bybowes

bybowes Pro

Favorite films

  • Barry Lyndon
  • Hard Boiled
  • News from Home
  • Lola Montès

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  • May December

    ★★★★½

  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

    ★★

  • The Killer

    ★★★

  • Dredd

    ★★★½

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  • May December

    May December

    ★★★★½

    This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

    The reason Todd Haynes is Todd Haynes instead of some jerkoff is when the scene comes along where the Zoomer kid is disgusted that the cusp Gen-X/elder millennial actress is drawn to moral ambiguity, he lets her cook for a couple seconds. He doesn't slosh his martini bellowing about how you damn kids these days need to learn about Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He just lets her have that moment.

    Which is par for the course for his career; the list…

  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

    ★★

    This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

    The first half hour is clunky but fun, the last twenty minutes or so are genuinely touching, the middle twelve hours are a little rough. I will concede, on paper, that an Indiana Jones movie where the villain's plot is to kill Hitler for not being a good enough exponent of Nazism and where Indy ultimately says out loud that he'd rather literally live in ancient history than his own time is thematically meaty. But there's a reason why you actually have to make the movie rather than just have a good Wikipedia summary. Preferably without someone in the Panama Papers making sitcom jokes about capitalism.

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  • Gotti

    Gotti

    ★½

    Until I was ten, my dad's main source of income was from bartending, and for several years in that period he worked at a place in Downtown Brooklyn that was a brisk walk from the borough's various courthouses. This is relevant for two reasons: the main one is a prize anecdote starring my dad's friend and coworker Jimmy, wherein during a particularly busy day at the restaurant John Gotti and retinue came in seeking strong drink and a bite to…

  • Tenet

    Tenet

    ★★★★★

    To properly explain myself I have to start many years ago. When I was 18, my second year in college, I took a fiction writing workshop taught by a well-known novelist who shall remain nameless here (mainly because if she remembers me at all, any mention of my name probably elicits a "Jesus Christ....him"). I was very excited at the prospect of getting my future storied career as A Very Serious Writer underway, and as such I was more than…