NAZA (Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, 2026): 5/5

It’s been a few hours and I am still sick to my stomach. No wonder Zionists are losing their goddamn minds over this. And if you think comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany are too much, you might think differently after you see this film. After all, the perpetrators themselves make the comparison.
This documentary is less of an interrogation of Israel's systematic annihilation of Gaza and more a series of open admissions into the technical implementation of that policy that occasionally leave reporter Yuval Abraham stumped for a follow-up. At one point Abraham suggests that a certain set of actions could lead to dozens of killings, only to have his accusatorial gusto cut short with a correction: "Hundreds."

Abraham's face is our main entry point into a series of nighttime discussions on balconies, where the identifying characteristics of whistleblowers and/or braggarts - faces, voices, handwriting - have been gently obscured (presumably) beyond recognition. My gusto comment notwithstanding, Abraham generally maintains a preternatural calm in the face of stunning confessions and gives his interviewees space. As a filmmaker, he and Rachel Szor also give the viewer space, letting the confessions air amidst the surveilled interiors of Tel Aviv, where amidst comfort its residents are assured via television of the righteousness of the cause, and viewers are left to contemplate what an equal reprisal would look like.
The silence at the end of NAZA in the cinema was profound and heavy, like we were all trying to find a conclusion to an open wound. It's hard to know what to say. It’s just a horrible, horrible thing to watch, but we all have to watch it. And it’s horrible to be alive while such an evil is happening. But, it's good to be alive to see how many people are fighting that evil.

Animals (Ben Affleck, 2026): 2/5
Obviously the worst of the three versions of High and Low, and obviously I was only in it for Gillian Anderson who was predictably hot as hell. 

Onslaught (Adam Wingard, 2026): 1/5

A teenage pantomime of a real movie where a trio of unblinking super soldiers shoot people with nothing underpinning it. No greater insight, no fundamental statement.  Purposeless pastiche. Nonsense zeitgeist soup. A paper-mache mountain.

rewatched Sink or Swim (Su Friedriech, 1990): 4.5/5

Last seen 2008 for class. I've seen a fair few films since then that have a voice telling a story and tangentially related footage on screen, and it's a difficult trick to make work. Yet Friedrich does it the best and makes it look effortless here, telling the troubling story of her relationship with her father using a structuralist gambit that nonetheless succeeds in encoding an emotional journey as well as an organizational principle, all via mysterious footage that feels often found instead of shot. Even the few slightly staged moments sit nicely in juxtaposition to the audio track, the awkwardness of the staging mirroring the awkwardness of the experience of re-encountering her father as his latest daughter acts out a nearly identical psychodrama. 

Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger (Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace, 2026): 3/5
FUCKIN’ BIBLICAL INNIT

Insidious: Out of the Further (Jacob Chase, 2026): 1/5

More like Insidious: Out of Ideas! 

All Fall Down (John Frankenheimer, 1962): 3/5 

Is it weird that Frankenheimer cast Angela Lansbury as a mother with incestuous feelings towards her son TWICE in 1962 alone? 

The basic arc of the film is a young man (Brandon de Wilde) learning the older brother (Warren Beatty) he idolizes is actually a callous prick but that's so obvious from the second we meet (the bafflingly-named) Berry-Berry that the film doesn't really have anywhere to go. Scene-to-scene is very well-done but taken as a whole it's certainly lacking. Extra star for Lansbury who is reliably great in this. RIP Eva Marie Saint. 

The Rivals of Amziah King (Andrew Patterson, 2026): 3/5 

 Has a strange, messy warmth to it, where bluegrass, beekeeping, potlucks and the Oklahoma landscape all become part of the same little community. I really liked the folk rock throughout, and the score adds so much to that loose, lived in feeling. Besides all the Western revenge stuff, there’s a genuinely lovely belief in shared labor, chosen family, and looking after people who might otherwise have nowhere to go.

Between Two Worlds ( Emmanuel Carrere, 2021): 3/5
A Ken Loach-y, Dardenne brothers-esque social commentary that challenges and exposes without quite hitting the sweet spot. Sincere but surface level attempts to critique class divides while raising awareness of the working conditions and sacrifices of vulnerable people doing low paid cleaning jobs to increase respect for these professions and the vital services they provide. Was in it for Binoche, of course. 

Everyone is Lying to You For Money (Ben McKenzie, Giorgio Angelini, 2025): 3/5
Wait are you telling me the advertised, decentralized future of money is brought to you by BLACKROCK?? 

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (Nicolas Rossier, David Ridgen, 2009): 5/5 

Incredible piece of documentation on an inimitable academic figure. This film does a fantastic job of painting a portrait of Finkelstein, both personally and professionally, that is difficult to look away from. At times moving, infuriating, and devastating, all with Professor Finkelstein squarely centered. Legitimately brought me to tears a few times. Ex: When Finkelstein says "Not true!" after a student says he is "Too good for DePaul!" I choked up. You understand completely that this is a man who does not care about institutional power, but about ideas, about their discussion, and about the transference of radical thinking and what some in those institutions may call radical morals from one generation of thinkers to the next.  I dislike the concept of heroes, but it's hard to think of a better word to describe my admiration for this man. (Though I do agree with Chomsky that he should have focused less on Dershowitz's plagiarism and more on his specious arguments.) 

BOOK NOOK 

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Norman G. Finkelstein, 1995)

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Norman G. Finkelstein, 2000) 

This GIF but Israel, the U.S., and basically all of western imperialism: 

 

The Rivals of Amziah King (Andrew Patterson, 2026): 5/5

Moviemaking of the very highest order, novel both in structure and editing. As everyone mentions, this is a tale of two movies. The first half being the best hour of cinema of 2026 to date—a pure, eye-watering pleasure to watch and stuffed with emotion. And the second being only completely watchable and satisfying. McConaughey is on fire. As in Vast of Night, the characters—like an accomplice in a fast food place and a boy scout/marine co-thief—are enjoyably fast talking and competent.

 

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun, 2026): 3.5/5

A wonderfully personal and idiosyncratic vision—and surprisingly entertaining. My take was that Schoenbrun made an uncanny movie about the scary, overwhelming, world-rending feeling of one’s first orgasm (enter: the Little Death). Later I listened to an interview where Schoenbrun referenced rather their first non-dysphoric sexual experience, and the penny really dropped.

 

Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005): 3/5

A lackadaisical and discursive version of my beloved “Young person wants to start a band and does” plot. The characters are understated and endearing, but the film really could have been about a science fair or anything. 

 

After Hours, rw (Martin Scorsese, 1985): 3.5/5

The same few locations, characters, images and scenarios—around and around in a paranoid and inescapable loop, like a circle of hell. Forty years after my first viewing in the theater, the bit that still hits me the hardest is the Kafkaesque bouncer who tells our protagonist, “I'll take your money 'cos I don't want you to feel you left anything untried.”

 

The Naked City, rw (Jules Dassin, 1948): 3/5

Exceptional for its head-of-its-time Weegee-inspired documentary look, colorful chatter from peripheral New York characters, and radical use of real NYC locations, including interiors of crowded apartments as well as an extended tour of the Williamsburg bridge in 1948. Plot-wise, it’s a rather pedestrian police procedural plot brightened only by Barry Fitzgerald’s ultra-Irish charm and hooey. 

 

Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001): 1/5

Dumb, ugly, self-serious, visually incoherent, and irrelevant. Subtract half a star because Tarantino cited this as his top film of this century. 

 

KoKo’s Earth Control, 8m (Dave Fleischer, 1928): 3.5/5

A cartoon that is recognizably madcap and rule-breaking and that experiments with all kinds of combinations of live action and animation. Clearly a huge influence on Looney Tunes

 

The Haunted House, 7m (Walt Disney, 1929): 3/5

Mickey dances with skeletons

 

Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You, 10m (Brandon Cronenberg, 2019): 3.5/5

Wonderfully creepy. Mad doctors. Wires implanted in brains. Nightmares where loved ones are just a bit off. 

 

 

Anthony Mann Westerns in the 1950s 

Mann made 17 movies in the 50s, including 9 westerns. I didn’t rewatch The Naked Spur (1953) (4 stars), The Man from Laramie (1955) (3.5 stars), or Man of the West (1958)(4 stars). Korean-war movie Men in War (1957) is also worth your time. Mann made 41 movies over the course of his career, which only lasted the 30 years between 1939 and 1968. Mann died of a heart attack at 61.

 

The Furies, rw (Anthony Mann, 1959): 5/5

A rich Western-set melodrama that stands with Sirk in terms of intensity and batshit behavior. Barabara Stanwyck, fierce and complex, has Succession-like ambition to run her father’s ranch but loves/desires the wrong man/men. At one point, in a scene that must be seen to be believed, Stanwyck stabs a potential rival in the face with a pair of scissors. Walter Huston is also a force of nature as the Succession-like patriarch who isn’t sure whether he’s ready to give up control of his ranch. “New Female Romantic Rival: My name is Dallas Heart. I’m new here, honey.” “Stanwyck: Honey, you wouldn’t be new anyplace” 

 

Winchester ’73, rw (Anthony Mann, 1950): 5/5

An episodic series of expert Tarantino-esque set pieces, including: Wyatt Earp demands your guns, a high-stakes shooting contest, a run-in with a guy who sells guns and liquor to “Injuns” who also cheats you out of all your money, an Apache attack on the cavalry at dawn including a chicken-hearted husband proving his bravery, and finally Cain and Abel confronting one another on a steep desert hillside. Plus, an epic amount of gun = dick stuff, including lots of rubbing and caressing. 

 

Devil’s Doorway (Anthony Mann, 1950): 2.5/5

I suppose it’s to be celebrated, but it’s hard to stomach this movie’s didacticism. Robert Taylor (dull) plays the tragic Native American. His family has worked the land in a verdant valley forever, but the law says white homesteaders can claim the land as their own. It doesn’t go well. For all the people who think revisionist Westerns just started to be made in the 70s.

 

The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951): 2.5/5

I though this might be a Western, but it’s actually a thriller-on-a-train. Dick Powell (dull) is a detective enroute to Washington and trying to smoke out a conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln (!!!) at his inauguration. 

 

A Bend in the River (Anthony Mann, 1952): 3.5/5

Like Winchester 78, this serves up Western genre greatest hits, here in Technicolor and broadly entertaining. We’ve got a wagon train, including James Stewart going out into the bush to kill some Injuns hand-to-hand. We have homesteader pure-land passages. We have the corrupting power of civilization and especially of gold, seeing Portland turn rapidly from a podunk town full of kindly characters to a den of iniquity. There’s a cattle drive, and some wonderfully ambiguously moral characters trying to outrun their pasts and achieve redemption. Will Arthur Kennedy turn out to be bad? Will Rock Hudson? Like all of these Mann Westerns, it contains some soundstage scenes, but plenty of the great outdoors including a working riverboat. Suck it, Nolan.

 

The Far Country (Anthony Mann, 1954): 4/5

One of the most cynical of these Mann westerns, though shot in VistaVision and Technicolor. James Stewart is the righteous rugged individualist who comes into an Alaskan town and quickly realizes that the sheriff/government is a corrupt thief and there’s nothing he can do about it. He contrives to get his own property back, but he doesn’t’ believe it’s up to him to save the whole town (and by extension the civilized world itself). Only in the end is he forced to take a stand, and violence is the only thing for it.

 

The Tin Star (Anthony Mann, 1957): 3/5

As in The Far Country, a righteous rugged Individualist (here Henry Fonda) is unwillingly pulled into defending the stability of a wobbly civilization, but this version is far warmer. The film has a strong emotional and character-driven throughline in Fonda’s growing relationship with greenhorn sheriff and mentee Anthony Perkins, a wise old doctor, as well as an eligible widow and her half-native son. Black and white.

 

 

BOOK NOOK

 

Stoner (John Williams, 1965)

The best reading experience I had since The Recognitions, and it couldn’t be more different. A 19th century-feeling novel of a perfectly ordinary life rendered with great truth and empathy. Born on farm, our protagonist’s parents send him to college, where he falls in love with literature (creating an un-bridgeable gulf between him and his parents) and becomes a professor at the same college. He gets married, has a daughter, navigates internal politics on campus, has an affair, gets sick. Just an absolutely normal life, with all of its hopes, turning points, disappointments and resiliencies—vividly and honestly rendered. Ignored in 1965, it experienced an international resurgence in the 2000s. “Lust and learning. That’s all there is.”

 

The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, 1920)

A short novel that packs a punch, especially in its final chapter. This helped me to understand the Scorsese’s adaptation much better. I always considered that the drama was that the external forces of society were keeping the lovers apart, and I just wanted the characters to throw off society’s yoke, move somewhere else, and live. But with the interiority of the novel form, I now understand that our protagonist actually loves the order and rules of society—and thoroughly enjoys all the advantages that he comes by so easily by being a member. Subsequently, it’s really a self-imposed denial. He wants her but…not really enough to change or deny his own tidy little world. The tragedy is internal not external. 

 

Louis L’Amour Short Stories

The Killer from Pecos, Mistakes Can Kill, Trap of Gold, Dutchman’s Flat

A pleasant surprise to find the prose here so compelling and modern, not that far off from (my beloved) Elmore Leonard. Fully of tight-lipped and competent men placed in the middle of compelling situations. Trap of Gold especially—about a prospector who finds a vein of gold in a dangerous place and tries to figure out how far to push his luck—is worthy of Jack London in its economy and vividness.

 

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun, 2026): 4/5

"Psycho... but from the perspective of the shower curtain."

You may not leave a Jane Schoenbrun film loving what you saw but you do leave knowing someone is going to have their lives changed by the film. This film is going to have a long and interesting life. In the near future, some will find it to make too many big leaps of faith, and in many ways I think horror fans may come away the most disappointed. But if you surrender to the vision, there’s so much to enjoy. This is a great looking film, with a smart script that’s also very funny, and it’s all powered by a concoction of meta 80s teen slasher with a sprinkle of Sunset Boulevard seen through Schoenbrun’s characteristic queer lens. Oh and towering Gillian Anderson clearly relishing at her Southern belle/Norma Desmond vampiric turn? That's a yes for me. Also, as fandom becomes a nearly religious identity, Schoenbrun is exploring how fandom and identity shape each other and I love that for myself.

The Last House (Louis Leterrier, 2026): 2/5

Typical bullshit I've come to expect from Netflix. But at least Greta Lee was there?

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937): 4/5

Requires some suspension of belief, but when it's so piercingly perceptive, who cares? Lubitsch mixes his patented light touch -- the social commentary about class with the various staff, especially on the trip to the racetrack; charming and witty banter between the love triangle of Maria/Angel (a typically mesmerizing Marlene Dietrich), her Diplomat husband Frederick (Herbert Marshall), and the starstruck Tony Halton (Melvyn Douglas) --with a remarkably astute depiction of the depths and layers of happiness, the challenges of marriage, and the swooning power of infatuation.

Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg, 2026): 3/5

A soft 3. It sometimes feels like a story that wants to be a drama but was forced into the mold of a thriller in order to occupy the summer box office seas. The problem a lot of new American blockbusters are repeatedly running into is that America now, from an outsider perspective, is completely devoid of empathy at the highest ranks of power. Perhaps Spielberg has finally given up on humanity sorting itself out and our last chance of redemption is how we respond to a hypothetical Disclosure Day. (Save us, ET!)

Also: that memorable shot of Fruit Loops falling in front of the camera like hailstones -- that had to be Spielberg or Kaminski's nod to Araki's Mysterious Skin right?? (Now there's a powerful story about childhood abduction.)

OK but we totally lost it when the bad guy Colin Firth, after spending his whole life fighting disclosure, just shrugs, sits down and says "Fuck it, I give up, disclose everything." I mean the guy had ONE JOB.

Evil Dead Burn (Sebastien Vanicek, 2026): 1/5

Dares to ask: what if evil men were evil?

Surprisingly awful with moments that approach genuinely incompetent filmmaking.

A Self-Induced Hallucination (Jane Schoenbrun, 2018): 3/5
2010-2015 YouTube was home to some of the most idiotic people to walk the earth.

Anyway, this is a much more effective way of surveying an internet phenomenon than any conventional talking head doc that I’ve seen. It’s sort of a video essay comprised of original YouTube content, but it feels more experimental and plays as impressionistic aggregate.


Swiss Family Robinson (Ken Annakin, 1960): 2.5/5
The type of Hollywood showboaty production of days gone by. Racism, misogyny, cruelty to animals, colonialism, toxic masculinity. It’s all here!


Young Washington (Jon Erwin, 2026): 0.5/5
George Washington: “What are we going to do Ben ”

Ben Franklin: “I don’t know George…” He pauses. “But whatever it is, we’ll do it together.”

And then they revolutioned… AMERICAN REVOLUTIONED!

Queen Bee (Ranald MacDougall, 1955): 3/5
People used to go to the movies to be terrified by Joan Crawford in this country.


rewatched Nine to Five (Colin Higgins, 1980): 3.5/5
In a time of downright diabolical evil, we have lost an angel. And we will not see her likes again. No one could embody everything great about this country like Dolly Rebecca Parton. And losing her now, when America is being engulfed by wanton cruelty, stings badly. So it seemed fitting to revisit this film, which became an improbable box office smash due to its casting of three formidable iconic women, its humorous tackling of serious gender and workplace issues, and of course Dolly’s monster hit song, perhaps the last great anthem of the worker’s plight this culture has produced. The plot is unhinged, but the monstrousness of Danny Coleman’s Franklin Hart is such that the farce is warranted. Watching this movie in the Trump Era is both dispiriting and also cathartic. But the film’s greatest pleasure may be in seeing Dolly almost steal the movie from brilliant and far more experienced actors.

RIP Dolly Rebecca Parton. 

BOOK NOOK

The Shipping News (Annie Proulx, 1996)
I love a book that takes place at the edge of civilization because it tends to make people act strangely, like they’re about to tip into barbarism at any moment. Such is the case with this book about a sad sack who ends up moving with his aunt to a tiny town in Newfoundland filled with some of the oddest balls you’ll come across in literature. Their struggles to barely keep it together are hysterical.

The Invite (Olivia Wilde, 2026): 4/5

Without mentioning any names, I know the nervous-energy decorator and the frustrated stoner musician characters pretty well. The film is bravura display of group dynamics and group acting in perfect rhythm—like a band playing together and off one another. Very fun and funny. 

 

Magellan, 2h44m (Lav Diaz, 2026): 3.5/5

A languorous but very beautiful movie. Stunning use of color and light on landscapes, in rooms, in the sky and sea, on sails, under trees. Interested in characters not so much for their interiority but for how they fit into their landscapes and their time. The great expanse of time is challenging, but there’s plenty of time to think about things like mutiny and homosexuality on ships or Gael Garcia Bernal rather minor career—or the dupe and destructiveness of Christianity in Asia (and Africa), where crosses replace ancient traditions that connect people to their ancestors and the landscape. 

 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Destin Daniel Cretton, 2026): 3.5/5

Like Disclosure Day, this features a candy-colored shell of expert and enjoyable action encasing a gooey center. 

 

It Ends (Alexander Ullom, 2026): 2/5

Think-pieces tie this one to Backrooms for its “horror of liminal spaces,” here an endless road trip. But the film this most resembles is The Long Walk in that the simple premise is established in the first 10 minutes, and thereafter there is no complication, elaboration or payoff. 

 

Night Movies, rw (Arthur Penn, 1975): 4.5/5

I underestimated this movie, which I last watched maybe 35 years ago. It’s a classic of the paranoid thriller genre. There are explicit references to the death of JFK and RFK, and the narrative plays a wonderfully paranoid trick. At the one-hour mark, the detective has performed the action he was hired for. Thereafter, the detective returns to the scene of his accomplishment (Florida) and the film offers three more solutions in 30 minutes: a bad guy, but behind him another, and behind him another—ultimately breaking through the frame to attack Hollywood itself. Features the same editor as Bonnie & Clyde and offers a beautiful, jazzy (and mostly rejected) take on moving from scene to scene. 

 

The Vast of Night, rw (Andrew Patterson, 2019): 4/5

Filmmaking at a very high level. A 5-minute one-er at the 20-minute mark connects two of the characters in the frame, the 10 minute one-er that follows that one sits on the protagonist’s face while a deep mystery unfolds, and the 4-minute one-er that follows that is a mind-bending traveling shot across, through and around to connect the two characters within a very specific geographic proximity. The second half is merely good. Looking forward to seeing Oklahoma-native Patterson’s second feature, The Rivals of Amziah King, in theater(s) now. 

 

Aventurera (Alberto Gout, 1950): 3.5/5

This almost feels like a Bollywood movie, with its fever-pitch melodrama, pathos-evoking limping mutes, and many elaborate musical numbers. Turns out it’s a particularly exuberant example of a popular Mexican genre, cine de rumberas or fallen-woman melodramas, swift and full of event. At one point our protagonist, the astounding Ninón Sevilla performs a dance that involves (brief) simulated masturbation while wearing pineapples on her head and an outfit that seems to simulate her pubic hair. Wowsers.

 

Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964): 3.5/5

Michael Mann put this on his S&S Top 10, and it’s easy to see why: a characteristically Mann-ish blend of romanticism and nihilism, with tons of cool and style. A tight lipped but competent gangster gets out of jail, meets a girl, hangs out, gambles, and eventually stoically accepts a suicide assignment to save the girl. Says stuff like: “I play cards. What else is there?” and “I’m the scum of the earth, but I forgive myself.” Shot in beautiful but harsh deep blacks and blown out whites. 

 

Ever Vanishing Present, 48m (Toshihiro Matsumoto, 2017): 3.5/5

Is it the present that is vanishing or the past? I find it fascinating how obsessed she is with remembering—like a person who has lost a leg reaching for it thousands of times a day and obsessively longing for it to be there. What does it mean that she needs to write to live? Certainly, her notes aren’t necessary for her to feel and enjoy the world around her—or to be the “she” that she is at any given moment. And they aren’t necessary for her own profound conclusions about her life: “If I could learn to enjoy myself just as I was, I thought I could be fulfilled. I think that is why I find myself laughing so much.” And: “Take good care of the people you meet, and enjoy every day.”

 

Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949): 3.5/5

Demonstrates that there are at least two movies called Obsession (along with Visconti’s take on The Postman Always Rings Twice from 1943) that are better than this year’s. In this droll and black-hearted noir, a jilted husband keeps the other man locked up in a basement for weeks. He doesn’t want to kill the guy until he’s sure he won’t get implicated and caught. Then a very clever police inspector shows up. The mystery’s solution hinges on something I also love about The Big Lebowski: the fact that language is passed from person to person. Lubowski sees George Bush Sr. say “this aggression will not stand.” And later the phrase just comes out of his mouth too: "This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man."  Like William S. Burroughs says, language is a virus. 

 

Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981): 3/5

You can feel the shag and ambiguity of 70s cinema make the turn to a more direct and black-and-white morality. Stallone sports Pacino’s beard and poofy hair (and he looks great when he’s running) but this is no Serpico. Cocky yet incompetent terrorist Rutger Hauer impresses with his intensity and sweatiness, the year before Blade Runner. The inevitable NYC subway chase is dynamic, but the conclusion, which presents a hostage situation in a cable car 250 feet above the East River is static and drawn out. There’s a good chance I would have been thrilled by this if I had seen it upon its original release when I was 14. They definitely jumped a real bus into the East River and filmed it sinking. Suck on it, Nolan. 

 

Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997): 2/5

A slow and awkward murderous melodrama set in a small community where the women feel all the feelings, and the men do what they want. As a result, the women devise to control the men through prophesy and superstition, to mixed results. This dystopian view is never truly acknowledged or criticized, however, and the women continue to think themselves superior.

 

BOOK NOOK

 

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)

I’m reminded of Robert Silverberg’s dictum that a science fiction short story must have something new on every page. This is a sci-fi novel that keeps up this pace over 260 pages. At first this is exhilarating. Bester’s imagination is limitless, and the world is constantly shifting based on what you’re discovering about it. But over the course of the novel, it’s finally just dizzying and exhausting. And since the protagonist’s personality, outlook, attitudes, opinions and goals are also ever-evolving, there is finally a cipher at the center of the eventful narrative, and the experience is a hollow one. 

 

 The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026): 3/5

Saw it in 70MM IMAX down in Irvine, and I don’t think the film would have lost much if shot by a great cinematographer on "non" IMAX camera. Some amazing casting and performances. (Samantha Fucking Morton!!). Nolan’s shortcomings are still here (notably his women characters, Calypso strikes me as a missed opportunity), and the soullessness at the heart of his work will always keep him from realizing the outsized ambition he’s clearly driven by. And yet, the film has an undeniable appeal. It’s an interesting mix of modernist storytelling and old fashioned Hollywood epic making at a time when laziness and contempt for the audience has all but destroyed studio filmmaking.

Nolan’s obsession with smart men (but I have to say, his vision of Odysseus is pretty dumb-- this guy is the clever one, not a killing machine- and it underlines my old take once again that for a guy who clearly worships at the altar of intelligence, Nolan’s films aren’t all that smart) who unleash hell without meaning to is a worthy subject, but I’m curious if the current mess of the world will begin to change how he approaches that theme. Nolan likes us to think he’s questioning this patriarchal and brutal world he’s depicting but he always stops short of tarnishing his hero too much. He will show us Menelaus as a brute, but he avoids dealing with Odysseus obviously having a sexual relationship with Calypso while his wife has to remain chaste for decades. He's definitely improving as a filmmaker over time, maybe someday he'll get there.

Ever Vanishing Present (Toshihiro Matsumoto, 2017, 48mins): 3.5/5

"Why do I write? To leave proof that I lived?"

"I think, in a sense, I am really fortunate... to have memories that I want to keep."

"There were so many memories I wanted to keep. They are your life, after all."

I am not OK.

Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, 1968): 4/5

The performances may not be photographed under optimal conditions, but what a lovely portrait of a moment. I especially appreciate how much Pennebaker spends time on the faces of the kids who showed up. It made me think of the beautiful impermanence of it all. It also showed me how fictional filmmaking can never come close to the power of actually capturing a moment before it disappears forever.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Baz Luhrmann, 2025): 3.5/5

A genuine ode to pure showmanship in its grandest tradition; Luhrmann's 2022 feature cleverly subverted its own spectacle by making Elvis the man transition into a cog in a wheel - a tool and creation of management, making the film as much about the birth of the modern entertainment industry as it was about Elvis as subject. This is far more straightforward when it comes to its subject though far more than a concert film, because Luhrmann intelligently intercuts interview footage and sound bites of Presley himself discussing his own life and history, so many of these songs take on a greater emotional resonance being juxtaposed with this material than they really would have by themselves. For this same reason it adds considerable substance to what a concert film can normally provide, and while it remains to be seen whether or not this becomes a benchmark for how concert films should be made, it absolutely should. Touching in other ways as well, because Luhrmann (is it reactionary to say this?) genuinely believes in celebrity and popular culture as something sincere, that people need icons to celebrate, that theater is as much carnival trick as it art, and that those things give people meaning.

BOOK NOOK

Compass (Mathias Enard, 2015)

This is the story of an academic’s sleepless night thinking about all the mistakes he’s made and…wait, where are you going? But seriously, it turns into a brilliant meditation on what western civilization even is without eastern civilization. 

Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026): 4/5

All the stuff in the backrooms works gangbusters. Lynchian sense of physical space being psychic space. (“You are your brain, dipshit!”) Very eerie, uncanny and disorienting, recalling (for me) the childhood feeling of being lost. An office space designed by a hallucinating AI—or by an alien, based on descriptions scrawled on a bar napkin. The scene where they finally go “down” definitively drove away Melissa and Jack— all with mere sound, peculiar space, recessed lighting, office furniture, and too much yellow. Despite the fact that there was not a monster in sight up to that point, Jack in fact later had a nightmare that robbed both of us of hours of sleep. Whoops! He wanted to see it! (since he is absolutely YouTube-pilled). Getting Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve to act all this out was a good idea. 

 

* The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026): 3.5/5

Saw it with Jack in IMAX in Century City. Like most Nolan movies, it displays the effort of a filmmaker attempting something extraordinary for three hours and occasionally achieving it. And like most Nolan movies it’s ponderous—but at least this time it’s justified by its quite formal and ceremonial source material. The Trojan Horse itself is used well physically, symbolically and (for Odysseus) psychologically. Despite what each side says, I find it ambiguous politically. On one hand it hand-wrings about today’s poor treatment of homeless travelers (immigrants?). On the other hand, it portrays a bunch of “guests” as overstaying their welcome and needing to be kicked out! 

 

Power Ballad (John Carney, 2026): 3.5/5

Here it is again: my favorite plot. A person dreams of being a musician, and (in his/her own way) achieves it. Usually this person is much younger (Sing Street, School of Rock, CODA, Michael), but it just as effective (on me) when it’s an old (Song Sung Blue). Of course, Paul Rudd overflows with charisma and good spirits. The ending really works despite how horrible the songs are. 

 

Obsession (Curry Barker, 2026): 3/5

“Consent, The Movie.” Also: “Gen Z Hand Wringing, The Movie.” Yes, the Gen Z (slash my own) sweetness, niceness and sensitivity is great/annoying. Yes, the positive and negative waves of need, insecurity and desire that you feel in any relationship is scary. Yes, having a person love and need you is scary. [Jesus, she loves me and now I’m responsible for her!] And yes, it’s nerve-wracking to have an effect on others and on the universe. Best just kill yourself. 

 

I Love Boosters (Boots Riley, 2026): 3/5

Without a doubt overflowing with colorful and amusing imaginative leaps. It never coalesces into anything like a satisfying dramatic situation or coherent worldview, but there is more to life (and film) than these aspects. Keke Palmer and Taylour Paige are both a revelation. More of them, please. 

 

The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda, 2026): 3/5

A perfectly cromulent movie, paying as much attention to the relationship between the characters as to the neat mystery. Sort of a non-ironic Knives Out for the tween set. In every way inferior to the two-minute-long bit in the latest Jackassmovie where a live ram is let loose in a small room full of cringing men. Those fuckers really do butt, sending grown men flying like bowling pins. 

 

The Furious (Kenji Tanigaki, 2026): 3/5

Despite (or because of) its action-packed nature, this movie is not for me. But it’s easy to admire its swift, witty and balletic action sequences. Fight as dance: choreographed, contrapuntal movement of bodies in space. 

 

Buffet infinity (Simon Glassman, 2026): 3/5

An alien invasion story completely told through late-night-style television ads. The premise and execution are so good you wish the story evolved more quickly and more coherently.

 

Iron Lung (Mark Fischbach, 2026): 2/5

Another tell-tale sign of the film industry in 2026. One tiny location (a 15-ft-long diving bell) and some complex context/lore results in an audiobook of a movie. YouTuber Mark Fischbach financed the film himself for a reported budget of $3 million, and served as writer, director, editor, and star. His online audience requested local screenings, and the film earned $18 million domestically during its opening weekend and ultimately surpassed $50 million worldwide.

 

* Minions & Monsters (Pierre Coffin): 2/5

I have no memory of this. 

The Bear, Season 4 (Christopher Storer, 2026): 2.5/5

I reviewed season 2 of this show back in 2023 thusly: “New season, new tone: kinder, gentler, more heartfelt. It’s the Ted Lassification of The Bear, and I’m here for it.” And damned if Season 4 didn’t follow Ted Lasso’s lead as well, as in: I could barely finish it. The decision to make the whole season one day and evening is utterly disastrous. Only the penultimate and final episodes seem anything other than water-treading. Still, the last episode works really well and got me, so help me.

 

 

Criterion Murderous Melodramas

A fun collection, and more than the sum of its parts.

 

Bigger than Life, rw (Nicholas Ray, 1956): 5/5

Stylishly bonkers in the best and most Sirkian of ways: DeLuxe saturated colors, looming shadows, surging music cues, and extreme angles expressing internal states, in glorious CinemaScope. All to recreate what it sometimes felt like (to me) in my house growing up, for there is perhaps no better depiction in cinema of my dad at his worst. (Other possibilities include Whiplash and The Great Santini). Self-loathing and self-aggrandizement. Sobbing on the couch. Punishment for wrongdoings, by hand, belt, wooden panel or slat. Wanting only to control and improve his boy. Such as one incident where he read over my page-long, hand-written essay (in maybe 4^th grade) and required me to recopy it over again because of some grammatical errors. But I showed him (or he showed me) because I grew up with those grammatical rules so firmly in mind that it got me my first job (as an editor). So…thanks dad? 

 

Some Came Running, rw (Vincente Minnelli, 1958): 5/5

Grumpy, washed out, drunken, lonely Frank Sinatra charges into town, knocking down smalltown provincialism,repression, and respectability using the huge chip on his shoulder. As a result, he frees some and further locks up others, mostly righteously (with one massive exception). The last 15 minutes are an all-timer, putting Minnelli’s mastery of wide-screen color and movement on glorious display. Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine are all excellent. 

 

Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1960): 3.5/5

A story of a father and his two sons—one illegitimate (and good) and the other legitimate (and some of each). Epic and full of parallels, turns and ironies. Comparable (favorably) to East of Eden. George Hamilton and George Peppard (certainly two of the blandest actors in film history) underwhelm as the brothers, but Minnelli succeeds in elevating their story to a mythic realm. 

 

No Down Payment (Martin Ritt, 1957): 3.5/5

A fairly early look at the California suburbs and its discontents, contrasted with the beauty and placidity of the setting. Conformity, alcoholism, racism, and (most startlingly) seething sexuality (although to say more would be a spoiler). Lots of terrific parties. Joanne Woodward is fine! Penned by blacklisted writer Ben Maddow. Stands with (and below) other films addressing this topic, including The Reckless Moment (1949), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), There’s Always Tomorrow (1956), and the aforementioned Bigger Than Life(1956).

 

Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947): 3/5

Grounds itself not so much in psychological verisimilitude but in hard-boiled teenage emotional intensity. There are only a few characters and past vortexes of the unknown (a deadly bridge incident), so the conclusion is not hard to guess. There are also classic gunzel homo overtones, but I wonder if the director is even aware. Lizabeth Scott is pretty, with a rectangular face, a mid-Atlantic accent and flat and dead-eyed delivery.

 

The Long, Hot Summer (Martin Ritt, 1958): 2.5/5

Three Faulkner stories twisted into Tennessee William porn, including sexual repression, fading patriarchs, a drop of homosexuality, and a sweaty, sweaty Paul Newman, whose eyes were created to be seen in Technicolor. Presumably Newman and Joanne Woodward (again!)   were falling in love here, but it’s not on screen. Raised a half-star for this shot: 

 

The Girl in the Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955): 2/5

Script: Stiff, although co-written by Charles Brackett no less. 

Acting: Joan Collins. 

Direction: Fleischer is surprisingly good (Narrow Margin, 10 Rillington Place, See No Evil, Mandingo (!!!)) but he misuses the large proscenium of CinemaScope and presents much of the drama in disastrous medium shots that, watching on TV at least, keep the emotions at a distance. His use of DeLuxe Color is also garish and horrible.

However: Fleischer and  Brackett  hit upon one sublime image of sublimation, and it’s right there  in the name of the movie: a red swing built in a large domed room by our protagonist, aging married architect Ray Miland. The sequences with Miland pushing nubile Collins in the swing (“You can’t make me your wife, so you make me your daughter.”), spill deliriously over with Hitchcockian and Lynchian fetishism and kink. It’s the only orgasm Miland, Collins, and the movie will have.

 

 

John Carter (Andrew Stanton, 2012): 2/5

EWB’s first Mars novel was published serially in 1912 in a quarterly pulp magazine. As a result, it is focused on short-term goals, intense clashes, and small victories that roll into a big picture à la Raiders of the Lost Ark. Instead, here, the ultra-complicated “big picture” drowns much of the joy and liveliness, produced with cartoonish CGI. The ultimate bounced blank check for Stanton after Finding Nemo and WALL-E.

 

Postcards from the Edge (Mike Nichols, 1990): 3/5

An accomplished screenplay (for someone who played Princess Leia). Strangely, I didn’t love Streep’s performance, but Shirley MacLaine is very good as always, especially in a scene where she’s been in an accident and is “without” make-up and her wig. Very vulnerable and expressive. 

 

The Human Voice, 30m (Pedro Almodóvar, 2020): 3/5

The composition and art direction (all pretty great) does all the heavy lifting of storytelling here. Emotional connection is a different thing. 

A Strange Way of Life (Pedro Almodóvar, 2023): 3.5/5

Deliciously Sirkian. Overheated and swift melodrama that also exposes societal repression. Hawke Is excellent. Why should there be only one gay cowboy movie? (Setting aside all those starring Randall Scott). 

 

Laura, rw (Otto Preminger, 1944): 4/5

A perfectly satisfying murder mystery. Just a small cast of characters and yet even with so few suspects, the solution is both unexpected and inevitable. Gene Tierney is gorgeous. Her face reminds me of Zendaya’s—wide, with high cheekbones and an upside-down mouth. Screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr, who also wrote MASH. 

 

The Warped Ones (Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960): 3.5/5

Released the same year as Breathless, but this is an even more twitchy, wiry, jazzy, ravenous, exploratory, feral, and impulsive. Also fairly rape-y. Reminds one how much Godard’s movie(s) have such quotations around them—whereas this protagonist refers to and points to nothing and is just really an aimless scumbag—a man trying to tear through the reality he is in. The final scene, involving two abortions, is an all-timer of nihilism. I watched this because one of my favorite critics, David Ehrlich, had it in his Letterboxd top four of all time along with Marie Antoinette and Close Up.

 

Borom Sarret, 18m (Ousmane Sembène, 1963): 4/5

A portrait of two Dakars. The title translates to The Wagoner, and indeed our protagonist drives a horse-drawn taxi that connects and binds a community (the “native quarter”), taking poor people from their wooden hovels down dirt streets to their jobs, the hospital, the cemetery and church—never making enough money to feed his own family. But until he gets an unexpected fare, he never, never goes to the plateau: where the rich and modern people exist in their office buildings, sports cars, paved streets, parks, and high-rise apartment buildings—like beings in a different galaxy. 

 

Eno (Gary Hustwit, 2024): 3.5/5

Great to hang out with this brilliant and creative idol of mine. (I love especially his 70s “rock” albums and of course ambient music.) Parenthetically, the idea that this was a modular movie that could be watched in any order (“film that’s different every time it’s shown!”) is uninteresting and dumb—and in fact completely fudged for this locked-down version. 

 

V/H/S Halloween (Alex Ross Perry & 6 others, 2025): 2/5

Disappointing batch, over-reliant on degraded and glitchy video. However, the Alex Ross Perry’s entry rocks. So grotty, horrible and upsetting it almost breaks this pop format. 

 

 

Book Nook

 

A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1912)

Written in an oddly stilted and formal tone that isn’t completely explained by the era of its creation. Still, it’s packed with event, action, violence, daring do, and romance—so it’s easy to see why it was so popular. There’s a strong anthropological bent to his vision, as he takes long passages to describe societal norms and machines of the various warring factions of the planet. First serialized in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine from February to July of 1912, this is ERB’s first novel, and the first (of 11) of his John Carter Mars novels. He began writing at the age of 31 and wrote 91 books in all, including 24 Tarzan novels, 7 Pellucidar (Prehistoric, hollow earth) novels, 5 Venus novels, 3 Lost World novels, 3 Moon novels, 3 Mucker (street brawler) novels, and 2 Apache novels. Of course, Burroughs eventually lived and died on a massive ranch in the San Fernando Valley, now called Tarzana. 

 

Ice (Anna Kavan, 1967)

A neurotic return over and over of a girl, her arm, ruins and forest, war, a cruel and repressive man (who is possibly the protagonist himself), and of course ice and snow. “In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.” It’s a tone poem, so I wonder how she decided it should be its current length. Why not twice as long or half as long? William S. Burroughs and Ballard are comps. 

 

Bluebeard (Kurt Vonnegut, 1987)

Takes on subjects as disparate as the American Abstract Expressionist movement (he’s pro) and the Armenian Genocide by the Turks of 1915-1916 (he’s anti), and ultimately circles back to WWII. Early in my reading life, I blew through all of Vonnegut’s novels, but no memory of this one remained (nor of Hocus Pocus). I appreciated today the same quality as I did in my teens and 20s: Vonnegut’s voice and tone that sees everything with an ironic and cock-eyed grin, conflating the horrific and the ridiculous—forgetting nothing and, If not forgiving, at least accepting everything. Joins the list of works (I’m thinking primarily of Michel Houellebecq’s extraordinary The Map and the Territory) that contain descriptions of other works of art that don’t actually exist, something I’m told is called notional ekphrasis.