Film diary

Last night I watched Anatomy of a Fall and tonight I watched this. Cinema is so much.

I made a Spotify playlist of the Love God soundtrack. Only a little over half of the songs in the film are available on Spotify, but it’s still 81 minutes of music!

I loved watching Lloyd Bridges slither all over this thing, but even if I agree with the message, I could do without the “yellow journalism bad, due process good” sanctimony of the final act.

This goes way harder than I expected, and is a significant improvement on 1947’s similar Brute Force.

On this, my third viewing, I realized that Sophie is funding her revenge activities with the cash her dad gave her so she could avoid eating on campus with the plebes.

Bailed after 13 minutes. It’s cool that the recent animated Spider-Man movies are inspiring others to step away from the stale Pixar template, but Mutant Mayhem’s aesthetic isn’t nearly as compelling, and as much as I loved TMNT as a kid, it turns out I don’t need an umpteenth iteration.

The magnitude of Don Henley’s and Glenn Frey’s egos is inversely proportionate to how thoroughly boring they are, as musicians and as people, and this documentary’s biggest strength is its apparently unintentional spotlight on that phenomenon. As they pay breathless homage to every minute detail of the Eagles’ bland existence, there is genuine suspense to be had in wondering if any self-awareness will ever creep into the proceedings. (Spoiler: It will not.) When Joe Walsh… See more →

thanks obama

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a worse idea better documented.

This whole thing is shot from the POV of Philip Marlowe, which is a bold choice, but it doesn’t work, especially since this is the most belligerent version of Marlowe I’ve ever seen. Probably my least favorite Chandler adaptation, though the one saving grace is that it lets you spend a lot of time with Audrey Totter staring directly into your eyes.

It seems to me that the most interesting aspect of the QAnon phenomenon is the extreme mass hysteria, and that therefore the most urgent question, by far, is “How are this many people this stupid?” This docuseries does not ask that question. What it does ask, over and over again, is “Who is Q?” And among the Trump era’s endless parade of grifters, opportunists, and self-satisfied keyboard warriors, I simply do not give a shit… See more →