If my wife has a bag of gold, do I care if the bag be old?

Kiss Me Kate — 2/5

I think, like a lot of these types of movies, it's a collection of highlights on top of a thin backdrop that creates an excuse to sing and dance. Unfortunately, that backdrop is 'The Taming of the Shrew' which is one of my least favorite pieces of storytelling. And now here it is, in musical form! Yay! There's a good number, and another interesting number, and a fun dance but, beyond that, it's hard to watch for how borderline evil he is, and how weak-willed she is. And then to see them together at the end? Heart-breaking.  

—

In case those links die someday —

Brush Up Your Shakespeare 
Always True To You In My Fashion
Why Can't You Behave 

I just dropped her picture in the group chat.

They Will Kill You — 2/5

Zazie Beetz will star in hundreds of hours of middling entertainment before they figure out what to do with her.  She's great! She's a very physical actress! This movie is a great big nothing! Though it's a type of movie I'm very attracted to, and keep watching, though I can't quite name that many successful movies in the genre. "Fight or Flight" (bad), "Ready or Not" (fine), "Bullet Train" (fine). "Bad Times at the El Royale" (bad). What do you call these movies? Highly stylized and highly art directed action-comedies with bright colors and colorful personalities. Is this just the downstream of my love for 'The Running Man'? Are they just "video game movies"? Your job: get from point A to point B, and kill all these Street Fighter-ass people along the way. It all sounds fun, and so I keep looking to them for the ultimate expression of passive entertainment, fun fight scenes, fun deaths, but they all just end up being boring because they're based in cool character names rather than interesting characters. If it is indeed all just downstream from 'The Running Man', then I'd like to remind executives that that movie is more than its superficials. 

 

I'm so sorry, that will never happen again.

The Moment — 3/5

I think it's interesting!! Charli XCX embodies herself believably. But also, much like 'brat,' it feels like she's creating a body of work that is just a built-in defense mechanism. You can't call me an asshole, I've already called myself one. You can't tell me I'm over-hyped, I'm telling you I'm over-hyped — and I'm anxious about it!! There are times when the movie veers towards comedy — which is the right instinct!! — but too often it gets caught up in that anxiety-as-comedy trend of the past few years which, I repeat, is not funny, it's just anxious. The A24 of it all. But I come back to "did you just make this for yourself?" It feels true, except it's a performance. Are you being for real or are you just saying shit? It's "the thing but subverting the thing" all over again. Ultimately, I think Charli made a bold choice, but what worked about the album — making music for yourself, that also works for others — does not work as well in a movie. It can't just be a movie about you. It has to be about something larger than you. 

And so, we find we belong to them.

The Sheep Detectives — 3/5

People seemed to be chatting about this thing inciting tears and, yes, it did make me shed a couple, but I'm just going to associate that with being old and weak vs young and in touch with my emotions. The movie has a sincerity which I've been clamoring for, but the voice acting feels disconnected from the characters, and the suspects within the detective story feel pretty unexplored, though yes there is some heart at its core. Emma Thompson pops up here and there to remind us what the correct tonality was meant to be. Oh well. Every 20 years, a 'Babe'-level event comes along, and unfortunately that was already answered with 'Paddington 2,' so we'll have to wait another 10 years for another in its line.

Your eyes are beautiful when you cry.

Supergirl (2026) — 2/5

We were all rooting for you!!!! Sigh. I really want James Gunn to succeed because I like his weird balance of hope and edgelord. I really want Milly Alcock to succeed because she has such an interesting face. (Though I think she's probably better served as a villain? There's a hint of unpredictability and danger in how she holds herself.) And here, you just have a bunch of random shit happening. Supergirl gets nerf-ed, re-powered, nerf-ed, repowered, nerf-ed, etc. What is her emotional arc? What does her origin story add to it? Who is Krem, what are his motivations? What even are his powers? Why did he steal swords and never use them? Why does he have a cool mask that we never see him wear? Why does he kidnap girls but not kidnap the girl? What real relationship does she develop with this girl? Why does she care so much that murder is so bad? Why is a 'you shouldn't murder' argument laid clearly beside 'really good reasons to murder'? Sucks, because Milly brings so much to so little. Props to the people who made the trailer for finding the potential for a good story buried inside this movie. Sigh. There are still elements of this world that James Gunn has shepherded that I enjoy, and the few minutes of Superman here make me excited to see him again, corny and genuine and funny. But, uh, based on this, I worry about how much more we're gonna get, boys. 

It doesn't feel that you know that.

Sorry, Baby — 3/5

The humor in this movie works. Eva Victor has a millennial idiosyncrasy that is fun to watch. Unfortunately, that humor only really kicks in about 40m in, after a long trudge through some sad shit.  Shit, I feel like I had an epiphany about A24's weaponization of cinematography?? Uhhhh maybe — they care more about the framing than communicating the feeling. They care more about looking good than feeling good. A few pinpoint-able directors with strong POVs aside, they know how to arm their teams with the aesthetics of how to make something good, but not how to make it fun—or at least something you want to watch over and over again. They have taste, but still need a someone to bring soul into it. I think Eva Victor's next movie will be better once she escapes A24's aesthetic fetishization.

I can do anything I want to, baby. I ain't lost.

Pretty Woman (re-watch) — 3/5

Not a great movie, or really a complete one, but it's easy to see why it was a hit and why Julia Roberts became a star. She's got a "smile that lights up the room." There's a scene with a piece of jewelry about halfway through the movie that feels like improv, causing her to laugh, and if you hadn't fallen in love with her before then, this would have been where the final snare was tripped. She has an inherent quality and, in the movie, she's also playing into what I will define as a then-new type of idealized partner for men: the easy woman. Easy because sex, yes, certainly, but more largely easy in the simplicity of interactions between man and woman. Easy sex, easy conversation, easygoing, adaptable, fits in even when she doesn't belong, gently funny, casually beautiful, unfussy, coming and going at behest of the person paying her money. I think women looked at Julia Roberts and said 'I want to be her' (smile, laugh, lack of anxiety) and I think men looked at her character and said 'I want my partner to be her' (the woman who isn't difficult). She's essentially a less redneck (but still kind of redneck) version of Dolly Parton coupled with this shitty post-'Wall Street' 80s feeling of "I want it all," money and now the woman who will work around my needs. On the other hand, I was always curious to understand why Richard Gere never became a bigger star, and oh, oops, it's easy to see why, no need to have stayed curious. He's handsome, and not much more. He might have made a good Patrick Bateman, though I think he would have played it without irony. But they both fit each other's characters in being morally amoral people. And so what's really interesting about the movie is that she, as a character, isn't someone who regrets her prostitute life. Sure, she doesn't want to be made to feel like a prostitute and, like anyone, wants a happy fairytale ending for herself, but she shows no shame in doing what she does. Can you imagine what John Wayne would have said about this movie? This movie feels like one of those markers in time where you can draw a straight line through Breakfast at Tiffany's "...is she a call girl?" to the more explicit but via art film aesthetics of Midnight Cowboy to the lighthearted mass media representation in this movie, on upwards to Margo's Got Money Trouble and the open-ended "I'm going to show my vagina to men on the internet and we're going to be cool about it." You open the door, and you will find it just leads to another set of doors, in an unending war of escalation. We are about ten to fifteen years away from hardcore penetration in a Best Picture nominee, mark my words. But anyway, the movie. Uhh it tries to invent a villain at the finale in order to figure out how to end a movie that was largely lacking plot and so it ends up feeling rushed and incomplete. But it's an interesting one, mainly because of the overall sense of acceptance in which the character is handled. Hector Elizondo in particular stands out as someone who has this stiff kindness to him, both quick to judge and quick to adjust, perhaps a feeling of lower class solidarity within that; looking out for each other as they become what they need to become in order to navigate upwards.

I'm your court-appointed theatrical agent.

The Running Man [1987] (re-watch) — 4/5

In a scant 100 minutes, this movie reveals 18 identifiable, memorable characters. Here, let me list them:

• Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
• Yaphet Kotto
• Nerdy third guy
• Maria Conchita Alonso
• Damon Killian
• Security guard guy
• Subzero
• Buzzsaw
• Dynamo
• Fireball (who I've only now realized is Jim Brown!)
• Captain Freedom
• that character actor (Kurt Fuller!)
• that guy who was the Principal in Buffy
• that nerdy audience member who can't choose
• that old lady rooting for Ben Richards
• Mick Fleetwood
• Dweezil Zappa 
• The gamblers in the slums (collectively)

A mixture of big stars, stunt-casting, iconic supervillain names, character actors, and idiosyncratic bit players fill every frame of this movie. Each of them bring some element of bigness into every small scene, each surrounding two people who just exude largeness. Early on, Richard Dawson looks at images of Arnold running away from prison and correctly predicts that this man's gonna get ratings. They both have presence, they take up all the space in a room, they control its energy just by stepping through the door. They both look like they could destroy you.

I'm not gonna wait for them to collapse on us.

Coherence — 3.5/5

Inventive, clever, cleverly made. It's easy to dismiss because of its amateur aesthetics, but it's a really smart idea that coasts on the tension of that idea. Stuck in one room but it never feels limited. It ultimately can't carry the weight of its spinning plates, and none of the actors are really strong enough to be the centerpiece that the movie eventually demands of them, but fuck it, it was a good time. I'd love for someone to revisit the idea, feels like it would make for great TV. 

Life is a house of horrors. / I had concerns.

Widow's Bay S1 — 4/5

I'll keep ringing the bell for 'tone' as the bellwether for a thing to be good or bad. Now, I just need to figure out what the fuck goes into making that sound. Seeing Hiro Murai's name at the end of many of these episodes was one clue; he has a consistent touch on things, but the thing I think he has most a finger on is casting and not trying to outwork the actors. Put the right people in a place, and let them do the their thing. Then focus on building that world around them. I said in my Suspiria review — "Tone is words. Mood is visuals. Tone is emotion. Mood is feeling." — and I disliked that movie for only having mood, but here's a show that captures both. Widow's Bay feels like a real place, where a structure is both a home and a haunted house, perpetually on the verge of giving shelter or falling down upon you. Kate O'Flynn, who I particularly love and now have a crush on, does a better version of what Rachel McAdams was trying to do in 'Send Help' which is to feel both empowered and helpless. She is capable of eliciting such genuine sympathy from me. She so acutely embodies a person who has to wake up and face the day, even when the day fucking hates her. A long-running theme of my thoughts (if not my reviews) is that the world is made up of opposites, and we grapple with those opposites to see which wins, which is more powerful, or what third true thing can be found at the apex of them both. The show works because it's built on those opposites. It's comedy, and it's horror. It's life, and it's death. It's doing the right thing, even if it's doing the wrong thing. Acceptance of what you can, and cannot control. Knowing the unknowable. The work of living. In the world they've created, I think we're finally finding an heir to 'Twin Peaks.' 

And do the other things.

Operation Avalanche — 3/5

I'm in a Matt Johnson hole, enamored with 'Nirvanna the Band The Show The Movie', watching the original web series and checking out his earlier movies. I think this movie continues his thread of pure inventiveness. I think there's a theory of making stuff where if you're having fun, the audience will have fun, and that shows, but it also shows how far his tone will take you. The movie wants to at points be a thriller, but resting on his shoulders as the main actor, it can only go so far in that direction (save for a genuinely exciting and apparently improvised car chase scene). It's basically OJ Simpson's "If I Did It" but with the moon landing, and feels about as silly and plausible as that must have felt. 

I recognize myself in you.

Sentimental Value — 4/5

After you have an internal thought, you say it out loud, and then, maybe, for some, you do something with it. Some people don't know how to do that middle part. They skip straight from something happening inside them to needing to explore it in its grandest form. I bet it's frustrating to have them as a parent!!! As executed, the movie feels like a better version of 'Hamnet' and a clearer articulation of someone having an internal life that they can't express but upon the stage. And the kicker being that it still feels like their children aren't quite understanding it — he understands you because he understands himself, and are you not of him? 

Do you feel like something from the past is missing from your future?

The Resort S1 — 2/5

...and final season...? It managed to pick up speed halfway through when it threatened to switch the main character to a charming yet bumbling Mexican man, the Memory Detective, but it only allowed him to become co-lead, forcing him to share screentime with the two people we had already been forced to know, dwelling in grief and no longer in love and making bad choices and jfc what a slog those two were, damn. Yada yada, compelling mystery that goes nowhere and doesn't connect to the main narrative yada yada but listen, on the other side of 'something weird is happening in movies,' something weird is happening in TV: shows that feel like comedies, that star comedians, but are actually just dramas (but still want to dip their toes in comedy). I'd say it started around the time of... 'Better Call Saul'? Heavy things that have the feeling of lightness to them. But, you know, it's that artistry thing again, and mastery of tone is that most untouchable of intangibles. 

A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet.

The Testament of Ann Lee — 3.5/5

What an interesting movie!!! What's fascinating is that it feels like a genuine religious movie. What I mean by that is that the movie doesn't cynically side-eye Ann Lee's testament. It seems to communicate what's visible (what she says is true, if not what is actually true), and communicates the belief of her followers, without casting considerable doubt on any of them. This is her experience, and that of her flock. I could put this side-by-side with 'The Ten Commandments' as a movie that religious people could love (except that her religion is sillier of course). And it's made in an art house style visited by people who have no interest in religion, and then features scenes that would likely offend the more religiously-minded. It seems to be a movie that caters to no one. And it's a weird-ass musical! Brave!! And the ultimate takeaway for me is — sure, why not? Why isn't she the next Jesus Christ? The only difference between this and 'The Passion of the Christ' is the worldwide belief that He is the Savior. It took time for Him to become that, so sure, why not, maybe Her time will come as well. Just need one believer, and it grows from there. 

Perhaps good to pair with 'The Wonder.' 

And I have wept to see the beauty of the world passing

like a dream behind her eyes.

— James Joyce, writing to (or of) Nora