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I needed Conclave to be a bit more like this.

Charlie Chapman as Hollywood Sophocles. Not exactly one to one with Antigone but a similar vibe, the tragedy of the modern woman. Really enjoyable, gorgeous 20s fits and hats. The "Hollywood" comes through via pulling its punches and veering away a real tragic ending and landing safely in sentimental territory, our protagonist completing her arc by learning a valuable moral life lesson.

This had alot of things going for it that I wanted to like more, i.e contemporary Hitchcock political mystery/thriller, incredible coastal atmosphere, a sort of Bolaño esque concern with the literary figure carrying water for the regime, but idk it just was lacking the juice to really be 2010 Chinatown. Almost felt a little anachronistic at times, the lines felt like they should have been read by actors from another era. There's several old man versus technology bits lol. Idk, the CIA plot felt a little old hat, like shoving JFK deep state into 2000s terrorism politics regardless of how real deep state politics is or even Britain's collusion with the Bush set. All in all I liked and enjoyed it, but was left scratching my head on what more I wanted out of it. Sort of an odd late career work to me.

This kind of played out like a porno that turned into a Hitchcock that on the whole wasn't too bad. A little unwieldy by the end like a lot of the 80s/90s neo noir and Hitchcock revival movies are. It's like they need up the ante by applying twist after twist, reveal after reveal.

Just like after Key Largo, this movie makes me feel the need to get down to Florida.

Puro Fellini 😩🤌

Amazing how when watching Nine the viewer recoils and cringes at the "8 1/2 Musical", but here, under the vision of Bob Fosse, the viewer, hands in the air, rejoices "Yes, of course! The 8 1/2 Musical!".

Been watching so many stinkers lately, I needed this...

Ngl i didn't go into this thinking it was gonna be so Sorkin Resistance core. When I started to feel like I was watching Catholic West Wing I got the ick.

You know you go into this already thinking, "8 1/2 Musical, what a silly idea" and it gets started and I'm at least thinking, this isn't so bad. The numbers sort of suck but for that price I get Daniel Day Lewis as Guido, I get cool Italian cars etc. But it just keeps going and it looks less chic and more like an issue of Vanity Fair and when it got to Kate Hudsons Cinema Italiano number I had to reject the movie completely.

A little stagflation hits and suddenly everyone's a Young Antonioni.

This one goes out to the actresses acting their asses off

The opening scene alone cements this as a classic. Also very important for establishing the leftist sex pest.

As fun as it was watching young Penelope and Javier (and the whole movie is shot well with great colors) the tone and plot was just a little ridiculous. I wasn't sure if was supposed to be either, like am I supposed to be laughing at a climactic ham fight?? Is that ham-fisted poetry or mere chistes. Lots of bizarre decisions in the plot as well, but the loins want what the loins want i guess.

It started pretty slowly, but by the end I was completely swept up in the story. Amazing costume/set design. Almost makes me wanna visit the American 80s fantasy excursions like Labrynth.

Had a feeling that folks weren't giving this its fair shake, but by the end I had to agree with consensus. We actually might be being generous Sirk, its even a little bad really.

Nice morality tale set in fuedal Japan. You can really feel the post war retrospection, id imagine that the viewer would be seeing Japan as a whole in our two ambitious protagonists undone by their pursuit for honor and even more so, profit. The consequences were obvious, but the romantic view of peasant life feels a little rose tinted, a little conservative. -insufficiently dialectical- as one might say! Not quite wrestling with the contradictions like Ozu does in his post war work.

All that to say, the movie shines more so at the level of film itself. Moody shots of mist on the water, reeds blowing in the wind set to a classic Noh opera score create an enchanting atmosphere. I was impressed with the rhythm and tempo of the film in its narrative but more so coming out through the movement of the camera, long sweeping pans and dolly's that would quicken and slow. Again, enchanting. The dark rural aesthetic actually made me think back to Night of the Hunter.

Todd Haynes was really going ham with window panes. I loved the scene in Megalopolis where Caesar drives his citroen in the middle of a rainy night and its shot after shot of city lights diffused through rain drops and condensation. Well Todd here keeps it up for 2 whole hours. Bravo!

While Network is still my fave media satire I did like this more than say, Nightcrawler. Incredible cast. I can't believe how fortunate we used to be where you could stack a movie like this.

Over and over throughout this movie I kept thinking back to what my mother used to tell me when I was a teenager that "the brain doesn't stop developing until your 25". This movie has a lot going on with power dynamics explored from practically every angle you can imagine, but even more immediately you the viewer are to suffer the prudence free world of young adults. It's exhausting! I felt like the working class goons, particularly Igor, bound via contract to see the shit show (the diegetic circumstance, not the movie itself) through, staring wide eyed as these psychos make things worse and worse.

The most compelling aspect of the movie i found was the parallel circumstance of Annie and Igor who despite their immediate opposition occupy a structurally similar position in relation to wealthy family along with The Help who enter the film every so often as the poetic period on the point.

I think Anora fits nicely in the long lineage of romcoms: 30s/40s class centric Romcom (It Happens One Night), Anti-Romcom (Annie Hall), and with Anora this sort contemporary Romantic Tragicomedy that makes something sincere out of all the vulgar post modern trappings we've accumulated since the 80s.

I was having a hard time getting that into this one.

Bit of a snooze fest imo.

John Wayne had the sauce in this.

They could have stopped the romantic comedy right here. It's really the be all end all platonic form of the genre. On top of that in spite of being comedy it's surprisingly kino. So many shots and scenes will literally take your breath away. The entire scene in the first motel after the lights turn off my mouth never closed. It doesn't slouch on the comedy bona-fides either, i was really busting a gut laughing lol. This is really just becoming a comfort watch for me.

Up in my Woody power rankings. I thought this one was kinda cringe like 5 years ago, but I'm really respecting what in my estimation is a really earnest attempt to do Ibsen/Chekhov in 80s New York by a Jewish comedian. Also enjoy Woody settling into a more later in life Bergman mood and dropping some of the more French new wave trappings.

I was a little bored until he actually was confirmed crazy. Not quite Annie Hall for me. Gloria Grahame was a very nice suprise though!

After already being holed up in Puerto Vallarta with John Huston in Night of the Iguana, I had big expectations for being back with John holed up in the Florida Keys. For the most part it lived up to them. It's not really a noir, but the atmosphere is still dark, replete with seedy characters and ratcheting tension. Like noir, Key Largo is dealing with post war hangovers albeit in a more direct manner and less sublimated than say Bogert, the violent unhinged vet, from In A Lonely Place. It was this sort of unatenuated liberal optimism that diminished the film a bit. Our hero *spoiler* can manage to shoot his way through his obstacles to a harmonious ending... Idk I usually feel like it's hard to make political art that's good and feels like anything more than moral invective. Quibbles aside, this movie was best when Huston explores tension in his sweaty and claustrophobic atmosphere between his star billing. Rocco and crew really did feel like Frank Booth and crew from Blue Velvet.

RIP Gene!

Charming Jewish intervention into Uptown literary social striving.

This is an improvement on the second movie imo, but still suffers all issues of the previous movies as well. Legolas scenes are barely watchable. It's sort of sad what they did to a fan favorite.

The is when the plot bloating accusations are fully justified. Just chalk full of doing too much. There are literally two legolas's in this movie because the Hobbit already has Bard, bowman hero figure, written into the story. The barrel river scene feels and looks like a level out of a ps4 game. Just unforgivable how ugly it is as well. Stark nosedive here.

Just read the Hobbit so I'm gonna go revisit these. I know the expansion of the plot ends up bloating the story, but imo the Hobbit doesn't really get into gear until the escape from the wood elves anyways, feeling really episodic and discursive beforehand, so I actually think in the first installment here the plot tweaks tighten up the story. Plus all the Orcs/Wargs are in fact really cool.

Unfortunately this series co-habitates with peak MCU and consequently suffers over reliance on ugly cgi, quippy dialogue and a heavy handed use of fan service. Basically they made it Reddit. So one hand i see the plot bloat to be necessary and on the other, the viewer has suffer all the worst tendencies the early 2010s longer than they really deserve to.

This was one of my favorite looking and sounding PTAs but idk it was also just like, two boring perverts for two and half hours

Amazing performances by Dudley, Liza and the show stealing John Gielgud as the savage butler Hobson, lift a fun but otherwise tired exercise in the Hollywood rich meets poor trope. Also some incredibly ugly and ostentatious early 80s luxury interiors stand out.

Revisiting one of my favorite movies as a teen. I did this once in my mid twenties and it really fell in my estimation, but I gotta say that I liked it alot more this time even if it still doesn't quite hit like it did when I was a teenager. Idk, despite some woody Allen cringe moments, I think you do in fact gotta hand it to the guy for making a smart new wave anti-romantic comedy that doubles as a meditation on finitude. My biggest revelation though was realizing that Manhattan clears! Lol Always gonna love this movie, but its official: Manhattan is the Woody masterpiece.

Really cute, tremendous period sets and costumes. Rene and the guy from Frasier are great, the acting is nice all around. The ending felt fun rather than convoluted and unnecessary which it really easily could of as it drifted past the tight 90 territory, managing not to come off as either a screed or a lapse into gender roles. Really nailed the landing in a way that felt in the spirit of classic screwball/romantic comedies. All these managed to elevate what initially appeared to me as a pleasant but sort of uninteresting early 2000s rom-com.

I'm learning that I don't find audrey hepburn to be that engaging lol. Cary Grant more so! I wasn't that taken with this but it does get better as the plot takes its twists and turns but I gotta say it mainly feels like lesser Hitchcock. Maybe even a lesser Columbo. There were plenty of moments that feel like it was nudging towards great cinema but just too much pulling it the other direction for me.

Billy Wilder never misses!

Bruno is probably a top Hitchcock villain in his own right, and there were so many details from the shadows to how the train imagery functions, that I really liked; i loved everything about the carnival, but it felt so similar to other Hitchcock works that I think are even better, namely Shadow of Doubt, that the lack of distinction hurts it a bit.

Bruno seems a direct prescendant to Norman Bates and the difference between the two feels like the difference between a sociopath and the full blown psychotic. I love Hitch's appreciation of psychoanalysis. Ill often stamp a work as "Dollar store Freud" when like, there's some heavy handed oedipal dynamics in a love triangle, but Hitch is always way more interesting than that.

Lastly I thought the murder at the center of the movie was particularly brutal, especially for the time. Like if you compare it with the shower scene from Psycho and it's quick cuts that obscure the directness of the whole thing, in Strangers on a Train Hitch makes the viewer directly watch with practically no cuts the life be strangled out of the victim. Pretty nuts lol.

When Herbie said he thought ruined the session with a wrong chord, but Miles didn't think it was wrong at all and just played the notes on his trumpet that would make it fit, it brought a legitimate tear to my eye.

I was p engaged at the start, i liked cozy pre-90s vibes and some relatable and real anxiety about the future, but by the end of what ends up being a complete nice guy fantasy (he's not like the other guys!) And even a daddy daughter break up movie, you just end up bored. The movie isn't really that interested in the questions of Diane's subjectivity that it raises early on beyond filling those spaces with dime store freud. It also never complicates Lloyd at all. So yeah, despite some will they won't they tension, the whole thing feels flat.

Caught this in a very Miles Davis time of my life.

Belated Christmas viewing. This was pretty great. It started to drag for me a bit in the middle, but really liked it over all. Christmas anime hope core. Never kill your self.

Rather than masquerading around in Christmas garb w/o any pretenses thematically whatsoever to the occasion, or God forbid the anti Christmas movie, this is very much spiritually a Christmas movie. Without any christmas trees or carols, it's a decidedly brazen affront to cynicism, it finds meaning in selflessness, it's paternal figure finds agency only after accepting his own finitude, and even concludes with snow falling and children playing in the park. Ikiru should be rubbing shoulders with the rest of your seasonal viewings like It's a Wonderful Life (to which it often is compared), Shop Around the Corner, Holiday Inn, etc.

Not really sure what wasn't working for me the first time, but found this incredibly charming on re-watch. Perfect coworker dynamic, young Jimmy Stewart is great and its treat to see the father son drama play out between himself and the wizard of Oz.

I can't believe this was somehow one of the best Christmas movies I've ever seen and also almost unwatchable ing on how racist it is. 🤷‍♂️

Put this on today after my daughter had a pretty traumatic face plant. She seemed to be into it and it helped calm her down 👍

Nice slasher flick. Really liked the Christmas mise en scene. Was very into the killers psychotic babble and the girls confrontation with the vaguely obscene/aggressive nonsensical voice. Very traumatic.

Not really a Christmas movie though.

The turn of the century series of vignettes had a Mark Twain feel that I appreciated. Late 19th century-WWI is a time period I always appreciate on screen. This maybe didn't dazzle like some of the other MGM song and dance musicals but it had quaint coziness that I really enjoyed. Maybe as a counterpoint that coziness is the viewer being subject to an extremely horny on screen Judy Garland. Was a shock to my system at least. I didn't even know what other movies she'd been in besides Wizard of Oz before watching this.

Throwing straight HEAT 🥵 for the whole movie, holy shit. These MGM Gene Kelly technicolor musicals are in themselves national treasures and some of the best art to come out of the 20th century. A virtuosity exhibition. Also appreciated the movie itself being what amounts to a conversation on the artistry of the genre as distinct from the theatre or even cinema outside of the musical. It's like a loud declaration of its own merit.

As someone who's read the entirety of Gore Vidals non fiction essays, where this exact time, place and subject matter is well trodden, at first glance I thought I'd love this movie. I'd even read Faulkner this year and the W.P Mayhew stand in was in fact greatly appreciated. But overall, idk. Something about this movie just seemed to be getting away from the creators, or me at least that's forsure. Just wasn't really expecting this to be so... fucking weird the whole time lol. I'm pretty willing to try it again another time though.

Been meaning to get around to this one for a long time. Worth the wait! Easily up there with No Country and Fargo as favorite Cohens projects.

This was way better than I thought it was going to be. I really just expected "sexy" Rita Hayworth in a gangster love triangle, but what I got was something much more sophisticated. Visually on the level of Hitchcocks Rebecca, I've got post war Nazi industrialists popping up in Argentina, Rita Hayworth doing much more work in this role than mere eye candy shes probably the most talented one on screen. Pleasantly surprised at how much this rocked.