Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012): 2/5

For, you see, life itself is a museum, and it's always open.

GACK.

Basically it played to me like a feature-length extension of American Beauty's swirling plastic bag. If everything is interesting and worthy of attention, as Jem Cohen insists, then nothing is, I would argue.

CODA (Sian Heder, 2021): 3/5

Major Hallmark/Disney Channel Original Movie vibes. So very "yeah it's sweet!" it's no wonder the Academy was powerless.

Deep Water (Adrian Lyne, 2022): 2/5

Poly people will name their daughter Trixie and keep snails as pets, next thing you know they’re murdering.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022): 4/5

Charlie Kaufman’s multiverse-Tree of Life, if made for Adult Swim.

Has a lot of heart, is weird/kooky but stays fully committed to the bit. An undeniable feat of filmmaking in terms of editing and creativity. Extra star for having Michelle Yeoh at the helm.

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021): 4/5

Poetry in the absurd. With minimal dialogue and no narration, this documentary still provides a nuanced (and occasionally pointed) exploration of supply, demand, and consumption on a truly mind-boggling scale. There is so much here that’s indelible - that opening scene of the hunt where jobs are classified as “standing up” or “sitting down,” the sex doll factory, the drill team salute, the butler academy, the indoor amusement park, the video game room, the fancy party, the lipstick made for female soldiers, the final shots of the misty waterfront, and above all the rules for hugging.

After Yang (Kogonada, 2021): 3/5

The opening credits scene is better than the movie itself. Narrative is underwhelming and way too ruminative with underwritten characters. Points for the production design, perfectly framed cinematography, and skillfully utilized special effects though.

Turning Red (Domee Shi, 2022): 2.5/5

Whatever it's a film for kids. (No big sin, of course.)

Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962): 3/5

Not much to this apart from its eerie, somnambulistic vibe, though admittedly it is sometimes potent.

X (Ti West, 2022): 2/5

Horny grandma commits crimes. Didn't absolutely hate it like I have Ti West's previous films so there's that. Some ok gore and Mia Goth's side boob shots are the highlights.

The Tinder Swindler (Felicity Morris, 2022): 1/5

Why would a billionaire be on tinder? Why didn’t the women say “ask your billionaire dad for money”?? Why would Netflix think I would sympathize with people who willingly got involved with someone they thought was either an arms dealer, a Mossad agent or the heir to a fortune built through owning diamond mines in Angola and building settlements in the West Bank???

Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson, 2021): 4/5

Someone explain to my tear-drenched t-shirt why this is being marketed as a zany comedy??? What's depicted here without question is one of my greatest fears. Sure, I found myself wanting to do without the fantasy Heaven sequences and some of the other goofy bits...but really that was me resisting this as much as I could. "It would be so easy if loving only gave us the beautiful. But what loving demands is that we face the fear of losing each other. That when it gets messy we hold each other close. And when we can, we defiantly celebrate our brief moments of joy." By the finale I was powerless and destroyed in the best way.

Kimi (Steven Soderbergh, 2022): 3/5

Starts out very derivative but the groundwork gets laid for a fun third act. Seems to me Soderbergh's scaled back his ambition to the point where he may never make another truly great film, but at least he's finally stopped fucking around with goofy lenses.

Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985): 3/5

In between the opening shantytown shootout/demolition derby and the truly astonishing climactic fight sequence, featuring stunts so insane that it's hard to believe the entire cast wasn't hospitalized for months afterward, is a solid hour that's virtually action-free, during which Chan cranks up the mugging and I remember why I've never been very motivated to catch up with his oeuvre. As always, what's funny is very much a matter of taste, so I can't argue with those who enjoy seeing Chan get hit in the face with a cake not once, not twice, but three times in the midst of a standard Three's Company scenario. I'm just never gonna fully embrace a movie that's 25% kinetic masterpiece and 75% static tedium.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (Michael Lehmann, 2022): 1/5

This had EVERY CHANCE to be a good parody. Decent cast, the budget was there. Unfortunately, it commits the cardinal sin for parody: it’s not clever. This cleaves so closely to the structure of the narratives it's trying to make fun of that there's no space for it to actually take a view on them. Its attempts at mimicking the genre's tropes come just too close to the high camp of the genre itself that they barely register. Just all around lazy, mishandled, and completely devoid of joy.

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944): 3.5/5

What economy! As masterful an exercise in “single location” filmmaking as you’ll see, and we’re not talking about one house or one room, but one BOAT. A great Hitchcock picture that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

Clean, Shaven (Lodge Kerrigan, 1993): 1.5/5

Seems like this is in the Criterion Collection because it has the most sound editing in a movie. Otherwise it’s just kind of miserable and grating, which I get is probably the point, but doesn’t make it something I’d ever want to revisit.

Boiler Room (Ben Younger, 2000): 3/5

Part well-observed takedown of broker culture as an indictment of chauvinist capitalist excess and part formulaic daddy issues actor showcase. Well-realized moments, like when they watch "Wall Street," stand out and it has a unique place as a financial services movie in a pre-9/11 and pre-2007 mortgage crisis world. Extra half star for the very lovely Nia Long.

Hannibal Rising (Peter Webber, 2007): 1.5/5

Where Gong Li (poor Gong Li) teaches teenage Dr. Lecter (her nephew) Kendo so he can get revenge on the Nazis that ate his baby sister. Admittedly if this plot were, say, season 6 of the TV series, I might be more into it (transmedia forever). It already sort of looks like "Hannibal" anyway, with its self-consciously operatic chiaroscuro.

Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002): 2.5/5

Expository wholesale re-staging of Mann's MANHUNTER with a name-brand cast, and what's worse Ratner occasionally pulling out Demme's confessional straight-into-camera close-ups for no other reason than to sew this up visually with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Only Fiennes really rescues this, bringing a frenzied physical menace to Dolarhyde where Tom Noonan was all imposing, quiet control.

Lucy and Desi (Amy Poehler, 2022): 3.5/5

Doesn't get beyond 101 territory but still sweetly made. Skip Being the Ricardos and just watch this doc instead.

Hot take: I Love Lucy is such a funny show.

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 2/5

Pretentious and exhausting. So last century. Stories concentrated on people’s idiosyncratic forms of grieving always stir me to some extent—this one didn't at all. Also, not really important, but I don't understand the point of subtitled multilingual theater. From what I can tell, the whole point of that discipline is to deliberately redirect viewers' attention to nonverbal cues; it's not clear to me what one gains merely from having actors converse in different tongues, while translating them all on a projected screen.

Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997): 2.5/5

I'm back to where I always end up with Miyazaki, feeling frustrated by what seem like purely random flourishes. My gut feeling is that he's a great animator but a bad storyteller. Since my knowledge of Japanese mythology is basically nil, however, what seems random and unsatisfying to me may well make perfect sense to others. In any case, I've never been able to just roll with the weirdness, as most of my peers have. They see a dazzling masterpiece; I see a prettier version of Takashi Miike's dumbfounding The Great Yokai War.

Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975): 1/5

Few things are more painful than bad surrealism. There's virtually nothing here to either delight or disconcert. Just a bunch of naked children running wild, an old lady jabbering nonsense into a wireless radio, the occasional "talking" animal (mostly indecipherable grunting and squeaking), and Joe Dallesandro's presence as counterculture Ken doll. Dream logic has rarely been so prosaic, and if there's a less sensuous film about a young girl's sexual awakening (metaphorical or otherwise), may it thud right on past.

Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999): 2.5/5

Another of Spike's rippers on trauma and tribalism and glimmering hope, only this one also has a talking dog.

Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997): 3/5

So many of these 90's indie crime dramas depend on Michael Rappaport being a dipshit who fucks it up for everyone.

Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992): 2.5/5

Nothing but downward spiral, plus one agonized act of forgiveness. The early, iconic scene in which Lt. Bad staggers around naked, his face a mask of pain, arguably does more harm than good—it's certainly arresting and memorable, but it overwhelms what's otherwise a remarkably flat, almost procedural portrait of ingrained vice.

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021): 2/5

Ansel Elgort has to be stopped, now. I’m not doing this for another 20 years. If they had to put him in a musical, it should have been as a “Sound of Music” Nazi.

Anyway, Spielberg works his magic here and there, but it’s only 4 minutes longer than the original and it feels like at least 45.

Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020): 3/5

Interesting little flick; dug the aesthetic and the setting. Has a sort of Silent Hill element with the gritty, rundown house and uncanny, supernatural aspects. The plot is a little unfocused though; all the pieces are there but motivations and decisions feel off in a nonsensical way. Still, an engaging and promising debut.

The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021): 1.5/5

This is what I imagine people who’ve never seen foreign films are picturing when they say, “I don’t like foreign films.”