Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp, 2022): 5/5

Don't really know how to talk about this yet other than to say it felt like my soul was a flower and it was being watered.

 Don't Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde, 2022): 2/5

Viewing experience was a bit unbearable. Trapped in a theater full of Harry Style fan girls where every time they would squeal and overreact to everything he was doing in the film. Just a theater of 16 year old girls cackling for two hours.

Anyway, this diet-Stepford mystery is too concerned with surface-level "interrogations" of intriguing and layered ideas that have already been explored and dissected more thoroughly and rewardingly in numerous other films. (The flick ends where it would actually starts getting interesting.) One wishes its script wasn't such a wretched waste of time, given the immaculate polish of the picture. It is really incredible how quite literally nothing happens or is developed for the first two-thirds of this film. It is entirely constructed like: inert scene of ironic 50s glamour -> Florence Pugh has a cheap-O David Lynch vision -> repeat for 90 minutes.

Beast (Baltasar Kormakur, 2022): 1/5

Love to shoot a movie in Africa, but confine 90% of the story to a 150 yard radius.

Goodnight Mommy (Matt Sobel, 2022): 2/5

The 2014 Austrian version is better - more tense, more disturbing. The twins are less annoying. Nobody asked for this remake except for Naomi so she could pay the rent.

Do Revenge (Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, 2022): 0.5/5

Excruciating. Godard being mentioned in this movie must have been his final straw.

Sharp Stick (Lena Dunham, 2022): 1.5/5

I was a fan of Tiny Furniture and HBO's Girls, but here there's no life, no charisma, no humor. The most interesting elements are on the fringes - namely, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character and Jon Bernthal and Lena Dunham's marriage. They're refracted through our quirked up lead character who seems to be miscalculated at every turn.

Antibirth (Danny Perez, 2016): 2/5

IFC Midnight stoner oddity I'd been meaning to see since it came out because it stars Natasha Lyonne AND Chloe Sevigny, AND we also get Meg Tilly's first big-screen role since like, 1994. Lou (Lyonne) and her best friend (Sevigny) are party girls whose lives are surrounded by drug dealers, pimps and various other scumbags, so when she's told that she's probably pregnant, she refuses to accept the obvious explanation that she was raped at a party while completely out of it. The subsequent fast degradation of her flesh, and the even faster gestation she undergoes, makes it clear that the actual truth is even scarier. Basically a white trash version of Rosemary's Baby.

Italian Studies (Adam Leon, 2021): 1.5/5

i know i was supposed to care about this lady wandering around manhattan confused about everything for 90 minutes but i was more concerned about the dog she left behind at the hardware store. The film presents the protagonist's memory loss as the central conflict of the film but then abandons it halfway to present itself as a documentary that doesn’t mesh together with the film’s opening act. Italian Studies is only intriguing for about 15 minutes before losing itself in a cinematic void of nothingness.

The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel, 2020): 1/5

“He suddenly wanted to see her again, thinking he could sleep with her.” This is a real line in this goddamn movie.

Impressively embarrassing, especially for a 72-year-old man who should know how a relationship functions by now. Some of the worst dialogue I've seen in a fair bit, some bad implications for consent and the male ego, and even worse it's not even enjoyably bad, just mostly boring.

Emily the Criminal (John Patton Ford, 2022): 3/5

I support women's rights and women's wrongs.

Fall (Scott Mann, 2022): 1/5

I, for one, simply wouldn't have climbed up there.

Pinocchio (Robert Zemekis, 2022): 1/5

Pathetic. How is it that someone watched this in post-production and thought "yea that's heat, release it."

We need to stop the live action Hercules while we still can.

Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman, 2022): 1/5

More like crawBAD amirite? No wait, more like this is where the crawdads SHIT amirite?

Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022): 3.5/5

Walked into this knowing next to nothing. I recommend the same if you want the optimum experience. Best horror film I've seen all year.

Funny Pages (Owen Kline, 2022): 3.5/5

A chaotic, grimy feature directorial debut from Owen Kline that’s just as messy and darkly funny as the underground comics he’s paying tribute to. Definitely could feel the Safdie influence all over this one. Equal measures anti-social, heartwarming, discomfiting and goofy — this is a fun little coming of age romp thru a comic book underground perspective, where fringe characters are at the center. Kids always need to see shit like this in their teens.

rewatched My Bodyguard (Tony Bill, 1980): 2.5/5

The late, great Robin Wood makes reference to MY BODYGUARD in his book HOLLYWOOD FROM VIETNAM TO REAGAN in a chapter on the homoeroticism of "buddy films," citing this one's "extraordinary motorbike-riding montage sequence in which the two male teenagers are seen trying out all available positions."

rewatched Charly (Ralph Nelson, 1968): 2.5/5

Having Ravi Shankar compose the score was a bold choice. His Indian instruments give the movie a slightly off-kilter aura, avoiding the usual saccharine, violin-based melodies a traditional Hollywood veteran would have favored. Appropriate for the unconventional romantic sci-fi adaptation that is Flowers for Algernon.

Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette, 1981): 1/5

just french girls geocaching and larping, showing their disdain for kurosawa, screaming and waving guns around, you know, being french girls.

Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957): 3/5

Acerbic and searing down to its wistfully unapologetic core. The scene in which Falco brokers an assignation between the sad floozy who's hot for him and a columnist from whom he needs a favor ranks among Hollywood's ugliest spectacles.

The Banishment (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2007): 1/5

Lumbering, clumsy, overly long. Has all the elements of a good movie except a script. Typical director`s mistake after 1st film success.

8:46 (Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, 2020): 3/5

Chappelle is such a talented storyteller and an emotive speaker (wanted to write "well-spoken" but unfortunately, white people have co-opted that as a racist dog whistle) that there's something incredibly powerful and generationally emblematic about seeing him scream the truth of George Floyd's death. But I don't know that he wants to be seen in that way. I think he just wants to tell pussy jokes without living with the heightened responsibility that exists at the strange intersection of celebrity and blackness. Who wants the pressure of having to be "powerful" or "generationally emblematic" while emotionally arguing for the basic humanity of your own life?

Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller, 2022): 2/5

More like Three Thousand Years LONG!!!!

Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022): 1.5/5

Don't have too many thoughts on this - more propulsive than the original in many technical areas but probably less enduring over the concessions on the cheese factor. Would’ve liked to see the hot guys kiss. Merica.

Living in Oblivion (Tom DiCillo, 1995): 3/5

Come for Buscemi as Art House director. Stay for Dinklage critiquing David Lynch dream sequences.

Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-8): 3.5/5

Never been a medieval, knights, swords & dragons kinda gal, but I guess I can now understand the hype. And I'm actually fine with how it ended. Who cares about House of the Dragons, they should do a Brienne of Tarth spinoff. Love that big woman.