28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025): 2.5/5

Putting aside my nag that we didn't get to see the logical next installment titled 28 MONTHS LATER - does that bother no one else? - Lots of literal big dick energy here. A gang of pimped out blonde parkour kids in tracksuits was probably the last type of people I thought would show up. The film might resonate with younger audiences, but for us oldies, the primal thrill is gone. From the opening scene, comparisons begin—and they aren't flattering. Boyle seems to sense this. Maybe that's why he inserts a jarring Godard-style archive footage intercut to scrub away some of the mainstream gloss, and those experimental moments were my favorite in an otherwise overly polished, Hollywood-ized journey.


28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007): 2/5
Torture having to follow these dipshit kids as they single-handedly decimate the global population. (I cannot believe this movie had four writers. Four!) Further demerits: severely lacking Cillian Murphy dong.


Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything (Jackie Jesco, 2025): 3/5
Weawwy intewesting documentewwy.


The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025): 2.5/5
It’s yet another beautiful Wes Anderson film with a star studded cast but what else? Should’ve been 102 minutes of the basketball scene.


Final Destination Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein, 2025): 2/5
There's an unintentionally hilarious scene in this where the main character explains the tree traversal algorithm Death uses to eliminate a person's descendants and how its path through the graph can be blocked at specific nodes. All of these movies seem to position the antagonist as a sort of computer that can be wildly creative within a certain problem space (finding Rube Goldbergy ways for people to die) while having strict logical rules that it can't violate under any circumstances. I guess that's nothing new — The Seventh Seal is about trying to beat Deep Blue at chess.


Clown in a Cornfield (Eli Craig, 2025): 2/5
Clown in a Cornfield fully delivers on its title—there are clowns, and they’re in a cornfield.


Hurry Up Tomorrow (Trey Edward Shults, 2025): 1.5/5
DADDY CHILL, I'm unABEL to process this bad trip!

(In which Trey Edward Shults valiantly tries to perform life support on a thinly conceived vanity project.)

Predator: Killer of Killers (Dan Trachtenberg, 2025): 4/5

One of my favorites of a lousy half-year. Excellent action filmmaking á la classic Spielberg.

 

* F1 The Movie (Joseph Kosinski, 2025): 4/5

Jack wanted to see it, and I was concerned that it would be talky in a normal, adult way. But no. It’s basically a dozen races that are exciting in a traditional action-movie, pure-cinema way. Brad Pitt continues to perfect doing more with less.

 

Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2025): 3.5/5

Comedy as horror. Jack can take any violence or suspense in a movie, but if a character is embarrassed or humiliated, say…in front of his class or friends, he literally can’t watch it. During this movie, I felt the same way—perhaps because this was me in junior high. Michelle, you are certainly onto something with the Marvel angle. We are just all babies, wanting our dose of superhero Mayors with wigs. 

 

Final Destination Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein): 3/5

Horror as comedy. The (pretty great) first 20 minutes sets up that this movie doesn’t give a fuck. It will kill anyone at any time. Afterwards they set up quite a lot of lifeless plot—and we have not exactly been given instructions to care. Like Starship Troopers, this movie keeps building eye-rolling dramas up and … knocking ‘em down. 

 

Clown in a Cornfield (Eli Craig, 2025): 3/5

A Gen Z take on Scream (non-supernatural murder mystery), with a much different culprit. I, for one, feel the frustration that this movie is violently expressing—where the olds are sitting in their positions of power and the rest of us just have to, I guess, fuck off.

 

* The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025): 2/5

I know you’re going to find this a familiar feeling, but… this just didn’t click for me. I found it cold, insincere, grating and just not funny. Cool production design tho!

 

* Lilo and Stitch (Dean Fleischer Camp, 2025): 2/5

Possibly because he doesn’t look very good, the filmmakers rarely just rest the camera on Stitch and let him do his thing. Instead, he skitters around, knocking stuff over as if desperately trying to prove he exists in the real world. It’s tragic that this was Camp’s follow-up to the magical Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. 

 

* How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, 2025): 3/5

I liked the original a lot, and that’s basically exactly what you get here. A low bar, but after Lilo and Stitch, this seems like an accomplishment.

 

* Elio (Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian, Adrian Molina, 2025): 3/5

Inventive, colorful and entertaining. Jack said he didn’t like it, but I suspect that’s because sadness and loneliness so thoroughly underly the drama. 

 

Mountainhead (Jesse Armstrong, 2025): 3/5

A venomous take on tech bro amorality and dick-swinging. Funny, true and glib. 

 

The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko, 2025): 1/5

Young people looking at screens x1000 (plus COVID). 

 

Hi Diddle Diddle (Andrew L. Stone, 1943): 3/5

An amiable gag-a-minute war-time farce, with several misunderstandings and scams going at the same time.

 

The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng, 2023): 3.5/5

An almost drama-free process film about making art and the power of a collaborator—as exquisitely beautiful as an 18th-century still life, and just as overflowing with dead animals. 

 

The Battle of Chile, Parts 1-3, 4h23m (Patricio Guzmán, 1975): 3/5

A traditional documentary in everything but it’s length and its timeliness (released just two years after the coup it analyzes). One thinks of Latin American revolutions (like Cuba) as the poor rising up to overthrow the rich and powerful. Here (as I’m sure you know but I hadn’t really groked before) the script is flipped. The Socialist president, Allende, has been legally elected twice (!) and it’s the bourgeoisie (backed by the U.S.) who rebel and take over the government by force. #Allendesuicide

 

Nostalgia for the Light, rw (Patricio Guzmán, 2010): 4/5

A big-brained, arty and heartfelt film about the way we look (and fail to look) at the past. Perfect companion piece to The Battle of Chile, by an older man. 

 

The Hour of The Furnaces, 4h20m (Octavio Getino, Fernando E. Solanas, 1968): 3/5

Begins as an examination of “neo-colonialization” in Argentina—meaning that forces from outside of the country own almost all of the industry and access to natural resources, taking all wealth out of the country and keeping the people poor. Then tells the story of Argentina’s democratically elected Socialist leader (Juan Perón) overthrown because he attempted to do something about this (nationalization of industries and factories, etc). Ends with a call for an armed uprising in Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, and Guatemala—an “epic struggle for all of Latin America,” akin to Vietnam. Stylistically, it’s mostly interviews with people from all levels of society, some passages of exciting montage, and lots of on-screen text. This—and the fact that that the directors took the film around Argentina to screen at various union meetings, village halls and other community spaces as a way to raise awareness of the causes of injustice—must have made Godard apoplectically jealous.

 

Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960): 3.5/5

Told in multiple chapters or movements, with leaps forward in time—and with the characters being affected by the events of the drama and changing. I always like that: like a novel, or as the title would have it, a river. After Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star, I was concerned this would be more misery porn, but instead this is a lovely star-crossed romance with consequences. Very free and expressive camerawork and music. #suicide

 

The Age of Earth (Glauber Rocha, 1980): 1.5/5

I don’t begrudge any drama students who want to put on crazy costumes and dance around and chant ritualistically, waving sticks wrapped in red ribbons and shouting poetic revolutionary statements and nonsense—possibly obliquely referencing past events or literatures. Do it for two and a half hours! Or in the case of Out 1, do it for eight hours for all I care. Just don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s creating a new and essential cinematic form.

 

Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004): 2.5/5

Bizarre premise and tone. For much of this semi-comic movie, it feels like a melodramatic gangster flick. But eventually we realize they are not fighting about money but about who is the best judo fighter(!?). All they want is the honor of challenging and fighting the best. One of the judo dudes has fallen from the straight path through gambling and drink. To seek redemption, he and another judo guy must spar a lot, which consists of rolling around on the ground, wrapping one’s legs around the other sweaty person, and making grunts of exertion—until finally falling to the mat in detumescent satisfaction. 

 

Green Fish (Lee Chang-dong, 1997): 3/5

Guy gets out of the army and falls in with a gangster, also falling in love with the gangster’s girlfriend. These are cliches, but Lee keeps the proceedings on edge with unpredictable rhythms and stabs of violence. 

 

Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong, 1999): 3.5/5

Digs back, back, back into our protagonist’s life, through small degradations, missteps, and heart-closings—to learn how he came to behave as he does in the opening scene. A tremendous performance, as he becomes increasingly young, unmarked, and innocent.

 

Notes Towards an African Orestes, 65m (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970): 2/5

Pasolini describes the plot of Euripides’ play over footage from his vacation across Africa, while musing aloud about connections between the play and what he sees as a rising Africa, newly throwing off colonialism and embracing democracy (and how did that go?). To their credit, the actual Africans he talks to seem confused about the project and dubious about Pasolini’s naïve projections onto the African people. A film that surely launched a thousand dissertations.  

 

The impossible Voyage (Georges Méliès, 1904): 3.5/5

Amazing that the template for the colorful, effects-heavy sci-fi blockbuster is established in 1904. Emotional engagement is secondary to the eye-tricking technology (which here is pretty great). 

 

El Mumia/ The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969): 3/5

Called by some the best Egyptian movie, this in many ways is a mummy movie. There are ancient tombs (real ones, not sets), graverobbers, curses, murder, and music that invokes dread. All very authentic and in a chillingly still style. Safe to say the ancient dead haunt these people. 

 

Trás-os-Montes (Margarida Cordeiro , António Reis): 3.5/5

A dreamy portrait of a village and its inhabitants. Stories, music and dances, weaving, rolling hills and fields, the milling of flour, sheep and donkeys, childbirth, and the introduction of disruptive technologies such as a phonograph and a toy ball. Also examines politics (a voice expressing a feeling of isolation from the capital and powerlessness), sociology (a voice that expressing that the villagers intermarry and ask people in other families to be godfathers, etc., until the whole village mourns when a tragedy happens), plus, I think, actual dreams and other reveries. 

 

A Bundle a Minute, 6m (Harmony Korine, 1991): 3/5

Korine’s student film. A comic monologue with skits. Edgy but traditionally funny. Available on YouTube.

 

The Hedonists, 26m (Jia Zhangke, 2016): 3/5

Jia gets a new drone camera and tests it out with the short tale that contrasts old traditions and new realities, as is his wont.

 

Revive, 18m (Jia Zhangke, 2017): 3/5

As in The World, we have a family drama set in a milieu rich in metaphoric resonance (here an old palace where our protagonist performs in recreated scenes of drama for tourists. Her standard melodrama of wanting a (newly permitted) second child is, in this way, contrasted the fate of a possibility former self from centuries before. Jia’s contribution to the omnibus film Where has the Time Gone.

 

Surface Tension, 10m (Hollis Frampton, 1968): 3.5/5

Quite a lot of ideas in 10m. A high-speed walk through New York City is enjoyable and influential, as today’s movie editing speeds up. Brilliant curlicue, Golden Ratio-type narrative in last three minutes, where the film’s third part tells a new story with three parts. 

Process Red, 4m (Hollis Frampton, 1966): 3/5

Carrots and Peas, 6m (Hollis Frampton, 1969): 3/5

 

 

Julien Duvivier Film Fest

Based on these films and the three from last month, I would say that Duvivier’s ample talents peaked at the dawn of sound. His silent films are all excellent, and his early sound films are remarkable for their unusual protagonists, stories and storytelling. Mostly diminishing returns as the years go on (Pepe Le Moko aside). 

 

La Divine Croisière / The Divine Voyage (Julien Duvivier, 1929): 3/5

A tale of shipwrecked sailors and the community that despairingly awaits their return. Outdoor adventure under crystal clear skies, some mild rioting involving tearing down curtains and fire, plus mystic religious ecstasy in the tradition of Ordet. Several moving sequences feature a series of faces, akin to those sequences in Red River.

 

David Golder (Julien Duvivier, 1931): 3.5/5

A portrait of a longtime successful Jewish businessman overturning his life as he realizes his wife and daughter are just spending his money. An unusual and unpredictable narrative filled with visual invention, rich characters, empathy all around. Hints of Billy Murray in Rushmore, and I saw Wes Anderson cite this film as an influence on The Phoenician Scheme. it’s easy to see that WS admires and emulates Duvivier’s propensity to take everything with a light and humorous touch, even when dealing with sad characters and situations. Both moods are there.  #suicide

 

Poil de Carotte (Julien Duvivier, 1932): 3.5/5

The main character is a (presumably red-headed), spirited boy, always in a good mood but dealing with people who make his life difficult, especially his comically horrible mother. I like how lightly it takes the sadness of our young protagonist (maybe 10 years old) lightly, while still taking it seriously. #suicide

 

They Were Five / La Belle Equipe (Julien Duvivier, 1936): 3/5

Jean Gabin is one of five friends who win the lottery and decide to open a restaurant and dance hall in the country, beside a lazy river. Like Poil de Carotte, this is remarkable for its sense of joy (until it isn’t). 

 

Pepe Le Moko, rw (Julien Duvivier, 1937): 4.5/5

Shot with magic lenses that distort and rarify the images in a completely unique way, and the characters on both sides of the conflict are complex. A love letter to Paris from the Casbah, a rat maze that Gabin can’t escape. Visually and dramatically, up is divine cool and down is resignation to fate and death. This could be one of the movies that Breathless is based on, especially the end.

 

Un carnet de bal / Life Dances On (Julien Duvivier, 1937): 3/5

A similar narrative strategy to Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, where our protagonist travels to see what became of her past lovers. The result is series of short stories or sketches, some banal and others exaggeratedly dramatic. Includes a variety of photographic novelties to bring the audience into the protagonist’s mind space: forced perspectives, shadow play, horizontal split screens, rear projection. A massive hit. 

 

The End of the Day (Julien Duvivier, 1939): 3/5

Melancholy and even mournful portrait of a community of aged actors in an old folks home. They have spirit left in them, but precious little.  

The Encampments (Michael T. Workman , Kei Pritsker, 2025): 4/5

Excellent work. I held it together until they played the phone call of 6 year old Hind Rajab begging for someone to come save her life as Israelis shot into the car she was trapped in surrounded by the dead bodies of her family. Then I was weeping. This documentary is very important and will be in the future when the protestors of last year are eventually vindicated just like the kids in 1968 were.

Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2025): 3/5

There’s something definitely going on here. The motif of Marvel movies seems to be the key. It feels like the tell that this film is about the absolute emotional and spiritual poverty of contemporary American life and the increasingly desperate measures we will go to to fill the void. Robinson’s self immolation seems far fetched but it’s only a little bit heightened. He goes over the top but in doing so makes us face what we all have the potential to be if we totally gave in to our goblin selves. And Paul Rudd, an actual Marvel hero, is just perfect.

Parthenope (Paolo Sorrentino, 2024): 1.5/5

I'm like 0 for 5 or however many Sorrentino films there are. He's like the Italian version of Terrence Davies - another director who I simply cannot find one single film in their oeuvre to enjoy.

I'm Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024): 3/5

Competent and often moving!

Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024): 3.5/5

Elegant and beautifully shot. This is little more than a glorified travelogue that's practically devoid of much subtext or even critique - but lots of wonder in its place: less the Brechtianisms of Tabu but rather a more controlled and condensed version of Arabian Nights wily chaos.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024): 3.5/5

There’s a Kubrick film this reminded me of but to say which one ruins it. Brilliant use of actual protest footage. Stirring.

Fountain of Youth (Guy Ritchie, 2025): 0.5/5

The ancient Greeks warned us never to tempt the gods. The Hollywood gods, however, can be summoned by little more than a streaming contract, a few past-their-peak A-listers, and the seductive idea of “what if Indiana Jones evolved, but worse?” Thus arrives Fountain of Youth, Apple TV’s grand plunge into the tepid, over-chlorinated waters of the action-adventure genre; where the only mystery more elusive than the titular fountain is why anyone agreed to make this movie.

By the end, Fountain of Youth doesn’t so much conclude as it politely dissolves, like a sugar-free lozenge in lukewarm water. Apple TV, for all its deep pockets and deeper desire to disrupt cinema, has somehow created a movie with the visual excitement of a desktop screensaver from 1995 and the narrative coherence of a botched PowerPoint from a non-profit organization. There are worse ways to spend two hours; but most of them involve jury duty, amateur dental surgery, or watching this film again. In the end, Fountain of Youth may not deliver eternal life, but it will make you feel like you’ve lived forever.

Mountainhead (Jesse Armstrong, 2025): 3/5

Succession on meth. The black humor really zeroes out to blood-boiling despair, so be prepared, but there’s at least a steady supply of A-grade zingers.

The Rehearsal: Season 2 (Nathan Fielder, 2025): 5/5

A million chef's kisses. Nathan Fielder's comedic brilliance and originality is simply unmatched. No one else is doing comedy today anywhere near his level.

Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023): 3.5/5

Breillat's back baby!

The Accidental Getaway Driver (Sing J. Lee, 2023): 3/5

Dustin Nguyen is due for an American renaissance. I hope American filmmakers see this and hit him up (apparently he's had a perfectly lovely acting career in Vietnam for quite some time when Hollywood stopped offering him meaty roles).

Magazine Dreams ( Elijah Bynum, 2023): 3.5/5

If you thought the date between Travis Bickle and Betsy in Taxi Driver was awkward, it's downright pleasant compared to the one between Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) and Jessie (Haley Bennett).

Spellbinding character study fueled by raging id and sheer hatefulness. Even at its most overwrought, there’s a certain delusional mania to the narrative that many outsiders among the audience will surely recognize. Majors’ performance is a revelation. (Shame he's a shitbag IRL.)

La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2023): 3/5

I approached this expecting a typical immigrant narrative, but I was completely unprepared for such a fascinating contextualization of NYC's working-class multicultural fabric. Altman would be proud...

 

Eephus (Carson Lund, 2025): 4/5

For my money, one of the two or three best baseball movies. A poetic and shaggy hang-out comedy, with ample meditation on time and death—Tyler Taormina plus Linklater. Feels 15 minutes too long, but that’s consistent with the movie’s themes.

 

The Rehearsal, Season 2 (Nathan Fielder, 2025): 4.5/5

Takes “overly elaborate” to dizzying heights. Amazing to watch Fielder try to get outside of his own life to look back inside it as an observer. This desire is probably at the root of all fiction, but it takes a genius to make this autistic disassociation the subject of a show. The Sully episode, with its use of puppets and people on stilts to recreate breast-feeding and the feeling of looking up at your parents when you were in your crib: a million chef’s kisses.

 

Warfare (Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland, 2025): 3.5/5

The feel-bad body-horror movie of the year, but at 86 minutes, anything is permitted. A total lack of context really gives it a “Huh, this just seems to be what humans do * shrug *” quality, in a blankly profound way.

 

* Thunderbolts* (Jake Schreier, 2025): 3.5/5

Not exactly wall-to-wall action but entertaining throughout due to good characters and dialogue. Pugh nails it, and Jack and I agreed that she rules. 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2022): 3.5/5

Fun film crit on AH’s themes and visual motifs, but long. Curious use of a fake Hitchcock voiceover.

 

* Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025): 2/5

Overlong and emotionally overwrought, with unoriginal story and imagery. The ‘conjuring spirits’ musical sequence I have heard called one of the best of the year gave me nothing but douche chills. Why twins? And if you’re a black filmmaker remaking a movie and coaxing out its underlying racial themes, why pick on a movie (From Dusk Until Dawn) directed by and starring Mexican people? 

 

Drop (Christopher Landon, 2025): 1/5

Modern cinema is increasingly a matter of looking at a screen showing people looking at screens. An idiotically contrived premise that the movie doesn’t seem to have any idea how to exploit for drama. Sometimes it’s nice to reset the old movie-quality yardstick.

 

Dating Amber (David Freyne, 2020): 3.5/5

A funny and sweet story about two gay kids banding together to survive high school in a tiny Scottish town. Reminded me of Sing Street (highest compliment). 

 

Twenty Years Later (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984): 2/5

In 1962, the peasants in Northeastern Brazil attempted to come together in a union to fight for better wages and working conditions, and of course the leaders were gunned down in the street. Terrible, but this could have been an email. 

 

Mother Hummingbird (Julien Duvivier, 1929): 4/5

A mother of two falls in love for the first time, with a younger man. After an amazingly ecstatic 45 minutes of falling in love involving a long and exuberant party scene, reality sets in. Very empathetic and vivid, told in long sequences with no intertitles. Pure cinema. Romantic, poetic, and finally tragic.

 

Ladies’ Paradise (Julien Duviver, 1930): 4/5

Filled with startling mise en scène, new here and never repeated. Multiple superimpositions. Faces in rictuses of the most extreme emotions. Rapid montage. Intrusive flashback images as psychological states. Plotwise, it’s like You’ve Got Mail if Meg Ryan (finally) runs across the street and shoots Tom Hanks in the heart. Culminates in a mass shooting at an ultra-modern French department store, followed by an old man being dragged under a delivery truck.

 

La tête d’un homme (Julien Duvivier, 1933): 4/5

A polite and witty French police investigation is disrupted halfway through by a Dostoyevsky-like, Nietzschian, above-the-law , Pickpocket type killer who shatters the mise en scène pretty radically. Open to shagginess, unpredictable beauty, and sexual frankness. Subverts a Maigret/Holmes cleverness: they figure everything out but what does it all mean?

 

Humphrey Bogart Film Fest

Raymond Chandler supposedly said Bogart was the right person to play Philip Marlowe because 'He looks tough without a gun in his hand.” And it is true that he plays a great rictus-fingered, face-twitching psycho, without or without a gun, especially in the earlier Warner Brothers movies. But the real measure of Bogart’s persona is that he could be tough while also being soft (They Drive by Night, High Sierra) or pathetic (Dead End, Black Legion, The Caine Mutiny). Bogart made 7 films with Curtiz, 6 with Huston, 5 with Walsh, 3 with Hawks, and 2 with Wyler.

 

Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936): 3.5/5

An emotionally rich adaptation on a hit play, with florid and romantic dialogue, starring this same cast. Bette Davis is (uncharacteristically) sweet, and Bogart is startling and intense. His performance is Kabuki: formally posed and full of striking stillness. 

 

Dead End (William Wyler, 1937): 3.5/5

Based on a hit play and completely set on an enormous, three-story set including a pool representing the East River. This is a pretty gentle portrait of a neighbor on the East Side of Manhattan, contrasting social strata. The large cast of characters includes The Dead End Kids (who were also actors in the play), a romantic triangle with college-educated but unemployed Joel McCrae and heavenly eyed Sylvia Sidney, and Humphrey Bogart as a gangster returning for a visit to the old neighborhood. Bogart to McCrae: “Six years you work in a college and all you get is handouts. I’m glad I’m not like you saps. I got mine. I took it.” One of seven movies Bogart made in 1937—studio system, man… Here Bogart is feral and twitchy—a violence that must be eliminated for the neighborhood society to continue.

 

Black Legion (Archie Mayo, 1937): 3/5

Bogart is passed up for promotion at his factory and is recruited into a group of nice men who tell him it’s all the foreigners’ fault (here meaning the Italians and Irish)—a science fiction story that could never happen in real life! Beatings, floggings and house-burning ensues, although since they’re wearing white robes and hoods, we are denied the pleasure of seeing Bogart perform these heinous acts himself. The last act is devoted to Bogart trying to extradite himself from the group after becoming disillusioned. Another one of seven movies Bogart made in 1937. Here Bogart is weak and afraid, and any violence he demonstrates is utterly shameful. 

 

Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939): 3/5

A classic weepy where Betty Davis learns that she must meet death “beautifully and finely.” Bogart reunites with Bette Davis (after The Petrified Forest, Marked Woman and Kid Galahad) as her horse groomsman with an occasional Irish accent—a nothing role. 

 

The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939): 3.5/5

Quite a broad emotional tapestry, for a gangster movie. It has a romantic triangle, three war buddies with shifting loyalties, three nightclub-set songs and a dance. Cagney is a cocksure businessman, but Bogart is a killer on edge—lips drawn back with occasional ticks, not of a tough guy but of a neuralgic. The film’s 20-minute denouement (where Cagney falls, becomes a drunk and earns redemption) is great argument for a more feral and abrupt gun-down.

 

They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940): 3.5/5

The first half is an engaging, human-sized, and action-packed melodrama that feels like one of Hawks’ “competent men (and a girl) at work” films. See the truck go off the road, down the incline and flip over (including a brief shot of body’s writhing in flame)! Unfortunately, when Ida Lupino shows up as (characteristically) the most bitter woman on earth, her self-destruction and insanity completely changes the tone of the entire set-bound back half of the movie. (As in real life), Bogart is the more sensitive and complex younger brother of George Raft. 

 

High Sierra, rw (Raoul Walsh, 1941): 4/5

Ida Lupino is top-billed and the story IS increasingly told from her point of view. Bogart is sprung from prison by a kindly mob boss and is assigned to rob a hotel. Sets a template for what makes Bogart so special: he’s tough enough to kick anyone’s ass but also sensitive and clever. Here is a gangster with an affinity for nature and a heart of gold—shamelessly expressed through love with a handicapped girl, then Ida Lupino, as well as a dern cute dog. And it’s true, the woman, girl and dog do make his fate more emotional. 

 

Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943): 3/5

An action-packed yet grim desert warfare film that pits a ragtag, international band of nine men against a battalion of 500 thirsty Germans. Bogart—on loan from Warner Brothers to Columbia—is a down and dirty yet empathetic leader despite his better judgement and someone who can be counted on to do the right thing against great odds. 

 

The Big Sleep, rw (Howard Hawks, 1946): 4.5/5

Bogart couldn’t be more relaxed and in charge, and each scene is a great pleasure to watch. Bacall is also perfect, and the scenes of them together are movie magic. “[Into the phone] Oh, YOU’RE the police.” “[To Bacall] Oh, he's the police.””[Back on the phone] “Oh well that's different."

 

Dead Reconning (John Cromwell, 1946): 3/5

A baroque noir detective story with ex-paratrooper Bogart, freshly back from the war, investigating the sudden death of his paratrooper buddy. Chock full of hardboiled voiceover. Femme fatale Lizabeth Scott is a handsome and husky-voiced Lauren Bacall type, but blonde and more inert. At one point she urges Bogart to give her a nickname, and so he calls her “Mike” throughout (!?). He also tells her, “I loved you, but I loved him [the paratrooper buddy] more.” Here Bogart seems to be open to romance but (correctly) has trust issues (and perhaps prefers guys?). He can’t be duped, really, and is a beat-up justice incarnate.

 

Knock on Any Door (Nicolas Ray, 1949): 2.5/5

Ray manages to smuggle some perversity into a handwringing youth-gone-astray courtroom melodrama, including overt homoeroticism in gang wrestling/fights as well as in some kiss-close conversations between Bogart and Derek. Features a very early-Method, James Dean-ish performance from John Derek, who says stuff like, “Nobody knows how anyone feels.” Bogart plays the overly earnest lawyer (!)

 

The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954): 2/5

I knew that we were in deep trouble when I saw this was “made with the full participation of the U.S. Navy, so we can use all the neato boats.” And indeed this is bloated with patriotic Navy baloney, light comedy, terribly dull naval battle footage, and a stiff as a protagonist. For the audience, Bogart’s crazy is welcome! Compared to the similar Mutiny on the Bounty, the stakes they are rebelling against are miniscule (no movies and frozen strawberries. Boo hoo!) Nothing, compared to the mysterious, exotic and sexy power of Tahiti vs the whip.

 

We’re No Angels (Michael Curtiz, 1955): 3/5

Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray are all excellent, but the script swings freely from clever to overly sentimental in the way only a Christmas movie can. Bogart has moved from romantic lead to father figure.

 

The Desperate Hours (William Wyler, 1955): 

It’s great to see Bogart return to playing someone mean and violent, the first such role in this fest in 14 years but he's still got it. Here he breaks into not a safe but into the suburban dream itself, filling it with mockery and contempt. Fredrich March is also a great actor, and the two of them together are a joy to watch. Bogart would be dead 13 months after this film’s release, aged 58.

 The Assessment (Fleur Fortune, 2025): 4/5

As a person who also questions the soundness of bringing children into a world that appears destined to burn soon, I felt seen by The Assessment.

A solid and promising debut feature by Fleur Fortune. Nicely paced, focused tone and momentum and execution. Minimal-effects sci-fi that’s able to create this totally believable, lived-in world, without compromising the film with a metric fuck-ton of expositional clunk. Alicia Vikander runs away with it. What a wild, intense, bonkers performance. And Minnie Driver coming in like a tornado and kinda saying what I’d been thinking the whole time, lol. A genuinely interesting, compelling and thought-provoking sci-fi indie film.

Marie Antoinette (WS Van Dyke, 1938): 3/5

A romanticized and quite sympathetic look at the doomed French queen. There were a number of plot points that were taken directly from history (the necklace affair, the attempted escape, the rivalry with the preceding King's mistress and so on) and they're expertly woven into the overall narrative of the titular character. But the real star here is the extravagance of the production: the sets, the costumes, the HAIR! It's all on a scale that was huge even for MGM at the time.

Vivacious Lady (George Stevens, 1938): 4.5/5

A movie about the intoxicating power of a good kiss from a beautiful person. “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore” I wistfully murmur into my corn on the cob.

I love everything about this movie. I love that stank ass trick of a fiancée, I love that idiot cousin, I love that horrible father, but most of all, I love that I found the origin of that Hattie McDaniel gif. Also, Ginger Rogers got a stan out of me. My goodness she’s stunning here.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024): 3/5
Very well made and deeply upsetting. Tradition versus Modernity might be one of cinema’s most enduring and rich themes.

Death of a Unicorn ( Alex Scharfman, 2025): 1/5

I’ve never had more faith in my creative abilities. Fucking dire. At least someone snorted the unicorn horn powder.

Blind (Eskil Vogt, 2014): 3/5

Kaufman does Kieslowski in Oslo. A tinkering with creative transference and an unsettling use of space. Feeling like she has no control left of the outside world, Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) retreats into her inner one until it almost consumes everything. The lines get diffused and as an spectator you start to feel confused and lost, just like her. It must be hard. The anxiety, loneliness, anguish, fear and desperation. You go on with it because you want to know, she goes on with it because she wants to live.

The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett, 1999): 3.5/5

This is not a film that signals its importance by veering into stylistic excess or formal austerity, and for many it will be viewed as lesser Charles Burnett and a specimen of post 90s indie quirkiness. But the trio* of performances that drive this film are pretty great and a testament to Burnett’s legendary equanimity and humanism. Seeing it at the age I am now probably has a lot to do with how I received it. The idea of a love story between a man who wrestles with his demons and a woman heartbroken over a lover she’s conjured up would have seemed precious at 19, but at 39 it resonates. The movie is deceptively complex with what it has to say about what happens when our demons and scars become longtime companions. It also helps if, unlike many contemporary moviegoers, you don’t have an aversion to the operatic. Madame Butterfly isn’t just there for window dressing. It’s a key to understanding how to read the film. I hope this film gets paired up at revival houses with Minnie and Moskowitz. The films have a lot to say to each other because they are made by directors with the two biggest hearts in all of late 20th century cinema.

 
*RIP James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, and Margot Kidder.

Locked (David Yarovesky, 2025): 1/5

If Jigsaw was an insufferable conservative boomer.

Charlotte's Web (Iwao Takamoto, Charles August Nichols, 1973): 3/5

Television animation studio Hanna-Barbera (The Flintstones, The Jetsons) made the big-screen jump with this adaptation of the E.B. White children’s classic. It’s fair to say that the best stuff — including an honest consideration of mortality — comes directly from White’s plot and prose, while the additions (plaintive songs, an annoying gosling named Jeffrey) fail to add much.

The Friend (David Siegel, Scott McGehee, 2024): 1.5/5

Me throughout this entire movie: "CAN I PET THAT DAOWG"

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024): 3/5

Favorite line: "Grief is rotting your teeth."  

Not his best, for hardcore Cronies only. The raw emotion of his grief (this film is very much the director publicly processing the death of his beloved wife) is quite arresting at times.

Drop (Christopher Landon, 2025): 1/5

she literally tried everything but turning off her airdrop

Ronin (John Frankenheimer, 1998): 2.5/5 

Flighty and half-told, almost feels like a purposeful deterrent for plot holes but winds up nevertheless head-scratching by the end. Then again, we’re not here for narrative tautness, are we? The action is fine, and the acting supports that well enough—De Niro and Reno carry much of the load; smaller roles, in all fairness, aren’t given much to do—even when things get a bit dramatic (like the red-herring suspense of De Niro’s first venture to the Paris cafe); some gnarly car chases, too, but nothing nearly as memorable or exhilarating as the vehicular prowess of e.g. The French Connection, or Death Proof, or countless others. I’ve nothing bad to say about this other than, perhaps, I’ve nothing terribly good to say about it, either.

An American Crime (Tommy O'Haver, 2007): 1/5

First of all, the amount of famous people in this is astonishing. Second, it's a terrible film. One of the least ethical portrayals of a real crime I’ve ever seen.  Everyone needs jail time, right now. And if you're unfamiliar with the story of Sylvia Likens - don't read the details. Honestly, don't. You don't need that kind of horror in your life. 

Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, 2025): 3.5/5

All the world-building, especially in the second act, is greatly appreciated. I liked Ruffalo’s tooth-licking performance too, but—like that of Pattinson’s—it’s so broad that it’s a matter of personal taste. A reminder that Bong Joon Ho’s movies are (usually) comedies.

 

Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2025): 4/5

Narrative-free but visually astonishing, free flowing, hypnotic, and often beautiful. What it feels like (will feel like) to live within a totally mediated world—it’s as if we are wearing augmented reality glasses that add stuff to our view, making actual reality feel as morally weightless as a video game. If you can’t tell whether the other characters are humans in the actual world or NPCs at the virtual level, how easy is it to torture and kill them? Enders Game but Grand Theft Auto.

 

Duck Duck, 4m (Harmony Korine, 2019): 3/5

Like Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis—but Miami, with Furries, old men skateboarding in hot dog costumes, and augmented reality everything. A sizzle reel warm-up for Baby Invasion.

 

Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025): 2/5

I don’t think I’m very interested in plot, and I’m definitely not interested in busting my brain trying to figure out stuff that dodo-bird David Koep and sadomasochist Soderbergh are deliberately not telling me. Also fuck John LeCarre. Just peeved that Kate Blanchett got plastic surgery. 

 

Dying for Sex (Shannon Murphy, Chris Teague, 2025): 4/5

Love Michelle Williams and this show’s frankness about sex and death. For me, very emotional. I love MW, and I’m glad she’s so beautiful here (after a very unglamorous turn as Gwen Verdon). Considering how much I liked this and We Live In Time, I’m beginning to think I have a thing for young blondes who are dying of cancer. Don’t kink-shame.

 

Adolescence (Philip Barantini, 2015): 3/5

The feel-bad hit of the year, though certainly a technical achievement in terms of camerawork, script and acting. Stephen Graham, man.

 

Becoming Led Zeppelin (Bernard MacMahon, 2025): 3/5

Four amazing musicians and the music is hot. Not sure what the last 20 minutes are doing since we spend much them listening to the album cuts while watching unsynced live footage and montages of newspapers and shit. LOL. Crazy that shy genius weirdo Jimmy Paige had the iron will to put a wild, psychedelic-orgasm freeform part in the middle of Whole Lotta Love.

 

The White Lotus, season 3 (Mike White, 2025): 2/5

I was vaguely bored for most of the runtime—begging for the characters to do something and for the situations to evolve. But no, everything remained pretty much static until the rushed and cursory death to wrap at least one of the threads up, anyway. The rest of the threads: shrug.

 

My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989): 3/5

In the tradition of The Elephant Man, DDL writhes in uncommunicable intelligence, dignity and loneliness. Towering performance.

 

The Boxer (Jim Sheridan, 1997): 2/5

All the characters hate DDL, but the film never says why. Something about The Troubles, or maybe we’re just supposed to know or maybe I just didn’t care. The direction is tragically choppy. We want to just sit there and watch DDL’s face, but Sheridan doesn’t let us see it for more than 10 seconds at a time. 

 

I’m Not a Robot, 22m (Victoria Warmerdam, 2024): 3.5/5

Stylistically a mixed bag, but good storytelling and some food for thought, regarding identity. Won the Oscar for best Live Action Short.

 

 

Thalberg Mini-fest

I just read The Genius of the System (recommended if you like movies).

 

The Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926): 3.5/5

This a prime Thalberg object has much to recommend it. John Garfield’s acting is unique and eye-catching. He leans in very closely to the men or women he interacts with, and it’s very powerful. Korina Longworth talks about how he was considered a genius at seeming to be in love with someone, but it seems to me that he loves (slash wants to fuck) whomever he shares the frame with, man or woman. Of course, he would soon be the stereotypical example of the guy who couldn’t make the jump to talkies (Brad Pitt in Babylon). Incredible that I haven’t even mentioned yet a very young and free Garbo as the two-way femme fatale. 

 

Camille (George Cukor, 1936): 3.5/5

Garbo is radiant as a Paris courtesan with a mirthless laugh and TB who enters into a damned love affair with nice guy Robert Taylor. Perhaps it is the newly recognized hand of Saint Thalberg, but this drama seems perfectly told and modulated. Interesting to discover that Cukor was an MGM journeyman for so long—he shot half of Gone with the Wind, for crying out loud.

 

Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935): 3.5/5

Another perfectly told movie from Thalberg. Was the top grosser of the year, won the Best Picture Oscar, and it lasted so long in the public consciousness that Bugs Bunny has a great bit in “Mutiny on the Bunny” from 1950, where he shoves out his lower lip and says “Mr. Christian!” Contains a dreamy 15-minute idyll on Tahiti where Clak Gable (hot!) very definitely knocks boots with a native girl (played by a white woman, naturally). Woo woo! Of course, it can’t last: “Tahiti isn’t real. It’s that ship that’s real.” The “justice” of the ending is wonderfully ambiguous—and grounded in the different viewpoints of the two best friends, both moved by their experience in Tahiti. All this and Charles Laughton as one of the most odious villains in film history—as an actor he laps laps laps it up.

 

 

Early Short Films by Geniuses (?) Film Fest

 

Amblin’, 26m (Steven Spielberg, 1968): 2/5 

Silent cinema, with Mrs. Robinson-adjacent music and sound effects. It’s a sort-of comedy of hitchhikers, in a loose, Breathless way. Written by Spielberg. He was 22, and it shows.

 

The Dirk Diggler Story, 31m (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1988): 3.5/5

The depiction of gay porn (and gayness in general) didn’t age well, but when you compare this film to, say, Amblin’, the sophistication and mastery over several levels of the comedy and tragedy of these characters is truly impressive. PTA was 18.

 

The Suicide, 22m (Todd Haynes, 1978): 3.5/5

Takes the pain of a young boy very seriously. Circular, recurrent and obtrusive images, thoughts and memories swirl. Haynes was 17.

 

Dottie Gets Spanked, 30m (Todd Haynes, 1993): 4/5

A six-year-old boy fetishizes an I Love Lucy-type show, and as a plotline syncs up with his cycle of abuse, he takes steps to repress the whole thing. Touching and psychologically deep. 

 

There Will Be No Leave Today, 46m (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1959): 4/5

Tarkovsky scrambles sustained suspense and Eisenstein’s radical montage and basically invents modern cinema. Street repair workers uncover 30 unexploded WWII-era missiles, and soldiers must remove them and drive them out of the city without blowing up—like Wages of Fear, although Godzilla’s allegory of repressed war acts is in there too. Like his version of The Killers (1956), it betrays Tarkovsky’s interest in genre (he made two sci-fi films!) as well as suspense (I’m thinking of that scene in Andrei Rublev where we find out whether the newly forged bell will ring—or the scene in Nostalgia where the protagonist is trying to walk all the way across the pool without his candle going out). Tarkovsky was 27.

 

The Steamroller and the Violin, 46m (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1961): 3.5/5

What is stronger, a wrecking ball or music? Alternative answers: dreams, cinema, friendship, longing. Beautiful use of visual motifs such as red highlights everywhere and the sun glinting off mirrors, windows and (Tarkovsky’s beloved) water. 

 

White Man, 19m (Bong Joon-ho, 1994): 3/5

A white-collar worker finds a finger, opening the film up to Bong Joon Ho’s already characteristic horror, comedy, and social and economic critique. Bong Joon-ho was 25.

 

Influenza, 28m (Bong Joon-ho, 2004): 3.5/5

A crime spree depicted totally with (simulated) CCTV footage. The flat video and high vantage points makes the violence both more emptied out emotionally and more horrifically realistic in a Haneke way—although the humor is all Bong Joon-ho. 

 

 

Phil Karlson in the 50s Film Fest

Four of these films are from 1955 alone. Karlson started on Poverty Row, making The Shadow, Charlie Chan, Bowery Boys, and Abbott & Costello movies for places like Monogram Pictures. He would go on to direct Elvis in Kid Galahad (1962), as well as Walking Tall (1973), not to mention The Wrecking Crew (1968), the movie with Sharon Tate featured in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 

 

Scandal Sheet, 82m (Phil Karlson, 1952): 3.5/5

A variation on the No Way Out situation where a young newspaper man is trying solve a murder that the audience knows his boss, the editor, committed. More murders follow as the noose tightens. John Derek (yes that John Derek) exudes a nice gee-whiz Kyle MacLaughlin energy. 

 

Kansas City Confidential, 100m (Phil Karlson, 1952): 4/5

Like Charley Varrick and Touchez Pas Grisbi, this is mostly about what happens after the successful heist. Dry, straight-forward and raw-fisted. Two of the three main hoods here are Lee Van Cleef and Jack Elam—do ya think that Sergio Leone might be a fan? Lead John Payne is solid, and Karlson would go on to use him in two other good films as well, including…

 

99 River Street, 83m (Phil Karlson, 1953): 4.5/5

An ex-boxer gets double-crossed twice by two different groups in the same night and must keep from going to jail for two different reasons. Populated by a bunch of cool killers, fisticuffs, strangulations, dames getting’ slapped, and shootouts. Jack Lambert, one of the great rat-faces in 50s villainy (see below), plays (what else) a gunzel. 

 

They Rode West, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1954): 3/5

“A young doctor brings compassion and modern ideas to the Old West” is a fine (and well-worn) theme, but it runs counter to Karlson’s stark and violent strengths—as does the non-urban milieu and Technicolor. Makes me admire Anthony Mann’s accomplishments in bringing dark intensity to the desert. 

 

Tight Spot, 97m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 2/5

A strange Star Vehicle in the middle of this run of cut-rate thrillers. Ginger Rodgers is charmless, doing a broad, 40s comic Born Yesterday thing, in what is otherwise a tense FBI vs. mob drama. By contrast Edgar G. Robinson nails it. Most of the drama takes place in one drab hotel suite. 

 

Hell’s Island, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

At one point lead John Payne pushes a man over a piece of furniture, slaps the redhead, and says “I’ve been beaten, badgered, hit over the head, and mixed up in three killings. And believe me, I’m going to find out why. I’m through thinking, and I’ve had a belly-full of double talk.” Filmed in Technicolor and VistaVision (!) 

 

5 Against the House, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

The first hour of this light-hearted casino heist with a romance is pretty boring. They set up the characters, there are some sub-Animal-House college-life hijinks, and Kim Novak (beyond beautiful) sings two (!) songs. It’s all worth it for an action-packed last half hour combining a casino heist and a character degeneration—Ocean’s 11 plus Taxi Driver, but worse.

 

The Phonix City Story, rw, 100m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

Takes pains to establish verisimilitude, which is fun, but the story is pretty rote—and is from my un-favorite, Mississippi Burning strand of dramaturgy. People stand up against a gang, and we watch the gang beat them up, throw their children out of cars, murder them, blow up their houses, etc. Violent, shocking, and noble, but kind of a drag.

 

The Rico Brothers, 92m (Phil Karlson, 1957): 3.5/5

All three Rico brothers are lower members of a criminal ring, but only one (Richard Conte) makes it out of the movie alive. The film leans on family drama instead of foregrounding Karlson’s strengths—vicious crime and violence. Andrew Sarris, who puts Karlson in my favorite category, “Expressive Esoterica,” calls this the director’s best film. 

 

Gunman’s Walk, 97m (Phil Karlson, 1958): 3.5/5

“One son in jail, the other moonin’ over a half breed. I don’t know which one shames me more.” A father who helped build the Old West town—with cattle and plenty of violence against natives—has trouble adjusting to how the town has changed, eschewing gunplay and integrating native people. It’s my second Tab Hunter film, after Polyester, and he’s surprisingly intense as the older son who follows his father’s violent ways into ruin. Are all Westerns “End of the West” movies? 

 

The Scarface Mob, 102m (Phil Karlson, 1959): 3/5

A stiff telling of the Ness vs. Capone story (it was a two-part pilot for the TV series version of The Untouchables, which ran from 1959-63). Robert Stack is stiff and one-dimensional—but that’s pretty much true to the character. Some nice scenes of tension, sex and violence. Yet: All this effort over a little booze? How did Ness feel when alcohol was legal again two years later?

 

Hell to Eternity, 131m (Phil Karlson, 1960): 3.5/5

Underrated and unheralded WWII Pacific-arena battle movie following the marines taking over the island of Saipan—using Guadalcanal survivors’ testimony for authenticity. Features (at least) two devastating scenes, one evoking Red Badge of Courage and the other Midsommar. A very modern take, since our protagonist was raised by a Japanese family and understands Japanese—and indeed the conclusion comes down to words rather than guns.