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Well, it turns out 2024's Joker: Folie a Deux is a good movie. Fuck me for trusting the vast majority of critics and audiences. I mean, it's not a perfect film but its near total rejection by audiences and critics is kind of baffling now that I've seen it. If it weren't for the fact that Quentin Tarantino and John Waters both praised the film, I ( Read more... )

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Improvements in communication technology mean you can make a pretty good tech suspense thriller on a pretty low budget. Netflix's 2024 film Carry-On (no relation to the long running British comedy franchise) is mostly just Taron Egerton talking to Jason Bateman on the phone. But it's one of the most intelligently constructed films to have ( Read more... )

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We have a new Superman trailer. At first I wasn't enthusiast. Shots of Superman bloodied in the snow and flashbacks to the Kent farmstead with golden sunlight behind silhouetted figures seemed like a retread of Zack Snyder. The titles announce it's directed by James Gunn and note that he's the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I ( Read more... )

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Two women trying to make careers for themselves in the women's section of a castle find themselves confronting a demon in 2024's Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain (劇場版モノノ怪 唐傘). This is basically a feature length episode of the Mononoke television series from 2007, which in turn was a spin-off of another series, none of which I knew when I ( Read more... )

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A little girl is critically ill and only one brave canine can save her in 1995's Balto. The last traditionally animated film from Amblin Entertainment, I remember my friends and I turning our noses up at it at the time of its release as just another Disney imitator but now I see it's an excellent artefact of an all but lost art in America ( Read more... )

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Sharon Stone falls for a cheesy voyeur in the sleazy 1993 thriller Sliver. But when I saw the screenplay was by Joe Eszterhas I knew what I was in for and was quite prepared to enjoy his distinctive brand of greasy imitation Hitchcock ( Read more... )

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I'd avoided watching 1993's Falling Down for decades. Everything I ever heard about it told me it wasn't something that would interest me and the fact that it was directed by Joel Schumacher did nothing to commend it. But a friend asked me to watch it a couple weeks ago so I finally did. It's pretty much what I expected but I was more entertained ( Read more... )

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Teenagers rebelling against the social order and the demented adults trying to put them down all attract the ironic sympathy of the filmmaker in 1990's Cry-Baby. I don't know if it's John Waters' best movie but maybe it's his most appreciable, coming at a transition period from his wilder early films into his attempts at somewhat more mainstream ( Read more... )

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2009's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has been on Criterion Channel for a while so I watched it again. I can't believe it's fifteen years old, it still feels like a recent movie. Legendary director Werner Herzog makes movies all the time, often attracting star talent, but it's kind of rare for any of his movies to break through into ( Read more... )

Last night I dreamt I was watching an animated movie written by Dave Filoni and directed by Robert Rodriguez. It was terrible, which is no surprise from Dave Filoni but I thought I was a Robert Rodriguez fan. Maybe my subconscious isn't anymore. Hypnotic was underwhelming but I didn't hate Book of Boba Fett as much as most people seemed to. Still, ( Read more... )