Yeah, this is really good, just a pretty darn delightful day at the movies, and what qualms I may have about how both Miguel O'Hara and The Spot are not exactly great adversaries for Miles and Gwen here are made up for by how I absolutely expect this team to stick the landing and that it is given the space to be a Miles & Gwen movie and knows the right amount to use everyone else.
It's a visual knockout, of…
One of the great things about watching 2001 in a theater is the folks who haven't seen it before and aren't ready for how shit gets real in this otherwise patient film right after intermission.
Movies like The Booksellers don't exactly backfire when, halfway through, certain viewers find that this film meant to celebrate a rare and vanishing breed of person is instead providing examples of just how that breed rubs them the wrong way. A documentary doesn't necessarily need to be convincing to be worthy, but at times there is enough self-satisfaction evident in this one to visibly crowd out the more dynamic stories that filmmaker D.W. Young could be telling.
You almost have…
A solid, sympathetic story about a woman trying to come to terms with how she just couldn't do enough for her best friend. It's a thing that could be too earnestly somber or too casual, but instead comes from a place that could be horrifying but instead has a shred of optimism: Mariko may have been done from the start, but that doesn't make her friend's attempt to help without value.
It works in large part because of its great…
