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Watched on Tuesday June 10, 2025.

This is John Candy’s Fletch and also his Master of Disguise

For the first hour its mostly a pretty typical silly Chevy Chase movie where he plays Clark Griswold/himself only in a fish out of water scenario in small town Vermont with a lot of well thought out and genuinely funny gags generally focused on his inability to write his supposed novel and their collective inability to adjust to the big move and maintain their marriage. 

As to be expected with a Chevy Chase picture hes a real shitheel to his wife and by the end of the movie - in contrast to most of these movies - theyre getting a messy divorce! The catalyst for the divorce is something truly selfish and terrible done by Chase to his wife (played excellently by Madolyn Smith Osborne) and the third act turn is played in a downright harrowing and depressing tone relative to what came before that kinda put a damper on the vibe of the thing. The tonal whiplash makes the next plot point, and grand finale gag, feel even stranger - to sell their idyllic Vermont country estate they have to get all the townies who generally hate them to put on a big Truman Show-esque production for prospective buyers so as to not scare them off with their eccentric small town weirdness and will buy the house so the Farmer’s can get their divorce. This sort of serves to drive home a thematic point about what they couldve had should their relationship not have gone the way it did. You see where I might have been a little caught off guard when the third act decided to really examine the implications of the way Chase’s characters usually act! Its not that it isnt an inspired direction to go but it does honestly feel a little bit like they didnt fully know what to do with the various plot threads and over the top Chase antics, like how to balance the more dramatic inspirations with Chase’s clownlike presence, and it resulted in this out of place plot about this charade of selling the house? Im not sure if this is improved or made worse by the fact that the ending has them (obviously) realize they still love each other and the town of Redbud after seeing the successful execution of their Norman Rockwell inspired vision, and a happy ending where the town accepts them and they find their places, but overall its an enjoyable Chevy Chase vehicle that id probablt watch again. Any way I've written more about Funny Farm than I have about most movies I've watched recently so I’ll leave it here.

Despite the fact that the second chapter catastrophically failed to satisfactorily conclude this story, and that certain things from the book (elided from this film) cast an unignorable pall over the whole thing (IYKYK, and you probably do), despite all that and against my better judgment I still really love this movie. While only being aesthetically connected to the 80s in the barest sense this truly captures the magic of those films and the era it is harkening back to. The strong cast and Benjamin Wallfisch’s Amblin-esque score do a lot of the heavy lifting but its really just a well constructed film from top to bottom in achieving the simultaneously carefree and terrifying vibe necessary in depicting this story. It has that colorful, sunbaked summery visual style of something like Stand by Me, which is probably its closest cinematic relative for more reasons than one. Im hoping against a hope that maybe a rewatch of Ch 2 after some distance might help me to appreciate it more, but this will forever be a solid and deeply enjoyable throwback that works very well as a standalone piece.

Watched on Friday June 6, 2025.

doesnt have much rhythm or forward momentum but its got texture, visual style, a great cast and a great soundtrack. at the same time it very successfully achieves the vibe of being on an unending roadtrip you dont wanna be on in a car with no AC. chafing hot and languid.

very much has the stink of a movie that tried to be the final entry in a slasher horror franchise. but on the other hand that smash cut deadliest warrior x ray triple kill final shot is incredible.

Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 29, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Incredible performance from Bart the Bear II.

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

insane this is 20 years old… honestly holds up

Been feeling a major SW itch since finishing Andor S2, and before checking out Ahsoka or The Acolyte decided it was time to dive into the animated behemoth that is The Clone Wars. Opting to watch in the “official” order, I found myself with the proposition of revisiting the much maligned animated feature debut of the now-loved series, which chronologically acts as “episode 3” of the series.

It’s notable to me that, at the early apex of my SW fandom seventeen years ago when this came out, I have zero memory of how I felt while and after watching it. I saw it theaters with my dad like I did every Star Wars, of that I am sure, but beyond that I have literally zero recollection of what I was thinking about it at the time. Maybe this is historic revisionism but I think it’s because it was the first time I realized Star Wars could be disappointing. Maybe it’s my unbroken devotion to the masterpiece that is Genndy Tartokovsky’s Clone Wars, of which I probably watched more times than the movies when I was younger.

At first it’s sort of hard to put your finger on why this just does not work; the narrative and new characters, IMO, are compelling enough in their own right and welcome editions to the universe, the action is well crafted, it feels vaguely cinematic, it doesn’t feel overtly cartoonish or kiddy; but then you realize it’s because of the general “meh” ness of it all together that it becomes a chore to sit through overall. For one, I’m not a big fan of the art style of TCW i have to be honest, but the animation here is just strange and floaty and sluggish. Nothing has any real weight to it at all. This contributed to a general lack of momentum both visually and narratively - it has the vaguest appearance of normal, pulse-pounding Star Wars shit happening, but without any sense of the dynamism that usually brings those scenes to life in the live action films. This movie stitched together from a few TV episodes feels like sitting through an entire season of television at once. It’s not so much the editing or just the writing or whatever, it just doesn’t move how it should and it throws the whole thing off.

So yeah, being a completionist I genuinely had to  force myself to sit through this and it just wasn’t worth it on its own. It’s frustrating because nothing about it is so overtly bad or boring on paper that it’s just easy to write off as a bad, boring movie. Considering that I genuinely enjoyed the first two episodes of the show which act as a narrative prelude to this film, it’s even harder to truly identify in an objective way why this is such a stinker, but it simply is.

PS: As a kid any game more complicated than an FPS was a no go for me so I didn’t get into Knights of the Old Republic until recently; it was kinda fun to hear Mission Vao’s voice come out of Pe.

it’s fun that all the online premises for this try not to spoil the premise which the trailer blatantly revealed. anyway pretty fun but doesn’t do enough with said premise. it’s funny that Jack Quaid is typecast as a guy like that.

The burning question on everyone’s mind… is this made better by association with Andor? Honestly, I’m not sure*, but against my better judgement I actually find I like it quite a bit. Not as much as when I first saw it, but I also don’t dislike it as much as I did the last times I saw it either. It’s a very enjoyable and compelling adventure that adds some appreciated grit and texture to the Star Wars universe, and for better or worse is responsible for one of the greatest things to come out of the franchise. Fuck it, I don’t care, it can get a from me. It’s better than Rise of Skywalker and probably Force Awakens too. This is all despite the terribly cheesy sounding “Rogue One” theme which very much sounds like a version of the Star Wars theme in a discount version of Star Wars, the distinct erasure of Bothans, and the foul digital necromancy that resurrected Peter Cushing.

*it undeniably gives the conclusion to the Battle of Scarif a much heftier weight

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Am I not being cool?

Regrettably have not seen the original, usually won’t watch a remake without having seen the OG but the trailers of this were so memorably ridiculous and it was right there on Prime!

Surprised and pleasantly so to say this is actually really good. Profoundly cringy and difficult to watch for the first hour or so as you know what it inevitably is building up to (even without specific spoilers it’s abundantly clear the kind of direction this will go). James McAvoy is just so good in roles like these, like a giant bulging vein threatening to burst between perpetually clenched teeth. Last thirty minutes it becomes like Straw Dogs but we got there without enduring a horrific rape scene!

I enjoyed this a great deal and you know my ass is seeing Final Reckoning in IMAX but this was a hefty mixed bag for me. There are some steps forward, but a lot of steps back. On the one hand, I genuinely love the doom laden portent about the rogue sentient AI, that makes the franchise suddenly feels more like a sci fi film where the factions are all trying to curry their favor with an emergent digital god than secret agents and mercenaries trying to satisfy their respective shadowy government employers by retrieving a hard drive full of valuable data. It is such a brilliantly insane zenith for a franchise about the blurred reality of nations and intelligence, of evolving surveillance and technology and how they dictate our lives in the hands of the powers that be, the first time Mission Impossible truly begins to grapple with the metaphysical nature of what its been dealing with throughout every film. This should go without saying that this grand finale to the franchise poses questions that we genuinely are all grappling with in real life, in a world that is constantly changing and evolving to meet the whims of some unseen force or forces.

On the other hand, it not only suffers heavily from "Part One" syndrome, but it comes after a film that was such an exquisite conclusion for all of this already that it can't help but feel a little redundant, a little bit over-the-top in a way the franchise hasn't felt before, given that its a little hard to up the ante past nuclear armageddon when that has already been averted twice in your franchise. Sentient AI is absolutely an appropriate avenue to go down but the massive swings that this entry takes don't always totally work, as much as I appreciate the risk they took in making those swings at all. It all comes back to this being really the only film that is so heavily anchored to all of the rest, that it struggles to really find its own identity. It is the first film in the franchise that feels notably leaden with exposition and pregnant pauses between the action, partially because it's ambitions with it's damn near transhumanist, digital New World Order narrative requires the aforementioned doom laden portent and that can't really be set up through the visuals the same way other threats in the past of the franchise have been.

If I'm being honest, if this film didn't follow up Fallout, it would easily get at least four stars, but it’s hard not to be slightly more critical when it has to follow that. All that being said, the heart, the intensity, the gadgets, and impeccable action are all there, so this one is for the fans through and through and I'm pretty confident that they took these risks because they know they would pay off in the final film. I trust them to get it done, and I think when this isn’t chained to being a cliffhanger I’ll be able to appreciate its charms a lot more.

the 80s were fucking crazy. concur with the resounding chorus that this is so breezy and charming it makes up for the fact that it’s one of the most horrifying premises ever.

immensely boring. could not finish it. satanic panic was real though sorry to say

A kinetic lens flared beauty, a surging force of nature, but nature bent to the will of a mad king and his army of minions willing to bring to life his insane vanity projects that for us mortals doubles as an enrapturing example of why the cinematic medium was invented. I’m sure the last two are great too but goddamn this closes so many thematic and aesthetic arcs of Ethan Hunt and Friends’ journey that it’s hard not to see it as a literal showstopper. I’ve enjoyed all of the MI films thus far and would call most of them great but it’s hard to understate what a stratospheric peak the franchise reaches with Fallout. Every element of the franchise is brought to its maximalist conclusion, to the point that the film is (I would say) much more self aware cartoonish in a way that makes it simultaneously easier to take seriously. I would absolutely love to write a more extensive piece talking about the batshit insane politics of these movies but honestly it’s pretty clear that it’s all just set up for Tom Cruise to throw himself into needlessly dangerous but highly entertaining situations. Simply put, the action is fuckin non stop and breathtakingly exhilarating. I don’t know how much I could add that hasn’t been said already - it’s pure fuckin kino from top to bottom. I like to believe that Cruise has a clause in these movies that if he ever dies on camera, they still use the shot.

“Tom Cruise shared that when filming the motorcycle chase in Paris, the safety rig on his motorcycle was malfunctioning. The crew had a very small window in which they could get the shots they needed, so Cruise told Christopher McQuarrie, "My friend, we have got to shoot. You just put the camera out there and I will come around this corner as fast as this bike will possibly go." - Trivia from IMDb

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Very much in the vein of post-Get Out hyperwoke (sorry to use that term but it’s appropriate) social commentary horror but in my opinion it just absolutely nails everything it’s trying to do. Im not sure how much was really intentional and how much was just backdrop for the SOV retro horror game inspired aesthetic and plot (Puppet Combo anyone?) but it still results in a sharp and scathing satire about an America well, well beyond its golden age collapsing in on its rotted decrepit form as predatory ghouls and vampires masquerading as human swoop in to consume the carrion so that not even sawdust remains as evidence that something once stood there. A gruesomely believable fable about the blood and horror that lays under and nourishes the lawns of Suburbia, generational trauma and exploitation made manifest as a wraith of pure consumption - one who still has more inborn humanity than the monster who created her.

I mean the image of a gentrified Air BnB as the only occupied house at the end of a block that hasn’t been inhabited for four decades, owned by a rapist actor leeching every possible drop of profit and gain from everyone around him kinda speaks for itself no? Idc what anyone says, this movie fucking rips. I’ll it I’m biased as a die-hard WKUK fan, but even beyond that it’s just so clever, funny, scary, and mean-spirited in all the right ways.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Mission Impossible: You Only Die Twice

Epic post-Southern Gothic riff on From Dusk Til Dawn and Near Dark swamped in the rich esoterica of southern US history and folklore, and the blues. And even that feels insanely reductive for something so wrapped in themes with a capital TH and wholly original. I was entranced by this connection made between vampirism and music, both as bridges between the past and future. Is it a cop out to say the clunkier and cheesier parts of the structure/narrative just add to the whole experience? The kind of big budget shit that seemingly only comes around once in a lifetime where a true ionate creative is given the blank check to execute their vision, and every bit of that ion and love drips and oozes and splats off the screen. Even if i wasn’t biased because of all the meticulous period detail and general aesthetic and vampire siege final act, this would still be among some of the best genre stuff to come out in the decade so far. Go see this shit now!!

Watched on Tuesday April 29, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

Exquisite pre-Code pulp dripping with portent and enshrouded in the ghosts of the past. Has pretty much everything you want from something like this; hapless Americans in a foreign Euro country, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Satanic rites, the undying blood curse of imperialist nationalism in the aftershock of the Great War, and the bloody vengeance of a good ol' fashioned flaying (off screen of course). By no means a perfect movie but since I first watched it it has quickly become a personal favorite.

I don’t mean this to sound overly critical but this is like a vastly more artistic and only slightly more poignant version of Happy Tree Friends. I think at a certain point in my life this probably would’ve hit pretty hard and stuck with me but honestly I think it was released too late for that anyway. Pretty cool though and I would probably show this to a kid if I had one. Is that fucked up?

This honestly kinda fails to truly live up the chilling implications of its premise and the fantastically spooky first 40 minutes where it builds up to and executes the first “flatlining” by giving in to a very one dimensional and commercial interpretation of said premise that is basically just a few spoopy ghost haunting scenes. I feel like Altered States falls to the same problem; where this movie ultimately succeeds however is that Joel Schumacher more or less treats it like the haunted house it is all throughout, complete with neon lighting in abundance and over the top but finely tuned performances from its star studded cast (performances that end up selling the premise at its creepiest moments even though it overall fails to truly live up to its potential).

Sorry, i’m a sucker for anything this drenched in autumnal/neon 90s vibes. felt a little like Blair Witch 2 mixed with Hackers. Cheesy and stupid as all hell but also so good.

Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.

If i told you that in this movie Tom Cruise stopped a nuclear missile mid-launch with his bare hands would you believe me?

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

not sure what the hell happened in the first hour and twenty minutes of this movie but the finale was pure elemental action insanity. waves crashing on the shore as bodies break upon the sand. don’t hire John Woo if you don’t want a John Woo movie!

The first four of these movies I pretty much know like the back of my hand but I guess even when I was younger the whole thing just never clicked with me like Star Wars or LotR did and as a result, the latter half of this franchise just never stuck with me the same way. I realize now this is plainly because I am not that invested in the story or characters despite occasionally being enchanted by elements of Rowling’s world building. Beyond not really having the same nostalgia or lifelong love for HP the way some do, I find that my ability to take this as seriously as it wants is inversely correlated with how serious it gets by this point. It just doesn’t work for me, I’m sorry.

After all these years I had no idea how much the “Terminator” part of its title actually had to do with The Terminator! The eponymous female killing machine is clad in leather, has more guns than Duke Nukem, at one point uses a police checkpoint as a firing range, and even has the gnarly eye removal scene (for some reason?) Imagine instead of a robot sent from the future to kill a would-be human revolutionary you have an anthropologist student possessed by a vengeful Indonesian ocean goddess trying to kill the last descendant of her traitorous husband, and annihilating the dick of any man who gets in her way and blowing away any others with M-16s. So basically the same movie. Seriously, a few dozen dicks at least get obliterated in this movie, like that viral Robocop remake scene, and at least double or triple that in total body count. Suffers a bit from “exploitation syndrome” where the scenes surrounding the absurd mayhem can be kind of a snooze but if you think this sounds overall dope as hell, you’d be absolutely right.

has an unexpectedly very wholesome conclusion. Thomas Hayden Church is hilarious in this. surprised at how funny this is all around!

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

These are films that I haven’t been able to very easily track down with an internet search. It’s possible i’ve overlooked the availability of some of them, but given my laziness it makes “availability” a stricter criteria. I’m keeping them here to clear my watchlist a bit.

• The Dark Planet

Everything up to and including 2023 releases will be on this list. It must have been the first time I've seen it and I must have given it at least a 4 star rating. Ordered highest rated first

• The Zone of Interest
• The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
• Dreams
• The Incredible Shrinking Man
• The Sweet East
• Amarcord
• Wizards
• The Lair of the White Worm
• Conan the Barbarian

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

366weirdmovies.com/the-weird-movie-list/

Those of you who don't know, 366 Weird Movies is a website collating everything cinematically weird, primarily in its list of 366 "canon" Weird Films. It was one of the earliest film sites I discovered that influenced my taste - though many of the films I still have yet to see. Many of the films are ones I've seen but have been meaning to rewatch, others represent huge blind spots for me personally. I'm even gonna rewatch the handful on the list that I've already seen and hate, to see if maybe my views have changed. I will mostly do this in alphabetical order, but I might jump around when I see fit.

• 3-Iron
• 3 Women
• 8½
• 200 Motels
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes
• Adaptation.
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
• After Hours

...plus 355 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies where Jimmy Stewart says the word “screwy”.

• The Philadelphia Story
• It's a Wonderful Life

🎃🎃🎃

• The Addams Family
• Addams Family Values
• Army of Darkness
• The Barn
• Beetlejuice
• The Black Cat
• The Black Phone
• Bride of Frankenstein
• Cobweb
• Coraline

...plus 52 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

the short films i havent seen that i want to see. anything 50 minutes or greater is a feature imo

• The Death of David Cronenberg
• The Four Troublesome Heads
• Fugue
• Irresolute
• The Dark Tower
• Glaze of Cathexis
• The Wold-Shadow
• Black Ice
• PLAGUE INC.
• Age of Bloom

...plus 389 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

aka, my favorite movie from every year I've been alive. normally id go by wide release date for lists like this (it follows was 2015, not ‘14, Green Room was 2016, not ‘15) but to keep things simple i just went by what year they are on here.

• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
• Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
• eXistenZ
• Ginger Snaps
• The Royal Tenenbaums
• A Snake of June
• Oldboy
• The Village
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
• Inland Empire

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The time has come. No 2023 films on this list, everything else is fair game. It has to be something that is new to me that I gave a 4, 4 1/2, or 5 star rating to be on this list. Ordered chronologically (order I watched )by highest rating.

• The Long Goodbye
• The Heroic Trio
• My Cousin Vinny
• Come and See
• Tales from the Hood
• In the Cut
• Skinamarink
• Hard to Be a God
• Island of Lost Souls
• 3 Women

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not that I regularly maintain any list but it seems as good a time as any to compile my favorite new films (new to me) that Ive watched this year so far. No 2022 releases on this list. unranked, ordered by order i watched them/highest rating first

• eXistenZ
• The Cranes Are Flying
• Die Hard
• Stalker
• Another Round
• The Hunt
• Oh, Sun
• Grizzly Man
• The Color of Pomegranates
• Le Bonheur

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Sad it took me so long to see these, but this has been (so far) the most consistently great film studies course I have taken (in of the films screened) Who woulda thunk that these canonized and endlessly studied diamonds of world cinema would be so damn great???

sorted from favorite to least favorite (except for Now! which is unrated/unranked)

• Oldboy
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Close-Up
• Chungking Express
• Pather Panchali
• Om Shanti Om
• The Battle of Algiers
• Daisies
• Tokyo Story
• Bicycle Thieves

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Alt title-Perfect Movies to Show to People You're Meeting the First Time

Perfect movies to cuddle up to!

• Eraserhead
• Blue Velvet
• Cannibal Holocaust
• Cannibal Ferox
• Nekromantik
• Nekromantik 2
• Audition
• Angst
• Ichi the Killer
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

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

Every film I watched in 2015. This is in chronological order, and not counting the many films on this list I watched more than once.

• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Ida
• Battle Royale
• Blood Simple
• Ichi the Killer
• Alice
• The Guest
• Le Samouraï
• The Circus
• Fallen Angels

...plus 244 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.