It is neither work nor play, purpose nor purposelessness that satisfies us.

It is the dance between.

— Bernie DeKoven

It is not my responsibility

to uphold your reality.

Stand in front of the public, and God, and obliterate yourself.

Tar – 3.5/5

Man, I don't even know if I like this movie as much as I'm interested by it. My main takeaway is take away about an hour of long, drawn-out scenes and you've got a pretty effective dark comedy. I successfully was able to play a shitty iPhone game from 2012 while still managing to feel as though I watched this movie well enough to warrant reviewing it. "Narcissism" is a classification that will always get me interested, if just to learn a little more about what makes them so fucking awful. Thus, my second takeway is this: lying to others starts with lying to yourself. If you reveal your betrayals of others, you would have to then admit to the core betrayal of yourself. And that, simply, cannot stand. Here then is narcississm's countdown, with the tell-tale heart of a ticking metronome. At the end of the countdown lies not the end, but the beginning of a new lie; a new story to tell yourself. And if you don't like the way it sounds, just turn the volume louder.

Each generation better than the last.

Fast X - 2/5

13 returning characters! 5 new characters! One death that seems pretty final! One death that seemed pretty final now back to life! One man disassociated with the franchise, now back with the franchise! Wow!!! If Vin Diesel knows how to do anything, it's bloat. Instead of the fiery car crash ending, we get multiple roads going in different directions. It's a Franchising Opportunity™, baby, sign up now. Meanwhile, we'll continue to get poutier and poutier and the fun will circle the drain. Correct tonality has been the twirling ether of these movies which, when captured, is amazing. It should be serious. It should be stupid. The taking it seriously is the fun of it. And the camp of it all is that Vin Diesel doesn't realize it's dumb. Justin Lin knew it was dumb. Louis Leterrier is just an Alan Smithee for actors who want to have more control over directing. I believe they call this a patsy. But listen, there are redeeming qualities! John Cena was fun (so of course he had to die). Jason Momoa's gay Joker is fun (so of course Vin Diesel has to blame him for the movie's poor performance). If you throw enough shit at the fan, some will stick to the ceiling. The art is knowing the shit that lands on your boot isn't also worth keeping.

Nah. I'm-a do my own thing.

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse – ??/5

Listen, friend, it was... a lot? And this will be a review I re-visit a couple of years from now, after having watched it again, and having watched the next one immediately after. My love for the first part in this now-trilogy is such that I will give it this boon which I have allowed no other. (Also, the sound was weird at Movie Place and I couldn't hear some of the dialogue.) But, to put forth my initial thoughts: it was a lot! I think it may have been too much! And a thought that sticks with me, is that is this movie, unlike the last movie, now talking to itself? Did it go too insular? The death of Captain Stacy, I'd argue, is not nearly as monumental a moment as the death of Uncle Ben, and it's certainly overshadowed by the loss of his daughter, Gwen. Can this wonderful populist entertainment that reflected on and broke open the cultural perception of Spider-Man with the last movie now just be doing that again, but without the "cultural perception"? There's some matter of relatability that is lost. It went full comic book. (And, friend, I am fully comic book, but even so, I don't think having a collection the size of mine should be a pre-requisite.) They could have just made it about loss being central to who Spider-Man is. And that, I think, is a matter of not editing. Why bother? We'll just make two movies out of it. But listen, man, that first movie? Gangbusters. And so I give this a moment more to sink in, because that is the forgiveness that greatness allows – but only for so long. So there you have it for now.

Good name. Totally fits.

Dumb And Dumber To — 1.5/5

I was just telling someone how I thought this would be an infinitely repeatable franchise and I'm surprised they hadn't done a true sequel, only for them to tell me a sequel had been had, and it made $170M, and I never knew, and it also sucks. Everything's the same but different somehow. Was Lloyd always so mean-spirited? Did the first one look so cheap? Jeff Daniels' goofy face still works, and there's a decent handful of jokes within the Family Guy machine gun cadence of jokes that work here. But way too many that don't, and so many of those as to make me doubt how good the original was. So, more harmful than not. 

And suddenly, we're here.

Beef (Season 1) – 3/5

Can I sum up A24 as people who gave an increasing sense of importance to cinematography and design? Beef looks good. Beef looks great, actually. Looking great makes things seem great. It's easier to like things when they look good. It's harder to like ugly things. 'Looks great' creates the illusion of taste. "Oh, the cinematography is beautiful" is not a reason that something is great, but it is a protection, a ward cast. It's hard to dismiss it easily. The premise here is interesting and, at the very end, it starts to answer that promise of interesting – how our private battles become public, but in becoming public, we have the potential to see ourselves in each other. The end makes me excited for where it might go next (if a next is even promised). But getting there was a lot of down, down, down, and I only want to follow someone so far before I need to see them come up. It's torture-as-comedy, and I can only handle that in a two-hour movie. Five hours is pushing it, boss. 

Forgiveness can look like permission.

Women Talking – 2.5/5

Women, they do be talking. I wanted this to be a more interesting movie!! I wanted some 12 Angry (Wo)Men. Talk, debate, disagree. Fight about it. Make it seem like a harder choice? In the end, that is I think the trouble. The choice seems easy. It is easy, for a modern person, in a modern world. These people are not that. They are people who think they are dying because their glasses fog up. It is easy to clean the fog when you have a name for it. 

Shoot me down, but I won't fall, I am Titanium.

M3GAN — 1.5/5

I was surprised at how cheaply made this was? I dunno, with all the talking, I figured there'd be, I dunno, production value. I think M3GAN is a classic case of a filmmaker(s) discovering something towards the end, and by then it's too late to bring it into the rest. A Tiktok-dancing genocidal doll is genuinely entertaining. I don't like this movie, but I hope they take that 30s clip and figure out how to infuse it into a 1 hour and 42 minute sequel. Make it about the unstoppable desire for capitalistic growth. Make it less horror and more dystopia. Keep it Tiktok. There's gold here, honey. 

Things don't change at all that much.

Nobody's new, we're just grown up.

– Sorry Mom — awesome party, reprise

[It is an] observed fact that every person is like all other people,

like some other people, like no other person.

- anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn and psychologist Henry Murray, 1940s

Respectfully, I don't recognize you.

Jury Duty - 3.5/5

I'm not sure what I think about this show exactly. It's genial and fun and they found a star in Ronald. He's a genuinely good dude. I smiled throughout. And also, I don't know how to look at this without thinking he was intended to be the butt of the joke. Yes, he carried himself well, and was funny in his own right, but... what if he wasn't? What if his ass was left out to hang? I can't shake the nagging morality of it all. It's the same nagging I get with Nathan Fielder, though that show somehow manages to feel like art (and thus worthwhile?). I dunno what I've convinced myself of. Forgive me.

I don’t have anything

but darkness to lose. 

— Bob Dylan