I'll write you a letter tomorrow. Tonight, I can't hold a pen.

Can't Hardly Wait — 4/5 (rewatch)

At this point, feels like I'm just rewatching these things to create better context for why I love 'Not Another Teen Movie.' And I think it comes down to NATM not making fun of bad things, but making fun of good things—just the sillier parts of them. 'Can't Hardly Wait' is a banger, the last of a breed of movies about last nights matched with good music and distinct characters wholly identifiable from a yearbook photo alone. (And I think it's got a film-making trick that NATM caught onto which is to bridge transition scenes with off-screen chatter, creating energy where there isn't, which is a trick I think other movies could lean on.) But the cardinal sin lying in the center of it, which NATM pokes at with a knife, is its sincerity. Which it wears well! Ethan Embry embodies a type of guy, in love with the high school beauty, despite the awful things they did to her hair. But the sincerity is something to point at and say "that's stupid" (because it's sincere). I think when people say "they don't make movies like this anymore," I think they are referring to the fact that a movie can be both fun and sincere. CHW came out in 1998 and NATM came out in 2001 and somewhere around here, sincere became the most awful thing you could be. That cynical sentiment was bubbling up in the '90s and so it feels like it's associated with that decade, but actually may have only been cemented until the Y2Ks. The '80s had it in spades, the '90s had their fair share, but the teen comedy boom rusted over during the 2000s and 2010s, yeah? Something was missing in the water. Things like 'Easy A' came along and proved that they could still exist but they felt more like a fluke rather than a sign that the dam was leaking, preparing to burst back open. Ugh anyway, what's my point? I don't have one. This review really went off the fucking rails. "Artists who are hurting, who take knife to skin: it is okay to bleed sincerity onto the screen. It will ruin you. It will make you immortal."

What a stressful day you've had.

Trap — 1/5

Trash. I was prepared to come out of this with a "wow, M. Night has really made a niche for himself these past many years" and then this movie slapped those feelings out of my head. This feels like a first-time director who has no sense of pacing, acting, or how a camera should move. Awful dialogue, delivered awfully. I'll never under-estimate him again? I'm also not confident I'll never give his next movies a shot either. Maybe that's his appeal: you have absolutely no idea what movie you might be walking into. That's the trap!!!

If love doesn't last,

then what's the point of lying?

If love lasts forever,

then what's the point of dying?

Every artist prays, when they step upon the stage,

that God will come when called.

You didn't know, but you were both born as musical genuises.

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers — 2.5/5

It's a music video movie, a loose plot laid across a collection of songs, all used as an excuse for fun visuals. There are many fun visuals! And the songs, collectively, are fun, that same pop world of Richard O'Brien's 'Shock Treatment'—both thin and big. It doesn't ever become anything substantial, and that's fine; it's a movie that can be easily divided into snippets you enjoy on YouTube, which is essentially what I did.

Pop quiz, asshole.

Speed — 4/5

I've grown to believe that when a movie hits, it's less because of the specific ins-and-outs of 'hey, it's a solid movie' and more that it feels like something new. I love 'The Fall Guy' but I'd now argue that it's relative failure belongs to it being just a solid movie. It was charming, and fun, in ways I'd seen before, but rearranged. That's not enough. But I can clearly see in my mind movie audiences looking at "Speed" and seeing something they haven't quite seen before, and I can see movie executives looking at it and saying "I see a new template." And I am not knowledgeable enough nor do I have a good enough memory to say if this template really existed before then—arguably in bits and pieces in other movies, and I'm sure in cult movies, but perhaps never put in front of the world as a big action film with bona fide movie stars in the blockbuster era. I think some of those people watching the movie, scrambling for exactly what it is that is new about this, might look at it and say the template is "entire movie built around silly action set-piece," and therefore you got movies in its wake built around silly action set-pieces... but that's just the executional details. That's just the excuse for enabling the big shift as I see it which is momentum. It's a chase movie without the chase. It's a countdown movie. You're just constantly moving, the big enemy a giant ticking clock on the wall. Keep moving, moving, no time to settle down, and the movie nips and tucks character development within the 'ramp up excitement every ten minutes' template. And for that in order to work, you need control of the fundamentals. For these movies to be what they are, they can't just be a new template—they have to have an ounce of that traditional mode of movie-making: actors with chemistry. Sandra Bullock is great in this!! She, too, feels like something new, and I need to watch a few more of her early movies to figure out exactly what that is. She seems proto-manic pixie dream girl, minus the indie twee (so just "college girl with equal mixture spark and anxiety" is the best I've got so far). Keanu, as he does, carries a movie with full belief in confronting a confusing situation. The movie's only fault really is not really knowing how to end. I wonder if it could have just ended with Keanu and Sandra escaping the bus. The movie feels the need to keep pushing bigger and bigger instead of accepting it's already big. But fuck it, the subway's got some iconic moments, so whatever, I'll get over it. But overall—this felt like something new, and still feels like something that I haven't quite seen replicated to the same degree. I think a movie's success can be half defined by how many pale imitators are birthed in its wake who are both worse than it and more successful than it, and you can see a direct line between this movie and every single thing that Michael Bay has done. Though he only understood the template without ever once getting the fundamentals right.

Violence

is a girl's best friend.

We already committed murder, we might as well rob his ass.

Scary Movie – 1.5/5

I will probably never be able to define the differences between why 'Not Another Teen Movie' is a successful movie to me, and this one is not. There's an energy that connects the jokes? The little jokes between the jokes? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯At the very least, I'm glad that NATM isn't filled with rape jokes. I did like all the gay jokes, though. Hey, there's something for everyone.

The lines of reality are very blurred in our business.

Mr. McMahon — 3.5/5

This often feels like a speed-run of wrestling history, and I motherfucking love a speed-run of wrestling history. Hoo-ha, let's go. But it's built a centerpiece around perhaps the most compelling figure in the whole business. Vince McMahon, the unreality machine. He'll lie and tell you he's lying without specifying which of the things he's said is the lie that he's told. And through a live, televised wrestling program, he's able to make wavy the lines. The more he goes out there and says "this isn't me, it's my character," the more obvious there's a line drawn straight down the center of the both of them, while it becomes harder and harder to point at the lie. Two realities exist on top of him at once. Both things are true, and not true. And you don't have a choice in what you accept, because he controls the whole enterprise; you either believe his version, or you're out. The world's biggest and strongest men and women held captive by the whims of one man. The power!

Thankfully, the wind.

Shogun — 3/5

There is a breed of content that is highly acclaimed, and so when you watch it, you have high expectations, and you watch it and you think it's fine, but there's something about it that makes you want to give it a higher rating. As if the problem is you, you think. I will push against this feeling. I think in the center, there is a streamlined show half in size, half in characters. In a society bound by rules, proper exercise of the rules will break it. "Their grip on power pried apart by just one frail human being. No weapon, no war machine." Love it, wonderful idea. "A Japanese period piece whose central climax revolves around a poetry contest." Yes, give me more. But around this wonderful idea, people we need not know, people we need not be exposed to. They make you think you're watching a larger thing, expansive, many seasons long; which in turn makes the wonderful idea at the center feel smaller. I think I might just be upset that this is a TV show instead of a movie?

We don't mourn the number of people;

we mourn the size of the bombs.

This

used to be a place.

If you enjoy it, come out.

Will & Harper — 4/5

There's a smallness to the movie that serves it well. Despite starring Will Ferrell, it never becomes as outsized as he makes himself out to be. He's still a buffoon, but quieter, reserved; sad. The movie felt like a true road trip: long stretches of not much happening, the threat of danger in an unknown place, and great conversations that can only be sparked on day 7 of an 8-day trip. Only by creating the familiarity of sitting next to someone for long stretches of hours can you then create the true conditions of saying goodbye, and the need to say what needs to be said before then. I don't think I got through the movie truly understanding the connection between Will and Harper in terms of conversation or similar comedic sensibilities, but you felt the love. A man loves his friend and wants to help her in the only way a famous actor knows how: by turning it into a movie. We can only use the tools we have.

Some of us fracture, others simply deform.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — 2/5

Tim Burton has returned to form, and has forgotten what shape that was. Michael Keaton still has a spark, but he's buried beneath a messy little movie made of too many severed parts. First draft-ass movie. Lazy.