Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960): 3.5/5

Someone in 1960, after watching Inherit the Wind: “Wow, this was a rousing film about an issue relevant to recent history. What a thing. I wonder what kinds of debates and arguments people will be having in the future.”

Me, 60+ years later: “Still this one.” :(

rewatched North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959): 4/5

Still thankful the lead role went to Cary Grant instead of James Stewart as originally intended. Don’t have a problem with Stewart in general, but he was too old-looking* and meek for Grace Kelly in Rear Window five years earlier. He’s quite literally anti-suave, and that role at least called for someone with a lumpy, milquetoast demeanor. Could you imagine him fitting into the proto-Bond mold sculpted for the wrong-man hero here, gently schmoozing Eva Marie Saint or supplicating the agility required in the final set piece? (Sorry, Jimmy! You weren’t the right man for the job.) And as good as Grant is—he’s great, actually—Mason is even better, parlaying his dastardly disposition with frightening nonchalance. A bit long, maybe, though I’m not sure what, if anything, you could trim without much narrative implication. But as far as “fun” movies go, this one’s a lot of fun, nearly start to finish. My favorite gambit is how Hitch fools us not once, not twice, but thrice with the same goddamn gun. (Final gripe: Did Roger’s mom give birth to him when she was thirteen years old, or what? They couldn’t find a single older woman?)

*For clarification, I am fully aware that Grant is older than Stewart, but their dispositions would never reveal as much. As charming as he might’ve been in his The Shop Around the Corner days, Steward was a curdled raisin by the late fifties. In contrast, Grant was aging eloquently, like a fine wine. Grape analogies are neat.

Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024): 3/5

Pitch: "What if... Taylor Swift caught The Zodiac Killer?"

Also i really thought he was gonna have gay sex to escape that arena

Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957): 4/5

“Touching, isn’t it? The way he counts on his wife.”

“Yes, like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade.”

Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994): 2.5/5

I don't think pedophilia is very professional!

rewatched Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford,1939): 3.5/5

History gets shaped as Henry Fonda’s body slowly accepts its final mythological state. Very much a movie on the craft of a public performance by Ford and Fonda, equal partners in what doubles as sculpting an origin myth and the process behind it. A movie of constant doubles, stark and haunted by death, while light, taken by its Americana setting and slowly shaped by its procedural needs. Ford achieves a relaxed quality that feels at odds with the enterprise without never undermining it, quite the opposite. Young Mr. Lincoln, of course, came out the same year as Stagecoach, the year Ford went from being just a filmmaker capable of greatness to the American Filmmaker, and they are also fine mirrors, the earlier movies considerations about civilization and society in movement plays against this one about history advancing and democracy getting shaped.

She's All That (Robert Iscove, 1999): 2/5

RIGHT ABOUT NOW. THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.

Also, freaking EVERYONE is in this movie wtf

Josie and the Pussycats ( Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, 2001): 3/5

*My wife and I trying to decide on a movie to watch*

Wife: Josie and The Pussycats?

Me: Sure. I've actually never seen it.

Wife: YOU'VE NEVER SEEN JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS?!

Me: No I -

*Backdoor Lover by DuJour already starts blaring from the television*

rewatched Tabu (F. W. Murnau, 1931): 4/5

Moonlight, paranoia, and tragedy. Murnau's most heartbreaking film.

rewatched The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931): 3.5/5

An iconic film, a star-making performance, and a genre-defining work. Really need a spin-off/sequel with the queer-coded tailor. What’s that queen up to?

The Pied Piper (Jacques Demy, 1972): 3.5/5

Demy did not have the widest range but when he was working in his wheelhouse the results were pretty magical. After the debacle of Model Shop, Demy leaves behind the real world, at least on the surface, to give a very contemporary telling of an old story. The use of plague, the way it fuels all of man's worst impulses, and the dogged optimism of the ending all spoke to me. And the scene with the cake is a must for any montage about Demy's body of work.

Daughters ( Angela Patton, Natalie Rae, 2024): 3.5/5

It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the premise: a father daughter dance for incarcerated dads. And sure, it checks all the boxes for a Sundance award winner. But you’d have to be a Trump voter not to be moved and wrecked by this. Very well made doc, recalls the Apted 7up docs but with more poetic interludes.

The Union (Julian Farino, 2024): 1.5/5

This can't be what the strikes were for!

Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024): 2/5

A film all about feelings that made me feel nothing

National Anthem (Luke Gilford, 2023): 2/5

“Levi’s commercial for Pride Month” vibes. Hate to trash a queer cowboy commune movie but this thing stinks. No perspective, no story, no teeth - just a collection of aspirational/pandering imagery. At least everyone in it is pretty.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962): 3/5

A somewhat discursive film. Its opening solemnity thankfully gives way to a more anarchic tone and style: Richardson was never one for placidity. Tom Courtenay (about four decades away from knighthood) is very fine as the titular lonely long-distance runner. Alternately charming and affectless, he reminds one of the British answer to James Dean, and all the Rebel With A Cause baggage that conjures up.

As far as kitchen sink realism goes, this isn’t as strong as say, A Taste of Honey (also directed by Tony) or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (also written by Sillitoe); the underlying material simply isn’t as potent or compelling.

Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024): 2.5/5

Stylish but overstuffed; at once too much was going on but you got the sense that scenes fleshing out the world and characters were cut for time.

Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024): 1.5/5

yeah sure we'll fix global warming by [checks notes] firing rockets at tornadoes until they die. welcome back ronald reagan

Coup! (Joseph Schuman, Austin Stark, 2024): 3/5

Covid social commentary by way of spanish flu. Parasite, but cunty. I always love me some Peter Sarsgaard.

Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (Terrence Malick, 2016): 2.5/5

Trying to decipher how this is any different than interlacing pages from Science Weekly, Zoobooks, and National Geographic; sure, “motion,” but that’s a formality, indicative of the medium itself, far from a justification of existence. You could say that you pick up Cate Blanchett’s whispered narration, too, but that’s almost an anti-argument at this point, instead highlighting a benefit of the magazines as Malick’s propensity for rambling off philosophical one-liners is rapidly approaching the land of self-derivation, steadily traversing the spectrum from pretentious to satirical (though I’m sure neither of those were ever Terry’s true intention, which makes it all the more troublesome). As beautiful as it is, the purely observational formlessness doesn’t yield enough material to fill the mold of a 90-minute feature, leaving a solidified final product that looks great on the outside but is uniformly porous and brittle throughout. As a final bid of positive empathy: I’d still take this over TO THE WONDER, KNIGHT OF CUPS, and SONG TO SONG, whatever that’s worth.

Blue Thunder (John Badham, 1983): 3/5

Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby clearly meant this to be a very post-70s ACAB thriller about the growing danger of the police as a militarized force that relies on bullets and surveillance to keep the citizenry in line but director John Badham had something else in mind. You can see that the third act was really meant to be a PTSD afflicted cop turning the establishment’s weapon against them (shades of Christopher Dorner) but instead we get a neat and tidy 80s technothriller where the government is capable of manufacturing crime in order to justify authoritarianism but all it takes is one tape to a local news station to bring it all down. I would like to imagine O’Bannon and Jakoby intended the cops to be horny creeps as critique and not for yuks but I could be reaching. Badham handles the aerial duels well but it feels like something Michael Mann could have turned into art. Shoutout to John Alonzo’s Panavision cinematography with its eye for L.A. 's haze and raise a glass for the great Warren Oates. That this film’s ending was totally ignored to turn the film into a short-lived TV series tells you all you need to know about the times.