One thing I’ll say with this movie is that sitting with it only made it better, even if it didn’t fully rehab the final act. The snap-reaction that I posted is a bit more bearish than my current take on it, though admittedly I haven’t done a round two with it yet.
I do think that movie contains the best needle-drop of the year.
We watched A House of Dynamite. I felt it had no suspense or thrills. I found out after that there were sound effects placed under the credits that suggested the hit to Chicago and then a further escalation. By that point, I was really like who cares?
They could have properly elevated the stakes by having POTUS in Chicago at the time of the attack. Angel Reese, a Chicago Sky player was in the scene at the arena so it would have worked. The movie just didn’t really work for me and would have been 10 times more intense using juxtaposition instead of discrete scenes. To me, it was just failed experimental filmmaking. Oh and there was a gunshot sound toward the end of act 2 that was never paid off. Any ideas what happened there?
One Battle After Another is just okay. I wouldn’t cancel plans to see it.
The action sequences are fantastic. But you can watch those out of context and see what I mean.
The script is an absolute mess.
I guess it’s time for me to admit I haven’t liked a PTA movie in over a decade. And it’s been almost TWO decades since I thought he made something truly great.
The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
It has a sex scene where the woman is riding a guy in cowgirl while wearing literal cowboy boots. Enough said.
Grade:D
But since this is a bet film with @RiskyFlush I feel I owe more.
I give it a D because it’s not really trying hard enough to be offensive. It’s just lazy.
It clearly wants to be like a Tarantino or Mann film. The problem is that it misunderstands what makes those directors good in the first place.
Tarantino builds tension through sharp character interplay and scenes that shift power with every line of dialogue. This movie gives you flat exchanges that never evolve. Mann shoots crime with a sense of precision and professional competence. Here the heists feel sloppy in a way that isn’t intentional or thematic. The geography of action scenes is unclear and the blocking makes gun fight scenes feel like random noise instead of tactical choices. It’s similar to how Bay directs robot fights in Transformers.
The pacing is probably mostly why this has a 0%. It drags even during sequences that should feel propulsive. Scenes run long without adding character depth or narrative pressure. You can tell when a a movie mistakes length for importance and this is one of those times. The writer and director think length equals gravitas.
The narration is especially rough. It’s not used to reveal psychology or fill narrative gaps. It just restates things we already understand from the visuals or dialogue.
Stylistically the film tries to mix gritty dystopian crime with comic book aesthetics but never commits in either direction. It’s really fucking ugly visually. The production design looks expensive but also strangely empty. Lighting choices push everything toward a muddy digital look. It’s very “Netflix” looking.
It terrible but mostly just really lazy. It never really tries which is boring and does make for a bad film.
It doesn’t however offend me like a Transformers movie which would have been the real punishment I was dreading from Risky. Glad nobody on here remembered my hatred of Bay and those films! 
Booo!
Is there a date for HBO Max yet?
None that I’m aware of.
That was great buddy. Consider the bet settled and your reputation as a gambler ruined.
Quite a misstep for me to forget Transformers 2.
Ok I don’t totally hate Adam Driver anymore.
Predator Badlands (2025)
This is not my kind of film at all but god damn if it’s not fucking awesome. It’s so fun. Great action that you can actually follow. A logical plot. Actual character arcs. It’s an actual movie!
And damn is the action fun. It all has gravity and seems real.
A total blast.
Grade: A-
Oh man, if you want to feel absolutely horrible for a few hours, The Perfect Neighbor on Netflix is for you.
Do you mean neighbor? I couldn’t find perfect stranger
If you liked The Perfect Neighbor for its ability to reconstruct what happened through archival footage, you should also watch The White House Effect.
D’oh, yes
Oh hey, who’s ready to get absolutely emotionally wrecked just in time for the holidays?
So I guess the pope is a movie guy.
>The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.
Eternity (2025)
I loved this. I can’t believe I loved this. Despite liking or even loving a bunch of projects he’s in, I don’t like Miles Teller. Why? I dunno. Off-putting vibes or something? Possibly unfair of me. In fairness, a bunch of people around here have random actor hate of people who don’t possibly have it coming, and since my crusade against Ryan Reynolds is rooted in absolute 100% correctness, I still hadn’t met my quota of one unreasonable hate object. I’ll probably lose my hater card over my reaction to this movie anyway and be left to search out another target.
I basically just gave this a shot because my arthouse was doing an advanced screening that would allow me to see it a couple of weeks before it goes wide, and it was irrationally appealing to get to form an opinion before that many people. Beyond not liking Teller, I also didn’t like the trailer. And 20 minutes into the actual movie, I was shrugging and deciding that my pessimism was correct and that the movie doesn’t work. The jokes weren’t landing for me despite solid laughs elsewhere in the theater; the concept just seemed to be missing the mark.
I hung in there, hoping the movie could at least salvage a passing grade. It did more than that. The jokes started hitting at a much higher rate, and the movie got its emotional hooks into me. And it did what I felt was the heaviest lift, which was to manipulate me into actually rooting for Teller. (Doing this is basically a requirement of being able to really like this movie.)
The movie correctly acknowledges that the other dude is the hotter and more exciting option, and while “just go with the schlub” is a really hacky, eyeroll-inducing angle in the wrong hands, the execution here was really intelligently done. They got me.
Somehow, some way, one of the best new releases I’ve seen so far this year.
4/5
(I am now stricken with fear that this movie will cool off considerably for me when the afterglow wears off and that ctr will angrily use it in future research against me if he feels that I don’t love one of his favorite movies enough.)
Same.
I thought he was in three great movies:
The Spectacular Now
Whiplash
The Gorge
And even those I’m like well did he play an integral part in making those movies great? Or should he just be grateful he got to be a part of them?
