdition feels like the open spaces you on a road trip. I think the score for Crash, a bad movie, is so hauntingly lonely and streetlight-lit it almost single handedly won Best Picture.

I like apparent contradictions in tone. In between the hip hop and tense words of Do the Right Thing, the harmonizing saxophones cool things down like a summer breeze. Recent favorite Sorcerer plays synths from an 80’s creature feature, but the antagonist is nature. 

I love to listen to these on my own and get dropped right back into these worlds.

1. The Village
2. Road to Perdition
3. A Single Man
4. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
5. Star Wars
6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
7. Princess Mononoke
8. Black Panther
9. The Fountain
10. Blade Runner 2049

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.