Journal

A $300M F1 movie finishes P2 in 2025’s driving-scene standings

Bingo

Fun, mega-gnarly, dong-filled

Ralph Fiennes and Jack O'Connell carried the energy throughout. I was a bit surprised they sidelined the kid character, since he was really good in the first, but maybe he will pop off again in the third installment?

Men will literally write a best-selling novel about the most romantic night of their life in Vienna with a stranger they met on the train instead of going to therapy

The movie that made me realize I had become cat-pilled.

Coen brother's movies are so reliably wonderful. They are filled with the best kind of things films can do; make you laugh in interesting ways, make you sad in interesting ways, make you think about the meaning behind really small moments. I get to the end of one of their films and thing "yeah this is why I like movies"

The usual Park Chan-wook goodness:
- Symbolism maxxing (a decaying tooth, bugs eating thing alive, pig slaughter, forcing the bend of a bonsai tree with wire until it snaps, etc etc etc)
- Truly S-tier creativity in terms of match cuts, cross dissolves, camera locations and camera movements (the digging scenes, my god)
- Good comedy and good fucked up shit

However, like Decision to Leave, it was verging on incoherence at points and that disconnected me a bit from the story and characters.

The Handmaiden is still peak for me. It has all the good stuff I mentioned while also maintaining emotional connection to the characters and executing a legible (though convoluted) narrative.

Bechdel lives in fear of this movie.

It was between this and My Cousin Vinny to get Sarah prepped for her jury duty tomorrow.

Instead of a review, check out my erudite-maxxing watch setup instead: https://imgur.com/a/29Z4QEm (haven’t read any of them btw).

This was fun because I like the New Yorker and I love the folks that work there getting airtime, but it had nothing on Very Semi-Serious.

Anodyne, saccharine, but it goes down easy

Lost half a star from that god awful scene between Dern and Sandler, how does that dialogue end up in the final cut of a Baumbach movie?

2025 “power of art” / “bad dad” triple feature with Hamnet and Sentimental Value.

Intentional, relentless, aggressive

The next stop on Sarah’s movie education tour

For the record, if the sexy goth Na'vi warrior gave me space coke and asked me to be her sex slave I'd say yes. Just for the record.

The underlying moral debate of this film is really interesting, but I think the delivery of that dialogue needed more character arc or plot or something else. By the end I was a little tired of everyone yelling the same questions over and over again.

On the positive note, the dark humor was great and the ending was amazing and almost, but not quite totally redeeming of my earlier boredom.

2025 has been a great year for smaller, grounded, emotionally moving flicks (Sentimental Value, Hamnet, Sorry Baby, to name a few others). Who doesn't like sitting in a dark room (or plane) with strangers (or friends, or alone) and getting a little dirt in your eyes that you have to wipe away for a minute.

I could watch a Rian Johnson mystery every single night of my life. Keep em coming!

P.S. Netflix pls don't kill movies thx

I spent a lot of the movie deciding if the first-person camera was a distracting conceit or something fundamental to telling the story and I landed a bit mixed.

It got be thinking about strong camera constraints in general (oners, bottle movies, etc etc etc) and the balance of artifice vs genuine narrative device. I asked that question of other movies I have liked like Birdman, Enter the Void, 12 Angry Men, Presence and how IMO they work a bit better with their chosen tricks.

Final decision - this story could have been told just as well (maybe even better) without the strong first-person constraint, but it will certainly be more memorable because of it. Anyway... 3.5 stars.

One of the few movies you watch then say "they don't make em like they used to" and actually be spot on.

It's the accumulation of a thousand of small, perfectly-made choices that elevate above its trope-y genre.

A movie that asks "what would you do?" when the answer is blindingly obvious: just lie and shirk off jury duty just like everyone else.

There might exist a particular mood I could have been in where I liked this a bit more, but I was not in that hypothetical mood when I watched it. I couldn't deal with the atrocious dialogue or the never-ending stream of plot holes. They kept hanging lampshades on the implausibilities but that somehow made it worse (e.g. "oh we couldn't possibly have a mistrial on this extremely high-profile case we're simply toooo busy").

That one episode of The Bear but make it 90 minutes long and also Scouse

Bonus half star because it isn't every day I discover a new example of Cockney rhyming slang (henry -> henry the eighth -> eight ball)

Just about the same amount worse than the first movie as the second act of the musical was worse than the first act of the musical.

Uphill battle for this to be good:
- no novelty effect of seeing this world realized in a film setting
- shorter source material so they have to stretch it and add filler
- fewer banger songs
- darker and less fun plot

No Good Deed was peak though.

If you have read my review of Pride & Prejudice then you know some of my thoughts on adaptations.

In general I look for two things. I want an adaptation to stay true to the tone & themes of the original. I also want it to add to the original in ways that are only possible in the form factor of the adaptation (a movie adaptation of a book should be more cinematic, a book adaptation of a movie should be more literary, a play adaptation of a novel should be more theatrical, etc etc etc for all permutations).

This adaptation was true to the tone of the book throughout, but it took till the last twenty minute to make me feel like it was doing something moving in a cinematic way that a book could never accomplish. Once it got there, it was spectacular.

I would have enjoyed the first half more if it had stuck to the non-linear narrative of the novel (you know I'm a sucker for non-linear narrative).

My short reviews usually do better on here (brevity is the soul of wit, after all) but sometime ya just have to rant.

P.S. for a recent adaptation that I think broke from the theme of the source material and it pissed me off see my review of Frankenstein.

Another understated and evocative drama from Trier. While it didn't quite have the sustained energy or personal resonance of Worst Person, the emotional crux of the film still get me like 🥺😢

Waiting for the digital release so I can re-watch the monologues back to back.

The only Frankenstein adaptation for me, thank you very much

This adaptation focusses on monster == misunderstood and good, humans == bad and evil (except for the monster-loving chick), which is incredibly on-brand for Del Toro.

IMO, Frankenstein is so much more interesting when the themes are monster == complex creature musing about life and love, humans == complex creatures musing about life and love.

Also, a lot has already been said about the "you’re the monster" line, but jfc I wanted to call up Guillermo and say "my guy, anyone who is voluntarily watching a 2.5 hour adaptation of Frankenstein is literary enough to pick up on the theme here"

My face when I realize I haven't really loved a Del Toro movie in over a decade 🙁☹️😩

This review may contain spoilers.

A full star of the review is attributed to the Chekhov's leg extension reveal and the subsequent line "it's hard to think it's not about the legs right now"

I truly believe that this could have been 4.5 stars if Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans were replaced with Emma Stone and Josh O'Conner.

Alt review: OMG Celine is right, poor people deserve to fall in love too

After the era of horror movies that were campy good, and before the era of horror movies that were good good, this was just bad.

Anti-Sorkin dialog (complimentary)

This was so small and so so good. Seriously, the dialog was so good I could listen to this movie as a podcast. It was naturalistic, awkward, profound, aching, wonderful.

Also, Lucas Hedges! Where you been at?

So it’s actually never the wrong night to rewatch an epic Korean psychosexual thriller like The Handmaiden

This review may contain spoilers.

Big winners:
- Bees
- Bald girls
- Conspiracy theorists

Big losers:
- Leaving the office before 5:30
- All humans
- Kneecaps

Let that be a lesson to you, no one thinks they killed the bad guy and drops the weapons literally right next to him three times in a row.

Alt review: "Tubthumping, but it's a horror flick"

RIP 💔😢

Was it great? No. Am I a compete sucker for creative narrative structure. Yes. Will I watch just about any B grade indie horror thriller with my wife? Also yes.

If you liked this, go watch Sanctuary and Black Bear.

Masterclass in scene blocking

This review may contain spoilers.

I could have stopped them

If I ever licked toad, this movie would be the fever dream I never want to wake up from.

Rewatching on a plane really isolates the true laugh lines vs the crowd-thing theater laugh lines.... And the answer is still Jimp.

Didn't totally care for the low-budget cosplay (60 million, come on!) but there were some nice moments snuck in there.

Unfortunately, for me, this movie will always be overshadowed by the legacy of its trailer and the subsequent feast that hobbyist editors on TikTok had with that Kipling poem audio.

I finally understand the Dobler-Dahmer theory from HIMYM

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"