Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018): 2/5

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018): 2/5

Two Euro 2018 movies about dancing yourself (and others) to death. Largely forgettable works by a couple of my favorite and least consistent working directors.

Diary of a Country Priest, rw (Robert Bresson, 1951):4/5

The point seems to summed up in the priest’s insistence that “All is Grace.” When I texted Jerry to ask whether he believed this statement (which I guess I figured he didn’t), here was his reply, which it’s hard to argue with: "Grace = Bresson, Folly = Bunuel. Shit = Genet. I’d agree with any of these, depending on my circumstances at the moment."

Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009): 3/5

Fun time-tripping sci-fi adventure.

Undone (Raphael Bob-Waksberg, 2019): 3.5/5

Fun time-tripping roto-scope-animation sci-fi adventure.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019): 5/5

Playful, trippy, and horrifying. Aster once again grounds the movie’s horrors in the characters’ real trauma, and spins familiar elements into vivid new shapes. Mines the loss of individual identity of the “psychedelic experience” for maximum horror and ecstasy.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Scott Aukerman, 2019): 3/5

I’m a fan, and there were plenty of faint pleasures here.

Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016): 2.5/5

I keep thinking that it’s impossible for Hayao Miyazaki’s movies to be that far ahead of any other Japanese animation. But this movie didn’t provide any evidence to the contrary.

Succession, Seasons 1&2 (Jesse Armstrong, 2018/2019): 3.5/5

Lear refuses to give up his kingdom but the three siblings fight and plot anyway.

Too Old to Die Young, Eps 1, 3 & 5 (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2019): 2/5

Watched the first one, which had a devotion to tableau and stasis worthy of Parajanov. Vowed I’d never watch another. Then someone said to watch 3, so I did. Vowed I’d never watch another. Then someone said I had to watch 5, so I did. You can’t say I didn’t try.

The Amazing Jonathan Documentary (Benjamin Berman, 2019): 2/5

People who smoke meth are erratic.

Last Year at Marienbad, rw (Alain Resnais, 1961): 2.5/5

I had a lot more patience for high formalism tom-foolery when I was in my 20s.

The Old Dark House, rw (James Whale, 1932): 5/5

Halloween Watch #1: Delivers ace performances from Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger and Charles Laughton, as well as resolution for all the characters—all in 72 spooky and madcap minutes.

City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci, 1980): 1.5/5

Halloween Watch #2:  You’ll hear horror people talk about Fulci as a horror master, but this one never got off the ground for me as either an eye-gouging crowd-pleaser or a synth zone-out.

Friday the 13^th: Parts 2&3 (Steve Miner, 1981/2): 3.5/5

Halloween Watch #3: Contrary to my expectations, these were well-made, efficient, enjoyable and blessedly subtext-free.

High Tension (Alexandre Aja, 2003): 3/5

Halloween Watch #3:  French take on the slasher. Aja has a reputation for brutality, but perhaps we’ve gone a lot farther in the subsequent 16 years?

The King (David Michod, 2019): 3/5

Chalamet lacks the gravitas to really play Hal/Henry V, but his interiority did help to make the character more thoughtful and conscious-wracked than I’ve ever considered him before. Joel Edgerton plays a surprisingly buff and sober Falstaff, and Robert Pattinson has fun channeling Klaus Kinski.

Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019): 4/5

A full-on gaze into the abyss, anchored by another seriously great performance from Phoenix. If you’re going to really notice and feel the meanness, misery, pain and meaningless of our stupid world—well, ya just gotta laugh, right? Or let yourself go crazy, or blow your brains out? The movie gets into trouble when it tries to articulate an alternative, because any response other than anarchic madness just becomes a different brand of fascism.

The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns, 2019): 2/5

Fight Club set in the Napolean Dynomite universe. Yeah, that doesn’t work, does it?

* The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019): 3/5

Plenty to enjoy here, including two terrific performances. But like The VVitch, it remained too static and open-ended to really satisfy.

The Farewell (Lulu Wang, 2019): 2.5/5

Charming and shallow. Our main character never really acts—and turns out to be just wrong the whole time?

The Tin Drum, rw (Volker Scholondorff, 1979): 3.5/5

Certainly one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. Free-flowing fuckery, and question marks at every turn. Barbaric, Mystical, Bored: You have given the century its name.

Frozen 2 (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, 2019): 2/5

In which Elsa confronts the genocide of the native people by her ancestors (literally, her grandfather), and the conflict is resolved by destroying a dam that is a symbol of the exploitation. So kind of a cross between Dances with Wolves and Zjangke Jia’s Still Life. Jack was as bored as I was, and we didn’t leave humming the songs—but…I didn’t get the first one either, so what do I know.

The Image Book (Godard, 2018): No Rating

Not much point in "reviewing" this, as Godard's post-'80s collage essays operate in a free-associative, heavily allusive (yet somehow didactic) mode that just holds very little interest for me. Been rough sledding ever since nouvelle vague. (GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, with its radical 3-D experimentation and comparative lack of aphoristic pseudo-wisdom, is a partial exception to the rule, though I still got restless.) It'd be like my trying to assess the value of an opera, or a ballet—I could take a stab, certainly, but there's no particular reason why anyone should care what I think. See also: most avant-garde cinema.

Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019): 1.5/5

"A fundamental difference between THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and its sequel, HANNIBAL, is that the former is frightening, involving and disturbing, while the latter is merely disturbing." - Roger Ebert

Loving (Jeff Nichols, 2016): 3/5

Good and restrained, very geared towards driving home how ordinary and lovely its central couple were. Has no interest in mounting an argument against systemic racism, nor should it--what this movie is about is a matter of fact, and it wants it to feel that way. It'd work regardless, but Ruth Negga's performance is superb.

Lyle (Stewart Thorndike, 2014): 2/5

Or, Rosemary's Gayby

Also, who names their daughter Lyle? I'm sure not even lesbians in Brooklyn would do that shit.

Pass Over (Spike Lee, Dayna Taymor, 2018): 3/5

The absurdism of Waiting For Godot was a perfect template to explore systemic racism. Fascinating to watch something that's at once blatantly theatrical and aggressively cinematic. (I assume Lee shot multiple performances, each from a variety of different angles, because otherwise he must have spent a fortune digitally removing the camera crew in post.)

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, 2013): 2/5

What if Tilda had just played all of the roles?

The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019): 2.5/5

Or, Dump That Mother Fucking Asshole (otherwise known as DTMFA)

With little regard for plot, pacing and narrative structure, THE SOUVENIR is a patchwork of capricious moments that chronicles a destructive, Phantom Thread-like relationship through a random flow of highly-personal memories. Messy, fragmented and autobiographical in nature, it’s the kind of lovesick story that doesn’t really have a clear purpose in mind, nor does it care to take you anywhere in particular, but it does allow Joanna Hogg to get therapeutic, purge some demons, and wax cinematically self-indulgent for 2 hours. A little too muted and emotionally barren for my taste, but some people are gonna absolutely love this stuffy mix of reverie and requiem. With Scorsese, Tilda, and A24 all backing it, I just wished it converted into something more universally moving.

What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000): 1.5/5

The premise of this film is that Mel Gibson has to electrocute himself multiple times to be a decent person.

rewatched Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971): 2.5/5

I really just want to strangle Maude, to be honest. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Crone, embracing life and seizing the day with the kind of pushy, simpleminded vigor that in reality would drive somebody like Harold to demock his mock suicides. That Harold sleeps with her is still shockingly bold (even given that nothing but the afterglow is shown) but there's only so much ostensibly delightful nonconformity I can stomach, and around the time Maude steals the cop's motorcycle I started actively rooting for her demise.

The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth, 1958): 1/5

All downhill from the title song. I'm not an aficionado of bad genre films, but this seems insufficiently cheesy/fun even by those limited standards.

Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971): 1.5/5

Lots of smart folks, including Peckinpah himself, have attempted to make a case for this as something other than vile misogynistic Neanderthal bullshit, but I remain unconvinced. Superbly made does not trump hateful.

rewatched Schindler's List (Stephen Spielberg, 1993): 4/5

me: [starts a 195 minute movie at 12:50am]
me: this is a great idea

The Lady in the Van (Nicholas Hytner, 2015): 1/5

Ungrateful old hag meets dull-as-dishwater playwright. What could pozzZzzzZzzzZzZzZzzZzzzzZZzz… zZZzzz… ZzzzZzzzzz… oh sorry, I dozed off there for a while. What was the question again?

rewatched The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957): 4/5

Guinness' Col. Nicholson one of the all-time great movie characters. Holden section does flag.

rewatched Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974): 5/5

Few things have ever been funnier than young Gene Wilder shouting. But the film's genius is how seriously it takes everything except the jokes, faithfully replicating the look of Universal's '30s horror and constructing a credible narrative framework that serves to heighten the absurdity.

The Wind (Emma Tammi, 2018): 2/5

The Witch, but make it a Western and not good. But also the goat should be white. #WhitePhillip

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019): 4/5

Remember when the Toy Story saga felt complete without the fourth film? We were such fools back then...

The thing I like about the TOY STORYs is that because the toys' existential angst is so foregrounded and palpable, the movies can go from almost cloying to downright upsetting on a dime. This one even gets near the idea that Woody and the gang's relative stability is a privileged experience, that the life of your average toy is probably a sad, lonely one, that their self-actualization is rare. The adventure this time is slight but the egalitarian streak is ramped up, I really related to the new character who only wants to go in the trash, and I'd gladly sit through another story if it's going to be this stealthily thoughtful.

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019): 3/5

Carl Th. Dreyer presents Bela Tarr's THE SHINING.

An ambitious divergence from The Witch’s occult dread into the genre’s more obscure depths. The film is a roaring tempest of style and performance: a descent into cackling insanity, writhing with furious energy against the confines of its square frame. I still prefer The Witch, but Eggers’ dedication to authenticity, the riveting visuals, and fascinating interplay between the central duo are unparalleled as a unique, exquisite cinematic experience.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Vince Gilligan, 2019): 2/5

Not even a coda, more of three-episode-long narrative digression that never feels as spontaneous or desperate as the series. Well made and the cast is fine, but absolutely not a story that needed to be told in any way, shape, or form. Take it or leave it.

The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh, 2019): 2.5/5

Stevie was like "Have you guys read Das Kapital?"

Skin (Guy Nattiv, 2019): 2/5

if clint eastwood was more liberal but just as tone deaf

Ma (Tate Taylor, 2019): 2/5

Must a movie be good? Is it not enough to see Octavia Spencer, unhinged?