Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019): 4/5

Bong's version of a heist movie about a diabolically clever and resourceful family is a pretty straightforward crowdpleaser. Just lots of fun, and act two's big twist (this film has the cleanest Syd Field structure in recent memory) made me think that Bong was saying something truly bold and incisive about senseless infighting among the bottom 20%. What happens at the climax doesn't really fit that interpretation, though, and by the final scene it's quite clear that we're looking at a familiar binary lament that's unequivocally allied with the have-nots. The spaces we occupy. The artful ones where the light and warmth streams in. The lower ones, where the shit water flows. What those of us below won’t do to get above. What those of us above cannot comprehend is below. “So metaphorical.”

On the nose, yes, but every single scene claps and the whole thing is ratcheted tight as fuck. Destined to age well.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Rob Letterman, 2019): 1/5

I have no real connection to Pokémon, never played the games, collected the cards or read the manga. I only watched because it promises Pikachu in a cute little Sherlock Holmes hat but then he fucking LOSES THE HAT like halfway through. Bullshit.

1 star for the design of the titular Pokémon - certainly cute.

rewatched In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000): 5/5

imagine .... basing your entire plot ..... on the concept of cheating on maggie cheung ........... sorry wong kar-wai, It's Just Not Realistic

Late Spring (Yashiro Ozu, 1949): 2.5/5

Ozu's sensibility ultimately may just be too sedate for my taste—I've seen most of the acknowledged classics now and have never been wowed, not even by Tokyo Story. Maybe one day I'll mature enough.

The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938): 3.5/5

Works beautifully as a nimble entertainment that the pointed anti-isolationism creeps up on you unawares. But it's the gradual progression from frivolity to impassioned engagement that gives the film teeth. Charters and Caldicott abandon their designated role as comic relief and join the fight, while the appeaser gets gunned down before he can even wave his white flag; it's the quintessential pre-war film, serving much the same function as the conclusion of Foreign Correspondent without making such a sententious fuss about it.

The Night Eats The World (Dominque Rocher, 2018): 2/5

“With the participation of Denis Lavant” is the coolest way to list a supporting actor who’s too good for the movie they’re appearing in.

The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982): 3.5/5

Jerry Lewis has the best unimpressed face.

L'enfance Nue (Maurice Pialat, 1968): 4/5

An extremely graceful, slow, and beautiful look at a wayward youth. Deeply moving.

Boulevard (Dito Monteil, 2014): 2/5

No fun trashing this earnest coming-out tale featuring Robin Williams's final on-screen performance. The film just isn't very good, it's pretty generic in terms of older gay man falls in love with young gigolo while not having an explicitly sexual relationship with him.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019): 3.5/5

Consistently very amusing and charming, but doesn't have much trajectory. There's not a ton in the way of stakes, never the sense of actual jeopardy. Still, representation and fealty to experience are both great, so keep it up The Movies.

Child's Play (Lars Klevberg, 2019): 0.5/5

Hot garbage top to bottom by Hollywood mercs with zero fucks. Far too superficial to function as a social commentary, far too void of tension to function as a horror, far too void of wit to function as a comedy/satire and far too obnoxiously cliche-ridden in general. Actually makes me appreciate how well put together the original was.

Krisha (Trey Edward Schults, 2015): 3/5

Valiant attempt to fashion a movie out of almost nothing, and Schults comes impressively close to pulling it off. Formally, KRISHA takes its cue primarily from the percussive anxiety of PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (fragmentary frantic activity accompanied by a jittery score). Combining that approach with a no-thanks exposition policy, plus Fairchild's intensely neurotic performance, yields arresting results, which means that quite a long time passes before the material's fundamental thinness becomes evident.

Anima (15 mins) (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2019): 3.5/5

"Cue the sliding violins, in sympathy" - Thom Yorke

I love this format - long strange music videos that span across a few songs. Can PTA's next film be a musical please????

Brightburn (David Yarovesky, 2019): 0.5/5

THE FUNNIEST FUCKING END CREDITS CUT IN THE WORLD. (They play Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy")

Daddy Longlegs (Benny and Josh Safdie, 2009): 3/5

If Cassavetes directed BIG DADDY.

Juliet, Naked (Jesse Peretz, 2018): 2.5/5

All I keep thinking about is that Ethan Hawke sure can afford to get his teeth fixed but he doesn't and I find his crooked teeth refreshing to see on screen.

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018): 1.5/5

A talky bloat that clocks in at 3 hours. A total slog, and this time Ceylan doesn't have a stunning location to visually offset the excessive prattle.

Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019): 2.5/5

Very brave choice for Joaquin to play a lonely guy on the edge of a breakdown!!! It's refreshing to see that from him!!!

Interesting in the abstract. It problematizes the very concept of Batman: a rich white dude who takes to the streets and beats up criminals, ignoring all the systematic ways that he could actually make life better for people in his city. The rich get richer, and they start to imagine the people beneath them as rats and clowns, sick in the head and all ready to murder each other. They fail to see their complicity in a system that drags people down, that pushes the poor and downtrodden into lives outside of the privileged conception of civilized society. They're just filth to be exterminated. In that kind of climate, is it any wonder that the Joker exists?

It's a sophisticated idea that requires real nuance, but all this film can give us are broad strokes: a sweeping largeness that simplifies issues of class struggle and mental illness into all-caps BIG IDEAS.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Scott Aukerman, 2019): 4/5

Dumb as hell. The web series has been making me laugh for years and the hilarity continues here.

rewatched The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000): 3/5

As lovely as it is deeply stupid, like a MATRIX knockoff designed by a committee of Bob Flanagan, Damien Hirst, and Henry Darger. At its best a genuinely unsettling freakout distilled from a lot of ostentatiously grim, intrinsically misogynist pop serial killer imagery, and at its worst reinforcing the stereotypical crap about violent mental illness being rooted almost exclusively in sexual dysfunction and trauma.

Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer 1932): 4/5

They spell vampire differently than me... that's classy! This whole film is classy.

High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh, 2019): 2/5

Predominantly intellectual exercise with formal rigor, so: a late Soderbergh movie. Soderbergh filming some power games using a fictional version of the 2011 NBA lockout as inspiration. The league itself is mostly abstracted outside of serving as a source for minutiae (and the "exploration of black bodies" theme that hangs over it). The dialogue is simultaneously dazzling and very deliberately stagey, and true to his promise he manages to get that iPhone camera into some wild spots. It feels very self-satisfied (though I would not call it at all smug). Soderbergh is clearly having a lot of fun here, I just wish he'd share with the rest of us.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Macon Blair, 2017): 3/5

"Melanie Lynskey and Rat-tailed Elijah Wood: Amateur Detectives."

You could do a lot worse than this.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Andre Ovredal, 2019): 1.5/5

Horrendous dialogue with sluggish pacing & some really laughable performances. Aimed at kids who are too old for GOOSEBUMPS but too young for IT.

Leaving Neverland (Dan Reed, 2019): No Rating

As crushing and awful as you've heard, less a documentary than a testimonial. Simply impossible to assess critically. No rating seems appropriate.

Surviving R. Kelly (2019): No Rating

”People will say, ‘Well, why didn't anyone notice?’ The answer is that they all noticed; no one cared because we were black girls.”

Not rating this one for the same reason why I didn't rate Leaving Neverland.

Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (Tyler Perry, 2017): 0.5/5

In hindsight, my rating for Scary Movie 5 was too harsh.

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960): 2.5/5

Or: Rocco and His Beautiful Face

From the opening scene introducing the Italian matriarch in full-on mamma mia mode, combine with an archaic depiction of red-blooded Italian dudes (the straight-laced one, the bullheaded one, the sensitive one, etc.) plus a patently misogynist, simple-minded treatment of women - wrapped around a shamelessly bombastic M.O. - you get a movie of diminishing returns with a laughably entitled sense of self-importance. I'm absolutely willing to concede the importance of the film's socio-economic commentary, but I can't get over how cruel Visconti's treatment of Nadia is. I get that it's in service of the film's bigger picture, but it doesn't feel earned dramatically. Nice atmosphere, though, and Delon is as good as usual.

Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019): 2.5/5

Moody sci-fi film where our hero travels to the edge of the solar system to confront his daddy issues. An uneven script that's heavy on theme but lacking in character. And the dialogue is bad too. Everything is just a little too straight forward for me, all the characters one dimensional with our lead basically playing a piece of white bread.

You guys ever notice that brad pitt’s kinda hot?

rewatched Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997): 5/5

"It actually says 'the most popular gun in American crime,' like they proud of that shit."

Mandatory rewatch after Hollywood. Pam Grier is a goddess.

Glass (M. Night Shyamalan, 2019): 1/5

A film that exists solely to undermine Unbreakable. It's long and entirely anticlimactic, limping along just to get to some awful twists that sell out the characters.