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Okay so this movie is about a guy who wakes up on a boat and is forced to play rock paper scissors for Michael Douglas and whoever loses dies. Kind of like Squid Game, but instead of elaborate set pieces it’s just rock paper scissors.

ALSO. The guy has hallucinations where he becomes a superhero clown and fights aliens. These hallucination sequences are shockingly slick. 

I watched this on a plane like 5 years ago.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” but for tech bro douchebags.

This review may contain spoilers.

Watched this post-Andor (which I loved). 

Still pretty mixed on Rogue One.

Lots of elements I like about it:
K2-SO.
Probably the best looking Star Wars thing ever made.
Robot legs Forest Whitaker huffing jet fuel. 

I guess I just don’t feel it at the end. Like I know it wants me to feel something whenever Donnie Yen or Riz Ahmed die, but I just kinda don’t give a shit (which is not how I feel about the series.)

This review may contain spoilers.

I generally liked this. BUT.

I recently watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy, which has a very similar premise. There’s a creep who somehow gets people to kill their families.

It’s fine that the premise is similar. That said, it’s a premise that becomes the central question in the movie:

HOW DO THESE CREEPS KEEP DOING THESE WEIRD ASS CRIMES???

***SPOILERS for both Creepy and Longlegs below***

In Creepy it’s some kind of not-well-explained hypnosis. Here it’s literally the magic of Satan. In both cases it’s completely unsatisfying. 

It’s like: “Oh… I’m actually watching a Sinister movie or Insidious or whatever. Alright…”

Which brings me to the inevitable Silence of the Lambs comparison. While the serial killings in Lambs aren’t as high concept as Longlegs, by the time credits roll, you know how and why Buffalo Bill does what he does. You also know how Hannibal Lector’s charisma and intellect makes a great hang, which then makes him an S-tier serial killer. 

Meanwhile Longlegs is out here like “…and the answer you’re looking for is… MAGIC!!!”

Which I guess I get. How else do you get people to do murder suicides over and over again? I don’t have the answer.

I don’t even know if I totally disagree with the concept of a grounded film that goes into the supernatural in the third act. (Trying to think of examples. Maybe The Prestige? If anyone ever reads this and has an example, please put it in the comments)

All that is to say, it didn’t ruin it for me, but felt like an easy way out of a hard problem that I didn’t ask for. I would have liked to see a more conventional version of Longlegs where it’s just Nic Cage being a maniac and serial killing people in his Dana Carvey Church Lady outfit and singing Happy Birthday.

I like it but was hoping it had a little more energy I guess

Excellent.

Giving this an extra half star for the inclusion of the Verizon Ringback Tone.

Watched this with the kiddos. It ruled. Charlize Theron is excellent even in animation. Some truly awesome sequences and the sister witches were sick.

The first act and the final sequence are pretty incredible and you feel yourself in the presence of a director who can really turn it all the way up. The middle was more of a slog than I wanted it to be.

The “music” is hilarious. 

Phantom has some early, low budget production design by Jack Fisk, which of course rules.

Also counts as part of my unintentional and somehow interminable series of films about fame. The moral of this one is kinda like “if you wanna do art, your boss is gonna be a jerk.”

I watched this after having recently seen Trap, A Complete Unknown, and Perfect Blue. All movies about how people expect too much from celebrities. The most interesting of the four is A Complete Unknown, mostly because Bob Dylan —as a persona — is inherently fascinating and intentionally opaque. It’s good source material. Trap is the dumbest. Smile 2 weirdly has the most day-to-day grunt work of being famous that provides the backdrop for a bunch of jumpscares.

What else? The premise of transmittable suicide is pretty gross and the amount of “cool techniques” they used in this was annoying.

Did not expect a Pantera needle drop.

The edit on this is kind of like if the “Previously on…” synopsis at the beginning of a show was two hours long and went right into the end credits.

I was skeptical going in, but the musical performances in this are excellent. They feel like seeing live music in a way that movies rarely do, like actually being there when Dylan and Baez sang together for the first time.

Incredible on every level. Especially the level of seeing two dudes absolutely drooling over Zendaya.

Watched on Friday January 19, 2024.

The musical “acts” in this film are as follows…
Lady Raven
Papa’s Boots
Parker Wayne
Mr. The Thinker

This review may contain spoilers.

Spoiler Alert: Only one guy in this movie fucks.

The girl group pop star to serious actor transition is a tough one.

This review may contain spoilers.

Vader.
Your father. 
Searches the stars.
Reaching out to you.
Wheezing.

Not a satire
Not a spoof
Not action
Not comedy
Not to laugh
Not lying
Not what you really wanted
Nor the mess in your purse
Nor the bed that is haunted
In a blanket of thirst

Too sexy. 🥵

I’m giving this an extra star cuz I watched this on an airplane with the sound off while trying to keep a two year old from having a meltdown.

Kinda like an 2 hour long ad for the marine corps. Also has the truly bonkers premise of one man going to war against an entire police department. That said, pretty fun.

This review may contain spoilers.

The movie ended and I really wished that we got to see more of the world of the Pink Opaque. The costumes and creatures (and music) are SO good and weird. I wanted more of it. As the credits rolled it felt like a missed opportunity. And I was disappointed. But that’s the point isn’t it?

And if I (essentially a voyeur in this extended metaphor) am disappointed, what about someone like Owen? It’s heartbreaking.

And besides, Maddy makes it clear that you don’t get to see Season 6 unless you’ve made the necessary sacrifices.

It’s been hard not to think about I Saw The TV Glow since finishing it. I find myself turning it over in my mind, imagining what the next movie could be like.

I think it’s a masterpiece.

It’s beautiful. Tang Wei is incredible.

It wants to do the Vertigo mid-movie twist, but it struggles and you really start to feel the hand of the filmmakers getting us there.

One of the old evil nuns looks just like my father in law’s girlfriend. Thankfully the old nun in this movie didn’t do a 20 minute long monologue about the app she uses to order food at the cafeteria.

I watched this a few months ago and can’t it

This review may contain spoilers.

I also lost interest in the patriarchy when I found out that it wasn’t about horses.

Tell me why you make a robot that looks like an old ass monk?

Amazing groundbreaking film that I watched in five sittings on my phone while falling asleep.

The bucket hat is the Wilson of this film.

People should just let their moms do whatever the f they want. Life is hard for everyone. Chill out and don’t everything bagel the universe or whatever.

They look great in animation. Like cute lil Doraemons.

My father in law watched the trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon and said it looked “tedious” then made us all watch this piece of crap. What can you do?

Rewatched this tonight. Incredible that we get to live in a world that has people like Spielberg making art that we can see and hear.

Vampires are done. Frankensteins are over. Wolfmen can eff off. We’ve voted and we’re doing all M3GANs now. 

Also, the MSRP for a M3GAN is $10K, which is honestly an incredible value.

Not enough goop.

When this came out it had a lot of heat around it and I never got around to it. It was alright. Unfortunately the woman is only on fire for a very small part of the film and does not have the Phoenix Force inside of her.

There’s something irable about a film that does so much to keep you at such a distance.

The MCU continues to be surprising and weird. This is it’s darkest entry, despite there being a movie called Thor: The Dark World. Vol 3 is dark. Like disturbingly dark. It also manages to out-gross Sam Raimi’s Dr. Strange on pretty much all fronts. And it has a budget of $250M and is a Disney movie.

Like all of James Gunn’s stuff, it is needle-dropped to death. But also like the rest of James Gunn’s stuff, it’s really good.

This review may contain spoilers.

“Yes Chef!”

This movie is great. Not only is it a satire of rich snobs and Michelin food culture, but also a satire of the mastermind killer trope. It’s like if instead of killing his victims for being sinners, Seven’s John Doe killed people for the pettiest shit of all time.

There’s no real morality or justice being served, just a convenient selection of victims based around a pretty loose concept. And that Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot is the only person who A. recognizes this and B. calls him out on it and C. forces him to cook her real food instead… Well… chef’s kiss. 

So good. So funny. So thematically deft on so many levels. 

“We love you Chef!!!”

This movie is 100 minutes long and 95 of them are just a camera pointed at the floor. Sucked ass.

This review may contain spoilers.

This movie is like a whodunit where they don’t find out whodunit. Like if Sherlock Holmes just kinda timed out on the mystery.

I’ve got to stop letting my father in law pick the movies.

This movie has no action in it. I don’t mean there aren’t any explosions or fight sequences. I mean the entire movie is people sitting around and talking, often repeating themselves over and over again. No one moves. Aggressively uncinematic.

Also I have two young kids and almost no time to watch movies so very resentful about this film.

I wish there were more of the rest of the crew in this. Drax and Mantis are great characters but for me a little grating as mains. It’s hard to be too critical of this because it’s successful at what it’s trying to do, but I don’t like this stuff anyway.  Did not like the Kevin Bacon music.

My father in law really hyped this up and said — as the movie started — that this was Paul Newman’s best movie and that it aged as well as any movie ever had. Then the movie started and the first shot is of Paul Newman in full Native American garb.

It has not aged well and it is not Paul Newman’s best role. His best movie is either in Hud or The Verdict. 

After a truly useless first half, the last hour is pretty good.

Watched on Friday November 4, 2022.

Hell yeah. Ridley Scott is the GOAT. I loved all the people saying shit like “You are a GUCCI!” or “You? You are NO GUCCI!”

Just delicious.

Seriously though, it’s an interesting film about capitalism and its ability to grind down and destroy anything and everyone.

Gray Man? More like the Brown Man, cuz this movie looks like shit.

It’s the kind of semi-disappointing action flick that Hollywood used to churn out by the dozen in the 90’s, but is somehow less fun and cost $200M. It would have been better in 1997 starring Antonio Banderas and John Travolta in the Gosling/Evans roles.

The action is bewilderingly bad. Poorly shot and none of the set pieces are remotely memorable.

Hate that the raptors are good now. Huge thumbs down on that.

Casting is uniformly terrible and — aside from James Cromwell and the little girl who plays his granddaughter — not a single person is believable. Chris Pratt spends 95% of the movie doing Blue Steel. There’s a fake Sam Rockwell guy. Bryce Dallas Howard is a good actor but her character makes no sense at all.

Also Chris Pratt has to fight a bunch of mercenaries, which is not why anyone goes to a Jurassic Park movie.

The camera keeps doing these impossible moves through walls and shit that just highlight how fake and CG everything is. Speaking of which, the CG is terrible.

The indoraptor sucks. 

The only thing that works in this movie are the moments where they use some dino puppets, which look pretty good.

I would have given this more stars but I didn’t like seeing Tom riding his motorcycle without a helmet on.

Movies that have something to say to each other. Put me in list view for color commentary!! 💃🕺🏻

1. Rosemary's Baby
2. The Devil's Advocate

   👶 Rosemary’s Baby and 😈 Devil’s Advocate. Find out what Satan wants from women (babies) and men (them to be scumbags)!

3. Phantom Thread
4. Challengers

   🧵 Phantom Thread and 🎾 Challengers. Two incredible films about unique relationships!

5. I Saw the TV Glow
6. The Matrix

   📺 I Saw The TV Glow and 🥄 The Matrix. Watch The Matrix as if it’s the sequel to I Saw The TV Glow!

7. Parasite
8. Us

   🪨 Parasite and 👯 Us. Look at all these freakin’ mole people!

9. The Craft
10. Chronicle

    🧙‍♀️ The Craft and 🦸‍♂️ Chronicle. Oh to be young and discovering the power you have! Two fun movies about puberty???

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