On second try, it just doesn’t work. I’d thought it was a step up from the rest of the series but the seriousness with which it regards itself gets in its way. I’m still loyal to PWSA thanks to Event Horizon - but it remains his only worthwhile film.
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Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981
The only perfect film.*
I needed to see Indy kill some Nazis real good. And he did.
* Except for that thing where Marion was 15 when she and Indy first hooked up. Ew David. -
Rashomon 1950
Rating it 4 because I’m meant to hold this in high regard and I know my problem so far with Kurosawa is only mine. I need to spend some time with writings on him so that I understand what to take from these films. At the moment, I don’t understand their relevance to cinema history and I’m left mostly scratching my head. I want to get on board because my FOMO is bothering me a lot. I might find that I’m better off reading about him than I am watching his films. No point continuing if I don’t enjoy them and honestly, I just don’t.
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Quantum of Solace 2008
Breaking my own rule and logging a film that I didn’t finish because what I watched of this is so unbelievably shit that I wasn’t about to damage my own peace of mind for two hours with it. I’m no purist about franchise entries - “Casino Royale” makes a beautiful soufflé of minced Bond tropes - but this fucking thing just ignores any sane action filmmaking instincts and barfs up a mess of split second cuts and oblique anti-narrative wankery and idiotic music cues and other bullshit and no. Fuck this movie.
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Casino Royale 2006
Mads horny af over naked bloody Daniel Craig is the only scene in all of cinema that matters
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Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death 2005
The bluntly brilliant culmination of the trilogy is precisely what I did not expect: a hangout comedy wherein Milo is a fish-out-of-water in his own, slowly attriting life. For all of its jokiness and the horrific crescendo into madness we expect of these films, “Pusher 3” is also surprisingly poignant: here is your run of the mill knuckleheaded criminal sociopath who charmed his way to the top of a ramshackle neighborhood dope enterprise who has to reckon with his own…
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Furious 7 2015
I didn’t give this enough credit the first time around. On second viewing I definitely prefer it to 6, which is good but lacks the visual wit and narrative energy of this one. I’m generally hard on Wan, I don’t care for much of his stuff but I also think my distaste for Saw and Conjuring has influenced my feelings about his larger films. Not saying I’m about to come around on Aquaman but maybe I could let my defenses…
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Aniara 2018
I suspect this one lost a lot of potential viewers because its trailers highlight its cheap VFX and obvious use of hotels and / or malls and / or universities to represent spaceship interiors. Once you buy into the idea that it’s a luxury liner and the story takes hold none of that matters. This is a survival story of the grimmest kind - doomed humans running out the clock, desperately looking for any inspiration to help them wake up another day. It’s a strange and hypnotic film, a bald existential nightmare that gives not a solitary fuck what we expect of a space movie.
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You and the Night 2013
Rubber prop cocks, M83, a single soundstage, cute haircuts, and a whole lot of Jarman. It’s not good, but it’s memorably single-minded and strange. Gonzalez fascinates me.
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Once Upon a Time in America 1984
This has really upset me. It’s more than the rightfully infamous rape scenes. I think it’s that it so deftly weds those scenes along with extreme violence and general unpleasantness to a sickly sweet invocation of classic Hollywood romances - Leone, with extra help from Morricone, gives us a number of scenes of warbly cooing between lovers, shucksy joshing between friends, and street rat shenanigans straight out of “Oliver Twist.” America has always had snakes in its gardens - Leone…