The Man Who Sold His Skin (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2020): 3/5

I can see the appeal, I can see why it was nominated; Yahya Mahayni gives a strong performance, the cinematography is rather good, the concept - exceptionally original. It ultimately feels more like a canvas of interesting ideas that are never properly explored or further delved into though. Also still not sure how I feel about the ending.

The Mauritanian (Kevin MacDonald, 2021): 2/5

Another addition to the "reasons to hate the United States" canon.

Things the movie wanted me to learn: how an inexcusable abuse of human rights stemmed from a fragile post 9/11 America

What I actually learned: Guantanamo Bay has a McDonalds and a gift shop.

Sword of Trust (Lynn Shelton, 2020): 3/5
The story is simple but screwy and enticing with plenty of little turns peppered into its short runtime.

You Can't Take It With You (Frank Capra, 1938): 3/5

Sometimes Capra's naivete and compulsive idealism works for me, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes his films are infused with so much charm and sincerity, so many tender moments that they're close to magic. Here, it doesn't really work. The ideas are just a little too simple and the way he spreads the message - the old "follow your dreams, live life to the fullest" stuff. Which I can be a supporter of, but topics like these just tend to fall a little flat in the hands of someone who maybe wasn't the most complex of thinkers, nor the most subtle of cinematic prophets. (Capra does have a bit of Oprah in him)

I'll mostly remember this for Lionel Barrymore. He's terrific, and a total sweetheart.

In the Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021): 2/5

Simultaneously overwritten and underdeveloped. It’s an unpleasant sledgehammer of a movie. Points only for Clint Mansell's synth score and one really great sequence of genuine terror.

Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954): 3/5

It doesn't benefit from how easy it is to compare to LA BETE HUMAINE, a far more feeling and poetic work (it's the difference between Renoir investing himself 100% and Lang comfortably coasting along). Gloria Grahame is great, and when the film is focused on her woozy, frustrated femme fatale at her wit's end, it's almost as good as the previous year's THE BIG HEAT, made with the same leads working a similar dynamic under the same director. Generally, though, it needs a bit more fury and a bit less coziness with playing to formula. Definitely one of Lang's more sedate films, enormously competent but only interesting when he gets to play with trains.

Zeroville (James Franco, 2019): 1.5/5

I can't wait until James Franco makes a sequel to THE DISASTER ARTIST but it's based on the production of this movie.

Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939): 2/5

Hitchcock's most un-Hitchcock film. Two stars for Charles Laughton's eyebrows.

Copycat (Jon Amiel, 1995): 1/5

Has zero atmosphere plus a predominantly loud score that overemphasizes everything that's going on and two serial killers that act like they are in a Wes Craven slasher, which makes them instantly laughable.

U Turn (Oliver Stone, 1997): 2/5

Pretty ostentatious, glibly nasty thing. There's also a very thin thread about the exploitation of Native Americans, bizarrely articulated in a character's gruesome sexual abuse and a race-bending Jon Voight as a Wise Old Indian. Weird shit, with an unresolvable knot of tones.

The Tempest (Julie Taymor, 2010): 3/5

Put this off forever, but it's not so terrible—excellent cast, decent script (yuk yuk), spectacular Hawaii locations.

Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez, 2007): 2/5

Rose McGowan dancing around a stripper pole in the opening credits, and posing next to the credit of 'Produced By Bob and Harvey Weinstein' aged just terribly.

Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi, 2019): 2/5

Yet another mediocre and stock biopic. While there's ambition and visual flair, it's gravely vapid and excruciatingly uninteresting.

QT8: The First Eight (Tara Wood, 2019): 3/5

Nothing much new here, and the Weinstein stuff feels a little desperate and half-assed, but a lot of nice interview footage, and what am I gonna tell you, I'm sort of in the tank for the guy anyway.

Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, 2012): 3/5

No dialogue, no musical score, no storyline, no commentary, nothing. Just angry ocean vibes through and through. Watching it gave me the sensation of being an internal organ. Maybe a spleen. Insistent, exhausting, alive.

Kid 90 (Soleil Moon Frye, 2021): 2/5

Quite literally reading a stranger's diaries. Soleil Moon Frye (PUNKY BREWSTER) looks back on hundreds of hours of footage she shot of her and her friends as Hollywood brats in the 90s. Seeing all those stars in their teen years is arguably the biggest (and only draw) of the doc.

The Reckoning (Neil Marshall, 2020): 1.5/5

About what you'd expect from a guy who directed a bunch of Game of Thrones and then saw THE WITCH.

The Tale (Jennifer Fox, 2018): 3.5/5

Horrific. The only comfort here is that it’s skillfully told by a woman from her own experience and on her own terms. and in her own words. I know this is a bit of a hot take but ALL RAPISTS AND SEXUAL ABUSERS AND PEDOPHILES NEED TO FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Land (Robin Wright, 2021): 2/5

Vanity project bogged down by the presence of an ambiguously melodramatic angle. It’s not tragically incompetent, but it has no idea how to evoke emotion and it offers absolutely nothing unexpected - I was able to see every beat coming from just the trailer/premise alone. Minimal progression or development with lots of learning to be woodsy scenes.

WeWork: The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (Jed Rothstein, 2021): 3/5

I like watching men fail at things they think they’re good at.

Okay, but begs the question: when are we going to get the only hot-new-business-blows-up-then-crashes doc we actually want? MoviePass.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan, 2020): 2.5/5

Margot Robbie has a scene where she skates to "barracuda" by heart, just like she did in I, TONYA.

White Lie (Calvin Thomas, Yonah Lewis, 2019): 3.5/5

Or, The Complete and Utter Exhaustion of Lying: The Movie

rewatched House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, 2004): 4/5

To this day carries the reputation of a CROUCHING TIGER coattail rider, but while it never reaches those emotional heights it's so much more traditionally Shaw, despite its formal modernity. The bamboo forest fight is as good as contemporary wuxia gets.

Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman, 2020): 3/5

"YOU LOOK LIKE GWYNETH PALTROW ON FOOD STAMPS."

Every Breath You Take (Vaughn Stein, 2021): 1.5/5

You're better off just listening to The Police song for 105 minutes straight, than to sit through this.

Falling (Viggo Mortensen, 2020): 1.5/5

Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut is a look into a father-son relationship where a father does not accept who his son is. (He also didn’t seem very accepting of pretty much anyone or anything and really was a hate-filled character that I quickly got tired of.) Everything here is either deeply earnest or turned up to 11 to the point where it’s impossible to invest in it as something genuine.

The Last Cruise (Hannah Olson, 2021): 3/5

The couple that complained about the decline in friendliness among the staff during a deadly outbreak on a boat where the staff is working 13 hour days and not being taken care of...those people were definitely the villains of this documentary. While they lounge on their balcony and hope for chocolate, we cut to the woman making their desserts crying, overwhelmed. This is a true upstairs, downstairs look at how COVID impacted the whole country, really.

Godzilla vs. Kong (Adam Wingard, 2021): 0.5/5

BANG BANG SMASHY SMASHY MONKEY MAN AND LIZARD BOY GO BOOM BOOM !

Kong's fur looked really good in this though. Good job to the vfx people in charge of that.

rewatched The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956): 4/5

It's interesting how they take like one minute for the plagues, but take the first hour and a half for just Moses realizing he’s not Egyptian.

The Father (Florian Zeller, 2020): 4.5/5

Honestly one of the scariest films I have seen in a while. Plays from Hopkins's perspective like a slo-mo psychological thriller, which is the perfect move to depict something as disorienting and torturous as dementia. Truly fucking heartbreaking to watch, especially with one cruel moment near the end that pushed me into hot angry tears. Big "used to be a play" energy but I don't mind it. Made me really glad I used my final genie wish to never ever ever grow old.

No but really just put me out of my misery if this happens.

The World to Come (Mona Fastvold, 2020): 3.5/5

Pioneer lesbians be like "You smell like biscuit."

Violation (Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer, 2020): 2.5/5

Eschews the standard conventions of a rape revenge thriller: the rape is not brutal, but quiet, and filmed in soft focus and extreme close-ups. The victim's resistance is hard to detect. The rapist is possibly under the impression that he is not committing rape. He is not a neanderthal, but instead a baby-faced loved-one of the victim. It's the rapist who is sexually objectified, in one scene the camera lingers for an uncomfortably long time on his trembling hard-on. The revenge is messy and nauseating, and does not bring the expected catharsis. The structure is not the expected two-act split that is common to this genre and instead conflates the rape and revenge with a non-linear back-and-forth cross-cut. The cinematography is not crude and ugly and instead frames the violence with heavily saturated shots of idyllic nature, as if suggesting that such acts are at home in the wild.

Some of this works, and some of it feels like a couple of yuppies trying to gentrify a slum. Also, the characters were underdeveloped, dialog was all mumblecore, and the disjointed plot turned the film into a slog.

Crisis (Nicholas Jarecki, 2021): 2/5

The easiest comparison here is to call this TRAFFIC but with opioids instead of cocaine, and not as good. An inert thriller that neither excites nor captivates.

Breaking News in Yuba County (Tate Taylor, 2021): 2.5/5

Better than I expected. I mean it's not great and the stellar cast is better than the film deserves. It's a breezy enough 90 minutes though. MVP to Regina Hall's wig. Or Wanda Sykes' wig.