For important context, see my 2025 and 2024 lists. The introductions contain information on my movie watching habits. Also, this year I continue to (loosely) focus on some eras, countries, and directors that I focused on in 2025 as well.

I continue to struggle assigning scores, and I feel like I grade lower than others do at the same enjoyment and appreciation level. For example, my 6/10s often seem to be equal to most people’s 7/10s or 8/10s. So, if it helps, mentally add 1 or 2 to every score to normalize them. If I were assigning letter grades, I’d probably give most 6s a B, 7s a B+, 8s an A, and 9s an A+, so that works out. I sometimes think about how if I were grading out of 4, as Ebert used to do, the films would get totally different grades. For example, I’d give most 5/10s a 2.5/4 (62.5%) and most 6/10s a 3/4 (75%), which is mathematically incoherent.

Clearly there’s no meaning to the scores, I just throw them out there, but I generally strongly recommend everything at 7/10 and up, and I still definitely recommend the 6/10s. At 5/10, I recommend some. As for the 4/10s, I don’t recommend most, but occasionally I do. Some 3/10s too. I’ll go ahead and say I don’t recommend anything that gets a 2/10 or lower, but I’m not sure I’ve ever given out such a low score. Anyway it’s all meaningless.

Films were in theaters unless otherwise noted (all theaters this time were in Phoenix or Los Angeles), and for home viewings I’ve stated the platform I watched the films on and noted the picture quality. I also saw a number of films on 35mm or 70mm, I’ve noted that as well, along with the theaters, which were all in Los Angeles, the best place in the world to watch movies.

Since a few people have asked, I do these quick writeups shortly after watching the films. Sometimes it is immediately after, sometimes it is a few days later, but never more than a week later. I sometimes write things like “Earlier this week…” and I sometimes vaguely reference current events. I’ve chosen not to edit that stuff out.

I’ve decided that I need to learn a lot more about film history, so I’ve devoted some chunk of my reading this year to film books. I have some quick notes below. Though I’ve started a handful of these books, I only actually finished one, as I think film books are best as secondary books to pick up here and there so that I read them while watching a lot of movies, and read a few at the same time so they inform each other and the material sticks better. That said, I’ve read between 100 and 400 pages of most of these (I’ve noted the exceptions), so I can confidently recommend them all. Outside of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, a bunch of books on individual directors, and a few books on Indian cinema, I think these are the first actual film history books I’ve read, which is pretty embarrassing.

I didn’t do much research to pick these books out. I chose them mostly based on what was at the library and what I had sitting around from a collection of film books my uncle sent me 15 years ago (a belated thank you!). Thankfully they were all great picks, though they’ll be challenging for those who don’t already have a good knowledge of film. For a video companion to these, I recommend Mark Cousins’ series The Story of Film, which I watched several years ago on some free streaming platform (this is also a book, and some say the book is better than the series, though I haven’t read it yet). And if you’re focusing on Hollywood history, the podcast You Must Remember This is a great companion as well.

The books:

The Whole Equation & The Big Screen by David Thomson - Thomson has a ton of books, the only one I’ve read before being “Have You Seen...?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, which is a lot of fun. The Whole Equation and The Big Screen are his two big film history books, with the former focusing on Hollywood history and the latter being a bigger book with a global focus. Though The Big Screen also covers Hollywood, there’s surprisingly little crossover in the content, so they are good companion books. Thomson is a historian with a literary style, and he alternates between straightforward history and personal analysis, which is sometimes really insightful and fascinating but at other times is over indulgent and annoying. But you can skim through those parts. Overall I appreciate his personal, erudite journey through film history. There are tons of fascinating stories, and he includes discussion on aesthetics, biographical (and sometimes gossipy) information on major players in the story, broader cultural trends, and business practices.

Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies by Robert Sklar - Excellent book. The description made it sound more like it was about how America was changed by movies rather than about movies themselves, but this is a straightforward American film history book, and it isn’t boringly academic as I feared. It has a similar scope to Thomson’s The Whole Equation, as both books focus heavily on the silent and early studio eras while the 60s onward are more of a footnote (works for me, as I already have a good background in the latter era of Hollywood history), but there is hardly any redundant material between the two books. Compared to The Whole Equation, it is less personal, less analytical about the films, and has less biographical information, with more of a focus on the film business, exhibition, and how film influenced culture and culture influenced film.

Planet Hong Kong by David Bordwell - Free PDF on Bordwell’s website. A great read if you’re into Hong Kong cinema. Covers everything: history, aesthetics, industry and filmmaking practices, fan culture, important filmmakers, etc. Bordwell’s approach to breaking down film aesthetics was exciting to me when I was 18, but I now find it dull to read (would work better as a video essay). The inside look at the film business in HK is really fascinating, though.

The Oxford History of World Cinema - I’ve only read a dozen or so pages of this, but it is so far good enough that I recommend it. Unlike the others which should be read from start to finish, this is a reference book to be read piecemeal, jumping around as you please. Dozens of writers contributed individual chapters that cover different aspects and eras of film history, with individual country chapters as well. I sampled a few sections and was really impressed with the depth of each one, with material that is hard to find even online. (I looked at the India sections of some other world cinema books and learned nothing, while the Oxford one had so much new information for me!)

And though I only read the India chapter, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World by Ross Melnick is super fascinating and contained information I’ve never encountered elsewhere. I will read more from it one day. Highly recommended if you’re interested in movie theater history in any of the countries covered here (see the contents page in the Kindle sample), a special interest topic that surely some of my readers will share.

I will continue to give film book recommendations in future installments, hopefully there are many more to come.

And now the film list, in the order I watched them (8/10s and up are bold):

Ikkis (Sriram Raghavan) - I’m not a war movie guy and wasn’t really interested in this, but I couldn’t turn down a well reviewed Sriram Raghavan movie. I didn’t think it was very good, though, for reasons having nothing to do with my distaste for the genre. It’s plodding and overmelodramatic, crosscutting between two storylines that are both underdeveloped and difficult to get into. I kept thinking a full movie focused on the latter day portions had much more potential (if they dialed down the sentimental music). It’s not a complete failure. There’s a warm heart to the film, which isn’t your typical war movie (and Dharmendra’s final performance adds pathos and gravitas), and a good attention to detail that you’d expect from the filmmaker. The film is getting praised as a contrasting antidote to the hyper macho and nationalist war film boom of recent years, and I do appreciate that it felt like it was from another time. I’m on board with what it has to say. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me from being bored. (It looked like around 20% of it was shot on film. I’m unaware of any other mainstream Indian film from the last decade that was shot on film, so this is significant!) 4/10

The Housemaid (Paul Feig) - Trash, but fun, as expected. I knew nothing going into it other than what was on the poster. It was actually dumber than I expected, and it got dumb faster than I expected. And it was too long. Feig’s direction is serviceable but doesn’t elevate it. But hey, if you look at the poster and think it looks like your brand of stupid, you’ll have a good time. 6/10

A Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-tung, though it’s said that producer Tsui Hark was essentially a co-director) [Criterion Channel, okay picture quality] - I was excited to watch this for a number of reasons, one being that it draws from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the same source material as some of the King Hu movies that I loved. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the class or beauty of a King Hu movie. Crudely made, a lot of dumb humor, 80s music, and a not very interesting story in between often just okay action and effects sequences. Still, there are some wonderful moments, often to do with the charmingly old fashioned but quite impressive practical effects. There’s a terrific sequence about an hour in where they fight a giant demon tongue, and a few other high points. I always like it when the Diamond Sutra is used to ward off evil spirits. I feel like I shouldn’t bother, but I’ll probably watch the sequels, which may benefit from a bigger budget. 5/10

Royal Warriors (David Chung) [Criterion Channel, decent picture quality] - Much beloved 80s Michelle Yeoh starrer. Sadly I was bored. Eventually I started just fast forwarding to the action scenes (thus no score, as I didn’t watch the whole thing). The action was indeed good, with plenty of crazy stunts and mayhem that makes you wonder how many people ended up in the hospital while filming this, but only a few parts really thrilled me.

Shaitan al Sahraa (aka The Devil of the Desert) (Youssef Chahine) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - This came out the same year as Chahine’s The Blazing Sun but is nowhere near as good. Both films star Omar Sharif (I believe this one came out after, as Blazing Sun is often cited as Sharif’s debut). It’s an old fashioned and juvenile swashbuckler, and though it has a promising start, the weak writing and slapdash editing drag it down (I wondered if it was reedited for TV or something). It’s fun and light on its feet, though. Recommended if you want some Bedouin adventure hokum. There’s some good silliness (I liked the scene when two girls, fighting over one guy, start hurling insults at one another. “He’ll never go for a skinny legged girl like you!” “I’m not skinny legged! See!”, and then she hitches up her ankle length skirt slightly to reveal her shins.) There’s also great location photography and grand sets. I liked the songs. I was surprised at how much skin was shown in a 50s Egyptian movie. At <90 minutes, I can’t complain. 5/10

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed) [Criterion Channel, great picture quality] - Reed made this a few years before The Third Man (which I think is the only Reed film I had seen before this) and though they are very different films, this also has some magnificent chase scenes full of narrow alleyways, stark contrasts, and striking shadows (though it gets billed as a noir film, I’d say the chase scenes were the only noirish element here). Overall the film is beautifully crafted and does a great job of putting you in Belfast in the 1940s (although, according to wikipedia, “Few of the main actors in the film actually manage an authentic Ulster accent”). Many cite it as Reed’s true masterpiece. But I’m sad to say I was mostly pretty bored. 5/10

Osaka Elegy (Kenji Mizoguchi) [Criterion Channel, poor picture quality] - The first film I’ve seen from Mizoguchi, and his first sound film. From 1936, so also the first pre-war Japanese film I’ve seen in full. It’s fairly boring, despite a good story (could have a great remake!). But it’s just over an hour. Most interesting for its portrait of Osaka at the time, and you get an array of settings: home, office, puppet theatre, department store, cafe, train and train station. For that, I recommend it, to some people. 5/10

Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi) [Criterion Channel, poor picture quality] - The first classic Japanese film that I’ve actually liked! (Admittedly I’ve seen few outside of half a dozen Kurosawa classics.) Like Osaka Elegy, this is also from 1936, and also just over an hour, though apparently the only surviving versions are missing some scenes and wikipedia lists the original as being 95 minutes. An interesting exploration of geishas in a changing society. While Osaka Elegy was too understated and slimly detailed for me, this was much more developed even with its truncated runtime. Slow at times, but rewarding, with interesting characters and a great look at a bygone world. Overall I liked the Osaka Elegy / Sisters of the Gion diptych. The two films are thematically connected but with the former set in the very modern Osaka while the latter is in more traditional Kyoto. 6/10

The Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang) [Criterion Channel, so-so picture quality] - I’ve always wanted to watch more Fritz Lang movies (I think I’ve only seen Metropolis and M) but the streaming selection is poor. I almost skipped this because it got middling reviews, but I’m glad I watched it. The reviews aren’t wrong and it’s hardly essential, but it is pretty fun. Though it gets labeled as noir, I wouldn’t classify it as such. There’s a crime and mystery element, but it was surprisingly lighthearted and comic for much of it, with a good cast having a good time. Based on a novella by Vera Caspary, of Laura fame. 6/10

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper) - The first film I’ve seen from the great American auteur Bradley Cooper. It was pretty good. Could have been better, but it’s generally entertaining and at times fairly touching. As a divorce drama I thought it was at times quite raw and real but at other times middling and sitcommy, and it also suffered because too many characters annoyed me, a problem I have with most movies that try to be realistic, and I found myself rooting against the characters. The coming of (middle) age standup part of the film was stronger and had some excellent parts, though it was too rushed and underdeveloped. The intersection of the two sides of the film was good. If I had known half the movie would be shot in tight handheld closeups I would have sat one row further back than usual. 6/10

Boat People (Ann Hui) [Criterion Channel, great picture quality] - Hong Kong new wave classic about the hardships of life in communist Vietnam. Should have been called “Becoming Boat People.” As wikipedia notes, ‘The Chinese title, literally meaning “Run Towards the Angry Sea”, more accurately describes the film’s content.’ I found a lot of the film boring and depressing, but it’s an impressive production and I found it a worthwhile glimpse into what it promised to give us a glimpse into. I liked many of its quieter, more humane moments. I’ll watch more from Hui. 5/10

[I enjoyed reading about the film more than watching it: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7704-boat-people-persistence-of-vision

It was selected for the 1983 Cannes competition but was removed “under pressure from the French Socialist government, which was concerned that such a high-profile berth for a film so critical of the Vietnamese regime might strain relations with its former colony.” Also, left-wing critics attacked the film, calling it right wing propaganda, a legacy that survives in the top rated Letterboxd review, by a dude with a watermelon emoji next to his name who wrote “yeah fuck every single thing about this stupid ass movie, and ann hui is a sack of shit for making it.” (And that’s just the first paragraph.) Considering it’s not exactly entertaining, I’m impressed that it was a big hit in Hong Kong. It was also apparently the first HK film to shoot in communist China, with Hainan standing in for Vietnam, and it “paid a steep price to shoot the film with Chinese cooperation; the film was banned in Taiwan, at the time a hugely significant market for Hong Kong cinema, and eventually in Hong Kong as well, despite its initial commercial success there. Ironically, after having hosted and supported the production, China also eventually banned Boat People, claiming the finished film didn’t go far enough in criticizing the Vietnamese regime.” Anyway let’s all hold hands and be happy that Vietnam has turned out pretty well!]

Night Train to Munich (Carol Reed) [Blu-ray, great picture quality] - I was excited for a Hitchcockian adventure spy thriller from Reed, written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder who most famously wrote The Lady Vanishes (released two years before this, also starring Margaret Lockwood, and a comic relief duo was carried over, playing the same characters, though I saw that film so long ago that I don’t remember them) and later started producing and directing their own films (I greatly enjoyed both Green for Danger and I See a Dark Stranger). They’re great purveyors of films that blend comedy and suspense and British charm. Unfortunately this one is just okay. The first half was good fun, and it chugs along to the finish line well enough, but the writing and direction aren’t strong enough for the film to reach its full potential. The most interesting thing about it is that it came out in 1940 and is about the war, and there’s a lot of humor directed at nazis, but it’s mostly overly broad cheap shots and a lot of it fell flat for me (it’s no To Be or Not to Be). Not as visually accomplished as Reed’s later work, but there’s some cool stuff. I loved the miniatures and enjoyed the cable car climax, dated as it is. I wish I liked it more, but I ultimately can’t complain about a 90ish minute movie that gives me solid train and cable car content. 5/10

Struggle in the Pier (AKA Dark Waters) (Youssef Chahine) [Criterion Channel, mostly great picture quality] - Chahine remains a great director of melodrama, but he can only do so much to make the dull story work. It’s a badly reheated leftover version of Struggle in the Valley (which came out a few years earlier), and it suffers from being watched within a month of watching that film. Still, excellent visuals, great performances (starring “Omar El Cherif” and the very beautiful Faten Hamama), and a great Alexandria port setting. If I watched any five minute stretch in isolation I would have loved it. Chahine fans will find plenty to value. 5/10

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch) [Blu-ray, good picture quality] - I really enjoyed this romantic drama which has a sophisticated air and dreamy feel to it. I think people rate this low in Lubitsch’s filmography, which I’m new to, but it’s definitely worthwhile. 6/10

Mother India (Mehboob Khan) [Criterion Channel, decent picture quality] - Indian classics are such a grab bag. Sometimes you get masterpieces, sometimes they’re unwatchably bad, and there’s no resource to turn to that will help you know what’s what ahead of time. This was one of the good ones… for the first half. I thought it worked great both as a grand Hindi musical melodrama and, despite a heightened style, a social drama depicting the rural poor. Broad, but very well done and absorbing. But the second half jumped the shark. Great music from Naushad. I want to read an article about how Hindi films perpetuate negative stereotypes about Banias. How many films have actors who play mother/son become a couple in real life? 6/10

The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch) [Blu-ray, great picture quality] - Just really fun and sweet. Warm, fuzzy, charming, funny, and heartfelt. I’m fascinated by Lubitsch’s choice to set films in Europe and not bother with accents. It works! 7/10

Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - Some people (Tarantino) consider this to be one of the all time greats, and on paper it sounds like something I’d love, but it didn’t click with me. I liked it a notch less than Shanghai Blues, where the sweet, old-fashioned rom-com charm meshed well with the zany comedy. Here the zany comedy is mixed with an espionage thriller and action and earnest melodrama, and while I’m all for a genre mashup, the individual elements didn’t work for me. Some great moments, though, particularly with the slapstick comedy. 5/10

Deadline at Dawn (Harold Clurman) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I hadn’t heard of this or anybody involved with it (unless you count Cornell Woolrich, whose book it is based on), but I needed something under 90 minutes and nothing is better than a random noir at 1am. It turns out that though the film is little known, the director was a big name in the mid-century New York theatre scene (this was his only film), as was the writer (who did a fair amount of film work, most notably writing Sweet Smell of Success, and he was an inspiration for Barton Fink). I thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable down and dirty noir at the beginning, and then was just pretty decent, and then it was close to 2am and I was struggling to stay awake and I’m not sure if my lack of interest in the last half hour was the film’s fault or not. Anyway, not a must see, but noir fans will be satisfied. 5/10

Cat People (Jacques Tourneur) [Blu-ray, great picture quality] - I admittedly mainly watched this as prep for the Schrader version. I believe it’s only my second film from Tourneur, after the excellent noir Out of the Past, which I need to rewatch. This was good hokey fun, elevated by some great visuals with excellent use of light and shadow. The few suspense sequences are surprisingly effective, with the pool scene being a beautifully surreal highlight. I wouldn’t say the writing is particularly good, but it’s good enough, with a tragic heart that makes it more than your typical trashy monster movie. More importantly, it has the good sense to only be 73 minutes. Like all old movies, there are interesting cultural quirks to pick up on, the most significant being that in the old days, you could just go into a pet store and buy a monkey. (This is what they took from us!) 6/10

Ornamental Hairpin (Ornamental Hairpin) [Criterion Channel, poor picture quality] - The BFI named this the best Japanese film of 1941 (some characters are soldiers in the Second Sino-Japanese War, but Pearl Harbor hasn’t happened yet). It’s a lighthearted drama set in an onsen, and only 70 minutes. I think these old Japanese films just aren’t for me though. I was fairly bored and turned it off after 30 minutes.

Thailand Moment (Les Blank & Skip Gerson) [Criterion Channel, decent picture quality] - 10 minutes of documentary footage, set to Thai music, from a 1967 trip to Thailand. Nothing I haven’t seen before but good stuff. Lots of boat merchants. 6/10

Borom Sarret (Ousmane Sembène) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - Sembene’s debut short (and among the very first African films by an African filmmaker), in French and set in Dakar, only 18 minutes. (Sembene was 40 when he made this. There’s still a chance for me!) I loved Sembene’s early features, Black Girl and Mandabi, and am happy to start going through more of his work. He was pretty great right from the beginning, with a good sense of narrative and visual style, and there’s great documentary value from his location photography. Though it’s a sad story about the plight of a poor cart driver, there’s a light touch to it that keeps it from being dreary. 7/10

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I’ve always been a Woo fan but have never seen his first “auteur” movie, which some consider to be his best. I liked it. There’s a giddiness to the slick, stylish filmmaking and a sincerity to the cornball melodrama which sells it. But I don’t know if I’ve aged out of this stuff, or I’ve seen too many things that have followed in its footsteps, or it just wasn’t meant to be. As with all of the HK films I’ve been watching recently, I’ve wanted to love them but they just aren’t clicking. I feel like I had to be there. Still, it works, there are great moments, and the leads are terrific (I also really liked Woo as Inspector Wu!). Chow Yun Fat lighting a cigarette with flaming counterfeit money is what I come to John Woo movies for. While watching this I thought that on the international film nerd scene, Parinda is very underrated. The Chinese title translates to “True Colours of a Hero.” 6/10

I Am Waiting (Koreyoshi Kurahara) [Criterion Channel, so-so picture quality] - Part of Criterion’s Japanese noir collection. It was okay. I enjoyed the character driven first half, but the more plot driven second half was too generic. Overall the film felt like noir tropes and aesthetics transplanted to Japan in a pastiche way rather than something that feels homegrown, but it lacks the wit or energy to make the pastiche work, though there is some charm to it. 5/10

Black River (Masaki Kobayashi) [Criterion Channel, decent picture quality] - Another film in Criterion’s Japanese noir collection. This one was much better (though take away the jazz score and I’d call it neorealism rather than noir). The standout element is the setting, with the film, from the mid-50s, set in a shabby, crime ridden town outside a U.S. base. It’s well directed and is an interesting watch, though I felt the characters were underdeveloped. 6/10

Bringing out the Dead (Martin Scorsese) [Paramount+, first time using it, so-so picture quality, clean print but it looked like 720p, maybe it was an issue with the app and network? 20 minutes in I regretted not turning it off in the beginning, but by then it was too late.] - One of the unsung Scorsese movies. After watching it I get why, but it’s unsurprisingly full of brilliant cinematic work, with a style that feels completely like Scorsese while also being fresh and new. It didn’t really work for me though. It’s hard to connect with the characters, and a more understated and less slick approach may have worked better. It isn’t boring, though. It’s one of his bleakest films, but also one of his funniest. The whole cast is great (I hope this isn’t the last time Marty and Cage work together!) but Ving Rhames is the MVP, an underrated actor. The film is excellent whenever he is on screen. (Scorsese himself is also an underrated actor, even when it’s just his voice. There’s another good voice performance in the film, but I didn’t know who it was until the end credits, and when I found out it made me smile). 6/10

Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch) [Blu-ray, very good picture quality] - Not up with Lubitsch’s best, and a good chunk of the humor fell flat for me, but it’s nevertheless a very enjoyable watch. A charming British comedy of manners. One noteworthy thing about Lubitsch films is they have large casts and even the side characters are memorable. I can’t decide if Charles Boyer is a bad actor or not, but he’s great (a thought I also had while watching History is Made at Night). 7/10

City on Fire (Ringo Lam) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - I think the first film I’ve seen from Lam other than some random Van Damme movie. Quite different from what I’m used to from this era of HK action movies. It’s more driven by the narrative than just the style and action, and it’s grittier and more realistic, though it still has its cheesy 80s Hong Kongisms, and the more realistic a movie tries to be the more I’m thrown off by the lack of on set audio. In some early scenes, particularly the romantic ones, I thought the film aged very poorly, but it grew on me and I ended up really liking it. Great location photography and excellent chase scenes. Solid undercover cop story. It was interesting to see Chow Yun Fat play a more vulnerable hero than what I’m used to from him. Cool jazz soundtrack. The Mexican standoff went hard. Now I gotta watch Kaante to complete the “trilogy.” The Chinese title translates to “The Wind and Clouds of the Dragon and the Tiger.” 7/10

As Tears go By (Wong Kar-wai) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - Wong Kar-wai’s debut, and far away from his later work. Still, the fingerprints are there. It feels somewhere in between classic WKW and one of the better 80s HK crime flicks (such as City on Fire, with which it shares a cinematographer and composer). I dug it from the first frame. It probably works better the way I watched it, while going through a bunch of 80s HK films, than the way a lot of fans watch it, getting to it after seeing WKW’s better films but without seeing it in its own context. I just don’t like criminals that much though. Buncha lowlives. I would have liked the whole film from Maggie Cheung’s perspective. Cantopop Take My Breath Away went hard. Chinese title translates to “Mong Kok Carmen” referring to the HK neighborhood Mong Kok and the opera Carmen. 7/10

My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - I only recently heard of Tam, a major Hong Kong new wave filmmaker who is said to be a big influence on Wong Kar-wai and is a collaborator, with WKW first writing for Tam and, oddly, Tam later turning editor for WKW. This was Tam’s last film before mainly working as an editor, a career trajectory I’ve never seen before from such a big name (unless wikipedia is lying to me about his filmography?). There are elements of WKW’s work in here, mixed with some Woo, but more neo-noir (I also thought of Johnnie To, whom Tam later edited for as well). At first I couldn’t decide if it was bad or great, but then I decided it was bad and great. Total B movie potboiler plot with thin characters. But it has stylish neon lit cinematography full of interesting compositions (partly shot by Chris Doyle!), backed by cheesy 80s synths and Cantopop songs (all Cantopop music I’ve heard is mediocre, but in these movies I wouldn’t want to hear anything else), and some strong performances (stunning Joey Wong and sleazy Gordon Liu among them) and great locations. I didn’t think of this until now, but Refn’s Drive is a good comparison. The Chinese title translates to “Butterfly Dream Killer.” 7/10

A Chinese Ghost Story II (Ching Siu-tung) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I wasn’t crazy about the first one but I liked it enough to watch more (though I wouldn’t have watched it so soon if it weren’t going to expire on Criterion in a week). This one is a modest step down, and has less romance and beauty and wuxia, but more monster movie magic madness. Fans of the first should like this well enough, despite the change in approach. It had just enough wacky appeal to make me want to check out the third (though I won’t bother before it expires on Criterion). Also, I really like this Joey Wong lady. 5/10

Hard Boiled (John Woo) - Theatrical re-release! New restoration! Second time seeing the film but first time in theaters. I remembered very little of the film other than some flashes from the action scenes, and after the film I went to check what I wrote about it after watching it in 2014. Interestingly my feelings are almost exactly the same, so I’ll just copy and paste: “I don’t think there’s ever been a movie with as much carnage and mayhem. This is epic. There’s so much going on in every shot. I’ve seen a lot of Asian action movies and other John Woo movies but nothing compares. This film is just insane. John Woo is a cinemadman! The story is an unremarkable undercover cop movie elevated by the intense brotherhood loyalty honor stuff that Woo likes to pitch at the level of opera. I was never super involved in the story or characters but it was good enough to keep the film moving and to make the action scenes more meaningful. Honestly, I didn’t even love the action. It’s all so bonkers that very few moments even stand out. I never got to savor any moments. It made me appreciate the simplicity of lesser films. I think it’s telling that my favorite scene was probably the one where Chow Yun Fat and Tony Leung are alone trying to break through a door. Easily the quietest action moment of the film. But even though it isn’t among my favorites the whole thing is still a ton of fun and there will never be anything like this again. Obviously a must see film.” I’ll add that I’ve grown to love Chow Yun Fat as an actor, as much for his warmth and the little tics and gestures as for the cool posturing that I mostly previously noticed. Also, I loved John Woo as the bartender. Woo is just so cute. I enjoyed the post-film Q&A they added to this re-release as much as I enjoyed the film. The Chinese title translates to “Hard Boiled Detective.” 7/10

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer) [Criterion Channel, great picture quality] - An unsung classic of Jewish-American cinema. I hadn’t heard of this and only came across it while looking at the films expiring on Criterion in the next week. Though it’s something of a cult classic, for several decades after it was made, nobody else had heard of it either. I love the story behind the film’s rediscovery. From Ebert’s review: “The movie was completed in 1970, but at the time it was unable to find distribution; Hollywood didn’t think it was funny. It waited on a shelf for 20 years, until Roemer decided to transfer it to video to show to his children. The video technician started to laugh as he watched it. A curiosity stirred within Roemer: Could the movie possibly be good, after all? He submitted it to the Toronto, New York and Park City film festivals, where audiences were enthusiastic, and now he has commercial distribution, two decades later.” Given that it’s a low budget film that couldn’t find distribution, I honestly expected something kind of slapdash, but the craft is excellent, and the film’s obscurity made me feel sad for everybody involved, given that few of them worked much after this came out. Though I wouldn’t call it a laugh riot, it’s a wryly funny low key crime and family drama set in New York’s Jewish community. Though it’s from the late 60s and is a great portrait of a different time, I was surprised at how familiar the Jewishness felt to me. One of the most Jewish films I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the most Jewish pre-Coen brothers American film. It feels like a much lower key, lower decibel Safdie movie. Like their films, I kept thinking to myself “Where did they find that actor? What a face!” An interesting and entertaining watch from start to finish, and I look forward to more from Roemer. 7/10

The Card (aka The Promoter) (Ronald Neame) [Criterion Channel, so-so picture quality] - Starring Alec Guinness, though his later collaborations with Neame are more famous. Written by Eric Ambler and based on a novel by some famous guy I’ve never heard of, Arnold Bennett. It’s a decently entertaining comedy about a social and class climber in (early 20th century, I think?) small industrial town England and had a strong first 30 minutes or so, but it’s too rushed and lightweight to leave much of an impact. 5/10

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) - Second viewing after 13 years, first time on the big screen, and I think the first Hitchcock film I’ve ever seen on the big screen. I’m surprised at how little of it I remembered. Does everyone’s memory suck as much as mine? I rarely rewatch films (and often only do so in theaters), partly because I want to watch something new and partly because I know I can’t recreate the magic of the first viewing when it’s a film I love (I think I may never rewatch Psycho, as I can’t top the huge impression it left on me when I was 13) (“You can’t recreate the magic,” someone shoulda told that to Scottie Ferguson). But this was actually even better than I remembered, which is pretty impressive. Maybe my favorite Hitchcock? Insane decade for him, and this feels so different from any other Hitchcock movie, slower, more low key, more dreamlike, and really quite different from any other film of its time. Are there any other major studio A-list star driven Hollywood sound films that have so many lengthy dialogue free stretches? I may just not be well enough versed in classic Hollywood, but the only other live action film from the era that comes to mind as evoking a similar “mood over plot” feel is Night of the Hunter. But Vertigo also has a crackerjack plot. Or does it? I could see it sucking with any other director. But it was gripping from start to finish, even as it devolves into kookiness. With all of that said, the film is still slightly overrated, and all of the analysis about it is bunk. For fun, here’s what I wrote after my initial viewing in 2013: “I wouldn’t put this among Hitchcock’s most entertaining films, but it’s his grandest, most beautiful, most mysterious (and not just in the story), and most human. It gets a ton of praise from film people because of the parallels between Stewarts’ character and Hitchcock (and the job of a director in general) but I think the reason it has become so highly regarded is because it seems to be his most rewatchable. It’s less dependent on suspense, surprises, and set pieces (though it still has those) and is more of a mood piece and is deeper than most of his stuff. I got the Hitchcock set on Blu-ray and it looks gorgeous if anybody wants to borrow it.” I was a good friend. Nobody took me up on that offer. Now I gotta see Kalangarai Vilakkam. 9/10

Judex (Georges Franju) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - Franju’s 1963 tribute to classic French silent crime serials by Louis Feuillade. According to wikipedia: “Judex appears to have been an inspiration for the American pulp hero The Shadow, who was himself an inspiration for Batman.” I was really excited to watch this, particularly after enjoying Franju’s Eyes Without a Face and his wonderful documentary about Georges Méliès, but I found this to be just okay. I liked the aesthetics, and I’m willing to forgive the dull story, but it needed more energy to work as a lazy Saturday 10 year old boy’s adventure serial sort of thing, or it needed more surrealism and inventiveness to work as a dreamy silent film tribute. Any 10 minute stretch of the film would be good fun (even better without subtitles). Hopefully that stretch includes the party where everyone is wearing bird masks and the actual magician lead actor performs tricks, or the girls in spandex rooftop fight scene. Like its source material, it is probably best experienced projected onto the wall of a hipster bar or something. 5/10

I loved this trailer for a collection of Feuillade’s work:

Send Help (Sam Raimi) - Though I really loved the Spider-Man movies back in the day, I never got into Raimi otherwise. Still, his name was enough to get me curious, and the positive reviews sold me. It’s good fun. A bit too slick and Hollywoodish for me, but it’s quite good for what it is. One of those “if you’re excited by the poster, you’ll have a great time” movies. Clever script, going in some interesting directions, and it’s much better directed than, say, The Housemaid, or the recent Final Destination movie (I’m not the kind of person who wishes auteurs would do a franchise film, but I’d love to see Raimi take on Final Destination). Some great gags, and it’s nice to see Raimi effectively apply his horror expertise to a non-horror movie. At first I wondered if casting Rachel McAdams in dorkface was offensive, but she gives an excellent performance. Currently my third favorite stranded on a deserted island movie, though admittedly I can only think of three (and I probably would have liked this more if I didn’t have the others in my head, which is probably unfair). 6/10

Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder) [Blu-ray, very good picture quality] - I was fully expecting this to be the best movie ever. I loved the book, which I read a decade ago and forgot most of the particulars of, and you have Raymond Chandler writing the script with Wilder! Alas I thought it was just pretty good. An entertaining noir, for sure. But not in my top ten noirs, and though I haven’t seen ten yet I suspect it won’t end up in my top ten Billy Wilders. I wasn’t crazy about the lead actor, and the plot and characters worked much better in the book (though there are enough changes that it feels new enough, and the film’s best character, played by Edward G. Robinson, is much expanded from the book, from what I recall). It made me appreciate The Big Sleep film even more, as I felt the film was as good as the book. Still, plenty to like/love in the story, dialogue, visuals, performances, and atmosphere. I liked some of the details of the time, notably the grocery store (with smoking allowed, of course), and the drive-in diner that serves beer. 6/10

Lost Highway (David Lynch) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - Once every five years I watch another Lynch movie and I say, “Nope, still not for me.” I ended up turning this off after 45 minutes. Should I keep trying?

The Limey (Steven Soderbergh) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - I was excited for a Soderbergh LA set neo-noir, said by many to be among his best, made a year after Out of Sight and a year before Traffic. There’s a movie in here that I’d like, but this really didn’t click with me. Several choices in the editing, writing, cinematography, music cues, and performances just took me out of the movie. Movies from the 90s feel more dated than movies from the 40s. 5/10

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (Gore Verbinski) - I was a big Verbinski fan back in the day but haven’t seen any of his movies in over a decade. I kinda liked this and kinda hated it. I knew early on that it wasn’t really for me, but I did enjoy the first half. The script is frequently clever and inventive and it constantly went in surprising directions. The cast is game for the lunacy and Rockwell in particular has some pretty funny lines. But whatever direction it went in, it got old fast, with overly obvious social commentary and a quippy tone that makes it feel too sketchlike. And it just drags on and on. Gore gives this relatively low budget indie his all (apparently $20 million, very impressive!), and it’s technically proficient with some imaginative visuals, but it is ultimately an aesthetically ugly movie by design. And very loud. My ears hurt by the end of the lengthy climax. It’s an odd movie because it’s about how we’re losing our humanity due to technology, but the film itself has little humanity, and it’s also about how teenagers suck, but it seems like a movie designed to appeal to teenagers. I contemplated walking out halfway to go see the Charli XCX movie, and the main reason I didn’t is because it was a full theater and I was in the middle of the row and I didn’t want to disrupt everyone. I’m glad I stuck it out to the end though, because as I was leaving the theater I saw a guy wearing a Rango shirt. 4/10

Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell) - This is my first film by Fennell, though I’d like to catch up. This is also my first time experiencing Wuthering Heights. I tried reading the book a few times, mainly because I’m a Kate Bush fan and I wanted to know what her song was about, but I never got past the first few pages. 19th century literature hurts my head and the words dance around the page and I can’t make sense of the sentences. However great the story must be, it doesn’t work well at all in this film version, which is overstylized but undeveloped and dramatically flat. In the first half I felt it was ineffective but still a fun gothic period soap opera with some good, if distracting, visuals, music, and goofiness. But as it went on it lost me. Too showy, and hard to care about anything. I wondered if already being a Wuthering Heights fan makes it work better as you’re prebought into the narrative and can appreciate the wacked out interpretation. At one point I thought to myself “I’d rather be watching the Charli XCX movie… but I guess this is a Charli XCX movie too.” I liked the end credits song. The people next to me loved the movie though. They gasped and said “oh no” throughout the many twists and turns. I love and envy these people. I go to the theaters to bask in their presence. As soon as I got home I looked up the Indian versions. It turns out there were three different ones, all starring Dilip Kumar. I also listened to the Kate Bush song again, but I’m still not really sure what it’s about. 4/10

The Moment (Aidan Zamiri) - I finally saw the Charli XCX movie. I barely knew what Charli XCX was until a few weeks ago when I saw this was coming out. I started listening to her music and really liked it. I wanted to check out the movie to better understand the phenomenon, plus I like to keep abreast of Gujarati diaspora cinema. This is decent for what it is, though what it is is a showbiz mockumentary, an aesthetic and subject matter I don’t find very appealing or interesting. But there are funny scenes, and Charli is an appealing actress with good comic timing. I would’ve liked this more with a crowd of fans rather than an empty auditorium. Also “deconstructing Brat summer” might work better if you know what that is. There were I guess some famous people cameos but I didn’t recognize anyone. 5/10

Cold Storage (Jonny Campbell) - I hadn’t heard of this until I saw some showtimes for it, and I initially glanced past it because it looked like one of the random cheapie horror films that somehow opens every week. For whatever reason I bothered to google it and it turns out this is written by David Koepp and is based on his first novel, and it got pretty good reviews. Fuck yeah! I am a Koepptomaniac. Unfortunately it’s not that good, though it’s pretty watchable and went down easier than most of the movies I saw in the past week. It’s an unapologetically goofy old school B creature feature that moves fast and has enough moving parts to keep it from being monotonous. But eh. The good cast can’t save the middling dialogue and direction. I can’t believe this was a novel. The Indian actress had a very familiar name and I couldn’t pin down where I knew her from, and then I googled her and realized I met her roaming chef parents at a vegan food pop-up they hosted in Nagaland. Small world! 4/10

Wuthering Heights (William Wyler) [Criterion Channel, decent picture quality] - An interesting companion to the new one, at least for someone who hasn’t read the book, partly because it’s fun to play “spot the difference” (there are many major ones) and also because they each help you understand the other. This tells a better, more coherent narrative, but is too rushed to really work. Meanwhile, the new one, despite many narrative changes, fills in the details well, elaborating on the attraction that is just implied here. I appreciate what Emerald Fennell did more now. Her version is kind of terrible, but it had higher highs. I do have more versions of Wuthering Heights that I want to watch, but I’m a bit burnt out at the moment. At least I now know what the Kate Bush song is about. I think. 5/10

Amazing list: https://www.vulture.com/article/the-32-best-and-worst-wuthering-heights-adaptations.html

O’ Romeo (Vishal Bhardwaj) - I haven’t seen a Vishal Bhardwaj movie in over a decade. Nice to have him back on the big screen (his first theatrical release in 8 years), even if this isn’t particularly good. I liked it though, and it is kinda good. It’s one of those movies that would have been better if the budget were cut in half. Get rid of 90% of the action and the foreign locations and lavish sets and you have a better movie! The first 30 minutes made me think I was in for a 3 hour headache, but it shifted gears into something more low key, and kept shifting throughout the movie. I’m curious to know the behind the scenes story. While watching the film, it’s hard not to wonder if Bhardwaj wanted to make a 90s Bombay underworld romantic thriller (based on interviews, he’s had a version of this film in the works for a long time), but could only get financing if he made a modern ultraviolent Animal-esque movie. I suspect that is the case, but even then, there’s plenty of bloat and excessive quirkiness that can be blamed directly on Bhardwaj. Still, there’s a good Mumbai crime movie in here, and the other bad parts of the film were more artistically crafted than most mainstream Indian action movies. It’s sort of amusing how much of a messy, mixed bag this is. The performances are strong but the characters are shallow. The action is coherent, well executed, and directed with flair, but it goes on and on and I never cared about anything. It has some of the best Hindi film songs in recent memory, and some great choreography, but they mostly fit poorly into the film. Despite the unevenness, I found great pleasure in the hit job at an Irani cafe, the suspense sequence on the Mumbai local train, the chase scene down narrow alleyways, the beautifully-mustached, classical-music-singing cop, and several other moments and elements. Not saying much, but this was probably my favorite Hindi movie of the past few years. 6/10

O Agente Secreto (aka The Secret Agent) (Kleber Mendonça Filho) - Sprawling slow burn slice of life Brazilian period piece pseudo-thriller. It may not have built up into something super satisfying for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Made me want to go to Brazil. Seemed like an authentic period piece though I was surprised at the level of obesity depicted. One of the best “movie theaters within a movie” movies. I remember not making time for Bacurau at MAMI as it didn’t seem like my thing, but now I really want to catch up on the filmography of this “diretor e roteirista.” 7/10

Tânia Maria is badass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A2nia_Maria

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Baz Luhrmann) - I wouldn’t call myself an Elvis fan but I do love some of his songs and I like the nostalgic Americana of Elvis the icon. I missed Luhrmann’s biopic but I want to see it. I enjoyed this, though honestly I regret seeing it in Imax because it was too loud for me and that took away from the concert scenes quite a bit. I don’t like concerts for this reason, though I do generally like concert films, just maybe not in Imax, I guess. Still, the varying sources of footage looked great on the big screen and I liked it as both a concert film and a documentary. I liked the rehearsal footage the best, and there was more intimacy in here than a typical concert film. I came out of the film with more appreciation and affection for Elvis than I had before the film. A great period piece, so to speak. I didn’t know Elvis kissed his fans on the mouth. I couldn’t do that. Even handshakes gross me out. I’m not fit to be The King. 6/10

Blades of the Guardians (Yuen Woo-ping) - I like silly silk road wuxia adventures as much as the next guy, but I dunno. I never seem to click with post digital cinematography/CG mainstream Chinese movies, even with old masters at the helm. I liked some of the stuff in the fight scenes, but my favorite part of the movie was reading on Wikipedia about the reshoots they had to do to replace the former lead actress who was caught in a scandal because two decades ago she used false documents to qualify for the gaokao exam. 4/10

Kokuho (Lee Sang-il) - The highest grossing live action Japanese film of all time, a three hour drama about Kabuki performers! I’m happy and surprised it was a huge success, because it is very slow paced. I thought I was in for a great movie from the early scenes, and it is an interesting, intimate look into the world of Kabuki, with striking performance sequences. But it really dragged, and it kept us at arm’s length from the characters. I liked it enough that I’m interested in checking out more from the director Lee Sang-il, who has directed a few other films by the novelist Shuichi Yoshida who wrote the source material for Kokuho. But despite the great craft and plenty of great moments, this left me cold. 6/10

Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro) - This gets my 2025 award for “If this were shot on film I would have liked it much more.” I made the effort to see this on the big screen, but it looked shockingly bad. Oddly flat and uncontrasty. I skimmed through it on my TV afterward and it did look better, but it was still kinda cheap looking in a TVish way. Is this a Netflix thing? Sad, especially since it is otherwise a visually splendorous and lovingly crafted film. (I had a chance a few months ago to see it in 35mm, but I skipped it since I don’t usually like digitally shot movies transferred to film. Now I’m curious.) Anyway I liked the movie. Wanted to love it, but it’s hard to really get into the drama. It’s fairly long but still often feels too rushed, so though dramatically it is structurally sound, it runs through potentially interesting material without giving us much of an entry point. Nor does it have the depth to take it beyond the familiar, even for someone that only vaguely knows the story through cultural osmosis. And the lack of great cinematography made it impossible for me to get lost in the beautiful, baroque gothic world (I don’t even remember what Crimson Peak is about, but I have a vivid memory of seeing the film in theaters, feeling cold and frightened as colorful wind blew out of the screen). All of that said, the film comes alive in the slower paced second half, and there are some great stretches where Guillermo clearly puts his stamp on the material. 6/10

The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu) - I missed the initial theatrical run (the month it came out is when I moved to India!) and was happy to see the IMAX re-release. This was a mixed blessing because I honestly couldn’t understand half the dialogue. Everything Tom Hardy said was totally garbled (honestly worse than Bane-voice), which I thought may have been intentional, as was the scene with the heavy rain that drowned out all of the dialogue, though even several other scenes and characters had me trying my damndest to make out what they were saying. Odd choice, though not as odd as the Academy voters who got this nominated for both Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing (my guess is the bassier IMAX audio made it worse). Thankfully a bunch of scenes were subtitled because they were in French or a native dialect. The other issue is that though much of the film looked great, a lot of it suffered from the glimmer a lot of laser IMAX theaters have with bright white images, which was a lot of the movie. Also I was exhausted and compensated by overcaffeinating. It was not my day. Anyway, I actually liked the movie more than expected, considering I don’t usually like wilderness survival movies or Inarritu movies very much. Of course it’s an incredible production. There’s excellent period detailing. I got to learn about the fur trade which was fun. A number of the suspense scenes really grabbed me and were pretty brutal but also surprisingly funny, in a grisly Keatonian sort of way. Still, I had a hard time getting into the film, and I’m not sure if it’s because I was out of it and my seat was uncomfortable and I couldn’t hear and the screen was glimmering, or if it’s the fault of the film itself. I mean, it’s not exactly a fun movie. Much of the film is more of an audiovisual experience than a satisfying narrative one, which isn’t a dealbreaker, but I found the cinematography to be distancing, however beautiful it was, so it was often not as immersive as it should have been, nor is there a lot of character stuff to hold onto. I was often observing the movie rather than feeling it. Inarritu did brilliant work, but I may have liked it more with a more conventional director at the helm. But it was an undoubtedly worthwhile experience, and I suppose I’m a Leo completist. 6/10

Farewell My Love (Youssef Chahine) [Criterion Channel, solid picture quality] - Probably the weakest Chahine film I watched so far. Mostly lame broad comedy with some fairly basic romantic melodrama stuff. Chahine is a good craftsman, and the film has its charms, especially with some good songs and the lead actress Shadia, but there’s not enough to make it worthwhile. The military hospital setting gives it less historical and cultural value than his other films (though the pan-Arab nationalism song was… interesting). I could hardly find any background info for this (or any of Chahine’s early films, for that matter), but one guy on Letterboxd said “Clearly a work for hire project in service of Farid al-Atrash’s production company,” referring to the film’s star who is a famous singer. Makes sense! 4/10

My One and Only Love (Youssef Chahine) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - Another musical from Chahine, with the same leads as his last film, and also Hind Rostom, whom he cast a year later in Cairo Station. It’s a rom-com, and it alternates between being decently funny and charming, particularly in the beginning, and being really dumb and tedious. The cast is great though. The two lead actresses are insanely beautiful (and… it’s one of the most cleavagey movies I’ve ever seen, which is pretty impressive for 1950s Egypt), and the songs are good. This is one of the last of the “early” Chahine films before he became more of an “auteur”, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of his more mature works. It’s been a fun ride, though. Really made me want to go to the middle east, but, uh, oh well. 5/10

Hoppers (Daniel Chong) - The last Pixar movie I saw was in March 2020. I’m afraid this means we are in fact on the verge of WW3. Made sure that I didn’t sit near anyone else when booking my ticket because I didn’t want to be near kids, but it turns out most of the 20 or so people at the 1PM opening day showtime were adult weirdos like me. I was bummed there was no short film, though I guess Pixar stopped doing those a long time ago. Anyway, I thought the movie was perfectly fine but fairly bland and middling for the first half, and I found too much of the humor to be very… 2020s. It picked up a lot in the second half though, going in weird, surprising directions. A fun ride with some heart. Definitely lesser Pixar, but solid. Made me want to go beaver watching. I think the message of the movie is that activists make things worse and smart, engaged people should just do academic research? 6/10

La Chienne (Jean Renoir) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I was at an art museum and saw a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and told my wife that the artist’s son is one of the most iconic French filmmakers, though I barely know his work (I was very bored by Rules of the Game when I watched it around 15 years ago, and I really liked his India-set Hollywood film The River, I think that’s all I’ve seen). I decided I’d come home and watch one of his films. From 1931, this is his second sound film and his first film that gets a lot of acclaim. I’m far from well versed in cinema from this time, but my initial impression is that this was much more advanced than any other early sound film I’ve seen (the limited range has mostly been Hollywood). The camerawork is fluid and subtle, the performances natural, the writing isn’t overly talky and stagey, even the use of sound is mature. I thought it was a pretty good story, too, though I didn’t love it. A bit slow, and I preferred its more tragicomic first half to the bleaker second half. Definitely a Capital-F French movie. Like all proper French movies, it is about infidelity. My biggest takeaway, other than “early sound films are better than I thought,” is that the lead actor Michel Simon is really outstanding. I’m curious to watch Fritz Lang’s Hollywood film Scarlet Street, based on the same source material. 6/10

Kummatty (G. Aravindan) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I’m really thrilled to see any parallel cinema classic get a good restoration, so I was happy to watch this despite suspecting it’s probably not really my kind of movie. Aravindan’s narrative minimalism isn’t for me (the only film of his that I really liked was his most mainstream one, Chidambaram), and also, Kummatty is about kids, a category of people I don’t find interesting. After ten minutes of joy of watching a beautifully shot, artistically crafted, lovingly restored classic Malayalam film, I admit I was fairly bored for most of it. But then the main character got [redacted, spoilers, though Scorsese spoiled it in his introduction to the film]. Then it was kinda awesome, for a bit. Plus, it’s a nice portrait of rural Kerala in the 70s, with its location photography and use of non-actors, and it is only 90 minutes. I liked the music, which I can’t find online. I would include this among the programming to project on the wall at my hypothetical South Indian inspired hipster cafe. 5/10

I enjoyed the Criterion essay, particularly for the details about Aravindan’s life: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9041-kummatty-a-children-s-movie-for-adults?

On purge bébé (Jean Renoir) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - Renoir’s first sound film, made to get financing for La Chienne which came out the same year. Totally different style, a French farce that is very much a filmed play. Only 52 minutes. It’s okay. Michel Simon is wonderful, and there were some funny parts. But it’s mostly kinda dumb, and the characters are mostly annoying. The best parts are about infidelity. 4/10

Chess Fever (Vsevolod Pudovkin & Nikolai Shpikovsky) [Kanopy, so-so picture quality. I wonder if the Blu-ray version from Flicker Alley is better, though the one I watched, from Kino, is 28 minutes and the Blu-ray one is reportedly only 20 minutes.] - 1925 Soviet silent comedy short about chess. Excellent. Very funny and fascinating. I’ve never seen any foreign silent comedies and I was curious to see the stylistic differences. This was satisfyingly Soviet. I love that the filmmakers expect the audience to be able to recognize Cuban chess champion José Raúl Capablanca, which I was unable to do and thus missed out on a key joke and plot point (though I soon figured it out). I saw the film described as Keaton-esque, which I assumed wasn’t the case, but it is a solid description given the more surreal visual gags. Adding to the offbeat vibe was the strange jazzy music, recorded in 1993 by Roger White (the composer of… Bandit Queen?! And music consultant on Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth and Four Feathers. Random Indian cinema connection!). I would have disliked the anachronistic soundtrack on nearly any other silent film, but it was perfect here. If I saw this out of context, I may have thought it was a weird Lynchian reinterpretation of silent film aesthetics from the 80s, but it’s the real deal. I wouldn’t project this onto a hipster cafe wall, but only because it is too good to let anyone see it in a non-ideal viewing context. I would have liked to see more by Vsevolod Pudovkin, a major name in early Soviet cinema, but I think this was his only comedy, and he is mostly known for propaganda films. Writer and co-director Nikolai Shpikovsky isn’t even on wikipedia. After the movie I went onto chess.com and played my first game in five years. I lost but it was fun. 8/10

Here’s the trailer for Pudovkin’s “Bolshevik Trilogy,” not something I feel like watching anytime soon but some of the footage is outstanding:

Paris Qui Dort (aka The Crazy Ray) (Rene Clair) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality. I watched the 59 minute version which I definitely recommend. Criterion also has a 35 minute version called At 3:25 which I sampled, but the picture quality is worse and it seems to be cut down too much.] - I haven’t seen a Rene Clair film before but am excited to dive in. This is his debut from 1924, and it is the second film in my series on non-American silent comedies, though I wouldn’t actually classify it as a comedy despite it having some laughs and generally being witty and clever. This science fiction film, set in Paris, is gorgeously shot (sometimes thrillingly so, with some great shots high up on the Eiffel Tower) and has a lovely, poetic vibe and old world sci-fi charm. The initial portions are wonderful, but it doesn’t have enough tricks up its sleeve or strong enough writing to keep the momentum up throughout its runtime. It’s short enough that it hardly matters, though. A unique experience. Would project onto a hipster cafe wall. 7/10

Heat Lightning (Mervyn LeRoy) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I hadn’t heard of LeRoy, but Criterion has a collection of his pre-code films. Only one hour. It’s pretty good! I loved the setting, at a highway diner/motel/gas station/repair shop somewhere out in the southwest. I honestly would have liked this more without the crime plot. Just people hanging around the diner and crashing for the night at the motel and dealing with ordinary matters of life. That stuff was all great. 6/10

Mahjong (Edward Yang) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - This is my favorite of the handful of Taiwan New Cinema films that I’ve seen so far, and honestly the only one I didn’t find to be pretty darn boring. It’s only my second from Yang after Taipei Story, which I thought didn’t have enough talking. This might have had too much talking, but too much is better than not enough. I was a bit confused at first because of a large cast of characters, several of whom look alike to my quasi face-blind eyes, but pausing and checking wikipedia cleared it up, and as the film goes on the distinct personalities emerge. I found the film a bit hit and miss. It moves around between a number of characters, some more interesting to me than the others. I just don’t find lowlife criminals to be very interesting. Some characters were interesting but underdeveloped and hard to grasp. And though the film is by and large exceptionally well crafted and acted, the white actors playing expats are an undeniable weak link (barring the most significant foreigner role, played by Virginie Ledoyen, who is great). But a lot of the film is a compelling and occasionally funny portrait of Taipei in the 90s. It actually made me excited to watch more of the Taiwan New Cinema classics, which I had previously been drudging through. 7/10

Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - Another one hour pre-coder. Also pretty good, but also has a crime plot which takes over the film’s latter portions which end up being less interesting than what came before (though the wild ending worked for me). This tells a giant story and is too rushed to really work, and it’s pretty broad in its characterizations. But I still dug it. 5/10

Chandni (Yash Chopra) [Blu-ray, decent picture quality] - The first half of this is a borderline unwatchable soap opera, elevated only by Sridevi and great Shiv-Hari songs (which work much better outside of the movie, unburdened by such inane storytelling). I contemplated turning it off. I was so upset about how bad it was, I contemplated never returning to India. But then the second half is a surprisingly great soap opera. Juicy stuff. Crazy ending. Sridevi was probably in over 100 outfits. They were all great. A satisfying entry in the Yash Chopra catalogue. The first 90 minutes though, oy. I’ve said this before, but someone needs to do fan edits for Indian films. Cut that first half down by 30 minutes, maybe trim the second half by 15 minutes, and we’d have a terrific soap opera at two hours 15 minutes, with all of the songs and most of the outfits intact. If I could meet any human in history, it would be Sridevi. 7/10

Celluloid Man (Shivendra Singh Dungarpur) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - 2 hour 37 minute documentary about P.K. Nair, India’s pioneering film archivist. Total special interest subject, but if you’re into it, this is gold. At first I thought the runtime may be excessive, but why shouldn’t a documentary about Indian cinema reflect the length of the typical Indian film? And the leisurely pace differentiates it from a typical fluff piece entertainment industry doc. I could have watched several more hours of this. It is full of interviews with a wide range of major figures in Indian cinema, but my favorite interviews were from villagers in Kerala who used to go to 16mm screenings organized in rural areas. I started crying when the betel nut farmer talked about seeing films by Ray, Kurosawa, and Chaplin. That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I also loved the personal portrait we got of Nair, from his daughter. When she talked about how passionate he was about movies while being so distant in his family life… I felt seen. The documentary is from 2012, and I was sad to find out after watching it that Nair passed away in 2016. I would have loved to meet him. I don’t know how FTII is now, but the film gives the sense that it was once a very special film school. The tragedy of the documentary is that it contains remarkable, well preserved footage of old Indian films that aren’t available to watch in such good quality anywhere. Free the archive! I would pledge a lifetime of $15 per month subscription payments for a good NFAI streaming service. 8/10

Daag (Yash Chopra) [Netflix, okay picture quality] - A pretty entertaining soap opera! Exciting script full of good twists and turns, surprisingly dark, and well paced with hardly anything I wanted to cut out (under 2.5 hours, thank heavens). Good Laxmikant-Pyarelal soundtrack. I didn’t love it, though. I had a lot of fun, particularly in the first half, but it’s a bit too silly, its world too much of an unrooted, untextured Bollywood fluff fantasy, and its characters too thin. But the somewhat mature treatment of its themes keeps it from just being fun hokum. I appreciated it more once I learned the meaning of the title. 6/10

The Italian Straw Hat (Rene Clair) [Criterion Channel, good picture quality] - I was really excited to watch this French silent comedy, a continuation in my series on non-American silent comedies, and the second film I’m watching from Clair. This is regarded as one of his best works and as one of the finest silent comedies ever made. Unfortunately I found it very boring. It is well made, the story has some clever bits (though the actual setup fell flat for me), there’s some occasional very good gags, and there’s a brief but wonderful surreal nightmare sequence. The film is just so slow. I could see myself really liking this if they lobbed off 30 minutes. Maybe I’m just uncultured. It is much less gag driven than the American silent comedies I’m accustomed to, and a lot of the gags were so subtle that I wasn’t even sure what the point of them was. I periodically felt it would have been better with talking. It is a classic, talky French farce that was adapted into a silent film, after all. At least it was satisfyingly French, with the plot hinging on, you guessed it, infidelity. Reading about the film afterward, I learned that it was a satire of bourgeois values and a recreation of the aesthetics of turn of the century cinema, neither of which I picked up on while watching. 4/10

The Bride! (Maggie Gyllenhaal) - I want to appreciate this for being a big, bold, weird, fearless vision. Unfortunately it is let down by being totally all over the place, both narratively and aesthetically, and though there is good work in it, a lot of it is too mediocre to even be an “interesting failure.” 4/10

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki) - I’ve seen very few Miyazaki films. Was glad to catch the Imax re-release of this. I can’t say I loved it but it’s a nice, cute, sweet movie. I like the charming low-key vibe. Good stuff. 6/10

Tommy (Ken Russell) - I think this is both my first Ken Russell movie and my first rock opera. I didn’t realize “rock opera” would be so literal. This was a lot. Some of the music is great, but for the most part I like the album versions of the songs more, and in Imax my ears hurt by the end (I said never again after the Elvis doc in Imax, but I couldn’t resist…). Russell has a million maniacal tricks up his sleeve to keep us entertained even with an unengaging story, and the movie is a lot of fun for the first half, but my patience wore thin as it went on. Couldn’t help but kinda love it, though, even when I didn’t like it. And Elton showing up for Pinball Wizard, epic. (After that, the film had… big shoes to fill.) Wish I could have seen it in the 70s, and wish it were 30 minutes shorter, and 30 decibels softer, and maybe split into three sittings. 5/10

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller) - I liked this much more than The Martian, which I thought was perfectly fine but too bland and lightweight and jokey, with too much pop music. While this is superior on every level, it had some of the same problems for me. It’s a pretty funny movie. Too funny. Ryan Gosling is wonderful as always, and he very impressively carries the movie, but is his goofball screwball comic energy right here? I kept imagining how various other actors would say some of the lines in a more droll, understated way (actors whom I remade the movie with in my head while watching: Pitt, Bale, Leo, Will Smith, Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Jackie Chan, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Murphy… eventually I had to force myself to stop this silly game and just pay attention to the movie). The supporting actors were perfect. It feels unfair to blame Gosling, though, as it’s really the direction, with its fast sitcomy pace. I periodically say that all good movies are funny and serious movies that are afraid to be funny are bad, which may or may not be true. But this is the first movie I’ve seen that I thought suffered from being afraid to be unfunny. All of the major creative names do very good work, but maybe a hard sci fi movie from the author of The Martian, directed by the guys who did The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, with a screenplay by the co-writer and director of Cabin in the Woods, and starring Ken may not have been the best combo. But I should let it go because the movie is pretty good! It works! I was never bored, and though the runtime rounds up to 3 hours, it’s the unusual movie in this range that I didn’t feel was too long. Even more unusual is that it’s a big effects movie and I never thought anything looked fake. Great cinematography and production design. Good story, well told. A lot of fun. Immensely likeable. But I felt it had potential to be much more impactful. 7/10

Topkapi (Jules Dassin) [Blu-ray, great picture quality] - One of the most important films of the 1960s, having been the inspiration for the Mission Impossible television series (and I of course desperately need to see Dassin’s Rififi, another urtext for the greatest film series of all time). And it’s based on one of my favorite books, The Light of Day by Eric Ambler. I think I’d have liked it more if I hadn’t read the book. I hate when I rave about a movie and someone is like “eh, the book was better,” but I’m going to forever do that with this. Sorry. The film is a silly good time, but the book is just so much better (and the book is funnier, despite the film being more overtly comic). But anyway, it’s a fun, stylish 60s caper, a genre I’m quite fond of, and it has excellent location photography. I may have cringed a few times (“Effendi!” “That’s alright, I’m not offended.”), but overall it’s a great Istanbul movie. They shot a real Turkish oil wrestling match? That was awesome. Great soundtrack by Manos Hatzidakis, whom I hadn’t heard of but have been listening to for the past 24 hours. Though the story follows the book fairly closely, the style of the film allows it to stand on its own. While reading reviews, I was happy to see how many people really loved the main character, who was such a great character in the book but to me was underdeveloped in the film, which is how I felt about the film’s story and characters as a whole. That said, the film version does improve on the book in its heist sequence, which was truly excellent Capital-C Cinema, bringing the film from being a goofy fun genre entry in an exotic locale to something more noteworthy. One of the great cinematic sequences of the 60s, worth the price of admission for that alone. 7/10

Alpha (Julia Ducournau) - My first film from Ducournau. I’ll still watch Titane and perhaps Raw one day, but this wasn’t very good. The craft is there. It feels like a French Cannes-competition body-horror social-drama, which I mean as a compliment. But it’s dramatically anemic and surprisingly dull. It has minimal “world building” for the weird pandemic happening in the movie, and I thought that was a cool choice as it just throws us into the drama. But the drama is undercooked, the characters aren’t very compelling, and the little-explored weird stuff ends up being the most interesting part of the movie. I thought it needed either more or less of it. I would have preferred a straightforward immigrant AIDS family drama. 4/10

Les Deux Timides (aka Two Timid Souls) (Rene Clair) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - Clair’s last silent film. I liked it quite a bit more than The Italian Straw Hat, mainly because it was much tighter at under an hour and twenty minutes. Can’t say I loved it, though. The lead actor was delightful, but as was the case with Straw Hat, it’s less gag driven than the classic American silent comedies that I love. The whole film was a very solid, elegantly and cleverly directed silent comedy that would have made for perfectly functional connecting bits for some brilliant comic sequences… but they just aren’t there. I chuckled a few times, thought “aha, clever!” a handful of times, and was mildly amused throughout, but I wanted more. 5/10

Dhurandhar: The Revenge (Aditya Dhar) - I found the first film worthwhile despite its many issues. Though the follow-up has its moments, it exacerbated the problems of part one while also having fewer pleasures. There’s a debate to be had about how “problematic” the film is. It is indeed hypernationalist quasi-propaganda, much more so than the first film, and often in a way that is so comical it’s hard to even be upset. Contrary to some suggestions I’d heard, I didn’t think it portrayed Muslims in a negative light. Honestly, Punjabis came off worse. But anyway, objectionable content is the least of the film’s problems. I personally was deeply offended by the four hour runtime. I admittedly felt disturbed at times that such an ultra-violent, chest-beating nationalist film is breaking box office records, but it’s also got more going for it than any other work of mainstream Indian cinema in the past year, so I’m not sure who to be mad at. Dhar has talent and ambition. The film is well plotted and individual scenes are sometimes well crafted. He’s got a good ear for music (as irritating as I find the rap songs to be) and a gift for casting. But it’s so overindulgent and the story is so badly told, with so many baffling writing and editing decisions, and it is hard to care about the endless stream of violence or the boring political happenings or the underdeveloped drama or anything else. Like a lot of movies, it’d be better with its budget (sans star fees) cut in half, and it’d probably gross the same amount. This is a really weird phenomenon. Producers gotta impose some discipline. Though it’s worse than the first, it’s also crazier, and once I embraced that it made it a bit more appealing. Its relentlessness was laughably exhausting and frequently annoying, but also hard to not appreciate. I liked when it became clear in the epic climax that they ran out of time while editing, and there were a bunch of random shots with missing or mistimed sound effects. This somehow added to the film’s verve. My favorite part of the movie was when all hope seemed to be lost, only for the day to be saved by… Israel. (The great thing about the movie is this sounds like a joke but it’s actually true.) 4/10

The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli) - My favorite new release so far this year, I think. (Honestly not much competition.) I knew nothing going into it, and so will say nothing. At first I was afraid I might hate it, because it is set in the modern world and I feel deeply alienated by the modern world and see movies as a means to escape it, but it soon brought out its inner misanthropy and I felt at home. I giggled a decent amount, which most comedies don’t make me do, and I contemplated how I would react in various situations, which most dramas don’t make me do. Though it is very entertaining and has many great moments, I felt it fell short of greatness overall. The characters didn’t feel fully realized. I kept asking myself “Would they really do that? Is that how it would really go down?” It’s a bit overdirected and prioritizes its own surface cleverness over character depth. I kept thinking there’s an outstanding Ruben Ostlund movie in here that just isn’t coming to the surface. With that said, I can’t complain too much about such an enjoyable Hitchcockian anti-rom-com arthouse soap opera. Borgli is two for two for me after Dream Scenario. 7/10

Entr’acte (Rene Clair) [Criterion Channel, very good picture quality] - 1924 surrealist short, part of the Dada movement. Was shown as an intermission (plus a short prologue) to a ballet. Cool shots and editing tricks. Weird. Good Paris movie. It’s only a little over 20 minutes and still drags a bit, but it’s an interesting curiosity. Put yourself in the head of viewers at the time and you’ll like it. Has a lot of famous artists in it, probably plays better if you know who they are. If you read the wikipedia page and are like “OMG a movie with Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Jean Börlin, and Georges Auric!” then it’s a must watch. If you’re just a philistine like me going through Rene Clair movies then it’s kinda cool I guess. 6/10

The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh) - I can’t believe I didn’t know about the new Steven Soderbergh movie (written by Ed Solomon, no less) until the day it came out when I saw some headlines about people being mad at him for talking about using AI. Come on, Neon! Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Anyway this is one of his small, kinda weird ones. I was excited by the rave reviews but unfortunately this didn’t click with me. It has a lot going for it. McKellen is excellent. It’s occasionally very funny. The script is clever. There’s compelling character work. But ultimately I didn’t connect with the characters, which is fatal for a talky character driven drama, and Soderbergh’s direction left me cold, which seems to happen with everyone for varying films of his. And I just don’t care enough about art. Whenever they talked about art, I thought to myself “Thank god I didn’t get that art magazine writing job that I interviewed for a few weeks ago.” 5/10

Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace (April Wright) - Documentary about movie theaters, covering 100ish years of history in under 90 minutes. It’s one of those docs that is mediocre but still worthwhile if you’re interested in the topic, and despite its flaws it is a loving tribute to grand old theaters. I should see more movie documentaries. I saw it at Phoenix’s 1929 movie palace, the Orpheum Theatre, which made it a special experience rather than just a decent watch. For everyone else, it’s free on Youtube. 6/10

The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo) [Blu-ray, great picture quality] - I don’t relate to most movies but this one is about a failed writer wandering around Arizona. Was cited by Wes as an influence on Asteroid City. I watched this a few days after visiting the titular Petrified Forest, which was A++. It’d be very on brand for me to say I liked the movie more than the national park of the same name, but not quite. Good movie though. An entertaining 1936 crime drama set in a highway diner and fuel stop. Only 82 minutes. Best known for being Bogart’s breakthrough role, though Leslie Howard and Bette Davis are also great, and the setting is what really makes it stand out. I loved the first half, though liked it less once the crime part kicked in. I felt the same about Heat Lightning, which released two years prior and has basically the same setting and a lot of other similarities (both are based on plays, I wonder if one inspired the other), though they’re different enough to both be worth watching. I think I liked Heat Lightning a notch more, as this had too much annoying philosophical pontificating for me, and it felt like a play not because of single location staginess but because of overly writerly dialogue. 6/10

Faces of Death (Daniel Goldhaber) - I remember people talking about Faces of Death when I was like 12 but I never bothered watching it. Not my genre, and I wasn’t initially interested in the reboot or whatever you want to call it, but it got good reviews, the writer-director team seemed interesting, and Charli XCX is in it, so I gave it a shot. It started off pretty good, a well cast and crafted (it’s even shot on film!) original indie Gen-Z psychological thriller with a clever premise. But it quickly devolved into a bland slasher with facile social commentary. 3/10

Michael (Antoine Fuqua) - I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan but biopics are bad and I knew from the day it was announced it would be bad, and it would be impossible to cast, and Fuqua, who tends to make good dumb fun B movies, wouldn’t be able to elevate what is surely going to be middling, sanitized material, however good of a writer John Logan is, and I wouldn’t bother to see it, and the teaser trailer confirmed that it looked awful, and the actual trailer… well the actual trailer was kinda good. I actually got emotional watching it. I knew it would be mediocre at best, but I had to see the movie. And I grew excited. And I saw a few strong reviews that convinced me I would be in the contrarian club that loved the movie, that it might be akin to a religious experience for me. Anyway the movie was terrible. (I almost ended my review there. Woulda been a good one.) Is it a movie? It’s more of a collection of scenes and performance bits. I know the story and players in pretty good detail, but I’m not sure the film would be coherent at all to outsiders. Maybe that’s fine and everybody seeing it already knows the outline of his story. And if you know the outline, it’s actually entertaining. A lot of scenes are bad, but several scenes are almost pretty good. I say almost because the film is horribly shot. Well written and acted scenes are captured in clunky compositions that cut together poorly, and there’s just a weird fake feeling to everything. (Cinematography by Dione Beebe! This reminds me of the time I saw the trailer for Fuqua’s Equalizer 3 and was so horrified by the awful cinematography that I went home and looked up who shot it and discovered it was shot by Robert Richardson! Antoine Fuqua, slayer of great DPs.) Partly because of the visuals, it’s also an unconvincing period piece. Some of the performances are great, particularly those for Michael and his father who play the closest thing the movie has to real characters, though a lot of other performances are bad. I also liked Mike Myers in the Jewiest performance of the year, and if you’re wondering why the biggest star in the movie has a small, pointless role as Michael’s lawyer, that’s because the lawyer is the film’s producer. (To be fair, I think his role was bigger in the original version of the movie, before it was rewritten for… legal reasons. But still.) There’s no real drama. It feels like a feature length montage. There’s a surprisingly good arc, though. (Absent from the original script?!) From the moment it was announced, I was like “How the hell do you make a Michael Jackson movie?” Despite the film being pretty bad, it actually answered that question satisfyingly. You can see the pieces of a good movie in here, which surprised me. It was just badly made and uninspired. I thought the movie might be horribly ill conceived on every level, but I left it thinking it was more of a missed opportunity than something destined to be bad. There are inherent challenges with what is clearly a film made by committee, determined to please various stakeholders, but really it just needed a better director. Anyway this could have been a great documentary. The performance sequences were some of the best parts of the movie, but… just show the originals. Cut it together with some archival footage. Do 4k restorations of the music videos, some of the finest works of art of the 20th century, and put them in IMAX. Until then enjoy this shlock, it’s kinda fun. And emotional. And I got to hear some of the greatest music of all time through some killer speakers. 4/10

As a bonus, here is my 2014 review of the last Antoine Fuqua film I wrote about, The Equalizer: I am sad to report that this is not the greatest film of all time as we were all expecting. It’s fun, definitely, but I wanted this to be more than just a good stupid movie. Understand that I was supremely excited for this movie. Literally all I did today was sit around waiting to watch the film. I woke up, ate a power breakfast, worked out, ate a power lunch, took an Emergen-C, drank coconut water, brewed some tea to bring with me to the film, etc. I don’t make a big deal out of movies all that often (like only a few times a month...), but Denzel films are a special occasion. After delivering one of last year’s finest pieces of cinema with 2 Guns, this is a let down. There are a lot of good scenes in here, even some great ones, but a lot of the movie feels like a collection of scenes. I don’t think it’s that hard to write good scenes. I’m not saying that any ol’ monkey can write a good scenes, but apparently monkeys don’t actually write screenplays like we all thought, they’re actually mostly written by humans and robots, and for those higher functioning species you can stumble on a good scene fairly easily. The hard part is writing a whole lot of good scenes that all build into a greater whole, which this film fails to do. Also, there are some bad scenes. I was actually bored in a few scenes here, which is pretty shocking to think about. But let’s talk about the good stuff. Denzel plays Batman without the Batman, and he’s sensational, to say the least. Most of the appeal of the film is just watching him be a badass. There’s also plenty of hilarious dialogue that he makes soar. Many scenes in the film are just The Denzel Show and it’s great. But there are way too many scenes that don’t have Denzel in them. You all know I am a huge James Bond fan and I especially love the villains in those films, but it’s pretty common for those films to be terrible when they cut to the villains and they ramble on about their plans and it’s so boring. That happens here. The villains in these movies work best when they are killing people in ridiculous ways. This film stops dead whenever we cut to the bad guys. The script is really the worst part of this, with little momentum. The direction by Antoine Fuqua is alright, pretty TVish. He keeps it nice and stupid. I looked at some reviews and people call him a great stylist. The hell? I swear 90% of critics sleep through movies and then bullshit their way through the reviews. By the way, the film ends with an embarrassingly bad new Eminem song. I sat there in the theater wondering what the hell I was listening to. I happen to be a fan of Eminem but I really don’t get how anybody thought this song was good enough to get released in the first place, but Eminem is big enough that any song he poops out can get released without people asking questions so I get that. But how does it end up in the end credits of the year’s most anticipated American film, Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer? I don’t want to bring race into this, but Denzel and Antoine are black, and I imagine they have superior musical tastes to the rest of the population and they are less likely to be seduced by Eminem’s complexion. So I’ve concluded that the use of this song in the credits is actually a joke, which is a nice way to conclude the year’s finest comedy. I recommend The Equalizer to everybody but you must know that this is a vastly inferior film to Jack Reacher, which is the gold standard of this very particular genre. I must also say that I think this is a film that will be remembered fondly. I just know it. In 20 years people will still be talking about this. It’s kind of like Cobra, one of Stallone’s craziest movies. I think a lot of critics who sleep through this will call it a generic, forgettable film but for the people that actually watch this, it is a very enjoyable bad film, starring one of the greatest actors in history, and it delivers on a level of B movies craziness the the way few films do. 7/10

Mother Mary (David Lowery) - This is the first film I’ve seen from Lowery. He’s clearly a talented filmmaker with an original vision, and the craft is strong on every level. The performances are great and I liked the music. But this is a glacially slow pretentious bore. Maybe Lowery is like Soderbergh where the so-called “ones for them” are better than the “ones for me.” 3/10

Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondō) - I don’t relate to most movies but this one is about romantically desiring someone who checks out the same library books as you. I remain underexposed to anime and specifically Ghibli, so I was happy to see this get a theatrical re-release. I found it quite charming at first, but lost interest as it went on. I’m not sure if it’s the movie or because I was, admittedly, tired and distracted. I also think I’d be better off really immersing myself in anime rather than doing scattered one-offs, as I feel like I need to break down an aesthetic barrier. 5/10

Fight Club (David Fincher) - I didn’t like this when I saw it in middle school. (For reference, Se7en was my favorite movie in middle school!) I may have rewatched it in high school, and still disliked it, but I’m not actually sure. In any case, I haven’t seen it in 20ish years. I initially wasn’t interested in the 4k re-release, partly because I figured I still wouldn’t like it, and partly because there’s something about Fight Club that’s just so… cringey. But I owed it a rewatch and it occurred to me I haven’t seen a Fincher movie in theaters in a dozen years (an overlooked casualty of the streaming era). I went in with a positive attitude but this was actually worse than I expected at my most negative. And cringier than I expected. I feel embarrassed for anyone who likes this. Of course the technique is unimpeachable, but it’s just slick and soulless, which may be the point, but it’s not an interesting one. The question of finding meaning in the modern consumerist world certainly has potential, but this jokey, ironic, and mostly unfunny, empty film does not explore that in a compelling way. It must have been very novel in 1999, but as I’ve stated elsewhere, films from the 1990s feel more dated than films from the 1930s. I am usually opposed to such statements, and nobody ever asks me anyway, but women shouldn’t date men who rank this among their favorite films, huge red flag. 3/10

The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda) - I went into this thinking there was some chance it would be the best movie ever made. It was not. Still, pretty fun. Mostly quite cute and charming, occasionally very funny and clever, sometimes surprisingly serious and meaningful, but also often kinda dumb and middlingly sitcommy. Whatever. I dug it. May have teared up once or twice. Don’t expect the Citizen Kane of sheep movies, gotta hire George Miller for that, but otherwise the film should live up to your expectations, whatever they are. If you see the poster and you’re like “Hell yeah, sheep detectives!” then you’ll have a good-to-great time. 6/10

Lumière, le cinéma! (Thierry Frémaux) [Criterion, great picture quality] - The director’s name sounded familiar. Turns out he’s the guy who runs Cannes. This is a documentary that collects dozens of Lumiere short films, which run around a minute each, and provides commentary over them. A must watch for film nerds. I’d hardly seen any of these films before. I was genuinely surprised at how great the footage is in terms of the beautiful restorations and the advanced cinematic technique on display. The films are from the 1890s and I honestly didn’t know that the medium was so developed at that point, considering most early silent films I’ve seen are pretty stagey. These felt like shots that I could have seen in French films from the 1930s-50s. Interesting to watch from a film history perspective and a general history perspective, as the films provide excellent documentary footage from the time period, particularly with street scenes in France. The commentary is limited but it offers good information on the historical development of film, biographical information on the Lumieres, and artistic analysis of the films. 7/10

Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) (James Cameron & Billie Eilish) - I wanted to go see the new Charli XCX movie and the new RZA movie but the showtimes weren’t working out. So I settled for the Billie Eilish movie (there is a Charli XCX song in the movie, making it the fifth film I’ve seen in theaters this year to feature Charli and/or her music). No complaints, I like her music, plus it’s Jimmy C!!! I initially booked a ticket for a 2D showtime, but decided at the last minute to give Uncle Jim and his stereoscopic toys one more try. I actually liked the 3D here. Way better than in a narrative film. I haven’t figured out a way to articulate this that would make sense to anyone but me, but the best way I can describe good 3D is that it makes things feel more real and more fake at the same time, which works for a concert film but not for most narrative films. But to each their own. The more important thing is that I did not get a headache. (I think I saw this in HFR, but I didn’t notice?) Anyway I liked the movie. I’m not really a concert fan, partly because they’re too loud, partly because I’m too reserved to lose myself and sing and dance in public, but mainly because concerts literalize music, which to me is abstract and visual. The images when I close my eyes are better than what can happen on stage. A true one in a billion performer can improve on what I’m imagining, and though Billie is great at what she does, she isn’t that kind of talent. There are some cool visuals to liven it up here and there, but I was only sporadically riveted by the show, as much as I like the songs. I kept thinking “this song would be so great in a movie.” Still, the film works well. Some of the ballads improve on the album versions. I really enjoyed Cameron’s interviews with Billie. They are cute together. Cameron focuses a lot on her relationship with her fans and vice versa. I found it touching. (You meet a number of fans whose lives seem to depend on Billie. This is presented without judgment. Why are so many teenagers destined to be so unhappy? This seems like an underrated problem that people don’t think about enough? The average audience member was much weirder looking than the audience in any other pop star’s crowd, which I thought made the film sociologically interesting.) There’s a brief subplot involving her relationship with her brother, I found that touching as well. My absolute favorite part of the movie is after the concert when the camera focuses on a girl bawling, and a soft spoken Canadian voice comes from offscreen: “So, how’d you like the concert?” I was giggling for like a minute after. I learned in the end credits that some of the concert footage was filmed in Phoenix. If I were a teenager I definitely would have been there, giddy with excitement, screaming… for James Cameron. 6/10

Hokum (Damian McCarthy) - I walked out of the director’s previous film, the critically acclaimed Oddity, after 30 minutes, and wasn’t interested in this new one despite the many rave reviews. But then I saw a few articles about the current Irish Horror New Wave, of which McCarthy is a prominent member, and I became more curious. I went into this fully expecting to walk out after 30 minutes, and the first 10 minutes had me gearing for the exit, but I ended up liking it decently enough. I’m just not a big horror guy, I guess. I had fun with a number of suspense scenes and enjoyed the twists and turns, but I liked the non horror parts the best. There’s a good dark dramedy in here that I would have liked to see fleshed out rather than transmuted into a horror movie. I’m obviously out of touch with critics because if I saw this at a fest I’d be like “Quite promising. Had a lot of good elements. Some effective suspense sequences. Direction is a bit stiff but it makes up for it with a unique vibe. Worth checking out for genre fans, I suppose.” But then I look at the reviews and it’s like “A thrillingly original masterpiece from the genre’s finest modern purveyor” and okay sure I don’t know. 5/10

The Groundstar Conspiracy (Lamont Johnson) (35mm, New Bev Cinema!) - Coming to LA, the first thing I do is look at the New Bev schedule. They’re showing a bunch of George Peppard films this month. I never heard of him (apparently I saw him forever ago in Breakfast at Tiffany’s… but who remembers the male lead in that?). This double feature with P.J. looked compelling. This is a fun but mostly middling cheesy 70s thriller. Bargain bin stuff, but has plenty to make it somewhat worthwhile. I really liked Peppard’s performance as an authoritarian government official anti-hero who thinks everybody should be surveiled. There’s also an interesting score, great locations around Vancouver, cool shots, a sci-fi meets paranoid thriller vibe, some funny dialogue, and a solidly constructed plot that heats up a lot in the final 10 minutes. A good New Bev movie, hokey fun. Just not actually that good. 5/10

Here’s QT’s writeup, with context on Peppard: https://web.archive.org/web/20200714083300/https://thenewbev.com/tarantinos-reviews/tarantino-on-the-groundstar-conspiracy/

P.J. (John Guillermin) (35mm, New Bev Cinema!) - Second half of the New Bev George Peppard double feature. Much better! A very entertaining noir detective movie, but with a jazzy 60s comic tone. It mostly works. The plot, I’m convinced, makes no sense, and the unseriousness holds the movie back, but it’s a fun time with a good setup, stylish direction, colorful characters, strong performances, and a few solid suspense scenes. Felt like it was a rewrite or two away from being a great movie, but it’s definitely worthwhile for fans of this stuff. A great New Bev movie. Also… the pizza. There’s a shot of pizza that made me and a few other audience members gasp. It is the most disgusting looking pizza I’ve ever seen. Did pizza look like that in the 1960s? The film actually shot in New York, but maybe the interiors were shot in LA. Did Angelenos not know real pizza back then? I will never forget the P.J. Pizza. 7/10

Obsession (Curry Barker) - I disliked this pretty much from the beginning, and I contemplated walking out early on. I stuck around mainly because the theater was full and I was sitting in the center and didn’t want to disrupt people. Also, I was curious because the film got such good reviews. It did not get better. I would describe the film as anti-dramatic, with a premise well mined for gags but otherwise being underdeveloped and unengaging. The lack of agency in both of the lead characters is kind of the point but makes it terribly uninteresting. It is mostly well directed and acted and has many scenes that are effective, which explains why the crowd was so into it. But the characters are so bland and behave so implausibly that it was hard to buy into this at all. On a dramatic and aesthetic level it’s trying to be more than your typical horror movie, but it ends up as one note as the most mediocre of them. I’m pretty shocked at the great reviews. 3/10

Is God Is (Aleshea Harris) - Another film full of talent and craft and ambition that just has no dramatic juice (and, another film where I’m baffled at the strong reviews). The writer/director is a playwright who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which surprised me because the stylistic quirks really overwhelm the story and characters. The film is entertaining in portions, thanks to a strong cast and a director who is eager to impress, but the self-conscious cleverness gets old and there’s not much to actually latch onto here. 4/10

I Love Boosters (Boots Riley) - I was a fan of Sorry to Bother You and was looking forward to this. Pretty sure Boots Riley remains the best rapper turned filmmaker, but this didn’t work for me. Riley is bursting with ideas as both a writer and director, and I respect the wild imagination and the strong visuals (too bad it came out alongside a big blockbuster hogging the PLF screens) and the inspired soundtrack and the references ranging from Godard, Hitchcock, Rushdie (!), and… Katamari? But all of this didn’t add up into a good movie. Sorry to Bother You was wild and crazy but actually had a strong script, with solid characters and an engaging story, holding it together. Boosters has a scattershot story, underdeveloped characters, and is more of a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” pothead comedy. It’s like a Black, leftist politics Dude, Where’s My Car? style of comedy, which admittedly sounds kinda awesome, but a lot of the humor was of the “haha, this is crazy” variety that was frequently amusing but rarely made me laugh, and its satire was too over the top to be cutting. (It’s so absurd that it’s hard to be mad at its “stealing is okay” viewpoint, though some of the reviews I read defending such ideas are pretty reprehensible.) I was happy to go along for the ride when it descended into slapstick anarchy, but I didn’t think it had the chops to pull it off. The audience found it much funnier than I did, so what do I know. (And I should stop saying “I can’t believe this got great reviews.”) (I also felt the dialogue was often too low in the sound mix and got drowned out by the music and effects, but that may have just been an issue at this particular theater.) 5/10

Mank (David Fincher) [35mm, Vista Cinema. I usually don’t like seeing digitally shot movies converted to film, but this seemed fitting.] - Mixed on this. I wonder if it will work better upon rewatching, as the structure and the arc may benefit from knowing what direction it’s going in, and I can just treat it like a work of fiction and not be annoyed by how much it makes up. Also, I was unable to understand like 20% of the dialogue and wouldn’t mind going through it with subtitles. Either way, it’s a worthwhile movie. There’s a lot of compelling material, and it’s a gorgeous throwback to old Hollywood. (At least when projected on film, it looked like a really beautiful B&W film from the 40s… except for the aspect ratio.) I debated to myself the effectiveness of using old Hollywood aesthetics, with its fast paced dialogue and old fashioned performance styles, to tell this story, but it is the rare modern period piece where I wasn’t constantly like “It’s just a bunch of people playing dressup with a bad Instagram filter.” This is why we pay Fincher the big bucks. But the film is hard to get into, the main character is unappealing for much of the film, many scenes just had people yapping away about things I didn’t care about, and a lot of the humor fell flat. As a “based on a true story” movie, I find it a bit weird, because the appeal is mostly for quasi-insiders. Forget two Manks and Welles and Hearst, if you don’t know who Mayer and Thalberg and Davies are, you’re screwed. But also the main arc of the film, entirely about real people, is completely made up. I get annoyed when people complain about movies for being historically inaccurate, so I don’t want to do that here, it seemed like an odd choice for the film to have such niche appeal and to also just not be true on so many major levels. I guess there’s some alternate history appeal, it just felt kinda dirty. I felt like I sometimes knew too little to fully appreciate what the movie was doing (I had no prior knowledge about the political happenings in Los Angeles in the 1930s and how they intersected with the film industry, thank you for introducing me to this topic, Fincher), and at other times knew too much to the extent that the falsehoods annoyed me, or the references to real things that I knew about made me cringe. But I did find a lot of the film to be very good and would like to rewatch it one day while turning off the part of my brain that says “But that isn’t true!” 6/10

Show People (King Vidor) [35mm, New Bev Cinema!] - The first of a silent showbiz comedy double feature at the New Bev. I’m not a silent movie guy outside of Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd/etc, but this was pretty amusing and cute, if also pretty slight. I liked the first half hour or so a lot, but as it went on it became a kind of cliched movie about a girl who comes to Hollywood to be an actress. But… it’s from 1928, so maybe it invented some of the cliches? Also, being from 1928, I appreciated its look at the film biz in that era. I think it’s the first film I’ve seen with Marion Davies and I thought she was quite charming, better than her reputation as someone who only got work because she was Hearst’s mistress. Probably plays a little better for people who know this era of film well. It’s apparently inspired by the career of Gloria Swanson, a name I’ve heard of, maybe. There are several major movie star cameos, but the only one I recognized was Chaplin. 6/10

Matinee Idol (Frank Capra) [35mm, New Bev Cinema!] - Part two of the silent showbiz comedy double feature at the New Bev. Under an hour. I liked this one more. The setting here is Broadway, rather than Hollywood (the main character is a famous blackface star…). The first half is pretty funny and charming, but then it gets more serious and amps up the drama, to the extent that it’s actually uncomfortable to watch. Pretty impressive for a silent movie! Capra had his comedy/emotional manipulation chops early in his career. But I didn’t like it! I liked the lighthearted first half more! But it’s good. Though I enjoyed and appreciated both films, the films of the great slapstick stars are just so much better. Maybe I need to watch the greater works of non-slapstick silent comedies (Lubitsch?), but the way I see it, these films, which depend a lot on the intertitles, ultimately improved with sound, while the slapstick films are a unique visual art form that may have died out but never became obsolete. 6/10

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson) [70mm, Egyptian Theatre!] - I was excited to catch up on Lokesh Kanagaraj’s first Vijay starrer Master, which I missed in theaters as it released during the pandemic. I assumed this got a re-release in honor of Vijay being sworn in as Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, itself a masterstroke. But alas I did not read the listing correctly. Anyway, I had already seen PTA’s The Master in theaters in its initial release, but always wanted to see it again, particularly in 70mm (it was magnificently stunning). I basically remembered nothing from the first viewing. I wrote this in 2012: “Not really sure what to make of this. It is really incredible work, and sometimes it is spellbinding, fascinating, and entertaining, but it is frustrating in how meandering it is (in such a controlled, precise way, too!). There is a lot of interesting stuff in here, but the film never goes into anything for too long and I didn’t feel the ideas or relationships were satisfyingly explored. Not that I wanted to be spoonfed, but I wanted to be given enough to make it interesting to think about, and I didn’t get that here. For that reason, I loved the first hour or so but became disinterested as it went on. Curious to see what others think. 6/10” I liked it more than last time, but agree with 80% of what I wrote, with the big point of disagreement being that this time I did feel there was enough to make it interesting to think about. It’s just hard to grasp the characters. I found elements to identify with in each of the leads, but Joaquin’s character is too much of a detestable loser, and the movie doesn’t give you much of an entry point. Even as an observer, you’re left distant a lot of the time. Amy Adams’ character, one of the most interesting parts of the film, is only hinted at. Still, it’s an absorbing watch. When it came out, the big talking point was that it’s the Scientology movie, but I think the film works better with that more in the rear view. It’s one part of the text, but there is a lot else happening, and the film is character driven, not some exposé that people treated it as. (That said, it was amusing to see it on Hollywood Blvd, walking by the scientology building after.) One thing I kept thinking: why does Joaquin look like PTA? I usually get annoyed when audiences snicker at the absurdities of old films, but it was a wonderful shared audience moment when the crowd laughed and booed at the Weinstein Company logo. 7/10

Backrooms (Kane Parsons) - I continue to strike out with critically acclaimed new movies. This one I flip flopped a lot on while watching. “This is pretty decent. This is dumb. This is actually kinda cool. This is dumb. Hey, this is pretty fun. This is dumb. Hmm, it’s getting good. Oh wait, it’s dumb and pointless.” There’s plenty of craft to admire (I only found out after the movie that the director is only ~20 years old, very impressive), with imaginative production design and skillful cinematography and editing, plus a good cast, which is half the reason I saw it. But narratively there’s barely anything there. In the 15 minutes or so when the movie pretends to be a drama, it’s somewhat promising, but goes nowhere. The horror stuff was periodically very effective, and at times a lot of fun with a crowd. But it’s also often tedious, like watching someone play a video game. From early on, I thought “I’m too old for this shit.” Clearly made for a different generation. (The fuck is a “creepypasta”?) Wondering if I should adopt a “half my age plus seven rule” for the directors of new movies. Or just a “don’t watch movies that originated on 4chan” rule. Or both. 4/10

Anupama (Hrishikesh Mukherjee) - This is my third Hrishikesh Mukherjee film, after Anand (which I really liked, 12 years ago) and Bawarchi (which I kind of liked, also 12 years ago). Would like to watch more. This was a special screening of one of his most beloved films, put on by Mukherjee’s family in LA. It was a supposedly newly restored print, and though it looked okay, I was disappointed that it was in the wrong aspect ratio. I compared some versions on youtube, and the original aspect ratio version (which I found in one low quality, unsubtitled upload) just looks so much better. Mukherjee isn’t a flashy director, but he has a good eye for composition, camera movements, and editing. A really solid craftsman, but you wouldn’t know it when his frames are cropped. People just really don’t want black bars, I guess. Anyway, I liked the movie, and really liked the first half, but it suffers from the same ailments as most classic Hindi movies. The characters are too underdeveloped, some are too annoying, the film is too long, etc. Still, it’s a solid melodrama with a good premise, a sweet heart, excellent music (by Hemant Kumar, aka Hemanta Mukherjee), and good performances. (I think it’s my first time seeing the iconic Indian-Jewish actor David, though Wikipedia tells me he’s in Close Encounters?!) A likeable film, despite its unevenness. Afterwards there was a Q&A with the family (which was enjoyable and touching) and so many people went on about how it is one of their favorite films and it always makes them cry. I wish I could see it through their eyes. 5/10

Barton Fink (Joel Coen) [35mm, Vidiots Eagle Theatre!] - One of the few Coens I hadn’t seen, though I owe their entire filmography a rewatch. Their late 80s, early 90s era just doesn’t work for me. This is one of those movies that I found mostly enjoyable and exquisitely crafted from start to finish, but it was too mannered to really involve me and I was constantly asking myself what the point of it was, even before it took some bizarre turns. Great period piece depiction of Old Hollywood, excellent cast, some terrific dialogue, strong visuals and atmosphere, and occasionally interesting thematic material, but there was little for me under the surface level charms, and I found it overdirected with not enough of a story. Its surrealism and ambiguity didn’t appeal to me. 6/10

Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin) - Got to see this in LA’s glorious Orpheum Theatre. 2013 restoration, according to the opening credits. It looked gorgeous. I watched nearly every Chaplin film around 15 years ago and recall this being my favorite (neck and neck with Gold Rush), though I went and checked my old review, from 2011, and apparently I liked some of the others more: “Of the Chaplin movies that I’ve seen, this is the biggest statement and also probably the biggest technical achievement, but I also don’t think it’s as funny or as magical. With that said, I still laughed throughout the entire movie and teared up at the end, so it wasn’t that bad. 9/10” I think I see where I was coming from. The structure is loose and feels like a series of shorts. The sentiment is perhaps less earned than some of the others. Still, it was pretty magical. I laughed throughout this time as well. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed so much in a film. It contains several of his finest sequences. I cried at the end, less because of the film’s intrinsic emotional content but because the film is the end of an era. The end of an art form, really. Did audiences back then know? Did they care? Most classic movies are overrated, but the great silent comedies are underrated. Why did it have to end? There is nothing in film history that makes me sadder. But, at least it ended on a high note. This is probably my favorite film of the 1930s. I forgot Michael Jackson took some dance moves from Chaplin. 9/10

[Many articles on the film claim that it was inspired by Charlie’s conversation about technology with Gandhi, which I was obviously very excited to discover, but I read the section in Chaplin’s autobiography where he writes about their meeting and conversation, and I read the disappointingly short section about the film, and he draws no connection between meeting Gandhi and making Modern Times, so I say this is false. Anyway, I never saw the video of their meeting before:

It is also claimed that Gandhi didn’t know who Chaplin was. This may be true, according to an Indian journalist who was there, which is the only other direct source I could find. Chaplin says he was asked to meet Gandhi, but other sources suggest Chaplin requested the meeting.]

Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg) [70mm, Vista Cinema!] - I only saw 30 seconds of the teaser and a few posters and thought this was about aliens releasing some telepathy virus thing to make people lose their ability to speak. So the entire plot was a nice surprise. (The trailers that I watched after give away too much.) It was pretty good! I’m getting old and would rather see Spielberg make a historical drama than a sci-fi thriller, but still, cool he’s doing popcorn movies at 79. I rank it low in Spielberg’s filmography (probably not bottom 5, but likely bottom 10), but if I’m making a list of movies in the 2020s that cost over $100 million, it ranks surprisingly high. We’re almost halfway through the year, and it’s probably my second favorite new release (I greatly enjoy going to the movies almost every weekend… but I realize looking back at my list that I disliked nearly everything). At one point in the movie I thought “This is a really good summer movie from 20 years ago!” At another point I thought “This might be top 5 Shyamalan!” (“The best David Koepp movie of 2026!”) It’s hard to discuss without spoilers, but I’ll say I liked the film best at its most Hitchcockian and least at its most old-school Spielbergian (which is reductive for a filmmaker who does it all, but you’ll know what I mean). Another way of putting it is that it’s best the less it explains its MacGuffin. I get the sense there’s the movie Spielberg wanted to make with various subject matter and thematic interests of his, and the chase movie he wanted to package it in, and the packaging is better than what’s underneath. It’s just a very entertaining suspense thriller with crafty sci-fi elements, some good heart, top notch filmmaking, and a great performance from Blunt. (The whole cast is good, but the characters are largely not that interesting. I was excited to see Josh O’Connor for the first time since Challengers, and though he is good, it’s just not a juicy role. I was also looking forward to seeing Domingo after loving his performance in Michael, and he’s great, but his character, I don’t know.) Not an instant genre classic or anything, but a good old fashioned entertainment, with great visuals and clever twists. But when its ambitions rise above being a chase movie, it is occasionally interesting but not particularly successful. The big ideas just fell flat, and I thought the mostly wonderful first three-quarters of the movie didn’t gel with the somewhat baffling latter portions, which strain for an emotional connection which isn’t there. I think he was just too close to the material. But I suppose the film did succeed at having me leave the theater pondering the big questions of the universe, such as why Colin Firth looked like an aging Tamil movie star. Spielberg loves to take on new genres and I know he’s planning a western, but I’m crossing my fingers that he does my two favorite genres, neither of which he has tackled yet: silent comedies and Indian movies. Or, as long as he’s going back to genres that he hasn’t done in a few decades, there’s my other favorite genre which he could take another crack at: Tom Cruise movies. 7/10

Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma) - This is the only film in the series I hadn’t seen in its initial theatrical run, as I was five when it came out (though, to be clear, that is not a valid excuse, shame on my parents for not taking me!). This is an important moment in my life, as I caught a screening of it at the excellent Vidiots cinema, and have now seen the entire franchise in theaters. I have completed my mission. (Or not! Of the six films in the series that were shot on film, I’ve only seen three projected on film… the mission continues!) (This might only be the second De Palma movie I’ve seen in theaters as well… and none on film. A lot of work to do!) I watched this once on VHS in 2000 (before seeing M:I-2) and again on Blu-ray in 2011. It remains a wickedly entertaining movie. It’s also really bizarre, teetering on the edge of self parody and always just managing to stay on the wire. I can imagine fans of the later films going back and watching this and being like “What is this?” (I don’t really see the characters in this as being the same characters as in the later films. Until the last one, they’re basically all standalone, with easter eggs.) But it’s so De Palma. So much to appreciate in the filmmaking. Even the sound design is notably stellar. Cruise’s nervous energy is perfect for the baroque paranoid thriller atmosphere. The script is better than I remembered. It lacks strong characters, but it has a fun story that keeps you guessing even if you remember some key twists, and there are so many great, hilarious lines of dialogues. (The film is indeed a comedy. Kinda.) The major suspense sequences are electrifying, but several minor scenes stood out more this time, as did the many terrific supporting performances. Some of my favorite scenes remain the ones that show Hunt’s internal thought processes, which is a good example of De Palma’s style as substance approach. It was interesting to rewatch this after the last few films in the franchise, given the numerous callbacks. (Also interesting to watch it after Topkapi, though I still need to watch Rififi.) Unfortunately I never liked and still do not like the effects heavy climax, which might be the only time in the eight movie franchise where I thought that something looked fake. I also disliked the end credits music, in a film with an otherwise sensationally good score. 8/10

For reference, I wrote this in 2011: “I’ve technically never seen this before (key word: technically). I’m glad I decided to give it a go because it’s pretty much a blast. It’s a great example of a movie that if the same exact script were directed by anybody else I probably would have hated it but De Palma makes it awesome (then again, if it were done by somebody else it probably wouldn’t have the same exact script, but that’s besides the point). I didn’t know what was going on for most of the movie but every scene is so damn exciting with the low angles and close ups and cold streets and fog and gadgets and avant garde editing and explosions and unnecessary double crossings and subtle sexual tensions and heartpounding music and heartpounding due to the lack of music and on and on and on (I swear all of that is in every scene). And of course Tom Cruise. I was expecting a pretty typical action/suspense movie but this is fairly out there and not very Hollywood, which is funny considering it’s the biggest success for almost everybody involved. It does have a lot of problems, most notably that the story and characters aren’t very compelling (the only interesting character was “Max” and we don’t get to know much about her) and it has three main sequences and the first is more fun than the second (which is still really cool), and then the third just doesn’t compare (I know people love the finale but I thought it felt like it belongs in a different movie and was too over the top and lame and also outdated). Despite that, most of the movie is a lot of fun in the moment thanks to its style. Most of you have probably seen this before but maybe not technically, and I recommend giving this another go because you may find a new appreciation for its cinematic techniques. 8/10”

Main Vaapas Aaunga (Imtiaz Ali) - I’ve seen all of Imtiaz’s films from 2007-2015 and generally liked them all, particularly the 2010s ones. Haven’t seen anything he’s done in the past decade, and I should note that this is his first theatrical release since 2020. I was excited by some rave reviews I saw, but the movie really let me down. It’s Imtiaz, so it isn’t lazy trash. There are a number of good scenes and performances, as well as many inspired touches in both the writing and direction (and music, from Rahman). But it’s mostly very middling, and I found it dramatically ineffective. The partition drama crosscuts between present day portions and flashbacks, and it is as much a story about memory and longing as it is about partition, but the approach is too scattershot. The present day portions feel overly concerned with teaching Gen-Zers about partition, and even though the film’s nearly three-hour runtime is a slog, it is all underdeveloped because of how the film divides its time across timelines and characters. There’s a lot of “That would have been compelling, if it were actually explored,” and “Why is this in the movie when more time should have been devoted elsewhere?” 4/10

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson) [70mm, Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater!] - This didn’t totally work for me. I liked the first half a lot, and the craft is exceptional. Visuals, music, sound design, performances, all incredibly impressive. Terrific period piece with gothic touches. But the characters are hard to grasp and it leaves you at a distance. The Master was the same way, but I found that film to be interestingly enigmatic, frustrating but rewarding. After The Master I came home and read a bunch of writeups and discussions about the film and even looked at how a few scenes were written in the script. I was less inspired here, and maybe just found the lead character to be too unappealing to be interesting beyond a certain point, and the direction it went in didn’t feel true to the characters to me. (Reading about The Master after, it seemed like most people agreed with my feelings about the film, while with this I’m apparently one of the few who didn’t totally love it.) Maybe on a rewatch I’d pick up the, uh, phantom threads. 6/10

The Invite (Olivia Wilde) - Another highly acclaimed new release that did not impress me. What is going on? It was decent. I alternated between finding it pretty good and very mediocre. I personally found it overdirected, as if Wilde was afraid of betraying the film’s stage origins, but overall she does a good job and that bothered me less than the often tedious, contrived dialogue which made it hard to really buy into the good parts. There’s some good character work but it’s ultimately too shallow to leave an impact. But it’s sometimes pretty funny and the cast nails it. Norton is particularly terrific, and Wilde’s performance impressed me (off the top of my head I can’t recall her in a single performance, though I have seen her in stuff here and there). Feel this could’ve been great with some script doctoring. Do they do that anymore? We need the old studio system assembly line back. (I know it’s an indie, but just saying.) I wonder if the Spanish original is better. 5/10

Born to Kill (Robert Wise) [35mm, New Bev Cinema!] - First half of the early Robert Wise noir double feature at the New Bev. Hadn’t heard of it, and hadn’t seen any Wise films from before the 60s. It starts off as a compelling noir, but quickly descends into kooky melodrama. Pretty entertaining, though! Funny and twisted. Total salacious potboiler material, and I was eager to see how it would conclude. Fun with a crowd, with some loving laughter to accompany the film’s absurdities. I’m surprised there was no Hindi remake of this. It would have been a great 1993 Shahrukh Khan movie. 6/10

[Interesting wikipedia page. It was banned in a few states, RKO disowned it, the Production Code had to be revised to prevent another film like this being made, and it was referenced in a murder trial!]

The Set-up (Robert Wise) [35mm, New Bev Cinema!] - Second half of the Robert Wise noir double feature. Though it was made only two years after Born to Kill, with only two films in between (the former was Wise’s sixth film and this was his ninth, going by Wikipedia’s list), the craft here is light years ahead. The direction there was mostly pedestrian, while this is an exquisitely crafted noir mood piece with gorgeous lighting, beautifully framed compositions, motivated camera movements, moody jazz and orchestral music, perfectly pitched performances, a detailed, well observed script that opts for poetry over cheap melodrama, and perhaps the finest boxing sequences for decades to come. That said… it’s just not that gripping of a story. 6/10