My job is to ruin them.

The Studio, S1 — 2.5/5

Technically sound, looks nice, sounds nice, but it falls into that modern trope of anxiety-as-a-primary-driver-of-plot. I love art that has an inherent energy to it, but the Anxious Age of movie-making has taken a thing I enjoy and almost ruined it for me. Seth Rogen, who I mostly love, is at best a co-lead who needs someone who offsets his anxious energy, but here he is surrounded by people who have their own insecurities and fears and shakes. I'm not saying the show isn't accurate to the creative industry: The Pitt was a shining star that makes you feel the urgency of your job, how every decision matters, and the pressing need to make that decision quickly. And this show sort of sits beside it to show that no decision matters, it's all just random choices that maybe, hopefully, possibly might make something better. Supreme importance placed upon the nothingness of it all. Which, in theory, I like!! But it's all just a tightly wound ball of disruptive energy, and the show's directorial style is to keep that going for 30m at a time. Every single episode could use a moment to just sit down and be comfortable doing nothing. This show needs a fucking xanax.

The pus-filled

 sky.

This is not sincere.

The Rehearsal S2 — 4/5

I feel we're right around the corner from everyone deciding that Nathan Fielder is cringe, but man oh man, does he know how to land a plane. Never once do you see where he's going next, odd tangent after odd tangent, but always connecting back to a straight line. He's the raptors in 'Jurassic Park,' having you stare straight ahead while he attacks from the side. And who he is now still ties back to what he was doing on 'Nathan For You'—weaponized idiocy as a problem-solving measure. Sincerity via stupidity. It all just screams of someone who knows exactly what they're doing. 

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Catastrophe S2 — 3/5

Continues to be a charmer but I think this season's dip has to do with making Sharon seem the worst of the two. Rob's got problems but he's mostly good, come to terms with himself, and is quick to apologize. So that just makes Sharon the stinker. Imbalances aren't wrong, but it just rubs me wrong.  

It was no accident. It was a monkey.

The Monkey — 3.5/5

The first half of this is a miracle of tonality. It has a very casual absurdity to it, played seriously and then just passively stepping over the line before quickly stepping back. Theo James, at first glance, feels intensely wrong for this, but very quickly proves himself to be the right anchor-point for that line-straddling. (Contrast him with the brief cameo of Elijah Woods who is playing into the farce of it all.) The movie, for as long as possible, holds on to this wonderful tone before, understandably, losing control of the wheel in the second half. It drives headlong into the ridiculousness of it all, which is easier, and which is less interesting. But, for about an hour, as it held tightly onto the wheel as it headed down a bumpy road, it reminded me that horror-comedy is one of my favorite genres.

All that once was good.

Field of Dreams — 3.5/5

I maintain that American can only be saved if men are allowed movies like this again. It's middle-American twee, closer to anything made in the '30s or '40s than most anything made in the span of my life. Kevin Costner defined an era of acceptable man; conservative at birth, but went to Berkeley, dropped some acid—but came back home. The 'common sense' man who toyed with some new ideas, maybe took on a few, but finally realized what his dad had been telling him all these years. We need more movies that make grown men cry. But noooo, we had to make fun of this shit, we had to call it drivel, we had to make them feel stupid for having emotions and now we have a *loneliness epidemic* and their only outlet is action movies featuring fading stars who've taken on serious expressions in their later years who must come out of their mundane life to become the badasses they always were. A small life as a thing to escape from, rather than escape to. This movie holds up surprisingly well despite never really making all that much sense because there is such an intense sincerity to its proceedings that everyone has bought into and I swear to you, I promise you, the world will be a better place if we can just let men have movies where they can miss their dad. 

I like this life.

Love Hurts — 1/5

Ariana DeBose is very possibly my least favorite actress of all time. I make a solemn vow, here and now, to never see another movie that features her. The rest of the movie is chopped ham; the potential for a cute premise that wastes Ke Huy Quan's adorable qualities because it has no fucking clue how to connect characters when they're not hitting each other. The most damning praise I can give it is that the best part of the movie is a cameo from a Property Brother. lol I just watched the trailer again to remind myself of what happened and I still thought 'oh, this is probably a fun movie.' It's not. But, honestly? Ripe for a remake. Make every single character in it be in search for love in some way, and make it less about embracing the old life and trying to save this new, mundane life he's created for himself. 

Run!

Train to Busan — 2.5/5

Fine at the time—sets up clear characters at the outset, keeps the energy up from there—but in just a few days has mostly faded from memory because it never really develops the characters into anything more than the rough sketch. Teases at interesting character interactions and larger themes but nah, not really. 

We met amongst the tall trees.

Late Night With The Devil — 3.5/5

I feel like I tend to save my more pointed criticism to things that were almost something. I get frustrated at things that were almost good, almost great, because they went all this way and they got so close. This movie got so close! I love the premise! Blair Witch-adjacent, the fantasy that this might be real... an illusion which unfortunately the movie keeps breaking. Bad visual effects, from awkward CGI to faux-retro scanlines to poor Photoshops to the danged AI artwork, keep pulling you out of the movie, reminding you constantly that you are, indeed, watching a movie instead of a long-lost now-found tape from a bygone era. And a few more turns of the dial could have made the devil more real? Embrace even further the aesthetic of the time; use the tape from that era, remove the close-up documentary camera in the between-break interludes, replace it with a studio camera that was continuing to roll or an audio mic that never stopped recording. Welp, too late now! 

All that to say, despite what I have to say, this is a fun movie that I would gladly rewatch on basic cable in this, the latter half of my life.  

Pulling on your pudding.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore — 4/5

Here, in this movie that is nothing like what he does, is my favorite Martin Scorsese movie. I want to compare this to Jeanne Dielman; an American and American cinema version of seeing a woman go through the same repetitions, both more entertaining and with less depth. Scorsese captures a feeling of time and place and person; his rooms and cameras are art directed just enough to give it a feeling of something new without needing to steal attention from the movie's star, as it is her movie. Ellen Burstyn, appearing as a woman and a mother rarely seen, fills every frame. She's wonderful! There's a sweetness in her harshness and a fragility in her strength. No wonder they made this into a TV show, hoping it was the character instead of the actor. I've never seen it so fuck it, maybe it was? The Hollywood ending of it all betrays the movie, but it's also built up enough goodwill to that point to forgive it.

Open the door.

Alien: Romulus – 3/5

The Alien franchise is in an odd place of wanting to return to basics, essentially a slasher movie with cooler art direction, a formula that could just be repeated ad infinitum, but still this desire to expand beyond what is. Are you stalker or are you cinematic universe. Mostly, this succeeds as a return to basics, minus the Gen Z cast that feels out of a Facebook ad, this modern idea of what 'cool' looks like. But then it wants to connect to the other films through uncanny valley Ian Holm! And then the alien/human hybrid that looks like the Engineer! I don't mind the Ian Holm in theory; these types of movies work well when there's a whisper of a wider world, something to be curious about but never needing to be discovered. But it's bad visual effects which just remove you from the movie's present in its insistence to fold in the past. And then the Engineer hybrid looks stupid, shades of Alien: Resurrection, and serves as this both more subtle but more obvious attempt to connect to the other, lesser (?) movies which pushed this simple franchise into a more complicated place. I think there's two ways to view worldbuilding: how can you expand this world, and how can you expand what is possible within this world? One is more finite, a way to innovate within limitations. I think it should do more of that.

Don't you know what he did?

Last of Us S2 — 2/5

I really enjoyed the themes of season 1, but I also thought the episode-to-episode enjoyment of the series was fine. Serious people in a serious world, no room for joy. Here, that, minus any new compelling theme. It, I suppose, still follows the idea behind season 1—love as a destructive force—but it's just Ellie's revenge trip, minus nuance, minus any builds on top of that. Just that, over and over. I think this is a season that had the capacity for compelling philosophical conversations of individual needs vs the group—the fragility of community—and that's really only touched on here or there, up to everyone ultimately rationalizing and helping this damaged girl destroy everything she touches. I think we're supposed to have this revelation of 'oh shit, Ellie's the bad guy!!' but it makes that point too obvious, and unfortunately for this show, I have always struggled to follow a story with a bad guy as the hero. Ellie shows regret once, and then immediately has a greater regret that she hasn't been able to kill another. Okay. No lessons learned.

I'm free, and all it took was a bullet to the head.

Companion — 3/5

I think when movies have an easy logline — boy's girlfriend is a robot, say — then going into the movie requires the patience of waiting for everyone else to know what you already went into the movie knowing. I now, 41 years later, understand the easy appeal of those loglines as a way to get people in, but the trade-off is an ultimately unsatisfying first twenty minutes as we twiddle our thumbs until shit happens. And from that moment where shit happens—a totally fine movie to be enjoyed passively. It knows what it is and does it well enough.

The guy you didn't count on.

Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back — 1/5

ugh christ, i just realized this was the sequel rather than the original. I wanted to watch this because I'm interested in exploring Christopher McQuarrie's relationship with Tom Cruise, because I fucking love 'Edge of Tomorrow' and have such extreme disinterest in the entire Mission: Impossible franchise, and 'Jack Reacher' seemed to fit into this interesting low part of Cruise's career where he could have very easily been stuck in DTV vehicles for men to watch other men fighting other men, and I'd heard enough 'hey, it's not bad' to risk entry. ugh this was trash, it was such a long two hours, and I watched the wrong fucking movie, jesus. Feels like where this lines up with Mission: Impossible is with Tom Cruise thinking people like him because he's Perfect Guy. So smart!! So talented!! And he never says anything interesting!! At least 'Edge of Tomorrow' showed the long slough of becoming flawless. The smile at the end of that movie is one of my favorite cut-to-credits moments cuz he fucking earned that shit-eating grin.

It's interesting but I'm not interested.

Love on the Spectrum, S3 — 3/5

This is my reality television trash. It's heartwarming to see these little sweet, awkward weirdos find people who match up to them. And the show, over the years, has done a good job of laying out the spectrum within "...the Spectrum." But I'm probably less interested in it than I have in other years; it's all the same beats, and this could very well be the last season I watch of it. Here's a free idea you'll never read: focus on the parents? They're interesting, and they've shown a massive amount of patience in raising these people.