This review may contain spoilers.

if this franchise has taught me anything it's that the only thing holding thousands of lives in the balance is the whims and livelihoods of about 3-4 extremely important dogs (who WILL bite your testicles)

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Overall, the story devolved from the tightness of the first film, but I think the films' identities sit comfortably as vessels for action more than good stories. I'm willing to meet them halfway even though I'm not much of an action guy.

These films are way more interesting when Wick isn't JUST fleeing for his life, and it seems like the filmmakers learned that after Parabellum. The assassins hunting him get in each others' ways enough that Wick gets a bit of autonomy back and puts him back in control of his own story — The same dynamic that made him feel like such an unstoppable force in the first film. (i.e. "What happens when a top-tier assassin hires himself?")

Full credit to the 'pull the knife out or pull your hand out' scene for being extremely visceral and for doing a lot of efficient character work.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the card game scene was very lame, largely because it was just luck of the draw (lacking any sort of bluffing / play psychology), but also because the premise didn't really make sense? If everyone wants Wick dead and Wick wants the dealer dead, none of those things really deadlock the parties... I wouldn't have cared but the dialogue explicitly points attention to it, like it's a standoff.

It's weird that they all entertained the game instead of just beginning the inevitable — especially because normally the thing that defers violence in a casino setting is that nobody wants to fuck with the house, but Wick is here specifically to fuck with the house. It basically had the aesthetics of a high stakes guns-under-the-table poker game but none of the needed structure that legitimizes that kind of setup.

The fight afterwards was very fun though — Scott Adkins embodies the hammy kingpin-esque dealer perfectly.

Traffic fight had me laughing out loud. Love some car-fu, and the ludicrous hyper-reality of all the civilian cars just plowing into gunmen without hesitation or care added a lot of humor.

Gotta acknowledge that the top-down incendiary shotgun shootout was one of the coolest things this franchise has done so far in an action sequence, A+.

This review may contain spoilers.

it's great to see the action scenes still doing new and interesting things even three movies in... wall-running ledge-takedown dogs and the reveal of the comically effective body armour both come to mind

but i'm starting to have some issues with the direction of these movies... i think the biggest one is that wick and the continental both end up where they started at the beginning of this movie — lots happens but nothing really changes

i think having john be on the run the whole movie was a bad choice for both the pacing and the story, as it never really lets up and gives characterization a moment to shine

would've loved to see john wick work for the high table as the devil's right hand for the bulk of this (maybe even doing some warding work that forces him to fight some old friends as winston feuds with the high table) as it would:

1) switch up the pacing and let wick have a quiet moment
2) let him plan his way out of a sticky situation rather than constantly flying by the seat of his pants
3) give us time to meet the new characters, better establish the high table, see what he's up against
4) it would make him losing his finger/ring feel more meaningful (in a reminder of how he was neutered kinda way)
5) it would let us show wick doing some work that's kinda below him and how much of a breeze it is for him

also this is a nitpick but i continue to be annoyed by the way the subtitles are stylized (it makes the scene feel like a trailer)

This review may contain spoilers.

john wick has to shoot gianna because otherwise he doesn't get the XP for the kill

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The first film is tighter but this is still appreciably small-scale in a way that doesn't wash away all the intrigue. John Wick still has stuff to lose and stuff to gain, and The High Table hasn't yet squashed all the relationship dynamics under ultimatums and excommunication.

The car works as a loose end to kick off the events and get a baseline action sequence to set the mood. 'Markers' are a good addition to the movie mythos that work to set up history and build on the code established by the first film.

I love the scenes with the sommelier and friends. Again, such a strong point of the franchise is *implied* history over flashbacks and exposition. And I love how eccentric and full bodied even throwaway characters are.

Something Chapter 4 did was introduce a badly done (in my opinion) guns-under-the-table casino game, but I think Chapter 2 does a more effective job with the scene between Wick and Cassian in the Continental's lounge. It's not poker but it has the same structure and effect as a poker game, where the establishment they're meeting is neutral with an enforced peace, but they are exchanging that wonderful casino-esque mix of civility, hatred, and sportsmanship, while unable to do what they wish they could do.

The way the 'real world' seems to willfully ignore all the crazy shit happening around them is part of what I consider to be this franchise's sense of humor, and I'm here for it. I genuinely think it's a great direction decision.

I thought Laurence Fishburne was pretty silly in this but I'm going to assume it was intentional. In a Kojima kind of way.

Winston flash-mobbing Wick at the end got a laugh out of me too.

action movies are the lamest genre of movies (change my mind), so take notes from john wick:
- stay the fuck away from origin stories
- introduce a protagonist by hearing how others talk about (or to) them
- implied backstory is 9000% more efficient than showing it
- often the most artful and effective thing you can do in an action scene is pull back to a wide shot, or hold long on a shot
- let the protagonist fuck up constantly, in small and big ways
- an inexplicably loyal friend is more interesting than a betrayal
- giving the criminal underworld a strict code and ruthless enforcement lets you write moments of incredible righteousness when the bad guys break the rules
- the aftermath of violence is darkly, absurdly funny, so let it be
- the only character i will care about in the first 10 minutes of a franchise is a dog, so kill the dog (sorry but it's true)

a weird change of pace for david attenborough's career but it works in its own right

jokes aside this is reasonably underrated... a nihilistic salad of Alien, Gravity, and The Thing, but lacking solid themes and characters

the vfx are a strong point, and the skeleton of the movie stands on some decent Asimov-calibre sci-fi which probably doesn't stand up to scrutiny but foregoes some believably to tell an interesting story

one big critique i have is that the movie feels most tense and interesting near the beginning when it feels like the crew still have a fighting chance. the minute calvin goes through the fire suppression vent i kinda gave up hope

i would've loved if they were able to contain it a while longer, and did some more first stuff believing it to just be wild or scared still... that way we could see it act more intelligently and maybe do some manipulation before it just starts killing

also the movie seemed to just forget that this thing can grow from a single unit cell? in my opinion there should've been a scene where they shunt it off the ISS (maybe during the EVA scene) and it should've chosen to split its body apart to kick off its other half to make it back to the ISS, sacrificing some of its size but ensuring its survival

Films I consider essential viewing, and constantly tell people they should watch.

Ranked from 'most approachable' to 'most challenging'.

All worth your time, but the latter half of the list will require more from you.

1. Spirited Away
2. Rear Window
3. Knives Out
4. Clue
5. Amélie
6. Alien
7. The Thing
8. Everything Everywhere All at Once
9. RRR
10. Mad Max: Fury Road

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2023 (year of the lil' freak) that I've seen, ranked.

1. The Holdovers
2. Barbie
3. Beau Is Afraid
4. Bottoms
5. John Wick: Chapter 4
6. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
8. Infinity Pool
9. The Fall of the House of Usher
10. They Cloned Tyrone

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2022 (year of the return to form) that I've seen, ranked.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. The Fabelmans
3. Triangle of Sadness
4. Decision to Leave
5. The Batman
6. TÁR
7. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
8. RRR
9. The Banshees of Inisherin
10. Glass Onion

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2020 (year of the beautiful mess) that I've seen, ranked.

1. Tenet
2. James Acaster: Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999
3. The History of the Seattle Mariners
4. Little Vampire
5. The Kid Detective
6. The Haunting of Bly Manor
7. The Call
8. Some Kind of Heaven
9. The Queen's Gambit
10. Palm Springs

Movies about people who delightfully good at their job.

Ranked subjectively by:
1) how impressive it is to watch, given...
2) ... how grounded the film is

Basically, 99% of superheroes and "chosen one" films are disqualified from this list.

Science fiction works, but needs to abide by fairly strict internal logic (think Tenet).

Films like The Grand Budapest Hotel also make the list because the characters' competency is still delightful and surprising, even if the film universe is less-than-grounded.

1. The Conversation

   Must see. Some of the best investigative surveillance and paranoia I've seen on-screen.

2. Spotlight

   Fantastic ugliness. Dryly thrilling, harrowing subject matter, and deeply comionate.

3. Tenet

   A rare sci-fi movie which uses its internal logic to a maximal degree, and simultaneously has its characters struggle, then function competently within the established logic.

4. Army of Shadows
5. 12 Angry Men

   Definitely not realistic in any sense, but this makes the list because the group as a whole, though flawed, is immensely competent in aggregate.

6. Le Samouraï
7. The Big Short

   Acquired taste. Blowing the whistle on the shittiest people on earth.

8. Moneyball

   Using math to fight big money.

9. The House That Jack Built
10. The Killer

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

production design hall of fame

• Poor Things
• Her
• Alien
• Dune
• Metropolis
• Rear Window
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• PlayTime
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Silent Running

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies that would be significantly better if they didn't cast big-name actors.

• Life
• Dune
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
• The Big Short
• The Martian
• The Social Network
• Fight Club
• Se7en
• The Italian Job

Read notes for explanations.

Challenging movies that act as litmus tests for interpretation, or enjoyability. I.e. Different people experience them very differently, sometimes in almost opposing ways.

My personal bias is that I love all these movies, otherwise I wouldn't care enough to put them on this list. However, I can see how others might not enjoy these movies as thoroughly as I did.

It's also fair to say that I think these movies are smarter and/or more dignified than they're given credit for.

• American Psycho

  You may experience:
  1 — absurd satire) an incredibly holistic and sharp satire of fragile masculinity and american individualism, funniest black comedy of a generation
  2 — discomfort) i don't like these people or what they're doing, and it's hard to enjoy these scenes because everything is alien and dry
  3 — cognitive dissonance) patrick bateman is me but he's actually the hero and very cool (i am braindead)

• Fantasia

  You may experience:
  1 — spiritualism) the most groundbreaking animation achievement in human history, a deeply spiritual, psychedelic experience which re-awakens the inner child and transports you to a time of optimism and magic, even better when experienced on drugs, and an accessible love letter to art itself
  2 — contextless) some boring vignettes with no plot that don't tie into eachother, disney's most boring classic

• Barry Lyndon

  You may experience:
  1 — precision) a surgical, sardonic portrayal of the world's most unworthy hero, in a familiar period epic structure, hilarious specifically because of the transgressions of our expectations
  2 — messy) a series of boring vignettes about a character who shouldn't ever have been the star of a movie, everyone is awful and nobody wins

• Force Majeure

  You may experience:
  1 — deep comfort) an optimistic movie that makes fun of its own audience, our walks of life, and the fickleness and fragility of our own comfort with others, but finishes with a beautiful affirmation of humble love in all its imperfections
  2 — deep discomfort) a pessimistic movie about an awful failing marriage and nasty people (i hated character x, and character y was in the right), ending was weird and confusing

• Speed Racer

  You may experience:
  1 — pure joy) the craziest art CG art direction ever put to screen, a love letter to camp, a comfort movie filled with likeable archetypes, unabashed psychedelic wonder, deeply funny, dense attention to detail, and impossibly inspired set design
  2 — ugly) tasteless CG which ruins the whole movie, overwhelming

• Under the Silver Lake

  You may experience:
  1 — layered and dignified) a purposeful and precise adaptation of the noir genre into modern LA, with the noir synecdoche (so common to the genre) being that of inceldom and its objectification of women, paralleled with hollywood old money and its consuming of women
  2 — gross and weird) an unlikeable protagonist who objectifies women and who glorifies conspiratorial thinking, and then a lot of stuff that was random

• Starship Troopers

  You may experience:
  1 — raucous satire) a blunt, darkly funny satire of fascists and the dehumanizing essence of fascist ideology
  2 — problematic) satire is uncomfortable for me and this just feels like a gross violent film

• Tenet

  You may experience:
  1 — riveted) a stylish, class-A science fiction film, endlessly rewindable, dense with internally consistent detail, a rabbit-hole of time travel fuckery with groundbreaking execution, the only smart christopher nolan film since memento
  2 — overwhelmed) audio is bad, characters felt cold, i got lost partway through and just let it roll and i never got less confused, then it ended

• Primer

  You may experience:
  1 — thoughtful) a spectacular low-budget accomplishment which pushes time travel storytelling to its limit, and depicts a subtly horrifying existential nightmare born of the human condition
  2 — overwhelmed) a confusing film with bad effects

• Cloud Atlas

  You may experience:
  1 — earnestness) an emphatically optimistic epic across space and time, inventive despite its problems
  2 — cringe) nothing but problems, too long with a cringe story

Having a little tsundere arc re: anime...

Ranked from 5-star 'I hate you for being right' through-2.5 star "you need to calm down about this".

1. Spirited Away

   The first anime I ever saw, circa 2006. Impossibly beautiful at points. I don't know what I can say that others haven't said before.

2. Patlabor: The Mobile Police

   Very important franchise for anime (and mech anime) history. Under-appreciated, more human and less nihilistic than Evangelion. Climate allegory and symbolic anti-capitalist moments. Very original ticking-clock, and some cool police procedural bits.

3. Porco Rosso

   One of the Dark Horses of Miyazaki, IMO. Miyazaki vistas are unrivaled.

4. Princess Mononoke
5. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
6. Grave of the Fireflies
7. Howl's Moving Castle
8. Kiki's Delivery Service
9. Ponyo
10. Patlabor 2: The Movie

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

Everything from 2018 (year of contemporary cult movies) that I've seen, ranked.

1. The Haunting of Hill House
2. Maniac
3. Burning
4. Happy as Lazzaro
5. Under the Silver Lake
6. Diamantino
7. Avengers: Infinity War
8. Suspiria
9. Eighth Grade
10. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2017 (year of peak superhero) that I've seen, ranked.

• Blade Runner 2049
• Get Out
• Logan
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
• Lucky
• Thor: Ragnarok
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• Spider-Man: Homecoming
• Dunkirk
• It

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Many things have happened! Who did which thing? How thing transpire??? Why they do thing?! (We all live in the same house)

Movies that are like Whodunits but there are more variables, often WAY more variables.

• Knives Out
• Primer
• Clue
• The Hateful Eight
• Bad Times at the El Royale
• The Kid Detective
• Bodies Bodies Bodies
• Glass Onion

HOW DO THEY EXIST???? Films which are impossible and/or unforgivable.

• Speed Racer
• House
• Fantasia
• PlayTime
• Roar

Everything from 2021 (year of the waking dream) that I've seen, ranked.

1. The French Dispatch
2. The Green Knight
3. Midnight Mass
4. The Innocents
5. Dune
6. We're All Going to the World's Fair
7. Ascension
8. Bad Trip
9. Zack Snyder's Justice League
10. The Card Counter

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2019 (year of the new auteur) that I've seen, ranked.

1. Chernobyl
2. Parasite
3. Midsommar
4. Knives Out
5. Greener Grass
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
8. Us
9. The Platform
10. Toy Story 4

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everything from 2016 (year of crying on an airplane movies) that I've seen, ranked.

• The Love Witch
• Arrival
• Planet Earth II
• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• Zootopia
• Moonlight
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• La La Land
• The Nice Guys
• Captain America: Civil War

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