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Watched on Tuesday June 10, 2025.

Watched on Monday June 9, 2025.

Watched on Monday June 9, 2025.

In total disbelief not just that this is a real movie, but that it has breathing room, that it feels like a dangerous kids film, scary and exciting, but also maintains the emotional and somewhat elevates it. There’s wonderful craft here, with some shots and sound design choices that had me choking back tears, and its action in the back half is some of the most spectacular stuff this year, and so in this very strange summer and very odd year for movies, it was such a pleasure for this to be so great, especially when there’s absolutely no reason for it to be.

Pyromaniac meets grenade fetishist mashup. Lumbering first hour that has some great ideas, just not enough of them, but eventually gives way to an insane back half. There’s no real need for John to be in the movie outside of his initial scene, the best stuff later is separate from him, when it leans into Eve’s scrappiness and total lunacy. She’s not composed in the way John is, and that new kind of style is really exciting, especially when the sequences show off just how often she fucks up. A really fun spin-off, but one that feels too self-important for too long, and when it does go full Buster Keaton, it’s as good as ever, yet still tied to John Wick in a way that feels more distracting than distinct. But again, FUCKING FLAMETHROWERS AND GRENADES!!!

Watched on Saturday June 7, 2025.

What the fuck happened here? Where’s the fun?

This review may contain spoilers.

It’s hard to tell how I precisely feel about The Piano Teacher. Coming out, Connor made a great point that I totally agreed with; by its end, by design, the catharsis Erika achieves is purposefully cut off from its audience, our emotional catharsis thwarted. It’s true to Haneke’s hypothesis that other people are inherently unknowable, that cinema shouldn’t create emotional bonds through style and affect to sustain this staunch point of view. But do I like that? Does this make me like this movie more?

I was so struck by Haneke and Huppert’s approach to Erika, aware that the way she’s been taught and told to love is far from social conformity, yet not ‘wrong’, it’s just specific and transgressive enough to appear to others as foreign s of love. She’s so desperate for romance through sexual expulsion and exploitation, that it can’t help but feel like a dialectic surrounding the ways abuse manifest.

Erika has mastered the hand movements required to play piano, yet lacks the sexual dexterity of everyone she teaches, hands serving as signifiers of physical connection through the devotion to personal excellence. It’s a vitriolic relationship, but I do think Haneke makes Erika a deeply empathetic and tragic figure, yet, he doesn’t want us to know all of her. The internal transmogrification Erika is going through can truly only be known to her, as is true for a real flesh and blood person. Even the slightly off-putting nature of the near unanimous dubbing, creates an atmosphere of miscommunication and human barriers. 

But again, do I like this? Is this something that I find emotionally satisfying, or just stimulating as an intellectual effort? I really don’t know, but I love that I’m left to wonder. Even if I’m left with the empty feeling of never knowing another person, it precisely proves Haneke’s worldview, which I may often disagree with, but nonetheless find devastatingly truthful.

Easily the best Cuarón. It’s the breath, the pause, at the start of every voice over; it feels like lifetimes are lived and lost in those gaps. Fleeting feelings preserved in the nowness of youth, in the traces of personal worlds. 

Happy 3 years Evi!

“They're only people. People make mistakes. Could they be wrong?”

The imioned idealism, and subsequent turmoil, over the truth that there is no genuine jury of one’s peers.

“It’s been… nice…”

What awaits us all. My first existential confrontation with age as disease, where reaching a long enough lifespan feels as debilitating and corporeally deteriorative as any sickness.

Grisly in tone and sense of humour, but softly tender all the same, Karyn and Diablo having an enormous amount of pathos for their leads. An absolutely off the wall movie in every respect, but also just a totally engrossing text, rife with the kind of material that gets my academic senses tingling.

Youth in motion; always on the run from the real world, heading towards the private worlds of flight and fantasy. Phantom Thread’s nefarious B-side; what was once toxic on the surface but true love underneath, has instead become toxic infatuation suppressed by the sweetness of nostalgia. 

“Things come easily when they matter so much.”

The kind of teacher I hope to be. Incredible moviegoing experience, so joyful to revisit a childhood classic this way.

Watched on Monday June 2, 2025.

Watched on Monday June 2, 2025.

Ralph Macchio says Karate with a flawless Japanese accent.

Watched on Sunday June 1, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

“Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.”

Jerry and Rod’s friendship is one of my favourite onscreen friendships, based in a mutual belief of the kind of men they can be, that they almost are. I love Cruise just playing a regular dude, there’s a real desperation that is rarely seen in his other performances, and so makes it one of his most human too. Deeply comionate, yet never saccharine.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

No ropes, no wires, just Cruise!!

Watched on Thursday May 29, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

GOATED bloopers, you could just tell they were such boys. If you haven’t done the Phantom Thread/Rush Hour absolutely smashed, I HIGHLY recommend it, hilarious movie.

“Kiss me my girl, before I’m sick.”

Ornate perfection.

I never thought I’d see the day where the audacious, nay, brave, moment in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction when Mark Wahlberg drinks a Bud Light on camera in the middle of an action scene for product placement reasons, is not only duplicated, but one upped! But today is that day, and now, I’m off to consume a Capri-Sun: Roaring Waters- Fruit Punch for no reason whatsoever!

The most unfortunate blockbuster this year. The kids in my screening were bored by the halfway mark. It suffers a dysmorphic quality, where Stitch is still hilarious and cute, but the emotional moments that surround him are cut to ribbons, reduced to digestible mantras, and visually, the tactility is tactless. It knows it has the Ace card in Stitch, the original Minion, but it also knows it has nothing new in its heart to offer, and instead repurposes what was once valuable into something decisively commercial.

“What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful!”

“People kept robbing it.”

“...Small price to pay for beauty.”

Changing the Self-Made man into just, a man.

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

Not as glorious as my teenage self would have had you believe, but still holds up as a great Cruise vehicle with a lot on its mind, and a nice dollop of old school sentimental filmmaking to boot.

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

The colonial manifest destiny drowning, rotting in its own greed. A flash of the bleeding world we’ve made for ourselves. 

“If I’ve gotta be a corpse, I want to be presentable.”

“You and me are one.”

The most distinctly different Bong, less a satire/metaphor and more of a tragedy concerning the freedom that ignorance offers to our thorny hearts. Societal scapegoats are defined by the desecration of the dead; all to keep our loved ones safe, and our minds at ease. Maybe his best.

Watched on Sunday May 25, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Lacks the harmony between self-introspection, heart on sleeve sincerity, and formal innovations that made Asteroid City such a late career wonder from Wes, but it’s charming, sweet, and so well acted that it’s hard to be dissuaded from the inherent pleasures of what the film is offering. But there is something to be said for the undercooked Tenenbaums premise of staunch capitalist reforms through familial redemption, feels like Wes on autopilot, which, aside from some absolutely mesmerising, photo negative, black and white/heaven bound interstitials, can also be said for his style as a whole. It’s interesting to think that Wes has entered the territory of a filmmaker that always guarantees a good time, great performances and beautiful camera work and framing, but little else. Fun! But at what cost?

Built to last the erosion of peoplehood. 

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.”

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

The joys of storytelling! It does get mired in a lot of showing not telling, but there’s so much fabulous set work and theatre performance that the picture book quality does come alive.

This review may contain spoilers.

The desensitisation to violence is more apparent here. We’re watching the same film again, whose deviations, as fascinating as they are on an intertextual stage, mean little to the key beats of barbarity; we are watching, knowing, deciding to put ourselves through it again, and to engage in the cycle of fetishised violence as viewers, we are the true perpetrators. The acting and lighting is better, Haneke purposefully making this a more attractive endeavour, targeting cinephile as well as horror audiences. The dramaturgy of the original is replaced by active style, that both deflects the horrors the family faces, and aligns us more with Peter and Paul’s perspective than the original. The challenge here is in knowing where this is going and what it means, with the same damnation for anyone watching, and yet Haneke doubles down by making it more visually appealing to watch, punishing us and himself for even engaging with the film to begin with.

There’s such a staunch removal on the camera’s behalf from the violence that Haneke brings into concert his unique ability to capture what we don’t see, that along with his pervasive nihilism,  accentuates the futility of what’s on screen. And so exists a real distance from understanding these people, and yet the camera is frequently closer in frame than those same shots in the 1997 version. We’re involved further in the brutality, yet removed from a sense of humanity. Yet, Haneke cannot get away from the notion that the film is one about victims, who are merely characterised puppets, subject to cruelty, and its performative nature, for our entertainment. The brilliance of the fourth wall break to rewind after Corbet’s death is compounded in this remake; he cannot possibly die, because his death would create a greater impact in the audience than Watts’ death, while simultaneously calling attention to the lunacy of our ability to replay moments of amplified brutalist pathos to maximum effect, getting to see the carnage in both reverse and in forward motion thanks to the digital era we also complicity belong to. 

Personally, I felt both more emotionally devastated by the events of the film, but also removed from it; the dichotomy between empathy and apathy born out of a world class filmmaker’s direct remake of his own film, culminating in what is certainly one of the most audacious auteurist contributions to art. The inherent trap of Funny Games, is to love it, is to perceive it as Haneke has intended, but in doing so, are being part of a process of glamourised violence that we usually, morally, disagree with.

“Your portion is pain. But not my Elwoood. Not my Elwood.”

This review may contain spoilers.

Tom Cruise let us ascend with him to Xenu, and I never want to come back. Ethan can’t save everyone, but he can save in abundance, and that’s enough. The best stunts, really can’t believe the shit they’re accomplishing here, giggling like a little school girl basically the whole time. Never seen action like this before, and probably never will again. God is back in the box, and its never been in safer hands than with Tom.

“The farmers have won. Not us.”

The restoration; an archival confrontation with the death of cinema, preserving the indexical under the hallow housing of what technology can do to improve on an already established masterpiece. Forced to wander the earth alone, belonging to neither world. 

Strongly considering changing my research focus to the comparative analysis between Seven Samurai and the Mission: Impossible franchise.

.03%

the erosion of male friendships in the modern era. The digitisation of real life; trying desperately to be something you’re not.

• The Night Of
• Nosferatu
• Shadow of the Vampire
• Contagion
• Wonderland
• t Security Area
• Thirst
• Witness for the Prosecution
• Rope
• We Live in Time

...plus 210 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Sinners
2. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
3. Mickey 17
4. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
5. Hallow Road

1. The Master
2. Phantom Thread
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Magnolia
5. Punch-Drunk Love
6. Licorice Pizza
7. Boogie Nights
8. Inherent Vice
9. Hard Eight

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. Rushmore
4. Asteroid City
5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. The Royal Tenenbaums
7. The French Dispatch
8. Isle of Dogs
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox
10. The Darjeeling Limited

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
3. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
4. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
5. Mission: Impossible III
6. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
7. Mission: Impossible
8. Mission: Impossible II

1. Gone Girl
2. Se7en
3. The Social Network
4. Fight Club
5. Zodiac
6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
7. Mank
8. The Killer
9. Panic Room
10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

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

1. Andrei Rublev
2. Stalker
3. Nostalgia
4. Solaris
5. Mirror
6. Ivan's Childhood
7. The Sacrifice
8. The Steamroller and the Violin

• Mulholland Drive
• Titanic
• T2 Trainspotting
• Cuckoo

1. Steve Jobs
2. Trainspotting
3. T2 Trainspotting
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Sunshine
6. 127 Hours
7. 28 Days Later
8. Shallow Grave
9. Trance
10. The Beach

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

1. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
2. Wild at Heart
3. Twin Peaks: The Return
4. Blue Velvet
5. The Straight Story
6. The Elephant Man
7. Twin Peaks
8. Mulholland Drive
9. Inland Empire
10. Lost Highway

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Oppenheimer
2. The Dark Knight
3. Interstellar
4. Inception
5. Memento
6. The Prestige
7. Tenet
8. The Dark Knight Rises
9. Batman Begins
10. Dunkirk

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

1. Parasite
2. Mother
3. Snowpiercer
4. Okja
5. Memories of Murder
6. Mickey 17
7. The Host
8. Barking Dogs Never Bite

1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. The Shining
4. Paths of Glory
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. Barry Lyndon
7. Spartacus
8. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
9. Full Metal Jacket
10. The Killing

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Oppenheimer
• The Master
• Minding the Gap
• Harakiri
• Ikiru
• Heat
• Beanpole
• Millennium Actress
• Amadeus

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

1. Birth
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Sexy Beast
4. Under the Skin

• The Killer
• Hour of the Wolf
• The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum
• Tropical Malady
• 12 Angry Men
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• We Are Who We Are
• Avengers: Infinity War
• Avengers: Endgame

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

1. Aliens
2. The Terminator
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Avatar
5. Titanic
6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
7. The Abyss
8. True Lies
9. Piranha II: The Spawning
10. Ghosts of the Abyss

1. Spirited Away
2. Princess Mononoke
3. The Boy and the Heron
4. Ponyo
5. Kiki's Delivery Service
6. The Wind Rises
7. Castle in the Sky
8. My Neighbor Totoro
9. Howl's Moving Castle
10. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
5. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

1. Nickel Boys
2. Dune: Part Two
3. The Brutalist
4. Anora
5. Nosferatu
6. Challengers
7. Civil War
8. Better Man
9. The Substance
10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

1. The Departed
2. GoodFellas
3. After Hours
4. The Last Temptation of Christ
5. Silence
6. The Color of Money
7. The Age of Innocence
8. The Last Waltz
9. Killers of the Flower Moon
10. The Irishman

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

1. Pan's Labyrinth
2. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
3. Nightmare Alley
4. The Shape of Water
5. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
6. The Devil's Backbone
7. Hellboy
8. Crimson Peak
9. Cronos
10. Pacific Rim

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

1. Joker
2. Joker: Folie à Deux
3. War Dogs
4. The Hangover
5. Starsky & Hutch
6. Old School
7. Due Date
8. School for Scoundrels
9. The Hangover Part III
10. Road Trip

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

1. Saving Private Ryan
2. Schindler's List
3. Jaws
4. The Fabelmans
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark
6. West Side Story
7. Jurassic Park
8. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
10. War of the Worlds

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Lighthouse
2. Nosferatu
3. The Northman
4. The Witch

• Lost in America
• Anyone But You
• Night Swim
• Poison
• One Life
• Great Freedom
• In My Skin
• THX 1138
• Terrifier
• Terrifier 2

...plus 447 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Oppenheimer
2. Maestro
3. May December
4. Anatomy of a Fall
5. The Zone of Interest
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
7. The Holdovers
8. The Boy and the Heron
9. Perfect Days
10. Killers of the Flower Moon

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

1. Heat
2. The Insider
3. Thief
4. Collateral
5. Miami Vice
6. Manhunter
7. Ferrari
8. The Last of the Mohicans
9. Blackhat
10. Public Enemies

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

1. Anora
2. Tangerine
3. Take Out
4. Red Rocket
5. The Florida Project
6. Starlet
7. Prince of Broadway

1. Nickel Boys
2. Anora
3. Queer
4. Maria
5. All We Imagine as Light
6. A Real Pain
7. Blitz
8. Conclave
9. I'm Still Here
10. Nightbitch

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

1. The Power of the Dog
2. Titane
3. Spencer
4. Memoria
5. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
6. Benedetta
7. The Souvenir: Part II
8. Compartment No. 6
9. Red Rocket
10. The Tragedy of Macbeth

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

1. Hunger
2. Occupied City
3. Widows
4. Shame
5. 12 Years a Slave
6. Blitz
7. Lovers Rock
8. Red, White and Blue
9. Mangrove
10. Education

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

1. Maestro
2. May December
3. The Zone of Interest
4. The Holdovers
5. Occupied City
6. Perfect Days
7. The Boy and the Heron
8. Ferrari
9. The Beast
10. The Killer

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Tree of Life
2. The New World
3. The Thin Red Line
4. Badlands
5. A Hidden Life
6. Days of Heaven
7. Song to Song
8. Knight of Cups
9. To the Wonder

1. Margaret
2. Manchester by the Sea
3. You Can Count on Me

1. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
2. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
3. The Breakfast Club
4. Uncle Buck
5. She's Having a Baby
6. Curly Sue
7. Sixteen Candles
8. Weird Science

1. Ambulance
2. The Rock
3. Armageddon
4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
5. Bad Boys II
6. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
7. Transformers
8. The Island
9. Bad Boys
10. Pain & Gain

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

1. Django Unchained
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Reservoir Dogs
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
8. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
9. Jackie Brown
10. Death Proof

1. Civil War
2. Devs
3. Annihilation
4. Ex Machina
5. Men

1. Man of Steel
2. Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire
3. Zack Snyder's Justice League
4. 300
5. Dawn of the Dead
6. Army of the Dead
7. Watchmen
8. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
9. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
10. Sucker Punch

1. The Rider
2. Nomadland
3. Songs My Brothers Taught Me
4. Eternals

1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Prometheus
4. Alien: Covenant
5. Alien: Romulus
6. Alien³
7. Alien Resurrection

1. The Whale
2. The Wrestler
3. Black Swan
4. mother!
5. Pi
6. Requiem for a Dream
7. Noah
8. The Fountain

1. Logan
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
3. X-Men: First Class
4. X2
5. Deadpool
6. The Wolverine
7. Deadpool 2
8. X-Men
9. X-Men: Apocalypse
10. X-Men: The Last Stand

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Arrival
4. Prisoners
5. Dune
6. Incendies
7. Sicario
8. Polytechnique
9. Enemy
10. August 32nd on Earth

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

1. Drive My Car
2. Happy Hour
3. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
4. Evil Does Not Exist
5. Asako I & II

1. Decalogue I
2. Decalogue IV
3. Decalogue II
4. Decalogue IX
5. Decalogue VII
6. Decalogue X
7. Decalogue III
8. Decalogue VI
9. Decalogue VIII
10. Decalogue V

1. WALL·E
2. Toy Story 3
3. Soul
4. Up
5. Coco
6. Ratatouille
7. Monsters, Inc.
8. Inside Out
9. Finding Nemo
10. Toy Story 4

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Piano
2. The Power of the Dog
3. In the Cut
4. Sweetie
5. Top of the Lake: China Girl
6. An Angel at My Table
7. Bright Star
8. Top of the Lake
9. The Portrait of a Lady
10. Holy Smoke

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Anomalisa
3. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
4. Adaptation.
5. Being John Malkovich
6. Synecdoche, New York
7. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
8. Orion and the Dark
9. Human Nature