Hamlet ( Michael Almereyda, 2000): 3/5

Undeniably 2000, in every conceivable way. Ethan Hawke delivers the “to be or not to be” monologue while walking through a Blockbuster.

The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2005): 5/5

🇺🇸️ RUDOLPH BLOW POKE 2020🇺🇸️

The Retrieval (Chris Eska, 2013): 2.5/5

Ashton Sanders before Moonlight.

re-watched L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960): 2.5/5

That awkward moment when your friend goes missing so you stare at rocks for a few hours. Also has the kind of dialogue that makes me want to watch nothing but silent films for at least a month. Last viewing was in 2006; undercutting all narrative expectations and replacing them with ennui still doesn't click with me. Maybe, like Ebert, I'll enjoy this more later in life. One positive note: Antonioni favors one shot in particular that I'm surprised more filmmakers don't steal, in which a character starts out in close-up, walks away some distance, and then a second character steps into the foreground—the sudden disruption of the plane is a real jolt.

The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann, 2013): 3/5

Clocking in at 3 hours and 40 minutes, this is a leaner, more focused documentary when compared to Shoah, but less compelling, also.

re-watched L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962): 1/5

Last Antonioni re-watch for a while. It's not like I'm expecting actual development in characters or with pacing/plot but even to his standards this was a drag. Vitti and Delon lend their presence, but this was testing the limits of how much star power alone can engage me.

The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017): 3.5/5

A lot to appreciate here - the naturalistic feel, the world-building, the themes, the characters, etc. Agree w/ Justin that casting a real cowboy instead of an actor made all the difference. 

Planetarium (Rebecca Zlotowski, 2016): 1/5

What is this movie even about and why does it exist? Is it a Gothic supernatural haunter, a creepy old rich man suspense thriller, a star-is-born actress biopic, a Jewish persecution story, or something that can only be described as "artistic"? Pretty sure anyone involved in its film-making wouldn't be able to answer this question.

re-watched Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996): 2.5/5

I completely forgot that they immediately wasted Emilio Estevez in this and then take 51 minutes to introduce Ving Rhames’ Luther. Also, Ethan Hunt typed in a Usenet address with an ampersand in the main part of the address, which was certainly the most impossible part of his impossible mission. Langley break-in is De Palma at his finest, a multi-spacial engineering problem writ large.

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018): 3/5

Pan-Asian Princess Diaries. (And what, no Mandarin cover of any ABBA songs???) Silly and flawed throughout with a truly vulgar display of wealth. But overall a somewhat delightful and satisfying genre movie. Extra half star included for the divine Michelle Yeoh. #moviepass 

Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016): 2/5

Well directed and edited and gorgeous at times. But what started as a gripping -- if completely mystifying -- execution of best-laid plans becomes a Cubism-level appraisal of the mindset of today's youth.

Kings (Deniz Gamze Erguven, 2017): 1/5

Fascinatingly awful. To say that this film has tonal issues would be like saying the ocean is a little wet. I don't think one right choice was made. 

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (Les Blank, 1980): 3/5

20 minutes of Herzog discussing, planning, and eating a fucking shoe. Errol Morris has no memory of this bet and isn't convinced a bet even took place, which makes this a great deal funnier when you consider that Herzog may have confabulated the whole thing and gone through with it anyway. An absurd and inspiring spectacle.

Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013): 2/5

Very, very weird. A reflection of anxiety about the digital world as refracted through the analog age. Sort of The Last Days of Diskettes.

Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman, 1997): 4/5

 Wiseman takes us inside the day-to-day events that occur in the Ida B. Wells Homes, a predominately-black public housing project that was once located in the south side of Chicago before being demolished in 2011. One of the failures of U.S. bureaucratic government programs is that they remove the individuality of people targeted for aid, creating a system of spreadsheets, departmental mandates, quotas and pie charts systematically turning flesh and blood into data. Wiseman reverses the process, focusing on complex human lives to expose a more exact tragedy: institutionalized degradation as racism's endgame.

re-watched The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991): 5/5

SOTL has it all: corpses in bathtubs! Night vision! Cannibalism! A cute dog! Jodie Foster's career best performance! Weird bugs! An iconic mask! Killer lines! One of the best final acts ever! A movie so good it premiered in February and then won Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars a whole year and one month later.

re-watched Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960): 5/5

This veritable knockout is one of my all-time faves. Great prison movie, no bullshit, just plenty of scenes of dudes digging holes. So understated and unpretentious, yet so poignant and dynamic that the underlying scrupulousness hardly ever comes to the fore. Revisiting it is always every bit as enthralling as experiencing it the first time around.