rewatched A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957): 4/5

Wonderfully excoriating, disturbingly contemporary, and that scene at the end with the laugh track machine is some WAY before its time deep nihilistic brilliance.

Another Day in Paradise (Larry Clark, 1998): 2/5

For James-Woods-in-sleazeball-mode completists only. It's so odd to see Pete Campbell this way.

Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954): 3/5

This is no ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, but I still mostly enjoyed it as a perverse portrait of love blossoming from guilt and channeled into deception, with emotions heightened via orchestral yearning, deeply saturated Technicolor and weirdly artificial exterior views through windows.

Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992): 2.5/5

Underwhelming, but there's no denying that the film makes some sharply pointed, admirable observations about race (super-discomfiting use of the 'n' word here by two white screenwriters, even for that era, though Duke and Fishburne evidently weren't troubled by it), class and corrupt institutions. I just wish that its superficial layers were more compelling.

It's Always Fair Weather (Gene Kelley & Stanley Donan, 1955): 3/5

Just fair! I found pretty much every non-musical scene here drably pedestrian. But I'd happily watch any or all of Fair Weather's four stunners again right now (and in fact took a second look at "No Thanks" on YouTube while writing this, just for the fun of it) but have no desire whatsoever to revisit the film as a whole.

rewatched Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946): 5/5

Gotta love the self-harming tug-of-war between Bergman and Grant. “Is this where you tell me you’ve got a wife and two children waiting for you at home?” with a playful smirk on her face, to which he coldly replies, “I’ll bet you’ve heard that line a few times before.” No chuckle, no smirk, not even an impish undertone. Just straight-laced venom. Bergman is so excellent, electric and content to absorb the torment that gets relentlessly shoveled in her face. And Grant is absolutely spellbinding, embodying a cocktail of suave, insouciant, and downright bloodthirsty; a man battling inner demons of jealousy and pride, incapable of letting either one fully take the reins. This is also just a marvelous espionage flick: velvet-gloved Nazi murder plots (spoken of but never shown); the breathtaking crane down to the wine-cellar key gripped tight in Alicia's hand; a cup looming huge (but out of focus!) in the foreground to signify its poisoned contents. But that's all in support of a truly extraordinary psychological dynamic.

rewatched The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941): 5/5

If I could get a penny for every moment a gun exchanges hands I'd probably be able to afford the falcon myself. Oh wait, never mind. I've just found out that in 2013, the prop sold for $4.1 million. I guess dreams are made of lead after all.

Pink Floyd: The Wall (Alan Parker, 1982): 2/5

Less of a movie and more of a compilation of music spots that feature some plot ideas about our singer while Pink Floyd songs play over it. Basically Mamma Mia but emo.

Too Late Blues (Cassavetes, 1961): 3/5

Cassavetes second film and first studio feature. Bobby Darin delivers a surprisingly good dramatic performance.

rewatched sex, lies, and videotape (Soderbergh, 1989): 4/5

I generally dislike overt therapy onscreen yet am hypnotized by this film's relentless emotional probing. The story is basically a (heteronormative) version of TEOREMA in which candor replaces fucking as the destructive/liberating force...which actually does sound like something I'd adore, so there you go.

rewatched Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998): 3.5/5

What retroactively surprises me is how little influence LOLA wound up having. Seismic at the time, apparently the big arthouse hit of that summer...yet I can't think of many subsequent films that took its throbbing breathlessness and, well, ran with it. There's a big opening right now for a filmmaker who wants to indulge in pure pop dynamism. And should a gifted young woman make her generation's Run Lola Run, we're talking potential phenomenon.

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954): 4.5/5

"Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not."

Film scholars and critics have written quite eloquently, and at greater length than I'd ever be able to, about various queer readings, as well as the film's clear anti-McCarthy subtext. I'll just simply say that this film is like a cup of coffee and a good smoke.

The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002): 2/5

Over-determined paean to female suffering. Daldry’s anonymous slick direction leans heavily on Phillip Glass’ score, like in both extended reaction shots of Moore’s dullard child. The structural conceit is just a fancy costume for its middlebrow aspirations. The dialogue is so sappy and everyone is talking like they’re quoting a bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul. Cotton scented candle dialogue. Some of the styling looks like Barnes & Nobles interiors.

rewatched The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973): 3/5

My "problem" (relative to the consensus that this is a masterpiece) mostly involves accepting Gould as Marlowe. Also, I think what I really want is for this magnificently counterintuitive conception of Marlowe not to get embroiled in this frustratingly convoluted, almost cinema-retardant plot. Every scene pitting this laid-back, befuddled incarnation of Marlowe against traditional genre heavies plays like Lebowski without the jokes. Altman and Gould try hard to break free of Chandler's novel but ultimately don't succeed enough to fully win my heart. I do very much admire the effort, though.

rewatched The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946): 3/5

Just for fun, I made a concerted effort this time to follow the plot, pretending that it actually matters, and can now definitively say that doing so ain't remotely worth the mental energy required.

rewatched To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944): 3.5/5

"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." Rewatched that scene half a dozen times, just to revel in its blasé magnificence.

rewatched Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959): 5/5

“A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?”

“That's *what* I got.”

Great lead performances. Flawless direction and writing. Ward Bond sporting an impossibly deep tan. The plot stopping to make room for a group of men singing a song about how they wish they were an apple.

She Came to Me (Rebecca Miller, 2023): 0.5/5

Insipid, largely nonsensical, flat-out boring, a complete tonal mess. How this film ever made it through a script meeting I’ll never know. With some of the most banal characters and haphazard storytelling, Miller has made one of the most bizarrely preposterous and smugly pretentious films of the last ten years. The main lead is a composer plagued with crippling anxiety married to his therapist who seems to have her own demons as things go into disarray when he has an affair with a woman who aggressively stalks men. Then there's the whole B-plot between the therapist's kid and a minor who has an aggressive control freak stepfather. It's a parable of chaotic toxicity that resolves itself in a strangely idyllic manner.

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023): 3/5

Great sound design, fantastic fight scene (I'm now obsessed with what a pure Fincher action movie would look like), and the opening sequence recalls Fincher's days as a music video stylist nonpareil. Not his best and it doesn't add up to much, but it's still Fincher doing what he's good at with a dollop of class rage that runs through all his work.

Quiz Lady (Jessica Yu, 2023): 2/5

There is a baseline level of entertainment just from watching Awkwafina and Sandra Oh play polar opposite sisters, but this leans too heavily on lazy broad comedy gags (the drug bit feels especially desperate) and gets weirdly affected by its trite feel good beats.

The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): 2.5/5

Weird ass Karloff/Lugosi chiller makes no sense at all and has nothing to do with the Poe tale which allegedly "inspired" it.

Wham! (Chris Smith, 2023): 2.5/5

Not that I'm a fan, but what's truly compelling about unitalicized Wham! is the Michael–Ridgeley dynamic: Childhood best friends form a band together and conquer the world, only for one of them—the one who'd originally been dominant—to gradually realize that he's dwarfed in talent by the other. Would love to see a fictionalized version of that Star Is Born-ish rise | fall, and the real-life account might have been equally worthwhile, if not for Ridgeley apparently being the world's most understanding and emotionally stable guy, nothing but happy for his buddy's solo success. Great for him, if true; not so great for the movie.

* Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023): 5/5

A couple is having a disagreement, and the husband ends up dead (relatable). The rest of the movie seems to be about whether the wife killed him or it was a suicide, but it’s actually about how mysterious and unknowable a relationship is, even to its participants—or even how very unknowable a person is. Triet manages a delicate equilibrium of ambiguity throughout, urging multiple interpretations, even with so much emotional weight in balance. So many great scenes, including the argument, the what-will-happen ending scene with the lawyer/past and potential lover, and the ending scene where the kid says he was “afraid of you coming home” and she agrees. These can mean so many things—and do! I liked the way there were all these symbolic impediments to understanding, including three different languages, the son’s “blindness,” and the fact that the suspect is a person who blends reality and fiction for a living. The movie starts and ends with the dog, and I think this means we understand our world about as well as a dog does. Insightful, true and always riveting.

 

Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023): 4/5

No particular method or agenda—beyond perhaps a bit of a character unraveling—but lots of pure emotion expressed by two great performances Franz Rogowski (a revelation, even after seeing Transit) & (Bright Star’s own) Ben Whishaw. Quite a leap forward visually and thematically from Love is Strange, which I remember as being pretty sit-commish (older gay people in Brooklyn in bunkbeds!), to something that feels like Olivier Assayas. Great last sequence. 

 

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason, 2023): 4/5

Novelistic, which here means that it moves from drama to drama over time, resetting the stakes and the relationships among the characters, including who is the protagonist. Jaw dropping Icelandic production values. People have cited Aguirre, but I was reminded of the (beloved, to me) The Immigrants/A New Land—a long and hallucinatory journey and a new fellowship in a remote location. Our original protagonist is a hopeless idiot, but the film finds new people of interest to center the film, over time. 

 

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023): 3.5/5

Familiar territory (see Point Blank, Le Samouraï) but well told. The first bit is very Palahniuk and fun but the revenge section becomes more tight lipped and, for long stretches, silent (always good). it is interesting that our killer is pretty incompetent and not strict about acting within his own supposed code. This makes the self-seriousness of the voice-over (and the idea that this movie is autobiographical) increasingly ironic. It’s also interesting that Amazon and WeWork have made his life (like ours) so frictionless, screaming, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar/The Swan/The Rat Catcher/Poison (Wes Anderson. 2023): 3.5/5

Despite my well-documented adoration of Anderson, I was “disappointed” upon first viewing—overwhelmed by these films’ speed and intensity. Moving too swiftly through so many levels and interludes, all packed and potentially hilarious, plus many beautiful tools of set design and acting and animation, not to even mention people looking at the camera and saying “He said” all the time. A second viewing of each rendered them more coherent but still ecstatic and exhausting—and a gauntlet thrown at the feet of adaptation itself. So you think you want to see a recreation of the actual book? Here you go. Of course, many adaptations emphasize the original work’s emotions, but this one instead revels in the satisfying clockwork and ever-evolving drama in these complex stories. 

 

NYAD (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, 2023): 3.5/5

Benning’s performance is completely without vanity; I especially loved the parts when she is in the middle of her one of her swims and is disoriented, grunty, bloated and ugly. Foster is also surprisingly terrific. Script rings all the bells.  

 

Flora and Son (John Carney, 2023): 3/5

Not as good as my beloved Sing Street but not as bad as the condescending and narrowminded Begin Again (although it does take a snarky swipe at James Blake, of all people). All the musical parts here worked gangbusters for me sob sob sob. But a lot of the drama did not. Flora’s hollow-eyed, anti-social son just wanted to make sunny pop music with his mom?! 

 

Gran Turismo (Neill Blomkamp, 2023): 2.5/5

Cliched sports film but doesn’t spend unnecessary time on exposition. Racing scenes are effective, and Jack liked it a lot.

 

* Next Goal Wins (Taika Waititi, 2023): 1.5/5

Cliched sports film but spends way too much time on broken White savior Fassbinder instead of on the colorful Samoan team and, you know, the sport. Jack did not like it a lot. Fassbinder is miscast and horribly awkward and robotic. Can he only play sociopaths?  

 

* PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (Cal Brunker, 2023): 2/5

A yardstick for mediocrity. Requested by Jack but subject to the inquiry “why am I the oldest kid in this theater?” 

 

Reality (Tina Satter, 2023): 2/5

The real hook is the use of actual FBI transcripts for the script, and it is interesting to see how everything truly went down. Although of course, face gestures and body movements (not explicit in the transcript) are crucial to how the words are received. I believe that the movie thinks it’s about how the FBI too-zealously persecuted this woman for her mishandling of classified documents—and indeed the film is largely devoted to emphasizing their micro-aggressions (although generally I found them pretty respectful and kind). But I wonder how the super-lib (I’m assuming) filmmakers and intended audience changed their minds when this same sin of mishandling top secret docs was weaponized against Trumph. 

 

Welcome to Hell (Toy Machine, 1996): 4/5

A skateboarding video that serves as a profound document on the subject of flow state as well as on urban architecture. Feel free to turn off the sound and provide your preferred soundtrack. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tx2Q9pNxPc

 

Howard’s End (James Ivory, 1992): 3/5

I just read this novel, and it’s a weird book/story. There are two half-romances but it’s not really about love like A Room with a View is—although Ivory piles on the beauty as if it is. Instead, its interest is in class, depicting a wealthy family that accidentally (and to some extent blithely) ruins a lower-class man’s life while trying to help him. Whoops! Oh well!

 

Manhatta, 10 mins (Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, 1921): 3/5

10 minutes of Manhattan in 1921. Who doesn’t want to see that?

 

Sonny and Jed (Sergio Corbucci, 1972): 3/5

A Spaghetti Western with amazing zooms in and out all over the place—heightening intensity and emotion. Corbucci is unrepentant about putting a chaotic, repugnant rapist in the usual protagonist role and making us deal with it. Between Mandingo, Dirty Larry and Crazy Mary, and this one in the last couple of months, I have come to really like Susan George: a nice naturalism and A+ teeth. 

 

Gone in 60 Seconds (H.B. Halicki, 1974): 3.5/5

Has a surprising verisimilitude around the subject matter of car thievery—as well as when heavy pieces of metal start flying around the screen. Great to see some real fucking physics on screen. Our protagonist is an asshole, but he’s also professional, competent and principled (he won’t sell heroin). The camera ogles the beautiful luxury and sport cars, polished to a sexy sheen. The last 45 minutes are a shaggy chase scene from Long Beach across the bridges to Pedro and up the “Harbor” freeway (do we still call it that?) and around Carson. Amazing and pleasurable time travel, then-vs-now footage of fields and open skies where there are now billboards, blimps and buildings. 

 

Buffalo 66, rw (Vincent Gallo, 1998): 5/5

Je suis San Fernando Valley 67. I recognize so many of these behaviors and tantrums in my own worst behaviors. I am this weak, abrupt, angry, childish, demanding, frustrated and little. And it is reassuring that a make-upped angel like Melissa (here played by Christina Ricci) loves me anyway and actually wants to help me. As for Ricci’s character, I think she is just taking a ride and tripping out on the experience. In a similar way, I have recently discovered the joys of simply agreeing, in conversation with difficult people. 

 

Whiplash, rw (Damien Chazelle, 2014): 5/5

Serious daddy issue movie for me (in a good way; it’s why I forgive the teacher his trespasses).  Plus, yeah I kind of would like this guy to bully my bandmates into practicing a bit more and keeping time better. Miles Teller is terrific here and has yet to fulfill the promise of this film. 

 

Howl’s Moving Castle, rw (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004): 5/5

Perhaps his most mysterious work (and that’s saying something). The viewer is so often in the middle of some experience that we don’t know the rules for—and we just have to go with it. Watched with Jack and later he said it was his new favorite movie (after Deadpool, a film that completely fascinates him, especially as I would not let him see it for years). 

 

Design for Living, rw (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933): 4/5

The three-way love affair here would still be taboo 90 years later. Playwright Frederic March (so great in The Best Years of Our Lives 13 years later) is aces, but the MVP is painter Gary Cooper—gangly beauty, with huge hands (!!) and excellent timing. Miriam Hopkins’ character is way ahead of her time, hustling to help make the men she loves a success while also charting her own idiosyncratic fate. 

 

 

The Thrilling Conclusion of This 1001 Greatest Films Project

After some investigation several years ago, I settled on this list and finally—to my great satisfaction—I have watched every film on it. As you may have read, many of them were really good and some of them I didn’t like at all. From now on, if someone suggests an older movie I haven’t seen, I’m just going to make a disgusted face and tell them that it’s not even one of the best 1001 movies, so fucking forget it!! (No, actually of course I already have a new list of the 153 movies that made four or more lists in the most recent Sight and Sound poll that I haven’t yet seen.)

The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995): 4.5/5

Absolutely expert middlebrow. Streep in her imperial phase, casually incorporating accent and unique facial expressions for the character. Eastwood is also great, doing almost nothing and relying solely on great sense of ease, relaxation and presence. The last half hour is a cascading succession of emotional moments and yes sob sob sob. 

 

The Best of Youth, 6h6m (Marco Tullio Giordana, 2003): 3.5/5

Follows four siblings and their friends from late adolescence through when they are grandparents, with all the love affairs, parent deaths, and other perfectly ordinary dramas of a lived life—such an obvious idea for a film and one wonders why it is not done more often. It’s pleasant to watch these beautiful people trip, Gump-style, through post-war Italian history (this is when we reformed mental health treatments, this is when we fought the mafia in Sicily). And in the final hour, remembering back through their lives: sob sob sob. 

 

Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, 2020): 3/5

Tremendously lovely hand drawn animation and production design. Routine story, more or less like Disney’s Pocahontas, Pixar’s Brave or DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon. (Outsider group not trusted until our protagonist joins them, then shows everyone how great they are). 

 

Whirlpool (Otto Preminger, 1950): 3/5

What year in America history is it when a movie is, without irony, built around the power of psychiatry and hypnotism over female “you must believe me” hysteria? Gene Tierney outacts Richard Conte and Jose Ferrer and makes it look easy.  

 

A Silent Voice (Naoko Yamada, 2016): 3/5

Extremely sensitive, let’s say emo, teen drama expressed with the utmost seriousness and sincerity. It makes me happy to know that there are so many Japanese youths feeling everything so deeply and trying to be good people. Female director!

 

An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957): 3/5

Filled with all kinds of completely normal moments between strangers—then lovers—that throb with feeling. Cary Grant is deeply relaxed (and deeply tanned) and brings a reality to the whole affair. The last half hour devolves into a musical as McCarey kills time the best he can before finally gets to reunite his lovers. McCarey’s third-to-last film, of 95.

 

Son of the White Mare (Marcell Jankovics, 1981): 2.5/5

Packed with ecstatic and intense psychedelic images, but it never really transcends that in terms of narrative or character. I think some people (wrongly) want Yellow Submarine to be more like this. 

 

The Tiger of Eschnapur (Fritz Lang, 1959): 2/5

A German-language evocation of India, with romance and intrigue. What could go wrong?? Combines some beautiful travelogue footage, with studio-bound scenes of the worst theatrical nature, plus racism. Brown face everywhere, but the love interest is a blue-eyed Eurasian. Worst of all, it’s ugly—green, red and purple lighting abounds. For a flavor of the “authenticity” and exoticism here, here’s what the protagonist stumbles up in a secret temple. Sheesh!

 

 

The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1959): 3/5

In the dumb criminal genre also populated by Big Deal on Madonna Street, Ruthless People and Snatch—all movies I find tiresome. Lots of fake teeth and actorly business. Shockingly it’s the old woman’s intelligence, poise, grace and good humor that persists in the mind. Also shockingly, the Coens found no way to improve on this material.  

 

The Red Light Bandit (Rogério Sganzerla, 1968): 2.5/5

Follows the exploits of a thief, rapist and murderer. Or as the movie puts it “A Brazilian in the last phase of capitalism.” Nihilistic, and largely declarative rather than dramatic. Over and over we get descriptions of this monster we are watching, obviously contradictory, about his philosophy, his passions, his methods—over rapid-fire Godardian pop visuals. Our bandit is later contrasted with a Trumpian populist politician, pals with Nazi Martin Bormann himself. "Within the garbage can, one must be radical." — Rogério Sganzerla

 

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023): 4/5

My first Triet, and I'm now very curious. Thoroughly gripping, loved the forensic attention to detail, both in the case at hand and in relationship dynamics, and the fastidious lack of score. Also the way it interweaves objective, near banal coverage with intensely subjective and empathic rough camera movements (a double take in the courtroom is particularly striking, and a zoom at a key moment got what I believe to be intended laughs) seems wholly unique. Aided by Sandra Huller's five star performance (an acting masterclass) and a brilliantly layered script, Triet has delivered one of the most morally attuned critiques of the fundamental dysfunction at the heart of the current zeitgeist that nails what Todd Field and Cate Blanchet sought to achieve in TAR without resorting to that film's more overtly confrontational and controversial schematics.

This is one of the most emotionally intelligent films you're likely to see this year. Well worth a look.

Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese, 2023): 4/5

Another sprawling Late Marty epic as both an elegy for a forgotten American tragedy and an American master of crime films lamenting on the true cost of evil. Leo’s Ernest Burkhart is a dimwitted ex-soldier led to moral ruin by smarter men for whom they became willing pawns. Scorsese has never been more Shakespearean than here. Of course this film belongs to Lily Gladstone, the magnificent actress who plays a wealthy Osage woman besieged by an orchestrated wave of death meant to steal her tribe’s wealth. Gladstone’s prodigious gifts bring this woman to life and express love and fear in a way that belie the words she utters. And the story calls on her to create crushing grief usually reserved for Greek Tragedy. She astonishes. Robert De Niro won’t get the attention he deserves here but his turn as William Hale is some of his best work in years. It is striking how different this film is from the mid-career crime epics that have come to define Martin Scorsese. This film eschews the propulsive drive and violent excess that once was the director’s signature. Instead we get a compelling portrait of the moral damnation that sprang from America’s Original Sin. It’s a rough ride, but we can’t look away. Doing that has led us to this. Sad. Moving. Infuriating. And the genius and emotional gut-punch of that fucking ending cannot be debated.

rewatched The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973): 5/5

"What an excellent day for an exorcism."

Few films are celebrated as the preeminent in their respective genre, even fewer deserve the title. But unlike others, horror is such a sweeping genre brimming with a multitude of sub genres— to dub a single film as the best is far more difficult.

Fortunately, The Exorcist makes it easier. Would be a shame if someone tried to make a legacy sequel 50 years later...

The Exorcist: Believer (David Gordon Green, 2023): 1.5/5

Or, THE EXORSISTERS.

Possibly the lamest one in the Exorcist franchise, the demons weren't cunty, there's the whole "town is experiencing trauma so let's get together and pray" storyline. And like characters will just be existing in a normal situation and suddenly stare off into the distance and start monologuing like "do u know what evil really is!? I think It's not having hope!!" and you as an audience member will be like um ok? Who asked!?

The most frightening thing about this movie is that David Gordon Green is supposed to make a trilogy of this. Speaking of which, you can tell he was never bullied in high school and all I’m saying is it’s not too late to start.

Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023): 2/5

I continue to find Sachs badly wanting; his instincts are commendable, but I never fundamentally believe anything that I'm seeing in his films. Also didn't like how neither Martin nor Agathe ever comes across as more than an empty vehicle for Tomas to repeatedly, narcissistically sideswipe, and Passages isn't disciplined enough (despite some excellent individual shots, e.g. one in which Tomas' body completely obscures Martin's as they argue in bed at night) to make that dynamic compelling to me. Nice to see frank sexuality onscreen for a change, but that's the only level on which anyone connects.

The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green, 2023): 3/5

Two Canadian female backpackers travel to the Australian outback to earn a bit of money working in a bar, in order to support their backpacker lifestyle. The locals are a bit shifty and trouble ensues.

I didn't really like how the movie kept walking right up to the point at which a conventional gnarly genre film would truly kick in and then warily retreat. Just seemed to tiptoe around its fundamental purpose and visceral draw. There's constant nerve-shredding tension, yes, but then nothing ever quite crosses the line into actual horror.

But having another young woman, Liv, in the same circumstances roll with toxic masculinity, and often appear to be having way more fun as a result, keeps the film from feeling overly didactic, even as we're generally recoiling alongside Hanna.

rewatched The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942): 4/5

Mildly amusing when thinking of Orson expecting mass audiences to empathize with George Amberson Minafer.

Constantine (Francis Lawrence, 2005): 2.5/5

Tilda Swinton. Gavin Rossdale?!

rewatched Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958): 4/5

I remembered this as an unassailable classic, but nothing about the desert hotel plot thread really worked for me on this viewing - performances, motivations, awkward timing necessitated by cross-cutting between two storylines, Vargas leaving his wife out there, the sodium pentathol in lieu of heroin (what, it's legal to inject people unwillingly with non-lethal doses?) - apart from some nice shots (duh, it's Welles). Rest is aces, bravura, essential cinema, give or take the brownface.

rewatched It (1990): 3/5

I would rather wake up to the 2017 Pennywise next to me than the 1990 Pennywise, I feel like the 90s Pennywise would try and do some freaky shit to me not gonna lie, and the 2017 one would just kill me.

Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965): 3.5/5

Of all his films, Chimes at Midnight was reportedly Orson Welles' own personal favorite of his work. I can see why— the ornate Shakespearean dramaturgy is an overwhelming indulgence of his grandiose and decadent thespian proclivities. There’s a lot to admire on a shot-by-shot basis, but I never could quite fully engage with it. It could be that I don’t have a strong ear for Shakespeare, but that’s exactly why I’ve always valued cinematic adaptations of his works; the visuals fill in the story for me in a way that a handful of actors milling about a stage simply can’t.

Sound of Freedom (Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, 2023): 1/5

*sharts loudly*

That's the sound of freedom.

This is the type of movie your christian xenophobic aunt tells you to watch because the concept of empathy finally hit her at age 60.

Basically: black and brown people are the villains, American prisons are great, the US government should be able to act however it desires all over the world in militaristic ways because they have a divine right to “liberate”. Pro-state nationalistic propaganda all hidden under the facade of “heroic acts”.

You'd think this vaguely faith-based anti-child trafficking hagiography would amount to some sort of ironically amusing late-night AM QAnon wankery, but this is so monotonous and self-serious that it becomes simply an interminable dirge that hops episodically from one canned movie-subplot to another. Styleless filmmaking as well, drab acting, and hollow cinematography. If you need a movie to convince you that pedophilia and child sex trafficking are a problem, then here you go.

Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989): 2.5/5

After having both arms cut off by her philandering husband, a circus performer compels her adult son to stand behind her and serve as her hands as she embarks upon a murderous, vengeful rampage. Like all Jodorowsky films, there's a ton of arbitrary weirdness I don't get: why does Concha's disfigurement need to reflect the patron saint of a bizarre church/cult that she apparently runs in her spare time? Why the operatic crane shot of young Fenix mourning a dead elephant? Why does one key sequence involve a bunch of folks with Down syndrome whose sole function is to be offered cocaine and hookers (merely as a means of reuniting Dark Fenix with the Tattooed Lady)? WHY at one point some random dude literally peels one of his ears off of his head and starts smacking Alma about the face with it???

Well, it's certainly not a movie one forgets, I guess. But Jodorowsky's particular brand of surrealism has always struck me as fundamentally empty, for whatever reason. Perhaps I'm too much of a rationalist to appreciate a by-any-means-necessary approach to the ostensibly visionary. I think Jodorowsky just ain't my bag. He's plenty singular, but not in a way that I find appealing.

Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975): 4/5

One of the greatest and most essential exploitation films ever made. Gleefully does away with any pretense to good taste and lets the rules of propriety that allow oppression to thrive expose themselves. Everything here is a hypocrisy.

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965): 4/5

Almost entirely visually organized by the Alps, the lines of the mountains...though rigid still a part of nature. They're a representation of the harmony that Maria brings out of her new family. Her love of the world is frivolous but pure, still Godly, and the structure and sacrifice of religion is unusually but crucially contrasted with the Captain's discipline, a micro version of the larger conflict between love and fascism.

Also just a ripping good musical, just one hit right after another.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, 1977): 3.5/5

 The strong tug of nostalgia that I felt here has little to do with Milne's beloved characters, and almost everything to do with preferring pre-Pixar picture-book flatness. Not that I didn't love Toy Story and its immediate successors, but who wants EVERYTHING to be so damn tactile? At this point I might even get all misty-eyed watching The Fox and the Hound. 

Reptile (Grant Singer, 2023): 2/5

Worst title in cinematic history.

All the right ingredients are here in Reptile to deliver a serviceably creepy crime story replete with True Detective detachment and Fincher atmosphere. But it never comes together to create any real tension, stakes or pathos. The result is derivative, lifeless, characterless…

 rewatched Anaconda (Luis Llosa, 1997): 1.5/5

Screaming snakes, Danny Trejo committing suicide up a mast, Jon Voight going full 'Hopkins', Eric Stoltz choking on a wasp, Owen Wilson's jungle horniness, Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez bathing in monkey blood ... it can only be Anaconda.

Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning, 1992): 3/5

Remarkably deft mockumentary. Imagine Paranormal Activity as a live episode of something like Ghost Hunters crossed with 60 Minutes. 

It Lives Inside (Bishal Dutta, 2023): 1/5 

More like It Lives Inside.....the TRASH! 

The Burial (Margaret Betts, 2023): 3/5

Jamie Foxx is electric.

The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947): 2.5/5

Bastardized Irish accent notwithstanding, this is such an uninteresting and incoherent mess.  Just watch the final 5 minutes for some innovative camerawork and nifty editing.