Fleabag, Season 2 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge/Harry Bradbeer, 2019): 5/5

My favorite media thing this year. Many rich laughs and a genuine love story. Transforms what was once a dramatic device (breaking the fourth wall to address the audience) into a personality trait within the drama—I’ve never seen that before!

Domino (Brian DePalma, 2019): 2/5

Boffo opening sequence that repurposes Rear Window and Vertigo (naturally). The plot involves Al Qaeda (which…bad idea). I’m willing to bet the thing grew out of DePalma’s fucked-up obsession with on-line beheading videos.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019): 3.5/5

Not sure it works as a social critique, but the horror parts work so well, it doesn’t matter.

Burning (Chang-dong Lee, 2018): 3.5/5

A movie where the viewer's response hinges on whether they believe a cat has the capability and willingness to respond to its name. Interesting to see what the very far north part of South Korea looks like. Redeemed by the gravity of its final act.

The Wind will Carry Us, rw (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999): 5/5

So much beauty and so much humanity.

* Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019): 3/5

Doesn’t measure up to the other three, emotionally, but entertaining for the whole family.

35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008): 2/5

Denis-wise, is it really just all about Beau Travail?

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher, 2019): 3/5

Emotionally, too Crocodile Rock and not enough Somebody Saved My Life Tonight. Like Bohemian Rhapsody but without the towering central performance and with more bad songs. Still, I like this genre (The Doors being one of my favorite movies), and I’m all for seeing one of these for every rock band that’s ever existed.

The Dirt (Jeff Tremaine, 2019): 3.5/5

No worries about song quality here; they’re all bad. Still this is my favorite of the recent spate of rock bios. Charismatic actors (Machine Gun Kelly is especially good) doing silly rock stuff.

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese, 2019): 3/5

Loved the concert footage, but I call bullshit on the fictional elements.

Fosse/Verdon (Thomas Kail, Steven Levenson, 2019): 3/5

Both leads are excellent, but the drama never evolves. I love All That Jazz as much/more than the next guy, but did we really need an 8-hour version?

All That Jazz, rw (Bob Fosse, 1979): 5/5

One of the best movies about dance, and one of the best psychodramas about a self-pitying artist. (Better, at least, than 8 ½ and Stardust Memories, both of which I like)

Shazam! (David F. Sandberg, 2019): 2.5/5

Why so dark? Are today’s 10-year-olds really so bummed out? Yikes!

Miami Vice, rw (Michael Mann, 2006): 4/5

One of the most beautiful movies of all time. Its abstract incomprehensibility doesn’t bother me a bit.

Heat, rw (Michael Mann, 1995): 3/5

Better than I remembered. Very man(n)ly.

Relaxer (Joel Potrykus, 2019): 2/5

In the days approaching Y2K, a guy accepts a challenge from his brother to not leave his couch until he finishes level 256 of Pacman. Despite a fun turn in the final stretch, it’s a bit of a stagey slog. I have also seen another Potrykus movie, Buzzard, and I regret to report that he is NOT a promising newcomer.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019): 3.5/5

Loved the affection between the characters. Better than Superbad.

* Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019): 4.5/5

Tarantino’s warmest film and his most thematically rich—about the relationship between cinema and memory, dreams, fantasy. My favorite part was when Brad Pitt parkours onto a roof, takes off his shirt, and enters a slightly-chop-socky styled reverie about beating up Bruce Lee. Movie Magic!!

Il Grande Silenzio (Sergio Corbucci, 1968): 2.5/5

Compelled by raves from QT and Alex Cox (they should know) I checked out this second-greatest movie by the second-greatest spaghetti western director. Despite Klaus Kinski as the villain and (spoiler alert) perhaps the most pessimistic ending in movie history, it failed to move. At least now I know where QT got the idea of a snowy western.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019): 4/5

Spellbinding, disorienting, and disturbing. A somewhat different beast than HEREDITARY but once again Aster showcases people dealing with a multiple array of personal struggles in a masterful way. Heavy themes are backed by beautiful cinematography and visceral violence. It’s a lot to process and I'm still taking it all in. One thing is certain, this is no sophomore slump.

High Life (Claire Denis, 2018): 3.5/5 

Claire Denis saw INTERSTELLAR and was like "oh cool but what if it was horny and disgusting"

Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2018): 4/5

This may be Zahler's best movie yet, in its way his JACKIE BROWN, an exploration of race, police power, class, and crime. As idiosyncratic and weirdly literary as it is vile. Any questions you have about his actual worldview won't be answered but it's an ugly, bleak, and often very funny little bomb.

Serenity (Steven Knight, 2019): 1/5

What the fuck is this movie. What starts as a mid 90s Palmetto-esque thriller goes off the rails, sprouts wings, and flies into the next galaxy. YOU ARE NOT PREPARED FOR THE THIRD ACT TURN THIS MOVIE TAKES. Sadly said turn doesn’t send Serenity into "so bad it’s good" territory.

Always Be My Maybe (Nannatchka Kan, 2019): 2/5

Yes, it's true women only want to date the stoner musician childhood friend they've become more successful than or Keanu Reeves. (Imagine making an entire movie based on one cameo.) Everything about this falls somewhere between annoyingly mediocre/unfunny and actively terrible.

Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983): 4/5

A deeply uncompromising film populated by Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts' incredible performances. It proved to be Fosse's final film and many would argue that he perhaps saved his best for last. A gruesome, true-crime tragedy of the murder of Playboy model and actress Dorothy Stratten by her estranged husband Paul Snider, and his subsequent suicide. Peter Biskind's description in his 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is one that has stayed with me ever since I read it:

"Probably loaded on booze and 'ludes, Snider blew Stratten's head off with a shotgun, and then placed her prostrate on an exercise bench (later referred to in the press as a 'bondage machine') and had sex with her corpse. Her butt was slightly elevated by the bench, on which there were semen stains; there were two bloody handprints on her bottom. One of her fingers, apparently blown off when she raised her hands to protect herself, was stuck to the wall, along with a fair amount of blood. She was twenty. Snider then shot himself in the head. When the police discovered the body, one of his eyes had been moved to the center of his forehead by the force of the blast, so that he looked like a cyclops"

Pet Sematary (Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kolsch, 2019): 1/5

I feel like dumbwaiters only exist in horror movies. Also, Jason Clarke tries to do a standard American accent here and cycles through like 15 nonexistent regional dialects that all sound terrible?? The family has a son that they and the movie forget about for like weeks at a time?? The movie uses the exact same loud-truck-driving-by jumpscare 5 TIMES??? I love cinema.

Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018): 1.5/5

The Funko Pop of seemingly risk taking cinema. Manufactured and monotonous, this is a weak-ass cocktail of Mulholland Drive, multiple Hitchcock movies, Big Lebowski, & Inherent Vice (dreadful to begin with) blended into an ungodly dull, repetitive, poorly written waste of my fucking time. Boring direction - Mitchell has no interesting ideas thematically or visually. Atrocious writing (in terms of dialogue, character and pacing) and ends up feeling like it fades away in seconds. But! An extra half star for when Andrew Garfield forcibly shoves an egg into a boy's mouth and punches him.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (Michael Patrick Jann, 1999): 4/5

More like drop dead GOOD. And the sheer amount of LEGENDS here? staggering

rewatched Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970): 2/5

I know this is one of those sacred cows in cinema history but I found it an ordeal to watch even after all these years. I still can't get past Roeg's constant barrage of headache-inducing quick cuts to non-sequitur images of SR-71 Blackbirds and giant nipples. The first third of this makes for a ripping British gangster flick, but as soon as Jagger and Pallenberg show up, it slowly devolves into a hot, stinky, psychedelic bowel movement of louche nonsense.

Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1970): 2.5/5

“U WOT, M8?!”
- this whole movie

Is this a meandering romp around 70's britrock culture that isn't that great until the last 30 mins, or is it a bizarre yet effective 2-hour Vespa scooter commercial?

Arctic (Joe Penna, 2018): 3/5

A straight forward survival drama that'll make you wish that if you're ever stranded in any sort of climate you'll have Mads Mikkelsen there to take care of you.

Captive State (Rupert Wyatt, 2019): 1/5

So obnoxiously low on entertainment value that it’s shocking it ever made it to theaters. What a waste of John Goodman.

rewatched Purple Noon (Rene Clement, 1960): 3.5/5 Not sure how blasphemous it is to think Minghella's adaptation superior to this one, but I do. My favorite part was Alain Delons's face

Swing Time (George Stevens, 1934): 3/5

“Oh, Fred’s getting his makeup ready for the next dance routine!

Oh.

Oh no.”

rewatched Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999): 5/5

Masculinity at its most toxic and elemental, in these lens men are nothing more than colonialist creatures, animals who fuck, kill and train in the name of nothing, all they are is movement and repression.

🎶This is the rhythm of the night🎶

The Perfection (Richard Shepard, 2018): 2.5/5 

More like THE FUN AND SUPER UNEXPECTED FIRST ACT THAT GIVES WAY TO AN HOUR OF PURE NONSENSE AND A NICE FINAL SHOT.

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018): 3.5/5

Koreeda’s films are like hugs until they punch you in the heart.

Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969): 2.5/5

Technically brilliant, though Wexler's lefty politics and a scattershot approach ensure incoherence. Probably the closest we've ever gotten to an American Godard film.

rewatched Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, 1955): 3.5/5

Lola Montes, Who Can Recall Her Past Lays.

One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961): 3.5/5

Brando's one and only film as a director is as interesting as its troubled production. A fascinating blend of traditional movie production values and the more emotive, revisionist efficacy of the New Hollywood movement that began spurring into action around this time. The last ever film shot in VistaVision, it marks an intriguing crossover period between the two eras. And Brando's eye for detail and framing is superb, some of the shots look like something John Ford could have done and the gorgeous coastal California landscape is captured in all its rugged glory. The film's pungent overall, with enough signs of a controlling intelligence to make you wish that he'd directed more than one film.

The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980): 2/5

Now I can finally stop mistaking this movie for Angelina Jolie's child abduction flick!

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016): 2.5/5

Good until that pronounced third-act nosedive. It's like someone accidentally pressed a button that switched on Shameless Hack Mode.

Trilogy of Terror (Dan Curtis, 1975): 2/5

Karen Black aside and her different wigs, the stories aren't all that interesting, except for the Zuni fetish doll segment of course.

Greta (Neil Jordan, 2018): 3/5

You've seen at least 95% of what follows Act One like, 195 times. Extra star for Isabelle Huppert. She can spit gum in my hair anytime.

Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1969): 1/5

This is maybe the thinnest New Hollywood anti-hero character study I've ever seen.

Darling (Micky Keating, 2015): 1.5/5

New Rule: if a young filmmaker wants to make a Polanski or Lynch riff, they should be required to submit a 2,000 word minimum essay explaining that they understand what makes those movies work.

Replicas (Jeffrey Nachmanoff, 2019): 1/5

“Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures” is what you call your distribution company when you want to launder money.

Destroyer (Karyn Kusama, 2018): 2.5/5

Nicole Kidman broods in THEY LIVE ghoul makeup and drives around sunburnt LA, trading contemptuous handjobs for intel and viciously pistol-whipping fools. Familiar pulp noir junk, but with a female antihero; it doesn't reinvent the wheel, but the novelty does add some interest.

The Happy Prince (Rupert Everett, 2018): 1/5

 Oscar Wilde would have hated this.

The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica, 1944): 2.5/5

The children are watching Kramer vs. Kramer only 35 years earlier. Early De Sica film is very domestic, middle-class, and not terribly involving. Made in the summer of 1942 months before the Americans invaded. You'd hardly know there was a war going on anywhere.

The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974): 2/5

Somehow got the impression many years ago that this is offensively salacious, but its provocation begins and ends at the logline. Mostly it's tastefully dull.

rewatched Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994): 5/5

You'd think having this memorized would rob it of its spontaneity.

Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019): 2/5

Weird that Guy Ritchie watched the beloved 1992 Disney animated classic Aladdin and thought “you know what this needs?? A breakdancing scene, a love interest for the genie, and a really awful princess jasmine solo song”

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007): 2.5/5

Absurd and wry. Takes about 20 minutes to kick in, or at least for the viewer to adjust to its unique presentation. I like the concept and certain individual plot points, but something about the film just didn't click or resonate with me. IDK maybe I'd like it more if I was Canadian. 

Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018): 2/5

Unsatisfying as either social commentary or heist film. Agree with Michelle that Elizabeth Debicki’s height is the movie’s best special effect.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross, 2018): 2.5/5

I’m a great champion of documentaries in the poetic mode, but this one didn’t do much for me.

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018): 3.5/5

Everything in the world is about sex except sex, which is about power. The bunnies were the greatest symbols/images from 2018 (that weren’t in Roma), but I still prefer the provocative and bananas The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Vox Lux (Brady Corbet, 2018): 2/5

It didn’t earn the evocation of mass shootings for emotional effect—or even address it, really. I was disappointed in Natalie Portman’s multi-accented performance. And what exactly was I supposed to be feeling during the final concert? Was it a triumph or an empty spectacle? Do you think the director knows?

Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018): 2.5/5

I get its mild but broad, sit-commy appeal. What I don’t get are the people who exited the theater exhilarated and thrilled. I read about these people!!

Juliet, Naked (jesse Peretz, 2018): 3/5

Entertaining and forgettable. A good performance from Ethan Hawke and a terrible one from (the usually reliable) Chris O’Dowd.

Vertigo, rw (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958): 5/5

He just can’t help himself. He just has to lose her all over again. Watched with Veronica.

The Line Up  (Don Siegel, 1958): 3/5

Another movie from 1958 featuring great footage of late-50s San Francisco. This one’s an OK police procedural with a fun performance by Eli Wallach as a psychopathic hit man. #ColumbiaNoir

Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner, 1958): 4/5

The first (?) of the stoic, sociopathic killers/criminals with a code/method—preceding Pickpocket, Le Samourai, Taxi Driver. One of Scorsese’s favs. #ColumbiaNoir

Inglorious Basterds, rw (Quentin Tarantino, 2009): 3/5

More of a collection of scenes than a movie. Thanks to my low expectations, it was more entertaining than I remembered. Watched with Rosa.

The Holy Mountain, rw (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2973): 5/5

“Your sacrifice completes my sanctuary of one thousand testicles.”

Missing Link (Chris Butler, 2019): 2.5/5

What exec thought a kids movie needed Zach Galifianakis’ brand of melancholy self-hatred?

High Life (Clair Denis, 2019): 2.5/5

All the big symbols are left unmentioned: like the ship (in a movie obsessed with pregnancy) serving as a seed travelling toward the great round void/womb of a black hole. What’s left is quite a lot of bizarre, unmotivated behavior.

The Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983): 2.5/5

Watched this with Jack on May 4 (Star Wars day). He was excited at the prospect of a movie with Han Solo, Chewbacca and Luke Skywalker but was only sporadically entertained, even by the (fucking) Ewoks. Also really weird that it contains a bunch of shots not in the original but still (now) outdated and bad-looking.

Cold Water (Olivier Assayas, 1994): 3/5

A victim of the overhype of the unobtainable. Unavailable for many years because of the (pretty great) use of music in a (pretty great) party scene. At one point, they start a song over and listen to it again. When have you ever seen that?

High Maintenance, Season 3 (Ben Sinclair & Katja Blichfield, 2019): 3.5/5

Continues to feature my favorite tone of any show on TV: warm, funny, open to the unexpected, and interested in people of all description. This season was less consistent than the two previous, but the (ahem) highs were just as high.

The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973): 3/5

A sort-of parody of Agatha Christie penned by Stephen Sondheim and Tony Perkins, with all the puzzly self-satisfaction that that suggests. All is not as it seems, you see? Richard Benjamin proves once again why he’s one of the most unlikely stars in movie history.

The Bay (Barry Levinson, 2012): 2.5/5

Not as horrific as Levinson’s Toys.

Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019): 4.5/5

My favorite movie this year so far, and one of the best movies ever in the Tarantino mold. Funny and novelistic. A great performance from Gibson, full of anger and self-loathing.

Thief, rw (Michael Mann, 1981): 4/5

I saw this in the theater when I was 13, and I can’t really see it as anything other than really cool. Cool music, cool visuals and cool performances by Caan, Weld and (the great) Robert Prosky. Influential.

Barry, Season 2 (Alec Berg & Bill Hader, 2019): 3.5/5

Very amusing. Hader, Stephen Root, and Henry Winkler are all aces.

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