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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 1982
In my head for years this was the best Star Trek movie.
Uh... I don't think so anymore. In fact, the majority of the second act is a complete bore. I'd even go on record that Khan doesn't do much for me anymore as a villain, the magic after only a few viewings has worn off and now I see Ric Flair in a Eurovision costume. The crew are even a lot more stoic and cold than I remembered through…
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Kristen Schaal: Live at the Fillmore 2013
The strangest, most divisive comedy special in some time. We're talking Kaufman territory here, or at least something like what a Tom Green standup special would have looked like in 1999. Like Kaufman, I can't say it's particularly.. funny? but Schaal goes so far out of her way to put out an uncomfortable experience of failure that I can't help but admire.
After watching I went to read some reviews of it and the number of people who thought she had a legitimate meltdown makes me weep for humanity. I mean a kid got in stage and upstaged her standup, people. Come on.
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Naked Lunch 1991
I'm a big Cronenberg fan but not so much of Burroughs, which is why it took this long to finally get around to this one. And... it's good. A non-linear narrative that I went to Wikipedia to help me make sense of, thinking I was missing something when really it was as weird as is on face value, I appreciated it simply as a cool, weird, and gross experience, the likes of which few if any are really doing these days.
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Silver Linings Playbook 2012
An ever so slight downturn on rewatch for something that was in my top 10 last year is still enough that it wouldn't be in my top 10 anymore.
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Mud 2013
I was not much a fan of Take Shelter so I was a little apprehensive going into this but mostly had an open mind. ....and Mud continues Matthew's streak nicely.
Mud is very much a Southern Gothic, Mark Twain-y piece of work, a bit of coming of age, a bit straight up thriller, and eventually a bit wild west, in a surprisingly un-sticky looking, gorgeous backdrop in Arkansas, where young Ellis and Neckbone come across Mud, who is living out…
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Femme Fatale 2002
A slightly underrated De Palma film. Nicely paced and trashy, it manages to be appropriately cast but at the same time it's that casting that puts a ceiling on how good this can be.
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Star Trek Into Darkness 2013
Confession: I didn't like the Star Trek reboot the first time I saw it. While admiring the performances, the whole thing felt so plastic and I was on board with those who felt it was betraying what Star Trek was all about.
I got over it. For all the nitpicking and red matter maguffin BS, there's no denying that cast chemistry, and it's the kind of thing that just overpowers all on rewatches.
With Into Darkness, those character dynamics are…
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The Manor 2013
This has come to be known as "the strip club documentary" this year at Hot Docs, but what is actually on screen is far more dirty. Telling the story of his own family, Shawney Cohen has put together a tragicially comic doc piece that asexualizes the family bar he grew up in (and received a lapdance in at the age of 13 for his birthday) and is rife with material that ranges from the awkward, to funny, to gross, to…
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Close-Up 1991
More fascinating to me than entertaining, Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up finds a real life trial re-enacted by the actual players, adding several layers to the proceedings considering that the trial revolves around one man acting as an imposter for artistic reasons. It plays as part fiction, part documentary, in a way that may be influencing current films that are touted entirely as documentaries.
Like the other films I have seen with this director, he takes all the time he needs and…
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The Great Gatsby 2013
Some kid is gonna watch this to help him do his English literature homework and it will make him drop out of school entirely.
