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I was happy to see the crew do their thing but it got a bit exhausting for me. I'm not sure I would call them boring but I didn't feel that invested in the two main Tom Cruise experiences in this and it did feel a bit goofy. I didn't really care about the battle against the computer because it's a computer. They do ratchet it up to the nth degree but even that felt like alright whatever. However I did enjoy seeing the characters do their thing, smiling at each other in big crowds and all that. And it did feel nice that someone was trying to entertain me. I also found it funny that this movie repeatedly confirms that Israel has nuclear weapons.

I enjoyed the fussing over the arrangements like it was Big Night or Babette's Feast or something, the hints of culture, making sure every file is in its right place, for something so horrific. The lawyers and such eating or not eating, the wine and the beer, the need for air. The secrecy and the stupidity of the attempts at secrecy. The stages of grief for their legacies and the boys-will-be-boys indulgences. I Michael Parenti saying it always annoys him that people would go "oh, you think the ruling class are conspiring together in rooms?" and he would reply "Of course they conspire in rooms, where else would they conspire?"

My power has been out for three days so I went to the movies to get out of the house. This was perfect for that. Totally mindless forgetable movie of a psycho killing some creeps. Right place right time. However I will not rate the movie because I found many elements immoral, such as torture.

Ok so I'm reviewing a kids movie as an adult so ultimately what I say doesn't matter. But it's important to be open and honest. I thought there were some clever ideas squeezed in here but I hated the movie. I thought it looked really ugly and that the premise gets run into the ground within the first few minutes. I read on Wikipedia that they consulted neuroscientists or some horseshit. Give me a break. But I'm staying positive and moving on.

I almost teared up at the songs a few times so it'd be unfair to give this a bad score. In truth, it would have been easy for this to have been a complete disaster, the sort of thing that would either be forgotten instantly or made fun of forever. Instead I had a good time, even if I ultimately don't think Dylan going electric is that interesting of a story. I mean, it is, but it's hard to make this without resorting to stuff like the steaming mad folk music festival organizer.

Loved Ed Norton as Pete Seeger. He's sort of reduced a generic activist with a "cause", without really getting into the meat of what that means, which is unfair, but you do meet people like that. As said, Timmy could have been terrible and was instead fun to watch. Monica Barbaro was a delight as Joan Baez. Elle Fanning is the other "male biopic punching bag" for this movie but she was charming. I try to rate movies based on whether I was entertained, and I was, so good times.

Took me a while to get into but eventually I was won over by all the Ridley Scott silliness. I respect having a bunch of evil gay guys in your movie in 2024. I liked the Moyle emperors and their monkey. Denzel Washington as a mischievous bisexual. Pedro Pascal does a funny voice in parts which I liked. Irishman Paul Mescal helps found a republican army. So many moments where you can tell Ridley Scott doesn't care what actually happened "back then" and I love that.

This review may contain spoilers.

I have loved Ralph Fiennes since The English Patient (sorry) and enjoyed this as well. And it's fun to have John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Stanley Tucci and a few other good actors around for the ride. This is ultimately a very silly movie for liberals to have a good time. I'm pretty liberal so I did have a good time. I can't help but think that there's a better movie in here where they didn't do the just-so ending. Everything gets resolved far too neatly. The problem is, I can't figure out how this movie gets made without all the too-cute plotting. I guess Lawrence needs to "pull it off" in a pleasant way for wish fulfillment reasons, unless the "twist" is supposed to be morally ambiguous (didn't seem so to me). So I have to file this in the "Movies For Adults" category which is like Marvel for Boomers.

A pretty formulaic sequel family movie that builds up a lot of things and seems to sort of half-forget about why they were important along the way, which is fine. Lots of gags and that's what matters. Catherine O'Hara (Canadian) and Willem Defoe do a lot of heavy lifting. I know Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega are playing it straight but it'd be nice if they got to goof around more and have fun. They mostly just act scared. They do the thing where Michael Keaton Douglas and Monica Bellucci get filmed off by themselves a lot, presumably to make filming easier for them, which I always find a bit uncanny. I hadn't seen the original since the early 90's probably so I can't really complain.

Felt like a weather-themed Hallmark movie but I liked it. Paint by numbers. Do people still paint by numbers? There were those adult colouring books too. I like Glenn and Daisy fine enough.

I really enjoyed this. I don't know why it needed to have a political point. No one gets mad at Inland Empire for being vibes-based. A movie about a contemporary Civil War has to disappoint over and over to be worth watching. I think the stuff about journalism is pretty ambiguous. "There is no anti-journalism film." It can get corny at times but like its competition is junk like Oppenheimer, I don't see the problem. Suicidal thrill seekers having a great time (enjoy your symptom). I wanted to buy a camera. I just bought a Google Pixel 8A but that's not a camera. I thought the president was played by Tim Robbins before it started and was sort of confused when I realized it was Nick Offerman.

I don't really like this level of gore but it was alright. To be honest I kept thinking... maybe if you hadn't fought the Russians so hard you wouldn't have had those Nazis in your country in the first place.

I enjoyed watching this. I actually didn't like Fury Road when I saw it, although I can't really why. I think I thought it was too violent. I guess I've given up on disliking ultraviolence. Maybe the world made that decision for me. I'm not sure I actually like this movie but there were parts that were badass and I was entertained. And it was nice to take a little journey through an apocalyptic wasteland. Like Seinfeld said about Unfrosted, I didn't want to take anything away from this movie, just have a good time.

I enjoyed this... I dimly not wanting to see this when it came out because I thought the computer graphics looked silly in the commercials, and the fact I disliked the Marky Mark entry. But the animation is actually good, the apes had little personalities and it was cute. At one point I thought John Lithgow was CGI because I was so used to it. Nice to see Brian Cox as a sleazebag animal control officer. The ape lab leak theory seems plausible these days. Hints of Spartacus and zombie movies in this and a strange ape combat sequence involving the Golden Gate Bridge. Pretty fun. Hasta la victoria siempre.

I liked the Bene Gesserit scheming. Some of the battles looked cool, too, I imagined the little red triangles. I think I would have loved this if I was 16, so I think he did a good job, but I don’t really care about the story. Some of the Harkonnen stuff felt a little too Zach Snyder. The whole thing did feel like a graphic novel adaptation. I don’t think sand worms are cool, reminds me of the Never-Ending Story with that big flying dog guy. I liked that Villeneuve pushed things along quickly, I was dreading long drawn out hand-to-hand combat but most people just get their throats cut right away. I liked that Josh Brolin played a space guitar. Good popcorn movie, just mindless fun.

Not sure this is a good movie but I'm glad I saw it. Napoleon as fail-emperor was mildly funny. I liked Vanessa Kirby in this, even though she contributed to the sense that is supposed to be Bizzarro England. She's a great beauty.

There's some talk of the absurdity of Caesarism but nothing gets too deep. It did make me think about how rulers can embody a paradoxical democratic spirit. C.B. Maherson talks about how just being the new regime has a certain democratic element of renewal, which states can coast on for a while. You see a lot of appeals to this with post-revolutionary states, and sometimes that's good but sometimes it's pretty stupid. Anyway, I did get fired up about the English: "no more kings" - I denounce the Monarchy in Canada and call for a republic.

Also, please subscribe to the Age of Napoleon podcast. It's great.

Watched the first 30 minutes of this… not going to be negative… I can see why other people might enjoy it… not everything needs to be Citizen Kane…

Fun schlock that I'm glad I saw. Most of the action is bad but whatever. Jason Statham is 56 years old and he mostly talks and moves like he's present day Clint Eastwood. I'm not sure why. There's a guy in this that seems like they got a cheaper version of Aaron Paul, which was uncanny. It was fun that Tim Robbins is in this. At one point I thought weeks of time had ed in the movie and then someone said everything since the start had happened since "yesterday" which made me laugh. The Beekeeper has a confusing sense of justice which involves killing or not killing police officers based on criteria I can't discern.

Basically punishes the viewer for wanting a standard race car movie narrative, walking through the cliches and undoing them, often brutally. Probably too conceptual for people who wear Ferrari merchandise and not conceptual enough for people who just like movies about Italy.

I thought it was fine. I enjoyed seeing Adam Driver act cool, as if he walked out of 8 1/2, that was worth the price of ission. I had no real investment in his family troubles and didn't understand any of the discussion around cars. I liked that Mann included a few little jokes about how they are speaking English even though it's in Italy. Penelope Cruz is basically the only person working hard here.

Not really for me but it killed an afternoon. There are three Guinness beer references. Everyone sounded like they were rehearsing their lines for the first time (except Nicole Kidman obviously). It did feel like a true comic book movie, like really hammy and cartoony compared to most of the others, which I think tweens might enjoy. Aquaman solves climate change.

Watched on Saturday November 25, 2023.

I think I'm going to stop rating movies with stars. It feels weird giving this five stars. There were sagging parts and goofy parts and parts that felt out of place. But should I take off stars for that? I wouldn't really change anything. If I ever met Scorsese I probably wouldn't even be able to what I thought could have been better. I can barely now and I just saw it. At one point someone said "oil, black gold" and I rolled my eyes. But that's probably a reference to some particular movie or something. It's weird to review things, sorry.

This is goes pretty deep into the genre of "Movies for Adults" like something like The Red Violin or Incendies where it's like "Big History! Grand themes! Lots of Coincidences!" and there's always something a bit corny about that to me, but I'm also a sucker for it. I like the setting of East and that dated sterile design. Not really sure about the politics or morality involved but I'm a grown up so whatever. I took German in high school, I should get back into it. I used to stupidly make fun of the idea of everyone moving to Berlin but I'd probably like it.

Watched it for the first time in probably twenty years, it was all new to me. AI generated films are getting bad press lately but I'd probably watch an inserted extra hour of Harvey Keitel just saying stuff like "Teresa, you're killing me here, listen, listen" and "Johnny, Michael's been looking for you, what are you doing".

Wooooo! Woooooooo!

I had fun. It did feel like an eighties movie to me sorta. Always feel something lacking from recycled IP but can't really complain. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is cute. I think she'd find me funny. Paint by numbers but the ticket was $6.50 again.

This movie is about the events leading up to the founding of the Communist Party in China. It races through a lot of the macro narrative and spices it up with human interest and the early years of Mao. I was lucky to see this in theaters in Toronto when it came out. You can find it on YouTube now and I think it's fun.

This is basically the sort of history movie you'd watch in school when you're 12, similar to Lincoln or something like that. A lot of cheese and romcom tropes but it's fun to do the Leo DiCaprio pointing at the screen from your chair at key moments. Not a lot of mass market features have Bertolucci references or people quoting from the Communist Manifesto.

The explicit politics are pretty limited to making the point of the relevance of foreign experience to China. The more traditionalist or conservative nationalist argument was that Marxism is alien to China's Confucian ideology and that it was dangerous to import European concepts of national revival and revolution. Against this, the communists argue that the unity of workers and peasants is the key to rebuilding China, and that this is a scientific lesson China can learn from Russia. And at the conclusion the movie makes explicit that this all worked out fine so far as of 2011.

At one point a woman says something like, "You're going to found a national party with 50 people?" And that's sort of the context that makes the whole story astonishing. They actually did it!

Went and saw this Tuesday afternoon with my mom if you want context. I had a good time. It was goofy and fun. Ezra Junior was a bit irritating and there was a lot not to like but who cares. Was worth my mom’s six dollars.

Sometimes I feel like I was sent here to see what human life is like. I still don’t get it.

Saw this on a Monday afternoon, which is probably the most unemployed thing I’ve ever done. No chance I I saw this tomorrow. But I had fun. Ham champions Chris Pine and Hugh Grant goofing off. Lots of nerdy RPG jokes for Leo screen pointing.

I thought this was pretty fun. I liked Donnie Yen goofing off and the fight scene with explosive flechettes. About half of the movie is discussing rules the crime types follow, which I wasn't that interested in. But it was nice seeing an obese German man kick people.

Not that good. Doesn't really do much with the premise of quantum reality other than some groovy animation. My favourite part was Michael Douglas goofing off or staring into the distance when some digital effects were near him. My second favourite part was all the weird nonsense in it like the deliberately bad big face guy MODOK. Most of the battles didn't make any sense but I ate a bag of popcorn by myself and relaxed for two hours. I wish Saoirse Ronan was in it more.

You ever get so angry after watching A Man for All Seasons that you write seven thousand pages? A really fun time. Emphasizes the muck of history side of ideology but the self-selected champions of progress don’t come off too well either. Silly enough for TV without being stupid. Lots of fun acting and Claire Foy is a megababe. Best oh fuck ending since The Graduate.

I won’t rate this because I had to turn it off after nine minutes. Bottom of the barrel stock jokes that can’t be saved by Chris Tucker’s charming emoting.

Some great moments in this where Ellen reflects on her career and tells some stories she has probably told dozens of times privately. It’s nice to get to hear them. Some parts sag as she tries to get through some stock material she seems less in confident in, but even those jokes are mostly charming. I’m glad I watched it.

If I were a kid I probably would have liked this. I laughed at “you bald-headed demon.” I liked the Mexico related stuff and the Paul Simon music. I watched about half of it.

I walked out after 45 minutes when I realized this isn’t the movie Kyrie Irving recommended.

Just not for me. I guess it's like if an old opera singer hears a record player for the first time and realizes that everything will be different from now on. Not necessarily worse, just a different world that they will never be a part of.

This review may contain spoilers.

Honestly enough weird stuff happens in this that it's worth seeing. I would say that this movie is 50% boilerplate and is probably what Bohemian Rhapsody was like with many of the same beats. My audience was 95% old people and that's what they probably wanted. There's also a lot of nods to Black culture to deflect the obvious blue check complaint that he did Black music to make himself wealthy. However, this angle is also initiated with Tom Hanks acting astonished and overjoyed when he finds out that a voice he thinks is Black is actually from a white person.

Some other decisions:

1. Colonel Parker narrates and leads the movie. Tom Hanks plays the Colonel in much the same way that Jared Leto played Paolo Gucci. At times the movie picks up and then abandons narrative devices about the Colonel being in a morphine haze on his deathbed. Get used to the word "snowjob" because you are going to hear it a lot. How helpful Parker is to Elvis is always pretty confused. He both makes Elvis and ruins him and that is hard to square with the melodrama that wants it one way or another. I assume there is some Hollywood reason why biopics have to focus on a secondary character. Maybe you can't stare too closely at the sun.

2. I would say the first hour of this movie is about Elvis' crotch. There is a lot of talk surrounding his pelvis in this. I liked Austin Butler as Elvis because it's basically an impossible task. It's the sort of thing that could easily destroy your career to try to do. Maybe by making so much of the movie about his penis and balls in tight pants they helped break that curse. I hope so. The wild reactions of women were a great part of the movie. They seemed horny as hell and I respected that.

3. The ending part of the movie gets silly in a few ways but it finishes off with Fat Elvis as you probably hoped it would. He plays Unchained Melody and it's very sweet. Elvis really does look like he is both actively dying but also an incredible entertainer. Most of the performances are chopped up and interrupted with inane plot and such but it all hit me. I almost burst into tears, which is funny given how insanely stupid a lot of this movie is.

Anyway I would say that most of this movie is a bizarre three stars but there were a few spikes that were so high that I still think every Elvis fan should see it.

Okay I it I enjoyed seeing the dinosaurs run around. It’s a bad movie I will forget tomorrow but some of it was fun. I was irritated at first how much of this is explaining things to move things along and I was sort of like who needs a dinosaur movie explained. Then I was confused and bored enough that I missed the obvious parts. The dinosaurs look uncanny but you get used to it. This movie includes a hyperloop train and if that annoys you then probably skip it.

This is the kind of movie Germans would make if they won the war. You can’t like this without being at least a little bit Nazi. And I it I kinda liked it.

I am not rating this because I left after about fifteen minutes. I was too tired to care so I’ll give it a fair shot another day. Mildly funny that I chose this as the follow up to Inland Empire. I think a fun derivative action-comedy would be one where Audrey Hepburn was secretly an international assassin. You could have Lily Collins starring in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and having to run around behind the scenes to do various spy things. It’s a bit Zoolander and you could include a lot of cameos. My tentative title is Code Name: Golightly.

Ok I loved this. Lucky to see it in a theater.

Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

The women in my life are enough magic for me.

Reminded me of skipping high school to watch The Crow.

A lot of the basic features of this movie are driven by necessity. If you have a movie about indigenous girlhood during a crisis there are a bunch of bases you are expected to touch. I think progressive Canadian audiences have expectations of certain subjects to be brought up and particular outcomes. All these expectations could have overwhelmed the movie and made it trite and wooden. Instead there is a lot of heart and I enjoyed the movie a lot. Like the real world, people make serious mistakes and confused choices throughout, wandering from one danger to another while trying to keep up hope. There's a didactic element to all this but it never becomes absurd.

In this movie the knock-out game is real. That made me laugh until I ed that became a liberal thing last year. Most of what happens is sourced from cop message boards. Nirvana Batman is objectively a funnier idea than Scorsese Joker. I had a pretty good time.

Antonio Banderas was fun but everyone else annoyed me. I don’t know how a movie based on a video game could be so boring. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all.

Felt like if they made a new Scary Movie style parody of The Matrix. A lot of jokes about how stupid it was to make another Matrix. Well, they convinced me it was. Still nice to have a movie led by Canadians.

This is the best comic book movie I’ve seen. I know that is a “tallest dwarf” sort of claim but I was thoroughly entertained. I could feel myself getting closer to the grave. The pacing is so fast for the TikTok generation. Felt more like a handoff between generations than those junk Thanos movies. I won’t even be able to understand the next ones. Time keeps on slipping into the future.