rewatched Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956): 4/5

TFW you catch so much dick ur dad dies.

Our Time (Carlos Reygadas, 2018): 3/5

TMI: The Movie. A three-hour excavation of a relationship in free fall, starring Reygadas himself as Juan, the husband, and Reygadas's wife Natalia Lopez as his wife Ester. The couple have three kids, and for years have had an open relationship, although based on what we see, this arrangement seems to be more about Ester taking lovers, and telling Juan the details -- a cuckold sex-play scenario -- than a true egalitarianism. When it appears that Ester develops feelings for one of Juan's friends, a horse breaker named Phil, it brings long-simmering jealousies and resentments to the surface. Probably Reygadas most linear, conventional film.

Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, 2018): 2/5

Wiseman's worst film? "Oooh let's see what Trump voters are thinking and feeling!" Who gives a shit. I've occasionally had my issues with Wiseman's filmmaking, but this is the first time I've come away feeling less informed, if not dumber, than when I started.

Predator 2 (Stephen Hopkins, 1990): 2/5

Unrelentingly stupid, from "what if the jungle were urban this time?" To the Jamaican Voodoo Posse to Bill Paxton's painfully strenuous efforts at providing comic relief. Improves in the home stretch, with flashlight beams struggling their way through particulate matter during the ultraviolet ambush and Harrigan eventually pursuing the Predator onto its spaceship, the interior of which boasts a surprisingly cool design. Passes the time, but I'll have forgotten it all by next week.

Mr. Mom (Stan Dragoti, 1983): 2/5

He's Mr. Mom, so...Dad. Even looking past the dated gender-role bullshit—dudes can't use a vacuum cleaner, grab the bottom grapefruit from a pile and send the others spilling to the floor, lose track of their small children, etc.—this is just almost never funny. Nor is it really actively awful, I guess—just utterly forgettable.

Aquarela (Viktor Kossakovsky, 2018): 2/5

No movie has ever needed David Attenborough more. Basically this is just an Apple TV screensaver with a cheap hard rock soundtrack. Frivolous attempt at feigning depth through minimalism. Water is majestic, it’s dangerous and it will be here long after we all drown in it. There are no doubt beauties and terrors to behold here, but it’s all told from such a cold distance that I felt neither moved nor horrified by any of it.

Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater, 2016): 2.5/5

No story. No plot. Just dudes being dudes - hanging out and fucking around.

Love the Coopers (Jessie Nelson, 2015): 1.5/5

More like Fuck the Coopers!!!

Nerve (Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman, 2016): 1.5/5

Props for predicting Tik Tok, but this was a chore to get through. Maybe if I was 14 years old, this would be 'like totally the best thing ever', but instead I'm 38 and sad that Juliette Lewis agreed to be in this.

Boo! A Madea Halloween (Tyler Perry, 2016): 0.5/5

For a movie that has "Boo!" and "Halloween" in the title, there is a surprising lack of spooky shenanigans in this, and a surprising amount of discussion about how you should still be allowed to beat your children. Perry also made sure the script he wrote included some teen girls talking about how hot he is - always a cool move.

Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk (Ang Lee, 2016): 1.5/5

I did NOT see the 120 fps 3-D version, obviously. Perhaps it would have made it marginally more bearable IDK.

Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer, 2017): 3.5/5

2/3 The Talented Mr. Ripley + 1/3 King of Comedy = Ingrid Goes West. Funny, scary. Plaza is fantastic.

Rebel in the Rye (Danny Strong, 2017): 1.5/5

J.D. Salinger Superficial Cliche Factory. Most great author biopics are just faintly dull and unnecessary. Rebel In The Rye, true to its ridiculous title, is proudly, even aggressively hackneyed.

The Only Living Boy in New York (Marc Webb, 2017): 1.5/5

The Only Narcissistic Little Asshole in New York (A City Which Is a Shadow of Its Former Glory, Guys; Raise a Glass to the Good Old Days, I'm 22 Years Old & I Know My Stuff)

Tour de Pharmacy (Jake Szymanski, 2017, 41 mins): 4/5

Perfectly stupid and hilarious mockumentary with a terrific cast.

Strange Way of Life (Pedro Almodovar, 2023, 31 mins): 2/5

The Tilda one is better.

Nai Nai & Wai Po (Sean Wang, 2023, 17 mins): 3.5/5

Ah yes my tear ducts' mortal enemies; old Asian women living their lives to the fullest. If anyone ever hurts my two new grandmas sleep with one eye open.

American Fiction (Cord Jefferson, 2023): 3.5/5

Loved the film when it's relaxed and observational and lightly funny, didn't connect with it when it aimed for provocative and outrageous. Minor qualm: there's no friggin way Monk could've written an entire novel in what just appears to be a few days, even out of annoyance and spite and EVEN if it's intentionally garbage.

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956): 3/5

Starts out as a serial-killer thriller (with Drew Barrymore's dad as the super-sweaty psycho) but speedily shifts gears into an oddball journalism melodrama involving a hugely improbable competition among various beats (newspaper, TV, wire)—not merely to land the story, but to actually catch the murderer! This particular corporation boasts a bizarrely incestuous staff who are not only fucking each other but all seem to live and/or tryst in the same apartment building, and the film's primarily about the ways in which their professional and romantic machinations coincide. Might have loved this had the killer truly become an afterthought, but the film keeps returning to him for interludes of conventional suspense, even though Lang's attention is clearly elsewhere. Worth watching for its stellar cast (including Thomas Mitchell in an atypically abrasive turn) and its subtle perversity, plus the amazing moment in which Lupino conveys her character's raging libido by tapping her lower teeth against a highball glass.

Eureka (Nicolas Roeg, 1983): 1/5

Nicholas Roeg out Roeg's himself. An incomprehensible mess of biblical proportions that is at times watchable and surreal but you're not entirely sure why and then a mixture of horrendously pompous and wildly unwatchable nonsense that makes you wonder if you're being left out of a joke.

Stay Hungry (Bob Rafelson, 1976): 2/5

Someone randomized like 7 scripts into one and that's how this movie came to be.

Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981): 1.5/5

This one tries way too hard to be like Rear Window on 18 wheels and fails at every turn. Even Jamie Lee Curtis' character is named Hitch. She's the lead actress and is barely in the film.

Stacy Keach is fine, but his lines are ridiculous. He espouses cliches, puns and quotes books and poetry as he rides his rig with his pet dingo/dog through Australia chasing after a suspected serial killer.

Club Zero (Jessica Hausner, 2023): 2/5

About the physical and psychological dangers of radical dieting. Whatever the film claims to want to say about eating disorders and cultish behavior, Hausner barely scratches the surface. Hollow and devoid of precious nutrients.

Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke, 2015): 3/5

A lovely portrait of a virtuoso pianist. In learning from and about Bernstein, we essentially learn a great deal about music, as seen from a particular perspective. Whether or not you’ve studied piano, it is fascinating to observe Bernstein’s gentle but rigorous technique in correcting errors, training the musicians’ bodies, and helping them to locate their own place within the piece they are trying to perform.

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (Midge Costin, 2019): 3/5

I have some issues with the structure of this film, which starts chronologically then suddenly moves into an explanation of an infographic provided an hour earlier. But I think most of my issues stem from the fact that this is a hell of a scope for one film to cover, and so it's necessarily a whistle stop tour which presumes (rightly or wrongly) that basically everything worth mentioning about sound happened in America and ignores everything after 5.1. The rest stem from some workman-like moments (the same visual sting for each year place card gets old very quickly).

Putting those qualms aside, this is a fine celebration of innovation and innovators in cinema sound. If it only skims the surface, there's a *lot* of surface to skim, and it does take the time to revel in certain moments and scenes that help keep it from being entirely superficial, and I did enjoy it on a moment-to-moment basis. 

Fractured (Brad Anderson, 2019): 1/5

Another lineup in Netflix's Crap-O-Rama for people who have never watched a single movie in their life. (It's literally just "he imagined the whole thing".)

'Pimpernel' Smith (Leslie Howard, 1941): 3/5

Leslie Howard reworking his success as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with a modern day Nazi angle as 'Pimpernel' Smith, infiltrating the Third Reich in his sly British manner. The fat knob, head of the Nazis, didn't have a clue and Howard played him lovely like a fool.

Mammoth (Lukas Moodysson, 2009): 3/5 

Unfortunately this doesn't beat the "sounds an awful lot like Babel" allegations, and Moodysson is a lot shakier at global profundity than he is at grounded, difficult human drama. But it's often good enough on a scene-by-scene basis to mitigate its failings in the macro.

The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984): 1/5

Even for a film with this title, I was floored by the sheer number of wolves!

Speak No Evil (Christian Tafdrup, 2022): 4/5 

Masterfully unsettling and ghastly bleak and uncompromising - totally reminds me of Haneke, who I love. Get ready to never wanna make new friends ever again. 

This is Me...Now (Dave Meyers, 2024): 1/5

If you liked This is Me… Now, you will also like:

-the Gal Gadot “Imagine” video
-"Music" directed by Sia
-the movie montage from the end of "Babylon"
-Barbra Streisand’s 100-hour audiobook memoir as read by herself
-any Sprite commercial ever made
-Gigli

Also, how old is J.Lo now because 1) she looks amazing and 2) she has views on love comparable to that of a 14 year old. 

Top 10 Films of 2023

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Maestro (Bradley Cooper)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, et al)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Next 10, Weirdly, a more interesting list.

The Outwaters (Robbie Banfitch)

Will-o’-the-Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)

Happer’s Comet (Tyler Taormina)

Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball)

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)

Past Lives (Celine Song)

 

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023): 4/5

Even more busy, fussy and dense than Wes, but also as purposeful, pissed off and romantic below the surface. Fascinating portrait of the moral stages one passes through in life. From the kill-the-frog stage to the screaming-for-freedom stage to the body stage to the philosophy stage to the stage where you realize you can’t really do anything about human suffering and punish yourself to the nihilism stage to when you reject and “kill” your father(‘s ideals). Admirably sex-positive and positivity-positive. Also the funniest movie of the year (if not Asteroid City). A kind of Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones, Barry Lyndon picaresque. 

 

Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023): 4/5

Out of all the movies I liked this year, this one had the most feels. Just vibrating with emotion. 

 

American Fiction (Cord Jefferson, 2023): 3.5/5

The most 2023 movie of the Oscar best film line-up. Speaking truth to power in a shocking manner.

 

Beyond Utopia (Madeleine Gavin, 2023): 3.5/5

What we learn about North Korea is absolutely jaw-dropping. I was also interested in how elaborate any escape from the country has to be (like…why don’t they just get a raft and circle around the border in the Sea of Japan or the Yellow Sea?). I was less convinced by the escape drama. 

 

R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu, 2023): 3/5

Combines the blatant and obvious with the vaguely symbolic. I think that all the racism stuff (especially a harrowing 17-minute unbroken take of the town meeting) would seem a lot more cliché if it had been set in, say, the South in 1955. Good thing it was in Romania! What the movie really has going for it is our protagonist, who is capable of anything and serves as a bridge between the film’s two worlds. Unfortunately, they don’t give him much to do, especially in the unclear and muddled conclusion. 

 

Trolls Band Together (Walt Dohrn, 2023): 2.5/5

I always forget how good the musical sequences are in these movies. Almost made me wish I knew the boy-band songs that were prominently featured. 

 

Orion and the Dark (Sean Charmatz, 2024): 2/5

Meet Darkness and his buddies Sleep, Insomnia, Quiet and Dream. Supposedly written by Charlie Kaufman, but Pete Doctor, writer of Inside, should get royalties for this shit.

 

Migration (Benjamin Renner, 2023): 2/5

Road trip with ducks. Written by Mike White, because all the weirdos are writing kids movies now. 

 

Warrendale (Allan King, 1967): 3.5/5

Upsetting and riveting cinema verité doc about a group home for emotionally disturbed children. As when I watch Love on the Spectrum, I experienced an instant warm recognition and empathy toward these young people who are doing the best they can with the hand they are dealt. 

 

A Married Couple (Allan King, 1969): 3.5/5

A completely fascinating verité documentary about a marriage in trouble. The husband is, god, so disgusting—and the tiny red underwear he favors will forever be seared in my mind.

 

My Name is Julia Ross, 65m (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945): 2/5

As the record will show, I am not a fan of gaslighting as a central plot conceit (see Les Diaboliques and, er, Gaslight). Gun Crazy, five years later, is a cosmic leap forward for Lewis.

 

U.S. Go Home, 1h8m (Claire Denis, 1994): 4/5

Two girls go to a party with the idea of losing their virginity but discover some complex feelings. One of my (new) favorite Denis films—a good length for one of her half-stories. Made for French TV as part of anthology series. Vincent Gallo is more tuned in here than in Denis’ Trouble Every Day (seven years later)

 

The Unholy Three (Tod Browning, 1925): 2/5

The first half unites the titular crime trio: a murderous little person (midget) impersonating an infant, an older man impersonating a grandma, and a female pickpocket acting as the mother. Fun! But the back half gets bogged down into a courtroom redemption drama (that everyone wants!?). Contains a truly frightening chimpanzee attack scene, using a live (and pissed) animal. 

 

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, 53m (Ron Ormond, 1971): 3.5/5

What the hell is this? It’s 80 percent authentic, preachy, pro-Jesus, anti-communist, repressive and repressed, fascistic propaganda. However, in showing the dangers of communism and godlessness, it indulges in the most lurid and grotesque fantasies. A perfect x-ray of their personal obsessions and turn-ons, including rape, torture and murder. Like Alex fantasizing about lusty but society-endorsed bible stories at the end of A Clockwork Orange. Naive and ironic. 

 

Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, 2019): 3.5/5

Like Happer’s Comet, the director’s (even) more experimental 2023 feature, this movie ambitiously tells the story of an entire community and is filled with ambiguous images and gestures. Here, a bunch of kids from all over the town meet for what at first seems like prom but eventually half-coalesces into something far more mysterious—leaving the rest of the population in a funk for something ineffable they have missed and will never get back. Excellent acting from more than 100 on-screen personalities and probably about 40 speaking roles. In his long, charming comment on Letterboxd, Taormina says “Please don’t compare it to Yorgos Lanthimos.”

 

 

 

Frank Perry Film Fest

A good six-year run. Nothing as daring, weird and iconic as The Swimmer, but all worth watching. 

 

The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968): 4/5

In the mysterious opening scene, a troubled god dreams aloud about swimming upriver, back to an imagined innocence. Thereafter, we swim from drama to drama as in a play—a journey that goes both forward and backwards in time, as we discover what he is swimming toward and away from with blank surrealism. Burt Lancaster was more or less my current age when he made the movie, and he looks goddamn perfect.

 

Last Summer (Frank Perry, 1969): 3/5

I heard Bret Easton Ellis extol the virtues of this movie at length, and I can see why. Bored rich kids in over their heads, alcohol and drugs, a hint of gay love, and the specter of violence. Barbara Hershey felt responsible for the death of a bird that broke its neck during filming and briefly changed her name to Barbara Seagull as a tribute to the creature: “I felt her spirit enter me,” she later explained. LSD definitely involved.

 

Diary of a Mad Housewife (Frank Perry, 1970): 3/5

A woman has a very justified affair. Richard Benjamin leans into being the most annoying and bullying person of all time, and Frank Langella is a real snack as the lover. 

 

Doc (Frank Perry, 1971): 3/5

A very 70s, spaghetti western-ish, Bonny and Clyde-drunk, retelling of the gunfight at the OK Corral mythos, starring Stacy Keech and Faye Dunaway (great!)—focusing on Doc Holliday and the sex worker he, uh, loves. Stages the final shoot-out as a massacre motivated by power and wealth.

 

Play It as It Lays (Frank Perry, 1972): 3.5/5

The tone is a bit wound up for such a spacey protagonist—I wish it was as languorous as she is. But I guess the movie places her in a foreign land that drives her crazy. Tuesday Weld is phenomenal, possibly because she’s actually high on heroin. Joan Didion offers an acidly, mordantly funny if shapeless script. “I know what nothing means and keep on playing.”

 

Man on a Swing (Frank Perry, 1974): 3/5

Cliff Robertson is a small-town police chief investigating a murder. Joel Grey is the self-proclaimed psychic who either has real powers or is himself the murderer. Shaggy but compelling.

 

 

Hong Sang-soo Film Fest

I think I may be getting the hang of Hong Sang-soo’s minimalist, tranquil, soju-fueled, humanist, naturalistic, tricky cinema—always different and always the same. I relate to these artistic characters who drink and talk about aesthetics and love. He employs long takes (often 10 minutes or more) of (often drunken) conversations, of which he commonly shoots 7 or 8 takes (the actors, often getting increasingly drunk), allowing his stable of actors to shine in ensemble. The characters are often directors or other kinds of artists themselves, and the men are almost always (gently) weak, self-deluding, ultra-sensitive, self-centered, and lacking ambition and foresight. Characters often say things that show that Sang-soo is thinking about his own artistic obsessions, strategies and goals. Like this one from Claire’s Camera: “The only way to change things is to look at everything again very slowly.” Or this one from Oki’s Movie: “Things repeat themselves with differences I can’t understand.”

 

Starting with his fifth feature, Sang-soo has been employing a unique filmmaking method: When making a movie, he wakes up each morning at 4 a.m. and writes the day’s script (or at least scene outlines). Then by 7 a.m. he lets the actors know who will be in the day’s scenes. This ensures spontaneity, freshness, lightness, and a (hopefully pleasant) wandering quality to the narratives.

 

Even more than with most films, I’m a bit reluctant to describe the structure and characters, since discovering the variations and delighting in the narrative strategies is the whole gig here. Crazy but these movies really do gain depth and enjoyment in relation to one another. 

 

I should also mention that Hong Sang-soo and I share a birthday (October 25). He’s exactly 7 years older than me.

 

HaHaHa (Hong Sang-soo, 2010): 3.5/5

Awkward and narcissistic men—and the women who forbear them and sometimes make them a bit better. Bounteous narrative innovation. Two young men talk about their recent past and slowly come to understand they’re describing the same group of people.

 

Oki’s Movie (Hong Sang-soo, 2010): 5/5

Four short stories about the same three characters, with a glorious final segment that locks loose ends into place. A great place to start for those new to Hong Sang-soo’s universe. Strong women and weak men, struggling to grow up. Fractured narrative. Filmmaker character(s). Discussions of aesthetics. Shifting perspectives and sympathies. Doubles. 

 

Hill of Freedom, 1h6m (Hong Sang-soo, 2014): 3/5

Japanese man comes to Seoul for a girl, but she’s not around. He lives his life, meeting people, writes her letters. Later she read the letters, the contents of which form the narrative, and this melancholy of missed opportunity hangs over everything. Also, the letters get out of order and one goes missing (with narrative implications). 

 

Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo, 2015): 3.5/5

Like Tokyo Story for Ozu, this is the accepted favorite (tho not mine), and it’s easy to see why. It’s romantic, wistful, in the face of longing and loneliness. It works great if it’s the only movie you’ll watch by the director, but it isn’t really in the slipstream of the artist’s work, which is usually more in discussion with itself. 

 

On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo, 2017): 3/5

Enigmatic even by HSS standards. Young actress Kim Min-hee drinks and talks with different groups of people about a messy affair she had with a director, while a dark and faceless figure sometimes hangs around. Editors’ note: it turns out Kim Min-hee really did have a messy affair with Sang-soo on set. In real life, they have been living and working together ever since, but Sang-soo’s wife (with whom he has a daughter) won’t grant him a divorce.

 

Claire’s Camera, 1h9m (Hong Sang-soo, 2017): 4/5

Another very aging Sang-soo-type director has an affair with Kim Min-hee. Huppert (surprisingly) is an agreeable ray of sunshine and an actual director character, hanging around taking pictures of the people around her, advancing the plot, getting them to express their feelings. Traditionally entertaining, with a backwards-feeling plot (since we keep finding out more about the past as we move forward).

 

Grass, 1h6m (Hong Sang-soo, 2018): 3/5

One of Sang-soo’s most abstract films, with a static setting, as in heaven or purgatory. A series of one-act dramas captured in one long take each. Situations and emotions freely flowing, in combinations and variations—a miniature of the entire HSS project. Strindberg’s Dream Play comes to mind as a reference, and therefore Bergman. As in Claire’s Camera, there is an explicit stand-in for the director role (Kim Min-hee, of course), interrogating the characters, pushing at lies, and heightening conflict. 

 

The Woman Who Ran, 1h17m, (Hong Sang-soo, 2020): 2/5

Kim Min-hee has especially banal conversations with three women. All is fairly peaceful in each until a man shows up to kill the vibe. 

 

The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo, 2022): 4/5

The most recent films of Sang-soo’s that I’ve seen (although there are three newer ones, including two from 2023 and one that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival with Huppert returning), and he’s still got the juice. Is it a series of chance encounters, including a socially awkward yet arrogant male director, with some really good unbroken takes of people in conversation about art and about their pasts and change? Why yes, it is.

 

rewatched Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993): 3/5

Meg Ryan's mostly silent performance behind the wheel of a car during the initial radio broadcast might be the finest work of her career—she has to sell us on Annie falling in love with Sam just by hearing him talk about his late wife, and while I wouldn't call her reactions subtle, there's a palpable wealth of raw feeling in them.

Dave Chapelle: The Dreamer (Stan Lathan, 2023): 2/5

For me, this special barely works. It's not that it simply falls short as a comedy special, but rather that it is a considerable departure from what earned Dave Chappelle the title of GOAT during his peak years. In contrast to the hysterical jokes and powerful societal examinations in specials of the past, The Dreamer offers lazy, lackluster humor and tons of self-righteous social commentary in the guise of thought-provoking analyses. It's honestly whatever at this point.

Moscow on the Hudson (Paul Mazursky, 1984): 3.5/5

Surprised by how much time the film initially spends in Moscow—Robin Williams speaks subtitled Russian for basically an entire reel. And his performance during that stretch is admirably restrained, with very little desperate clowning. Fish-out-of-water comedy kicks in once Vladimir defects, of course, and the film vacillates thereafter between warmly observing New York City's melting pot (virtually everyone we see is a recent immigrant and/or a person of color) and shamelessly inventing contrived dramatic crises.

Green Room (2015, Jeremy Saulnier): 3/5

Saulnier's good at escalating intensity and realistic violence, not so great with writing memorable characters or hiring actors who can compensate with force of personality. And while I admire how brutal things get, two survivors taking revenge in the woods (act three) isn't half so nervily effective as is the entire band trapped in the green room with a surly behemoth (act two).

Wonka (Paul King, 2023): 2/5

You know, for kids!

The Curse (Nathan Fielder, 2023): 4.5/5

High brow cringe, secondhand embarrassment, and self-aware satire are personified in this unsettling yet brilliant dark comedy drama that parodies white liberal America, reality television, and insecure relationships while also tackling sensitive subjects like gentrification, cultural appropriation, and exploitation. Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie are a collective force to be reckoned with in this unconventional and boundary-pushing TV series.

The Rehearsal (Nathan Fielder, 2022): 4/5

My love for Nathan Fielder is like a 13 year old girl's love for Taylor Swift.

Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023): 2/5

The Adam Driverization of every biography of Italian brand names.

Eileen (William Oldroyd, 2023): 3/5

Extra star for Anne Hathaway. Eileen never succeeds in persuading me to give a damn about its title character, whose personality is too flatly stunted to be of much interest. The movie comes to life exclusively via Hathaway's playfully and knowingly anachronistic performance, which does a surprisingly credible job of channeling Rita Hayworth in Gilda by way of Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023): 1/5

Limited and repetitive. Consistently struck me as labored and pretentiously art-damaged, leaping around in time without any clear purpose (certain shots trigger others, but the overall rhythm tends toward obfuscation rather than associative meaning) and remaining so narratively oblique that it's hard to be sure of what you've witnessed even at the end. Plus the movie's almost parodically solemn, devoid of human joy or thrilling, purely cinematic energy.

Stuart Little (Robert Minkoff, 1999): 1.5/5

Aggressively inoffensive trifle (which I now learn has virtually nothing to do with E.B. White's book). Bland-o-rama all around, and I kinda hate the "realistic" mouse design, which results in a lot of weirdly off-putting facial expressions that don't mesh with Michael J. Fox's voice. Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan.

Sleeping Dogs Lie (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2006): 2/5

A movie about the repercussions that ensue when a nice young woman confesses to her fiancé that she once, in a collegiate fit of curiosity and boredom, blew her dog. It's an earnest treatise on the potential pitfalls of exposing every crevice of your past and soul to those you love. Goldthwait's direction is amateurish though and the movie looks terrible due to the shitty DV cameras of that era.

The Color Purple (Blitz Bazawule, 2023): 2/5

Never understood how Walker's novel and/or Spielberg's adaptation could work as a musical—why not add Broadway razzle-dazzle numbers to Sansho the Bailiff while you're at it?

Napoleon (Ridley Scott, 2023): 2.5/5

An ambitious exploration of a troubled icon marked by Ridley Scott’s uneven direction and Joaquin Phoenix’s unbalanced performance. Alternating between Scott at his best in masterful sequences of epic scope and some of his blandest filmmaking yet, it lands with a mixed result.

All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, 2023): 2.5/5 

Petite Maman for sad gay men. Also, he didn’t get to tell his ghost parents about Brexit? 

At War with the Army (Hal Walker, 1950): 2/5

More like At SNORE with the Army!!! 

Summertime (David Lean, 1955): 3/5

Like a dance-floor remix of Brief Encounter - in color! in Venice!

Play Dirty (Andre De Toth, 1969): 4/5

 Bracingly cynical with exquisite tension, this is an exhausting, doom-laden adventure through the desert on four flat tires. Loved Fitzcarraldo? Settle in for Michael Caine hauling multiple jeeps up a mountain via a winch.