Losing trust

takes all the fun out of lying.

A mountain range

made of costume jewelry.

These same thoughts

people this little world.

Susan seldom sits alone.

It's when together, she's most her own.

Buzzards' guts, man.

Lincoln - 7/10.

While I like Diamond Dallas Lewis as Lincoln, we never get to the core of why he's doing his thing. For the rightness of it, I guess. And while that's Good, and Noble, it's not necessarily Drama. Tommy Lee's story is more interesting as he has to sacrifice a bit of his morality to make an even greater moral leap forward. I understood that that was what Lincoln was doing as well, with all his backroom shenanigans, but it doesn't come across as poignantly because it's all done by other people.

If I could afford a watch, I could tell you.

The Queen Of Versailles - 6/10.

Boy, is this movie lucky. Just a lot of good timing that makes something we've seen before – stupid rich people being rich and stupid – turn into such an odd story of rich people not understanding how to be poor.

There's a place where you can take refuge.

The Skin I Live In - 8.5/10.

It's such a masterfully told story because, while you know it's a horror story, you don't realize just how much of a horror story it is until it opens its robes and forces you to realize. 

My name is my name.

Les Miserables - 5/10.

It's long, and everyone's sad all the time and I guess I should've known that before going in. Poorly directed, as you've read, and that live singing things results in some pretty memorable performances, as you've read.

This your first war?

I Declare War - 7/10.

Not as fun as I expected, but a lot more drama than I would have given it credit for. Kids playing war can get real, y'all. The biggest drawback is there are too many characters to give them all satisfactory conclusions, but it manages a pretty good one for its most important characters.  

The Slut And The Falcon.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower - 5/10.

Oh my god, it's just so boring and sincere and Chbosky was a mistake to direct his own work because he takes what he wrote too reverently to inject fun into his high school movie. Ezra Miller (and Dylan McDermott! in his second good role ('The Campaign' being the other)) do their best to force the movie to be interesting. Boring people relate to the reality of this movie. The 80s would've made this movie good.

Just tone it down a little bit.

The We And The I - 6.5/10.

I think the setting is fantastic and the idea of a city bus as a microcosm of human behavior is something I'd like to see done again, better. But Michel Gondry gets bored and feels the need to be Gondry-esque and the mix of untrained actors – while some great –  means some of the acting is not very good, and much of the movie's weight is put on one in that camp. If it had just focused on the singularity of the idea, and more time had been spent coaching the actors, it could have been great. It didn't, and so it's not.

Why, they might even say that you're a liar.

The Window (1949) - 8/10.

I would never have guessed that 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' would have made for such a great little noir. Young boy discovers a murderer, but no one believes him because of the previous lies he's told. It feels like one of those live-action Disney movies, what with the peppiness of the young boy (who was on loan from Disney), but mixing that lightness with a fair amount of dark. What follows is a case of the villains not knowing when they've already won.

The amusement business.

The Chase (1946) - 6.5/10.

A great everyman hero who's got this great and mysterious smile to complement the fact that he has nothing interesting to say, a great villain with a ridiculous vice, and Peter Lorre makes a great Peter Lorre. The first hour is solid, but what I thought was heading into an interesting villainous act (fucking with the hero's head) turns into just some of that psychiatric shit that makes for boring mystery movies. 

May the saints protect us from the gifted amateur.

Dial M For Murder - 8/10.

My dislike for mystery movies tends to be the necessity for things to come out of nowhere in the course of solving a murder, but here, I ain't got nothing to worry about. You know who, you know how, it's just a matter of waiting to see how the killer will eventually fuck up. It a mindtrick. In other words: it's magic. I think this is how every episode of 'Columbo' works. I should watch 'Columbo.'

Noir city.

Street of Chance (1942) - 4/10. 

It answers only one of its two mysteries, and acts like there wasn't even another mystery to solve. The mystery it does solve is of that vein of movies like 'Spellbound' where it's not about being clever, it's about being the first to solve a mystery in this way.