wasn’t entirely sure it would elevate after the first twenty minutes or so, despite a great opening credits sequence, but clear that Glass has the juice about halfway through. like Saint Maud, this one is at its best when it plays with the tension between the corporeal and the psyche, and watching how she pushes that is thrilling. a blast to watch, to listen to when the score kicks in, to let it wash over you when it breaks from reality. super exciting, continue to look forward to Glass’s future work.
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Dune: Part Two 2024
elevated Marvel.
not sure if it’s burdened by the source material, but despite Villeneuve making a more cohesive film this time he, surprisingly for a work so enamored with spectacle, doesn’t really land on much fun or excitement. some may contend that is the point, the story we are watching is the rise of a tyrant, the weaponization of religion, the preservation of a oppressive power structure. it shouldn’t be fun, we should be horrified by the the protagonists as…
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The Lighthouse 2019
had the theater been more full, it’s very possible that I would have found an audience worse than the Circus Maximus one. not sure if it’s Eggers, A24, or specifically this film that drew out people who wanted to treat this like it was a screening of The Room or Rocky Horror, but they certainly made their voices heard. and seen too, i guess, in the case of the guy who’d pull up Instagram every twenty minutes or so to record a gif’d scene.
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Perfect Days 2023
more tragic than i expected, though perhaps a mirror in some ways that allowed me to see that. impressive to pack so much emotion in to a largely silent film, at least in a modern context.
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Drive-Away Dolls 2024
a lot of fun, though probably could have used a little more time? still struggling with liking so many individual elements while coming out slightly distanced on the final product? the writing is there, the performances are there, but kind of missing the tissue to elevate beyond the predictably compelling parts from Ethan Coen. maybe it’s me who needs more time, not the film.
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The Lobster 2015
Lanthimos at his best, true delight seeing John C Reilly as always, the film was even funnier than i remembered. and that ending…incredible. still does slow down just a bit in the last 20 minutes or so, but a minor complaint when everything else is so strong.
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Madame Web 2024
seen a lot of complaints about plot holes, camerawork, the script, line readings, and heavy studio interference. but the unfair one is changing the time from the 1990s to 2003. hard to imagine a 30 year old paramedic living and working in nyc who can also see the future wouldn’t have stopped 9/11. did the film really expect us to sit for two hours with a future terrorist? exactly.
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The Taste of Things 2023
easy to say this boils down to the temporary nature of life and food, how long both take to achieve and how quickly they can be gone, but just as the film lingers and appreciates the nuance of the process, the majesty of the results. almost enough to break through my hard heart, to really grapple with the internal. may not always feel like it in the moment, but the power of cinema is on display in every frame.
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How to Have Sex 2023
wonder if in the UK they refer to it as Spring Brekkie.
admired a lot about this one, and do think (despite some surface similarities early on to Korine’s brilliant film in terms of how the camera works and how it captures the introduction to the core group of girls and Malia) it’s unfair to liken this to the ‘easy’ points of comparison as it does a ton of strong scripting work drawing the characters, especially Tara.
McKenna-Bruce is great…
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The Monk and the Gun 2023
strange feel to this one, too didactic to feel wholesome and too wholesome to effectively satirize. but did come out positive on it, enjoying both its teachings practically and thematically.
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Paprika 2006
Had been sort of putting off this rewatch for a while, I’ve revisited parts, but my reverence for Kon’s work is so great and my memories linked to this film so important that I figured it perhaps couldn’t live up to how I remembered it. But with it returning to theaters for event screenings, I’m happy to report that, while my memory was not perfect regarding this film, it was actually better than I remembered.
From the opening scene and…
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Lisa Frankenstein 2024
a long awaited return to the Diablo Cody Novelty Phone Extended Cinematic Universe; however, shoe phone is simply no hamburger phone aside to a certain subsection of fetishists.
and, unfortunately, Lisa Frankenstein, while containing plenty of compelling elements from performances to set design to Cody’s script, is a far cry from the heights of her previous scripts.
pacing here is sort of a mess, not helped by the film being more enamored with stuffing in as many needle drops as…