How To With John Wilson (John Wilson, 2020): 5/5

A singular audiovisual experience. My jaw drops like 5 times per episode. I thought he couldn’t top getting into the referee dinner but then he follows it up with a woman putting a live pigeon in a Duane Reade bag and I am fucking screaming.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10 (Jeff Schaffer, 2020): 5/5

Guffawed like a sick donkey as per usual. Missed Marty Funkhouser. RIP Bob Einstein.

Soul (Pete Docter, 2020): 3.5/5 

What a nice little movie. Frequently clever, and more visually inventive than the last handful of Pixar movies even while it plunges ever deeper into the platitudinous. 

P.S. I would like to be scooped up and ride in the Jerry blob. I think this would be both the best and most existential ride at Disneyland so it will never happen but I want it.

Siberia (Abel Ferrera, 2020): 3.5/5

The problem with the past is that by the time it starts to haunt you it's too long gone to mend. Unable to find peace in isolation, Dafoe's Clint goes on a "trip to the lake", a dream voyage deep into the subconscious in which he accesses repressed memories and childhood experiences. (This is a film that lives and dies on how open minded one is going in.) Reminiscent of Lynch, Tarkovsky, Malick, Fellini, and Matthew Barney. Extra half star for the Del Shannon's "Runaway" bit.

The Midnight Sky (George Clooney, 2020): 2/5

"the astronauts are sad again"

-me, 100 minutes into this film

Sure the film nails all of the technical elements, but these hardly compensate for excruciatingly slow pacing, underdeveloped characters, a disappointing lack of dramatic tension, and it also features one of Alexandre Desplat’s worst and most cloying scores.

Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult (Cecilia Peck, 2020): 3/5

The Vow (Karim Amer, 2020): 2/5

Cults are wild. This guy said shit like "women enjoy rape actually" and "where's the harm in a parent having sex with their child if the kid enjoys it?" in a seminar and rich-ass dumb-ass white people ate it up.

Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Lilly & Lana Wachowski, 2012): 2/5

Here we have six stories, each more tedious than the last, made semi-palatable by cutting them ever more frantically together as a virtuosic exercise in parallel construction. The constant cross-cutting successfully staves off boredom, but it also inadvertently underscores how fundamentally thin and didactic these episodes are, as they now build simultaneously to their respective pleas for inclusion and tolerance. And while I can applaud the everything-blind stunt casting in principle, it's a ghastly distraction in practice. Like most grand follies, this was worth experiencing once, but I wouldn't want to go near it again.

The Undoing (David E. Kelley, 2020): 2.5/5

Or, Big Little Lies East Coast Edition

Rich white people's lives being destroyed is actually one of my favorite genres.

Small Axe: Mangrove (Steve McQueen, 2020): 3/5

An impassioned, urgent retelling of the 1971 historic trial of the Mangrove Nine, which follows the struggle of Black immigrants in London as they fight against police harassment and institutional racism. With great performances all around, this is compelling and efficient in retelling one of the most pivotal courtroom moments in British history that is often forgotten by many.

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen 2020): 3/5

Agree w/ Justin about this being reminiscent of Altman. AND only 70 minutes!

Small Axe: Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen, 2020): 3.5/5

Destined to pale in comparison to the moral crusade of MANGROVE and the intoxicating sensuality of LOVERS ROCK, this story is just as important if decidedly less sexy. Boyega has never been better.

Small Axe: Alex Wheatle (Steve McQueen, 2020): 3.5/5

A great coming-of-age story about a lost young man finding his people and himself. The tribute to the fallen of the 1981 New Cross house fire was stirring, reminiscent of late Spike Lee.

Small Axe: Education (Steve McQueen, 2020): 3/5

Works much better as a critique of education systems than it does as a character piece, which is perfectly fine given its breezy runtime. Well crafted and with great performances. Ending this episode with Kingsley reading from Kings & Queens of Africa was both a beautiful way to end the episode and a powerful way to end the series.

rewatched A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez, 1965): 5/5

A fearless exploration of post-war ennui and depression in small town America.

Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020): 3.5/5

I had an enormous crush on Garrett Bradley back when we were both at UCLA. (She was in Janet Bergstrom's French Cinema of the 1930s seminar with me.) Her new doc will surely resonate with viewers as she shows Sibil Fox Richardson’s story (Fox Rich) of trying to free her husband from prison who is serving a 60-year sentence for armed robbery. The film is a testament to Rich’s single-minded sustenance of her marriage and family (the couple has 4 boys), as well as an indictment of the criminal justice system that not only delivers punishment far outweighing the crime, but then doggedly does everything possible to obstruct an offender’s rehabilitation.

The crisp, black-and-white gorgeously shot sequences filmed in the present day, with a mixture of new HD footage and miniDV footage that spans 21 years emphasizes just how time is at once moving too fast and too slow for the Richardson family. Personal, subtle, and beautifully done. Really loved the airy, ecstatic piano music of Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou too.

I'm Your Woman (Julia Hart, 2020): 1.5/5

Remarkably boring, with vapid dialogue and a high degree of self-seriousness. I don't know about you, but if someone hands me a baby and tells me it's mine I'm gonna have a lot of questions.

Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020): 3/5

A tad underwhelming and too narratively/thematically simplistic, but I'll give an extra half star for that Mads Mikkelsen dance sequence.

Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones, 2020): 3.5/5

A reclamation project, FEELS GOOD MAN tries to rescue Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character created by Matt Furie for a 2005 comic called Boy’s Club, from the Internet trolls and hate groups who bizarrely co-opted him as a symbol and mascot during the Trump era. The interviews with 4channers and those on that side exist less to justify the racist, xenophobic and bigoted acts of those on the alt-right but more to both understand them and to give context to the battle at play. One of the better documentaries I’ve seen on internet culture and an understanding for not just how the internet functions and how it impacts popular culture, but an understanding of creative ownership to boot.

Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2018): 1.5/5

This could be a textbook example of when not to implement the slow-burn. There’s no reason at all this should be 8 hours long. With a whodunnit murder mystery where the detective work goes nowhere leaving the journalist to explore her unexceptional small-town, her largely unexceptional family, and her unexceptional life (even her pity seems trite), itself, the slow burn's consequence is a borefest. A subdued, rewardless exercise in dark moody visuals and victimized trauma that hardly leaves (the dreadfully unlikeable) Amy Adams’ POV - the complete opposite of what made Vallee’s luminous ensemble BIG LITTLE LIES so compelling.

Let Him Go (Thomas Bezucha, 2020): 2/5

Lesley Manville is a scene stealer in LET HIM GO as the terrifying matriarch of the Weboy family. Too bad the film around her is every bit as tired and worn down as Kevin Costner and Diane Lane’s characters are from the drawn out, basic storytelling. Emotionally gripping at times but ultimately flat.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings, 2020): 2.5/5

More emotional meltdown cop comedy from Cummings, this time in a whodunit murder mystery premise involving a werewolf. I prefer THUNDER ROAD (2018).

Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh, 2020): 2/5

Should have made this about Candice Bergen’s character working in retail. More evidence that she is being woefully underutilized by movies.

Luxor (Zeina Durra, 2020): 2/5

A subtle, gentle mood piece in what is essentially a spiritually-inflected BEFORE SUNSET. Riseborough impresses with an intriguingly ambiguous, restrained turn, but the film is a dud though, lacking in narrative momentum and at times feels more like a travelogue serving to deliver only a stunning sense of place of Egypt.

Happiest Season (Clea DuVall, 2020): 2/5

Depicts what should be an extinction-level event in this relationship between what appears to be an endlessly patient victim (who seemingly has no cause to trust anyone we meet in this film) and a gaslighting narcissist. If this was about a hetero relationship you'd be foaming at the mouth in fury about the level of abuse. I liked the weird sister and Aubrey Plaza here though.

Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, 2019): 3.5/5

Thought-provoking and emotionally absorbing, director-writer Darius Marder creates a highly empathetic drama in SOUND OF METAL, concerning a former addict/drummer who loses his hearing. Along with its evocative and inventive sound design, the film puts us directly inside the lead character’s headspace giving us a true immersion, presenting a convincing predicament of such tragic proportions. Riz Ahmed gives a mesmerizing, hurting performance.

The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson, 1982): 2/5

That it was a box-office hit surprises me, frankly, as it's seemingly too dark and grim for small children but unquestionably too earnest and simplistic for adults. Obviously an outstanding technical achievement, don't get me wrong, but at times so diabolically slow it feels more like a travelogue than an adventure. And impressive though it may be I just hate the design. Sure, let's build this richly imagined, intricately detailed fantasy world only everything is old and gross. I'd much rather watch Henson and Oz riff, honestly.