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put this on while following an annoyingly complicated recipe for making broccoli fritters and most of them fell apart when i plopped 'em into the pan because i'd missed some steps. lesson learned, do not cook and moonstruck; there are simply too many irresistible scenes to rewatch, with too much delightful dialogue that drowns out silly things like the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons. by the end i was all "i'm confused" about my own dinner, but ah well, worse things have happened. ronny lost his hand and his bride in one fell swoop, can you even imagine

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

there are infinite reasons why i wish i had even a teaspoon of gong li's poise and charisma and, frankly, everything, but one of the biggest things i envy about her is the fact that she got to run her hands through 2006 miami vice era colin farrell's hair. that is some terrific movie hair! not to galaxy brain this but it's just such a solid representation of the film itself—it's slick, it's sexy, it's strangely fluid to the point of incomprehensibility, and though it's a little misshapen, i can't take my eyes off of it. gosh, what a great flick about men discussing their loads! that's what this was about, right

Watched on Wednesday May 7, 2025.

in 2018, benny blanco released his debut single "eastside," which features halsey and khalid. it's a cute-enough song, but it mostly stands out in my memory for its music video—a strikingly low-key, melancholy production for what i understood to be a generic pop song co-written by half a dozen people, including ed sheeran. the video is cheeky, nostalgic, and unabashedly sentimental. i liked it; i'm a sap for this kind of stuff.

and so i clocking the video's director: jake schreier. i hadn't seen paper towns, and i can't say that i've followed his work closely since, but every time his name popped up—in other music videos i liked, or in beef, which i also liked—i'd feel, i don't know, weirdly proud? i'd be like, aww, good for the "eastside" guy!

oh man, this is a long preamble. the point is: i should've seen the final act of thunderbolts* coming. it's the first time in years i've felt genuinely surprised by a marvel film, let alone actually excited to see what comes next. a good amount of this still lacks the oomph of the MCU's early output, but i bought the ensemble's evolving chemistry and i can't be mad at a movie that lets bucky do another knife flip. (i love his knife flips!!) though i'm not sure how much schreier had to do with giving something made in an enormous franchise a mature bent, i suppose i'm just tickled that the "eastside" guy helped a superhero team-up film find some of that low-key, sentimental-but-not-saccharine seasoning.

of course, the MVP is absolutely, doubtlessly florence pugh. now when will she get to do a knife flip?

[heavy sigh]

not to sound woo-woo, but i think the best evidence a horror film worked is not if it gives you nightmares, but if its characters become afterimages in your subconscious. so, you know, i'm pleased to report that i've spent a week with two michael b. jordans wafting into my dreams. how nice for me!

i have quibbles—the first act drags, and the epilogue's shaky—but i could feel the whole theater sit up straighter during That Sequence, and for such electricity alone i'm going full four stars. ryan coogler please keep cooking!! also, the stock i bought in li jun li back in 2016 is paying off brilliantly (she was on the second season of quantico, a show i had to write about every week... what a strange funny confused time that was in Entertainment Coverage). more li li, pls, we lis gotta stick together

absolutely gorgeous—the shadow of his hand looming over the city!!—and so technically precise, i’m wowed. a few things: my doubts about lily-rose have been erased; i wish my wheels in yoga class looked as good as hers. my crush on nick hoult continues unabated, thank goodness. and my ongoing ATJ rankings remain unchanged (taylor-joy still in the lead because of furiosa, but this has tightened the race).

what else, what else… oh yes! i fear i will be doing the nosferatu voice for at least the next month, or until another voice takes its place. which is to say: dis vas not as scärry as i’d führed, vat a relief 

Watched on Thursday April 17, 2025.

you may think this is the sequel to the ant, but this is actually an x-men movie. no i will not be explaining my reasoning

chose this bc tax day lol sometimes i have fun. just like mister ant! you could have cooked more books, i gave you all the clues

I'm devastated that I don't have the time to write ~800 words about this movie, at least not before it comes out this weekend, but here are 106! I promise they don't all just say "Joan Chen is MOTHER" over and over.

wildly dated but who cares when scotty doesn't know that fiona and me do it in my van every sunday? something about this movie rewires my brain. case in point: shortly after rewatching this i ended up closing down a bar with some new pals and getting into what my friend called a "virgo logistics emergency" that involved my car being missing and the cops being called on us. coincidence or conspiracy?! everything is fine, but i'm never drinking again

I really wish I liked this more! As a fan of Meghann Fahy—cast her in M3GAN 3.0, y/y?—Red Eye, and much more recently, Trap, I feel like my threshold for silly, claustrophobia-inducing thrillers is quite low, possibly underground, but the contrivances in this one just made me bored. The memes were fine. The font is humongous. The body count is far too low. It's less of a drop, and more of a... fumble.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

cute! call it junior varsity a real pain—it's a dramedy about an uptight overthinker and a hot mess going on a trip, coming to with each other along the way. it's a little too slight to make its bigger emotional swings work, but the cast is solid, and i chuckled a bunch.

the truth is, whenever maya erskine wasn't on screen, i kept thinking "where is maya erskine?" so maybe i'm the problem for not paying close enough attention to the intricacies of male bonding being presented to me. i think i got the gist, though: these guys sure put the "men" in "sacramento," you know? sorry

more kelly tonight after talking a lot about kelly (hi joe! hi chris!). two kellys in one week, i am living the dream!

anyway: this is one of those films i tell people is funny but then have to very quickly follow up with "not funny haha, just funny." it's great if you know what i mean! if you don't... ah, well, that's the thing about art, isn't it. there's spontaneity in that pot.

every time i watch this my heart sings and my brain lights up and all i want to do is go to montana and, i don't know, write someone a nice letter; it doesn't have to be a tome. maybe i'd buy a pile of sandstone, give it a home. maybe i'd wander around a small town and be brave on my own.

i don't know how this turned into an accidental poem—gah, stop—but the point is: kelly reichardt makes magic out of silence and space and her infinite curiosity about how we care for each other, even when we can't connect. that magic is precious. i want to live inside it.

i reviewed this back in 2021 and while i stand by most of what i wrote, wow do i disagree with past me about han's involvement! when sung kang appeared during this rewatch i felt like i was transcending time and space—you know, tears in eyes, hands in air. i believe this is a phenomenon known as "having no choice but to stan"...? guess i was in a weird place the summer of 2021. justin lin pls come back

jack quaid and ray nicholson make a great nepo pairing. you know what else is a great pairing? this movie and A Real Pain! lol do u get it, do u understand it, do u like

It's not unforgivably bad, just forgettably bland. I wrote about it here if any of you, like me, are still thinking about how the Russos burned through $320 million just to make a movie that gets instantly memory-holed. Maybe it's a bit?

Watched on Tuesday March 18, 2025.

Watched on Friday March 14, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 12, 2025.

this is totally and exactly what happens every time i visit the NY office, it's uncanny

didn't realize i was wheezing from laughter until i ran out of breath, didn't realize i was weeping over the final shot until the lights came on. be brave! face life! chaplin's right—the birds are still singing.

euphoric, like getting champagne drunk. or taking a dip in the middle of the night. or catching up with some of your best friends by watching one of their favorite movies together 😌 let’s all reintroduce “yar” into our vocabulary, y/y?

these songs! this charisma! that raw theatricality! who cares if any of it’s messy? not me!! spent the final half hour feeling like i’d been struck by lightning. been grinning so much my cheeks hurt

Watched on Thursday February 27, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday February 25, 2025.

The combination of Meg and Tom and Nora—with a dash of Rob and Rita and Victor, of course—can make me buy so many things: that a radio station would allow a grieving child on the air; that adults with eyes would allow said child to be unaccompanied up in the air; that it's possible to peel an apple in one long curly strip. The whole apple. (I've never done it!)

But I think what really makes this film hold up in spite of every contrivance is that it sells each big, only-in-the-movies moment with an air of incredulity. Bewildered in Baltimore and Sleepless in Seattle can't quite accept that after all that running around, they're finally both at the top of the Empire State Building, locking eyes, holding hands. They can't believe it's happening, and that makes it easier for us to believe that it is.

Watched on Wednesday February 19, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday February 18, 2025.

dropped the orange i'd just finished peeling when leo woodall dove into the pool ◡̈ that's cinema

I am so tempted to mock this as the most French film to ever French. You're telling me the emotionally stunted hero—the one with the titular coeur en hiver—is in love with his best friend's partner, a woman who's recording Ravel's piano trio? Bring on the ménage à trois, I'm ready!

But no, this deserves better than my dumb Letterboxd jokes. It's a romance with a near-inscrutable, almost cruel protagonist, plus a whole lot of Ravel—and yet Claude Sautet just had a way of making discordant pieces work in harmony with each other. I think his distaste for cliché is key, even if he lets slip, oh let's see... a scene set amid a downpour in the middle of Paris, several sophisticated conversations over glasses of wine, and the forever chic Emmanuelle Béart at the height of her powers. I guess even the coldest heart has to beat.

it's an unconventional love triangle in which the centroid (that's the mathematical term, right?) is work, and as someone who is also in a love/hate relationship with her newsroom-related job, i find this to be exceedingly charming, even if it's an onslaught of emotionally walloping performances and endlessly quotable lines that make me want to, like jane, sob things out. wow, what a word salad! fire me

in sum: 🫶🏻✨💖 holly hunter 💖✨🫶🏻

Very goofy, very heady, very twisty, very happy-sad—in other words, very Bong in hardcore satirical, totally unsubtle sci-fi mode. In my head I picture him throwing spaghetti at the wall except the spaghetti is Robert Pattinson and both of them are having, like, so! Much! Fun! Besides, most of what's thrown sticks.

Full review from the part of my brain that isn't rotting and turning idioms into nonsensical metaphors about filmmaking can be found here. Sauce!

after years of painstaking research and liver destruction, i've concluded that the following are essential ingredients to a great house party:

- dumplings
- kendrick lamar
- a cat named saatchi
- multiple heated debates about the merits of dishwashers versus laundry machines, omfg i absolutely will not be relitigating this, neil
- cooling off by being reminded of point break's existence and immediately putting on point break

every film should open with keanu reeves in a wet t-shirt and climax with keanu reeves jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. it's so glorious, it's like—oh i don't know, acid in my mouth. kathryn bigelow thank you for your service

no ❤️

Watched on Sunday February 2, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 1, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 1, 2025.

Watched on Saturday February 1, 2025.

Watched on Friday January 31, 2025.

idk guys i needed to expel this from my brain SOMEhow

• Oppenheimer
• Problemista