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Watched on Sunday June 1, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

It could lose the first act with no real damage to the plot. There's one important death, which is staged in a fun way but takes ages to get to; should've crammed it in elsewhere. As soon as Ethan Hunt dives into the choppy north Atlantic, this is an above-grade cartoon action movie. Before that it's a waste of time that makes you ask who Cruise and "McQ" are trying to entertain.

The length is indulgent, but really, the whole thing's indulgent. The first 15 years of Mission Impossible movies teamed Cruise up with new directors, harvesting a few things from earlier movies, finding increasingly exotic settings and staging increasingly suicidal stunts. The last decade was a collaboration between Cruise and McQuarrie, and a deal with the audience: You will see amazing stunts, charismatic stars, spycraft gags (masks, mostly) and deeply unmemorable plots.

As the script keeps reminding us, it All Led Ethan Hunt here. Some retcons make him both a less destructive man, with a whole subplot about the CIA schlub whose career he ruined by sneaking into Langley, and a more destructive agent, whose search for the "rabbit's foot" in MI3 (a MacGuffin with BIOHAZARD written on it) was actually about transferring the "primordial soup" of AI to a bad guy.

I laughed out loud at that line. Who cares about MI MacGuffin continuity? We have a deal with Tom Cruise: He's the Harold Lloyd of action stunts, we will watch whatever he does, and we will put up with whatever silly exposition links those stunts together. There is just so much exposition here, much of leading to a dramatic presidential choice which we know *cannot affect the plot,* because the plot is about Spy Jesus, the man who can survive submarine-crushing pressure in his underwear.

This made for a schizo three hours of entertainment. The retconning was stupid, the character interactions were sexless (Atwell just doesn't have charisma with Cruise), the cute relationship between Benji and Paris is consummated by the phallic imagery of a pen being punched into his lung. There's an almost-good joke about how small and scrappy his team's become by the end, but it's undermined when the new are amazing at everything. And yet the submarine and biplane scenes are unforgettable, thrilling and pulse-quickening, completely worth a ticket, earning Tom's little thank-you at the beginning for keeping The Movies alive.

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

I've now spent more than half a day on earth watching this series to the end. The thought of owning it on blue-ray makes me queasy. I can it how wonderful 80s horror makes me feel, and I can have a great afternoon riffing on this with someone who wears a "Joe Bob's Last Drive-In" shirt to the baby shower.

But owning it? On a shelf? Where a girl could see it? No, I am going to stay a tourist. And this is just very good tourism, like a series of friendly retirees working at a museum, sharing one or two fun facts about the painting you just looked at.

The best fact I got here, which I'll spare you five hours of discovering, is that Keith Haring painted Grace Jones's body art in "Vamps." Not the strangest job either of them had, but the strangest one we can see on film, and it looks great here. Great tribute is given to the most famous actors and behind-the-scenes figures who went on camera for this, like a full-on ad for Tom Savini's make-up school.

I feel like I'm reviewing a spoon of chunky peanut butter rolled around inside a tub of Nutella. It's fan service, designed to perpetuate its fandom and keep small samples of the original texts alive.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Taking them for what they are, episodes of a merch-selling cartoon series, the Marvel films have gotten awfully bad at introducing new action figures. James Gunn, who ended up being the savant of the superhero boom, came up with a very likeable Adam Warlock and a High Evolutionary who we wanted to strangle; we hooted when his face fell off. Wyatt Russell's US Agent made a bad show slightly watchable; he and a few other C-list heroes didn't get good material until "Thunderbolts." Far more characters have been rolled out to a collective "eh?" (America Chavez? Ironheart? Druig?) and rolled back into the slush pile.

The fourth, stupidest "Captain America" movie gives us a few real losers: Ruth Bat-Seraph, an Israeli Black Widow-type with the odd proportions of a Steve Madden shoe ad character, and the New Falcon, a good-at-everything sidekick whose personality trait is making people want to punch him. They are a drag to watch in a movie with only boring shots, elevated a little by its villains.

Some people think that Giancarlo Esposito and Harrison Ford just cashed these checks. Esposito's Sidewinder was clearly jammed in by reshoots, every action scene happening on the same lot under the same lighting, but he makes a knife fight look interesting and hams up a silly negotiation scene. Ford had to talk about "adamantium, more indestructible than vibranium," and does this with the conviction of Jack Ryan; he throws himself around like Frederic March when the Hulk Replacement Therapy kicks in.

That's it, that's the good stuff. The rest is dreck and harmed by Marvel's confounding in-world politics, where the Celestial Island mineral haul has never been mentioned before and China is not in the hunt for a new resource in the Indian Ocean. This series handled a pretty good spy movie, with a great reveal. "Brave New World" has a more convoluted story, with a more pointless conspiracy theory, and there's nothing interesting to look at until -- I can it this -- the Hulk part. Nobody has turned the president into a Hulk before and made him fight on top of the White House, swinging its flagpole like a halberd. I appreciated that. Watch the clip on YouTube.

Schrader's last three films studied middle-aged men who'd been weathered by sacrifice; a dying reverend, a soldier unable to forget his war crimes, a repentant Aryan nation gangster. Here we spend the last day on earth with a coward: Leonard Fife, a left-wing documentarian who fled America and his young family to avoid the Vietnam draft.

Gere played Fife convincingly between middle age and the deathbed; Elordi plays him as a young, privileged wannabe writer who wants to avoid becoming a "businessman or something." Both are quiet and smoldering, charming everyone they meet, and getting almost everything they want. (In a crucial, late flashback, Fife easily convinces one man that he's gay.) The exception is a horrible, relatable tragedy that most men don't react to by fleeing. But some do. Fife becomes successful with luck and some embellishing, chasing pleasure, but so haunted by that one decision that he can't confront it.

Formally it's the most interesting thing Schrader's done since "Auto Focus," when he recreated sitcoms and shot through a few period-accurate cameras. We see a few of "Fife's" films, which look exactly like the sort of stuff that won Geminis and Junos (he won both) in their years. Fife is exhausted, an unreliable narrator, inside his head and on camera, even a hidden camera. The ing cast play themselves, uncannily, in flashbacks; this feels intentional, because real memory warps how we and our friends looked.

I was less engaged during the Elordi segments, but this is sitting with me, and I may be underrating it.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

"ion project" is probably too small a term for this. Andy Ostroy, who had no involvement with movies until he married Adrienne Shelly, directs and stars in this tribute that's also about how he processed the grief of her murder. Ostroy does man-in-the-streets asking people (under "Waitress" musical signs) if they've heard of her, letting friends interview him about what he did when her body was found, keeping a camera on as he confronts her killer with photos of heir daughter growing up without a mother.

I have never seen anything quite like it. Some of Ostroy's choices are jarring, like the animated recreations of things he told their daughter after Shelly was found dead, right before her artistic breakthrough was released; not a big name over the credits, but famous enough for news stations to report the initial, incorrect assessment that she'd killed herself. How does a new father tell his 3-year old about this? The recreations are stilted, the deliveries are blank. They are not actors squeezing all of the emotion out of these conversations. They are normal people who'll grieve forever.

It hits like it's supposed to: We are distraught that this actress/writer/director, who achieved indie fame in Hal Hartley's first two films, didn't get roles she deserved after that. Ostroy can't stop thinking about what else she might have made after "Waitress," and for a while, neither can we.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Not the worst sequel, but the worst *kind* of sequel. Milius made an immortal "Conan," loved by people who will never read one of Robert Howard's stories, Fleischer made a film more faithful to the Marvel comics sherpa'd by Roy Thomas, who co-wrote a story that throws the Cimmerian together with a band of goofy warriors and thieves.

It's dumbed down and cleaned up, fewer blades being driven into chests and more bad guys thrown off horses. It's still very fun, a series of fetch quests that get and closer to the dark God that the Conan Gang needs to kill. Drive-In achievements for Grace Jones, who is even more credible than Arnold as a warrior from the time after the sinking of Atlantis, and Tracey Walter as the sniveling comic relief thief.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

When in doubt, write a party scene. Plots move when characters are liquored up and making small talk; when they're brooding and have somebody to dump their woe upon; when there's no romantic conflict and you need to manufacture it.

"Highball" consists of three party scenes, all of them in the dark blue Brooklyn apartment of Ted and Diane. They move in, celebrate Halloween, and bring people back for New Year's Eve. We never see it empty, and we never even see the building. People drink, break up, get fired, wrestle with their sexual preferences, and drink.

Baumbach never wanted to release this movie he put together with cast and extra resources from the "Mr. Jealousy" shoot. His instincts were right; it only got released in a re-cut (not his) because the investors wanted their money, because it had enough b-list stars to move at a video rental store, and because Baumbach wasn't getting anything else made. (Seven years ed between "Mr. Jealousy" and "The Squid and the Whale," during which he stopped writing about childless twentysomethings and started writing about people who'd made their lives' big decisions or were dangerously old to be putting them off.)

What we have left is 90 minutes of banter delivered Baumbach's first troupe, plus celebrity guests, two of whom play themselves, famous women that Eric Stoltz brings to Ted and Diane's parties so they can get annoyed by questions like "Do you know Jack Nicholson?" Six of these actors appeared in "Mr. Jealousy" or "Kicking and Screaming," and Baumbach gives the biggest parts to the actors who did the least in his "real" movies. Baumbach appears in the biggest role he ever gave himself, dressing like he does in real life, even for the Halloween party.

"Are you..."

"Hitler? No, I just put on a mustache."

I saw "Kicking and Screaming" at a formative time, pre-college, when being a loser who stayed around his college town to work in a video store after graduation looked cool as hell. (This is the WRONG read of that movie, nobody is supposed to watch a Carlos Jacott character and think "I want to be him.") The picture of middling early career faux-sophistication here is sweet and accurate, and also looks just terrible, poorly lit and staged, so that when Ted arrives and commandeers a room to drink in at the second party we and the characters are equally confused about where he is. ("Is this a room?" asks each character as they try the knob.) It has nothing to offer but funny, exasperated banter, which was enough for me but not enough to serve to a friend.

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 29, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

It's too bad we didn't get more movies out of Richard Kwietniowski, who if the website is honest is now teaching film at a London university. I saw "Love and Death on Long Island" when I was a teenager finally starting to see movies that friends didn't want to go to. I never forgot the beguiling story of an eccentric man falling in love with an aging teen actor after watching "Hotpants College II." What else did Kwietniowski have in him?

Just this, the true story of a Canadian gambling addict who embezzled $10 million from the bank he worked at, feeding it all to croupiers. Every good gambling movie es the stress to you through the screen. Hoffman is so joyless and helpless that you want to start screaming. He never melts down. He barely raises his voice when he tells a friend, who had ordered not to let him spend another $40,000, to let him spend it. He's offered everything he wants by John Hurt's casino owner (not as natural as the "Love and Death" role but he's a very good sleaze) and asks for just Coke and "ribs with no sauce." There is a moment when he could have walked away and even wiped out his debt, and you sink, because he's going to fuck it up.

Hoffman did not star in that many films, and rarely got this much screentime. He disappears only when other people are talking about him: Colleagues, cops, shylocks, the guys milking him at the casino ("he's a thoroughbred"), the guys mourning for him at the casino. At one point, he hallucinates himself at the other side of a table; it is the longest he looks at anything but chips, cards, dice, and the floor. He's heartbreaking and very often annoying, especially when choosing his habit over Belinda (Minnie Driver), a girlfriend with the capacity for endless suffering. Why does she stay with him? She can't get off her track, either, and it's easier to lie to herself then to blow up her good-enough Toronto life.

Most of the film takes place in anonymous parts of that city and the bland casino in Atlantic City. Mahony travels constantly, even missing the weekend when he's supposed to move Belinda into their home. At its best you can feel the cold when he walks outside and smell the stale smoke in the casino. I liked the acid-jazz soundtrack; it's dated in the wrong era, but it jars you, because it's such strange accompaniment for this man trudging over to another table to humiliate himself.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Painfully long, juiceless romance between two leads, some decent use of John C. Reilly. Just not much of a story here, and too much dull banter to fill it out; weak addition to the middle-aged-man-looks-back genre, which I am usually a mark for.

Is this Raimi's least-loved movie? "Oz" has got to be more hated, but I'd rather watch that again than watch these unpleasant people argue in hotel suites.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

Two failures bundled into one package: A dull dystopia walkthrough with po-faced Samantha Morton, and a duller documentary about the "new kings" of technology and the brave journalists who exposed them - which, obviously, wasn't enough to prevent the dystopia. "I feel like we're already living in a science fiction world," says Maria Ressa, taking the "sub" out of the subtext. Can't overstate that: It literally ends with a fist being raised in the air as Ressa asks "will fascism win?"

So direct, yet so confused. The un-enlightening documentary sections establish that big tech (Thiel and Musk and Bezos and Zuck) has commodified human attention and it's probably too late to fix that. The future bits show Morton navigating a world where the ultra-wealthy live in CGI towers (along with all the world's great art, nice!) and the rest of humanity roots around in dumps and dumpsters to find yummy centipede protein or, hilariously, a copy of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." How did the very real AI nightmare turn into a more boring nightmare, where the unlucky are put through "re-education" by cameras asking them "what is 2 plus 2?"

Here's a kind explanation. There's a joke about how the Thiels of the world read sci-fi novels and got them backwards; blueprints, not warnings. Kapadia corrects this by showing us the sci-fi nightmares that nobody wants to copy,* hooking them up directly to the sci-fi advances that get the mega-rich so excited.

I get it. I got it in the first five minutes. There is one almost-powerful sequence where Morton and some urchins search for supplies after a hover-barge dumps junk on a landfill. Like "Elysium," like bits of "Civil War," it works because it asks you, the comfortable westerner streaming from his iPad, to imagine yourself as a third worlder. Got it? Okay, you can skip the movie.

*There are freaks out there who fantasize about rummaging through dead cars and broken computers to survive in the hellscape, but they're not in Kapadia's intended audience.

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Sometimes I watch movies to see early performances by actors I like. It's a bad habit and you shouldn't do this.

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

Richard Matheson lived to see "I Am Legend" adapted three times, never the way he wanted it. I'd love to live in the reality where George Miller adapted his story with Harrison Ford in the lead, or even the one where Fritz Lang developed Matheson's script. Instead, the job went to a journeyman who filmed in Rome to save money, casting Vincent Price and a swarm of anonymous Italians - some in the dual role of Unconvincing Scientist and Unconvincing Zombie.

Lots of people are happy with the result. I was distracted by the corner-cutting, because I rarely felt like Price's Robert Morgan was in trouble. Not when he's easily fending off the slow-moving virus vamps with an 8x11 mirror, not when he's throwing makeshift smokebombs to slow down pursuers, not even when his dear wife bounces out of her front yard grave and moans at him.

Price (who Matheson felt was miscast) does very good work here, even in the poorly-staged sequence when he learns that his daughter has died. The elements are strong, like Rome-as-LA emptying out, bodies being flung from an army truck down a burning hill, and Morgan making his discoveries of how the virus works. There's as much bad acting as there is haunting imagery - a whole lot of both! But as flawed as later adaptations were, they found more to do with the story. Charlton Heston's Last Bachelor on Earth condo in "The Omega Man," the same movie's conflict with Matthias and fountain crucifixion, Will Smith cradling his zombified dog and talking to his mannequin pals in the big-budget Francis Lawrence version.

Maybe we've moved on from this story, but I still want to see a non-journeyman handle it.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

• A Knight's Tale
• Shakespeare in Love
• Becoming Jane
• Devotion
• A Quiet ion
• Bright Star
• The Great McGonagall
• Benediction
• Vita & Virginia
• Testament of Youth

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Time Out
• World Traveler
• The Mystic Masseur
• The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
• The Last Kiss
• Love in the Time of Money
• Gerry
• Spellbound
• Overnight
• The Heart of Me

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films discussed on the very short-lived "Comedy Central" series "Drive-In Reviews." The first six movies are from episodes 1 and 2, in order. The next two were discussed but I am searching for either my tapes or an online resource that will let me recover the schedule.

• Curse II: The Bite
• Basket Case
• Deadly Eyes
• Dolls
• Parents
• Mikey
• Street Trash
• Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

The collaborations of America's greatest hero and Britain's greatest director.

• Chato's Land
• The Mechanic
• The Stone Killer
• Death Wish
• Death Wish II
• Death Wish 3

Rock and R&B biopics in order, now that the first genre is pretty much gone.

• Cadillac Records
• Ray
• Elvis
• Walk the Line
• Get on Up
• The Buddy Holly Story
• La Bamba
• Bound for Glory
• Nowhere Boy
• A Complete Unknown

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The New World
• The Witch
• The Crucible
• Drums Along the Mohawk
• Northwest age
• Johnny Tremain
• The Patriot

• The Viking Queen
• The Eagle
• Excalibur
• Alfred the Great
• Becket
• The Lion in Winter
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• Ivanhoe
• Catherine Called Birdy
• Braveheart

...plus 35 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Egyptian
• The Ten Commandments
• Solomon and Sheba
• Sins of Jezebel
• Duel of the Titans
• Duel of Champions
• Slaves of Babylon
• Confucius
• 300
• Socrates

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My personal list of the 100 best American films that aren't on the AFI 100. Work in progress.

• The Wrestler
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• My Man Godfrey
• Blue Velvet
• Being There
• Henry Fool
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
• Dawn of the Dead
• Badlands
• Before Sunrise

...plus 50 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• George Washington
• John Adams
• Jefferson in Paris
• The President's Lady
• Amistad
• The Great Moment
• Young Mr. Lincoln
• Lincoln
• Tennessee Johnson
• The Price of Power

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Bible, in order, on film.

• The Bible: In the Beginning...
• Noah
• Abraham
• Sodom and Gomorrah
• Genesis
• The Ten Commandments
• Samson and Delilah
• The Story of Ruth
• David and Goliath
• David and Bathsheba

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Desert of Forbidden Art
• A New Day in Old Sana'a
• Secuestro
• The Wedding Song
• Moolaadé
• Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
• Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
• Tekkonkinkreet
• Patlabor: The Movie
• Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Michael Ovitz founded CAA in 1975, and watched every "Big Five" Oscar winner (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay) up to that point. This is the Big Five roll call after he started the project.

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Rocky
• Network
• All the President's Men
• Annie Hall
• The Goodbye Girl
• Julia
• The Deer Hunter
• Coming Home

...plus 166 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

When he co-founded the Creative Artists Agency in 1975, Michael Ovitz set out to watch every movie that won an Oscar in the "big five categories" - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Screenplay.

Here are the movies he saw, combining the early years when there were multiple Best Picture categories, and merging all the screenplay winners.

• Wings
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• Two Arabian Knights
• 7th Heaven
• The Last Command
• The Way of All Flesh
• Street Angel
• Underworld
• The Broadway Melody
• The Divine Lady

...plus 175 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Doing one of these lists again, updating it as I see the other "good movies" on the way.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• TÁR
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Crimes of the Future
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Nope
• The Northman
• Decision to Leave
• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

You want states? America's got 50 of em! Get your stepped-on provinces outta here.

• Empire Records

  Takes place on April 8, 1995, in Wilmington, Del.

• Dawn of the Dead

  Set in Philadelphia, filmed in Pittsburgh.

• Clerks

  Refreshed New Jersey stereotypes for my generation.

• The General
• Beetlejuice
• Jaws
• Diner
• The Great Santini
• Lolita
• The New World

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies with only one actor.

• The Man Who Sleeps
• Secret Honor
• Talk Radio
• Buried
• Locke
• All Is Lost

• Taking Care of Business
• Chairman of the Board

A movie set every year from 2008 to 2058.

• Southland Tales
• Riverworld
• 2010: The Year We Make
• Bombshell
• The Ultimate Warrior
• Escape from L.A.
• Moon Child
• The 6th Day
• Hell
• The Running Man

...plus 38 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All of the films brought into the canon or otherwise mentioned by Joe Bob Briggs in post-"Drive In" history of world-changing movies. Just 15 of them got chapters; the rest were put into context in mini-chapters.

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• The Golem: How He Came Into the World
• Nosferatu
• Süss, the Jew
• The Bells
• The Man Who Laughs
• Waxworks
• The Student of Prague
• Casablanca
• Above Suspicion

...plus 253 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

We're down to 10 more months of this decade, so I'm optimistically starting a list of my 50 favorite movies of this mostly bad era. Will edit over time.

1. Four Lions
2. Boyhood
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Moonlight
5. Only Lovers Left Alive
6. Blue Is the Warmest Color
7. Looper
8. The Death of Stalin
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel
10. American Honey

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Head of State
• 2012
• The Man
• Deep Impact
• The Final Year
• By the People: The Election of Barack Obama
• White House Down
• The Fifth Element
• Idiocracy
• Born in Flames

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
• W.
• Journeys with George
• The Master of Disguise
• Fahrenheit 9/11
• DC 9/11: Time of Crisis
• Will Ferrell: You're Welcome America - A Final Night with George W. Bush
• Last Party 2000
• Recount