4o3v2h

This is charming as hell.

I got to introduce this at TIFF, as part of TIFF Next Wave Film Festival who asked me to screen a movie I loved and talk about it. Thank you to the commitee and to Joanne Sarazen for being a lovely .

Things that are fun/interesting about this movie:
*David Lynch was the first filmmaker approached to direct it
*It was rated NC-17 at first because Amy Heckerling wanted to show full frontal male nudity (!!)
*Of course, the first appearance of many glorious actors including Forrest Whittaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eric Stoltz and Nicholas Cage for approx. 20 frames
*The record store in the mall is called Licorice Pizza!!!!!!!!

Was really struck again watching it by:
*The insightful production design (the giant oversized chairs at the German restaurant where Stacy and Ratner go on a date are my favourite moment of visual comedy in a film)
*The impactful female gaze of the sex scene - especially the shots of the ceiling for Stacy's gaze when she loses her virginity
*How incredibly textured and layered the characters are, especially Stacy and Phoebe Cates
*How Sean Penn is SO effortlessly fun and dialed in here, it's maybe the best comedic performance of the 80s
*The wonderful natural dialogue but also insanely funny jokes and gags by Cameron Crowe - it's a perfect script

Judge Reinhold is so fucking funny to me in this movie. Honestly I cackle with delight at literally everything he does. Justice for Brad Hamilton and Mike Damone can rot in hell.

F/M/K
Spicoli/Ratner/Brad Hamilton

I would marry Brad Hamilton, fuck Ratner and kill Spicoli.

Thank you TIFF Next Wave for one of the best nights of recent memory... this was a dream come true
Love Chandler

June Squibb!

Gorgeous central performance. Nice use of ICQ.

Watched for the magic hour photography but stayed for the loveable little scamp.

Seen on 35mm at the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz, my favourite place to watch a movie. Thank you Matt Kazman for the ticket.

Watched this on 35mm at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles!
What a gorgeous theatre.

Can't really complain. Linda Forientino is terrific in this totally bizarre and very funny noir. Insane sex scene. Unexpected Q&A with Peter Berg. Saw Tatiana Maslany from afar. 10/10 LA experience.

Adam Sandler (in drag) has surprisingly amazing romantic chemistry with Al Pacino in this! I adored it.

Watched on Monday March 10, 2025.

Another hit from the Bong. So entertaining and dark. Good Trumpian impression from Mark Ruffalo, Robert Pattinson is so wonderful. Most importantly: Stars my number one character actor crush, Cameron Britton!

Dan Beirne is the only leading man I wanna see on the big screen. And Andrea Werhun! Wow. A star is born. Their scenes together are so magnetic.

Thoughtful, 90s Toronto time capsule that really makes me cry at the end. A very soulful, personal movie by Sook-Yin Lee; a earnest portrait of true love amongst neurotic needy creative Torontonians. Lots to ire and love here in this independent Toronto gem that marches to the beat of its own drum. I want more neurotic freakazoid cinema set in Kensington Market!

Was profoundly moved by this! This is how you do a remount. The director really really REALLY understood the assignment. What a glorious film - the best since the original (which is a perfect movie I have seen 700 times and big inspo for me and Barbie and Mile End Kicks). I wanna see a movie about Bridget Jones in her 80s where she hooks up with an entire retirement home. She is eternal!

Watched as part of Canada’s Top 10 Film Festival with a special Q&A with David Cronenberg! Cronenberg is the only person I’ve seen make drinking out of a boxed water look cool. The movie is campy and sexy and sad and personal.

CRACKINGLY funny and sweet and subversive comedy. My favourite Jason Schwartzman performance since "Rushmore." As funny and well directed as "The Graduate." Shades of Hal Ashby, Elaine May, Woody Allen. Brilliant energy and sound design and acting and direction... I could go on. There is a running gag involving a creaky door that made me less depressed. I watched this very Jewish film while suffering from severe lactose intolerance, so I truly felt an affinity with the characters. It's perfect. The new quarter life crisis is a 40 year old crisis.

Hipster male gaze claptrap that is occasionally very moving and funny, mostly this is a film about how hard it is to be super hot. Talia Ryder plays an underage nymphet scammer who exists only to be projected upon in Trump's America with some very sophisticated comedy done by Simon Rex and Ayo Edebiri who just wanna subsume her it girl charisma.

Gave it an extra half star because the scene where Talia Ryder unexpectedly sings in the bathroom mirror is truly one of the most beautiful opening credit sequences I've ever seen. And I like the monster DJ snorting cocaine who looks like he works with Jabba the Hut.

Okay maybe I liked this more than I thought I did. Certainly the most artful Alice in Wonderland fare of the Dimes Square oeuvre. Sean Price Williams knows how to make things beautiful and fun.

I have an aunt like this.

So grateful I got to see this for the second time on the big screen.

I LOVE this documentary.

Got to screen and introduce this film at Innis College today! Kind of the best portrayal of COVID ever. Martin Shanly's performance, writing, editing style and direction really speaks to my soul. A great movie about being a depressed fuckup with fraught friendships and family relationships. What is unspoken and not seen in the film is just as important is what is. I will never stop relating to Arturo.

I love "About Thirty."

Signed,
About Forty

Shoutout to CINSSU legend Soren Stancliff for programming this on the big screen in Toronto.

The Phillip Seymour Hoffmann/Camryn Mannheim scene in the diner is the realest shit I have ever seen in a movie.

How do you direct half the scenes in this film and maintain that tone? A genuine American classic.

Some stray observations...

1. Shot by Sven Nykist, go off king! There are some beautiful exteriors in this.

2. I wish Jonah was my son.

3. "You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.“
Great line from the queen of great lines. I love Nora Ephron.

4. A little too much stalking for my taste. Though I would do the same thing if I heard Tom Hanks on the radio.

5. Rita Wilson steals the entire movie with her recounting of "An Affair to ." Great scene.

Did not expect a musical biopic where ex-Take That member Robbie Williams is played by a CGI monkey to touch my heart and heal my soul but that’s what 2025 is all about! Did a full-bodied cathartic cry in the Carlton as the movie pressed on several aching wounds (no I am not a former member of a British boy band). Everyone should be talking about this movie. It’s the best fucking film of the year.

Not as audaciously bad as I thought it would be… but ridiculous nonetheless. The three actresses are very committed and Zoe Saladana is IN the movie.

Uneven shades of Annette, Sicario, Mrs. Doubtfire and Transparent but written and directed by an elderly Frenchman who is definitely wearing a fedora right now.

Oh my god!!! First time watching Notting Hill!!! So genuinely funny, surprising AND romantic!!! What a great script!!! What great chemistry!!! I love movies!!!

“I didn’t really know who that Tim Shallot guy was but he was pretty good!” - Cam Levack *****
“You know the film was pretty entertaining… full of fabulous musical performances obviously. I was always a Joan Baez fan… you know she was kind of sexy, she had everything. And the actress played her really really well, and she didn’t have the musical training but in some ways, she stole the show. Bob Dylan was kind of a creepy guy in some ways, but it depicted that pretty well!” - Cam Levack, Burlington Cinema Weekly

Watched this again with my dad who sat rapt with his hands over his mouth with a reverence last seen by a young Chandler Levack seeing “She’s All That” for the first time at a 7th grade sleepover. He has been talking about Bob Dylan for the last six hours. Help me.

Knocked out by Jeremy Strong in this… uncanny, harrowing, like he channeled the devil. Sebastian Stan was also unbelievable. Still it’s uncanny to watch a biopic about Donald Trump entirely shot in Toronto with Canadian character actors.

“After Hours” for interminable horniness

Moving beautiful sumptuous. Greta Gerwig is in this. Gorgeous symmetrical framing. A closeup in a mirror that is seismic. Mostly untouchable for THAT MICA LEVI SCORE (heartstopping!) and Natalie Portman’s face. Watched by myself in the balcony of the Paris Theatre on New Years Day then took a long walk up the Upper East Side where every gold-plated building with a doorman felt like Jackie.

Watched this in New York after funnily enough drinking a large glass of milk. Sexy! Sad! Fearless performance by Nicole Kidman! Treads water for a long time and doesn’t know how it wants to end but I’d rather watch a thousand flawed films about female sexuality than none at all. It’s the best when it’s a movie about two dorks trying to negotiate their BDSM relationship.

A movie about how situationships are bad only for women.

Watched this for the first time on 35mm at the Film Forum with a lengthy Q&A featuring Gary Cooper’s daughter! Since I recently watched “Mr. Deeds,” I kept thinking about Adam Sandler. Fine film with a genuinely romantic scene between Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper in the New York fog. Let good looking men play their tubas in peace!

This movie hits different in a roomful of elderly New Yorkers! I absolutely loved it the second time and could appreciate even more nuances. Might be turning into my favourite film of the year and huge inspiration for my next script.

Watched the only way this movie should be: on Christmas Day, on a hotel room TV, in Manhattan, in the background while my family fought with each other.

Watched this for the first time with my brother (a massive fan of the film) at Toronto's Carlton Cinema which POSITIVELY REEKED OF WEED. Someone in the audience was doing tai chi during the screening, another person had approx. 19 shopping bags, there were 7 stoned Ryerson students, it was a vibe, anyways... wow, this movie is PROFOUNDLY EXCELLENT. Moving, soulful, way ahead of its time in its treatment of trans and unhoused protagonists who have way more layers and complexities than I've ever seen in a regular film. Everyone who loves character and structure and heart should absolutely watch Satoshi Kon's masterful anime, which deserves to be a Xmas movie on the same level as "It's A Wonderful Life." I was very moved. I hope no one ever remakes this as a live action film, even though they should.

Watched this in 70mm baby with a very genial and self effacing Q&A by Brady Corbet. My main takeaway is that I still can’t believe he shot a 3 and half hour movie in VistaVision in 33 days, for 10 million dollars! How is he still standing? Some shots and music cues and graphic design that floored me. Felicity Jones plays another thankless wife. Adrian Brody is great. Guy Pearce plays the Monopoly Man. LOL Crawley is becoming a God-tier cinematographer.

This is a masterpiece, bar none. Anyone who cares about cinema or writing or basically narrative art in any capacity needs to watch "Fanny and Alexander." It is also a perfectly depraved Xmas movie! Second time watching the theatrical version on the big screen. So many wonderful shots, production design details, staging, inner weirdness. As someone who comes from a big messy family perpetually haunted by my own trauma... this movie is just sublime. Its treatment of ghosts and sex and death is very Shakespearean.

What really hit this time for me is just its depiction of family and childhood and how torn apart we are by the people who love us. Love how cozy and warm the film begins and how desolate and eerie it ends. It truly contains every aspect of the human experience with a trans coded subtext that was majorly ahead of its time.

Someone should take all of Bertil Guve's fits and make an SSENSE collection out of them.

Handsomely shot, somnambulistic Victorian thriller starring a woman who has definitely had buccal fat removal surgery. Expositional at points that felt like a Marvel movie, with three shots that made my jaw drop. While I fell asleep (like I do in every Robert Eggers movie), one can't help but ire the craft and hustle that gets a movie like this made.

P.S. Do not watch this on Christmas Day, your family will hate you.

P.P.S. If you watch the original Murnau film, it lines up perfectly with Kid A and OK Computer! That was like, the major epiphany of first year university for me.

There are a few films that I know from a single image. The image of a silouhetted Joseph Cotten in an underground tunnel has been burned into my brain since first year film school, but I'd never seen Carol Reed's The Third Man until tonight. It turns out that it's a pretty droll noir that's grim and entertaining in all the right measures. It's also sublimely, confidently shot - you forget until you watch old classical Hollywood films what power a closeup really has. Cotten is great but Orson Welles in a three scene role steals the entire movie. The audience at the Revue broke out into spontaneous applause during a choice line delivery during a Ferris wheel scene so great I feel like I'll spend the rest of my life chasing its perfection. One Perfect Shot turns out to be One Perfect Movie.

Great movie. Funny, heartbreaking, incandescent. But sadly, I must confess…
Too long! He needed to shave down that searching for Vanya/screwball comedy assault sequence dramatically! My patience wears thin! One time I heard Jason Reitman on a podcast talking about how editing is directing. Now that I’m deep into my own edit, bashing my head against the wall, trying to cut scenes and jokes I love, you really understand how the pleasure of a movie really comes from pacing. Maybe Sean Baker could’ve stood to be a little less precious here. Maybe. It’s hard. Still so many fantastic shots and moments here with an ending that only grows in its power. I really like this film!

Just a woman... on her period... watching "Elf" for the first time... and crying.

Jon Favreau really assembled a murder's row of character actors here! The casting is really what makes it sing.

Five stars for Owen Kline’s cameo, the wonderful Adam Pearson and when Sebastian Stan dresses up exactly like Woody Allen at the end of the film.

The only thing that's wrong with this movie is that it isn't 17 hours long.

Do you think Tom Cruise has seen “Cruising?”
An extra star because the most murderous twink in the film looks like Zach Braff.

Not since John Cassavettes and Gena Rowlands has a cinematic partnership been so fruitful. Ben Petrie and Grace Glowicki are my favourite filmmakers in Toronto and this funny, manic story about a couple who adopts a rescue whippet in COVID is exceptional. The writing and performances are great, but it’s also Beautifully shot, wonderfully directed, with the score by Casey CQ that is exceptional. If I was betting futures in Toronto cinema, I’d buy up all the stock in Glowicki-Petrie.

This movie is freaky-deaky. I love Rebecca Miller and I'm so glad she's making the films I wanna see (i.e. ones where Peter Dinklage has sex with a female tugboat captain). Gorgeously shot by my fave modern DP Sam Levy, Miller is taking all kinds of risks in this New York fable about love, including intermittently switching up the aspect ratio, shifting tones from Bogdanovich farce to Lonergman melancholia, and covering a baker's dozen of character arcs that really have no rhyme or reason to be in the same movie. But she's thinking, feeling writer-director, and one I really ire. You can tell she loves the craft of filmmaking and her actors, harnessing performances that are more embodied than nearly any other modern director I know. Anyone who loves Woody Allen movies should watch this and "Maggie's Plan." Plus, she's married to Daniel Day-Lewis and I'm pretty sure they match each other's freak.

Two deftly-crafted threesome scenes, starring a 90-year-old Clint Eastwood!

The perfect Venn diagram between “Harry Potter” and “Girl So Confusing” (Lorde remix).

As the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, I really related to the residual current of guilt, inherited trauma and glib humour that runs throughout Jesse Eisenberg's second feature. It's impressive feat to have such a small story feel this engaging. Kieran Culkin obviously steals the movie with his charismatic and soulful performance with a wound so big he needs to hang out at the airport and entice strangers to be his friend, rather than deal with the family who loves him. But there is a monologue halfway through delivered by Eisenberg that completely cemented the film as truly great for me. "A Real Pain" is about trying to feel stuff - when to supress your every little annoyance with a loved one, how emotions feel so big you could drown in them, when you're trying to have an emotional catharsis and it means nothing at all. It was also amazing to see a full theatre who was laughing at every single snide quip go completely silent when the tour van finally pulls up to a concentration camp. Sitting with cultural atrocity and banality, echoes of a past we are still living through, how to live with the legacies of a family history no one wants to ... and do something to truly honour them... when you maybe want to die yourself... I'm glad Eisenberg is making films about that. It makes me want to make one too.

P.S. This film is shot BEAUTIFULLY and has some really compelling camera blocking and cinematography. I really think Jesse Eisenberg could one of my generation's great directors! Okay bye.

Watched this (for the sixth time) on my birthday with my lovely editor/best friend Simone to study some good ol' fashioned rom-com love triangle editing structure. It's a masterpiece and so very human, what can else I say? Perfectly cast, perfectly written, perfectly directed. Cozy with an acid reflux. Shoutout to my mom who labelled William Hurt's character in this a "classic CBD" (cute but dumb).

Windy, ethereal romantic comedy. A masterclass in cross dissolves!

Watched at TIFF as part of their Almodóvar retrospective. I don’t know, I was kind of confused the whole time? It’s nice to watch messy early films from a genius. Reassuring in fact. Still a nun shooting up heroin is an indelible image.

Put this on after it became clear that Kamala Harris was going to lose the US election. Cursed.

• 3 Women
• Lady Bird
• The Roommate
• Single White Female
• The Edge of Seventeen
• Mistress America
• Carnal Knowledge
• The War of the Roses
• Last Night in Soho
• Clueless

...plus 55 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Reality Bites
• Singles
• s Ha
• Almost Famous
• 24 Hour Party People
• When Harry Met Sally...
• La Collectionneuse
• Heartbeats
• A Brother’s Love
• The Worst Person in the World

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Lady Bird
• The Souvenir
• The Souvenir: Part II
• 20th Century Women
• Janet Planet
• Moonlight
• Good Time
• Hereditary
• Midsommar
• mid90s

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Toni Erdmann
• Casablanca
• The Lady Eve
• Back to the Future
• Die Hard
• Witness
• Marty
• Shiva Baby
• The Godfather
• The Social Network

...plus 100 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Poor Things
• Barbie
• Splash
• Weird Science
• Blast from the Past
• Edward Scissorhands
• The Little Mermaid
• Encino Man
• Being There
• Kate & Leopold

Some of the many films percolating in my brain during the making and writing of my first feature, "I Like Movies," which will have its world premiere at TIFF in September 2022.

Details here: tiff.net/events/i-like-movies

• Rushmore
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Lady Bird
• Adventureland
• The 400 Blows
• Clerks
• The Edge of Seventeen
• American Movie
• Ghost World
• My Night at Maud's

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Song to Song
• Eden
• The Decline of Western Civilization
• A Star Is Born
• A Star Is Born
• David Bowie: Cracked Actor
• Velvet Goldmine
• Cocksucker Blues
• The Beatles: Get Back
• Queen: Days of Our Lives

Enter the mind of a childless 34-year old woman with a broken ankle in early summer... as she mindlessly abuses weed gummies and tries to understand the MCU.

• Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
• Howl's Moving Castle
• Death Becomes Her
• Thor: Ragnarok
• Collateral
• American Psycho
• This Is My Life
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Philadelphia
• Postcards from the Edge

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Barbie
• ages
• Rotting in the Sun
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has ed
• Bottoms
• Hit Man
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Past Lives
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
• Anatomy of a Fall

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has ed
• Dream Scenario
• Making Babies
• Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
• Dicks: The Musical
• The Boy and the Heron
• Seven Veils
• Fair Play
• Anatomy of a Fall
• The Holdovers

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• A Married Couple
• The Saddest Music in the World
• I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
• Geographies of Solitude
• The Twentieth Century
• The High Level Bridge
• No Skin Off My Ass
• Love that Boy
• Crime Wave
• Last Night

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• GoodFellas
• Wild Things
• The Whole Nine Yards
• Cast Away
• The Shining
• Full Metal Jacket
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Adaptation.
• Bowling for Columbine
• Shrek

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Whoops, went over. Sorry not sorry.

• I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
• Walking and Talking
• The Forty-Year-Old Version
• Never Rarely Sometimes Always
• Lady Bird
• Stories We Tell
• Daisies
• A New Leaf
• The Heartbreak Kid
• Maison du Bonheur

...plus 100 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Fabelmans
• Queens of the Qing Dynasty
• The Whale
• I Like Movies
• The People's Joker
• Bros
• Catherine Called Birdy
• Brother
• Decision to Leave
• Holy Spider

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Tower
• F for Fake
• The Other Side of the Wind
• Memories of Murder
• Brokeback Mountain
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• Beau Travail
• The Swimmer
• Sweetie
• Lenny Cooke

...plus 37 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Lady Eve
• Summertime
• Brief Encounter
• Fat Girl
• A Woman's Face
• News from Home
• The Green Ray