* Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021): 4/5

An unusual experience, with its silence, its languor, its long musical performances, its ravishing tableau and landscapes, its mysteries. I have spoilerific ideas about what’s happening with The Gonk, etc., but the movie's joys are more experiential than narrative. Still, I found the climax to be perfectly satisfying, emotionally. Also, gobsmacked and pleased to find myself watching it in the company of my dear friend Michelle! How could it fail to be a pleasure? 

 

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 4/5

I liked all three of these talky stories of women in complex emotional situations—stuffed with compulsions, betrayals, doublings and proxies. Made me reflect favorably on Drive My Car, and the complexity of the main character’s relationship with his wife and lead actor. 

 

* Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan, 2022): 3/5

Overstuffed with jokes and ideas, many (many) of which don’t work. But even at a 50/50 hit rate, there’s plenty here to laugh at, shake one’s head at, and generally have fun with. 

 

The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022): 2.5/5

The tear-streaked-mascara Batman. The Nirvana Batman. The detective Batman. The Se7en Batman. The first-responder Batman. The daddy-issues Batman. The too-depressed-and-obsessive-to-have-sex-with-Catwoman Batman.

 

X (Ti West, 2022): 2.5/5

They (also) say that direction is all about tone management, and this one is all over the place. Or maybe it’s just new, this combination of 70s realism and  80s cartoonish Texas-Chainsaw-2-level exaggeration—idiosyncratic, talkie and weird. But West makes the fatal mistake of using a young person in sub-mediocre oldie makeup to play the baddie, who should have just been played by an actual, capable and hot old person. Totally changes the movie’s vibe, meaning and balance. 

 

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021): 3.5/5

“A good building always makes a beautiful ruin.” Goddard’s living ghost haunts this word-strewn, quote-haunted critique of power and organization, especially capitalism, socialism, communism. Explicitly revolting against repression, censorship and distortion in all forms. Christ, did I (ironically) watch a censored version? God, I hope not. (I heard the one on Hulu is censored, so I went out of my way to rent it on Amazon Video, and it was rated NR. But still I wonder.)

 

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021): 3.5/5

An arty, fly-on-the-wall portrait of modern China. Definitely some images of wonder and power, but I’m not positive of the thesis. I would say that it’s about how one’s culture determines one’s behavior and reality and … Is China what the future looks like?

 

Eyes of Tammy Faye (Michael Showalter, 2021): 3/5

Likable but too long and styleless, and it lets the hypocritical duo completely and unsatisfyingly off the hook. My favorite of Chastain’s performances, so good on Oscar.

 

Pyassa (Guru Dutt, 1957): 4/5

Like a 30s Hollywood musical but with poets and prostitutes and full of deep despair about the state of the world. Beautiful high-contrast black and white, and many tuneful and unusual (to Western ears) songs. 

 

Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers) (Guru Dutt, 1959): 4/5

The main character is a film director who we first see as an old, lonely man. Thereafter we flash back to tell his life. References to Citizen Kane dominate the first half— from that story structure, to the pipe he smokes, to a white cockatoo, to specific camera shots, deep focus and beautiful shafts of light. Eventually morphs into a full-on remake of A Star is Born. Just a couple of songs, but their melodies are used beautifully throughout the score.

 

Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra, 1985): 4/5

Manages to be both languid and devastating, zeroing in on a certain rite of passage with harrowing and frank emotional and psychological detail. Chopra lets long scenes play out, with emotions flipping back and forth and around. Dern is really great. 

 

Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996): 3/5

Mads Mikkelsen is to Pusher as Deniro is to Mean Streets. This story of Swedish drug dealing is short, nasty and brutish. Also jittery. 

 

War and Peace, 422 min. (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1965): 4/5

Everything Cimino was trying to do with Heavens Gate, plus a dozen other tricks and vibes, including radical voiceover interiority all over the place a la Malick. “All of that is in me. All of that IS me.” Battle scenes are a heady mix of exact historical recreations and impressionistic swirling. 

 

Out 1, 743 mins. (Jacques Rivette, 1971): 1.5/5

An unsatisfying and head-scratching waste of 12.38888 hours, rivaling Alexanderplatz and, more relevantly, The Mother and the Whore as the biggest waste of (a lot of) time by a revered movie. Bored and boring theater kids senselessly fucking around does not a critique of post-1968 make! In the final episode Rivette randomly introduces a bunch of formal fuckery such as suddenly the dialogue is backwards or silenced, “lets just have 10 seconds of black here and there in the middle of this scene,” etc., as if even Rivette has become bored or self-contemptuous. Near the end, one of main characters runs down the beach yelling “Leave me alone!” and I couldn’t agree more.

 

Severance, season 1 (Dan Erickson, Ben Stiller): 2/5

Does a TV show have an obligation to answer any — or, actually, even one — of the dozens of questions and loose-ends it raises? If so, this fails.

 Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021): 4.5/5

Still sussing out THAT SCENE. Honestly, not sure if it was necessary. That scene arguably raises more questions than it answers, but Joe does such an impeccable job of prescribing The Boom (as I am so deeming it) an ominous, apprehensive register hitherto that assigning it any physical form, however nebulous, seems comparatively underwhelming next to total ambiguity. Upon the first occurrence of The Boom, I nearly shit myself; from quite literally the opening scene onward, I was braced with nerve-racking anxiety whenever things got quiet (which, in a Weerasethakul film, is ALL THE FUCKING TIME), nervously awaiting The Boom’s next emergence. Joe doesn’t overplay that hand, either; I didn’t count how many times we hear The Boom, but I guarantee it’s fewer than I’d guess after the fact, its concrete permanence attributed—somewhat paradoxically—to not its frequency but its infrequency.

A classic reading of the film, one made before the reveal is made, is that Jessica is experiencing early-onset dementia. The film is conspicuously titled Memoria [self-evidently Spanish for "Memory"], the thing with which dementia abducts. Is The Boom the creeping doldrums, an augur, for her dementia—like the ringing of one's ears indicating the damaging of ear cells, the repetitive boom indicating the slow decay of memory? She does seem to wander about carelessly, absentmindedly. Is Colombian elevation to blame as one doctor suggests, her insomnia, the working of the nearby Amazon, its leafy heart of darkness, unknown mysteries, working its cloistered magic upon her?

It was a rare cinematic experience (and not just because I saw it with the Scupine Brothers) that almost certainly wouldn't have been remotely as powerful at home, without the eerily hushed presence of others.

Vortex (Gaspar Noe, 2022): 3.5/5

Immensely sad and moving. It's a tentative gentle hug from a man I'd have expected in previous years to cave my head in first.

Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma, 2022): 4.5/5

Christopher Nolan shaking and crying cuz he could never come up with this.

All jokes aside, there is a sadness traded off between children and parents that’s rooted in wanting to see the other happy. It’s like that line from 20th Century Women, “you get to see him out in the world as a person. I never will”. Just as our parents never get to see us as human beings separate from them, we never get to see them that way either. And so a sadness exists that creates both distance and binds you. Petite Maman feels like closing that gap - it erases the mystery or fear in the back of one’s mind that the cause of your parent's sadness stems from you.

We're All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2021): 3.5/5

A challenging, complicated film - as we used to say back in grad school. I'm looking forward to revisiting it. For now, all I can say is it is a rare and honest and great piece of art. Might be uncomfortable to watch if you're the father of teenage girls.

Paris, 13th District (Jacques Audiard, 2021): 3/5

Slight, but solid atmosphere; including a stirring nightlife score and lovely black-and-white photography. Jacques Audiard follows three characters avoiding love (Makita Samba, Lucie Zhang, and Noemie Merlant). It's an extreme rarity to see Asian characters as the centerpiece of any European production, and Paris, 13th District is applaudable for presenting to the world Lucie Zhang, the still rather unknown Chinese-born actress who executed the bold, demanding role of a call center girl caught up in her own family drama as well as her complicated sex life. However, it's actually the perfect duo of Noémie Merlant and Jehnny Beth that offered the most memorable sketch and emotional moments of this interweaved Parisian saga, thanks to their off-the-charts chemistry, and, very likely, Celine Sciamma's magical input into the script.

The Northman (Rob Eggers, 2022): 3/5

Could've used more Dafoe and Bjork in my opinion. And this is significantly more Gladiator-adjacent than I'd ever have imagined, even as it's also clearly positioning itself as a vicious, poetry-free ur-Hamlet. Extra half star for the gnarly fun. But nothing to write home about overall.

Zero Fucks Given (Emmanuel Marre, Julie Loucoustre, 2021): 4/5

The hypnotic first half is among the great twenty-first-century visions of corporate, post-industrial labor (“You work as a team, but you each work on your own as well, okay?”), and the language of “growth” and “opportunity” just becomes deployed as a way of occupying another position in an exploitative system.

This is what ‘The Worst Person in the World’ should be like (if it was good). Also, Pandemic Cinema - the removal of a mask, exposing ourselves, is it literal or metaphorical? Seriously, Adele Exarchopoulos is one of the best on the planet.

Belfast (Kenneth Branaugh, 2021): 1.5/5
A good movie if you’ve only seen 4 or 5 movies

Encanto (Byron Howard, Jared Bush, 2021): 2.5/5

a grandparent apologizing for generational trauma is the most unrealistic thing in all of Disney

All the Old Knives (Janus Metz, 2022): 1/5

Me: Make more movies for adults.

[watches All the Old Knives]

Me: Make them better than this.

The House (Paloma Baeze, 2022): 3/5

Tim Burton by way of Wes Anderson's stop-motion cinema. Enjoyable little flick. The opening segment is far and away the best one, introducing a family living in a modest country cottage in what looks like the 19th century. The terror comes from the atmosphere more than specific incidents and builds to an unnerving effect.

Umma (Iris K. Shim, 2022): 1/5

More like ummmmmm uhhhhhh

The Dropout (Elizabeth Meriwether, 2022): 3/5

Elizabeth Holmes...such a copious amount of cringe in one person it's unbelievable.

Nitram (Justin Kurzel, 2021): 1.5/5

Yet another "let's explore the world of this real-life mass murderer." Unnecessary, shallow, and dull.

The Usual Suspects (Byran Singer, 1995): 1.5/5

All this fuss for a bland-on-arrival crime thriller that gets needlessly complicated as it goes along, and then pulls the rug out from under you to reveal that everything in the movie sans the last two minutes was a total fabrication? Amateur hour. I think Roger Ebert put it best: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care."

The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969): 2/5

Impenetrable symbolism. Impossible narrative to follow. Yes, the aesthetic experience and accomplishment was downright irrefutable, transcendent, etc etc, but the truth is that I never found it anything other than ponderous. In any case, don't let my lack of enthusiasm dissuade you from watching one of the most singular films ever made. This is akin to a sheepish shrug at La traviata because opera just ain't for me. #philistine

Kiki's Delivery Service (Miyazaki, 189): 2.5/5
I realize the cuteness and not just lack but outright eschewal of anything resembling conflict is a huge selling point on Miyazaki, and a reason so many others love and admire his filmography unconditionally. Not me though -  being the miserable kvetch and thief of joy that I am.  But if I completely ignore the existence of this film’s fictional narrative and pretend it’s a master animator’s sketchbook of loosely-related abstractions, I do indeed dig it.

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973): 2/5
I think maybe this picturesque slideshow style just isn’t to my taste, regardless of context - and no, the mature themes here add very little in the way of interest. Was expecting this to jerk the wheel into full-on avant-garde territory at one point during the long psychedelic montage, but it was only a minor distraction—one of many that add up to a frustratingly middling ordeal.

rewatched The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006): 4/5 
inside you there are two magicians. ok, three magicians. alright, three living magicians and hundreds of dead ones.

Police Story 3: Super Cop (Stanley Tong, 1992): 3/5

Stanley Tong makes some interesting choices, namely adding a few more cuts here and there and shooting the fights from a slightly higher angle. It's a bit Westernized. And I'm not a big fan of Jackie getting into a huge gunfight. But then the train/helicopter/motorbike finale happens and all that stuff just doesn't matter anymore.

  

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 3.5/5

The central conceit of how the Uncle Vanya’s dialogue relates to our movie’s plot and characters is really masterful. I was expecting something kind of empty, with long drives and enigmatic silences, but this was traditionally engaging. 

 

Uncle Vanya (Ian Rickson, 2020): 3.5/5

Watching Drive My Car, I was concerned that I was missing stuff thematically because I know zero about Uncle Vanya. But actually, for the most part, the film tells you what you need to know via context clues, and the Vanya dialogue is pretty re-contexualized. The Uncle Vanya scenes that play out in Drive My Car seem sexy, but in fact the play concerns a debauched and lethargic family dynasty petering out—and the subsequent realization that one’s life is meaningless and, worse, over. 

 

Vanya on 42^nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994): 3.5/5

I was hoping for some comment or analysis or interpretation or extension of the play but no, this is simply a performance of it. Nicely understated, since it’s an adaptation of the language by Mamet. 

 

Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022): 2.5/5

Keep your finger hovering over the skip-forward button, and you can have a pretty fun 22 minutes. 

 

After Yang (Kogonada, 2022): 2/5

Could robots have a soul, and if so would it be made up of/demonstrated by memory plus emotion plus self-identify plus the love of others or some shit. 

 

The Adam Project (Shawn Levy, 2022): 3/5

Indefensible sci-fi garbage that nevertheless hooked me with basic bitch father/son dynamics. I swear that during the two parts that made me tear up, I didn’t even hear the dialogue. I was just responding to the situation, facial expressions and music—and filling it in with memories and impressions of my life with my dad and/or with Jack. That’s cinema, but How Humiliating!

 

Nine Days (Edson Oda, 2021): 3.5/5

A guy has to choose what kind of person, from a dozen candidates, should be born on Earth. Compelling throughout. They say that the mark of a good director is that all the performances are good (as here, especially Zazie Beetz). I found the ending to be transcendent, but your mileage may vary. 

 

Beyond the infinite Two Minutes (Junta Yamaguchi, 2020): 3/5

A computer allows the characters to see two minutes into the future. Low-stakes fun as they spin out the sci-fi possibilities. 

 

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012): 4.5/5

In the cinema of clarity and commonplace brutality, it’s a masterpiece. Basic, primal, universal. 

 

White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009): 4/5

Explicitly declares that it is going to diagnose how we get WWII and the Holocaust, then presents us with three kinds of circa-WW1 German men, with all their feelings of superiority, god-complex, self-righteousness and fixation on innocence/purity — inflicted on their children, who express everything that is repressed. A lot to think about, and expressed swiftly and dramatically.

 

Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry, 1975): 2/5

A hazy-dazy movie, full of dumb and likablly handsome young rustlers, driving faded pick-ups around Montana. Script (barely) written by Thomas McGuane. 

 

Dodes’ka-den (Akira Kurosawa, 1970): 2/5

Very much a filmed play, with all the long monologues and artificiality that implies. Traditional Japanese theatre acting, including slow movement and exaggerated face work. The abstract plane of action (a stagy garbage dump) reminds one of Beckett, but this movie lacks humor. 

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926): 3.5/5

The supposedly first animated movie is all silhouettes, although there are all kinds of grey-scale backgrounds as well as evocative blues, reds, greens and yellows. (Right up there on the screen In 1923). Beautiful design, Tabu-like naked-lady bathing, witches, racist depictions of Chinese and Arabic characters, and plenty of other delights. 

 

Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951): 3/5

The Holy Fool of Gump (and unfortunately just as facile) crossed with the what-are-you -gonna-do generosity and gagginess of Tati, with a dash of radical humanism. Wish-fulfillment in troubled times. Honestly, I don’t have a taste for these fairy tale films (like Demy’s Donkey Skin, of which this is a neo-real cousin).  

 

Train Again, 20 mins. (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021): 3.5/5

I have some doubts about its conceptual discipline/rigor, but it’s a pretty good experience. 

 

In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003): 3.5/5

Genuinely hot and sexy and also actually disturbing, with a pretty bleak and paranoid outlook. It compares favorably to Pakula’s Klute.

 

Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947): 3.5/5

There’s a murder that both our protagonists seem guilty of. Will the sharp-eyed police detective find the right man? Smart entertainment. 

 

The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015): 3/5

A maid lives in the home of a wealthy family, but when her estranged daughter also comes to live there, all the relationships and power dynamics shift. Schematic. 

 

 

Pre-1978 Agnes Varda Film Fest

Varda is a magpie or gleaner of styles, perspectives, and strategies—a genius of spontaneous and mutating order. She doesn’t take any premise seriously for long, and changes rules frequently. This must madden The Formalists. 

 

La Pointe-Courte (Agnès Varda, 1955): 3/5

A talkfest with a strong sense of place, as a couple on the rocks wanders around a fishing village, past boats, nets, cats and fishermen and women of every shape. Comparable to early Bergman and Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (from the previous year). Varda says she was telling two stories that never interact (inspired by Faulkner’s Wild Palms), but the fishermen’s story isn’t exactly a narrative and comes off as mere scene-setting. 

 

Cléo From 5 to 7, rw (Agnès Varda, 1962): 3.5/5

Cléo from 5 to 7: Remembrances and Anecdotes, 36 mins (Agnès Varda, 2005): 3.5/5

Enjoyed the original as a hangout on the streets, apartments and parks of Paris. But the follow-up documentary Remembrances bumps it a half point for helping me see it as a reflection on deeper issues of seeing and being seen, as well as the inexorable movement of time. 

 

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965): 4.5/5

Packed with beauty and spontaneity. Cut together in a new way and churning with new feelings. Deserves to be in the conversation with the other New Wave Masterpieces. The man at the center is a bummer but the storytelling a big wow. 

 

Les Creatures (Agnès Varda, 1966): 3/5

Nutty science fiction about a guy who is controlling people in a village, plus meta-fiction stuff about the sadistic role of an author in the lives of his characters. An eccentric use of Catherine Deneuve (as a mute), Michel Piccoli (with a huge scar/gash running down the middle of his forehead), and (Bergman’s) Eva Dahlbeck. 

 

Elsa la Rose, 20 mins (Agnès Varda, 1966): 2/5

Banal portrait of the wife of surrealist poet Louis Aragon, who was also a writer. I know no more about why I should care about them than before I watched the film. 

 

Black Panthers, 28 mins (Agnès Varda, 1968): 2.5/5

A time capsule rather than an interrogation. 

 

Lions Love (Agnès Varda, 1969): 2/5

An acid-addled stumble through Hollywood in June of 1968. Charmless characters but great wallpaper. “There never was a Hollywood. It’s just a mining camp with service from the Ritz.”

 

Nausicaa (Agnès Varda, 1971): 4/5

A kaleidoscopic probing at the Greek civil war in 1968, which accuses the U.S. of installing a government performing an anti-intellectual, military-based coup and purge, plus torture. With intersecting fiction parts plus interviews of actual participants, news footage, breaking the fourth wall, Brechtian satiric parts, etc. Yet, it’s by far the most grounded and emotional of all the New Wave 68 Marxist movies I’ve seen. 

 

Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, 6 mins (Agnès Varda, 1976): 3/5

An excerpt from One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, which should have just be incorporated into that film. Our two lovers contemplate Iranian architecture and poetry. 

 

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, 1977): 4.5/5

A French hippy masterpiece and a blatantly political film—warmly feminist about girls doing it for themselves. Tells the story of two women over a decade, and fills it with moments between women that seem like secrets that no men talk about and I’m not even supposed to know. Not as formally inventive as Le Bonheur, but on the other hand for a while this an epistolary narrative as well as a stealth musical with decent songs and dance. Is there a song about the women on a tour boat in Amsterdam who were all there from France to get legal abortions? A definitive yes.

 

 

Akerman Mini-Mini-Fest

I’m good with these female directors undermining narrative constraints and setting off in bold or even odd new directions. 

 

Sauté ma ville, 13 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1968): 3/5

For some reason this 18-year-old doesn’t seem satisfied with the boxed food she is given to eat, the cooking she must do, the cleaning and beauty products that make her and her home pretty. 

 

La Chambre, 11 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1972): 3/5

A chair with a red velour back, a breakfast table, a teapot, curtains, a woman looking out guardedly, possibly masterbating, later fondling an apple meaningfully, the rhyme of a red chair, a lamp.  

 

News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976): 3.5/5

Mother’s letters add pathos, yet I can’t imagine a more mundane depiction of NYC. Perhaps this is the point (alienation: discuss). I wonder whether native New Yorkers are seeing a lot of Then vs Now stuff, lost on me. 

 

 

Movies I Avoided for Decades Because I Thought They Were Going to Be Bad, and I Was Right

 

The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967): 1.5/5

I realize comedy is subjective and that it’s not cool to judge anti gay and anti-trans jokes by todays standards, but really this movie stinks on ice. If it’s not funny, their strategy is to say it louder—and believe me, there’s a LOT of yelling in this movie. 

 

The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968): 2/5

There is a lot of Tati here and Clouseau obviously. However, Hulot retains his dignity because he seems to ignore or not care about other people’s opinions of him, and Clouseau continues to consider himself the world’s greatest detective no matter the evidence. On the other hand, this character seems fully aware of how personally humiliating his misadventures are. Notice, I didn’t even mention the brown-face Sellers wears throughout. Why did this character have to be Indian except because the creators think Indians are funny?

 

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947): 2/5

At least three disgusting men behaving leeringly toward a pretty modern Gene Tierney. “My dear, since Eve picked the apple, no woman has ever been taken entirely unawares. When a woman is kissed, it’s because deep down she wants to be kissed,” says the gross ghost sea captain Rex Harrison, who led a “very manly life.” In the end she is in love with a very Trumpian image of a manly man, who tells it like it is—a man who, in the movie, literally doesn’t exist any more. 

 

A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998): 2/5

A Predetermined Slog

 

Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968): 2/5

Skips jokelessly through a series of genres, including the western, war movie, boxing flick, adventure, horror, with toothless satire of advertising and the manufactured identities and cameos by Timothy Carey, Jack Nicholson, Zappa and Victor Mature (??) in a series of ascots. With some head-shop use of color and negative-image. Good songs, though.

 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012): 2/5

For, you see, life itself is a museum, and it's always open.

GACK.

Basically it played to me like a feature-length extension of American Beauty's swirling plastic bag. If everything is interesting and worthy of attention, as Jem Cohen insists, then nothing is, I would argue.

CODA (Sian Heder, 2021): 3/5

Major Hallmark/Disney Channel Original Movie vibes. So very "yeah it's sweet!" it's no wonder the Academy was powerless.

Deep Water (Adrian Lyne, 2022): 2/5

Poly people will name their daughter Trixie and keep snails as pets, next thing you know they’re murdering.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022): 4/5

Charlie Kaufman’s multiverse-Tree of Life, if made for Adult Swim.

Has a lot of heart, is weird/kooky but stays fully committed to the bit. An undeniable feat of filmmaking in terms of editing and creativity. Extra star for having Michelle Yeoh at the helm.

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021): 4/5

Poetry in the absurd. With minimal dialogue and no narration, this documentary still provides a nuanced (and occasionally pointed) exploration of supply, demand, and consumption on a truly mind-boggling scale. There is so much here that’s indelible - that opening scene of the hunt where jobs are classified as “standing up” or “sitting down,” the sex doll factory, the drill team salute, the butler academy, the indoor amusement park, the video game room, the fancy party, the lipstick made for female soldiers, the final shots of the misty waterfront, and above all the rules for hugging.

After Yang (Kogonada, 2021): 3/5

The opening credits scene is better than the movie itself. Narrative is underwhelming and way too ruminative with underwritten characters. Points for the production design, perfectly framed cinematography, and skillfully utilized special effects though.

Turning Red (Domee Shi, 2022): 2.5/5

Whatever it's a film for kids. (No big sin, of course.)

Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962): 3/5

Not much to this apart from its eerie, somnambulistic vibe, though admittedly it is sometimes potent.

X (Ti West, 2022): 2/5

Horny grandma commits crimes. Didn't absolutely hate it like I have Ti West's previous films so there's that. Some ok gore and Mia Goth's side boob shots are the highlights.

The Tinder Swindler (Felicity Morris, 2022): 1/5

Why would a billionaire be on tinder? Why didn’t the women say “ask your billionaire dad for money”?? Why would Netflix think I would sympathize with people who willingly got involved with someone they thought was either an arms dealer, a Mossad agent or the heir to a fortune built through owning diamond mines in Angola and building settlements in the West Bank???

Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson, 2021): 4/5

Someone explain to my tear-drenched t-shirt why this is being marketed as a zany comedy??? What's depicted here without question is one of my greatest fears. Sure, I found myself wanting to do without the fantasy Heaven sequences and some of the other goofy bits...but really that was me resisting this as much as I could. "It would be so easy if loving only gave us the beautiful. But what loving demands is that we face the fear of losing each other. That when it gets messy we hold each other close. And when we can, we defiantly celebrate our brief moments of joy." By the finale I was powerless and destroyed in the best way.

Kimi (Steven Soderbergh, 2022): 3/5

Starts out very derivative but the groundwork gets laid for a fun third act. Seems to me Soderbergh's scaled back his ambition to the point where he may never make another truly great film, but at least he's finally stopped fucking around with goofy lenses.

Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985): 3/5

In between the opening shantytown shootout/demolition derby and the truly astonishing climactic fight sequence, featuring stunts so insane that it's hard to believe the entire cast wasn't hospitalized for months afterward, is a solid hour that's virtually action-free, during which Chan cranks up the mugging and I remember why I've never been very motivated to catch up with his oeuvre. As always, what's funny is very much a matter of taste, so I can't argue with those who enjoy seeing Chan get hit in the face with a cake not once, not twice, but three times in the midst of a standard Three's Company scenario. I'm just never gonna fully embrace a movie that's 25% kinetic masterpiece and 75% static tedium.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (Michael Lehmann, 2022): 1/5

This had EVERY CHANCE to be a good parody. Decent cast, the budget was there. Unfortunately, it commits the cardinal sin for parody: it’s not clever. This cleaves so closely to the structure of the narratives it's trying to make fun of that there's no space for it to actually take a view on them. Its attempts at mimicking the genre's tropes come just too close to the high camp of the genre itself that they barely register. Just all around lazy, mishandled, and completely devoid of joy.

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944): 3.5/5

What economy! As masterful an exercise in “single location” filmmaking as you’ll see, and we’re not talking about one house or one room, but one BOAT. A great Hitchcock picture that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

Clean, Shaven (Lodge Kerrigan, 1993): 1.5/5

Seems like this is in the Criterion Collection because it has the most sound editing in a movie. Otherwise it’s just kind of miserable and grating, which I get is probably the point, but doesn’t make it something I’d ever want to revisit.

Boiler Room (Ben Younger, 2000): 3/5

Part well-observed takedown of broker culture as an indictment of chauvinist capitalist excess and part formulaic daddy issues actor showcase. Well-realized moments, like when they watch "Wall Street," stand out and it has a unique place as a financial services movie in a pre-9/11 and pre-2007 mortgage crisis world. Extra half star for the very lovely Nia Long.

Hannibal Rising (Peter Webber, 2007): 1.5/5

Where Gong Li (poor Gong Li) teaches teenage Dr. Lecter (her nephew) Kendo so he can get revenge on the Nazis that ate his baby sister. Admittedly if this plot were, say, season 6 of the TV series, I might be more into it (transmedia forever). It already sort of looks like "Hannibal" anyway, with its self-consciously operatic chiaroscuro.

Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002): 2.5/5

Expository wholesale re-staging of Mann's MANHUNTER with a name-brand cast, and what's worse Ratner occasionally pulling out Demme's confessional straight-into-camera close-ups for no other reason than to sew this up visually with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Only Fiennes really rescues this, bringing a frenzied physical menace to Dolarhyde where Tom Noonan was all imposing, quiet control.

Lucy and Desi (Amy Poehler, 2022): 3.5/5

Doesn't get beyond 101 territory but still sweetly made. Skip Being the Ricardos and just watch this doc instead.

Hot take: I Love Lucy is such a funny show.

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 2/5

Pretentious and exhausting. So last century. Stories concentrated on people’s idiosyncratic forms of grieving always stir me to some extent—this one didn't at all. Also, not really important, but I don't understand the point of subtitled multilingual theater. From what I can tell, the whole point of that discipline is to deliberately redirect viewers' attention to nonverbal cues; it's not clear to me what one gains merely from having actors converse in different tongues, while translating them all on a projected screen.

Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997): 2.5/5

I'm back to where I always end up with Miyazaki, feeling frustrated by what seem like purely random flourishes. My gut feeling is that he's a great animator but a bad storyteller. Since my knowledge of Japanese mythology is basically nil, however, what seems random and unsatisfying to me may well make perfect sense to others. In any case, I've never been able to just roll with the weirdness, as most of my peers have. They see a dazzling masterpiece; I see a prettier version of Takashi Miike's dumbfounding The Great Yokai War.

Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975): 1/5

Few things are more painful than bad surrealism. There's virtually nothing here to either delight or disconcert. Just a bunch of naked children running wild, an old lady jabbering nonsense into a wireless radio, the occasional "talking" animal (mostly indecipherable grunting and squeaking), and Joe Dallesandro's presence as counterculture Ken doll. Dream logic has rarely been so prosaic, and if there's a less sensuous film about a young girl's sexual awakening (metaphorical or otherwise), may it thud right on past.

Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999): 2.5/5

Another of Spike's rippers on trauma and tribalism and glimmering hope, only this one also has a talking dog.

Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997): 3/5

So many of these 90's indie crime dramas depend on Michael Rappaport being a dipshit who fucks it up for everyone.

Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992): 2.5/5

Nothing but downward spiral, plus one agonized act of forgiveness. The early, iconic scene in which Lt. Bad staggers around naked, his face a mask of pain, arguably does more harm than good—it's certainly arresting and memorable, but it overwhelms what's otherwise a remarkably flat, almost procedural portrait of ingrained vice.

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021): 2/5

Ansel Elgort has to be stopped, now. I’m not doing this for another 20 years. If they had to put him in a musical, it should have been as a “Sound of Music” Nazi.

Anyway, Spielberg works his magic here and there, but it’s only 4 minutes longer than the original and it feels like at least 45.

Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020): 3/5

Interesting little flick; dug the aesthetic and the setting. Has a sort of Silent Hill element with the gritty, rundown house and uncanny, supernatural aspects. The plot is a little unfocused though; all the pieces are there but motivations and decisions feel off in a nonsensical way. Still, an engaging and promising debut.

The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021): 1.5/5

This is what I imagine people who’ve never seen foreign films are picturing when they say, “I don’t like foreign films.”