Tiger King (Eric Goode, Rebecca Chaiklin, 2020): 2.5/5

A docu-series about some people who own tigers where the most normal thing about them is that they own tigers. Just some of the weirdest and worst people to ever exist. Didn't have to be 7 hours long though and totally lacks focus. Also, I can't shake the feeling that james franco is somewhere pitching a biographical adaptation of this, casting himself as the lead, seth rogen as one of his scumbag accomplices and, like, channing tatum as one of his husbands.

The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, 2019): 2.5/5

Sophomore feature from The Babadook director. On paper, it sounds like it’s going to be a ride – 1820s Tasmania, an Irish convict decides to exact revenge on the British soldiers who murdered her family and teams up with an Aboriginal Tasmanian tracker on the way – but the execution leaves too much to be desired. Mostly, it’s sort of dull. When it isn’t just dull, it’s a tedious cavalcade of violence because the director wanted to teach the viewers a history lesson but didn’t have any imagination beyond ”some rapes here and some murders there."

The Mountain Between Us (Hany Abu-Assad, 2017): 2/5

Totally unrealistic. No one waits 3 weeks to bang Idris Elba.

Free Fire (Ben Wheatley, 2016): 2/5

Vapid. An 84-minute shootout without an iota of coherent geography or even the vaguest indication of who's shooting and what and why. Wheatley's a flashy mimic with absolutely no agenda.

The Adderall Diaries (Pamela Romanowsky, 2015): 1.5/5

Suffers from a cruel lack of focus. #irony

Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011): 3/5

Alan Clarke meets Amblin. Kinetic mayhem, rowdy humor, first-rate creature design, and regional specificity are the meat and potatoes; the film works superlatively well as sheer entertainment, a simple yet creative sci-fi siege that accomplishes a lot with relatively little.

Frankie (Ira Sachs, 2019): 2/5

The fuck. The things I’ll watch for Izzy. Pointless bougie puff-party.

Code Black (Ryan McGarry, 2013): 2.5/5

Poorly structured and lacking any objectivity whatsoever (the director, who's also a doctor at this very hospital, is the main talking head), but occasionally inspiring all the same.

The Parallax View (Alan Pakula, 1974): 3/5

Come for Beatty and stay for the wide shots. Get your tinfoil hat out!

The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier, 2018): ?

I don’t know whether to give it 4 stars or none. Classic Von Trier.

rewatched It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934): 4/5

"Peter: [in a telegram] What's holding up the annulment, you slowpoke? The walls of Jericho are a-toppling.

Mr. Andrews: Send them a telegram right away. Just say, 'Let 'em topple.' "

rewatched Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937): 5/5

A deeply moving work of art, completely wrenching. Definitely one of the greatest and most important (American) movies of all time. Leo McCarey could not be more on point when he stated that he won an Oscar for the wrong film.

rewatched All About Eve (Jospeh Mankiewicz, 1950): 5/5

a classic amalgamation of brilliant direction, excellent screenplay, sophisticated production, outstanding performances & sparkling use of humor and covers the themes of ambition, betrayal, self-interest, fame & fate in the world of show business. hugely enjoyable, with a surfeit of classic lines . Pure and unadulterated fire put to film.

Pete Davidson: Alive From New York (Jason Orley, 2020): 2/5

I think he's funny in small doses. Nice Louie CK story.

The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2018): 2/5

Liam back on his bullshit again getting his family kidnapped and destroying public properties

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973): 2/5

Or, “wots owle dis den?” the movie

I would love to stage an elaborate mystery with my horny friends just to own some loser virgin.

rewatched Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004): 4/5

I was thinking it would be funny to do an all male reboot of this but then I realized it would end with a school shooting, not a song. 

rewatched Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010): 3/5

Gee what a neat and straightforward movie!

rewatched Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939): 5/5

GWTW's vision is a reprehensible one. Just like Scarlett O'Hara, there's an ugliness under that stunning veneer. But what a veneer! The sweep, the grandeur and the characters wield a power that not even the morally indignant can deny. I cannot with any intellectual honesty deny the hold the movie has on me, or how gloriously it works as a big-budget epic. For the visceral grip it has on my emotions, though, I'll always love it as much as I hate it. It's the kind of perverse, deliberately alienating movie for which I always have to justify my affection, except not in this case since it's the most financially successful film of all time.

Aardvark (Brian Shoaf, 2017): 1/5

Watched in a total state of glazed-over disinterest. I couldn’t say why this exists, who this is for, what you should get out of it, or what the hell is with that hair. Its protagonist's mental illness is never properly explored, explained or respected, existing simply to incite a series of low stakes schizophrenic incidents. It makes no sense whatsoever what would attract Shelia Vand's character to Zachary Quinto's hallucinating, child-like weirdo, dressed by mum for the first day of school.

Mediocrities like this Brian Shoaf debut comedy-drama are why Tribeca Film Festival has such a generally low reputation among the "major" film festivals of the world.

The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson, 2017): 0.5/5

Zero stars, honestly. The main crime is that The Snowman got greenlit for release. This is an absolute masterclass in 100% bizarre editing choices and weird direction. Think of every scene. Then remember there's at least one part of every scene where you go "WHAT the fuck was that?". Overly lingering shots, throw away WORDS, strange happenstance, insane plot devices, twins, non-sex sex scenes, a lot of parent-child stuff that honestly has about 8 strands that go nowhere. It felt a lot like an edited down, feature length version of an 8-part BBC crime tv show, where the threads are cauterized in the film, they would've been fully fleshed in the tv show.

Also, everyone is mispronouncing the protagonist's name (in Norwegian the name would be pronounced "Hoo-leh" and yet everyone else reads it literally as "Harry Hole"). Jarring.

Polytechnique (Denis Villenueve, 2009): 3/5

"If I have a boy, I'll teach him how to love. If I have a girl, I'll tell her the world is hers."

A year before Denis Villenueve's name became recognized across the industry for his Oscar nominated drama Incendies he directed a much smaller, yet equally powerful film. Polytechnique tells of the École Polytechnique massacre (or the 'Montreal Massacre') of December 6, 1989 which saw a lone gunmen open fire in a college and take the lives of 14 women over an anti-feminist agenda. Rhythmically tasteful and unobtrusive composition, glaring into the utmost horrifying of realities.

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

Amiable and meandering. Could have done entirely without the little IRL tag at the end, but an extra half star for that Mandarin cover of Badfinger's "Without You" during the credits.

Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello, 2019): 3/5

A very odd duck. I kind of love that the true horror here is spoiled white girl privilege.