An action cinema of pure vibes, the narrative nearly impenetrable and dramatic stakes relatively small and local despite the constant violence, the primary players being low-level hustlers trying to live to see a better future with the money to afford it. Tsui's maximalist style takes on something of the urban romanticism of Fallen Angels or Chungking Express, while his action sequences are as abstracted as ever. The apartment complex sequence, which finds bodies rappelling down the sides of a building, lassoed up a staircase, fighting with brute force in small quarters and taking aim from great distances, is a tour-de-force of Tsui's multi-dimensional staging. The editing throughout is jarring to the point of feeling avant-garde, with copious freeze-frames, expressionistic dissolves, and moments where the sound drops out almost entirely. The first action movie of the new millennium.

A film written by, directed by, edited by and starring cocaine. A Tsui Hark JCVD vehicle so deliriously unhinged from the jump that it makes Double Team look like The King's Speech. It sounds like 85% of the dialogue in this movie is ADR, Rob Schneider plays a CIA agent, Paul Sorvino gets attacked with a seltzer spray bottle of acid, all the explosions are green for some reason, there's a POV shot of Van Damme's foot going into a shoe. But there's also ecstatically boundless, physics-defying action filmmaking from Tsui, guided by the principle that there's nowhere the camera cannot go or direction it cannot move, no way a body cannot be flung through space for any reason. There's balletic fight choreography performed by Van Damme, culminating in a sequence where he's gliding around on the wet surface of a shipping tanker like an elegant swan. There's a score by Sparks, who also contribute a characteristically weird, funny end-title song. A bounty of pleasures to be found within a movie that is by most objective standards, pretty bad.

I was most taken with how much of this film consists of the interview subjects' long, unbroken responses to the filmmakers' questions (some of which are heard from offscreen, unusual for this type of documentary). Cole and Dale's approach, rather than cutting the interviews into sound bites, allows us to see these people thinking, hesitating, correcting themselves, sharing anecdotes and traumatic experiences. We start to recognize recurring themes in their stories - childhood abuse, economic hardship, impacts of drug use and violence on their day-to-day lives - but there's not really a sense that what they are sharing is being made to serve Cole and Dale's opinion of sex work and the people who do it. It's a true portrait of a "pimp-free" community as a group of individuals working together, living together, standing up for one another, and surviving together. The activism element introduced late in the film is especially fascinating, as people from outside the community practice outreach to mobilize the sex workers to organize for decriminalization and workers' rights. It's sobering to think that the needle hasn't moved much to protect sex workers or trans people in the 40 years since this was made.

The only part that fully felt like an ITYSL sketch (and to be fair, a pretty good one) was the climax. But I appreciated much of this as a dark, almost Observe and Report-esque riff on both Robinson and Rudd's comic personas. The key line is "You made me feel too free" - the danger of suddenly manifesting the guy you want to be is that you might be really bad at being that guy. And the guy you think you're emulating isn't even really that guy. Some great running jokes (Ocean View Dining got me every time), non-sequiturs (Conner O'Malley gets the best one, delivered from off-screen), and even a few genuine sight gags (loved Craig slowly sinking into the mud and out of frame). An inspired swerve of the anticipated hallucinatory drug-trip sequence. I don't know if it fully achieves greatness as a film but I respect its ambition and as a comedy I laughed a lot.

I wouldn't normally log a TV miniseries on here but I'm making an exception because I watched all 5 hours straight through, which turns out to be a great way of appreciating how well constructed and paced this is. Andrew Haigh might not have seemed like the most obvious match for this material, but his adapting and directing every episode brings out the intimacy and homoeroticism that is only textual in spots, but visible below the surface throughout. He's a great actors' director of course, relying on Jack O'Connell to embody the physical extremes demanded by the story, while Colin Farrell plays a casually evil beast of a man with surprising gradations of subtlety. Stephen Graham and Tom Courtenay are welcome presences in their ing roles, and the unknown-to-me Sam Spruell excels as the crude first-mate-turned-petty-tyrant. Shooting on location in Svalbard lends authenticity to the period drama trappings, as does the grit, grime and viscera that Haigh neither sugarcoats nor plays to excess. It's too bad that this was pretty widely ignored upon release because it's definitely worthy of any of its key collaborators' finest work, a bleak yet beautifully realized tale of nature's extremes, in men's hearts and the unforgiving landscapes of both the civilized world and the wilderness.

11:55am-1:31pm

Made me think about how much of watching movies is just looking at faces, and how much of movies is people waiting for something to happen. One of the most universal experiences, and one you get to share in because you're watching them wait for something to happen too.

Percussionist pouring water and playing the floating bowls like drums during "Blissing Me," save me. Save me, percussionist pouring water and playing the floating bowls like drums during "Blissing Me."

Poggi and Vinel parallel their real and virtual worlds beautifully without simply making one a metaphor for the other. The close bond between siblings Pablo and Apo, forged in the fictional MMORPG Darknoon, dissipates as Pablo disappears into his relationship with Night and a senseless gang war, and Apo is left to traverse the increasingly desolate virtual world alone as the clock ticks down to the server going offline for good. The world of Darknoon is rendered in exquisite detail, and Poggi and Vinel develop its depiction brilliantly as the film progresses, replacing Apo's avatar face with an uncanny rendering of the actor's own, and trading the standard third-person gameplay perspective for varied, cinematic angles that enable them to imbue the virtual world and the avatars with intimate feelings of loneliness, unexpected connection, and loss. The nuance they bring to their storytelling is matched by the understated tenderness of the performances from Théo Cholbi, Erwan Kepoa Falé, and Lila Gueneau.

Watching this just about a week after seeing the original for the first time did it no favors, unfortunately. Its overly careful lack of willingness to stray too far into farce or melodrama means that its attempt to recreate the plot mechanics of the original film in a new configuration comes off strained at best, and results in a seemingly endless procession of blandly staged scenes of people restating the film's themes and apologizing to one another, so much so that the climactic reconciliations come off redundant. The weight of parental expectations, despite being repeatedly invoked in dialogue, also doesn't manifest the way it does in Lee's film because Min's grandfather remains completely unseen and unheard, so the idea of doing all of this for his benefit doesn't resonate. The ensemble is very good, with Gladstone and Tran a much more believable couple than Han and Yang, but Youn Yuh-jung is the standout (and her character the most successfully reconfigured element of the original film). As a Spa Night fan and Fire Island enjoyer, it's disappointing to see Ahn settling into a mode that feels more inspired by prestige TV dramedy than anything else.

I don't stand by too many of the opinions I held 10+ years ago but in my 2014 post on Joel Potrykus's Buzzard I said "like if Kelly Reichardt loved dirtbag metal and horror movies and teamed up with the Jackass dudes for a microbudget guerilla remake of Pickpocket" and I do stand by that one. By that logic, this is his Old Joy, until it (through a wholly surprising, elegant and devastating cross-dissolve, one of the oldest tools of cinema) becomes something else, a morality drama that lives in Joshua Burge's singularly odd and compelling presence. Potrykus still has an incredibly sharp sense of duration and pacing (as with his previous works, he's the editor as well as the writer/director) that creates meditative moments, like an extreme close-up of fireworks blossoming into snake-like embers, as well as anxious, tense, or awkward ones, like an unsolicited "show" Derek performs for Marty in pitch darkness, involving a malfunctioning Discman, a glow stick and Godsmack's "Voodoo." Potrykus finally lands on a thoughtful and troubling suggestion - that the inability to escape consequences might be the only relief from the destructive impulses of a perpetual adolescence.

John Lydon in this is a fascinating example of an actor's very apparent lack of experience and training contributing to a performance and adding ambiguity to an already slippery character. The film is extremely spare visually, even dry to the point that the very cool Morricone score almost feels incongruous. But there's a lot of fun to be had in the weird tete-a-tete between Lydon's demon twink and Keitel's morally compromised cop, especially as Lydon's character seems to change from scene to scene (inconsistent acting, or a series of brilliant, deliberate choices?) and be in full control of the dynamic between himself and Keitel even as he insists he's being held hostage against his will. In some ways it's a classic BDSM scenario, and the more that's able to emerge through the interplay between Lydon and Keitel, the more lurid fun this becomes.

A love letter to the mythological origins of Delta blues (a la Robert Johnson) that expands across the large-format frame and generous running time to encom American myths of all kinds - historical, musical and cinematic - while cleverly repositioning the classically European myth of the vampire as one of American cultural assimilation and appropriation. It is undeniably refreshing to see a big new Hollywood movie rich with so many ideas that makes so many audacious choices - the showstopping, time-bending musical sequence at the film's midpoint is the big one, but I was also fond of the very retro, B-movie look of the blood spilled late in the movie, and the mid-credits scene that functions as a surprising coda to the entire movie while adding to its thematic and emotional heft. Despite the lush production and costume design, visually it does fall prey to some of the flat lighting and staging that mars a lot of studio filmmaking in the 2020s, and the climactic action feels rushed, especially after how patiently the first two acts unfurl. But Coogler's incredibly confident sense of what the movie is, even as a highly ambitious, unusual genre hybrid, emanates from nearly every frame, and the ensemble is excellent across the board, anchored by the major discovery Miles Caton and the magnetically powerful Wunmi Mosaku, as well as the perpetually excellent Delroy Lindo, who conveys more life and history in his character's introductory scene than most actors do in an entire performance.

David Cronenberg no longer needs to speculate on or imagine how technology might reshape the human body and human life because it already has, with self-driving cars and omniscient AI avatar assistants. But he is still better than anyone at daring to explore the contours of sorrow, horror, possibility and humor that form from that complicated marriage and The Shrouds, for all its austerity, still feels so exciting for that, and even fearless in how it so nakedly lays out Cronenberg's personal grief alongside these preoccupations. There hasn't been a better use of Vincent Cassel's weird swagger since Black Swan, and casting Guy Pearce as a nebbish is so out of left-field that it seems almost right. Everything with Hunny cracked me up, but I was one of the only ones laughing. I actually think this is his funniest film in a while, burrowing deep into the absurdity left behind by the loss of the person who gave one's world a sense of order and meaning. I haven't been so gagged by the audacity of a closing line and final shot in a while. He's still got it.

"You're witnessing the results of 5000 years of sexual repression."

A farcical plot gradually complicates and deepens into something both troubling and poignant just as a ruse ends up creating a very real and unconventional new family unit. Even in his early career, Lee had a great sense of blocking and framing. The scene where the father gives Simon the envelope - the two of them sitting with their backs to the camera, looking out at the water, faces cheated back - adds delicacy, surprise, and a kind of intimacy to what is already a highly charged moment.

A total delight. It's too bad Gillian Armstrong didn't direct more musicals because the New Wave ebullience she brings to the staging here (as well as great instincts for shooting and editing said sequences) is so refreshing. The elevator/hallway sequence with the goofy guys crawling along the floor and the pool sequence with the buff dudes doing synchronized swimming in matching bathing suits alone are more inventive and fun than anything in any recent movie musical (save Better Man). Also, somewhat sneakily, a great movie about family and home and the ways they can feel stifling and comforting at the same time.

A leisurely 144 minutes, a hangout crime drama/heist movie whose scenic-European-lark feel makes it something of the Ocean's Twelve of the Den of Thieves franchise. Bulked-up Jackson makes a better foil for Butler this time around. Pacing is deliberate overall but individual scenes are very tightly edited and composed, so it doesn't drag. Gudegast has a good handle on car action - the climactic chase here reminded me of Frankenheimer's Ronin, a high compliment - and Mann-style shootouts, as well as fun lunkhead dialogue (Butler in the club apologizing to the Serbian gangsters for "bombing the shit out of you guys in the 90s" is a highlight).

There can be something so personal about Amanda Seyfried's face reflected in an iPad screen.

Trauma channeled into art paralleled by life, increasingly mediated by screens and microphones that invite looking and listening for some kind of truth that often reflects the subjectivity of the person recording as much as anything else. Or something like that. Maybe too much voiceover, but in an Atom Egoyan film it's not like everyone's motivations are super legible all the time.

Sometimes you know from the very first shot that you're onboard with a film. With this one - a slow, graceful pan across an empty opera house that eventually reveals a giant eye projected on a screen above the stage, staring out at nothing - I knew I was in good hands. The way Egoyan cleverly rhymes with his opening shot much later in the film, through an iPhone camera, confirmed it for me. Seyfried is excellent, as is the unknown-to-me Rebecca Liddiard. Video artists shouldn't be allowed to have children, and arts organizations shouldn't encourage artists to post on social media. No one should have a podcast.

A painterly high-fantasy post-apocalyptic western that shape-shifts in its final act into a melancholic monster movie. No one has ever made better use of Dave Bautista's soulful eyes than Paul W.S. Anderson, and the way his presence and Jovovich's soft-spoken stoicism find an easy chemistry over the course of the film is just a joy to watch. The frenetic rhythms of Monster Hunter and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter are gone, and this is much more reminiscent of the epic melodrama of Pompeii (especially in a breathtaking late cross-dissolve from a close-up of blood spilling across a floor to a wide shot that makes it look as though the blood is briefly cascading down the steps behind Jovovich - Anderson really is the last genre expressionist). And at the heart of all these smeary CG backdrops and slow-motion demon battles, fascist priests and scheming queens, a simple fable of two strangers with a shared dream: "To find an end to all this loneliness."

Crystal was robbed, of course, but so was Miss New Jersey!

In its way, the Tenet of Godzilla movies, only with vastly more superpowered balding androids, teleportation lasers and unreconstructed Japanese nationalism. The kaiju fighting puppetry is particularly awesome in this one (love the move where Godzilla grabs King Ghidorah by his tails and slams him against the ground). The scene where the wealthy industrialist whose platoon was saved from American soldiers by Godzilla in WWII comes face to face with him again at the top of his skyscraper is complex and fascinating, approaching a reckoning with Japan's nationalist past and postwar economic miracle. But much of this is total nonsense, and not in a bad way.

This one is just bad. An overabundance of cheap CG in the repetitive premonition and death sequences, two minor characters who are virulently racist for absolutely no reason, and a quartet of totally charisma-free leads plus a hopelessly stranded Mykelti Williamson. Bleak.

Now this is the early 90s I have borrowed nostalgia for - Parker Posey and Adrienne Shelly playing goddesses with long wigs rollerblading around an abandoned building. I get that it's supposed to be an opera, but this actually nails the essence of A Midsummer Night's Dream better than any film adaptation I've seen. Playful, charming, surprisingly elegant, a lovely miniature work.

Just an incredible volume of fake movie science in this one - plant telepathy, anti-nuclear bacteria, synthetic diamond weapons, thunder machines...I had a blast. The creature effects are every bit as goopy as you'd want, the battle sequences are stacked with great miniatures and explosions, and Biollante's designs are beautiful and horrific at the same time. This is really everything I look for in a kaiju movie. And it's relentlessly, almost absurdly paced, so 105 minutes feels more like 45.