rewatched A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974): 3.5/5

Some parts of this are absolutely genius; other parts are surprisingly insufferable, and not re: the personalities on display (wherein you could argue that the detestability is intentional), rather Cassavetes' style. While I do understand the repercussions of questioning the technique of such a prestige and distinct director—and perhaps my Cinephile Card will be revoked for saying so—I'd be fibbing if I said my attention weren't constantly ebbing during the longer stretches of supplementary hyperrealism he often implores.

There's been a trend in his catalog, though, from FACES to HUSBANDS to this, where the interludes feel more relevant and less superfluous; just as well, the most potent moments become even stronger, and the ratio heads upward. On top of that, A Woman Under the Influence has the advantage of Gena Rowlands giving the unhinged performance of a lifetime (that could easily be mistaken for legitimate nuttiness; I mean, seriously, how can someone act like that?).

The Parenting (Craig Johnson, 2025): 1/5

A fairly stacked cast piqued my interest, but this is fairly awful. None of the humor lands and the horror aspect doesn't feel that much better. A waste of talent on this drivel.

Adolescence (Philip Barantini, 2025): 3.5/5

A remarkable portrait of all-encompassing devastation, from its initial ripple effect until its final, irreversible cascade. Fantastic performances at every turn here, and the one-take thing is additive rather than a mere gimmick.

Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan, 2024): 3/5

Towering central performances, lovely lived in detail, a sense of play that never overpowers a natural feel. If you love theatre and/or Manchester By The Sea, add a star.

Heart Eyes (Josh Ruben, 2025): 1/5

Bargain bin Eli Roth Thanksgiving which is already discount Scream

Emilia Perez (Jacques Audiard, 2024): 2/5

If one of the Cannes jurors last year were Mexican, I doubt this would have won the Jury Prize. Zoe's a joy to watch though. Her numbers are the best in the film by a mile. But this is a mess and a misfire. Only Almodovar could have pulled this off. Karla Sofia Gascon has presence. Looking forward to seeing her in better films. Adriana Paz does a lot with a little. And can someone explain to me why Edgar Ramirez continues to be wasted? The guy turned in one of the great performances of the 2010s and here he plays a role any telenovela himbo could have handled.

rewatched Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939): 5/5 

Life as fire burning a match, rapid combustion with no time for grief. A passion for flying only matched by an inner death drive that is not a matter of choice, but of inexorable need. Lighting a friend’s cigarette is worth a thousand words, the only proper way of saying goodbye to a friend is by moving on with life. All of life’s dynamics in a microcosm of aviation. Absolutely unforgettable, just so forceful and deeply true.

Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2025): 2/5

the only thing that worries me is that this looks like an art piece from a society about to collapse

The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdonavich, 1971): 5/5

I refuse to believe that anyone could finish this without having died a little on the inside, irrevocably calcified by the reminder (or newfound knowledge) that such infinitesimal places did and still do exist—i.e. places engaged in a Sisyphean battle against the tedium of life and experiencing a collective slow death by inertia.

These former idylls melting into pits of desperation from which there is no escape. Bogdanovich’s aim feels neither condemning nor sadistic, though, and he finds ways to oddly but sincerely romanticize his barren template of Podunk, USA, often in the same exact sentence that he lays waste to some blanketed notion of security or comfort.

Every inhabitant of Anarene is either sad or confused or totally unsure of themselves—or, most often, some combination of the three—and if that’s not the most digestible portrayal of crumbling ruralism, then it’s the most honest. This is nostalgia without the rose-colored tint; Americana stripped of the storybook invincibility to which it often gets tethered when baked into reminiscences or exhumed from the deepest recesses of our sugar-coated memories.

We might look back on this tiny dirt-road town with fondness and warmth—with a yen for its non urbanized slowness and simplicity—but beneath the overly sentimentalized veneer are prisoners of their humble environment, a community destined for rot, and a lifestyle on the razor’s edge of extinction. Christ, I had to check my own pulse a few times to make sure I was still alive—the film is admittedly an endurance test of compound miserablism to some extent, so much so that its biggest narrative pivots feel excessive.

Like any train wreck, however, the larger the flame, the harder it is to look away, and Bogdanovich’s uncanny dexterity behind the lens and in the cutting room is a perfect complement to the gallery of entrenched performances from actors both young and old. Everyone’s great, but my MVP is Cloris Leachman—when her film-long piety finally cracks and she flings a fresh pot of coffee up at her kitchen cabinets, I swear I started bending my fingers backward to distract from the pain of watching it transpire.

To Catch A Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955): 3/5

Somewhat middling for a Hitchcock picture, but ONLY because it’s a Hitchcock picture.

Opus (Mark Anthony Green, 2025): 2.5/5
If I were a newborn baby that’s never seen a movie before I’d be so shocked by the twists and turns of this one. 

(We as a society need to accept that the “strange things occurring in a retreat during a weekend” subgenre is played out and needs to stop.)

Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, 2025): 2.5/5

There's almost certainly a different movie that wasn't chopped and recut (and revoiceovered, to the point you can hear different voiceover sessions back to back) to pieces in the edit. Whether it's better, I'm less confident, as I found it frequently incoherent and most of the major performance choices I kind of hated. (Toni Collette innocent!) Love you, Bong! Sorry! The creepers were cute!

Holland (Mimi Cave, 2025): 2.5/5
babe, wake up. there’s a new movie with nicole kidman and her shitty husband #37475. 

The Rule of Jenny Pen (James Ashcroft, 2025): 2/5

Raising Cain - The Late Years.

Credits just rolled and I still don’t understand at all why John Lithgow had to put on fake teeth, blue contacts, and an accent here but ok

Apart from the excellent performances by the two leads, particularly John Lithgow who really seemed to be having the time of his life and having a lot of fun playing the character, there's not much else that really stands out here.

The Horror elements are quite soft, as the movie actually works best as a metaphor of how when we get older we sometimes end up losing a big part of our "true selves", our autonomy and the essence that used to define us as individuals, and quite often that essence is completely lost.

 

 

The Monkey (Ozgood Perkins, 2025): 2.5/5

The family drama makes zero sense, so we’re left with the zany comedy of violent death. Which, amazingly, is nearly enough.  

 

The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949): 3.5/5

A very unusual experience. Startling framing and composition, including during a scene where, under Patricia Neal’s drooling gaze, Gary Cooper drills into a wall of granite, arm muscles bursting—a scene that is nakedly sexual enough to embarrass Freud himself. All the characters are just philosophical positions, but the ideas remain bracing. 

 

Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, 1920): 3/5

Not strong dramatically, but full of violent and agit-prop images and harrowing situations, especially for its time. Equally amazing to see regular, normal black life in America, 1919. “The earliest movie from an African-American director known to still exist.”

 

Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux, 1925): 3/5

Paul Robeson plays an itinerant preacher who is a baaaaaad man. Has the same penchant for flash-back that Within Our Gates has, sapping dramatic power but allowing Micheaux to present and explain late revelations. Paul Robeson played football at Rutger’s College, where he was the only black student, graduated from law school, played football in the NFL, served as a civil rights activist, and as a popular singer released 276 songs. Other than that, he did nothing with his life.

 

Garbo Screen Test, 6m (Joseph Valentine, 1949): 4/5

A screen test for a potential comeback. She starts by smiling broadly and warmly, and she’s a stranger. Then she closes her mouth and looks forlorn and toward the ceiling, and boom there’s Garbo. An incredible testament to her persona, and certainly what Warhol was intending to do with his own screen tests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDErHzxZnSY

 

Angels Have Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938): 4/5

Tough but warmly emotional Cagney is perfect in this entertaining YA gangster picture, the emotional conclusion of which hinges on whether Cagney cries while walking to the electric chair. 

 

Empire of the Sun, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1987): 3/5

Half Spielberg magic, energy and wonder—and half bogged-down hunger, sickness, misery and death. This kind of suffering is normally dished out to people of color (looking at you Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star). Here Spielberg makes a warm-up for Schindler’s List but only dares to depict real-life war camps with nice WASPs as the victims. Rated 3.8 on Letterboxd, same as fucking Close Encounters. 

 

Always, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1989): 2/5

In the first 10 minutes we get strong Only Angels Have Wings vibes and a three-person simultaneous three-way conversation that is a fine steal from His Girl Friday. But as the film cycles into a dumb supernatural Cyrano story, we discover that Dreyfuss is no Cary Grant. I actually usually like Dreyfuss, but he’s terribly miscast here and his anxiety brings out the most grating aspects of this character.

 

The First Slam Dunk (Takehiko Inoue, 2022): 4/5

As close a movie can come to the actual feeling of watching a good sports event, where you know and care about the players. 11-year-old Jack was as fully engaged as I was. The first time I’ve dipped into the surprisingly robust “sports anime” genre, but not the last. 

 

 

Frank Borzage Film Fest

“For Borzage, love was not a plot device; it was everything.”

 

Street Angel (Frank Borzage, 1928): 3/5

Borzage has a thing for tall, slim, male, gormless, sweet, naive, dumb, emotional, direct male protagonists, and I’m here for it (and him: Charles Farrell, also so fuckable …ahem …good… in Borzage’s 7^th Heaven, Lucky Star, and The River (not to mention Murnau’s City Girl.)

 

Bad Girl (Frank Borzage, 1931): 3/5

Despite the salacious title, this is the most straightforward drama-free possible romance where boy meets girl, woos her, they get married, she gets pregnant, he’s happy about it, she has the baby, and they live happily ever after. 

 

A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932): 3.5/5

Although it’s kind of a war picture, what really matters is the love connection between casual Hemingway Gary Cooper and innocent but good-to-go nurse Helen Hayes—lounging in gauzy, dappled shadow and light. After a shockingly frank pre- and post-sex sequence in the first act, Cooper is even permitted to mention that he has just taken her virginity. I love Adolphe Menjou as Cooper’s surgeon friend who constantly calls him “Baby,” with great affection. 

 

Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933): 3/5

A sweet love story among the Depression-era poor, where the main obstacle to the romance is that Spencer Tracy (while charming) is a negging asshole. I really like Loretta Young. She was 20 at the time, and this was her 50th film. 

 

Desire (Frank Borzage, 1935): 3.5/5

A funny, action packed, and clever second act makes up for an OK beginning and end. I’ve come to really love Gary Cooper. He’s naïve and handsome, and I prefer both him and Marlene Dietrich in this movie’s comedic, parodic mode. It’s her first film after her split from Von Sternberg, and she seems happy to let loose.

 

The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage, 1940): 3/5

Clearly displays the whole Nazi thing in 1940–a contemporary protest document, of the (relevant) rise of the racist assholes. Also features Jimmy Stewart and a romance. As in The Sound of Music, the downbeat third act shifts into a long action sequence and an ultra-nationalistic evocation of god and country. 

 

 

Late Works Film Fest

I’m hit and miss on Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast, but I’m loving her most recent season, which focuses on the late careers of Hawks, Stevens, Minnelli, Preminger, and Wilder among others. It’s easy to find someone talking about Rio Bravo, but who is talking about the production and qualities of Red Line 7000 and King of the Pharaohs? No one!

 

Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965): 3.5/5

In the tradition of Hawks movies where a company of men (and, more incidentally, women) competently ply their dangerous trade with bravery and a casual and cool stoicism—Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo, Hatari, and Red River. This has a large cast of characters, all playing it cool while pairing off and falling in love, including at least four strong and distinct women (Longworth calls it the only Hawks movie from a woman’s point of view). It’s interesting to see Hawks’ trope updated to a sexually adventurous and explicit 1960s. Some excellent, real racing sequences, which were filmed first and then the drama was built around the footage. Also known for its prescient use of product placement and indeed the characters drink Pepsi from a huge lighted soda dispenser while hanging out in the courtyard of a Holiday Inn. 

 

King of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955): 2/5

Lots of pageantry and a cast of thousands—these are not what I look for in a Hawks movie, but I suppose he succumbed to the widescreen blockbuster demands of the time. Dramatically turgid, and with horrible sexual politics and a protagonist who uh, owns tons of slaves. Worst sin of all: the costumes are incredibly ugly. Terrible script co-written by William Faulkner.

 

Greatest Story Ever Told (George Stevens, 1965): 2/5

Jaw-dropping landscapes (all shot in the American West) and some delicious Stevens ultra-slow crossfades. But Jesus, even portrayed by a typecast Max von Sydow, is a stiff—and the by-the-numbers retelling moves glacially. 

 

The Only Game in Town (George Stevens, 1968): 3.5/5

The only reason to watch this cracked romance between a Vegas showgirl and a piano player with a gambling addiction, adapted (barely) from a play, is for Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor—and indeed that’s plenty. They are both excellent, and it’s a pleasure to watch them. Beatty’s first movie after Bonnie and Clyde; he wanted to work with Stevens. 

 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Vincente Minnelli, 1962): 3/5

I always like it when a character changes in the middle of a work, and here Glenn Ford is a feckless cad for half the film and the main actor in a cool spy thriller in the other half. Studio-bound and artificial, but not really in a bad way. Ingrid Thulin, so great in Bergman films like Cries and Whispers and The Silence, reportedly had a hard time on the set (her lawyer wrote a memo to Minnelli telling him he was not permitted to touch and move her body to demonstrate how to stand)—and eventually her voice was dubbed over by Angela Lansbury (of all people). These big epics demand expressive body language and gestural movements, the opposite of Bergman, where battles are all internal.

 

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970): 2/5

Dull, hazy, self-satisfied, and tainted by a first act full of gay panic. I can’t imagine how unwatchable Wilder’s beloved three-hour cut would be. 

 

Fedora (Billy Wilder, 1978): 3/5

An interesting pair with Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, as William Holden deals with yet another reclusive and insane female movie star. This is one is, if anything, more cynical and despairing: “Monroe and Harlow. Those were the lucky ones.” The last hour (!) is a series of gonzo flashbacks that invoke both The Substance and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane—but that unfortunately don’t involve Holden at all. 

 

Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968): 3.5/5

Despite its horrendous reputation, I found this to be a pretty even-handed, funny, and LSD positive comment on the clash between the (naive, confused and hypocritical) youth-culture and the squares (here represented by not only “the man,” but also by those who are forced to participated in the movie’s “gangster drama.”). Any movie where the head of a crime family is named “God” and is played by Groucho Marx (the ultimate Little Dickens) is too complex and fun to dismiss as a mere failure.

 

 

Hong Sang-Soo Film Fest

The modern director whose works feel the most like those of (my beloved) Ozu to me. Interested in repetition and variation. Serene and full of forgiveness for his characters. 

 

List, 29m (Hong Sang-Soo, 2011): 3/5

A sweet romance where the irony comes both from the romantic formula (made bare in the form of a literal list) as well as from what we know Hong Sang-Soo’s director characters are always ultimately like. 

 

Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-Soo, 2013): 3/5

A young woman has three very very similar conversations with three men who like her, with the same phrases popping up again and again and passed around among the four of them. 

 

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-Soo, 2013): 2.5/5

One of HSS’s least playful, formally, although there is some twinning and looping of situations, which for once feels redundant rather than additive. Also, for once, our lead actress (who HSS only used in a small part in one other film) is amateurish—something that reminds me that the acting is always excellent in his films.

 

Hotel by the River (Hong Sang-soo, 2018): 3.5/5

A uniquely somber tone, emphasized by the wintery setting and cinematography. Searching, philosophical, and open-ended. contrasts a father and his estranged sons with two women in the same hotel. The men are separated from one another and their own emotions and the women have a close and emotional bond. “People have two minds. One that walks on the street and the other that communes with the eternal.”

 

In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-Soo, 2021): 3.5/5

Performs a kind of magic trick two-thirds of the way through—where something so real and out of character for Hong Sang-soo happens that I was sent scurrying to IMDB to check on the real-life health of Lee Hye-young, the main actress.

 

Introduction, 1h6m (Hong Sang-Soo, 2021): 2.5/5

This one is not well liked on Letterboxd, so I was sure I was going to find something about it that everyone was missing, but nay not so. Just some disconnected scenes from the life of a young man who seems intent to have a deep conversation with someone, but never manages to.

 

Walk Up (Hong Sang-Soo, 2022): 3/5

Tells the story of 5 or 10 years in a director’s (typically self-centered and blithe) life, as he moves from the ground floor, to the second floor, to the top floor of an apartment building. No real formal trickery unless you count non-signposted temporal leaps.

 

 

Companion (Drew Hancock, 2025): 2/5

Maybe it was just Jack Quaid's calling to play pathetic bitchy annoying twink boyfriends, idk he plays them so well.

The Last Showgirl (Gia Coppola, 2024): 2/5 
I really wanted to like this. But it is ultimately undone by a bad script. No subtext, too contrived. Even Pam’s performance isn’t as good as I hoped it would be mainly because of how she’s directed. This movie needed some stillness and it never came. Too many interstitial sequences of characters standing around Vegas. In essence, it’s a short film padded to 85 minutes. It could gave been great at 20 minutes. Jason Schwartzman is pretty stellar in his one scene. This may be the most a Coppola has ever grappled with class struggle, for the record. 

Love Me (Andrew Zuchero, Sam Zuchero, 2024): 1.5/5
They had access to the entire internet and basically decided to be influencers in a toxic relationship eternally filming a Blue Apron ad.

Flight Risk (Mel Gibson, 2025): 1/5
Mel Gibson trying to be Peter Berg, which is sorta like diarrhea yearning to be normal poop.
Also, between this and the barely there part in Heretic, it’d seem Topher Grace will possibly act in your film for the price of a grocery store rotisserie chicken.

Grand Theft Hamlet ( Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, 2023): 3.5/5

You’ve never seen anything like Grand Theft Hamlet, the wild documentary about a group of professional and amateur actors putting on a site specific production of Hamlet within the video game Grand Theft Auto. (And yes, we got a theatrically released movie made in GTA V before GTA VI.) Shot entirely within the video game, it’s both a technical marvel and a heartwarming, hilarious ode to creativity and connection.

 
This rendition of Hamlet seems limited by gameplay, but carries an unlimited budget in the world of GTA, making this the single most unique version of Hamlet put to screen. However, Grand Theft Hamlet's most impressive accomplishment is not in the production of Hamlet itself - it's in the way these people cultivated human connection in a world that is designed to be completely barren of it. In the world of GTA, crime and violence is rewarded, NPCs walk around the city, and even the playable characters show zero emotion. Yet, this production manages to seize that very gameplay and turns it on its head, to create a very real and beautifully hilarious experience with strangers online.
Grand Theft Auto Online is normally a hellscape and I hate it so much BUT this is good! Bravo to all involved! Now do Romeo and Juliet.

A Prince (Pierre Creton, 2023): 2/5
There is literally a MEDUSA PENIS in this film that I was not prepared for. Outside of that, I never thought an 82-minute queer film about a horny dude would be such a slog.

The Monkey (Oz Perkins, 2025): 2.5/5
A black comedy about the senseless cruelty of death from a filmmaker whose mother died in 9/11. Even the Final Destination movies give their freak accidents more ceremony than the Grim Reaper affords his victims here

A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024): 3/5
Chalamet's Dylan imitation borders on ingenious. Still, I think the film is at its best when it doesn't seem like it's even thinking about Dylan, instead focusing on quiet moments and idiosyncrasies between people. Little moments, little moments: like the way it perfectly (and inadvertently?) captures the poetry of smoking a cigarette while waiting outside for someone to leave their house on a sunny winter morning in New York.

Love Hurts ( Jonathan Eusebio, 2025): 1/5
“fake movie that the characters in a real movie are watching” ass movie


You're Cordially Invited (Nicolas Stoller, 2025): 1/5
You cordially get one star.

Wolf Man (Leigh Whannell, 2025): 2/5

Whannell's Wolf Man comes 15 years after Universal's disappointing THE WOLFMAN, with Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, and it's even less inspired, probably thinking it's shaking things up by playing with (and mostly abandoning) the classic mythology and taking a few different, albeit unsuccessful approaches, but at the end of the day, it's still another example of assembly-line IP that will evaporate from your memory by the time you hit the restroom when it's over.


Better Man (Michael Gracy, 2024): 2.5/5
At last. A music biopic that dares to ask: what if fame doesn't make you happy?


One of Them Days (Lawrence Lamont, 2025): 3.5/5
Trying to wrap my mind around the studio's malpractice of dumping this super funny Keke Palmer and SZA girl-buddy comedy in early January?? you dumb fucks, this is good actually!!


Official Secrets (Gavin Hood, 2019): 3/5
Everyone who has had a bad experience with a sub editor needs to see this movie. Also, it doesn't transcend the type of movie you might think it is from that poster and that boring title, but it's a really good version of that movie.

 

Companion (Drew Hancock, 2025): 4/5

I really enjoyed the twists of this story, which ends up being pretty thought-provoking (and I think realistic) regarding the future of technology. This review is necessarily and blessedly spoiler free, unlike the preview, the poster, and half of the reviews on Letterboxd. 

 

Presence (Steven Soderbergh, 2025): 4/5

The camera is the POV of a haunted presence in a house. Dramatically this means there is always an additional “person” in any scene and formally it means that all scenes tend to be one-shots, more of a high-wire act while also being more like live theater. What’s more, the POV presence starts to feel like the representation of the audience itself—a creepy voyeur listening in on the weakness, doubt and crime within the family. A pretty satisfying little mystery, and at 1h24m a perfect little novella of a film. 

 

A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024): 4/5

One of my favorite genres is “young person succeeding in fulfilling their musical dreams.” See my outsized love for Coda, Sing Street, School of Rock, and the four or five seasons of American Idol I watched. It just gets me, what can I say? This movie is that same story except the hopeful young kid is writing and singing some of the greatest songs ever written. I’m not proud of it, but tears of joy abounded.

 

The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi, 2024): 4/5

Sebastian Stan nails it—perfect lip- and hand-work. I forgot almost immediately that the main character was who we think of as Donald Trump, and just thought of him as a schlubby, awkward dude. Hard worker. Doesn’t drink. No moral center. Filmmakers do a good job of balancing the well-intentioned behavior with the bad, but his whole syndrome is here.

 

Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024): 3/5

Filmmaking of the highest order, but the focus on human suffering makes it hard to appreciate, much less enjoy or take pleasure in. At 2h20m, it’s a whole lot to put yourself through.  

 

Here (Robert Zemeckis, 2024): 3/5

Can a movie be middlebrow and cosmic at the same time? Eternity in a cup of weak tea. 

 

Goodrich (Hallie Meyers-Shyer, 2024): 3/5

Well-worn ground, but well-appointed and buoyed by good acting and a script that moves right along—just like all of (her mother) Nancy Meyers’ movies. Since it’s about a father whose career is stalled and is forced to be a better father to his kids (a situation that bears some superficial similarities to mine), I could have been unnerved or insulted, but instead I was lightly entertained.

 

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina, 2024): 3/5

Like all of Taormina’s hyper-specific movies, this is about the “feel” of a party. The feeling as it rises in intensity and emotion, and then the feeling as it wrapping up and people start to break off into their own parties until it’s the story to a whole scene or community. Like La Dolce Vita or Dazed and Confused, but much worse. 

 

Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, 2024): 2/5

A tough hang with a deeply unhappy, aggressive, and unpleasant character. I kept praying for it to turn, but damn if it’s not a film about NOT being able to turn. Never never never being able to turn. 

 

Wicked (Jon M. Chu, 2024): 2/5

Some fun musical sequences, namely What is This Feeling (Loathing) and Popular, but mostly candy-coated crap. Having recently seen the play at the Pantages, I can say there is no reason whatsoever for the second half to exist, dramatically or in terms of songcraft, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

 

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, 42m (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1999): 3/5

A plucky young girl in Dakar, Senegal—whose legs are horrendously wasted by polio (timely!)—sells newspapers. In most hands, this story would be tragic, but instead there’s a lot of life and community here. 

 

Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1992): 3/5

A woman who was exiled from a small village for having sex with a man returns as a rich older woman to take vengeance against the man, buying the whole village (literally) and all the people within (with fans, refrigerators, and fireworks). A parable of the evils of outside money on Africa (probably). Shot in Mambéty’s own home town. 

 

Smash Palace (Roger Donaldson, 1981): 3/5

Character disintegration, New Zealand edition. Man loses his wife, his daughter, and his mind, in that order. 

 

The In Laws (Arthur Hiller, 1979): 3.5/5

If you like Alan Arkin’s and Peter Falk’s schtick as much as I do, most of this is a delight. Lots of Bugs-Bunny-like undercutting of the “crime drama, shootouts and car chases” they are carried through.

 

La Ronde (Max Ophüls, 1950): 2.5/5

An elegant conceit, but its lofty point of view defies emotional engagement, making the whole thing a bit trying. Very frank about sex for 1950—these lovers ain’t just kissing. 

 

Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015): 3/5

From his entertaining and knowledgeable podcast appearances, I know Perry loves horror movies, and he has made one here in the Bergman/Polanski mode. Lots of direct confrontation, creeping dread, paranoid delusions, and Identity dissolution. Well-made, emotionally intense, mastery of music and sound, hard to watch. 

 

The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011): 3.5/5

Funny and mean comedy about a brother and sister on a road trip, full of humiliation and self-revelation. Entertaining. 

 

Herschel Gordon Lewis: Godfather of Gore, 17m (Sean Baker, 2019): 3/5

A brief interview with the director. Mostly interesting to note how much Baker likes the guy.

 

Blood Feast (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963): 3/5

Of historic value, introducing a new kind of exploitation. Scrappy, campy, and basically harmless. One of John Waters’ favorites. 

 

Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance, 2012): 3/5

Love the cross-generational storytelling and three-part, three-drama structure. Very 19^th-century novel, and I’m here for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get around to relating the different stories to one another in an emotionally coherent way—like maybe saying something/anything about the relationship among generations?

 

Limitless, rw (Neil Burger, 2011): 3/5

A dumb but easy-to-enjoy thriller. It’s the ultimate fantasy to just be really, really smart suddenly and understand how everything works, gaining money and power along the way (or am I revealing too much). 

 

 

Robert Aldrich Film Fest

A varied career.

 

Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956): 3/5

Cowardly officer Eddie Arnold sends hatchet-faced company Captain Jack Palance and his men to capture a small town, which turns out to be packed with Germans. Some good action, but the dialogue and melodrama are overwritten and over-emoted. Palance makes a three-course meal of every syllable. 

 

The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965): 3.5/5

A plane filled with some of the great character actors of the 60s crashes in the Sahara, setting up a sort of 12 Thirsty Men chamber piece. James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine, and George Kennedy are all a pleasure to watch—although at 2h22m, it’s third act feels unnecessarily drawn out. 

 

Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973): 2.5/5

A lightly comic and very shaggy action/adventure with a bizarre premise: Lee Marvin is the world-champion hobo on a Quixotic quest to ride a train lorded over by vicious guard Ernest Borgnine. A couple of good action scenes and even more head-scratching ones.

 

…All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich, 1981): 3/5

Aldrich’s final film, and proof that 1981 is, in many ways, still the 1970s. Expert naturalistic acting from Peter Falk, Burt Young, and the Godfather’s Luca Brasi himself, just hanging out realistically in the cheap motels of lowest levels of show biz, traveling around the cold and industrial Northeast. The choice of obviously fake-ass women’s wrestling as the milieu is inexplicable but doesn’t ruin the movie.  

 

 

John Waters Film Fest

No new Waters films in the last 20 years, but IMDB says he’s in pre-production on movie called Liarmouth, to star Aubrey Plaza. Shrug emoji.

 

Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977): 3.5/5

Funny and disgusting behavior abounds. Does someone cut his own penis off with scissors? Is there rat-eating, cockroach eating, and cannibalism? Bien sur. 

 

Polyester (John Waters, 1981): 3.5/5

Waters begins his series of perverse and filthy parodies of film genres he grew up loving—here family melodramas of the ‘60s starring people like, well, Tab Hunter. Waters has a relatively large budget here, and spends most of it on garish home furnishings. Divine is (still) great as the long-suffering housewife.  

 

Cry Baby (John Waters, 1990): 3/5

Broad and mildly amusing celebration of greaser and square culture as well as juvenile delinquent films. Lots of lovingly presented costumes, songs, and other cultural artifacts from the era. 

 

Serial Mom (John Waters, 1994): 2/5

Barely amusing, the stuff I had seen from this movie turned me off Waters for the rest of his career (a mistake). Tries and fails to coast on the frisson of seeing a normal, middle-aged woman hit people with her car, etc. But our main character is so judgmental (usually anathema in a Waters film) that she kills people for offenses like wearing white after Labor Day. Ha? The last third swerves into a satire of criminals-as-celebrity culture. 

 

Pecker (John Waters, 1998): 3.5/5

Waters’ breeziest, most sincere, least ironic movie (since Female Trouble?), and the movie where the characters seem most happy and self-actualized. My favorite bit is when (THE) Cindy Sherman offers a five-year-old girl downers. 

 

Cecil B. Demented (John Waters, 2000): 2.5/5

Basically, it’s just one joke—reviling mainstream cinema. The most interesting bit is where each person in the filmmaking group reveals tattoos of their favorite filmmakers, including Otto Preminger, Sam Peckinpah, Sam Fuller, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, David Lynch, Fassbinder, Almodovar, Spike Lee, Herschel Gordon Lewis, and William Castle—all provocateurs with questionable taste.

 

A Dirty Shame (John Waters, 2004) 3.5/5

A real return to filthy form. Waters’ horniest movie—an exaggerated “nudie.” Sex-positive, pervert-positive, kink-positive, and head-injury-positive. Waters gives all the best lines to the anti-sex brigade: “He has no right to be so hard!” “My daughter’s a good girl. She hates sex!” “Tolerance went too far, and we all know it! No more tolerance!”

 

 Top 20 Films of 2024 (in descending order)

Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)

Anora (Sean Baker)

Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik)

Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan)

Do Not Expect Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)

A Complete Unknown (James Mangold)

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)

A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)

His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)

My Old Ass (Megan Park)

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)

Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos)

The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi, 2024)

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

Soundtrack to a Coup d’état (Johan Grimonprez)

Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller)

MadS (David Moreau)

The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)

 

Next 10 (descending) 

Aggro Drift (Harmony Korine)

The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders)

Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)

Strange Darling (JT Mollner)

V/H/S Beyond (Jordan Downey, Justin Martinez, Kate Siegel, Virat Pal, et al.)

Nightbitch (Marielle Heller)

A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)

In a Violent Nature (Chris Nash)

I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)

Saturday Night (Jason Reitman)

 rewatched Millennium Mambo ( Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001): 3.5/5

Noise and drug-infused neon dreams as a result of the inability to move on from the past, always coming back to the memories that we so desperately cling on to and remember only the good things about. The opening scene is one of the best there is.

Music (Angela Schanelec, 2023): 1/5

No plot no vibes just scenic shots and shit singing. I can respect Schanelec for committing so strongly to such a distant and cold film language but man are they a drag to watch. I'm sure there's a small subset of cineastes who actually enjoy them and another group who act like they do. 

The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, 2024): 3.5/5

Good film. I never want to see this again.

rewatched Fantasia (Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, 1940): 5/5

Wouldn’t have hated a Garfield cameo. Don’t care that Garfield didn’t exist when the film was made. Would have been fun to see him.
Much druggier vibe than I remembered. Dancing mushrooms, boys? Not subtle!
Much hornier vibe as well. The centauresses were topless and looked hot!


Babygirl (HalinaReijn, 2024): 2/5
Bitches will romanticize being dominated by a mediocre white man and then wonder why Trump won


Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader, 2024): 3.5/5
An interesting reunion between Schrader and Gere, and a final collaboration with Russell Banks. More formally interesting than the typical Schrader and a big return to form after Master Gardener. I did enjoy how Leonard Fife is kind of Schrader contemplating aged mediocre white men who stumble into importance and become morally ruined by their imposter syndrome.


Presence (Steven Soderbergh, 2025): 3/5
Soderbergh does Paranormal Activity. Do not expect James Wan jump scares or Ti West camp. This is something between The Innocents and A Ghost Story as disquieting and devastating as it is conservative.


After Blue: Dirty Paradise (Bertrand Mandico, 2021): 3/5
My first Mandico film and it's a soft 3. I was sooo on board for the first hour and sooo ready for it to be over the last 70 minutes. It's hard to dislike a film that's so original and visually breathtaking and points should be awarded for the insane world building and absurd horniness of literally every scene. But there's barely a plot to all of this, just a mother-daughter mission and an acid trip. I can forgive that if a film is 90 minutes but for 130 I would need an acid tab of my own.


The Crime is Mine (Francois Ozon, 2023): 2.5/5
The twee French gay version of Anatomy of a Fall. I don’t know why the whole film wasn’t about Isabelle Huppert, nor why it takes more than an hour for her to show up.


Here (Bas Devos, 2023): 2/5
Not to be confused with the recent Robert Zemeckis movie, this Belgian arthouse drama revolves around a foreign construction worker preparing to move back home and another foreigner studying moss who he eventually meets and has a possibly romantic encounter with. The operative word in that sentence though is "eventually" as this is a film that hums to its own beat, not worrying about the plot moving forward until towards the end. Thematically, this feels on-point with the male protagonist not trying his hand at romance in Belgium until it is too late for a relationship to properly develop. Sitting through the film, watching and waiting for something significant happen is a lot less interesting though, even with some neatly framed shots in low lighting at night.
Io Capitano (Matteo Garrone, 2023): 2/5Means well, but ended up being frustratingly by-the-numbers and on-the-nose; purely a point A to point B movie and nothing more. In the hands of a better vision and script, it has the potential to be something special.


Totem (Lila Aviles, 2023): 2.5/5
Lila Aviles' Totem is a gentle and meditative look at people who are anticipating grief but somehow holding it all together. As important as that is, the film feels slight and familiar with its coming-of-age arc thus not leaving the viewer with an afterthought.

Green Border ( Agnieszka Holland, 2023): 4/5

Harrowing. But necessary. I didn’t cry because of the cruelty and brutality, but the heroic acts of kindness made me weep. And the epilogue is quite a gut punch.

Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023): 4/5
A moving documentary about the important work that is done at an obstetrics and gynecology wing of a public Parisian hospital. More than any other modern doc work, I feel like this reminded me of a Wiseman film. The way we cycle through long scenes of doctors discussing different matters with a wide array of patients that are bookended with shots of the corridor of the hospital wing feels inspired by Hospital or Near Death. It’s an effective doc filmmaking technique, and the compounding of the scenes achieve director Claire Simon’s initial goal to show a collective care and understanding of non cis male people and their bodies. What Simon adds to the film - her subjective perspective - comes to play heavily later in the doc. And makes for a powerful set of scenes.


Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024): 2/5
Sucks cock and balls. Not a compliment.


Good One (India Donaldson, 2024): 3.5/5

An emotional slasher film. So much serene beauty along with two of the most emotionally brutal moments you’ll see in a film all year. Keep an eye on Lily Collias.


Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974): 3/5

Ambition that far outstrips ability, even if that ability is considerable. Baffling, strange, and truly weird.


Nightbitch (Marielle Heller, 2024): 3.5/5

Has passages I flat out loved, and I'd be fine with Amy Adams winning an Oscar for this.


T-Blockers (Alice Maio Mackay, 2023): 3.5/5

A story about what it feels like to be trans in a world that is increasingly transphobic. Turning hateful ideologies into a right-wing parasitic infection is only too fitting a metaphor for the bourgeois origins of fascist ideas and the way it spreads and poisons the working class; answering it with brutal violence is absolutely the correct response when there's no other way to get through. It's satisfying to watch a film that skips past the question and jumps straight to the answer that yes, violence is the answer. It doesn't really fully explore the metaphor of its parasitic fascism to the point of class consciousness, but it has the right spirit. It has the right angry energy. I could do without the sympathetic cop-dad - even the zoom in on the ACAB button wasn't enough - but otherwise, it's a glorious, snotty fuck you to the rising power of the right wing.


A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2024): 3/5
Part breezy indie pastime, part profoundly emotional indie drama. Both parts work quite well

Normal People (Lenny Abrahamson, 2020): 5/5
The best of what long-form television can be. Acting and chemistry on an almost supernatural level. Steamy! Sorry, you’re gonna have to watch yet another show.


2073 (Asif Kapadia, 2024): 3/5
While the filmmakers’ intentions are noble and their fears are not at all exaggerated (the film opens with a raging brushfire and as I write this a swath of my city burns) I ultimately think film will be rejected because people who care are already up to their eyeballs in bad news and the rest (who will vote for a monster as long as they think he will make their eggs cheaper and hurt people they don’t care about) either don’t care or lack the critical thinking necessary to understand the dilemma. But on its own terms it’s a competent bit of filmmaking and an interesting departure for a documentarian known for restricting his work to pre-existing footage. Here he conducts interviews, uses harrowing news footage, and shoots speculative fiction set 50 years ahead in a dystopian future (cinematography by Bradford Young) where a woman named Ghost (Samantha Morton) guides us through an environmental and economic ruin defined by totalitarianism. Documentary purists can’t stand this hybridization but I think it’s an interesting experiment even if it doesn’t quite work. We need interesting failures more than we need bland conformist success.


The End (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2024): 2/5
Whenever it actually reaches a point where things get interesting they burst into the most unserious musical number to date.

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024): 4/5
Much to chew on. Corbet is an interesting filmmaker but he also often feels like a try-hard. This is the first time the effort feels commensurate with the result.


Kraven the Hunter (J.C. Chandor, 2024): 0.5/5
Sony, my dear, making films is not obligatory.


The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodovar, 2024): 3/5
"your daughter looks just like you"
OH YOU MEANT, LIKE, LITERALLY-


Werewolves (Steven C. Miller, 2024): 0.5/5
What if a Punisher sticker on the back of a pickup truck could make a horror movie?


Y2K (Kyle Mooney, 2024): 1.5/5
The state of studio American comedy remains pretty dire as evidenced by this miss from A24. The period details were good in the beginning with the tug on nostalgia - look it’s AIM! look it's dial up! - and the high concept is a good one: what if Y2K actually happened? But Y2K does the bare minimum with it, recycling old sci-fi, high school party, and stoner comedy cliches and bringing nothing to the table.


The Order (Justin Kurzel, 2024): 3/5
Explores some very familiar (cop-thriller) territory, but sure-handed direction and strong lead performances make this well worth checking out.


Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024): 2.5/5
Director: In this movie, I need you to play an absent father.
Barry: I'll need months of preparation, I really want to get into char-
Director: Actually, I think you're ready.


Nosferatu (Robbert Eggers, 2024): 2.5/5

As a director, you can only care about so many things, and Robert Eggers is the guy who cares about whether the coffins were handcrafted with era-appropriate tools, whether the marginalia in an occult codex in a foreign language is accurate, and if the light balance of light grey to dark grey to black in a scene hits his sweet spot for barely legible. Meanwhile, establishing a rhythmic flow with editing, maintaining a cohesive camera language, and getting actors to do second takes when their reaction to the discovery of a boat of plague rats crashed on shore or the news that a patient escaped after killing an orderly carries the emotional weight of being told your UberEats driver is five minutes late - all of this is secondary.


Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024): 4/5

The animals were cute. Global warming is not cute.


Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024): 3/5
The latest edition to the Nuns are the Devil Cinematic Universe 2024.


Sebastian (Mikko, Makela, 2024): 1.5/5
Flaccid movie about being the worst person in your MFA writing program.


Gladiator II (Ridley Scott, 2024): 1.5/5



Carry-On (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2024): 1/5

How can you leave your post multiple times without alerting the entire line of the conveyor belt?


HOW can his colleague sit 5 feet behind him and hear nothing?!


HOW can a bathroom in one of the busiest airports on the busiest day of the year have no people walk
in for a few minutes!?


HOW can he just drive up to a plane and open a cargo room! (plane doors are locked by a system in the cockpit!)


Why is nobody shutting down the entire goddamn airport!!!!


WHY does an LAPD detective listen to a random lady working in an airport against a national security threat!?

WELL???

Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024): 4.5/5

Immersive rotating first person POV fueled film that REQUIRES you to walk many miles in the shoes of the protagonists set in the racially treacherous 1960s. At first I was concerned it was a gimmick to stay in the POV but it doubled down as an incredibly original approach to showcasing material we may have otherwise brushed off to “been there, done that”, especially with film. One of those movies that will be analyzed, discussed and processed for years.

The People's Joker (Vera Drew, 2022): 3.5/5
A parody and a pastiche of DC movies, comics, and television shows disguising a vulnerable, moving narrative of trans self-realization, trauma, and actualization; this film welds styles, references, and source material in a way that creates a vibrant, earnest amalgamation that does not lose its pathos in the midst of its sharp humor. While this is ostensibly a parody of Joker and Batman films, this saves its most vicious barbs for the comedy industry and capitalism in general. Its jokes come as much from trans in-jokes and queer pain as they do from the endless parade of Batman media and comedy entertainment they're dissecting.

Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, 2024): 3/5

Almost the platonic ideal of what we have lost in mainstream/studio American filmmaking. At age 94, Clint hasn’t lost any of his craft as a storyteller. This film moves beautifully and handles the flashbacks adroitly. But we all know Clint went down a bad path 12 years ago and became a culture warrior obsessed with the most retrograde kind of American heroics. This film isn’t that. It’s the closest we will ever get to an Eastwood/Patricia Highsmith adaptation. Eastwood’s unyielding Old Testament sense of morality is back stronger than ever which is at odds with the times we live in.

Maria (Pablo Larrain, 2024): 3.5/5

Maybe the combination of La Jolie, the production design, the cinematography, and the music was all I needed to surrender to this film. But I think this is by far the best of Larrain’s La Sad Girl Trilogy. The union of Jolie’s otherworldly and mysterious persona and this subject is pretty inspired. Kudos to Larrain for having Caspar Phillipson reprise his JFK from Jackie without having Portman do a cameo. Lesser filmmakers wouldn’t have resisted the temptation.

2024 films in descending order of preference

Not a top ten list just yet, just movies I watched. 

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024): 4/5

Wordless and overflowing with amazing, powerful, primal, and mysterious images. Great cat, and other animals too. 

 

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2024): 4/5

Mordantly funny and acutely aware of all the micro-humiliations, dumb resentments, and disappointments of modern life. Each short scene/skit is efficient and cutting. Serious Roy Andersson vibes but, like, funny. Arnow is one to watch. “Thank you for forgiving me for mansplaining about L.A.” “’Do you need me to leave?’ ‘Not for a few more minutes.’” “‘This is supposed to be foreplay, like in Titanic.’ ‘It would still be nice to get the proportions roughly correct.’” 

 

The People’s Joker (Vera Drew, 2024): 4/5

(Limited release in U.S., April 5, 2024) Accomplishes what no other trans-related property was able to this year: be relatable, inviting, and real-feeling. Also one of the funniest movies of the year (after Hundreds of Beavers and The Feeling That…). Not everything works and the last 20 minutes are tough, but overall fun, inventive, and impressive. 

 

MadS (David Moreau, 2024): 4/5

A propulsive and fun zombie/vampire, full of horrific shocks and surprising ecstasies. Made to seem like it’s one shot—and even at (supposedly) five actual cuts, it’s a marvelous object. 

 

* The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024): 3.5/5

It’s amazing how impressive and powerful a film can be just by behaving like it’s impressive and powerful. A lumpy script, overacting, some dodgy overliteral plot points, an unnecessarily open-ended ending (feeling like a betrayal after so much investment), and a slow-clap-in-the-auditorium epilogue that suddenly explains so much about the artist’s work that would have been nice to know earlier. And yet the filmmaking thrills by simply insisting on its own bigness and boldness. 

 

Soundtrack to a Coup d’état (Johan Grimonprez, 2024): 3.5/5

I didn’t know this (interesting and relevant) story of the Congo and CIA, and it’s told here with a lot of wit. Very Graham Greene. The (great) music is superfluous, really, but it does help situate the events in time through social context. Plus: groovy. Khrushchev comes off as surprisingly bad-ass—saying the same things that Malcolm X was saying about the exploitation of black people in the U.S. and Africa, but saying them on the floor of the U.N. 

 

Nightbitch (Marielle Heller, 2024): 3.5/5

So much relatable truth about how difficult and transformational it is to try to hang with a two-year-old. I genuinely love the unusual third act, where Travis Bickle (or the ballerina from The Black Swan or Jack Torrance in The Shining) discovers the beauty and wonder of, say, making pottery or, uh, macrame—and becomes a much happier person. Amy Adams lets her chub flag fly, and I love her for it.

 

A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2024): 3/5

The movie wants you to question whether the relatively contented Eisenberg, with a job and family, has made the right decisions about how to deal with his anxiety and pain (such as they are). After all, the people in the group seem warm to Kieran Culkin’s character in the end but dismiss Eisenberg’s with a “safe travels.” But to me, Kieran Culkin’s character—a suicidal, unemployed narcissist—is hardly a viable alternative to a life of safe stability.

 

It’s Not Me, 42 min (Leos Carax, 2024): 3/5

In which Carax says fuck it and makes a late-Goddard movie. Attempts, in 40 minutes, to relate his own story and his relationship to all of cinema, plus all of history during the time that cinema has existed—while also mourning everything that has changed and the abhorrent state and politics of today. So it presents multiple odds and ends of thoughts, feelings, and images that we are free to do what we like with. 

 

Heretic (Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, 2024): 3/5

Its exegesis on religion is jejune, but it fully delivers on the creepy-old-house-of-horrors level. What’s scarier than a basement? A sub-basement!

 

Dahomey, 1h8m (Mati Diop, 2024): 3/5

A meeting among young intellectuals, activists, and regular people about these repatriated artworks (in the back half of the movie) is completely fascinating. The Benin education system seems to be doing ok, if these young people can speak so eloquently about the many levels of meaning these works hold—politically, in terms of personal pride and self-understanding, and spiritually. The first half hour for me was mostly a waste. 

 

Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024): 3/5

Like all of Eggers’ movies, this is rich pictorially and weak dramatically—lugubrious, thick, slow, and ponderous with style. Surprising how much this owes to Coppola’s Dracula (not a compliment). A conversation with my daughter Rosa (who has a particular interest in depictions of vampires) lead me to the image/motif of Death and the Maiden, redeeming the ending somewhat and buying an extra half-star.

 

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2024): 3/5

i know that fans find Rohrwacher’s playful asides, bits of magical realism, and random narrative swerves enchanting, but I’m a little annoyed by them as well as by her films’ wandering emotional arcs. These moves fail to make me feel the demanded wonder or awe, and instead they just further attenuate my engagement with the narrative. Extra half star because of how much I love Josh O’Conner. The kid’s a star.

 

Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024): 2.5/5

It’s pretty interesting to be hanging out in Mexico City with a young William Burroughs, and there are a couple of haunting images, but overall pointless. 

 

Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2024): 2/5

A woman is attending the trial of a serial killer who broadcast his murders on the “dark web” for others’ entertainment. But what is her interest? Did she know one of the victims? Is she excited by the crimes? Maybe she’s the one who had committed them, and the guy is innocent. Unfortunately, the solution is uninteresting. 

 

Lee (Ellen Kuras, 2024): 2/5

I was not especially familiar with Lee Miller the photographer, so it was interesting to experience what music bios like that of Queen or Elton John must feel like to someone unfamiliar with their music and biographies. It’s not Kate Winslet’s fault, but there’s something inauthentic about the film’s feeling of its time, and the drama never takes wing. Extra half star for casting Andy Samberg. 

 

Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024): 2/5

After the stylistic breakthrough of American Honey, Arnold returns to the grotty apartment blocks and bad boyfriends of her earlier work, this time with a fantasy aspect that doesn’t work at all. Always great to see Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, but they’re up to nothing in particular here.

 

Seagrass (Meredith Hama-Brown, 2024): 2/5

(U.S. release date January, 2024) The supernatural elements are a dead end, and the mother character remains unsympathetically self-involved. Maybe she should have some kids so she could stop thinking about herself so much and redeem her feelings about her mother. What? Oh.

 

Caddo Lake (Celine Held, Logan George): 2/5

A temporal tangle that is, frankly, beyond me—and emotionally not worth the effort.  

 

 

Baker Mini-fest

One of the fun things about watching a bunch of a director’s movies together is that you recognize things like that Karren Karagulian (Toros in Anora) has been in all of Baker’s movies—and like him and Baker more and more for it.

 

Anora, rw (Sean Baker, 2024): 4.5/5

A strong rewatch. With the specter of menace removed, it becomes more funny throughout, as it flows from fun situation to fun situation. Anora is always strong yet vulnerable, and we are with her as we all gradually realize we’ve been had. The film offers the best ending of the year—a flood of emotion that deepens everything that preceded.

 

Khaite FW21 (Sean Baker, 2021): 2/5

I don’t begrudge Baker grabbing the cash, but this clothes commercial is pretty embarrassing. Extra half-star because KK shows up. 

 

Snowbird, 12m (Sean Baker, 2016): 3.5/5

A seemingly authentic glimpse into a community of folks living off the grid in the desert. A series of eccentric encounters with some genuine kooks, with a killer last image. These are signatures. 

 

Starlet (Sean Baker, 2012): 3.5/5

The sweetest and least complicated of Baker’s films—and the one that Anora is most hearkening back to. A sensitive and nice young girl—on the outskirts of sex work and peering at the abyss that beckons—enters an unlikely relationship that seems to promise the human connection she isn’t finding elsewhere. Lots of rich location detail (here a familiar San Fernando Valley). And, again, the final scene deepens and complicates the characters we thought we knew. 

 

Prince of Broadway (Sean Baker, 2008): 3.5/5

Another authentic-feeling look at a cluster of people in a disreputable and insular community—here a shop in NYC that sells stolen and knocked-off purses, tennis shoes, jackets. Largely about one character slowly learning to be a slightly better father. 

 

Take Out (Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, 2004): 3/5

Baker shows his Dardenne Brothers origins, here following a new-immigrant Chinese food delivery guy trying to raise $800 in a day to pay off a debt. Ends up a portrait of the whole NYC Chinatown restaurant, and if you count the 30 or so delivery customers, of a whole community. Dramatically a bit static and repetitive, but very authentic. 

 

Hi-Fi, 6m (Sean Baker, 2001): 3/5

A bunch of kids drive into NYC to … score heroin. Spoiler, but it’s this unexpected heaviness that makes the short special.

 

 

The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher, 2014): 2.5/5

A family of Etruscan beekeepers try to hold their lives together. Although the swerves of whimsy and surrealism are not present here (as they are in La Chimera and Happy as Lazaro), the characters, narrative, and meaning are similarly elusive and drifty. What are these characters feeling and what am I supposed to feel about them? It’s a beautiful mystery. 

 

The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941): 3.5/5

Edward G. Robinson is the mad Ahab-without-a-cause, and John Garfield and Ida Lupino two star-crossed lovers. But what persists is Curtiz’s realistic boat sets and his swaying and leaning mise-en-scene, making the viewer feel truly at sea. The final sequence, involving a very realistic sinking ship and a harrowing drowning, is aces. From a Jack London novel but very Conrad in its moral quagmire, shaded characters, and debate. 

 

Rifkin’s Festival (Woody Allen, 2020): 2.5/5

They say that so much of comedy is simply rhythm, and the pleasures of strong story beats and the rhythm of comic lines persist in these later Allen works—even when the relatable fireworks of insight are missing. Someone should point out how Allen keeps writing stories about beautiful women falling in love with his old, ugly ,and nebbish avatars.

 

Two-Lane Blacktop, rw (Monte Hellman, 1971): 4/5

A mysterious serenity and placidity reigns over this always-compelling story of a group of people dedicated to moving from blank space to blank space. Warren Oates is still haunted by desire and backstory, but James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are simply moving forward, wanting nothing. Casting Beach Boy Denis Wilson ties this brilliantly to an Endless Summer, sans sunset, waves, and satisfaction. 

 

Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley): 3/5

Three white rappers in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, struggle to record an album. Ultra-low budget, shot on crap video, but funny. Seemed to be a bolt out of the outsider midwestern blue, but I discovered afterwards that O’Malley was once a writer on Conan. 

 

Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999): 3/5

The hardscrabble life of a poor, sensitive 10-year-old: Glasgow edition. For me, the yardstick for this particular story is Maurice Pialet’s cruel and bracing L’Enfance Nue or Loach’s emotional Kes. (Not to mention 400 Blows and Shoeshine). But this is kinder, feeling more like a less abstract Terence Davies. 

 

The Killers, rw (Don Siegel, 1964): 4.5/5

Ostensively a remake of the 40s classic, this feels much more like the itchy little brother of Point Blank—with its bright colors, sudden blasts of violence, and dead-man-walking nihilism. The storytelling is a 93-minute model of efficiency, and Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson are excellent. Ronald Reagan plays a cardboard-faced heavy, Clu Culager is a perfectly sadistic sidekick, and even Seymour Cassel shows up briefly (he and Cassavetes had already worked together on Shadows and Too Late Blues.)

 

Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980): 3.5/5

Extreme cinema, filled with scenes that crackle with unpredictable negative energy, where any horror could occur next and often does. Some of the best very, very drunk scenes in film history, a genuinely odd (perhaps vaguely autistic) performance from Linda Manz, and one of the grimmest last 15 minutes I’ve seen. Audacious and horrendous. 

 

Jaws, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1975): 5/5

Loveable not for sleek depiction of action (it’s not sleek) but for its furriness. I have read that Spielberg served as an uncredited production assistant on Cassavetes’ Faces in 1968, and Jaws does have a recognizable looseness, informality, and privileging of character over event. Come for the shocks and stay for the hang-out vibes. 

 

Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964): 3.5/5

A measured and heartfelt look at a man trying to get along in a time when white people could just insult him (‘boy’ is especially weaponized), degrade him, and fuck with him at every moment. Everything is beautifully underplayed. After watching Abbey Lincoln sing like a powerful goddess in Soundtrack to a Coup d’état, it’s surprising how timid her acting is here.