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.