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Dude is on a mind boggling heater. Simply doesn’t miss. No one is better at writing blustery battering-ram assholes.
Every time I wonder if he’s just jamming on new, (but same-ish) dry absurdities, and every time the whole of it reveals laser focused thematic heft. It’s like magic. And as a bonus it’s one of his funniest.
The basketball. The violence. Thank you Wes!

I assume a lot of people rolled right from Andor season 2 into a rewatch of this, which I did last night, and... I don't know, weird experience! I've seen this several times, and it's an awesome piece of entertainment, with an incredible ending, and one of the best set pieces of the franchise.

But man... The last five episodes of Andor season two — or let's just say the entire project as a whole — is literally some of the best storytelling I've ever experienced in my life. Some of that is the foundational connection I have to the property, but most of it is on a level of pure, human, beat-your-chest-in thematic urgency. The tensest, most emotional, realest, heart-in-your-throat experience I've ever had in Star Wars, ever, period. On a character level, CASSIAN ANDOR is behind only Han and Yoda. For me. (And Luthen isn't far down that list.) Cass is the drilled-down encapsulation of the entire ethos of this universe. And I can't believe that's where I ended up with this! When Andor was announced, I shrugged. Felt like a reach. Too much. I was way way way fucking wrong.

So... to go from that, to a rushed/choppy/scattered (fun!!!) serial, where everything feels underbaked (but cool!!!), and MY GUY is just kind of rushed around from one thing to the next, with a romance that never really soars — even less so, given the context of Andor — it's deflating. But Andor (the show) needs it to complete the story. Cassian finishes the job. Of course I sobbed when it was over. But man... the "Andor" version of this final act would GO SO FUCKING HARD. And I know it kind of is that, but also, it just ... isn't.

Sissy understood maybe 5 percent of this but loved every second. Forgot how many of these jokes hit, still a kind of singular wonder that no one’s come close to replicating.

Thin on character and feeling, and the big idea(s) of the movie-world are purposely vague and preposterous. But once the bros start to turn on each other, the searing contempt for our dumbass burgeoning oligarchy and the think-tank tech speak they use to whip themselves into increasingly depraved decision making got some decent laughs outta me. Didn't leave me with much, but "Do you believe in other people?" really does get at the heart of it.

All of these things are fundamentally cursed but Sissy had a decent time.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

AMC @ Americana
Sissy’s first time and she was locked in. Even during the Act 2 ennui. When Kiki re how to fly she jumped out of her seat and yelled, “She got her powers back!! That’s just what I wanted to see!”

Needed to wind down after a particularly stressful Thunder playoff game and Stephen Chbosky's new Netflix movie about Vince Vaughn recruiting various Italian grandmas to cook in his restaurant was just the ticket.

No one understands Vince's radical vision of a restaurant with various Italian grandmas inside of it. And while it does seem like perhaps too many Italian grandmas at first, ultimately it's the perfect amount... to make italian food.

Perfect. No one can fill a frame like Kurosawa. One god level composition after another. Love how the tension and constraint of the first hour gets thrown out of a train window and it becomes a kinetic, wide-scoped procedural thriller.

Really makes you think!

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

Sissy desperately wanted to go to a movie this weekend, and turns out kids are still here and clapping and screaming and stuff. Legitimately funnier than I expected. Sissy had no idea what was going on, but she loved Steve. Jack Black is just an immediately get-able force. Not sure how the writing shook out here, but would love to see a Chris Galletta + Jared Hess weird character comedy that isn't IP if that's ever allowed again.

*JUST THE ENT SCENES*
Sissy saw a tree at the park yesterday and said it looked like it had a face on it, with two knots for the eyes.
I said "hey, yeah, that does looks like a face!"
And she said, staring into it, "No, Daddy, that IS a face."
Sissy has been powerfully entranced/beguiled by images and ideas of "trees with face on them" for years. They hold more sway over her psyche than any story-book macabre she's been exposed to. They're incredible, and terrifying, and so I felt like it was important to drill down on the facts a bit and explain fantasy vs. reality.
An intense, engaged line of questioning led us here. Kind of a pouring gasoline on the fire type situation. Laughing, clapping, stomping around. She fucking LOVES Treebeard. She's been calling him "Mr. Treebeard," out of respect. And I guess now she knows tree with face only seems scary at first, but then he's very nice.

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

A lot to appreciate here, but felt pretty unmoored on a narrative + emotional level after the first 30 or so minutes. Patz is a treasure. Bong is the fucking man (q+a @ DGA, wherein he explained, if he's doing a sci-fi, he needs big, cartoonish villains. Respect.)

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Extremely fun! John Whittington is the fucking man. Wish I had seen this in theaters :(

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 12, 2025.

banger

Watched on Tuesday March 11, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 3, 2025.

So funny to watch my three-year-old daughter drifting into different movie obsession zones, and right now Sleeping Beauty narrowly has the edge over The Little Mermaid. She watched this a bit back before her attention span could endure a full movie, and now she has a lot of wide-eyed questions about the goblin and dragon material in the third act.

forever in awe at the animation and bkgd paintings, never gets old. Love getting sucked into the corner of the frame on a pleasingly geometric river bank!

Watched on Saturday March 1, 2025.

Overwhelming virtuoso dv photography, maybe the hardest anyone has ever gone. Funny, gorgeous, harrowing. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Shoutout Captain EO 🫡

Watched on Monday February 17, 2025.

Hit Sissy with a “wanna watch something you’ve never seen but I think you’re gonna like?” and blew her mind.

What you have to understand about Red Hulk is that he’s a creature of the beltway.

Watched on Friday February 14, 2025.

In awe that this somehow just never runs out of juice. Spiraling “Duck Amuk” style lightly absurd mean-spiritedness that recalls Coens and Kaufman but hovers on it’s own vibe plane 👍

Delayed going to work for about 45 minutes so I could watch some of this with Sissy and have a tough convo about how dragons are pretend and dinosaurs are/were real, but unfortunately you can't play with either of them in real life, but that's what movies are for 💫

Fun! Sissy said "Hey, I didn't cry!" and was proud.

Watched on Sunday January 26, 2025.

struggling to engage with wider reality at the moment 🫡

Watched on Thursday January 16, 2025.

Watched on Thursday January 16, 2025.

Watched on Thursday January 16, 2025.

“I love no face. he’s the best.” — my three year old daughter. Is three too young for this? yes. but she kept seeing the thumbnail and kept asking for it. broke it up into three nights and answered questions throughout. “what’s haku doing?” he’s coughing up blood sweetheart. (she loved it.)

Can't shake feeling annoyed by this on a fundamental level, but pretty fucking good.

Watched on Wednesday January 15, 2025.

Watched on Monday January 13, 2025.

x1000 with Sissy over the past couple weeks

Watched on Sunday January 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday January 5, 2025.

look, Extremely fucking cool Dracula movie, fun to watch it

Watched on Friday January 3, 2025.

These are the movies + shorts we were watching, pulling apart, and stealing from in the process of writing THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE!

• The Thing
• Baby Bottleneck
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• Dumb and Dumber
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure
• Forbidden Planet
• The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
• Them!
• This Island Earth

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

need help, feel like this is missing about a thousand movies

• Bullet Train
• The Suicide Squad
• Deadpool
• Bad Moms
• Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
• Tremors 5: Bloodlines
• 22 Jump Street
• Friends with Benefits
• Louis C.K.: Shameless