I’m.a 49 year old atheist guy crying about a 12 year getting her period and finding god.
I think that counts as good cinema.
Are you there God? it’s me Margaret.
Grade: B+
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Yes, it would appear that I am. Hadn’t heard of it. It’s not streaming right now, but I’ve added it to my watchlist in the meantime.
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It is unreasonably excellent, least of all as an impeccable feather in Eastwood’s directing resume.
The Holdovers
I didn’t know anything about this film going in, other than it’s by the same guy who did Sideways, The Descendants and Nebraska, and I liked all of those, so I was expecting to like this too.
This movie is better than all of those. Dynamite performances from all 3 leads and the story felt so real. It reminded me a bit of Sound of Metal in that there were so many chances to do cheesy tropes, but it didn’t.
If I have any complaints, it’s that:
- We needed more of that janitor dude. Feels like he would have been closer to the other 3 than was portrayed.
- They went a tad overboard on the dickishness and harshness of the teacher in the opening few acts. We got the point pretty quickly; they definitely could have cut down on that. I felt Whiplash also had this problem.
But those are minor quibbles. Of the 3 BP nominees I’ve seen, this is my favorite so far. (And it’s easily better than every BP nominee last year)
9/10
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I thought this was just okay, but I’m such an admirer of his prior three movies that I’m glad to see Holdovers has some big fans.
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I’d be more inclined to credit this criticism re: Whiplash than The Holdovers, because the JK Simmons character was so over the top that it felt like it pushed the boundaries of what even the worst of these types truly act like. In The Holdovers, Giamatti’s character, a man with no family of his own who sees most of his life as a bitter disappointment and persistently drinks his sorrows away, is exercising the only power he actually has in the world, and it felt true to life to me.
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I didn’t know how the new Godzilla could possibly live up to the hype, but damn, they nailed it. Toho adapted the genre for modern audiences but still kept the core elements of camp that made their franchise work. Waiting until the last 30 minutes to drop the original Godzilla theme is a boss move. Can we get a Mothra reboot, one time, dealer.
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I wasn’t prepared to be emotionally torn up about what post-war Tokyo must have been like. When the little girl asked for her mama I pretty much lost it.
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Son and I were telling the other son that this is not Hollywood Godzilla and he needs to see it asap.
Saltburn
Didnt love it. But 24 hours laters it’s growing on me
The overall plot kind of sucks due to its predictability and there’s literally nothing surprising about the ending reveal.
But
I think the first half of the movie gets more interesting in retrospect. I.e. the “I gave you exactly what you wanted.” If he’s doing all that deliberately, it becomes more interesting as to the choices he makes and what that says about the people he’s manipulating. E.g. the overlong jacket sleeves, giving the mum permission not to feel bad about kicking her friend out, etc
unfortunately there’s too much cringe, and the plot doesn’t stick the landing, so I’m not invested enough to do a rewatch, which is a shame.
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Anatomy of a Fall
9/10
I didn’t quite like this movie as much as I thought I would. I think because it hides or omits so much important scene or shots. I mean that’s kind of the point of the movie. That there are some thing that we’ll never know or because of that absence things that could be innocuous take on different meanings but still it just didn’t hook me. The lead actress was great and actually I thought the kid was better.
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Not quite the paragraph I was expecting after “9/10.”
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She is also lead in this years Zone of Interest.
I should have prefaced it with “it’s objectively a good film, but…” You know something don’t grab you but you feel like it’s a personal preference thing rather than it being bad.
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I hear you. I generally can’t find a 9/10 for a movie if I didn’t personally enjoy it, but I absolutely get where you’re coming from. I hate trying to decide on how to log one of the consensus classics if it just didn’t click for me. Like I just don’t even feel entitled to give it a rating that reflects my experience because I end up feeling like there was a heavy dose of user error on my part or something if the movie has held up to critical acclaim for decades and completely missed me.
Re: Anatomy of a Fall, it actually didn’t land super well for me when I first watched it either, but it has digested really well and I ended up liking it quite a bit after just letting myself continue to think about it and take in other people’s discussion about it. I’ll see how a rewatch goes when it hits a streaming service.
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I was originally planning to watch Miller’s Girl this weekend just on the strength of the leads (Martin Freeman and Jenna Ortega), but then the review embargo lifted late and the criticism poured in hot.
So I took a pass. And with that, a particularly bad Dumpuary is in the books.
- Mean Girls (***)
- Self Reliance (straight to Hulu) (**1/2)
- I.S.S. (**1/2)
- The Book of Clarence (**)
- The Beekeeper (**)
Let’s hope February is at least five times better. Drive-Away Dolls, the nation turns a lonely eye to you.
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Yeah like I’m always giving Citizen Kane a hard pass, but I’m also never grading it less than 9/10. But a movie needs to be a cultural phenomenon for me to not deduct three points just for not being good in a way I like. Most Michael Bay movies are perfectly tailored to his target audience of twelve year old boys, but I’m still almost never grading one of his movies more than 5/10. Obv there have been one or two exceptions from Bay.
If I just can’t get into one of these classics - Seven Samurai was an example, which was unfortunate since it’s also fucking long - I tend to log it as 3/5 in recognition of the clear success that it was without giving it a rave from my end. It doesn’t sit right for me to mark a super high grade on something I didn’t sincerely enjoy, because it doesn’t feel like any movie should ever reach a status where it’s above any sort of honest grading below four stars, and I figure I have to be able to differentiate the classics that I loved from the classics that just didn’t land for me.
I guess Seven Samurai also carried with it the fact that, so far, some Kurosawa has really worked for me (Rashomon and Throne of Blood were great) and Seven Samurai and Ikiru just didn’t hit as well, and it would feel strange to just spam the same high star ratings for all of them and thereby remove my actual experience from it entirely.
Thankfully Citizen Kane was quite enjoyable to me and I would watch it again.
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