The Monster (Bryan Bertino, 2016): 1/5
Bryan Bertino's cinematic adaptation of the phrase: "D'you get it?" (SPOILER ALERT:........................................................................................................The monster is alcoholism. Or hardships. Or cruelty in life. Something to that effect, told to us incessantly. Should NOT have been marketed as horror.)

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (Constance Marks, 2011): 2.5/5
Cute and cuddly! *cut to me later reading Kevin Clash's Wiki page and learning of the sexual allegations with a young boy* WHY MUST EVERY MAN I LOVE DISAPPOINT ME. 

White Bird in a Blizzard (Gregg Araki, 2014): 3/5 
Strives to maintain a sufficient amount of suspense while presenting a touching tale about youth. Surprisingly engaging and unpredictable. 

re-watched Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001): 5/5 
Tightly paced and always entertaining with its two acts of pure excellence and corking dialogue. Not to mention one firecracker of a performance by Denzel.  

re-watched Ariel (Aki Kaurismaki, 1988): 4/5
"What's this button for?" 

Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis, 2018): 2/5 
Claire Denis's first sci-fi film: a world where no one wants to commit to being with Juliette Binoche. #moviepass 

Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017): 2/5
Sorry I'm a heartless asshole. 

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018): 4.5/5
Or, The Radicalization of a Country Priest. Pitch black arthouse film with intoxicating visuals, razor sharp storytelling, and nuanced craft. Enthralling. Paul Schrader is BACK, BABY!!!!! #moviepass


Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt, 2015): 2/5
Cate Blanchett plays 13 characters reciting dozens of artistic and political manifestos, from Marx to Dogma '95. It isn't literally watching a favorite actor read the phone book, but the spliced-together manifestos are too many, too jumbled, and too context-less to pull any kind of coherent meaning. Was likely more successful in its initial form as as multi-screen art installation. 

The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismaki, 2017): 3.5/5 
Funny and sad in equal measures. 

Deadpool 2 (David Leitch, 2018): 2/5
I have little memory of having watched this. #moviepass

1922 (Zak Hilditch, 2017): 1.5/5 
The only element that's lacking is the most important one - a sense of ratcheting tension and suspense to justify a 1h45m broody, atmospheric horror tale. See: The Witch for a movie akin to this, done right.

Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes, 2017): 1/5
I'll just stick to re-watching Safe and Carol, thanks. 

Night and Day (Hong sang-soo, 2008): 2/5
I find Hong's structure too meandering, and his flat visual style only adds to the lack of engagement. Ugh and those obnoxious zooms. 

re-watched Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004): 4/5
Fucked up and horrifying.

Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017): 3.5/5
Pleasant. Formulaic territory but makes up for it with charming leads.

re-watched L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997): 5/5
When you think about it, it's The Wizard of Oz - Bud gets a brain, Jack gets a heart, Ed gets the courage.

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2018): 2/5

We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011): 2/5

Violent, poetic, depressing, pointless.

The Girl with All the Gifts (Com McCarthy, 2016): 2.5/5

Delivers genre thrills but is only pretending temporarily to have more on its mind.

* A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018): 3/5

Super-tense but subtext free.

Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977): 2.5/5

Two Weeks in Another Town, rw (Vincente Minnelli, 1962): 3/5

Self-dramatizing and self-congratulating. Actors: what would we do without them? Two Weeks gets an extra half point for having one of greatest car scenes in the history of cinema.

Michael Clayton, rw (Tony Gilroy, 2007): 3/5

Peak Clooney.

* Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, 2018): 1/5

Not my Iron Giant. Not my Shining. “Only a great filmmaker could piss me off so much”—that’s bullshit, right?

The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941): 3/5

My least favorite of the Wyler/Davis collabs. Nasty but a bit stage-bound.

Ponyo, rw (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008): 5/5

Maybe the best ever movie made for kindergartners (or younger).

Suspiria, rw (Dario Argento, 1977): 3/5

Extreme style as substance.

The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2016): 5/5

Just keeps getting weirder, more mysterious and more powerful as it goes.

Atlanta, Season 2/“This is America” (Donald Glover/Hiro Murai, 2018): 5/5

Messy, complicated and strange. New.

Barry, Season 1 (Alec Berg/Bill Hader): 3/5

Some clichés and some good stuff. Hader is charismatic.

Silicon Valley, Season 5 (Mike Judge, et. al, 2018): 3.5/5

Continues to amuse.

The Fallen Idol, rw (Carol Reed, 1948): 4/5

Maybe the best ever movie about the tragic cluelessness of childhood. Richardson is great.

Creep 2 (Patrick Brice, 2017): 3/5

Almost spoiled by self-consciousness, but the last third delivers.

* Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard, 2018): 2/5
A boring adventure from an utterly skill-less director. Certainly the worst of new Star Wars movies.

Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner, 2014): 2/5

Those Germans really know how to do romantic comedy. "I love you, I want you to kill yourself with me." It really is the height of Nihilistic devotion. Sociopolitically specious and frankly kind of dull, but then I didn't perceive it as a comedy—a recurring problem with a particular strain of mordant art cinema (cf. Lazarescu).

Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, 2018): 1/5 

A by-the-numbers exercise in narrative genericism* that plays to the fantasies of hardcore geeks old and young alike. Revels in its nonstop cavalcade of insipid pop culture references. #moviepass 

*(So it's an extremely basic bullshit set up—blandly attractive white boy orphan [with obligatory Black Best Friend sidekick] has to Save the World and Get the Girl! The girl online could actually be a basement dwelling dude IRL. But, of course, when she finally appears in the flesh, she is a total babe who has one superficial "humanizing" flaw: a mild birthmark on her face. Our noble hero somehow finds it in his heart to love her anyway.)

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Gus Van Sant, 1993): 2/5

Uma Thurman's prosthetic thumbs are so fucking horrible and distracting. Jesus Christ. Had way more fun with Tom Robbins' source novel. (Currently in the midst of devouring all of Robbins' writing - amazing writer.) 

The Handmaid's Tale (Volker Schlondorff, 1990): 2.5/5

Haven't seen the Hulu series, haven't read the Margaret Atwood novel. At this point "Handmaid's Tale" is Trump-era liberal torture porn and I just can't do it.

The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017): 2.5/5

Meryl does her thing. Tom does his thing. Please clap. 

A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018): 3/5

I dunno it might be a good idea to at least sometimes wear socks, but that's just me. And another thing: you would not choose Monopoly as your silent family game. Monopoly requires communication and negotiation, and often engenders conflict. Might as well play goddamn Operation. #moviepass

Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018): 2.5/5

On the whole, the film didn't do much for me beyond give me a laugh or two every half hour. Once you get over the fact that they're dogs that talk like normal dudes, the humor ends there. #moviepass

Horse Money (Pedro Costa, 2014): 2/5

Another esoteric, challenging film by Portuguese master Pedro Costa. Much of it left me cold on an emotional level, and for every striking image that momentarily arrested me, an incantatory sequence left my mind wandering. 

Needless pedantry: the title actually refers to a horse called Money, back in benighted Cape Verde (it was eaten by vultures, alas).

You Were Never Really Here (Lynn Ramsey, 2017): 3/5 

Kubrick expressionism meets Scorsese ultraviolence for the Greatest Hits album of Disaffected Ferocity. Far more poetry than prose - and every bit as beautiful. #moviepass

The Work (Jarius McLeary, Gethin Aldous, 2017): 3/5 

 Once a week, convicts at Folsom Prison meet in the prison chapel for group therapy sessions. Twice a year, members of the general public are invited to join them for an intensive, four-day session. The Work is a documentary that follows one such session, serving as the cinematic equivalent of an exorcism that rips out the guts of toxic masculinity to reveal repressed vulnerability and deep sadness. A special subject indeed, but brace yourself. 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Luc Besson, 2017): 1/5 

 Might've worked better as a TV show. I feel like I watched the plots of 10 episodes. 

WARNING: MAJOR RANT AHEAD. And another thing, I really hope the day comes when Dane DeHaan chooses to share with the world the incriminating photos he has of various bigwigs in the film industry that has allowed him to blackmail his way into becoming the lead actor in films. Because they must be absolutely fucking amazing.  He's the absolute pits. And casting him as the lead role in a standalone $200 million sci-fi action film where said lead is meant to be a charismatic space adventurer and hero is more than enough evidence that Luc Besson has lost his damn mind. An unripe gratefruit has more screen presence than DeHaan but there's also the fact that HE CANNOT ACT. 

That said, I'm sure he's a nice guy. 

Disobedience (Sebastian Lelio, 2018): 3/5 

Turgid, but well-acted drama with some hot Rachels. The woman sitting in front of me whispered “not bad” after the sex scene and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me in a movie theater. #moviepass

Ghost Stories (Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman, 2018): 2.5/5

An attempt at an anthology style horror film with no sense for how to do the wrap around segments, wholly underwhelming, totally reliant on jump scares and with terrible dialogue delivered poorly even by a veteran like Martin Freeman. Half a star for Alex Lawther though; I’d watch that weirdo read out the phone book any day. And another half a star for "The Monster Mash" playing during the end credits. Would not recommend watching this. Would recommend listening to "The Monster Mash". #moviepass 

The Disaster Artist (James Franco, 2017): 3/5 
Back when I worked at Cinefile, we had a section aptly called "Holy Fucking Shit". Guess which title was always prominently displayed on there? 

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler, 2017): 3.5/5
Fantastic genre piece. Loved the stylization, the writing, the characters. #originality #ftw 

The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017): 2/5 
Cinematic slog about poverty and the tired theme of childhood resilience, with indie affectations. But even with my general abhorrence for children and the state of Florida, and my apathetic feelings for Sean Baker's work, it's hard not to be smitten with Willem Dafoe. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017): 4/5 
Me: Hi 
Frances Mcdormand: shut the fuck up and die ugly 
Me: Oh my god yes anything for you 

I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2017): 2/5 
I, Michelle am glad I didn't pay to see this. 

The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017): 2/5 
WASTING WATER IS NOT ROMANTIC. #wtf #bestpicture #really? #oscarssolame 

Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017): 2.5/5
Watching this really was the definition of neutral for me, if not bordering on slight dislike. It feels more like a puzzle with mostly missing and broken pieces and I'm not sure what "brilliant" bigger picture I'm supposed to be seeing. The film itself and multiple characters within it talk about the love between Oliver and Elio as if it is a rarity and a beautiful thing, but where is it ever like that? There's NO chemistry and we barely see them interact together in any significant way, making their inevitable coupling feel blasé. And another thing: Armie who?? Other than being conventionally attractive, I honestly found nothing intriguing, memorable, or revelatory about him or his performance. #overrated 

Battle of the Sexes (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, 2017): 2.5/5 
This is a GAYS only event, GO HOME 

A Hole in My Heart (Lukas Moodysson, 2004): 1/5 
A conveyor belt of depravity. Despite its [SCREECHING NOISE] efforts to employ avant - [SOUND CUTS FOR 4 SECONDS, THEN SCREECHING NOISE OVER PIXELATION] garde technique to discuss [GOES NIGHTVISION AND SOUND DOESN'T MATCH IMAGE] sexual desire and past trauma and parenting I don [SCREECHING, SCARE CUTS TO VAGINAL SURGERY] 't think the film succeeds at articulating any of its ideas astutely. 

Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler, 2015): 4.5/5 
Zahler's a talent. Simply superb. A brutal, smart, literary Western about what is basically a story of four white dudes saving a captured woman from Native Americans, made on a low budget. One of the most impressive debuts in recent years. (And I'm no gorehound or genre aficionado.) Zahler is two for two so far. Can't wait to see what he comes up with next. 

Fingersmith (Aisling Walsh, 2005): 5/5
Lesbian Sally Hawkins: way better than Fish Fucking Sally Hawkins. (This is also superior to Chan-wook Park's version.) 

Thelma (Joachim Trier, 2017): 3/5 
Sheltered by her parents to the point of neurosis, 18-year-old Thelma heads off to college and begins to feel the stirrings of attraction toward new friend Anja. Then things kinda take a turn for the worst. And the weird. Kinda like a Nordic version of CARRIE with a more sexually actualized protagonist. 

Beloved (Jonathan Demme, 1998): 3/5
A scene for scene, line for line adaptation of the acclaimed Toni Morrison novel of the same name. A sprawling and bracingly uncompromising studio project. #RIP #jonathandemme 

Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018): 3.5/5 
Ryan Coogler to film composer: "Make every theme so rhythmically intense that no white people can clap along." 

Phantom Thread (PTA, 2017): 3.5/5 
Me Whenever Someone Causes Me Any Minor Inconvenience: are you a special agent sent here to ruin my evening and possibly my entire life? Is this my house? This is my house, isn't it? Or did somebody drop me on foreign soil behind enemy lines? I'm surrounded by all sides. When the hell did this happen? Who are you? Do you have a gun? Are you here to kill me? Hmm? Do you have a gun? Where is your gun? Show me your gun. 

Molly's Game (Aaron Sorkin, 2017): 2.5/5 
Jessica Chastain really brought the "I was told by Apple Care" realness that this role required. 

Molly’s Game (Aaron Sorkin, 2017): 2/5

Overwritten. Also overacted and over-directed. And at 2 hours and 20 minutes overlong. Is it weird that Chastain so often picks roles where she’s a genius or goddess? The female Will Smith?

Help! (Richard Lester, 1965): 2.5/5

The Beatles/Lester invent the Monkees, but the faux-Indians in brownface with parody-level accents? #problematic

The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969): 3/5

A programmatic but occasionally amusing attack on dogma. A warm-up for the superior Discreet Charm and Phantom.

Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2018): 3/5

The whole fam enjoyed this sweet movie containing some nice bits of physical comedy. Sally Hawkins’s best recent performance.

Sexy Beast, rw (Jonathan Glazer, 2000): 3/5

A surprisingly conventional gangster movie in comic mode, with at least two great performances. Forevermore owns the Stranglers’ “Peaches.”

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017): 2.5/5

The less talented McDonagh brother. Defined/marred by intentional whiplashes of tone and character.

The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017): 2/5

Marketed as a romance, but it spends so much time with villain Shannon that it becomes more of a Guantanamo Bay analogy. But then is it OK for the analogue of a Pakistani or Afghanistani to be a fish? #problematic

A Futile and Stupid Gesture (David Wain, 2018): 2/5

A fiction remake of recent documentary, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead. You know, like Apocalypse Now was the fiction remake of Hearts of Darkness.

The Cloverfield Paradox (Julius Onah, 2018): 1.5/5

Hard to say what makes this movie’s illogic ruinous and Annihilation’s exhilarating, yet here we are.

The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017): 4/5

Pastel neo-realism. I could barely stand to be in the company of these grating brats. Still, the end floored me.

Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016): 3/5

Un story ghost. Trains, sexy outfits, dead brothers. Surprisingly genre-satisfying.

Creep (Patrick Brice, 2014): 4/5

Michelle was right about this effective and efficient thriller (77 minutes!) of discomfort, shot on a shoestring. Low-key great performance from Duplass.

Le Samouri, rw (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967): 3/5

Amazing what a great, long coat can do for the audience’s reception of a loser who loses and loses. Not in my Melville top six.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison, 2016): 4/5

Fascinating in both its subject matter and methodology. All film is documentary.

Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets (Luc Besson, 2017): 1.5/5

Considering (because of?) how much is happening on the screen, it’s amazingly dull.

Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979): 1.5/5

Tonally, a trainwreck. With Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Dorothy Malone, Ralph Meeker, and Toshiro Mifune—each of whom seems to be performing in a different movie.

Just Ancient Loops, 26 mins (Bill Morrison, 2012): 3/5

Some great stuff here.

The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017): 2/5

Crack for 60+ liberals.

Columbus (Kogonada, 2017): 2/5

As inert and rigid as the buildings it fetishizes.

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018): 4.5/5

A head-trip into mystery. It doesn’t all work, but what does is gold.

Stalker, rw (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979): 4.5/5

A nice pair with Annihilation of course.

Ratatouille, rw (Brad Bird, 2007): 4.5/5

My favorite Pixar movie.

The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013): 4.5/5

Why oh why did I wait so long to watch this last movie from one of my favorite living filmmakers? Master storytelling, amazing flying sequences, super-expressive hair, and a unique view of just-pre-war Japan.

The Ritual (Davide Bruckner, 2018): 2/5

I’m a sucker for these horror and sci-fi movies that just show up one day on Netflix, although they are mostly forgettable. Case in point: did this rip off Blair Witch or Deliverance? I can’t even remember.

Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018): 4.5/5

Wes is nine for nine, for me. Possibly the most detailed movie of all time. Funny and surprisingly relevant.

Better Call Saul, season 3 (Vince Gilligan, et. al, 2017): 2/5

As the show increasingly morphs to a Breaking Bad prequel, it’s as if my favorite TV show is being slowly invaded by an inferior one.

High Maintenance, season 1 & 2 (Ben Sinclair & Katja Blichfeld, 2016): 4.5/5
An anthology show featuring pithy portraits of all kinds of New Yorkers, loosely strung together by their amiable weed dealer, always a welcome presence. It’s a real pleasure to not know what any given episode is going to contain.

The Square (Ruben Ostlund, 2017): 4/5

Captivating, enjoyable Toni Erdmann-like absurdist, dry comedy about a museum curator and the art world. Loved the slow-burning eccentricity. 

Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985): 5/5 

"If you could lick my heart, it would poison you." 

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980): 2/5 

For RWF completionists only, otherwise don't bother because it's neither a game changer nor a masterpiece. Oh jeez and the epilogue is batshit craaaazy and comes out of leftfield.  Took me like, two weeks to finish watching all 16 hours. 

Gook (Justin Chon, 2017): 2/5

Hollow and simple-minded movie about Koreans v. Blacks during the Rodney King riots. Clearly the work of an inexperienced cineaste with financial restrictions. Though images are starkly beautiful at times, the whole thing's a tonal mess. 

re-watched The Sopranos (David Chase, 1999-2007): 5/5 

Two things: 1) I miss James Gandolfini and 2) I still have a thing for Dr. Melfi. 

Columbus (Kogonada, 2017): 3/5 

Another tranquil, slice-of-life film about thwarted dreams and father/son disappointments, but this time with added discourse on architecture and not-a-hair-out-of-place perfectly composed shots like, non-stop as a cinematic technique. (Wow who the heck knew about the existence of Columbus, IN btw?) 

Dementia 13 (Richard LeMay, 2017): 1/5

Reimagining of the 1963 Francis Ford Coppola horror film of the same name. (I haven't seen it.) The immediate threats terrorizing the Halorans in their haunted castle are, get this: a group of robbers AND an evil doll AND their dead sister AND an insane masked axe murderer; yet, the most terrifying aspects of this remake is its complete lack of originality and rampant cliches. 

Blair Witch (Adam Wingard, 2017): 1/5 

This is roughly the movie that most people expected in 1999, which only amplifies my love and appreciation of what we got instead. 

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon, 2008): 4/5 

Hilarious/clever/smart 45-minute musical (only 45 minutes! *kisses fingers, chef-like*) about a super villain (Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris) and his archnemesis (Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion). Great fun. 

1408 (Mikael Hafstrom, 2007): 2.5/5 

Another Stephen King adaptation.Watchable because of the solid atmosphere and tension. The last act fails to satisfy though and comes off as half-cooked. 

The Electric Horseman (Sydney Pollack, 1979): 2/5 

An O.K. Horse Movie.  

The Killing of A Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017): 4.5/5

Not really a fan of Lanthimos's other films, but I was riveted from start to finish with this one, terrified of what the fuck could possibly happen next. Tone is everything here. Great formal expressionism ranging from Kubrickian Steadicam to De Palma-esque God's eye view to even a swoony motorcycle embrace straight out of a Hou Hsiao-hsien film.

re-watched Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982): 3/5

Blasphemy Alert: I was never really "into" this wildly popular film. I mean it's perfectly fine. Rutger Hauer's last lines are still great. But now I find the whole "I want you" scene between Harrison Ford and Sean Young distasteful. 

Blade Runner: 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017): 4/5 

Blasphemy Alert: it's better than the original. 

Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondou, 1995): 1/5

The cinematic equivalent of young adult fiction. I've no intention to beat up on a Studio Ghibli movie, but beyond the pretty animations, there's precious little to interest an adult viewer. 

The Overnight (Patrick Brice, 2015): 4/5

Another great, engaging indie film by Patrick Brice (Creep, 2014), and this time it's a sex comedy. I'm now a Jason Schwartzman believer. 

Happy Death Day (Christopher B. Landon, 2017): 2.5/5

Mean Girls meets Friday the 13th meets Groundhog Day. An idiotic good time. Scariest part was when the credits started rolling and I thought it said directed by Christopher Nolan. 

The Similars (Isaac Ezban, 2015): 2/5

It's like someone put The Shining and Aphex Twins into Cronenberg's fly teleportation device and this is the movie that comes out the other booth. There's a reason why "Twilight Zone" episodes aren't feature length. 

Beatriz at Dinner (Miguel Arteta, 2017): 1/5

Salma Hayek's character is so insufferable and annoying and a horrible dinner guest that I found myself siding with the other dinner guests who were all corporate Republican ne'er-do-wells. Oh my god and Chloe Sevigny plays a rich girl. Now I've seen everything.

Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012): 2.5/5

Really wanted to like this doc, but alas my concentration lapsed numerous times; maybe because the big reveal comes way early on in the film and then meanders through an hour of sanguine, soul-searching justification for its own existence.

The Hot Rock (Peter Yates, 1972): 3/5

Perfectly adequate heist comedy, nice and light. Suitable for a Saturday afternoon filler. 

Certain Women (Kelly Reichhardt, 2016): 1.5/5  

To quote Douglas Adams, "For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."  On par with Pablo Larrain's Jackie for most tedious, unnecessary film of 2016, Reichhardt overthinks the human condition in yet another yawn-fest think piece. She really has very little to say beyond artsy interpretations of female living. A triptych (with Laura Dern and Michelle Williams), it's the last story with Kristen Stewart that makes the film somewhat salvageable if you can believe it.