Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019): 0.5/5

Not sure why this didn’t work, it follows a classic 3 act structure —

ACT ONE: Cats introduce themselves
ACT TWO: Cats continue to introduce themselves
ACT THREE: Unclear

Contagion ( Steven Soderbergh, 2011): 3/5

me watching this film during a pandemic: i think i know where this is going.

CONTAGION is expertly depicted - featuring many deaths, tons of bureaucratic nonsense, people doing their best yet still being flummoxed by nonsense, heroic people whose lives are taken with zero fanfare. Would have given it a higher rating if not for the "Damon's daughter's prom night" ending, an attempt at some sort of emotionally satisfying finale. Bullshit clumsy studio compromise, no doubt.

The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, 2019): 1.5/5

Impressive formal control; when there's actually something to look at, this is elegantly composed. Unfortunately it's in service of a lot of aw shucks quaintness and a glorified radio drama. Totally sleep-inducing. And the framing device is just useless. Did we really need to be prompted that this is sort of like an old Twilight Zone?

rewatched The Long, Long Trailer (Vincent Minnelli, 1954): 3/5

Duel, Fitzcarraldo/Burden of Dreams and The Wages of Fear got nothing on Minnelli-Ball-Arnaz. Lucy and Ricky - erm, Tacy and Nicky - buy a long long trailer despite his misgivings and she proceeds to make his life a living hell for the next 80 minutes. Domestic life portrayed as a hell on wheels in lurid Technicolor... Saw this as a kid on television one Sunday afternoon and always thought it was sweet. A safe no-brainer for when you really want to veg.

The Sound of Silence (Michael Tyburski, 2019): 2.5/5

Interesting, but doesn’t really explore its high concept premise enough to be anything more than that. I liked the patient and calculated atmosphere that it creates, but it’s missing some of the thematic exploration and deep melancholy that maybe someone like Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze would have brought to this material.

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Alicia Arden, 2020): 2/5

Completely boilerplate, entry-level Epstein docuseries that, when not going out of its way to defend Bill Clinton, is almost totally innocuous and hardly illuminating.

Diane (Kent Jones, 2018): 3/5

A small New England town, wintry, God-fearing (John Updike country, though the milieu is lower-middle-class). This gave me exactly what I love in projects like Olive Kitteridge, an examination of a life lived quietly but not without significance. A natural caretaker haunted by her past and the looming specter of death. Diane's life may not be extraordinary but Mary Kay Place's performance very much is, utilizing her expressive face to its full potential. An empathetic character study worth watching if only for Place and Kent Jones' naturalistic atmosphere. Gentle and affecting, Jones displays cautious restraint in the melodrama resulting in a beautiful film negotiating the particulars of growing old.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Jon Shenk & Bonni Cohen, 2017): 2.5/5

Al Gore in 2006: stop fucking up the planet!!

Al Gore in 2017: I told you to stop FUCKING UP THE PLANET!!!

The Field Guide to Evil (Veronika Franz, Peter Strickland, 2018): 2.5/5

An international grab bag anthology of horror based on folklore. I would gladly watch a feature length version of The Palace of Horrors and I’d also like to pay more money to make sure America is never allowed to be part of a horror anthology film ever again.

Fun Mom Dinner (Alethea Jones, 2017): 2/5

Watchable, undemanding, and liable to exemplify blandness.

Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984): 1/5

(First full, complete viewing.) Ah, the 80's. When America was Great™, Reagan was president, crack and AIDS were decimating disenfranchised populations, basically all of Latin America was run by U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships and John Hughes made movies about teenagers.

Surely, this was already influenced by the period's own nostalgia about post-WWII suburban utopia, but the fact is that this is a clear example of something made virtually irredeemable by its datedness, which is only reverberated by current pop culture's on-going fetishizing of that era. Ringwald's character's arc is mostly earnest and relatively amiable, yet is still much too slim to attenuate everything preposterously bad happening around her.

Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov, 2019): 5/5

Best documentary of the year and now my second favorite film of 2019. This one is going to stay with me for a long time.

Les Miserables (Ladj Ly, 2019): 2.5/5

A group of people in France sat in a room and decided that this film had a better chance of being recognized by The Academy than PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE. Infuriating and disgraceful.

And another thing: why would you make a film set in the banlieues in 2019 from the perspective of cops?

Border (Ali Abbasi, 2018): 3.5/5

A beguiling mix of horror-fantasy elements with an old-fashioned outcast story. The less you know going in to this bizarre, compelling film the better.

Greener Grass (Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe, 2019): 1.5/5

It’s like Todd Solondz or John Waters made a feature-length version of an SNL sketch. The style is the gag, and the gag wears thin. Also, can someone explain to me why every person in this neighborhood wears braces? I don't get it.

Little Monsters (Abe Forsythe, 2019): 2.5/5

Only in it for Lupita. Humor was ineffective and flat.

Spaceship Earth (Matt Wolf, 2020): 2/5

I liked when the Black teens immediately pointed out how white the whole thing was.

The 9th Life of Louis Drax (Alexandre Aja, 2016): 1/5

It's a family drama. But it's also a children's fantasy. And a horror movie. And a Hitchcockian suspense film complete with femme fatale. And a forbidden romance. And a psychological thriller. Oh, and Swamp Thing is here too. Holy hell and that Jaimie Dornan plague. Can we sign a petition to keep this plank of wood away from anything even remotely related to acting? 

Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019): 2.5/5

I don't really see how this is more valuable or productive than it would be played straight. 

The Lodge (Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, 2020): 2/5

Let me get this straight: the main plan—not the contingency plan for when something goes wrong, but, like, Plan A—is for you to leave your kids alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere ON CHRISTMAS with your cult-mass-suicide-surviving definitely-not-traumatized girlfriend SIX MONTHS after your ex-wife/the kids' mother committed suicide in response to learning that you wanted to marry your cult-mass-suicide-surviving definitely-not-traumatized girlfriend while you fuck off back to civilization to get some work done?

And you're, what, *surprised* when your kids, who both expressed their displeasure with this obviously awful plan and who openly act aggressively toward their surrogate mother, decide to gaslight her, causing her to have a mental breakdown and undo any psychological processing she had achieved since surviving the cult mass suicide? I mean, I've heard of people making bad decisions for the sake of progressing horror movie plots, but this entire scenario is fundamentally ill-conceived from beginning to end, from formulation to execution. Everything is tainted by its absurd folly.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James, 2016): 3.5/5

You know a movie’s craft is good when you’re rooting for a bank. I was trying to figure out why Cyrus Vance was such a familiar name to me, and then I realized it was because he was the dude who let Weinstein and The Trumps get away with so much shit and I was just like "oh yes that asshole". Fell in love with the Sung family. Sung daughters: sorry about everything that went on with your family. But also please hang out with me you're all so cool and strong and pretty.

Blow the Man Down (Danielle Krudy, Bridget Savage Cole, 2019): 3/5

A very promising debut from two filmmakers with a good sense of humor. Stylistic comparisons can be easily made (the Coen Brothers come to mind immediately), but nothing here feels borrowed in a way that's inauthentic. The film belongs to itself, and it's uniquely crafted in a way that makes the most of what's assumedly a more humble budget. Margo Martindale really deserves more dramatic roles. Also love the fishmonger Greek chorus.

A Good Marriage (Peter Askin, 2014): 1.5/5

Was it, though?

Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill (Joe DeMaio, 2020): 2/5

No cuss words. No filthy humor. No resorting to violent imagery to make his point. No hack material. No premises. No joke construction. No characters. No real point of view. Just good old-fashioned exasperation.

The Goldfinch (John Crowley, 2019): 1.5/5

It took me 5 weeks and a global pandemic to actually finish this.

The Coldest Game (Lukasz Kosmicki, 2019): 1.5/5

My friend Marcel wrote the screenplay. Bill Pullman as filthy Einstein-like Hobo, permadrunk smashing chess moves in a Beautiful Mind manner during Cold War while Russians are either drunk or evil or both. The Movie. 

Cheap and boring. Poor Marcel. The producers really fucked up his script.