P-p-p-p-preach!

The Boys S5 — 2.5/5

"On the other hand, the show is at its worst with everyone else, scrambling to find purpose when we only really care about the two people who will inevitably meet in the final issue to finish it off." And here we go, continuing to ride that train of thought. The show keeps trying to tell us Hughie is the central character and, sure, no offense to the boy, he's got a place here, but it's not his show. It is, as with every season, a show that belongs to Anthony Starr and Karl Urban who are so good at embodying the worst of us. Anthony Starr's Homelander and Urban's Billy Butcher go from defiance to evil to childlike to petulant to funny, turning on a knife's edge. They're every reason we fall in love with narcissistic people, because they are so charming and so compelling and that knife just hanging above our heads is so dangerously seductive, because surely it will fall on anyone but me. (They are the Chosen Ones, but at least they've chosen me to stand by their side.) Their smile is perilous. And so, finally, as foreordained, they meet in the end for an epic battle and... it's fine. This season should have been a downhill race to a conclusion but plot device after plot device, go here, do this, find that, oops find this other thing, oh hey there's a new character, created a circuitous path to its predestination. How exactly it would play out was left to be seen, but we all had a pretty good idea of how the final battle would go. But, unfortunately, it doesn't end with them. It keeps going, cooling down and then trying to heat the scene back up, but by then one half of the team was missing and it couldn't quite recover from that.  

Compared to my husband, he's nothing.

No Other Choice — 3/5

Had this been a tighter movie, it would have been a better movie. Asian Mads Mikkelsen is a surprisingly gifted comedic actor, but the beats play out for far too long. It's trying to be some version of 'madcap' but the added energy just slows things down. And so it fails to just be a fruitful "dark comedy." So more then is put on its psychological weight, and two interesting points that the movie makes, but points which start to push at each other: 1) capitalism will do us all in, but not before setting us against each other and 2) how we all just fall apart at the prospect of learning new skills and perhaps going down a rung in our class position. People are stubborn, and capitalism is destructive. I think the second point is easy to make, and I think the movie makes it easily and clearly and obviously. ("We fucked, fam.") The first point is more important, and harder to convey: we don't have to throw our bodies on the churning gears, but, when the hour strikes, we can choose to be nowhere near those gears. We have to lose something; but we may at least have a choice in what we lose. It's that choice to maintain what we've accumulated that fucks us in the ass. Anyway, I'm not even sure the movie was trying to make that point but I think that's the point that I would have liked it to make. 

I'm of the belief that certain people are cursed.

Euphoria S3 — 2.5/5

And thus ends what feels like a contractual obligation. Y'know, I never watched this thing for the story. It's a fun watch, and I think it's the closest perhaps we've gotten to a music-video-as-movie. It's full of color and music and standout images but never felt like it got lost in its art direction; it's vibes (and thus definitive of the late 2010s). It had extreme highs and extreme lows—you can't say it didn't swing for the fences! I appreciate that!! Now — which fence? And on what side? And in whose yard? Indeterminate. I think with this season, the show unfortunately will be remembered as a celebrity grab bag and 'a point in time' for a selection of famous actors and actresses. At some point during these episodes, I thought, cynically, that Sam Levine, former addict, was maybe making a point that though we look down on drug addicts, there are other addictions that we don't think as little of: addiction to attention, power, and class aren't nearly as bad. But do some heroin? Aw, man, ur fucked. I say I looked at this cynically because I think in that view it becomes a bit of "yOu dARe pOINt yoUr fiNgERs aT mE??" which is maybe unfair to him, I don't fucking know the guy. But then the last episode ends and nothing leading up to it really comes together to achieve epiphany, so it really ruins the opportunity to try to say all of it was about anything. The show ends with a showdown between two people we have not followed across multiple years. Fair enough—by this point, the rest of the cast had just became a bunch of people who used to share a space now leading scattered lives. They moved beyond the need for the show, so the show moved beyond a need for them.

Thats too stupid, isn't it?

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie — 4.5/5

What a fucking delight. The more I write about it, the more I'll remember it, and I'd rather just go in to my next viewing having forgotten my thoughts on this, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Shit, man, just reading the wiki on the filming of this thing is so fucking fun. 

I have a purpose. You don't.

Marty Supreme — 2.5/5

For about an hour, I was into it, I think maybe because I just really like ping pong, but at just over the hour mark, as Marty does yet another terrible thing that he must get out of, it occurs to me — I think they want me to think this is a comedy? "Look at this trial of errors that this confident/ce man operating on pure self-belief gets in and out of, what a silly compelling life." It is at this point that I realize that Marty Supreme is a fucking dick, and I'm following an asshole. I think in this way, Josh Safdie is the heir apparent to Martin Scorsese, making movies about people which can be viewed by some as a warning, except they make their lives seem so appealing. "Being a bad man's bad, except for all that fun we had." And so, to cut to the end, I think that final scene is basically a Rorschach test for what you think of Marty. Do you like him, find him a fun funny character? Then that new child is salvation, a path towards forgiveness and turning your life around, around it. Do you aspire to be him (you fucking hustle-bro)? Then those tears are for the renewed motivation to keep on hustling, to hustle even harder because now you're not just doing it for yourself, you're doing it for an other. Do you dislike Marty? Then that baby is an excuse, and whatever path you choose next, you get to credit / blame that child for sending you on that path. Leave that life? "I have a baby at home." Continue on? "I'm a father, a father has to provide." I don't like Marty, so I think that baby is just a new way out of a jam. If you can't win, then find a way to escape cleanly.

Just walk with me a little longer.

The Long Walk — 2.5/5

Reading the wiki on 'The Running Man' >>> written by Richard Bachman née Stephen King >>> who also wrote this >>> sure, I'll bite. People tend to make good movies out of Stephen King's writing, if they choose to keep the premise and throw away everything else. I think the premise, unfortunately, doesn't quite feel updated enough to be relevant. I want to say it's unbelievable but, then again, it's everything Mr. Beast does, isn't it? And so could have used a bit more of that spectacle rather than just sort of the lonely sadness of doing the walk without the ostentatious television presenter to make it work. Richard Dawson that shit, my brothers. As is, it's a fun enough way to stick philosophically-hued conversation between bouts of violence, which I'm not mad at in theory, except I don't really think the conversation is forceful enough to have changed the character at the conclusion.

I cannot live without my life.

Wuthering Heights — 4/5

Well, well, well, look who's been shitting on Emerald Fennell for the past year, who now has to eat said shit. It's me! Man, this movie looks and sounds fucking great. Flesh-covered walls, blood red skies. "I think I'm going to die in this hoooouuuse." I thought this story was some 'Jane Eyre' shit, but man — Guillermo del Toro wishes he could capture this kind of gothic atmosphere. This movie feels dangerous. It feels like a distant world; I am compelled by the people in it. Jacob Elordi continues to embody the worst boyfriend you could ever have. At some point, I've told someone that he'd make a better Frankenstein than a Frankenstein's Monster, and here you have it, proof positive. And I think here Emerald Fennell is still doing that contrarian shit, except unfortunately I am also a contrarian, oops, and I happen to share a sentiment here — love is a destructive force. Love turns people into monsters. Love kills people. There has to be a force greater than that, because I don't think it's the answer everyone is thinking it is. 

This is America, goddammit.

The Running Man (2025) — 2.5/5

"Whatever Happened to Edgar Wright?" is a book I'd like to read one day. This movie has so many bad decisions in it. Ugly character designs, a character that feels important introduced 30 minutes before the ending, a host and producer who should be the same character for the sake of *taps wristwatch*, and a main character whose defining trait is as 'the angriest man in the world' who never gets to fulfill that rage in an act of pure catharsis. And yet, the premise of this movie is one I love so much that I still kind of enjoyed watching it. Fuck me. 

I don't care if I never get back.

Eephus — 3/5

An 'Eephus,' as the movie explains, is a ball thrown by the pitcher that goes so slow that the hitter loses all sense of time. And, of course, if you're going to name yourself after the smallest thrown pitch in baseball, you're probably searching for the same effect. It succeeds in that! But also, I'd say, it never quite reaches the meditative timeless state I'd have hoped for. I really wanted this to be some 'Perfect Days'-esque Zen account of baseball, only I think it lacked the beauty of a painting in its presentation. Good idea, heart's in the right place, but I think it never quite stops feeling small; it never really makes a case for baseball as the beautiful game.

I see no value in you.

Send Help — 2/5

I read a stray comment calling this 'mean-spirited' and that was stuck in my head as I watched this. I think it's a good read on the situation. This is a movie with a great premise. I hope they remake it someday! Make it into a romantic comedy. Make it a reluctant buddy adventure. Make it a 'Misery'-like thriller. I would watch and enjoy each of them. Just please, for the love of god, pick a fucking path. This movie's trying to be all of these things, and that's the tangible problem that can be touched, but I think it's that 'mean-spirited' that underlines it all: this movie doesn't like its characters. The boss is an irredeemable asshole. Rachel McAdams (who I really enjoy in the role!) is a loser. Both are the villain. Okay, so who do I root for? 

Sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost.

Sisu: Road to Revenge — 2/5

Motherfucker, I am tired of sequels not enumerating. This is the second time I'm on a plane watching the wrong fucking movie. Sigh. I did not like this movie very much and unfortunately it has killed any desire to watch the original. It feels like it means to be a comedy, except it's, like, got a serious sadness in the heart of it? I would not describe that as a great combination, my brothers. Imagine Jackie Chan in 'Drunken Master,' except his drinking is motivated by the fact that his family was chopped up into little pieces. I unfortunately need my comedies to not take themselves so seriously. I would have loved for this movie to be made by the guy who made 'Hundreds of Beavers.' 

Look for the blood and the smoke.

Warfare — 2/5

First of all — every five to ten years, every promising young male actor in Hollywood should be made to star in an ensemble war movie together, so that we may pinpoint a moment in time, and separate the wheat from the chaff. Secondly — with this, I think I have to give up on being excited for Alex Garland movies. 'Annihilation' and 'Ex Machina' and '28 Days Later' have engendered a great deal of appreciation for him at his best, and we can't always be at our best, can we. This movie feels like a counterweight to 'Civil War' — a movie I really enjoyed! That movie felt like 'there can be no objectivity in journalism,' we are choosing sides by what we choose to show. And this movie feels like 'this is what objectivity looks like' and boy howdy is objectivity pretty fucking boring. All there is is people in a place at a time, disconnected from larger history, separated from who they were and will be. I'm not against that fundamentally, it can have value. It's just I don't know that I disliked this movie so much as I didn't gain anything from it. I don't remember the characters' names. I don't have a larger takeaway. I don't think the characters have a larger takeaway, other than a loss of legs. It's never that exciting, never that tense, never that comedic, never that dramatic. 'This is a thing that happened.' Sure, but can you tell me your reason for choosing this thing that happened over the myriad of things that happen? Why is this one so important to you? The movie lacks authorial intent. It's objectivity as the height of mediocrity.

I could use a tuny fish sandwich.

Big Business — 3.5/5

I've got too much history with this movie to do anything but build it up. My sister watched it a hundred times, and love is created through repetition. Everything in the movie is familiar like family, so what I say can't be trusted. I want to give it a 4, if not for the fact that it's a perfect 3.5/5 movie. 

Also I think Fred Ward might be one of my favorite actors?

Letting everyone down would be my greatest unhappiness.

Marie Antoinette — 2.5/5

I've no real interest in Sofia Coppola, but I watched this movie because I was interested in exploring my view of her as 'a person who makes movies about princesses stuck in castles' vis-à-vis an actual princess, in an actual castle. Coming out the other side of it, I now harden my dislike for her and think of her as more of an Emerald Fennell of a previous generation. For a large part of this movie, it paints a portrait of Marie Antoinette that I can forgive. She has no idea what goes on in the outside world, a princess in a castle, protected from what is actually happening and thus with no idea what questions to ask of it, nor what she is doing wrong within it. She exists for others within her sphere, always on display, and she becomes what they expect of her — a thing to talk about. She gets fancy clothes and candies and she wants what anyone wants, which is to entertain our way out of boredom, and there's no one to tell her no and give her the reasons why. So, my bad, I thought the movie was leading towards a "let them eat cake" moment that became the punchline to a joke of a life where she truly does not know why they can't, you know, just pivot from bread. Instead, the movie ends with these sad scenes of her bowing to a crowd and being driven away by carriage. The feeling of those scenes is 'aw, poor princess' and the movie quickly goes from 'she isn't innocent, but she's ignorant, made that way by others, and I can acquit her of any larger crime' to 'I think this movie legitimately wants me to feel sympathy for her?' which brings upon me the fellow-wealthy Emerald Fennell connection, and the general 'we must forgive the privileged amongst us' right-leaning centrist-ass view that I've seen in her films. But whereas I think Emerald is trying to push us all a bit further to the right, away from the class consciousness which would throw her against the wall, I think Sofia Coppola keeps making movies where she wants us to console her for her position within the upper-tier. She wants us to feel bad for Marie Antoinette and me, personally, I can find a way towards forgiving her, but I draw the line at trying to feel sympathy towards her.

The things that are that are not.

The Secret Agent — 4/5

According to the internet, the Brazilians have a culture of not wanting to bring up the past. This was helpful to fully understand the movie! But also, to the movie's credit, it created in me that curiosity to seek out more information. At its core, it's a serious movie, but completely surrounded by these curious and compelling choices. It's not a mystery movie, but it arouses mystery in me. It makes me want to learn more! Why is there a severed leg murdering people?? What is happening in the north vs the south of Brazil?? So, on a surface level, I was able to enjoy the movie despite not fully getting it, but learning what the culture is about helped me understand what the movie is about. At the end, when Wagner Moura appears in his second role, both clearly his father's child and totally removed from his father, there is this sense of hope that quickly becomes muddled. I didn't understand it while watching it, but later, upon learning, did it register. There is a hope that the past leaves a legacy: a son takes on his father, a nation is better for what came before... and the disappointment of that being both true and not true. The American axiom of "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" kind of flipped on its head, with the opposite also being true — we can't hold all of history in our head, it gets scattered, becomes unfinished fragments, barely remembered thoughts, we can't recollect how all the pieces came together, and so we are destined to do it all over again.