War of the Worlds

Godzilla Minus One

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Moon.

28 Years Later

On rewatch, this movie gets supplemented pretty well after having seen Bone Temple (as well as rewatching BT immediately after 28YL tonight) since they're such a throughline to each other. The emotional connection with Spike and his mom hits way harder now than on my first watch, I really appreciate Aaron Taylor-Johnson's performance in this and I desperately hope we see him in the third. Danny Boyle plays it too safe with this imo and doesn't offer the same sort of genre-defining creativity that 28 Days Later oozed from start to finish. Some gorgeous cinematography sprinkled throughout, but it just makes me wish Danny still had some fire in him Originally rated it 3.5/5 but it's bumped up to a 4 on this rewatch

Pizza Movie

[mild spoilers in the closing sentence but that's all] I was a little worried this movie wouldn't land well or would be disappointing and not do as much with the premise of "what if Harold and Kumar were a couple of white nerds stuck in their college dorm" as it could, but it genuinely exceeded every expectation I had! Gaten, Sean, and Lulu all have really great chemistry, Jack Martin did a fantastic job in his first feature film and plays a great antagonist, and I would've never guessed I would root for a pizza delivery robot. The comedy genre isn't dead and I wish studios realized that because Pizza Movie really nailed it I should've had far more faith in a movie that part of its marketing was making fun of Timmy Chalammy's (https://x.com/NickKocher/status/2037245668394447327) Marty Ping Pong vegas sphere stunt I do wish Sarah Sherman was in this a bit more, but I'm not sure how you could've fit her into more scenes without extending the runtime (which the movie definitely didn't need to be longer; it's a tight ~1h30m) also oh my god doing a parody of Inglourious Basterd's opening scene in the middle of this was absolutely fucking insane???? I was howling LMAO, truly incredible pull that I'd have never seen coming

Send Help

Sam Raimi has never been so back, this is such a fun rollercoaster of a movie oh my god Rachel McAdams has always been a phenomenal actress, but I think she really thrived in this and under Sam's direction because it's so clear how much of a blast she had in a role (as far as I know) she's never really had a chance to play in. Not to this degree and level, at least. Sam brings out the "I've lost my fucking marbles" in actors so well, and I really need to see him and Rachel work together again because MAAAAAAN. Dylan O'Brien also does a great job playing a smarmy, piece of shit, chauvinistic, asshole CEO, and both he and Rachel play off each other really well! Run her and this movie some awards next season, please. There's a lot of strong contenders on the horizon, but this planted a firm flag for horror that, as of right now, only gets beaten out by Bone Temple imo

No Other Choice

The only movie that can make me endorse tinnitus

Us

The 3.5 stars is a placeholder rating until I can give this a proper rewatch. I think a lot of the concepts here are interesting, and knowing how the movie plays out now feels like it really demands seeing it again to get the full scope of the story's progression to really feel confident in rating it definitively but I'll give my initial thoughts This is another incredibly well-made film from Jordan Peele. Great shot composition (I'm such a sucker for diopter shots), Lupita acted her ass off as she always does (and Winston Duke, Shahadi Joseph, and Evan Alex also did great jobs in their own right!), and the initial themes I did pick up on are nailed really really well (socioeconomic commentary and lower-class uprising, those well-off have left those struggling behind as they've pulled the ladder up with them regardless of their previous status as felt most prominently with Adelaide and Red). Maybe I just wasn't as locked in as I should've been out of my own doing or the movie wasn't gripping me enough, but it does feel like some of the other allegories, themes, and concept pieces presented didn't really click with me. I felt most lost by the prominence of rabbits and whether they have a deeper meaning or it was kind of just a "down the rabbit hole"/experimentation type imagery, idk. I think on a second watch I can really articulate this a lot more clear, but it just felt way less straight-forward than Get Out or Nope. Which a movie obviously doesn't need to be straight-forward or avoid high-concept ideas because those make some of the best films and experiences with a story, but something felt missing in this that his other two films just had and the words are completely escaping me right now.

Scream 7

YAWWWWWWWWN AI ZIONIST SLOP GARBAAAAAAGE SNOOOOOOOOORE

A Thousand and One

Absolutely no notes. Teyana Taylor does a masterful job and she deserves to have scripts filling up her inbox 24/7. 1001 captures the late 90s/early 00s landscape of New York incredibly well, and having sound bites of Giuliani/Bloomberg's virulent legislative authority (especially the stop-and-frisk era) accompany each time-jump transition acts as strong reminders of how New York, and the US government as a whole, treated & continues to treat black people as second-class citizens.

The Holdovers

"too dumb to pour piss out of a boot" is in my lexicon of insults now

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Lucy is an asshole and everyone is so unjustifiably mean to Charles Chuck Chucky Charlie Brownford IV

Sonatine

Weird and confusing and surrealist yakuza-gangster movie I don't even know how to explain it but something scratched my brain really well

Everything Everywhere All at Once

In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist

This is, by no stretch of the imagination, not a well-made movie But, maybe with some nostalgia to credit mixed with just the pure absurdity of 99% of this movie's writing, I couldn't stop laughing and I think I've ingrained vocal stims into my friends by making them watch this now THAT'S A LOTTA NUTS!

Freddy vs. Jason

Beast mode of a movie, but a product of the early 2000s in the best (and worst) ways, and a painful reminder that studio execs at New Line FUCKED US out of getting Freddy vs Jason vs Ash Williams OH MY GOD IT MAKES ME SO SAD WHYYYYYY I KNOW IT GOT TURNED INTO A COMIC BASED ON THE SCRIPT BUT GODDAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Superman

Superman. 💜

Sorry to Bother You

A surrealist scifi-comedy that critiques the exploitation of not only the lower-class of America, but international wage-slavery and the effects capitalism has globally? Directed by Boots Riley, director of the upcoming adventure-comedy film I Love Boosters? Starring Keke Palmer, LaKeith Stanfield, Naomi Ackie, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore? Releasing exclusively in theaters on May 22nd? Yeah, that's my shit

War of the Worlds

Truly awful. Terrible acting, nonsensical characters, pitiful editing/visuals I love it with my entire heart and I wish nothing but the best for the behind-the-scenes crew that had to work on it

No Other Choice

There's quite a bit to unpack with this movie and what it critiques. The overarching, general antagonist of the story is capitalism, but it manifests in a few different ways. Solar Paper, after an American buy-out, having "no other choice" but to slash their workforce for increased profits when they could simply not be fucking leeches (which, y'know, that's every company ever) LMAO. Moon Paper having "no other choice" but to start replacing nearly their entire workforce with AI machines, and Man-su, too entranced by "winning", celebrating in an effectively-empty factory previously bustling with colleagues and camaraderie first seen in the beginning of the movie under Solar Paper now devoid of humanity here and presumably everywhere else soon following suit. This "trial run" by Moon is nothing more than a testing ground for divorcing their profit margins from any impact made by the humans that once drove them. Man-su can't bring himself to settle for a "lesser" job, he can't bring himself to sacrifice for his family, he can't allow his pride and position as the "breadwinner" of the family be in jeopardy; he has "no other choice" but to ensure his role within the family and within his own mind are not diminished/compromised. He is his job, and without his job he is nothing. Such is the thought process that capitalism wants us to all fall in line with: hammering out individual identities and replacing it with conformity and dependency. This dependency is seen with nearly every other character in the movie. His coworkers in the beginning that he ensures he'll stand his ground to protect against the American, the room full of laid-off workers being consoled by, his victims (namely Beom-mo and Si-jo; the first one and his wife respectively), so on and so forth. Everyone is only concerned with their own self-interests, and if any of it has selfless results it feels entirely coincidental, but that flaw within all of them is implanted by capitalism and the societal pressure of meeting & exceeding expectations. The very thing that has caused so much turmoil in their lives, and is recognized as such, becomes innate characteristics in each one of them that motivates their actions (especially Man-su). Stab others in the back to get ahead. All consumed by this expectation thrust upon them. They've sunken their lives into this and they can't let it be all for nothing. No other choice. Man-su is a very unlikable piece of shit, but a small degree of empathy yielded for him despite it all. Mi-ri is wholly justified in her growing disdain and I adore her, we all need a ride or die like that (but also oh my god HE HIT YOUR KID WTF, COME ON MI-RI KILL HIM DEAD!!!!!!) Park Chan-wook does an amazing job of packing this all into the facade of what would seem to be just a silly (which it is), messy (which it is), anxiety-inducing (which it does), chaotic movie. Great acting, just enough humor throughout to lighten the thematic (and visual) weight that No Other Choice carries but nothing that causes that weight to be trivialized, beautiful cinematography (which is nothing new for PCW but it holds true here too lol) oh my god I think some bits of dialogue may've been lost in cultural differences, or wasn't effectively translated for western audiences, because I found myself just a tiny bit lost/confused at times. Maybe I need to rewatch this at some point, who knows idk I love movies