Josh:

I feel like I should have liked this more than I did, and I didn’t, partly because while they’re good actors, neither Stone nor Gosling can sing very well, so it’s that rare musical where I’m waiting for the songs to end so I can see what happens next, and while it certainly feels like it was made by the guy who made Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, I wish it had more of the propulsiveness of Whiplash. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I’ve seen this movie a few times now, and it always fucking wrecks me, I think because it’s about following your dreams and all that, sure, but it’s really about the choices we make and how our lives might’ve turned out had we chosen differently, and I’m in love with the last twenty minutes of the film with the couple’s revisionist story, the what ifs, and yes, I love all the over-the-topness of everything, including the whimsy, the surreality, the old Hollywood throwbacks, the costumes, the fucking score, and I will not be shamed, Josh! ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

In an ideal world, a performance like Andrea Riseborough’s gets nominated for all the awards, but the film has flown under the radar for the most part, which is a shame because it’s a tender character study about a woman trying to pull her life together, and it rarely feels over the top or exploitative the way poverty is often shown onscreen, thanks mostly to Riseborough’s nuanced portrayal of addiction. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

It’s pretty much exactly what you think it will be, save a plot development or three, and of course, Riseborough is fantastic, and Janney gives her best performance in years, and I don’t believe Maron as a Texan for a second, but it’s still kind of an endearing performance somehow, and while I like feeling that lump in my throat while also smiling as much as the next person, and there’s really no reason why this type of movie should always have to end in devastation, the cynic in me thinks Maron’s benevolent smile was a bit much, and I’m left wondering why she didn’t win the lottery a second time at the end… OR DID SHE? ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I remember those days well, of empty toilet paper shelves, and wiping down groceries, and chastising friends for taking selfish and unnecessary risks, and so do the makers of this movie, and they also remember every 90s slasher they’ve ever seen (or in Kevin Williamson’s case, written), and they don’t have much new to add to the formula, so it’s a competent, routine slasher for most of its runtime, and honestly, I haven’t decided if I like it better or worse once it fully reveals itself. ⏰⏰

Steph:

I kind of loved this creepy Covid film, especially during the first half when we don’t yet know the motive of the killers, and it was funny-sad seeing everyone wipe down their groceries but also disheartening to think about how little we take Covid seriously now, while people continue to die, so even though I found the killers’ motivation a bit silly at first, the film ultimately asks us to think about individual responsibility, our collective responsibility to one another, and what we deem an acceptable loss. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a story about a volcanologist couple and their obsession with getting as close as possible to volcanoes and their eruptions and explosions, but it’s also a story about living life on the edge and finding love with a person willing to do the same, and the footage is incredibly spectacular with its up-close lava shots and giant smoke clouds—plus, it kind of made me want to reevaluate my life choices, like if they can die fearlessly during a volcanic eruption, there’s no reason I can’t make myself go outside sometimes. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

A great documentary almost always needs a great human subject to bring the information to life for the viewer, and of course Fire of Love has two of them, celebrating the astonishing and scientifically significant volcano footage the Kraffts shot, and incorporating a touching human-scale romantic drama of two obsessives, each of whom found the perfect partner and lifelong quest for themselves. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

A tiny germ of an interesting idea here, and an overqualified cast including baby Michelle Williams, and the same cinematographer who’d shot The Verdict, Prizzi’s Honor, and Speed, but the filmmakers seem more interested in getting Henstridge’s clothes off again and maybe squeezing in a car chase and a silly climactic big hunt, so it never even achieves the deeply flawed but still more interesting exploration of gender dynamics found in screenwriter Dennis Feltman’s debut, Just One of the Guys. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This movie is so dumb that I was definitely rooting for the gorgeous blonde alien creature to mate repeatedly so that she and her offspring would kill everyone and I wouldn’t have to sit through anymore ridiculous dialogue—“let go, motherfucker”—and the somewhat psychic empath character was the stupidest with his whole “she went this way, wait, no, that way!” bullshit, but I did enjoy the hilarity of assuming that assigning the alien female rather than male at birth would make it more “docile and controllable,” so maybe there’s something going on under the surface here, and if that’s the case, someone please tell me what the fuck it is. ⏰⏰

Steph:

Movies about women friendships always delight me, and this film is no exception because it’s such a campy little horror movie with the biting dialogue that Diablo Cody is known for, and there’s so much high school angst it’s hard to take it too seriously, so I guess I think the film works best when it’s less about the occult and more about female friendships and how difficult it is to nurture a relationship when it feels like the other person is changing or pulling away, and there’s some pretty cool feminist stuff to unpack in this, particularly how it deals with sex and women’s sexuality. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Well, wow, I’d sort of passively watched this many years ago, having absorbed the critical consensus that it was a total disaster, whereas taking a more thoughtful look at it now, despite not being a huge fan of Diablo Cody, this is the best thing she’s ever done, and it’s laughable to think that people who loved her script for fucking Juno were disappointed in this one, and it’s sad that Cody was stuck writing for Jason Reitman, and Kusama’s budding career floundered, and Fox was never taken seriously as an actress (she’s startlingly good), it’s also understandable, as this film takes everything we want cut and dried about horror movie convention—the narrative pace, the unambiguous characterization, and even the palette (this reminds me more of something like The Company of Wolves than the indie horror movies of its time), the clear cut hetero/homosexuality—and gives it a good, sharp twist: “My tit.” ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Brown has full scholarships, you know! ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I feel like I’ve been watching so many movies about class issues lately, and this one surprised me (since I went in cold) with its hilarious disdain for the rich, or “the eaters,” and its sympathy toward the working class, but it’s also a film about cooking as art and how easy it is to lose sight of what makes our lives—and art—meaningful, so yeah, I loved it for those reasons because it’s a cool take on the role of the artist in society, as well as a commentary on art itself and who’s allowed to access it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I haven’t seen many Katharine Hepburn films, and this movie made me want to seek out all her stuff because she’s somehow simultaneously glamorous and down to earth in this, which makes her the perfect partner for Cary Grant as they try to contend with class divides and conservative ideas about work and family, all while accidentally falling in love (and performing the occasional acrobatic skill). ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I feel like Julia gets a bit of a raw deal here, the way self-made dreamer Johnny springs his plans at the last minute and expects her to abandon the only life she’s ever known, but of course, Grant and Hepburn are gorgeous and charming, and have such volatile chemistry together that it’s impossible to mistake where it’s going, and the movie is so witty, really delightful, cuttingly class-conscious, and timeless, although with the sarcastic Nazi salutes and obscenely wealthy fascists on display, it also feels dishearteningly timely. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This is my fourth time seeing this film, and while the first time was after seeing Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (its slick precision startled me after Chazelle’s gentle, loose-limbed debut), this time it was after seeing Babylon, and maybe that partly explains my reassessment, as I still appreciate the skill behind the movie’s breakneck brutality, but now I kind of have to consider what its undeniable effectiveness is in service of, because in the end, it’s the needlessly sadistic Terence Fletcher grinning triumphantly, while Andrew’s loving, concerned dad is almost completely shut off from the stage, staring in near terror at his son, who has already achieved a level of genius he finds incomprehensible. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I love the idea of teachers pushing students beyond what’s expected of them, and this film takes that theory a little too far with Fletcher, the sadistic music instructor, and Andrew, the fledgling musician, both coming to terms with their own capabilities and limitations, and it’s a complex and compelling film about art and pain and humiliation and passion, you know, jazz—and I love when Andrew’s father watches him play the drums from backstage, and this realization crosses his face like he’s learning something entirely new about his son in that moment, and isn’t that what we all want anyway—to be fucking seen?! ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is an adorable and funny little rom-com with all the cheesy rom-com tropes, and I didn’t mind them at all because Jenny Slate is such a gem—plus the film deals with adulthood and aging and the feelings of not having done enough in life, which is the perfect kind of existential dread to pair with the film’s super desperate version of unrequited love. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This was a 2-star movie all through the predictable breakups and the meet-cute and the deranged and vile plan our 2 heroes put into motion, briefly became 3 stars during Emma’s attempted seduction of Logan, which somehow involves a middle school production of Little Shop of Horrors (that section leans fully into the absurdity of the premise, and is greatly enhanced by the awkward charm of Slate, Rodriguez, and Jacinto) but then slowly scrapes that star away during the seemingly endless, mostly charmless third act, which hinges on whether or not Peter and Emma can figure their shit out, but by that point, I could hardly be expected to care, much less root for them. ⏰⏰

Guest reviewer Kirk Boyle:

Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is like a classical Hollywood comedy of remarriage if it were a genre-busting, pan-European horror-of-marriage-in-freefall arthouse film wherein the couple spawns a demonic doppelganger version of itself that instigates nothing less than Cold War Armageddon, a description that I believe doubles as a recommendation. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Returning guest reviewer Dr. Matthew Feltman:

The inclusion of bestiality with a sea creature might make Possession the underlying influence for The Shape of Water—if nothing else, this film has clearly influenced many filmmakers; the tracking shots lingering over abjection capture scenes of possession and madness that will scar the viewer for life, but the indelible and horrific images of a marriage gone awry keep you awake throughout the film even with a heavy-handed philosophic/psychoanalytic bent to them—this film will shake you to your core and maybe even shock you out of your own, complacent marriage bed if you are lucky enough to be in a partnership. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

So there’s that scene where Isabelle Adjani is cutting meat with an electric knife while speaking angrily to Sam Neill and looking deranged, and I was a little relieved when she finally turned off the knife, but then she pulls over the meat grinder and I just had to laugh, and I’m annoyed with myself for taking so long to get to this one, because I feel like I’ll need to watch it another 20 times before I can really talk or write about it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph: 

This film is probably about so many things, like the breakdown of a marriage or sex and power or a woman’s feelings of being trapped, among whatever else—it’s difficult to say with so much surrealism and the lack of a straightforward narrative—but I found myself in awe of its extravagance and the completely and unapologetically, over-the-top bloody mess of it all, which is testament to its ambition and choice to take risks, and the film is worth watching even if it’s only for what I’m calling The Epic Grocery Bag Freakout scene. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a somewhat silly alien-invasion, love-story disaster film that kept me in its grip because of all the explosions and the found footage format, which helped the film feel more visceral and immediate, and I genuinely enjoyed watching these kids try to survive the creepy monster, though some of the dialogue was pretty unrealistic and—since the film is mostly working with explosions and dialogue—it sometimes came off as lazy and uninteresting. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Technically impressive, sure, and its always nice to see NYC again, but the camerawork is shaky enough to cause motion sickness, and it never really drew me in completely because, despite the loooong buildup before anything interesting happens, and despite the impressive screen presence of youngsters Lizzy Caplan and TJ Miller (yuck) the characters feel completely generic. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

It’s hard to understand why Miles remains friends with Jack, I guess, but I’ve known plenty of friendships like that where the self-obsessed manipulative dude and the conflict-avoidant, refined one (Miles holding his finger to his ear while he sniffs and describes the wine is perfectly hilarious) stay friends for decades, but anyway, this movie is so funny and poignant and so in love with Miles and Maya that I stopped caring about what happens to Jack, which I think is part of the point, and also that it’s possible to be a great writer and never get the recognition you deserve, and if you don’t believe that, just look at how few likes this review has! ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I really love the buddy comedy aspect of this because the two lead actors have such amazing chemistry, and I found the dialogue funny and the deliveries even funnier, but I kind of hated how both men were so quickly and easily let off the hook for their bullshit—except for the Sandra Oh ass beating—which made the film feel a bit unbalanced and phony in the end. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I’d call this a pretty terrifying reality check about how little progress we’ve actually made on racial justice issues since the 1960s, and I think the film argues, importantly, that we’ve gone backward, with images of the police-military from the ‘60s looking quite like what we still see today and worse, and it’s difficult to articulate how the film affected me, but it’s enlightening and heartbreaking and true, with so many parallels to our racist society today that it’s also entirely infuriating. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Angry but largely mournful documentary locating the titular imaginary cities (the 2 Riotsvilles) as a paranoid cornerstone of the militarization of America’s police departments, and what I enjoyed most about this movie was the kind of ephemeral interplay that arose between seemingly disparate moments (such as the horrific Gulf bug spray as (“Kill it!”) that played during the Republican convention, and the way police repurposed an exterminator’s truck to spray unfathomable volumes of teargas at nearby Miami residents) and some of the footage from newscasts and public television that reminds us of how much things have changed in this country, while in terms of police brutality and repression, time seems to be standing still. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I hadn’t seen this since it’s theatrical release, and at the time, Nicole Holofcener could do no wrong in my eyes, so I rewatched it with a little trepidation, but, though the characters are all pretty unpleasant people, and mostly terrible friends, the actresses playing them are great, and that keeps things interesting, and then rather than ending, it just stops. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I remember liking this much more back in the day, but this time around it felt less self aware and more upper-class-white-privilege-y minus the critique of it, and I kind of liked and simultaneously pitied everyone in the film, but why should I like or pity any of these characters when their “problems” are so pathetically mundane, like, sorry your husband thinks your ass is getting fat and maybe we’re supposed to laugh at that but not when it’s in the same film as Jennifer Aniston and her tragic inability to find a decent boyfriend (who’s actually in her league)—I mean exactly how much am I supposed to suspend my disbelief? ⏰⏰

Steph:

This was like two hours of gory, formulaic Christmas propaganda that kind of entertained me in the beginning with the cynical Santa stuff and some of the fight scenes, but it got tedious after awhile and super cheesy toward the end, and the burning of the money was just a sad attempt at an anticapitalist message in a film devoted to saving Christmas—the holiday that would probably cease to exist without capitalism. ⏰⏰

Josh:

Didn’t realize from the ads I’ve seen that Harbour is playing the “real” Santa, and honestly, that premise sucks, and the movie is worse, with its cheaply ironic, incessantly grating soundtrack, its halfway decent gore effects, its lazy-ass sub-Bruce Willis one-liners, the way it casually kills off the help but saves the rich assholes, and worst of all, the way it tries to tug our heartstrings at the end: disgusting. ⏰

Josh:

A technical achievement, and while the script hasn’t gotten any better since the first time I saw it, hopefully these days people have a better understanding of the inherently white supremacist trope of neophyte lunkhead Jake becoming a much better Na’vi than the Na’vi themselves. ⏰⏰

Steph:

The script is bad for one, like all of James Cameron’s scripts—some of the worst dialogue of all time—and it’s racist, with the White Savior trope really driving it home, but I loved two things: the action sequences and spectacle of the film, as well as the pretty basic premise that humans are destroying the planet. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This movie is boring as shit, and a film can only handle like one or two slow-motion cigarette lighting shots max, and there were at least ten in this, but I suppose the premise is cool, and I like the idea of performative friendship and documenting supernatural phenomena and the real vs the unreal and the fact that they pulled it off low-budget style—but sometimes it felt a little dull listening to them riff off each other with math equations and theories about gravitational pull, and I’m not even joking about the unnecessary melodrama of the cigarettes. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Moorhead and Benson’s work, and this one has its minor pleasures, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, and once they start picking apart the veracity of what we’re watching, the stakes feel awfully low, and it basically reminded me of a paranormal Primer, but not as smart or compelling. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

You’d think after Devil’s Advocate, Charlize would know better than to marry a pretty boy rising star in over his head with an awful Southern accent who drags her to NYC, but here we are, in this generally awful, egregiously overdirected yet dull film—“a severe insult to the brain,” as they say—and I’d be ready to dismiss it completely if it didn’t have a few compelling minutes wherein our heroine gets advice and abortion pills from Blair Brown (I wish there’d been more of her and Tom Noonan) and tries to terminate her pregnancy against her husband’s will, because in those brief scenes, the horror depicted seemed all too real. ⏰

Steph:

This isn’t a good movie, with the stilted dialogue and the whole alien-rape situation, but there were times I found myself wondering if this could’ve been good—like minus the bad script—like maybe it could’ve been an alien-invasion film about the trauma of pregnancy or motherhood in general instead of just touching on those aspects and, while I found the film adhered to a kind of Final Girl notion, I wouldn’t call it feminist but rather the opposite—a conservative take on maternal instinct and the importance of upholding the traditional nuclear family … but with aliens. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a seriously slow burn but worth the gradual unraveling with all the ghostly trees and shadows and the mirrors and neon lighting and creaky doors, and the film is so unsettling, especially with the constant ominous flute playing over it all, and since I’m a sucker for films about grief and aging and existential struggles with mortality, this one hit me pretty hard—eventually. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Tilda Swinton is phenomenal in a dual role in Joanna Hogg’s gothic “ghost story,” and “ghost story” is in quotes because while this is a smartly reflexive and sometimes very moving drama about what haunts us—the “ghosts” we all carry with us—Hogg shies away from genre elements so pointedly (for example, nearly every creepy sound or menacing musical cue in the movie turns out to have a pedestrian diagetic explanation, to a nearly comic degree) that their halfhearted deployment seems like nothing more than a cinematic device, but it still works on a dramatic level, and Louis, you may have heard, is a rare talent. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I didn’t know much about Gray’s autobiographical drama going in, and seeing where and when it was set, with early references to The Clash, Kurtis Blow (who I saw open for The Clash once), Sugar Hill Gang, et al, I knew it was going to be an emotional nostalgic journey for me, and I was right, but I was surprised by the nuance Gray brings to what feels like a deeply personal and confessional story about systemic racism, white privilege, freaking Fred Trump, and our collective failure to “be a mensch.” ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The film shows just how much influence parents and adults can have over children, including spouting and accepting racist rhetoric, and I loved how Armageddon Time navigated that, with the grandfather there as an occasional antidote to the worldview of the other adults around him, but—though all the adult characters appear to acknowledge their privilege at times—their response is to take advantage of it rather than challenge it in any significant way, so it’s great when 6th grader Paul finally accepts that everyone around him is completely full of shit—which is what made the film ultimately feel like a critique of all the upper class private school American Dream nonsense that preceded it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Special guest reviewer Dr. Matthew Feltman:

The nods to cinema history—why else include those moving locomotive inserts?— feel forced (and ultimately add nothing), the dialogue comes across as fake due to the film’s tonal/genre shifts, and the formal excesses could have worked in a more capable adaptation but seem superfluous in this garbage heap of a film that should have kept its focus on death and ennui instead of taking a golf club to DeLillo’s novel in order to provide a more upbeat, Hollywood ending; this film feels as vapid and vacuous as each plastic bag flung up into the air during the last few seconds of the closing credits. ⏰

Steph:

I haven’t read the novel and can’t comment on whether the film stays true to it, but I loved how offbeat this was, how challenging and funny and dark, as well as the way it deals with big themes like mortality and love and how the film critiques academia, religion, and even Big Pharma, which made it feel ambitious and artful and, at times, just a tiny bit pretentious. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I remember loving the book (but I was so young, and maybe it just made me feel smart) but anyway after this and Babylon, I would like the next movie I see by a filmmaker I like to feel more assured and not like it’s trying so hard, and maybe just be a normal movie that I can enjoy even if I don’t get the reference (which I did btw I’m very smart). ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I was rooting for Chazelle, against all odds, but while his ahistorical, anachronistic Hollywood epic is undeniably ambitious, it’s also a complete mess, exemplified by the bathetic emotional swings it takes and its desperate stabs at profundity amid the headache-inducing, frenetic mayhem, and the only sequence where the whirlwind style really works is the first visit to the Kinescope lot, but by then it had already squandered a lot of my good will with that atrocious party scene. ⏰⏰

Steph:

I have a thing for movies that really go for it, for movies that try to unnerve the audience through spectacle and carefully choreographed haphazardness, but this film about filmmaking—while ambitious—doesn’t quite come together ultimately, though there’s plenty to praise it for, including—and perhaps most importantly—Margot Robbie’s compelling performance and carrying of the entire 3-hour film (no offense Tobey Maguire). ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is necessary viewing that shines a glaring light on the lengths people like Putin will go to in order to shut down opposition and stifle the voice of the people, and the film operates as an indictment of Trump and his ilk, while also working as a flashing red warning sign for the future of the United States. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

A riveting documentary about the Putin regime’s attempted assassin of Russian pro-democracy activist Alexey Navalny, a story I knew little about, and which Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher presents in a tense, straightforward manner, highlighting Navalny’s charm and his whole team’s bravery, and the brazen clumsiness of the fascist regime’s plot, and the overwhelming takeaway is, they’ll get away with anything there, as here, but the lack of critical thought they require to achieve their ends can also sometimes trip them up. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

For a moment, I was a bit worried it was going to be too evocative of Nell, but I was able to stave off those thoughts to appreciate this folk horror for what it is: a gore-strewn, half-goofy/half-profound meditation on gender roles and what it means to be human, and part of me thinks maybe I would have preferred it to take itself less seriously, but deep down, I know it needed that kind of cockamamie ambition to work at all. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a beautiful film about otherness and belonging and motherhood and the patriarchy, and I loved the low-budget folk horror vibe with all the eerie, woodsy river scenes and the roaming, ever-present Old Maid witch character, as well as the film’s commentary on gender and power and who’s allowed to wield it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This film had a nice femme fatale vibe going for the first half and then veered into complete bullshit territory, with the same ol’ tired narrative in which tragedy befalls a woman in order to make the dude seem more interesting or desperate or sad or justified in his actions, and while some may argue the film is more complex than that, they’re wrong. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This definitely reminds me of 80s/early 90s neo-noirs like Body Heat and, of course, Basic Instinct, though at a chillier temperature—restrained, but with enough visual and verbal wit and angsty emoting that the treatment never threatens to outclass the material, if that makes sense, but in the end, it leans too heavily into melodrama, and it almost seems like a betrayal of its steeliest character. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh: 

This is a really well-made and beautifully acted movie and it’s kind of hypnotic, visually, with its sun-drenched present tense and ephemeral flashes forward, and I know everyone loves it, but I have mixed feelings about it, like it’s more of a mood than a story, and almost too elliptical to really cut as deeply as one might expect, and I’m ashamed to admit I did doze off briefly (I really miss seeing movies like this in a theater), and honestly, I didn’t feel much of an emotional connection to its future Sophie, as she’s barely there, though the movie does wrap up strongly, and it feels lonely not absolutely adoring this, so I’m rounding up to 4 rather than down to 3. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is an emotionally powerful coming-of-age film that made me feel like I had a lump in my throat the whole time, and it’s so gorgeously shot—who thought watching a Polaroid develop could add such depth to a scene—that I occasionally felt overwhelmed by its beauty and craved a more conventional narrative, but by the end, with that final shot, the film’s deliberately slow unraveling hit me hard—and I found myself staring at the swinging doors like, fuck. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I love films that make fun of rich people, and Glass Onion treats them as especially stupid, with Edward Norton playing a character whose entire fortune was built on the ideas of others—how very Musk and Trump-like—and the film’s portrayal of his idiotic sycophants is hilarious, not to mention Janelle Monáe’s kickass performance, which, among so many other strong moments, was the highlight of the film for me. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

As Public Enemy once told us, “Don’t believe the hype,” and here’s another great story about storytelling, and how much depends upon who gets to tell the story, and it doubles, so to speak, as a satisfying fantasy of comeuppance, and yes, give Janelle Monae all of the awards. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Hard to believe that this was James Gunn’s feature debut as a writer/director, as it’s surprisingly assured, and Gunn (aided by a very strong, likable cast who understand the task at hand) masters that tricky balance between gross-out horror and gross-out comedy with aplomb, though seeing it again after all these years, it’s only truly transgressive in flashes, and the exploitative air of sexual menace throughout shows Gunn still had some excess Troma left in him. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Even though I don’t always love body horror stuff, I found the major gross out gooey mess of it all to be more effective than the jump scares—but not nearly as effective as dick-shaped worm creatures forcing themselves into bodily orifices—which I guess makes this a zombie-alien film with an interesting take on rape culture and consent. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I love how the film uses office politics to explore friendships and rivalries among women, and I love how the higher-ups pit all the “lowly” freelancers against one another—which worked as a commentary on class politics—and it was so fun seeing Lisa Kudrow, Toni Collette, and Parker Posey in these late 90s roles, especially in a sly little feminist film about the working class. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Of course, peak Parker Posey is amazing, but this is Collette’s movie, as she brings mousy Iris and her transformation to vivid life, and while the cast is great all around, that shouldn’t overshadow a sharp, scathingly anti-capitalist script, and Sprecher’s coolly efficient direction, which beautifully captures the hidden menace of a simple, buzzing fluorescent light. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This movie tried to Sundance its way into my heart but this type of film feels kind of programmatic by now, and despite Dame Dickey’s fine work as a taciturn middle aged woman looking for love, it settles for cute when it could be funny, and I didn’t find its longeurs as poetic as it seemed like they were meant to be, but hell, maybe I was just feeling too tired to appreciate it. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This film is really boring, but there’s a magic radio and a cool camp-side jam sesh, and the cinematography and landscape are so lush I wanted to reach through the screen and smell all the yellow flowers, and Dale Dickey choked me up in her portrayal of an older woman’s loneliness and grief and desire—a story we don’t get to see often enough on the big screen. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Moody, creepy, atmospheric, with elements of the surreal, Nanny is quietly unnerving as each scene builds off the previous to create a tightrope of tension that leads to a conclusion that left me completely in awe of how the filmmaker pulled it off—and I loved the critique of white feminism. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

There’s a very good and well-acted drama at the movie’s core, and a pretty scathing cultural critique within that drama, so even though the sloooooowly developed supernatural aspect didn’t quite come together for me, the movie, as a whole, worked. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I’m not immune to the charms of fine, over-the-top performances, exquisitely bombastic sound design, precise compositions that clash with the anarchic storytelling in a compelling way, pointedly exaggerated sexual and power relationship dynamics, or even fart jokes, but my favorite thing about this movie is the way the “culinary band” at its center gets out of bed every morning. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I’m a sucker for a film that really goes for it, and in that regard, Flux Gourmet doesn’t disappoint, especially with its over-the-top shock art scenes and after-dinner speeches with a feminist slant, and the general weirdness of it all and the surprising trajectory of every single conversation kept me interested, even when I didn’t quite know what the fuck was happening. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is quite possibly the worst film I’ve seen in 2022, with all the famous actors acting all boring, and I somehow didn’t learn anything significant about any of the characters, even after the 7-hour runtime, which made it impossible for me to care about the plot, not that there even was one. ⏰

Josh:

Having just listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast, Ultra, I can tell you there are some great, unheard stories about Americans, true believers and venal opportunists, who were ready to sell our country out to the Nazis, and the brave and resourceful people who stopped them, but I can’t fathom why Russell chose to tell such a fascinating and timely story in this lamely farcical and heavily mannered way, so that the whole thing feels like it was shot low-and wide-angle, and it all just gets so tedious, despite the impressive talent on hand, and also, you can’t do T-Sway (she’s fine) like that and then flashback over a decade like we’re just going to forget about that for a while, and so in protest, I dozed off. ⏰⏰

Josh:

Despite the way I felt and feel about Jaws, the first movie I ever fell in love with, I’ve been a Spielberg skeptic for much of his career, but his late work has been outstanding, and there’s so much to love here, from its authentic Jewishness (it’s easily Spielberg’s most culturally specific film) to the amazing cast, to the respect the film shows for Mitzi Fabelman’s unconventional life choices, to a movie lover’s punchline, and the script is mostly funny and moving, though it does veer off into sentimentality occasionally, pushed along by John Williams’ increasingly syrupy score, and yet the filmmaking here is assured and joyous enough to overcome my reservations about Spielberg making another Spielberg film. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The Fabelmans is strongest when it focuses on Sam’s love for filmmaking, when it shows his wonder and curiosity as a child and his passion as a teen, but the only major woman character, Mitzi, is weird for no reason—what was up with the monkey—like eccentricity is the only way to portray someone who’s artsy or has an imagination (even the artsy filmmaker uncle was a freak for his 5-minute scene) so, ultimately, the film left me wanting so many more meta film moments and a little less music-crescendoing familial drama. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The film says a lot about free speech and corrupt people in positions of power and general high school awkwardness, and I was on board with the teenage angsty vibe, but the schtick got tiresome after awhile—there are only so many masturbation simulations a film can handle—and the Big Speech at the end felt pretty extra, which is probably why I loved it so much (when I was 15). ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Not for me, I guess, maybe just because there are too many over-the-top reaction shots, and mainly because I was already too old, in 1990, to accept HHH’s banalities as profound, but I’ll also point out that Mark treats his fairly reasonable and indulgent parents like crap, complains about a suicidal kid making him depressed, and responds to his one good teacher’s news that she’s been fired by sullenly walking away like her troubles are just the last thing he needs today, but I guess that level of self-involvement is what being a white, middle-class American teenager is all about. ⏰⏰

Josh:

I like the way the movie subverts audience expectations by showing the grotesque flip side of what we might expect from a coming-of-age story about a talented but arrogant budding artist, and the way its supporting cast of oddballs reflects the medium he wants to work in, but I feel like the acerbic laughs too often veer off into cruelty, and while I laughed a lot, it’s a hard movie to love. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

As much as this film is about art and making meaning, it’s also a coming-of-age film with unresolved grief at its center, and its exploration of trauma and creativity goes beyond conventional tropes, with the script deliberately veering all over the place to poke fun at the idea of The Tortured Artist and, arguably, upper middle class suburbia as a bonus. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The film looks gorgeous, the script is tight and often funny, and the notion of how well we can truly know another person burns at the heart of it, with a sense of danger and yearning and menace and vulnerability bubbling under the surface of every scene Farrell and Gleeson share. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

It’s just a great cast, a sharp, funny, surprising script that builds startling emotional power, a spectacular but hardscrabble location, a miniature donkey, and the specter of tragedy inescapably hanging over it all, like bombs going off in the distance, even as we laugh. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I feel like I was led to expect something a little more upbeat than this, so maybe I wasn’t quite as prepared for its longeurs as I should have been, but the charismatic cast, especially young Rayan Sarlak, and the unique road movie’s dry humor (eg, Panahi’s modest tribute to 2001) kept me engaged, with occasional moments of genuine wonderment. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Heartbreaking and unsentimental, Hit the Road finds joy in the mundane, and with a gorgeously shot landscape and performances that create tension in an otherwise not-that-eventful film, Rayan Sarlak keeps things from becoming too melancholy, a real challenge for a narrative rooted in such a tragic reality. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

It’s a challenging film to sit through, with all the racist and homophobic language so casually thrown around by a group of white women, and there were times I found myself wondering if the film was accidentally reveling in what it was trying so hard to critique, but it ultimately shows what the rhetoric of the far right can lead to and that white women play an ever-growing role in its perpetuation. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Lacks any sort of profound point that would make sitting through this nightmare the least bit worthwhile, lets the kind of standard American racists who might actually see this movie completely off the hook for at least not being like this, and may as well have been made by white supremacists, for all the respect and compassion it shows its victims. ⏰

Josh:

I hadn’t seen this confounding movie in nearly 2 decades for some reason (maybe intellectual laziness?) and honestly, it could have been made yesterday, because it hasn’t lost a step—it’s still gorgeous, smart, oddly funny, and brilliantly acted (Watts’ dual (?) performance is uh, two for the ages), and it still feels impenetrable, as Lynch uses the artificial backdrop a noirish Hollywood melodrama to challenge us to explore the nature of performance, identity, and hell, why not existence itself? ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

A masterful film about filmmaking and reality and lust and Hollywood and misconception and memory and I couldn’t tell from each scene to the next what might show up, but the threads stayed connected throughout, with every new plot development feeling like its own film within a film, and I can barely handle how brilliant it is, let alone articulate it in a sentence. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Blue Collar is a thought-provoking film about union politics and the working class where trust, corruption, and betrayal among men stays front and center (with the women characters—if you can call them that—relegated to the background), but I loved the performances and found this film from 45 years ago entirely relevant to today’s political climate (in which the billionaire class watches everyone else fight one another for crumbs). ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I can definitely see why alienated adolescent Josh declared this crushingly cynical drama his number one movie back in 1978, and it holds up pretty damn well, though despite the volatility of Pryor’s and Keitel’s performances, and the lived-in sweaty grittiness of the locations, and the script’s bracingly complex racial politics, the magic still fades a little every time Yaphet Kotto is off the screen. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Grim, somber, artful, with a nerve-jangling buzzy score and a lot of jump cuts to keep the viewer off balance, The Stranger still only really works because of Sean Harris’ brilliant performance as a coiled ball of bad news. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

As much as this is a crime thriller, it’s also a gritty tale of trust and betrayal, and it kept me gripped from the start, with the literal darkness of the film working with the ominous score to create tension and uneasiness, and the two lead actors couldn’t have better performed the repressed vulnerability associated with quiet masculinity. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This film impressed me, and from its adorable and heartwarming nature to its hilarity and deep meditations on grief and belonging, I found myself incredibly moved—not only because of the wonderful script and premise, but also because of some seriously good voice work from Jenny Slate. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

You may not believe this but he’s literally a shell, and he’s often too cute (way, waaaaay too cute) and honestly, I would very much like never to hear him sing again, or even for the first time, if that can somehow be arranged, but…it has been said that I have a heart of stone, and also that I dozed through a good portion of this movie. ⏰⏰

Josh:

Maybe the score’s a little too plaintive, and there’s one too many shots of characters looking off into the distance, but otherwise, this is rock-solid filmmaking, and the cast is great, particularly Carey Mulligan and Samantha Morton, and I’m fine with this story being told and retold in every imaginable format so more people understand our culture’s moral turpitude, and how important the work of investigative journalists can be in combatting it.⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I wish it had been shorter and a little more exciting, but overall, the film does a perfectly fine job of getting across its message about sexual assault and the systems that uphold it, and I especially appreciate how the film portrays the fear Weinstein’s victims had about coming forward, which feels powerful and true. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Here’s another film about dead women driving a dude’s plot forward and how murder is such a turn on and something about art and snakes and mythology, which feels like it’s in there as some kind of pretentious performativity, and I would’ve laughed out loud through the whole thing if the film ever managed to land on a tone. ⏰

Josh:

This starts out so slick and cold and giallo-esque that my heart started racing. And “act one” is more than serviceable suspense, with Sarah Lind’s sharp performance helping to create a character we’re eager to see be okay, but then it gets all psychotronic in “act two,” and loses a lot of interest, both visually, as it discards the cool grace of the first act, and narratively, as it focuses on the mental state and fate of a character I couldn’t care less about. ⏰⏰

Josh:

I agree with those who think this is a much better movie than X, which was slick and clever but quintessentially idiotic, while Pearl is demented enough to make a real impression, carried along by its spectacular technicolor imagery and Goth’s equally vibrant, convincingly unhinged performance, which might win an Oscar if they made Oscars for horror films. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a difficult-to-categorize film about women and the domestic sphere and feeling trapped in caretaker roles, in which Pearl portrays a character that’s a little bit Carrie and a little bit The Yellow Wallpaper, and there’s a ridiculously good scarecrow scene and a lengthy monologue from Mia Goth that blew me the fuck away. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Pretty sexist, a little racist, and ultimately unfulfilling, Foxy Brown takes us on a journey of corruption by white people, but the message falls flat in the face of so much exploitation of women, which—couched in the idea of female empowerment—feels somehow insidious, and I really got sick of seeing tits everywhere. ⏰⏰

Josh:

I love all the different looks Grier shows in this film, except maybe the drugged-out, helpless, tied-to-the-bed-while-two-disgusting-white-men-and-the-camera-ogle-her look (this is a Jack Hill film, after all) but thankfully, the kind of joy in commanding the screen that Elvis Mitchell talks about is evident in the performances of Grier, Antonio Fargas, and Juanita Brown, all of whom could have had very different careers in a culture where their talent was appreciated. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I understand why some people object to this film on moral grounds, and I think framing it as a tragic love story was maybe not the best way to tell Wournos’s story, but on the other hand, Theron is astonishing, and I think the film explicates some essential truths, including the sharp script’s opening, with one of the most scathing distillations of capitalism I’ve ever seen, with the five dollar bill in one hand and the gun in the other. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

There’s no denying Charlize Theron kills it in this role (pun intended), so much so I found myself deeply sympathetic toward a serial killer, which I suppose shows how the film lets her off the hook a little—and probably says something about my empathy toward sexual assault survivors—so I mainly left the film wondering less about why she did it and more about how we still haven’t legalized sex work in this country. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The acting is so incredible that it’s easy to overlook some of the more problematic aspects of the film, particularly the psycho lesbian trope, but there’s something so delightfully devious in Dench’s portrayal that I found myself almost rooting for her in the end. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Beautifully shot and impeccably acted (Blanchett breaks down like few actors can, and it’s glorious), but somehow Philip Glass’ somber, elegant score strikes the wrong note, and while the actors act the hell out of it, and Menges’ camera glides around like a hummingbird, it feels like they’re trying too hard to class up the tawdry, soapy material, treating it like it’s Dostoyevsky. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This is one of my least favorite kinds of films that don’t keep me awake, because its elliptical nature made it so that I was sure I was missing important details, and was confused about what was going on nearly every time I opened my eyes, but it’s not Almaric’s fault he made a film for people to watch while awake, plus Krieps’ performance was so strong it pulled me through to the end, and I loved it when she touched that guy’s chest. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This is a film about grief, but I’d also call it a character study, in which Vicky Krieps gives a performance that elevates Hold Me Tight above similar films that deal with trauma, and while its slow burn may put off some viewers, it held just the right amount of tension for me, and all that beauty didn’t hurt, either. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This film reminded me of listening to a lecture where the professor’s passion for the subject becomes infectious, and even though I thought the film meandered a little and it felt self indulgent at times and the cadence of the narration had a lulling effect, I found the discussion of the history of Black representation in cinema to be powerful, and the scope of the film feels ambitious and deeply personal, which makes it an easy film to recommend. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Riveting and meandering by turns, Mitchell’s inarguably worthy documentary is at its best when he’s rhapsodizing about the unique power of the Black filmmakers and the magnetic screen presence of Black stars of the ‘70s, but despite his insight, he takes such a personalized approach that the film sometimes feels haphazard, and so less incisive than it might have been. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh: 

This movie is way too much; it’s bloated (sometimes to comic effect, admittedly), ugly, and coldhearted, and way too on the nose in its blunt satire, but sporadically very entertaining and darkly funny. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The characters are all douche bags, and that feels like the point of this politically conscious dark romp (yes I said romp), and I appreciated its self awareness about class politics and gender roles—and the power dynamics within the confines of both. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

This film about Bad Axe could’ve easily veered into melodrama with so much focus on familial love, but its discussion of the early days of the pandemic and the politics of race in Trump’s America somehow got me pissed off and crying at the same time, which is hard to pull off when you’re dealing with neo-Nazis. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I picked this for SMC thinking it was a narrative film, but it turns out to be 100% true—an uneven but deeply personal and emotionally rich documentary about a Mexican/Cambodian family and their restaurant surviving the first year of the pandemic in Trump country that naturally includes a potentially dangerous encounter with neo-Nazis and also with “normal” dumbass Americans, like that “deaf” gentleman I so badly wanted to punch in the face. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I enjoyed this, but it’s somewhat more annoying than funny, and somewhat more silly than scary, though it is that, and the practical effects, as others have noted, are aces, though it’s also gross to the point of just being gross, and the lack of any kind of coherent lore makes it less engaging than it could have been. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph: 

I enjoyed the low-budget, B-movie vibe of Deadstream, minus the constant high-pitched scream-crying, and it kept me on my toes with the occasional jump scare, but the cancel culture stuff was underdeveloped and clunky and ultimately didn’t add any weight to an otherwise fairly standard ghost story. ⏰⏰

Steph:

This long-ass film flies by and somehow feels joyous even in its most violent moments, mainly due to the Matrix-esque action sequences, that show-stopping dance scene, and its ability to tell this story without throwing around the white savior trope—loved it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

This is the first “Tollywood” film I’ve seen, and it’s everything my favorite Bollywood films are, and there’s more of it, from stunningly choreographed superhero action to joyous dance numbers, to its righteous anti-imperialist, nonviolent (just kidding) message, and I was entranced throughout, and so glad I picked it for Secret Movie Club, despite the length, which I never even felt. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I loved everything about this, cinematic bookends included, from Pugh’s spectacular lead performance to its absolutely scathing and timely critique of self-serving, inherently misogynistic religious fanaticism. ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

Aside from the 25 close-up shots of Florence Pugh eating (which I loved), the film mainly focuses on the dangers of religious extremism and the toxicity of all-male political bodies, and I’m here for it. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The animation still looks decent 25 years later, the music slaps, and I found the adaptation of this well-known biblical story engaging and thought-provoking, but I ultimately walked away feeling that perhaps children—who haven’t yet developed the critical thinking skills necessary to interrogate some of the more overtly religious moments—shouldn’t be the target audience for this film. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Excellent voice acting, and handsome, well-directed animation make this a solid depiction of the Old Testament story, with two show-stopping set pieces, the genuinely frightening slaying of the Egyptian first-born, and the magnificent parting of the Red Sea, elevating it to elite status, even if it’s not much fun, as these things go, but then, as the story focuses on slavery and infanticide, why would it be? ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Jerry and Marge go mid, as Bening is totally wasted here, and every time the script wavers from the straightforward story, it feels like it’s trying too hard, and it exemplifies the ageism it decries, but it’s a pleasant enough watch, and we’re supposed to root for the socialists against the baby-Musk-style capitalist, so that’s always nice. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

The film defies categorization, and I found the commentary on class issues to be delightfully surprising, even if some of the cheesier moments in the script bog down the message a little. ⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

I wanted to love this film because it has all my elements: a story filled with strong women characters who are treated horribly by The System after suffering violence at the hands of men, but ultimately the film left me feeling so much despair, which may have been the goal—to argue that capitalism traps us—but one awful thing after another happens to these women, and all I wanted was some kind of redemption for them that never really comes. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Engaging enough, but almost like an ‘80s indie in its grim, downtrodden atmosphere and somewhat mawkish sincerity, and while it’s moving in its smaller moments, the plot takes our beleaguered heroine (well played by Essie Davis, of course!) into such overblown Hollywood-style melodrama that it becomes increasingly difficult to take her plight seriously. ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I read on here that the short running time “flies by,” but Poser just kind of flutters around, and never lands, generously stopping short of parody, threatening to capture something, but eventually ditching any semblance of sincerity to ill-advisedly drag its pretty, semi-conscious self into a half-assed cautionary tale/genre exercise. ⏰⏰

Steph:

Nothing about this film makes sense because we never learn anything about Lennon other than that she’s insecure, and—while it attempts to go deeper by showing us both the literal and figurative masks we wear—by portraying Lennon as a poser-turned-sudden-sociopath, the film drowns out any message about identity and self-hatred it may have started out with. ⏰⏰

Steph:

Despite the infantilization of Henrietta (Elaine May), which is played for laughs throughout, the film ultimately manages to feel kind-hearted and emotionally resonant, leaving the viewer to ask, “How did these two weirdos ever live without each other?” ⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

Reading about how Robert Evans hacked May’s movie to pieces makes me angry, and makes me wish I could see her cut, because while I really enjoyed this, especially Henry’s wistful visit to his wealthy hangouts, and “she needs to be vacuumed every time she eats,” and that scene with the nightgown, it does feel a little choppy, though I suppose that gives it its own unique ramshackle charm. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Josh:

I feel like I’ve been watching variations of this story for decades now, but this one is gracefully acted, wonderfully specific in its milieu, and I love the way Kusijanovic and cinematographer Louvart shoot the water. ⏰⏰⏰⏰

Steph:

However the viewer interprets the ending will certainly color their experience of Murina, but one thing is certain: the young woman at the heart of it—trapped in an abusive, patriarchal nightmare with no one willing to help her—reminds us of our failures as a culture to end domestic violence—or to even take it seriously. ⏰⏰⏰