62
He's pretty bad!
2025
Liked 3
82
Zsa-zsa Korda is a tycoon with a death wish, but the usual formalities of business deals via basketball, executive hand grenades, and other high-level economic squabbles pale in comparison to the mechanics of a broken father and daughter relationship. This is a movie about rebuilding what's shattered, learning to communicate, and scaling down ambition, to the point that a new type of life isn't just possible but inevitable and welcomed.
Wes Anderson's mannered and manicured aesthetic finds a sharp…
Translated from by
1954
Liked 6
95
Returning to this film for the first time since high school really opened up a few of its key elemental aspects:
1. The richness of the images. Often oscillating between documentary directness and a sort of impressionist sensation of hard-boiled style. Feels both ultra-modern and classical in the mid-50s sense.
2. Leonard Bernstein's score! My god. Even if it does come in a bit loud now and then, it carries the rhythms of the movie to high opera.
3.…
Translated from by
2010
25
Even if They Came Together is utilizing a film like You've Got Mail as its central framework, watching something like Dinner for Schmucks makes you realize the true lampooning target of that film. Sub-standard studio mediocrity from beginning to end. Paul Rudd as a sniveling straight man desperate for financial glory while Steve Carell plays his best version of Patrick Star sounds way better than it actually is.
Translated from by
1980
Liked 2
78
Gene Kelly in Xanadu is akin to Boris Karloff in Targets - not only a gestural nod to their specific subgenre, but a guiding light towards blending old and new together. A gaudy, glittery mix of 40s big band and 80s synth pop, with Olivia Newton-John as the angelic mascot and ELO in a ing role. Has to be up there with Caddyshack as one of the more rampant cocaine film sets. Every decision is total nonsense. And yet!
Translated from by
1977
Liked 11
62
Watching this at a Quality Inn near Santa Claus, Indiana after visiting Holiday World, Kings Island, and Cedar Point over the course of four days was the perfect vacation capstone. Basically this is a Dirty Harry riff with rollercoasters, so it was impossible for me to dislike. Its opening bit of destruction is absolutely hysterical even if the rest of the movie stumbles into a weirdly lethargic pace. Be on the lookout for the band Sparks performing 'Big Boy' over and over for what feels like eons.
Translated from by
2022
Liked 16
*Was a 70, now a 100*
Fascinating textual blockbuster of analog tech, the traditional cinematic experience, sunsets and planes and Tom Cruise and Things We Recognize. Somehow it resulted in one of the greatest big-budget spectacles in recent memory.
Summer is on the way, listen up as we talk Top Gun: Maverick over on AnotherLook.
✈️ 🌞 👓
Translated from by
2025
Liked Rewatched
100
(70mm print)
Seeing this on celluloid really opens up the color palette. That shot of the blue moonlit sky combined with the demonic choirs in the Ludwig Göransson score is absolutely unreal. Certainly one of the best films of the decade so far.
If you missed it, here's some podcast thoughts.
Translated from by
2024
Liked 4
73
Feature-length indie comedy version of what the Hot Dog guy is like after his 9 to 5, how he interacts with his wife and son etc. Sort of a flimsy extrapolation of an I Think You Should Leave sketch but it's also extremely funny from beginning to end so it evens out. More nuanced is the continued exploration of the Tim Robinson experiment, complete with emasculated bouts of anger and sadness alongside the bubbling undercurrent of violence that made me think of The King of Comedy.
Possibly the greatest drug trip sequence in modern cinema.
Translated from by
2025
40
Takes all of the usual necessary evils of the Mission: Impossible franchise and dials it up to 11. Tireless exposition, plenty of nonsense macguffins, reverence for the Tom Cruise persona as both global savior and american rebel. Even the two (ittedly quite impressive) set-pieces feel a tad coy and self-aware while still being wrapped up in a funereal end of days intensity. I didn't care much for Dead Reckoning but this is a real chore even when compared to…
Translated from by