Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, 2025): 3.5/5

All the world-building, especially in the second act, is greatly appreciated. I liked Ruffalo’s tooth-licking performance too, but—like that of Pattinson’s—it’s so broad that it’s a matter of personal taste. A reminder that Bong Joon Ho’s movies are (usually) comedies.

 

Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2025): 4/5

Narrative-free but visually astonishing, free flowing, hypnotic, and often beautiful. What it feels like (will feel like) to live within a totally mediated world—it’s as if we are wearing augmented reality glasses that add stuff to our view, making actual reality feel as morally weightless as a video game. If you can’t tell whether the other characters are humans in the actual world or NPCs at the virtual level, how easy is it to torture and kill them? Enders Game but Grand Theft Auto.

 

Duck Duck, 4m (Harmony Korine, 2019): 3/5

Like Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis—but Miami, with Furries, old men skateboarding in hot dog costumes, and augmented reality everything. A sizzle reel warm-up for Baby Invasion.

 

Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025): 2/5

I don’t think I’m very interested in plot, and I’m definitely not interested in busting my brain trying to figure out stuff that dodo-bird David Koep and sadomasochist Soderbergh are deliberately not telling me. Also fuck John LeCarre. Just peeved that Kate Blanchett got plastic surgery. 

 

Dying for Sex (Shannon Murphy, Chris Teague, 2025): 4/5

Love Michelle Williams and this show’s frankness about sex and death. For me, very emotional. I love MW, and I’m glad she’s so beautiful here (after a very unglamorous turn as Gwen Verdon). Considering how much I liked this and We Live In Time, I’m beginning to think I have a thing for young blondes who are dying of cancer. Don’t kink-shame.

 

Adolescence (Philip Barantini, 2015): 3/5

The feel-bad hit of the year, though certainly a technical achievement in terms of camerawork, script and acting. Stephen Graham, man.

 

Becoming Led Zeppelin (Bernard MacMahon, 2025): 3/5

Four amazing musicians and the music is hot. Not sure what the last 20 minutes are doing since we spend much them listening to the album cuts while watching unsynced live footage and montages of newspapers and shit. LOL. Crazy that shy genius weirdo Jimmy Paige had the iron will to put a wild, psychedelic-orgasm freeform part in the middle of Whole Lotta Love.

 

The White Lotus, season 3 (Mike White, 2025): 2/5

I was vaguely bored for most of the runtime—begging for the characters to do something and for the situations to evolve. But no, everything remained pretty much static until the rushed and cursory death to wrap at least one of the threads up, anyway. The rest of the threads: shrug.

 

My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989): 3/5

In the tradition of The Elephant Man, DDL writhes in uncommunicable intelligence, dignity and loneliness. Towering performance.

 

The Boxer (Jim Sheridan, 1997): 2/5

All the characters hate DDL, but the film never says why. Something about The Troubles, or maybe we’re just supposed to know or maybe I just didn’t care. The direction is tragically choppy. We want to just sit there and watch DDL’s face, but Sheridan doesn’t let us see it for more than 10 seconds at a time. 

 

I’m Not a Robot, 22m (Victoria Warmerdam, 2024): 3.5/5

Stylistically a mixed bag, but good storytelling and some food for thought, regarding identity. Won the Oscar for best Live Action Short.

 

 

Thalberg Mini-fest

I just read The Genius of the System (recommended if you like movies).

 

The Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926): 3.5/5

This a prime Thalberg object has much to recommend it. John Garfield’s acting is unique and eye-catching. He leans in very closely to the men or women he interacts with, and it’s very powerful. Korina Longworth talks about how he was considered a genius at seeming to be in love with someone, but it seems to me that he loves (slash wants to fuck) whomever he shares the frame with, man or woman. Of course, he would soon be the stereotypical example of the guy who couldn’t make the jump to talkies (Brad Pitt in Babylon). Incredible that I haven’t even mentioned yet a very young and free Garbo as the two-way femme fatale. 

 

Camille (George Cukor, 1936): 3.5/5

Garbo is radiant as a Paris courtesan with a mirthless laugh and TB who enters into a damned love affair with nice guy Robert Taylor. Perhaps it is the newly recognized hand of Saint Thalberg, but this drama seems perfectly told and modulated. Interesting to discover that Cukor was an MGM journeyman for so long—he shot half of Gone with the Wind, for crying out loud.

 

Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935): 3.5/5

Another perfectly told movie from Thalberg. Was the top grosser of the year, won the Best Picture Oscar, and it lasted so long in the public consciousness that Bugs Bunny has a great bit in “Mutiny on the Bunny” from 1950, where he shoves out his lower lip and says “Mr. Christian!” Contains a dreamy 15-minute idyll on Tahiti where Clak Gable (hot!) very definitely knocks boots with a native girl (played by a white woman, naturally). Woo woo! Of course, it can’t last: “Tahiti isn’t real. It’s that ship that’s real.” The “justice” of the ending is wonderfully ambiguous—and grounded in the different viewpoints of the two best friends, both moved by their experience in Tahiti. All this and Charles Laughton as one of the most odious villains in film history—as an actor he laps laps laps it up.

 

 

Early Short Films by Geniuses (?) Film Fest

 

Amblin’, 26m (Steven Spielberg, 1968): 2/5 

Silent cinema, with Mrs. Robinson-adjacent music and sound effects. It’s a sort-of comedy of hitchhikers, in a loose, Breathless way. Written by Spielberg. He was 22, and it shows.

 

The Dirk Diggler Story, 31m (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1988): 3.5/5

The depiction of gay porn (and gayness in general) didn’t age well, but when you compare this film to, say, Amblin’, the sophistication and mastery over several levels of the comedy and tragedy of these characters is truly impressive. PTA was 18.

 

The Suicide, 22m (Todd Haynes, 1978): 3.5/5

Takes the pain of a young boy very seriously. Circular, recurrent and obtrusive images, thoughts and memories swirl. Haynes was 17.

 

Dottie Gets Spanked, 30m (Todd Haynes, 1993): 4/5

A six-year-old boy fetishizes an I Love Lucy-type show, and as a plotline syncs up with his cycle of abuse, he takes steps to repress the whole thing. Touching and psychologically deep. 

 

There Will Be No Leave Today, 46m (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1959): 4/5

Tarkovsky scrambles sustained suspense and Eisenstein’s radical montage and basically invents modern cinema. Street repair workers uncover 30 unexploded WWII-era missiles, and soldiers must remove them and drive them out of the city without blowing up—like Wages of Fear, although Godzilla’s allegory of repressed war acts is in there too. Like his version of The Killers (1956), it betrays Tarkovsky’s interest in genre (he made two sci-fi films!) as well as suspense (I’m thinking of that scene in Andrei Rublev where we find out whether the newly forged bell will ring—or the scene in Nostalgia where the protagonist is trying to walk all the way across the pool without his candle going out). Tarkovsky was 27.

 

The Steamroller and the Violin, 46m (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1961): 3.5/5

What is stronger, a wrecking ball or music? Alternative answers: dreams, cinema, friendship, longing. Beautiful use of visual motifs such as red highlights everywhere and the sun glinting off mirrors, windows and (Tarkovsky’s beloved) water. 

 

White Man, 19m (Bong Joon-ho, 1994): 3/5

A white-collar worker finds a finger, opening the film up to Bong Joon Ho’s already characteristic horror, comedy, and social and economic critique. Bong Joon-ho was 25.

 

Influenza, 28m (Bong Joon-ho, 2004): 3.5/5

A crime spree depicted totally with (simulated) CCTV footage. The flat video and high vantage points makes the violence both more emptied out emotionally and more horrifically realistic in a Haneke way—although the humor is all Bong Joon-ho. 

 

 

Phil Karlson in the 50s Film Fest

Four of these films are from 1955 alone. Karlson started on Poverty Row, making The Shadow, Charlie Chan, Bowery Boys, and Abbott & Costello movies for places like Monogram Pictures. He would go on to direct Elvis in Kid Galahad (1962), as well as Walking Tall (1973), not to mention The Wrecking Crew (1968), the movie with Sharon Tate featured in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 

 

Scandal Sheet, 82m (Phil Karlson, 1952): 3.5/5

A variation on the No Way Out situation where a young newspaper man is trying solve a murder that the audience knows his boss, the editor, committed. More murders follow as the noose tightens. John Derek (yes that John Derek) exudes a nice gee-whiz Kyle MacLaughlin energy. 

 

Kansas City Confidential, 100m (Phil Karlson, 1952): 4/5

Like Charley Varrick and Touchez Pas Grisbi, this is mostly about what happens after the successful heist. Dry, straight-forward and raw-fisted. Two of the three main hoods here are Lee Van Cleef and Jack Elam—do ya think that Sergio Leone might be a fan? Lead John Payne is solid, and Karlson would go on to use him in two other good films as well, including…

 

99 River Street, 83m (Phil Karlson, 1953): 4.5/5

An ex-boxer gets double-crossed twice by two different groups in the same night and must keep from going to jail for two different reasons. Populated by a bunch of cool killers, fisticuffs, strangulations, dames getting’ slapped, and shootouts. Jack Lambert, one of the great rat-faces in 50s villainy (see below), plays (what else) a gunzel. 

 

They Rode West, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1954): 3/5

“A young doctor brings compassion and modern ideas to the Old West” is a fine (and well-worn) theme, but it runs counter to Karlson’s stark and violent strengths—as does the non-urban milieu and Technicolor. Makes me admire Anthony Mann’s accomplishments in bringing dark intensity to the desert. 

 

Tight Spot, 97m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 2/5

A strange Star Vehicle in the middle of this run of cut-rate thrillers. Ginger Rodgers is charmless, doing a broad, 40s comic Born Yesterday thing, in what is otherwise a tense FBI vs. mob drama. By contrast Edgar G. Robinson nails it. Most of the drama takes place in one drab hotel suite. 

 

Hell’s Island, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

At one point lead John Payne pushes a man over a piece of furniture, slaps the redhead, and says “I’ve been beaten, badgered, hit over the head, and mixed up in three killings. And believe me, I’m going to find out why. I’m through thinking, and I’ve had a belly-full of double talk.” Filmed in Technicolor and VistaVision (!) 

 

5 Against the House, 84m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

The first hour of this light-hearted casino heist with a romance is pretty boring. They set up the characters, there are some sub-Animal-House college-life hijinks, and Kim Novak (beyond beautiful) sings two (!) songs. It’s all worth it for an action-packed last half hour combining a casino heist and a character degeneration—Ocean’s 11 plus Taxi Driver, but worse.

 

The Phonix City Story, rw, 100m (Phil Karlson, 1955): 3/5

Takes pains to establish verisimilitude, which is fun, but the story is pretty rote—and is from my un-favorite, Mississippi Burning strand of dramaturgy. People stand up against a gang, and we watch the gang beat them up, throw their children out of cars, murder them, blow up their houses, etc. Violent, shocking, and noble, but kind of a drag.

 

The Rico Brothers, 92m (Phil Karlson, 1957): 3.5/5

All three Rico brothers are lower members of a criminal ring, but only one (Richard Conte) makes it out of the movie alive. The film leans on family drama instead of foregrounding Karlson’s strengths—vicious crime and violence. Andrew Sarris, who puts Karlson in my favorite category, “Expressive Esoterica,” calls this the director’s best film. 

 

Gunman’s Walk, 97m (Phil Karlson, 1958): 3.5/5

“One son in jail, the other moonin’ over a half breed. I don’t know which one shames me more.” A father who helped build the Old West town—with cattle and plenty of violence against natives—has trouble adjusting to how the town has changed, eschewing gunplay and integrating native people. It’s my second Tab Hunter film, after Polyester, and he’s surprisingly intense as the older son who follows his father’s violent ways into ruin. Are all Westerns “End of the West” movies? 

 

The Scarface Mob, 102m (Phil Karlson, 1959): 3/5

A stiff telling of the Ness vs. Capone story (it was a two-part pilot for the TV series version of The Untouchables, which ran from 1959-63). Robert Stack is stiff and one-dimensional—but that’s pretty much true to the character. Some nice scenes of tension, sex and violence. Yet: All this effort over a little booze? How did Ness feel when alcohol was legal again two years later?

 

Hell to Eternity, 131m (Phil Karlson, 1960): 3.5/5

Underrated and unheralded WWII Pacific-arena battle movie following the marines taking over the island of Saipan—using Guadalcanal survivors’ testimony for authenticity. Features (at least) two devastating scenes, one evoking Red Badge of Courage and the other Midsommar. A very modern take, since our protagonist was raised by a Japanese family and understands Japanese—and indeed the conclusion comes down to words rather than guns.