Yippee!

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace — 1.5/5 (rewatch)

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones — 2/5 (rewatch)

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith — 2.5/5 (rewatch)

I haven't seen these movies since they came out and, in the 25 year gap, they have passed into the realm of watchability. What felt stupid 25 years ago is still very, very stupid, but there is now a quaintness to it. Everything feels like a Dreamcast cutscene. It feels like watching a movie from the '40s, in the '90s. Not necessarily good to engage on its own merits, but in order to see how things were. And what becomes fun in these movies is that you can visibly see the new world they're creating getting increasingly better. These movies were released across a 6-year span and, by the end, they looked more and more like the world we now know. In Episode 1, Star Wars traded its pure cinematic quality for brightly lit, flat environments for which to paint a background in the computer. When an actual set appears, it feels like a godsend. But as the movies progress, you can see them figuring out what works and what doesn't, how to hide effects in darkness, how to return a bit of cinema realness to the fake reality they'd constructed. So, too, the characters. As Red Letter Media asks — "who is the main character in The Phantom Menace?" It's no one!! It's just a bunch of people running around until someone gets chopped in half. But the movies becoming better hinge on Hayden Christensen — not on being a good actor, but on being an actual character. You can see everything that girls loved about Twilight in this movie full of attractive young people who can not recognize the very obvious red flags in front of them. He's moody, he's angry, and he's lost, and you can see an iconic character being constructed. And, in my prediction about 'Andor' making these movies better in retrospect, I can see that there's the possibility of a good politically-oriented movie in here! It'd make a good TV show!!! But as a movie, it's just so poorly fucking told. Which brings me to my overarching theory of George Lucas (work in progress): here is a man who lacks patience for progress. He just wants to go fast, zoom zoom, scene transition swipes being an artistic choice less because of the artistry and more because they let us get from somewhere to somewhere faster. Doesn't want to wait for an edit, so invents digital editing. Doesn't want to wait for sets, so popularizes computer graphics. Doesn't want to direct actors, so needs actors who actually care about the material to push back on him. No time for characterization, that takes too long. No time for rewrites, we've got a movie to make. It's a mentality that leads to bad movies but, also, based on everything that came afterwards, you can't deny that these three movies didn't change the world just as much as the previous three did. 

If we forgive our fathers, what is left?

Smoke Signals — 3/5

Everything I love about 'Reservation Dogs' is here, but just the beginnings of it. A fairly standard story, but the Natives at the center and behind the camera manage to elevate it by virtue of simply making it different, because they are different. Every old story can be new if you tell it new, with a different people. And then the worst haircut reveal moment in all of cinema. 

And God knows I've had some rough fuckin' years.

Peacemaker S2 — 2.5/5

Apparently I have only had a better habit of writing consistent reviews for just the past couple of years, because it looks like I did not review season 1. Here goes: it was fun. 

Season 2 is also fun, but lesser. Both seasons are kind of the best and worst of James Gunn — a certain casual lack of effort (or is it effortlessness?) to the set-up, lazy crude jokes, weaponizing needle drops to effectively and immediately communicate 'we're having fun', and surprising emotional depths plumbed from stupid, stupid characters. (Writing that out, I think he's the closest filmmaker equivalent we have to Garth Ennis, the comics writer.) This season's successes ride on John Cena managing to carry emotion surprisingly well, contrasting the buffoon we've mostly known so far. But also this season seemed like it would rather focus on Harcourt, who's whole thing is being emotionally unavailable, so, y'know, not necessarily the best person to place our emotional goodwill. So it just becomes light fun with the occasional touching on something interesting, laddering up to a final episode that does not at all put all the pieces together. I'm halfway through a rewatch of GotG v3 and I think it's obvious that Gunn has a soft spot for the side characters, but then gets sidetracked by the side characters to the side characters. 

I just want to know that it's really happening.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind — 4/5 (rewatch)

I have a lot to say about this movie.

This movie is a horror film.
I think something lost in our view of Spielberg is that those early movies of his really leaned heavily into horror. It's easy to think of that with 'Jaws', because it's commonly put in that category, but also — 'Jaws' never really feels like a horror movie as we've grown to know the genre. It feels like a character set piece with some jump scares and gore. It's scary if you think about it rather than being scary in the moment. And 'scary if you think about it' is something that runs through 'Duel,' 'Close Encounters,' and even 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' which I will call the last movie of the first act of his career. We commonly associate Spielberg with a sense of childlike wonder, more akin to 'E.T.,' or the any number of movies he produced in the '80s. We think of him more as the parody of him, like how we associate De Niro with the caricature of his 'Taxi Driver' role. And there is wonder present in these early movies as well, but also equally present is the other side of wonder — fear. 'What's behind that door?' is both an exciting, and dangerous question to ask. Wonder and fear play off of each other, a thin line separating them. The other side of that door might be your parent there to greet you, or an emptiness where a parent used to be. A child asks 'what if aliens exist,' and the adult version says 'it would freak us the fuck out.' There are scary ideas in this movie. But we don't necessarily see it because Spielberg, I think, doesn't have the language for horror. Had he grown up on 'Halloween', he may have made the musical cues more frightening (the dun dun DUN of Jaws is meant to be scary, but you also can't really take it seriously). Had he the camera knowledge of, say, the version of him that made 'War of the Worlds,' he might have been more hectic with his camera. But I'm glad he has neither at this stage in his career, more molded off John Ford, because what he has instead is unmatched and undefinable. When Billy goes running off into the night... it's odd, but it's not presented as scary. But it is scary... if you put yourself into his mother's shoes. This movie is about people who have an incredibly frightening experience, and people who don't believe them, and wouldn't that freak you the fuck out if that happened to you or happened to someone near you? To either have that happen and not be believed, or to see someone you know change and not be able to follow them through that door? These early Spielberg movies were grasping at this notion of 'wow, what a fun idea' mixed equally with 'opening this ancient relic will melt your face off btw.' Step through this door and you will be changed, but you really need to ask yourself — do you want that? But instead of presenting it as horror, it's presented as natural moments within a suburban life. The terror of everyday life. 

This movie is about coming to terms with something you don't understand.
At the ending of this movie, humans repeat a five-note phrase over and over again in an attempt to be understood, while a giant alien machine responds with increasing complexity. It is like a child saying 'Da-da!' over and over again, pleading to communicate, and a parent responding in full whole sentences that the baby cannot even begin to grasp. And so, to the repeated parent metaphors I'm putting in here — I hated 'The Fabelman's' when I watched it, but I think it's worth a rewatch with this movie in mind; at the very least, having watched that movie helps me enjoy this one more. This is very much Spielberg trying to figure out why his mom left. When I first (and last) watched this movie 20-some years ago, I could not grasp how someone with a family could just so easily leave their wife and children. And now, older, I am aware that this happens all the time, every day, all around us. And I think what I also understand after having a few mind-altering experiences of my own is that the curse of knowledge isn't just that you are changed, but that others are not changed. You enter these experiences, through these doorways of perception, and you will know more than you did before and you will be changed forevermore and no one anymore will understand what the fuck you are saying. Which is, again, scary. But I think through this movie he's starting to understand how someone could just leave. Because they have no choice! They are different now. Call it a mid-life crisis. Call it an alien abduction. They are no longer the person you knew, and they must go now be that new thing. 

All-in-all, I'm glad I gave it another shot after all these years as I walk away thinking I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it. This movie means something. It's important.  

Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow.

The Devil's Advocate — 3.5/5

Long been on my list as something that I'm not sure was highly received, but felt like an entertaining, enduring movie and man, Pacino is having fun, isn't he? He is both terror and cartoon, a Looney Tunes-sized supervillain. Keanu is pretty bad in here, thinking that he can pull off a Southern accent, but also Pacino pronounced 'cyber' as 'kyber' so I don't think anyone behind the camera was actually paying attention to the words coming out of people's mouths. Which creates a good and useful looseness! This could have been more serious, more horror, more good, but it instead is fun; infinitely rewatchable, both lesser-than and better-than, a devil's trade.

Semen demon.

One Battle After Another — 3.5/5

Expectations hurt this one. Not because I expect a lot from PTA, I think he has extreme highs and then a bunch of movies that absolutely do not connect with me despite being celebrated by others. So yeah, the expectations that others create for him make me less interested in jumping into a similar situation of being befuddled by the larger Criterion-American populace. And so—I enjoyed the act of watching this movie, and for two hours kept asking myself — "Is it great yet? Is it great yet?" At the very end, it started approaching something I could rationalize as great? Maybe? I'd have to watch it again to confirm, and to the movie's credit, its form makes it something easy to rewatch. It feels like PTA's 'everything connects in some tenuous way' by way of Soderbergh's light '70s action chase adventures by way of Quentin Tarantino's gritty caricaturizations. So maybe not as fun as those two on their own, but also a bit more than those two on their own. And in the center, some really fun characters!! One of Leo's best roles, Benicio's very best role, Teyana Taylor has an iconic look, and Sean Penn rides a sort of perfect line between serious actor and comedic role. I think, in general, intellectual directors have trouble with humor, and this is probably a better example of them pulling it off, short of, you know, making me laugh. It has a tone! That great undefinable thing that all good movies somehow achieve. And so, to the ending — if I were to try to draw a larger meaning from the movie, and I do have to try, it's that we are all of us going to be failed revolutionaries in whatever respects, flawed as we are with our original and unoriginal sins, but the only hope we have in creating a better world is creating children that are better than us. And part of the way we make them better is that we raise them well, but also that we fail them. They will mirror us, we will see them reflected in us, even in inverse. 

Dunno, I might be forcing it? 

Admit nothing, deny everything.

The Apprentice — 3.5/5

More than a good movie, a useful movie. Part of me wants to feel sympathy for these people because, uh, I'm a good person (?), but if I can push past that, it's a useful tool for seeing how monsters create monsters. The bad news is that they'll exceed their creators. The good news is that they will also destroy them. 

Also, the aesthetics of this movie are great, combo-ing archival NYC footage with the film, creating a verisimilitude. It feels vintage, authentic.

Memento amorous.

28 Years Later — 2/5

Uhhh just a mish-mash of tones and art directions, which makes it for an at-times compelling and often confusing watch. Is this a serious tale on serious earth, an oddball horror film, some story about... archers(?), or a Power Rangers film? All to say, I didn't really like this movie, but I'm also curious to watch the next.

And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.

Unforgiven (rewatch) — 4/5

Wow!! What a difficult movie!!! Just an incredible thickness to the proceedings. The thing that sticks with me within that is this: what is the cost of justice? And does that cost justify it? There are two characters here who are maybe outright a bad guy — the man who cuts up the woman and the bar proprietor — but the rest of them are, in any other movie, a potential protagonist: the formerly bad man looking to take care of his family by picking up his gun to kill a newly minted bad man, the man who still thinks he may have some badness in him, the man who wants to have a badass in him, the man who claims to be badder than he is, the bad guy turned law enforcer, the deputies bad at their job, and the women who do bad things but want to be treated as though they're worth more than a horse. Pick your poison but be sure — it is poison. So was it best just to leave things alone? A functioning civilization will have law in the center and flaws at the edges, and it's those frayed threads that unravel the whole affair. Those women deserved justice. And all would have been settled if they got it when the payment came due. But in the absence of it, an interest is created on the payment due that takes it beyond justice into another realm. I struggle with an idealism to be right and correct in all things (lest cancer form), and what feels to me a truth that mistakes will continue to be made, on and on, here to eternity. A bad carpenter will not make a good house, and we, all of us, hardly know what we're doing. Lately, I am stuck on this notion that society is a thing that is always constantly only ever so barely hanging on. 

The other thematic element at play here is the stories we tell ourselves and others. Bill Munny is chasing a truth, exaggerated, and all those potential protagonists are telling themselves stories about what they are, were, and could have been. A lot of stories, all bending the corner towards 'lie,' but the only real undisputed truth in them is that in the end, a lot of people die. 

This movie is about the edges of morality, and how they form a very sharp corner. 

As a child, I yearned for the mines.

A Minecraft Movie — 1.5/5

Watched it for work. The kids are really making this into something larger than it is, and that's great for them. Really. But also another sign for me that I'm getting old and I, like the generations before me, will cease to understand the world that passes by my window. Good luck out there.

...but what I doooooo that defines me.

Batman Begins — 2.5/5 (rewatch)

The Dark Knight — 4.5/5 (rewatch) 

Let us start with — what a stupid title for a movie. 'Batman Begins.' So dumb. From there, we shall proceed to: Christopher Nolan isn't given enough credit for being a bad caster. Katie Holmes, young Bruce, his dad are all sort of central to the emotions of this movie and they overall carry this feeling of 'they'll do, I just need human meat to say my lines aloud as my camera races forward.' You'd argue, then, 'but look at all the good actors in his movies', and I'd return that he makes easy choices of good actors — of course Michael Caine is a good actor, of course Morgan Freeman, of course Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson. Bale, frankly, is fine and grows into the role, but also let's remember how fucking stupid his Batman-voice is at times (to speak nothing of Tom Hardy's Bane). Whereas Wes Anderson surrounds himself with a repertoire of people who fit his vibe, Nolan surrounds himself with easy choices that can do their work aptly and then thusly get out of his way. Leading me to: I don't think Nolan actually cares about his actors, or directing talent... but I think actors like working with him because they can do whatever they want and he'll trust them. I think what he cares about is plot and energy and and editing and that rule of storytelling that he sort of breaks with overuse within 'Batman Begins': everything connects. I love when movies connect!! But, you know, thematically. Here, it's all just tangible plot details — where Batman comes from, where his armor comes from, where his ears come from. Everything here is designed to have purpose; everything here does not need purpose. It has the feeling of being smart because everything's been so thought-through. But the purpose of a storyteller is to think through everything, and then subtract until it becomes poetry again. 

And so I then watched 'The Dark Knight', which does a lot of what 'Batman Begins' does... just, you know, better. But whyyyyyy. Let us examine. First: you don't need 'Batman Begins' to enjoy this movie, but I think Nolan needed 'Batman Begins' to lay the groundwork for this movie. He needed to overly explain everything in that movie so that he could feel comfortable focusing on thematic connection in this movie. But the tangible plot stuff overly-connecting is still here!!! Everything happens so easily, everything's all going so according to the Joker's plan. BUT, within Joker, you have an almost supernatural force that allows you to excuse how preternaturally "smart" everything is. He is a Jungian force of nature, a cosmic villain, a Loki, a Bugs Bunny, a trickster god. Always in the right place, even when it seems like the wrong place. And so, in that character, Nolan finds his best character because that character fits what he needs as a filmmaker: pure connective force. A thing that pushes against everything, propels everything forward, while holding everything together. And Heath Ledger, truly, is exceptional in the role, an odd choice on the face of it, at first befitting my 'Christopher Nolan is a bad caster' thesis but also living proof that it's all up to you and what you bring to it. And it was fucking brought-en. But also proof that in order for Nolan's movies to work, it can't all just be energy: you've got to have a performance in the center from which everything can spin around.

You want to fight? Or you want to win?

Andor S2 — 3.5/5

Rogue One (re-watch)— 2/5 

Man, it feels like I just watched six seasons of television!! It shoots across four years of life in little three-episode arcs, and the result is a feeling of largeness – to its benefit, and also leaving it not entirely able to carry the weight of the world and its many spinning plates. To the subject of benefit — season 2, like 1, builds up an entire world of characters who aren't Jedis or weirdly-shaped creatures. Top-to-bottom great casting, set design, and tone that set it side-to-side with the Star Wars universe and, as with season 1, proves that there's just as much fun with manipulation and political intrigue as there is with fighting. It feels like the dream of the prequels come to life: a story about senators and issuances of orders and back-channeling as fodder for compelling television! The show's greatest strength, even, is that it makes me want to go back and revisit those prequels, and 'Rogue One,' for which this show serves as a lead-in. Unfortunately, I did that, at least in part, and 'Rogue One' sucks absolute shit. And I think, regrettably, that that little follow-up re-watch will color this review of the show. Never have I so clearly remembered my previous criticism of a movie while watching it and experiencing the same criticism all over again, beat by beat. A fun plot, cool names, beautiful scenery, and characters that immediately register as characters — and absolutely no relationship between them. Who is Andor to Erso? Who is the pilot to the Force bois? Why are they there? What purpose do they serve? They're all Chekhov's gun, minus a basic understanding of Chekhov's gun. It's Zack Snyder-esque 'cool aesthetics as reason enough.' For example: Force Boi 1 dies, leaving with 2 a message of the Force, which 2 takes on, only to die uselessly, in no way relevant to the Force. Okay, awesome. For example: The pilot, repeatedly reminded that he is a pilot, dies while trying to put a wire into a plug instead of, I don't know, flying up there to destroy the signal-blocker. For example: Let's give Cassian and Erso romantic tension, for no reason whatsofuckingever other than that they are both attractive. And, excuse the pettiness of bringing this up, but Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia's unnecessary CGI-ness enrages me all over again, tantamount to seeing Fred Astaire dance with a Dirt Devil. I've stated before that I get upset when things are so close to being good and here, the first time you see Grand Moff Tarkin, he's reflected in a window. It's great. It works. Seeing Princess Leia from behind? It works. And the movie has them turn around and face the screen and jesus christ it looks so fucking dumb. You were so close. You had the characters, you had the plot, you just needed to connect them together. Which, going back to the purpose of Andor the show existing — I think the idea behind this show is great! Take a character from a movie who is hardly fleshed out, and give them flesh; dramas, motivations, characterization. A theoretical outcome of that is, when then we are to see them again in that original movie, it makes that movie better; it has given them a weight that you then take with you. In theory. But the problem of the movie ends up being the problem of the show — he's just a guy who goes from place to place, arguing for control of his life and ceding it at every turn. There's not much there to him. And so the show is stuck trying to give internal thoughts and feelings to someone who needs to line up to our first impression in 'Rogue One.' The show's answer to this is to leave Andor as mostly an interior character, surrounding him with people who are trying to pull him in or out. To middling success. As such, the show's at it's best when it has anything to do with anyone other than Andor. By a wide mile, this show is a better show about political intrigue and the nips and tucks of morality that lead to a better world. More pointedly, this is a better show about Luthen. The largeness of the show works in his favor, seeing all the decisions he believed to be right play out in both directions. Cassian then just becomes an excuse to tether a more interesting story around. Which is fine! You go get that story, girl! But, similar to my criticism of 'Furiosa,' the desire to go right to the edge of when the original starts hamstrings it. And it's better if you just stop there instead of revisiting 'Rogue One' because otherwise that movie just serves as a very mediocre series finale to a show deserving of more. 

Oh and Dedra Meero is a delight and the song playing over Brasso's death is a banger.

Your life is over. But not in a bad way.

Catastrophe S3 + S4 — 2.5/5

I struggle with this show. I think it's got very likeable leads, and I'm probably going to get excited when I see Rob Delaney in anything moving forward, but also this show reminds me of people I know, and a relationship dynamic that I'm frankly not a huge fan of. I wish the show were a bit more 'both people are toxic,' but I feel like the larger toxicity falls on the woman's shoulders. Not to say the man is perfect, but he seems to be trying to improve, or seems to be gracious in compromise. And it's not to say the woman is awful, but more that she (...and he...) can be a pile of needles, and they never will tell you exactly where the needles are on their body when you touch them. Good luck navigating that. The ending of the show, while nice and poetically vague, makes me feel like it's saying 'most marriages are to swim in dangerous waters'... and I don't disagree with that in totality... but the struggle with watching the show is that when they're good together, they're great, and when they're bad, they're awful. And yes, the sex is good. But I wouldn't pay that in trade. I wish the show had bit more of an outsider character to look in on them, to give them a model of what a good relationship can be, because it all starts to feel like staring at the abyss and are you holding hands as you descend, or are you dragging the other person down as you fall deeper?

Habitual

toe-steppers.

It only happens if it doesn't matter.

Wristcutters: A Love Story — 3/5

A great companion piece to 'Adventureland' in that both movies are essentially the same type of movie and approximately the same level of good, except this one's way better. It's biggest departure is being shoddily made, but soon enough you buy into it as part of its charm. It drops you in quickly to a new world and just expects you to keep up. It feels like a somewhat-parody of 'Everything is Illuminated' in that somebody looked at that movie and said 'I think I can make it better.' Like 'Adventureland', it's mostly a mood movie but, unlike 'Adventureland', it ladders up into an emotional catharsis that extends beyond a simple chemical connection. It went in with a point to be made.