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Swedish Targets meets … Insomnia? The French Connection? Falling Down? A pretty singular experience, with a slow, very slow build toward one of the most stunning and elegant helicopter shoot-outs I’ve ever seen. A classy picture!

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

A black comedy that is as spiritually pure an adaptation of Jim Thompson as they come. Dewaere gives a nerve-wracked freakout performance for the ages, and Andreas Katsulas is an all-time Hey That Guy! in a late ‘70s Corneau movie. There’s a lot of Coen and Safdie in this.

In addition to being very moving, this movie is underrated as a work of cinematography and set/production design. The angles are so cool and intentional, and the costumes and locales all feel the same way. A singular movie.

Watched on Friday April 25, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 25, 2025.

The music is sooooooo good. Michael B. Jordan nails the doppelgänger/twin thing better than any comparable thing in recent memory (Legend, Alto Knights, etc). The credits sequence is cool and adds depth. Jack O’Connell is freaky and good and Irish from the jump.

A movie that espouses one of my favorite truths about this wicked world we live in: change is possible for every person, and changing yourself for the better is a high moral calling. Pay no mind to the dead guy on the floor. He’s irrelevant to this equation.

I LOVE NEW YORK!! I love knowing as little as possible about the bad guys. I love Jerry Stiller’s hypermorbid sense of humor. I love Fat Caz (RIP) and the indignity of having your day fucked up because the train doesn’t go where you need it to go. I love Lieutenant Garber; honest, true and ever-humbled by the racial mosaic of the world.

Watched on Wednesday April 9, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 8, 2025.

If you liked Memories of a Murder then you’ll like this. Feels like Tarkovsky adapting Jean-Patrick Manchette or Leonardo Sciascia. Slow, stylish and affecting.

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

What if George Smiley’s Ann was also a badass spy with her own sense of mystery? And also what if she didn’t fuck younger guys while George was mole hunting? Great concept.

A confessional mélange with no equal, I was struck on this rewatch by the mythic Committee of 100 on which Nixon blamed his whole misfortune. Even if Dick wasn’t totally to blame for Watergate, 90 minutes of primal wailing and gnashing against his verdict did not leave me sympathetic. But I was entertained.

Workmanlike heist thriller that has plenty of tension, humor and wit—but saves its ideas for the very, very end. A great movie.

A documentary about the Gaza solidarity encampment set up at Columbia, but broadened to include events from Los Angeles to Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil (arrested, fighting deportation) and Grant Miner (expelled from Columbia) play starring roles, but the true the lead is the camp itself—a collective project of hope, hundreds of people who inspired thousands around the world to take similar action. One story of 10/7/23 until now. Glory to the martyrs.

Dennis Hopper holds the picture together, which is much better in the first half than in the second. If you can get past the slow pace there are some excellent amateur performances. Some great faces and sickos in this.

Watched on Sunday March 9, 2025.

It’s so crazy to star in this movie and then be a huge piece of shit to your daughter. Maybe not that crazy. But certainly ironic. A pretty much perfect movie that has sunk its hooks into you before you even realize it.

So the Turner Diaries is like Nazi Harry Potter?

Watched on Sunday February 23, 2025.

Forgot how horny this was.

A bit repetitive but ultimately rather fun and spooky! Feels of a piece with The Exorcist in using Catholic imagery and symbols to depict an evil wind ing through the early 1970s.

Watched on Thursday February 13, 2025.

Had one of those “I’m really uncomfortable because of how much this resembles the setting of my childhood even if all this bad shit didn’t happen to me, personally” experiences. It ruled.

A million different details I can praise so I’ll pick the one that sticks with me now: Can’t think of a recent movie that works memory so with such skill into how it tells the story, not losing any propulsion or weight.

Bill Paxton da gawd. But killer ing acting, killer set pieces, and killer production design can’t fully rescue a lumpy story or the charisma vacuums cast as the leads.

Heston fucking KILLS it but this starts slow and ends maudlin.

Watched on Saturday January 4, 2025.

Watched on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Stacked cast, fun stunts and, about halfway through, it subtly goes from conspiracy-lite mode to a charming buddy action-comedy starring Pam Grier and Yaphet Kotto.

This review may contain spoilers.

He went whole hog!

I reviewed the film for Screen Slate. I struggle with its ambiguous and off-screen depiction of Israel and Zionism.

Fuckin’ trippy, man.

Horny funny.

This is a really stupid and incoherent movie… but it is also beautifully shot and really energetically acted. Has no excuse for how boring so much of it is, but a skydiving gorilla drinking a martini and smoking a cigar demands one’s attention. Not sure if it was in the novel but a primatologist with Save the Gorillas posters mowing down mutant apes with an Uzi had to be Crichton’s most sublime pleasure in the story.

It’s crazy how good trash used to be.

A few too many cliches keep it from Perfection but it really is a special flick. Haven’t seen since my teens. Full-bore nasty and much slower than I , taking its time gathering steam and dread. I like that it takes place in a city somewhat apart from our own reality—different enough to not be mistaken for reality but similar enough to suggest something about our own world. And that is? Not totally sure. A small detail: whenever people are explicitly asked to Help, or if they see something Bad happening right in front of them (like the Doe Chase in the apartment block, where they drop shit on his head from above)—they do it. Unlike what the characters profess to be the case.

Peckinpah homage bordering on plagiarism but there’s far worse out there to copy from. A little too boring in the middle, but the combat, lust and vivid Old West slow-motion shooting is too good to not enjoy.

Rather exciting 48 Hrs.-but-Chinese-women story punctuated by some really incredible stunt work with bamboo, construction material and, uh, a comically large opium pipe. Seriously, at one point a main lady does the Popeye spinach thing but with opium.

Surely part of the Unipolar Moment Canon. A bunch of second-rate powers fight over arms deal scraps left over from the Cold War. Pierce Brosnan was the real deal. James Bond is mostly for suckers, but not this one. “Boys with toys.”

What is Bona’s breaking point? Everyone wants to know!

Watched on Wednesday December 4, 2024.

Boring but the model train scene is worth the price of ission.

Incoherent but fun and weirdly prescient all the same (precedes Waco/Ruby Ridge by a few years with a Feds-Nazi/Church standoff). Some really stunning Balaban-Don Johnson rapport early on.

Many rich people are tired of being alive. An interesting movie that should be more exciting and lively than it is. We do love Fernando Rey showing up, though.

The Director’s Cut gives you more Susie (woman in the DA’s office who has some great exposition bits) and George de Mohrenschildt, who looks kind of like Max Headroom.

Watched on Thursday November 21, 2024.

Cool twist. Good acting. The story didn’t really line up for me, and the rather brisk pace left me feeling… uninvested in any of the characters.

Year in review.

• How to Blow Up a Pipeline
• The Zone of Interest
• Godzilla Minus One
• Bottoms
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Anselm
• May December
• Ferrari
• Boston Strangler
• La Syndicaliste