In the Heights (Jon M. Chu, 2021): 1/5

BODEGA BODEGA BODEGA NEW YORK TOP OF THE WORLD BAYBEE AYYY IM WALKIN OVA HERE YANKEES BODEGA BODEGA

Just violently antithetical to my tastes. Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda has too much power. He needs to be stopped.

Infinite (Antoine Fuqua, 2021): 1/5

Ludicrous decision by Paramount to cancel the theatrical release. This had the potential to be one of the highest-grossing films of 2003.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2021): 1.5/5

Chris Rock workshops some standup material in this.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (Michael Chaves, 2021): 1/5

Conjure me a better movie.

rewatched Irreversible (Gaspar Noe, 2002): 4.5/5

It doesn't get any easier, no matter how much I remind myself that Bellucci's just acting. Noe's decision to create a chronological "Inversion integrale" is such an eyeroll, since I'm almost certain that I'd truly despise this movie if it moved conventionally from order to chaos rather than the other way around. That's the whole fucking point, jejune as some may find it.

rewatched Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938): 2.5/5

A classic screwball that just picks enough at my nerves in just too many ways to make it impossible for me to love it. Hepburn is just a total fucking nightmare in this jesus christ. Exhausting. Just exhausting.

Cruella (Craig Gillespie, 2021): 1.5/5

“I’m not like other girls” but a 2+ hour movie

The Amusement Park (George A. Romero, 2019): 3.5/5

Orson Welles in the Twilight Zone.

Stare long enough at capitalism (or mortality) and you'll see either a horror movie or a sick joke. Romero, of course, sees both.

Collective (Alexander Nanau, 2019): 2.5/5

Exposé on the corruption running through Romania’s health care system. The execution of the documentary feels largely cold, despite its crucial subject matter. It’s timely, it’s brutal, yes, but it’s also left me with a bizarre sense of detachment. (Besides its unexpected use of actual footage from within the Colectiv fire, which I was nowhere near prepared to see and left me anxious.)

rewatched Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979): 5/5

The fact that the alien murders all the white men first is so funny what a woke queen lol

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986): 2.5/5

R.I.P. Bill Paxton—man, I keep forgetting. Also, when exactly did the closing-credits bloat start? Here we have a big-budget, F/X-heavy Hollywood blockbuster with tons of crew members to acknowledge, and the credits still occupy less than three minutes, rather than the 7-10 minutes one frequently sees nowadays. (Yes I sit through end credits.)

Aliens 3 (David Fincher, 1992): 2.5/5

“You’ve been in my life so long, I can’t remember anything else.”

Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997): 3.5/5

I like that a series that always dealt in imagery of rape, pregnancy and motherhood finally starts working in abortion. I also like that Weaver (especially good here, an idiosyncratic and physical performance) and Ryder both play characters who to varying degrees hate what they are. A great deal of this movie doesn't work (the Whedonest stuff, the "Firefly" dry-run stuff), but it's so ostentatiously weird that I found myself simultaneously wincing and falling for it.

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2014): 2.5/5

Pretty impressive fan fiction, though the plot doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me.

Alien: Convenant (Ridley Scott, 2017): 2/5

Just a lot of CGI proto-aliens leaping around and some pandering franchise "callbacks". Standard-issue sequel/prequel/re-quel mediocrity to me, yet somehow garnered a bunch of praise.

Mainstream (Gia Coppola, 2020): 1/5

A FACE IN THE CROWD for Generation TikTok. I feel bad for the 60 year old man they made edit this.

Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur, 1956): 3.5/5

Enjoyed it even though there's arguably not that much to it, and despite a plot that pivots on hard-to-swallow idiocy both from the villains (who unaccountably don't make sure that both of their victims are actually dead, then grab the wrong bag) and from our hero (who loses the right bag but has no idea how that happened, as if he'd misplaced the sports section rather than $350K in cash).

The Tall T (Budd Boetticher, 1957): 3/5

Very much a B Western, generically plotted and visually undistinguished.

The Saw Franchise (2004-2017): 1.5/5

I guess we should be glad that the fucked up minds who make these movies are using their powers for mediocrity and not creating weapons of war?

A Quiet Place Part II (John Krasinski, 2020): 3/5

Switches gears from the look-behind-you monster flick of the first one to a relatively more patient survival drama, one that like everything else these days is "about grief." Bonus, it's barely 95 minutes long.

The Millennium Trilogy (2009): 2.5/5

This may well be the only instance I can think of where all three films in a trilogy were released in a single calendar year. For fans of the novels, 2009 must've been heaven on earth.

Angels of Sin (Robert Bresson, 1943): 2.5/5

Like most auteurist’s early pictures, only vaguely reminiscent of what ended up defining their style later on, but in the same breath I’m not surprised to know that this is a Bresson film. It still seizes a large chunk of the themes that would recur throughout his entire body of work: Religion, in the broadest sense, but also the question and application of forgiveness, the exoneration of sins through repentance, and the variability of human nature w.r.t. the presence (or absence) of faith. Granted, he’d tackle similar material more convincingly—and to a significantly broader degree—less than a decade later in DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, but his control here is nothing if not promising.

rewatched Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999): 4.5/5

Miike has made a zillion films since and has never even remotely come close to this one’s acuity. It seems well beyond the capabilities he’s subsequently demonstrated. Perhaps the most amazing fluke in cinema history.

Plan B (Natalie Morales, 2021): 3/5

Yet another raunchy and healthy sex positive comedy about quirky teen girls learning about true friendship on some kind of journey to acquire “xyz”...

Okay, I’ll bite.

76 Days (Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, 2020): 4/5

A commanding cinema verite glimpse into the initial days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. In the widely accepted process of attempting to slow a pandemic, the Chinese government quickly and decisively locked down Wuhan on January 23 and reemerged on April 8, 2020—a lockdown continuing in total for 76 days.

Written, co-directed and edited by Hao Wu, the film's told from the corridors and emergency rooms of several overrun hospitals. It provides a penetrating exposé that apprehends both the struggles of frontline medical professionals and the increasing incapacity of victims that gradually gave shape to the pandemic's severity. (Thanks mainly to the footage of two reporters, Weixi Chan and a director simply credited as Anonymous, New York-based director Wu came across their coverage of the outbreak while he was laboring on unveiling the Chinese government's seal of secrecy on COVID.)

This is my kind of fully immersive, present-tense doc. (The opening 10 minutes in particular are tough to watch.) An important historical document - one that salutes the bravery of medical workers. Brutal, humane and very well shot.

Mare of Easttown (Craig Zobel, 2021): 3.5/5

More like MILF of Easttown amirite