Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020): 1/5

Or, WHY BOTHER: THE MOVIE

Just absolutely atrocious all around. The paper-thin characterization. The joyless ostentatious ploys toward spectacle. The ceaseless exposition and loud, convoluted setpieces. (Yet no matter how didactically it explains its physics to you, the mechanics never come close to making sense.) The editing is some of the worst in a major blockbuster for years, frequently foregoing logic entirely in the vague hope the viewer will get caught up in its simultaneous “forwards/inverted reality” setup. And don't get me started on the sound mixing. (What good is a complex plot if it’s too hard to hear or understand???)

Pretty sure Nolan has a dick swinging contest with his future self to see who can come up with the most emotionally unsatisfying, quasi-philosophical concept that is half-well executed.

Mank (David Fincher, 2020): 2.5/5

Touching though it may be that Fincher has brought to screen the script written by his late father, and love letter though it might be intended to the golden era of Hollywood, MANK is aggressively disappointing. While much effort was put into creating the feel of a film from the era of CITIZEN KANE, not enough effort was put into translating the concerns of its historical story in a way that makes audiences actually care. This is a film to be intellectualized over, not to be resonated with - which is a shame because there is a human story here, buried underneath all the masturbatory "old-Hollywood" fetishism. An impressive simulacrum of classic Hollywood, but it contains zero revelations, historical or human. And then there's that distractingly inept score.

Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020): 3/5

I came here for Gay Kate Winslet yearning and that's what I got. Overall though, this film just makes you recognize the true sorcery that is PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE.

Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard, 2020): 1/5

Glenn Close's makeup - zoo-wee mama! A milquetoast, exasperatingly mawkish adaptation of a controversial memoir from doltish venture capitalist J.D. Vance. At no point do any of the filmmakers seem to have considered answering the question: Why should I care about this awful little shit?

Thunder Road (Jim Cummings, 2018): 3.5/5

EIGHTH GRADE for dads. On-point-tragicomedy that shows how highly talented Jim Cummings is. A nice, touching, and enjoyable movie.

Mute (Duncan Jones, 2018): 1.5/5

Less of a film and more of a test on how long you can sit through an absolute mess. And there's honestly no reason for this story to take place in some BLADE RUNNER knockoff future dystopia, which makes the truly crappy-looking BLADE RUNNER knockoff future dystopia all the more disappointing.

A Rainy Day in New York (Woody Allen, 2019): 2/5

I mean, we’ve run out of things to say about new Woody Allen movies, right? Not just because those things inevitably become subservient to what we know about him as a person, but because Allen himself long ago seemed to run out of things to say worth making a new movie about. His latest attempt at effervescent dramedy casts Timothee Chalamet and Elle Fanning as Gatsby (yes, swear to god) and Ashleigh, a college couple who head to Manhattan for a weekend, where Ashleigh's assignment to interview a famous movie director (Liev Schreiber) and Gatsby's wandering spirit lead them on very different misadventures. Gatsby and Ashleigh are merely the latest variations on familiar Allen types—he the intellectual Woody surrogate who drops references to Irving Berlin songs, she the doe-eyed ingenue that older men can’t help but fall for—in a narrative that suggest the cultural interests of American 20-somethings ossified 70 years ago. If there’s anything of interest here, it’s Selena Gomez as the sister of Gatsby’s ex-girlfriend, in an eye-opening performance that somehow manages to make Allen’s ridiculous dialogue sound frisky.

Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan, 2019): 2/5

Trashy yet ponderous tale of a persnickety health inspector and his bizarrely self-righteous/self-castigating daughter, needlessly told in flashback to kindly priest Luke Wilson. Little of what happens makes much emotional sense and ultimately there was just no rescuing this one.

Rebecca (Ben Wheatley, 2020): 1/5

“Why should you hate me?” Rebecca (2020) asked; “what have I ever done to you that you should hate me?”

“You tried to take Rebecca (1940)'s place,” said everybody.

Absolute garbage.

Braindead (Peter Jackson, 1992): 2/5

Jackson leans too hard on the gross-out for my (uh) taste, I prefer the first two acts, when Lionel is valiantly attempting to pretend this zombie apocalypse isn't happening, to the extended bloodsoaked finale. And the film loses me completely at the rooftop climax, with Mum for some reason re-emerging as a lucid behemoth.

Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1935): 3/5

Josef von Sternberg, Peter Lorre, and Fyodor Dostoevsky – that’s quite a combination. But leans too heavily and simplistically on religious moralizing, leaving behind the entire punishment phase of Crime and Punishment. Loved when Raskilnikov smashed Luzhin's hat and Tonya's actor was visibly holding back laughter.

rewatched Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981): 2/5

Isabelle Adjani to all of the sane bitches out there: I respect it but it ain’t me.

Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine (Natasha Lyonne, 2020): 2/5

Like most people, I've been a huge fan of Sarah's Trump lip-sync videos during this year, and was curious to see if this obviously talented breath of fresh air would be able to hold an entire netflix special, and to find out if she had some other tools in her arsenal. (Answer: ehh and meh. But keep those lip-sync vids coming please!)

White Rabbit (Daryl Wein, 2018): 3/5

Authentic as fuck. Great vehicle for Vivian Bang. Looking forward to seeing what she does next.

The Dark End of the Street (Kevin Tran, 2020): 2.5/5

A little film that throws a lot of characters at you with no real rhyme or reason. The acting is a mixed bag, but the writing is decent, I wish it had more substance than a slice of life in a distressed neighborhood, but still an interesting watch.

Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019): 3/5

It has the same ‘cutesy’ vibe that most lighthearted indies commonly fall victim to, but the performances are appropriately organic and the final product radiates with a level of honesty that makes it hard not to appreciate.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin, 2020): 2/5

As I write this, I have been watching this movie for days. It hit a logical endpoint 30 minutes ago and yet somehow it still has 90 minutes to go. Full song performances are included, often more than once. I mean you hear the song from the first note to the last.

 The Queen's Gambit (Scott Frank, 2020): 3/5

I do find it hard to believe that 1) Russian people would absolutely instantly fall in love with a rich white American girl that beat one of their best grandmasters, in the midst of the Cold War at that, and 2) a bunch of white snobby chess boys would take losing to a girl that gracefully in the 1960s. 

Fireballs: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer, 2020): 3/5 

Herzog noting Chicxulub today vs. the devastation of 66 million years ago: "Nothing out here is reminiscent of it. Only leaden boredom weighs upon everything." Classic. 

Strictly Ballroom (Baz Lurhman, 1992): 2.5/5 

A Mentos commercial mixed with an 80s after-school special. I wonder what Baz Luhrmann's sequin budget was.

The Nest (Sean Durkin, 2020): 3.5/5
The story of one family's jarring cross-continental relocation and the ways in which its desperately status-conscious patriarch makes everything much worse. Jude Law's performance is a knockout —hearty and jovial with an undercurrent of self-loathing.