i was watching it through the gaps between my fingers.

honestly, that was probably the most brutal and undignified death i've ever seen put to screen

Edge of Tomorrow
Least important sentence out of the way first: Tom Cruise can be good sometimes, Emily Blunt is good all of the times, the cinematography breathes in scenes when the aliens are killing shit. Now: this is probably the go-to case study in how we literally need action/adventure/sci-fi films to have intellectual gimmicks. These intellectual gimmicks don't just make us feel smart while watching something dumb. They actually allow us to enjoy the dumb things we want to enjoy but can't enjoy otherwise. Like until that gimmick kicked in, this film was excruciating, even though it basically extends the same mind-numbing style further once the gimmick is established. You can do a lot of Zizekian jerkoffery on that point, but I'm not going to. So this was very enjoyable but also it's bad. Which is probably more than what the new Tarantino film is going to be, if my spidey sense is correct.

Wadjda
This informed me and maybe misinformed me about Saudi Arabia. It is shot like a midlevel realist arthouse movie. It is acted like a midlevel realist arthouse movie. The fact of its production makes it an upper level realist arthouse movie. I hope that more films like this come out of Saudi Arabia. I am not sure if any of this makes this an interesting movie to actually watch though. But then again I'm not sure if I would say Bicycle Thieves is an interesting movie to watch either. I think I would have preferred to read my own summary of the details in this film that I found kind of interesting over watching the film. These are details like, "in Saudi Arabia men play video games" and "even children in Saudi Arabia only give a shit about their religious training so that they can maybe get fun toys from being well behaved." The final scene is interestingly metacinematic analogy for me. Except honestly not that interesting. I wish I liked it more.

Phoenix
This is a slow and lovingly shot film which stylistically reminds me of the more restrained moments in Pedro Almodovar if you scrubbed his films of all surface humor and they concentrated only on sizzling drama and structural irony. It takes its time (about 30 minutes or more) in setting up the section of the film which is truly interesting to watch, but that 30 minute set up was necessary, because once it becomes interesting, it almost unbearably is so. And then, for me, is immediately not once it is over. I was most surprised that my brother, who you usually have to twist his elbow to get him into anything with subtitles that isn't a bunch of action, was absolutely riveted by this and liked it much more than me. We live in a weird world.

Best of Enemies
Very glad to see this as I loathed whatever the hell the name of last year's Gore Vidal documentary was. The Buckley vs. Vidal feud is a great subject for a film. I despise Buckley's politics but like the man, where the opposite is true for Vidal, so this is always interesting territory for me when it comes to reflecting on my own investment as a viewer. I was impressed by the general neutrality of tone in the presentation despite a bias towards liberal commentators. I think my quibble would be that the documentary kind of paints it as if American political discourse was always very calm and highbrow until that final fateful debate, when really it had always been terrible, and figures such as Buckley and Vidal were a momentary interruption of something resembling actual intellectual exchange in a sea of even worse bullshit. Even so it's a minor imperfection because the "point" of the film isn't nearly as interesting as is a chronicle of how interesting these two men were. If you aren't familiar with this feud, but like watching smart people get incredibly angry at each other, I highly recommend this very entertaining film.

Weird indeed, as I was floored by the end of it. The bulk of the movie seemed to be one long suspense tease all leading up to the denouement, which by the end of it seemed so perfectly earned, that it was simply transcendent. Perhaps a shake it off after-reaction is in relation to a lack of ambiguity? Idk, that film's a case where I actually think a satiating resolve feels more profound than a chin scratching ponderin'. How grateful and lucky do I feel to have been able to arrive at that moment.

Tho I might have had a better experience seeing it in an uncrowded theater four rows back where I was able to just let my eyes water up and flow like anime eyes.

I think I agree with you that the fact that it just completely wrapped itself up so powerfully in those final moments is to its benefit rather than its detriment. Very powerful, an impossibly perfect ending. Usually you do not see films where the final scene settles the film as perfectly as the final note of a great song sometimes can. It's just quite strange, since the majority of arthouse films go for precisely the opposite (Wadjda being possibly the most typical example of the usual style of arthouse endings). And the overall process of watching... usually reflective energy goes into bigger grander ideas but here I feel like all mental energy is directed into the concrete situation. So it is an interesting change of pace. I guess I'm just not sure how to process it because I'm not sure if I'm correct that "what happened" is all there is. Like it seems like all those scenes in the club were there for more than just setting the emotion of the plot. But what precisely are they there for? I should probably read some reviews.

been watching hood movies of late (well, months ago but youtube clips got me going), and anybody that hasn't seen menace ii society and fresh are doing themselves a huge disservice. as far as i'm concerned, menace is the hood film (fuck boyz in da hood) and fresh has one of the most brilliantly executed plots of any movie, as well as being well crafted

The Guest
Holy moly, how great googly moogly is this film? If Taxi Driver was a neo-noir New Hollywood version of The Searchers, and Drive was a hipster Shane version of Taxi Driver, then this is an 80s subversive underground thriller take on Drive's respectable arthouseification of 80s aesthetics. This makes the subtext (or what should be the subtext) of Drive very explicit so that instead of ambiguously evil poetic identification with 'The Hero', it's pure righteous indignation against deception in a spirit of John Carpenter left-intellectual savagery. And yet it's more fun than any of those films, while being just as well made. I love it I love it I love it, fun fun fun all over the place.

I've been watching the El Ray 'Kaiju christmas' marathon of godzilla movies. It's great going back to these films being able to pick apart what drew me to some over the others as a kid in terms of cinematography, plot, sound, editing, etc.

I'll have to check that out.

King Ghidorah our saviour

The Terror of Mechagodzilla is on right now, and it's definitely one of my favorites.

I know I've said it before but if you make a playlist of Massive Attack's Mezzanine and then their compilation Collected, and then play the complete version of Metropolis on Hulu over that, a lot of cool things happen

Glad you dug The Guest, Drew. It's one of my favs of the past year or two

The Homesman - 7/10

This is a hard movie to like, because it's so gut-wrenching, but, damn, if it doesn't leave a mark. Hillary Swank is extraordinary.

I love those. I erroneously called them dissolves in my review, but, yes, they are wipe cuts and they are so wonderfully Star Wars. I'm glad JJ Abrams kept them.