Slow Horses S1 — 3.5/5
This was fun and I enjoyed it. Gary Oldman is an asshole but he's also treated like an asshole, which is the only way I will accept it. Some of the bits got confusing, but as previously established, I'm a dumb-dumb. When I finished the series, I was like sure, I'll watch another season, but now that a week's passed, not sure it's at the top of my to-do list. And so it goes.
John Candy: I Like Me — 3/5
If you like John Candy, this is enjoyable enough to watch. You see some of his personal life, and you learn some things you didn't know. It does not have an overarching throughline or manage to sum up his life's story. It's a bunch of people you like talking about a guy you like, so it feels more like friends gathered for a remembrance rather than a dissection. It's a comfortable movie in that way. It's a project whose primary concern is allowing people to mourn.
Roofman — 2.5/5
This would have made for a great '80s movie, had it been made in the '80s. "Oh, that's the Toys 'R Us movie," says both my sister and mother, separately, which shows this movie had its finger near something interesting. But instead of infusing this movie with a banger soundtrack and the charm of two attractive people getting on, it instead chooses this low-key dramatic awkward downbeat "improvisational realness" quality that I associate with the Duplass Brothers. And that shit is boooooooriiiiiing. And the events play out pretty much as they happened. The trailer promised a fun movie! The end credits, even, they show real news clips and interviews with real people involved, and it suddenly has this 'Bernie' quality which I would have loved to have had interspersed throughout the movie. Between the promise of the movie that appear before and after the movie, the middle is a true story that's stranger than fiction, but which needed an added layer of fiction to find some truth in it.
Poltergeist — 3.5/5
This is my first time watching! Though I'd seen maybe the whole movie in bits and pieces across time. I'm in the camp that says that Spielberg was heavily involved in this, and it might be the most Spielbergian thing he's had a direct hand in? (Maybe 'E.T.', I'd need to rewatch it.) What his movies have is a greater sense of cinematography than people first think of, but I think the cultural feeling of Spielberg is much more downstream. There's a very '80s use of color in this and movies of its ilk that feel beautiful, but less overtly considered. Less film-ic. You know, more in tune to the choices of a middle-class suburban family. Lots of browns and yellows with pops of red which were iconic and symptomatic of the kitchens and clothings, but also just the look of the film coloring processing of the time. This movie's style is closer to 'The Goonies' than 'Jaws.' (So, in this thesis, "Spielbergian" is directly tied to our concept of what the '80s looked and felt like, and perhaps why that Spielbergian feeling went away once we left the decade. His feeling is twisty-tied around a decade's aestheticization.) It's also the most overt horror movie this secret horror director has made. Unfortunately, the movie's visual effects allow it to go only so far. The parts that work, work remarkably; I think Spielberg's success as a horror director is being to tap into very normal, and very real residential fears. (What's that in the water? Is that guy following me? Why doesn't my wife understand me? What's that noise downstairs?) Stairs stacked in the kitchen? Killer. Anything having to do with flickering light? Homina homina. Things floating around a bedroom? Ehhhhh. Mostly everything that involves more complex visual effects leans closer to 'Ghostbusters' than 'Close Encounters,' which pushes this closer to a comedy than a horror film. And tone-wise, I love that balance as the actors play it. With JoBeth Williams, you get that wonder and terror all rolled into one. She's great! Her smile and laugh is wonderful, both on the verge of tears. She is both frightened for her child and amazed at what is happening. Heather O'Rourke carries the same ability. (Craig T. Nelson, on the other hand, is an actor I simply do not understand, a comedian who looks like he's running for senate as a Republican candidate. A man who makes you smile even as he tries to take away your abortion access.) But where it works in tone, it stops working in mood. The effects feel too fabricated, too much like a too-friendly horror movie where no one can really get hurt. I think it could have worked if they just left most of that stuff in people's reactions. We may need to see it to believe it, but we don't need to see it to be frightened of it.
Suspiria (1977) — 2.5/5 (rewatch)
I didn't get the appeal of this movie when I originally watched it, and I don't love it on my second watch, but I understand it better. An epiphany for me in the past year or two has been the notion of 'tone' in movies, and on the other side of that is 'mood.' Tone is words. Mood is visuals. Tone is emotion. Mood is feeling. I like tone movies, perhaps because I both desire and need things to be said aloud (because I'm a dumb-dumb). I like when the accompanying music has lyrics. They all work together to create a rhythm which my body falls into. I don't love mood films, as they seem very intent on things not being said aloud but inferred; a feeling created for you to identify (if you can). Movies for art directors, movies for people who want to admire the choices that were made. "Challenging, but worthwhile." "Great cinematography" as a marker for a movie's value. Given the choice to stare at a painting for an hour and a half, or read a story, I'll choose the words. This movie is very pretty to look at; it's got great mood. If you like to live in paintings, here you go.
Vampyr — 2/5
It's no -sferatu, ha ha ha. (The crowd roars, demands more.) Really fun visual effects for its time and the occasional beautiful sequence. "A dream-like quality." (The crowd storms the stage.) A scant one hour and 15 minutes and feels every second of it. (The crowd tears me apart; I am no more.)
StageFright (aka Deliria aka Aquarius aka Bloody Bird aka Sound Stage Massacre) — 2/5
The first two minutes are a banger, and leads you to believe you're in for an MTV New Wave sex-killer 'West Side Story.' The illusion is quickly dispelled.
London — 2.5/5
What a masculine movie. It has a lot of boys crying and releasing their deep-seated fears, but with such a laddish quality. The boys had too many drinks and are getting emotional. Worries about dick size and impotence and the proper fucking of women. I don't want to pass those off as silly because they are serious male concerns, but writing it down and saying it aloud, it feels so weak, doesn't it? Which is of course the dilemma. How does a man reveal himself without destroying what makes him a man? It's an interesting aspect of the movie! It's sub-Quentin Tarantino / Christopher McQuarrie by way of one-room play, but it's aiming for something deeper.
Also, I hate Chris Evans' hair in this movie. I think he's had trouble as a successful actor because he hasn't really figured out his role. At times he is the intelligent jock, the charming douchebag who can have a deeper conversation. He would perhaps have been equally good in any of Glen Powell's roles. But his Captain America role, which he excels at, really puts a blocker in trying to place a a consistent theme throughout his career.
The Masque of the Red Death — 3.5/5
Del Toro wishes he could capture the mood and artistry of this movie. Cheap around the edges, yes, but something beautiful and poetic about it. I'd put it adjacent to 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'? Though less outright crazy, and with more control on the part of the nobles who think their high status can save them if they just wall themselves off from the outside world. I think this movie does a good job of positioning satanism as less 'evil' and more of the 'I'm just a realist' variety, speaking plainly about the truth of the world as though it was the intention of the world rather than the thing to be solved. Using their power to keep things as they are, and to remind people that that's why it is, as though that was the right and total thing. Had he a kinder voice, Price's killing of the villagers who have sought escape from the Red Death might be seen as a mercy. He loses his "decency" by speaking plainly. He's paired well with Jane Asher who has a wonderful softness to her, making her a great guest into this world.
Jack Reacher — 3/5
Finally, I watched the correct one. Go me. This movie contains a banger opening scene, and honestly, separately, one of my favorite silly fight scenes of all time, the latter of which is also emblematic of the problem with the rest of the movie. Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher is just Serious Man Smarter Than Everyone Else. And I don't know if I can put the troubles on Tom Cruise as much as how the character and movie is built. Robert Duvall comes in towards the end and gives this movie a spark, partly because of just who he is, and partly because he's someone who can take the big man down a peg. Humor, in this movie, is a shining light of hope, making the movie repeatedly watchable as any good TNT movie is, and which it is often trying to completely smother with seriousness. I think people now associate action and humor as "The Marvel Tone," but it's really just as simple as the template to 'Cheers' and most decent sitcoms: say something serious, and undercut it with a joke. It's a great formula. And it doesn't mean you can't be grave; it just means that when that when that formula goes missing, you take the serious parts more seriously. I think it's why Avengers: Endgame works so well for me? All the jokes from all those movies allowed you to let your guard down, and be hurt by it. Anyway, uhhh this movie needed more humor, ty. Props also to Rosamund Pike who brings some comedy to the role, I didn't expect it from her.
Friendship — 3/5
Stuck somewhere between Tim Robinson in 'Detroiters' and Tim Robinson in 'I Think You Should Leave.' Guess which one of these I'm more a fan of. The first twenty minutes of this movie, I was surprised at how well it was pulling itself off. Tim Robinson was playing what he tends to play, and Paul Rudd was playing a spiritual successor to Brian Fantana, a mixture of A24's seriousness and Adult Swim's who-knows-what, creating a really lovely feeling. (Is Adult Swim just a pipeline to A24? Both have mastered a certain aesthetic, clearly skilled hands behind the wheel, but also the laziness of 'hey, it's not for everyone' which is just an intellectual disguise for 'maybe someone else will pour more meaning into this than we are capable.') But from there, I thought it would take me down a path of 'the awkwardness of ending a friendship', and the hallucinations of what a friendship actually might look like, and instead takes me to the inevitable end result of Tim Robinson's narcissistic manchild who is only a few degrees away from being an actual psychopath. I didn't like that following that journey as much.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles — 2.5/5 (rewatch)
I've long not liked this movie, though I've felt wrong for it, and I can now in good faith put it behind me. To be fair, the ending is iconic! Five minutes of a great musical sound bed beneath an overwhelming sense of understanding and empathy. That five minutes can live alone, in isolation, for eternity, as a short movie unto itself. I think it's probably best viewed in that isolation! Because the preceding 90 minutes damage it. Both characters in this movie suck. Steve Martin in an obvious way: I don't like grumps, even when their grumpiness is well-founded. But John Candy also in an obvious way, but harder to point fingers at him because he's got a sadness and can turn that dial in his favor. The movie reminds me of the trouble I had with 'A Real Pain.' I'm not that interested in indulging in bad characters who don't have the ability to fundamentally change. This movie ends, that five minutes of emotional goodwill closes, and Neal Page and Del Griffith will return to who they are, rested after a Thanksgiving meal. That said, it feels like there's a longer movie in here. Neal's troubled relationship with his wife appears in hints, but feels like there was a larger story intended there. If I had to imagine what that was, and how that might have made this better: this movie is meant to be less about a man understanding another man's secret sadness, and more understanding how another person's love (a wife in both cases, and potentially Neal to Del and Del to Neal) can save a person and make them worthwhile. A person they don't need to change for, but want to change themselves for. In the movie, Neal's epiphany is about Del. I imagine in the longer movie, his epiphany is about himself. That's the imaginary movie, though. As it exists, I think this is a movie liked by difficult people.
Ludwig — 4/5
It's a detective thing I like!! Which comes down to a few things. 1) It's a detective show that views its mysteries as provable by logic, which equates to, in many of the cases within its mystery-of-the-week formula, that you could in fact solve it on your own were you smart enough to do so but 2) I'm not smart enough nor do I feel dumb for not being smart enough, because no one else is either, placed next to as they are with the world's preeminent puzzle-setter who is 3) incredibly fallible. He's a know-it-all but he's pushed into a situation that's beyond him, which makes him uncomfortable and tests his faith in his knowledge, and he doesn't have that autistic asshole persona that often comes with these abilities. He is often the butt of the joke. And it's funny! And well-cast! And there's the feeling of a very serious mystery beneath the lightfooted-ness.
Fight or Flight — 1/5
I honestly have no idea what guided me here. A stray comment on a 'best of 2025' blog had me chasing a nothing film, the hope of a light movie with larger ambitions, "fun fight scenes" capable of engendering epiphanous thought; the dream of 'Crank'. I am digging through the forgotten aisles of a video store to find the overlooked gem. I did not find it here.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — 3.5/5
These movies keep getting better while continuing to be not as good as they should be. But this one has Josh O'Connor! Great actor, and great comedic actor. He's got a strong moral compass, and he understands his body and the directions in which to move it. Part of me wonders if the movie was better just being him as suspect and detective? The detective priest, rooting out the moral decay. The Culprit at the Pulpit: A Jud Duplenticy Mystery. But no, we still have Benoit Blanc, who is fun but also little more than an accent, and who is surrounded by famous actors who aren't given very much to play with, or who don't know how to play up what they have. But beyond that, a bit of an epiphany for me. The mystery is fine enough, and I've often claimed that a great mystery is a movie that you could have figured out, but didn't, 'Dial M for Murder' being my high expectation that no one else can meet. But the other aspect of detective things — and the latest season of 'White Lotus' fell into this as well — is that I can't fully lose my self-awareness if I'm focused on figuring it out before it plays itself out. I'm hyper-aware of clues and false leads, both a feeling of wanting to feel smart and wanting to not feel dumb. I keep trying to figure out the magic trick. I can't fully escape the box. So, y'know, I'll take personal responsibility for that bit.
Cocaine Quarterback — 2/5
In terms of the right things in the right place, this would have been a great article. And someone would have tried to turn it into a movie, and it would have been more entertaining but also less interesting. But instead they turned it into a three-episode docu-series instead of a full-length documentary because that form softens the edges of this thing which is already pretty soft around the edges. Told pretty straightforwardly, with interesting characters appearing here and there, a ridiculous amount of money passed back and forth by some idiots. It's fun enough! I don't know why I'm rating decently fine things so poorly lately! It's either because I have seen the mountaintops and all pale in its shadow, or that I just increasingly place value on my time, and whether or not it's being wasted.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Brief Encounter — 3.5/5
I think for me, there's a thought that if this were Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, I would probably be taken by it more; the natural charm, two people bigger than whatever current relationship they're in who find each other, but bound all the same by a pre-existing contract with a lesser being who isn't bad, simply nice enough. But I think the beauty of this movie is how normal Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are. "Do you realize, Sir, that if Celia Johnson could contemplate being unfaithful to her husband, my wife could contemplate being unfaithful to me?" is the truth of it. I appreciate from there the leanness of the movie; a grand romance told in 86 minutes and just a few weeks of knowing each other. There's an undeniable beauty here and I, like Alec, fall in love with Laura with her big eyes and pursed lips. Middle-class as they are, they both, bathed in the light of love, become more attractive as the film goes on. Though I think then, my ultimate disconnect is that I don't fall in love with Alec. He seems too forceful, too sure, the romance seeming less like an accident, a giant hole that they just happened to step into. She fell; he leaped.
Caught Stealing — 2/5
I'm looking to figure out where Aronofsky is in this, and I simply could not tell you. Put any number of generic directors at the front of this and I'd believe more easily it came from them. What's up with all these famous intellectual directors out here making Steven Soderbergh jaunts? Are they trying to prove they can have fun? Fucking stop it, you're not fun, it's not what you do. This movie, at its best, is trying to be some take on 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,' fun smaller characters caught up in a bigger world, but neither side of the equation is all that interesting. I didn't know this going in but I should have been made wary by this movie being based on "the first in the [person] series of novels." When has that ever worked out? Movies keep trying to make these 70s-adjacent character-centric novels into bigger things, and Jack Ryan's been the closest to success, and even his movies are all pretty blah. What is it that keeps those novels from working at movies? Austin Butler is certainly fine here, but his Hank Thompson is not some Fletch-level of character where you can see where people might want to follow him further. The casting here is left and right; Regina King is woefully miscast, Zoe Kravitz continues to play herself, the Facebook version of cool, and I'm surprised that the generic AI-generated phone voice we heard throughout the movie belonged to Laura Dern, and then Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Matt Smith all think they're in 'Snatch,' which, good on them for thinking they're in a better movie. They're broad sketches of characters in a movie that's focused on little details that don't matter. What's it matter that Hank don't drive, that he has an alcohol problem, that he likes the Giants? Ah, so the finale is in a Mets stadium? Oh, no, they're just passing through? Nvm. It's just notes on a character, fleshed out but with no blood pumping through their veins.
Couples Therapy S4 — 5/5
Re-reading my review of the last season, I feel like I've probably said all I need to say about this show. Each episode is a universe and it always takes me way too long to finish each season because each episode is both very heavy, and very filling. If any new realizations this season, maybe the ways in which Orna is increasingly challenged by people she does not know and whose lives she cannot know, and so the tools she has to help may not be the right tools for them.
The Lowdown — 3/5
As much as I wanted this to be a pseudo-sequel to 'Reservation Dogs', it's really more an Ethan Hawke piece than Sterlin Harjo's. The edges of this world retain a faint outline of the exceptional casting and chemistry of that earlier show, but as the show reaches its conclusion, it's clear that those edges never really mattered; hamstrung by being a show rather than a movie, needing to fill out whole episodes with new characters and side-steps. At its core, it's a mystery, and only a mildly compelling one. In the conclusion, Hawke's character lays it all out in a long monologue, which is helpful, because the show didn't really help piece it together. It's a bunch of snacks calling itself a meal. But anyway, lately I am interested in figuring out the core of actors and directors—definitions—and this show helps me piece together Ethan Hawke: he's a dirtbag boyfriend! He cares more about being right than being good. "I'm just being honest" as a 5'10" male, unafraid to hurt your feelings because he's being pure to himself, self-righteous in pursuit of a greater ideal which will lose him friends and leave him lonely but at least he's able to sleep at night (alone in his bed). Too handsome to be incel, but an early precursor to the podcast males who have opinions. Draw a straight line from him here to him in 'Reality Bites.' Though the last two or three episodes of this series really did not work for me, the last 10 minutes provoked an emotional response as he, a "truthstorian," has to swallow the truth (the right, honest thing) in trade for doing something good, and you can see how much it sticks in his throat. It is a version of growth, but growth which at first hurts, bones pushing upwards, skin stretching to hold it; it feels tumorous. Is it growth if it destroys what made you interesting? Is it worth being right if you only end up hurting people? So feels like a good ending for the particular character that he embodies.
Eddington — 3/5
Ah, we are in the age of the apolitical political thrillers. "Both sides are a little stupid," says our centrist artist leaders, Ari Aster, Emerald Fennell, Paul Thomas Anderson. They're not wrong, they're just not helpful. I think this movie is both better and worse than 'One Battle After Another.' Better in that it's a more compelling build-up of interconnected parts, worse in that I can't really rationalize what it's building up to. Easily the best "Covid-era" movie made thus far (that I've seen), a clear signpost that "post-Covid" is our new "post-9/11" traumatic time-based movie marker. One united us against a theoretical and fictional common enemy to turn our hate towards, while this one just shows us how much we hate each other. And no matter what you do, it's wrong. I don't know what to do with that. Again, it's not helpful.
Frankenstein (Del Toro) — 2/5
I had given up on Del Toro, mostly because I only like one of his movies, despite the critical acclaim he gets for more than just that one of his movies. But my wife wanted to watch it, and who am I to deny the love of my life, my sweetie, my darling, my friend. Watching it, at least, helps me to define some things I don't like about his style. It's obvious that he's an aesthetically-driven director, but I don't like his aesthetic. I find that his choice of colors are at odds with the movies he's making. I think his movies want to feel like films, but everything looks so digital. Despite everything he does having this aura of horror, everything looks so pristine, so calculated. That thing behind the curtain has been carefully placed. Every scene is a painting, but lacks the loose expressionism of painting, and of dread. His overuse of blue and green tones creates not this aura of strangeness, but of fakeness. It's taking those hues of colored versions of those early Whaley monster movies, multiplied by the neon spray of Spencer Gifts darklight posters. It has a Pottery Barn-level of patina to make it look old, even though new, but just makes it look stuck in the late 90s. Is Guillermo even seen as a horror director? Is that just my perception of other people's perception of him? I'd classify him more as a maker of gothic melodramas. Base level romances or father-son catastrophes, but with a weird monster-who-isn't-a-monster. It's the aesthetic appearances of horror in name only. Man's the real horror, yeah, sure, okay. Anyway, this movie: Jacob Elordi's Frankenstein is compelling until he tells his own story and has this weird awkward way-too-heartfelt smile. Oscar Isaac as father turns from joy to contemptuousness too quickly, and the eventual forgiveness comes too easily. I think there's probably an interesting story about how fathers have no patience for their children, how they can create them but can only mold them so far. But that exists only on the edge of this movie. These Netflix movies just give big names a lot of money, when what they really need to give them is an editor for their ideas. I feel like the Netflix experience is on the other side of history to the studio system. It's an argument against free reign.
