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No rating (just yet), just some general ramblings. We all know what we're getting with Wes Anderson at this point: cool pastel coloring, whip pans, super symmetrical mise-en-scène, uncanny, quirky characters and interactions, etc. So am I surprised? No, but I do have something to say about movies in a more general sense.

There's an argument as to whether art can prioritize style over substance, i.e., some things exist to look pretty while conveying nothing. I don't necessarily subscribe to this idea, because I think any art (at least at a professional level) carries some messaging, however implicit/explicit.

However, Wes Anderson would be the director I'd use to make my case for this argument. In fact, nearly every time someone mentions "style over substance" in a movie-making context, Wes is almost always the example.

There's a possibility that there's something to take away from this, but Wes Anderson at this point has become such a caricature of himself that it's so hard to decipher what he's trying to say, even if you wanted to. He exists in his bubble, and you kind of have to take that into and approach any film he makes as sort of campy and meta and unserious.

I do think, though, that we should be careful about saying "style over substance" because it's almost a disparaging term. We need quirky, lower-budget ($30m but you get the idea), indie movies like this (indie in the sense that it's creatively unapologetic); that's how we get stuff like the French New Wave and the independent movies of the 70s. So overall, while I don't think I'll ever fully resonate with a Wes Anderson movie, I have to appreciate, in effect, what he stands for.

Guys, my goat might be washed 😔

Jesse Armstrong has created some of my favorite pieces of media ever, honestly. Cringe comedy with Peep Show, one of the funniest dark satires in Four Lions, and then, in my opinion, the greatest show of all time in Succession (which honestly might be my favorite piece of media ever). So I was so, so excited when news finally came out about his first project after Succession.

It seems like Armstrong, still bursting with ideas about tech-bros and life-extension after the Season 4 arc of Succession that included Matsson and Living+, felt that he needed to continue his critique on the uber-wealthy by bringing 4 characters of the same ilk to the table.

Maybe it's my obsession with his wonderfully created TV show, but these characters unfortunately don't feel different from archetypes he's explored in the past, or even characters he's made in the past. "Soups", Jeff, Venis, and Randy all feel like amalgamations of Mattson, Kendall, Connor, and Roman, each just displaying a varying percentage of previous characters. Even Jeff, the moral com of the group, feels a little like Season 1 Shiv.

Maybe someone who hasn't watched Succession wouldn't have this exact critique per se, but I still feel like these guys don't offer too much of a difference in personality. Succession allows all of its characters to hone their traits to the max, and bounce off of other, more straight-laced faces like Gerri, Karl, Frank, Karolina, etc., but we don't really get any outside presences here, making things feel sorta bland.

But beyond this, there's just a lack of nuance I grew accustomed to with Succession . Yeah, Peep Show and Four Lions aren't really caked with metaphor and depth, but Succession was such a wonderful study of family dynamics and wealth that I feel a similar premisce should have the same level of subtlety. This feels like Armstrong hitting you repeatedly over the head with a bat labeled "generative AI is bad, especially when unregulated." Also, the jokes, something I can usually count on with him, aren't his best. The slapstick comedy it becomes in the last 30-40 min is pretty good, but the one-liners don't hit consistently.

Jesse, you're my guy but damn. This one hurts a little.

Lowkey a masterclass in cringe comedy. Not all the jokes hit but with the ones that did I was nearly crying with laughter. ! Men should never have friends.

Kinda loses some of it’s “absolute cinema” vibe when it’s not watched in IMAX and you don’t the aspect ratio change and full scope (esp w the number of straight shot/reverse instead of more creative dialogue shooting/editing) but who cares I like movies and this is a really entertaining one

I’m ngl this is mid, prob cause there’s like no peeta in it. ALSO FOGGY IS IN THIS BRUH WHAT???

Fun drunk watch

Normally I would never have anything bad to say about 127 straight minutes of Florence Pugh screen time but this just makes me sad that the new daredevil series was ass. Marvel is back ig (for like the 100th time)

I guess all Wes Anderson movies are like this and I can’t tell whether that’s a good or bad thing. Lots of funny lines in this.

This is quite possibly the most deeply unserious movie I’ve ever watched 😭

So I walked into the theater and bought my ticket for the movie and the guy checking me in told me this was in theatre 4. So I make my way over there and at first there’s just nothing playing (bear in mind it’s about 2:00 at this point and the showtime is set for 2:05). A few minutes later the screen turns on but there’s just no sound playing. I walked out to ask a worker what was happening and he told me the movie was actually in theater 1 and I was about to watch Sacramento. Turns out the first guy just gave me the wrong directions.

Anyway, really good sound design; extremely claustrophobic and visceral. Can’t really say much else as it’s a retelling of events with no greater commentary.

Ryan Coogler Best Director and Sinners Best Picture is gonna go so hard next year. That scene (you’ll know which one I’m talking about when you see it) was jaw dropping. Watch it in IMAX if you can.

This is just "this town ain't big enough for the both of us" as a movie. It seems like this movie is building up to a huge crescendo of an ending, but it doesn't, yet, that's the point.

Something tells me this patriarchy thing is bad. Anything I’d like to say has probably been put 100x more articulately by most women.

Another one for French class. I’m lowkey a sucker for student-teacher tropes

Man oh man, this movie is just crazy. I realized that another masterpiece La Haine is so similar to this movie because they both use tension and social unrest to create such a captivating experience.

I love how Spike Lee uses colors in this to not only exemplify the scorching heat of this summer day but to add life to this neighborhood. Also, it absolutely rocks that we take so many detours; Sweet Dick Willie, ML, Coconut Sid just shooting the shit, everyone at Sals, Buggin Out and Radio Raheem, Da Mayor, Mother Sister, etc. As we hear what is nothing more than everyday chatter that you get over the summer, we begin to understand this neighborhood and what it means to these people.

And the heatwave never ends. The heat always boils over. You hope things will change, but it never seems like they do. Yet, you still go out and toss a basketball in the street, listen to the radio, or get your money, because that's life. But even through it all, you're proud of who you are and still have hope for the future.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

First Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. It’s kinda crazy how it took me this long to get around to watching one of his films.

Honestly, I wanted to like this, I really did. I don’t know, it felt sorta underdeveloped? The narrative is really meandering and all the characters feel flat. Sorry 😕

They got me man. They freaking got me. This was so fun. Steven Soderbergh has mastered this cool, suave, fun aesthetic. 90 minutes so it’s really tightly knit; score’s good too. Fun‼️

This was just absolutely hilarious. Dustin Hoffman is the king of socially awkward humor. The needle drops are great (all Simon and Garfunkel) and the ending is the cherry on top.

Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller, you're not slick. That last sequence in the season 2 finale of Severance? Yeah, you got that from here. Not that I'm complaining.

Psychosis, surrealism, existentialism, depression; Charlie Kaufman, are you okay?

They have the money to be using eggs like that in this economy?

Just goated; what can I say. I think I notice something new every time I watch this. A movie about making movies (also a movie about its own form), an obsessive nature of one's craft, jealousy, pride, all that jazz.

And I'm still 100% serious about my bio.

"Thank you for being born."

I have to write an essay on this for class so I'll save the long spiel for then.

An interesting look into the ethics of birth—a constant shift of morality, responsibility, and grief. Cycles of abuse and examining how such patterns manifest themselves; a wonderful use of lighting to reflect all these ideas and how they're always in flux from person to person and belief to belief.

Overall a good watch. Kinda wish the emotional beats hit a bit harder for me though.

Not a good look for the Peeta truthers (me)

New York Herald Tribune!

So, so strange. Things happen and people speak but it doesn’t really mean anything? There’s a plot here (it’s paper-thin but it’s there), but the camera, the characters, the dialogue has no interest in addressing it or advancing it in any way. 

It’s pretty looking, weirdly funny, it has a good score, and yet it is nothing all at the same time.

Watched on Thursday March 20, 2025.

I love it when a movie I've been anticipating for a while is actually good!

This feels like a love letter to physical comedy and slapstick. It's really over-the-top and gets heavy into its satirical elements but it's an American movie by Bong Joon Ho, so that's usually what he goes for.

The jokes here are hilarious and it's definitely hugely helped by the great acting by the entire cast, especially by Robert Pattinson. Dude's on a great run right now, I can't wait to see what he does next. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it's fun! Bring back more fun movies.

Peeta lived that long being a rock lol

Lowkey we should bring back technicolor. The vibrancy of the coloring in this thing is crazy. Super entertaining, super funny, I love the trope of all of them hating on Lina, and the songs are so good. Also Cosmo is just on one in this, he’s hilarious.

Maybe I’m just too dumb to fully understand surrealism but these kind of movies just don’t resonate with me like everyone else.

Really fun! It’s essentially just the play put to screen, but there are some bits that could be a bit better. I wish there were a few less song interludes and they didn’t grey this thing out cause it should be bursting with color! Even still, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are going crazy, the songs are catchy and it’s quite funny. 

Wicked is gonna be popular for sure‼️

The fact that I watched Rear Window right before this is sorta fitting because these two movies are related in a way you wouldn't necessarily think.

In my class, after watching Gilda and before watching Rear Window, we read a paper discussing the gazes in cinema (its overarching theme is about voyeurism and the role women play in movies). Those three are: the camera's gaze (what the camera looks at), the characters' gaze (what the characters are looking at), and the audience's gaze (what the audience looks at).

The author states that the audience is supposed to be unaware that they're watching a movie. We're supposed to take on the gaze of one of the characters. I think Rear Window succeeds in doing this in a way that Nickel Boys doesn't because of the plot.

In Rear Window, we take on and almost excuse Jeffries' voyeurism because the plot is exciting. There's a mystery unfolding and the only way we can find out the end is by also peering through the camera's lens and sleuthing for any possible information from the window's vantage point.

Nickel Boys—shot almost entirely in POV—tries to get you to take on the character's gaze too, but it doesn't work because the subject matter is too heavy. If Ross' point is that we can better engage with Elwood and Turner because we're literally them, then I think he's a bit of an idiot honestly. Just because we're taking on the physical role of two black men in the Jim Crow South, it doesn't mean we're engaging with either of them. And the topic itself is so weighty that having a stylistic choice to put the entire thing in POV almost makes you focus more on that than the abhorrent horrors you're seeing on screen.

I don't know. It feels like a super meta way of getting people with white guilt to feel as if they understand what it's like to be black. These are real people; we can understand them by just seeing the narrative play out too, you know. For so much of the movie, the characters, especially Elwood, say nothing. Why? Am I supposed to know what they're thinking cause I'm seeing it from their perspective? None of these characters interact in a way that feels real, probably because they were walking around with Go-Pros attached to their head.

All in all, I can't really get what this is getting at but the use of POV is at least an intriguing film-making concept even if it doesn't work here.

Wow, given the premise this was surprisingly engaging. Somehow Hitchcock pulls off this voyeuristic adventure by making the camera align exactly with Jeffries’ point of view and bringing in more characters along for the ride, which provides a quasi-justification for his excessive intrusion into the neighborhood’s hustle and bustle. Ultimately it ends up blurring the lines between the observer and the character. Honestly, you’re just one and the same.

I wonder if there's this much gossip when my dad meets with other pastors. I enjoyed this more than I was expecting.

Timothée Chalamet spent 5 years of his life prepping for this role just to be able to speak in tongues.

Once you realize that this movie is self-aware that it’s campy and over the top in everything (visual effects, sound effects, shock value, messaging) you start to expect less of it and can just watch it as an entertaining parody of sorts.

"YES! THE 3-HOUR-35-MINUTE LONG MOVIE WITH A 15 MINUTE INTERMISSION IS ACTUALLY GOOD!" I scream as they drag me into the white room.

A monumental, sweeping condemnation of the American ethos and assimilation into American culture. The first part beautifully builds up the idea of the American Dream, only to tear down that facade in the second section and darkly examine how capitalism corrupts art and the individual.

Interesting though, that capitalism corrupting art was a core theme of this movie and then they apparently used AI to better Adrien Brody's accent and create some of Laszlo's designs 🤨

So boring. I swear people only watch/like this because they get to look at Rita Hayworth and her character isn’t even interesting.

One of the movies of all time

Bro you are NOT Tyler, The Creator's 2019 neo-soul, electronic-pop masterpiece 😭😭

There's like three distinct portions of this movie, which are so starkly different, but I kinda see the vision. The first part, probably around 45-50 minutes, is spent on this Frank Ocean Super Rich Kids kind of journey, full of bright lights, quick cuts, exorbitant, excessive amounts of money, drugs, etc. It almost gets to be a bit repetitive, but I understand why it's like this.

Then the movie evolves into this meandering, comedic, wild goose chase as Anora and the Russians go through multiple misadventures on their search for Ivan. This, for me, is where it got so fun. I think part of the reason this shift worked is that with the hedonistic bliss that Anora reaches in the first 45, I was expecting a dramatic crash. So when these Russians show up as bumbling idiots, the subversion makes it that much funnier.

Then, I think the last 30-40 minutes try to bring the first and the second portion together, but don't execute it that well. Throughout the "Where's Waldo" section, there are these breaks from the screaming and drunkenness and fights and parking tickets where Anora tries to get through to Ivan. The implicit point Baker tries to make here is that no matter how loud Anora shouts or how much she fights, her position as a sex worker means she will never get the respect she rightfully deserves.

However! The reason this ending doesn't really tie things together that well is that we don't get enough out of Anora. Baker tries to invoke a melancholic feeling under the comedic surface, but we're never explicitly sure if Anora wants this marriage because she's actually in love with Ivan or because she wants that lavish lifestyle. And then, Igor seems like Baker's "Good Guy™" insert, so their conversation at the end just falls flat. For a movie called Anora, it's really more a shift between Ivan and Igor's perspectives of her, rather than her motivations and desires.

Despite the sorta flat ending, I did really enjoy this. This is my official petition to get Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov in more movies cause they were phenomenal.

Watched on Thursday February 13, 2025.

"Do I fit in here?"

I didn't write a long review the last time I watched this, I just had the pleasure of seeing it again in IMAX, and I've seen some decent-at-best movies recently so buckle up; this is gonna be a long one.

I forgot just how funny this movie is. That first hour has so many hilarious bits in it. There's the immediate scene of watching the family fold pizza boxes while being fumigated followed up immediately with them being scolded by their boss because they did a sloppy job. They have a dinner celebration for finding wifi, the jingle Ki-Jung and Ki-Woo make to memorize their lines, seeing the family act out how to get the housekeeper fired--in which they perfectly predict the mother's lines. It's comedy gold.

Last time I watched this I pointed out the birthday scene, but the old housekeeper's return is the real turning point. It cuts through the comedic "protective shield" worn by the Kim family and exposes them for who they truly are.

Looking at the things that I and others who watch this movie laugh at, you'd think that we're all assholes. We watch them scourge for wifi, get fumigated, and struggle through a life of poverty. But we almost get a because this is a uniquely crafted socioeconomic satire in which we root for and against the underdog simultaneously.

When the Kims are all at the Park's house during the camping trip, we get this exchange between the parents:

"They’re rich but still nice. They’re nice because they’re rich"

Yes, money is often corrupting, but the Parks are simply an unassuming family exposed to capitalistic tendencies pushed to their very extremes. The reason it's okay to laugh at the Kims is because they're assholes. But multiple things can be true at once, the Kims can be assholes, and still, they shouldn't be subjected to the literal and metaphorical gulf in living standards we see in the movie. Hell, they’re only that way because they’re extremely desperate.

I've got so much more to say, but I'll just end it here. It's a masterpiece, but we all know that. Go see it in IMAX while you can.

If you gave a horny middle school boy a camera and told him to make a movie.

Everyone here is vapid beyond belief. Also, Luisa is a pedophile and they kinda just brush by this as if you’re not supposed to be concerned by that notion. She’s also related to one of them by marriage???? Actually disgusting.

It’s certainly surreal!

One of the movies of all time

Visually it’s stunning and groundbreaking scientifically but it’s unbelievably cheesy. The memes aren’t as funny in context 😕

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

There's genuinely nothing in this world like the love of your family. It's unmatched, untouched, irreplaceable, whatever word(s) you'd like to describe. It's such a unique experience from person to person because how can anyone replicate those dynamics? How do you emulate that love on a movie screen? How can you take something so personal and make it come to life?

I'm Still Here places you right in the middle of a beautiful, loving, big family. The first 30 minutes of the movie are spent getting to know these people. Understanding their dynamics, seeing how they interact, understanding the Paiva's place in the community, etc. Not only is it so light and touching, but it's so real. It's genuinely amazing how real this all feels. You go through those 30 minutes and you feel like you've known this family for a lifetime.

When the army men come, there's a shift. When those guys walked in, it was like a cloud set over me. It felt like a genuine weight was being borne onto my shoulders. And just like that, in an instant, the patriarch is gone, and so is our sense of family.

Or is it? Does a family exist as solely the people in the house together? Maybe. Is it the house itself? Maybe. It's all of those things, it's the people, it's the house, the foosball table you and your dad play at when you keep your sisters awake, the dog you find roaming the streets, the coat you take from your mom when you go to London. It's all those little memories.

We carry all of that with us—the joy and the pain. Families exist beyond simply physical relationships, and Fernanda Torres' portrayal of Eunice masterfully conveys that sentiment.

Even if you know nothing about Brazil's dictatorship in the 1970s, which I didn't, please watch this. It's simply beautiful.

The Wolf of Wall Street if he was like 50% more chill. Kinda dragged at the end.

Another French class banger!

A very beautiful movie in so many ways. A somewhat sentimental watch, because although it takes place in Martinique, it reminds me of stories my dad would tell me about growing up in Cameroon. But beyond that, there's love in every scene.

We all want the same things: mutual respect, a successful life, the of our peers, a chance to make our families proud, etc. We're all so different yet the same, and I find that comforting.

Shoutout to the best voiceover I've seen in a movie; I learned so many facts! I don't know how many are true, but I learned them!

Where did his mustache go in the last like 10 minutes?

Here's my rankings for the 2025 Oscars Best Picture Nominations. I'll throw in my predictions and preferences for all the big awards too cause why not.

Best Picture (Prediction): Conclave
Best Picture (Preference): I'm Still Here

Best Actor (Prediciton): Adrien Brody (although I wouldn't be surprised if Timmy won)
Best Actor (Preference): Sebastian Stan

Best Actress (Prediction): Mikey Madison
Best Actress (Preference): Fernanda Torres (I'd be happy w/ Mikey Madison too)

Best ing Actor (Prediction): Kieran Culkin
Best ing Actor (Preference): Jeremy Strong (or Guy Pearce or Yura Borisov honestly)

Best ing Actress (Prediction): Zoe Saldana
Best ing Actress (Preference): Felicity Jones

Best Director (Prediction): Sean Baker
Best Director (Preference): Sean Baker (shoutout Brady Corbet though)

Best Cinematography (Prediction): The Brutalist
Best Cinematography (Preference): The Brutalist

Best Original Screenplay (Prediction): Anora
Best Original Screenplay (Preference): Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay (Prediction): Conclave
Best Adapted Screenplay (Preference): Conclave

1. I'm Still Here
2. Anora
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Conclave
5. The Brutalist
6. Wicked
7. A Complete Unknown
8. The Substance
9. Nickel Boys
10. Emilia Pérez