Life is meaningless. You have nothing and no one cares about you

Thunderbolts* (2025, Jake Schreier) is a psychological-action comic book movie about a bunch of losers who get thrown in our face by a desperately opportunistic manipulative tyrant who can be read to symbolize Marvel Studios itself. Ultimately we empathize with the Thunderbolts and in doing so want to kill ourselves. Gen x is back and this is what appeals to us. 

     This movie is all about being down on yourself. I love it. Thunderbolts* is a lame rip-off of the far superior The Suicide Squad (2021, James Gunn) first of all. And there’s nothing to do with YELENA that we hadn’t already seen in Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland), or ALEXEI either for that matter; and everything to do with Florence Pugh delivering a performance where she plays someone dealing with grief-guilt over trauma is redundant in the shadow of the far superior Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster).
     And the plot device that serves as vehicle offroad into the subconscious is so much a rip-off of Eternal Sunshine that there’s even a scene where Yelena breaks into another room through a wall that cuts to her climbing through it and up out of a hatch in the floor complete with tracking gimble tilt. All orchestrated by a villain whose design isn’t that much different than the forest ghost from Uncle Boonmee.
     The score mostly feels like it takes its refrain straight from that Kid Cudi “Pursuit of Happiness” with a bit of the Largo – Finale of Schumann’s Symphony no. 4. And here is where Thunderbolts* won me over. It’s like the oppression is authentic enough to vindicate the mediocrity. The emotional underscoring is rousing. I’m pulling for them. And I realized all of the subpar indistinct flavorless Marvel style is filling in for the feeling of not fitting in and underwhelming disconnect with the spread of the corporation that is social media/pop culture = society. 
     Thunderbolts* manifests an existential gloom so tangible and modern that it connected with me. And the power loneliness has to leave nothing behind of someone but a dark streak is a profound aesthetic flourish, albeit one already done in Pulse (2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa). This thing’s got emotion. And to top it all off there are a these three bait and switch gags where I’m sentimentally about to go misty or vengeful when right at the last second it’s a trap loaded with a trick unexpected emotional reaction of a completely unexpected variety. I’m at the very least intrigued here. 

 
5/4/2025 AMC Madison Yards 8
Atlanta, GA

Onslaught comedy is always daring

In 2023 I saw this split screen frame of Dasha Nekrasova and a phone and was intrigued. What could this be? It looks so innovative, new, fresh = novelty was born. It’s from Wobble Palace (2018, Eugene Kotlyarenko), and for me it was everything I could ask for in an independent film. Gross I know I’ve been using that word a lot, like way too much lately. How did I put it? “a film that takes you somewhere boring to watch boring people do something boring, yet you want to be there.” Wobble Palace is basically mumblecore through iphones. 

     Totally unrelated, 2023 was probably also around the time I saw Assholes (2017, Peter Vack) for the first time, which was different. I love shock. And I thought Betsey Brown was amazing. The first 2/3 of Assholes is some of the funniest shit I’ve seen. Actually before that I think I might’ve heard didn’t Jane Schoenbrun say they pulled out of a festival because it was screening Actors (2021, Betsey Brown)? I loved Actors, but it also brought back my craving for what happened to independent films? And why have I forgot about them? And where can I find more like this? 

I hate social media. It makes me want to vomit when I go for a walk and everybody’s sucked into this vortex in the palm of their hand as they walk, heads bowed into their lap as they drive; texting; screens, the whole. But I accept it. It’s a part of life. Although why would I wanna see it non-stop for an hour and a half in a theater?
     The Code (2024, Kotlyarenko) is like this screwball comedy that bombards you with more cuts than Natural Born Killers; it kinda feels like, remember Tarnation (2003, Jonathan Caouette)? Like diy home movie editing footage-software at hyperspeed. I can love too slow movies just as much as I can love too fast movies, if they work for me. Have you ever noticed something like His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks) or One, Two, Three (1961, Billy Wilder) have dialogue that speeds by faster than anything the mtv or tiktok medium has influenced-resulted in? Way faster. It’s nothing new.
     Okay but anyway, The Code works best for me as a comedy when the couple are trying to uncover some dark secret about each other. Mostly the guy, JAY, really. There’s this bit about how much porn is on his girlfriend CELINE’S phone, and like I guess I don’t wanna spoil it but the types of stuff he finds is delightfully hilarious. And her tiktok tutorial voice same.
     But the material in the hands of these performers is even better. They’re all skilled, experienced at being provocative, outspoken, adept at discourse on culture witty in real life. Especially so with Ivy Wolk. She’s actually funny, and moments that we feel her personality translates, unlike, is it me or did she seem underutilized in Anora? Ivy Wolk also represents this new, if you’re old this stuff isn’t for you, rebellious, forward-thinking voice in culture-entertainment now (because now the two are merged), but she, like The Code, are really just entertaining and legitimately funny. 
     Like I said earlier, this stuff makes me want more. Although I can only take so much at a time. It’s kinda throwaway. But so is most entertainment. There’s a lot to be said though about the way it experiments with the language-form of cinema and culture, yet not at the sacrifice of being fun to watch. Leaves me very happy to have got to see this.
 
4/21/2025 Plaza Theatre
Atlanta, GA

So ugly slow you'll either swing too early or miss it entirely

Do you ever feel like when someone starts making some analogies they cross a line and it no longer works for you? Because I’m about to dabble. I’m so taken with this philosophical line the Mark Wiener character says at the end of Palindromes (2004, Todd Solondz) about two kinds of people: the depressed type or the mindless happy type, that I think it accurately can express my favorite types of movies. 

     The depressed type, or what others have always described my entire life as “those dark weird movies” I like, are the ones that I take seriously—the important ones. In the last 10 years the only truly great movie I could think of was I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman). Ordinary types of characters with unusual or difficult conflicts or aesthetics?
     But I also love what I’m gonna describe as the mindless happy types. Genre films. Entertaining films. They can still be dark, and weird, and amazing though too. So through this entirely separate filter, in answer to the question what truly great films have I seen in the last 10 years, in that case I’d say: Tenet (2020, Christopher Nolan) and The Suicide Squad (2021, James Gunn), along with everything by Joseph Kahn. 
     However, beyond knowing the kinds of movies I love, what’s left isn’t the types of movies I hate. Sure, the rest, most movies then, don’t do anything for me. But the middleground are the movies I go to watch because I enjoy watching movies. I wanna pitch the idea that usually movies made in the context of a corporate infrastructure, or business model can be fun, but afterwards leave me empty, sometimes even remorse-disappointed; but the beauty of what we call independent movies is that even if you don’t really get anything out of it, the experience can be uplifting, illuminating, rewarding, because whether you call it art, or the little guy, or authentic, I have always pursued that specific joy you get from independent movies. If the bug hit you like it hit me, there’s such a charming magic the first time you see something like Down by Law (1986, Jim Jarmusch), My Own Private Idaho (1991, Gus Van Sant), or Kids (1995, Larry Clark). Admittedly, the term independent, when referring to a movie or director, can get muddy. But you know it when you feel it.
     When I forget about independent movies, something new always comes along. First it was Dogme 95. Then mumblecore. Most recently, Peter Vack, Betsey Brown, Eugene Kotlyarenko do it for me. It’s an exhilarating feeling watching indie cinema you can’t compare to anything else. But like punk and grunge, you gotta be careful, because mainstream interests wanna sell it to you, and sometimes it's crap counterfeit. 
 
I’d never gone to watch a sporting event before. Last year I was invited to a baseball game. It was the Atlanta Braves vs somebody. Detroit I think. I forget who won. The thing I was really looking forward to though is how on tv when they go to all those commercials during the game I think that’s so obnoxious. I wondered what a live game would be like. But when I went, it had just as much loud, obnoxious advertisements that there really wasn’t any difference at all. I don’t like sports though. That’s just me.

   
Eephus (2024, Carson Lund) has the quality of an independent film that takes you somewhere boring to watch boring people do something boring, yet you want to be there. I mean that’s basically the point of any movie, if you think about it: to make you forget about what time it is, what’s going on outside the theater, your life, your job, your phone, and not wonder when the damn thing’s gonna be over. Usually the gimmick is to make something with a built in figurative “ticking clock,” to keep the audience invested. The sublime is when you get what the movie is and, like in Eephus, realize once the experience has begun, there’s no payoff, because it’s one of those rare movies that don’t operate like that. Or I mean, it doesn't bait you to wait for the payoff at the end. Maybe think like that dude said in Heat, "for me the action is the juice." Like Cassavettes, or Altman, or Jarmusch movies.
     Here’s where I hope I’m not overdoing the metaphors but: the baseball game in Eephus feels like an independent movie. The players aren’t there ‘cause they care about each other, or care about winning or losing, or money, or any other sort of gain from it. They’re there because like us, something in them realizes it only exists because they’re there for it to. 
     That’s why no fans in the bleachers, or corporate advertising, or any capitalist mechanisms are present. When that food truck shows up, the one old dude in the stands says something about you don’t eat pizza at a ball game, you eat hot dogs. Eephus is fun. It really made me appreciate an understated beauty in tradition. And all of the players are very different in their approach. But they’re all a part of it in their own way.
     And when I use my criteria for appreciating movies (plot, character, dialogue, genre, and setting), I don’t find many movies that really manage to masterfully use setting. That field in Eephus packs so much atmosphere as soon as we get there. How many baseball fields have I been to in my life? And I don’t even play baseball. It brings a comforting familiarity with it. And what’s up with how even the players in the movie sometimes lose track of someone? Yet nothing stops the game. 
     Eephus is proof of what an independent movie can do that a commercial movie can’t. And it’s well done in the sense it doesn’t ever feel sentimental, or go for the easy tropes of say, a sports movie. I suppose the proof you’ve experienced a great indie movie is that afterwards you have felt something, thought something, or laughed, had a good time, in a modest, simple way. But it’s okay. If you have ventured off the beaten path and come away without any of that, there’s a name for that too: an art film. Unless of course it really sucks, then there's a name for that too: a low-budget movie.
 
4/16/2025 Tara Theater
Atlanta, GA

Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus

Has there even been a truly great movie released in the last 10 years? First sign there’s trouble is how long it took me to come up with an answer to this question, which ended up being I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman). Although this does tell me a lot about my taste. Ordinary, plain, flawed characters inhabiting domestic spaces charged with fear or sadness? Yet still funny at times. Or formally experimental. Like Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Alan Clarke, Hal Hartley, Todd Solondz, Lars von Trier, Claire Denis and Michael Haneke.
     I don’t think I’ll ever give up on the state of contemporary movies. I’m just really picky. And it’s one thing if a personal favorite, a great movie, holds up over time. It’s another when you come back to a movie you enjoyed and over time you find it to prove itself to be even better.
     In the 90s I’d seen Todd Solondz’s first few films on vhs. But I was living in Portland, OR at the time it came out and saw Palindromes (2004, Todd Solondz) at the Fox Tower theater. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it since. So when I saw a new 4K restoration was screening in my neighborhood I wondered what it’d be like to see it after all this time in a theater again.
 

Palindromes is an abortion-pedophile comedy. Its protagonist is a child named AVIVA, who’s portrayed by several different actresses. But there’s nothing cringe about it. Its tone vacillates between tender, sad, shock, jawdropping, and hilarious. 

     Seeing the new restoration on a big screen for the first time I noticed right away that it’s shot on 16mm. I never noticed that before in all my years. It wasn't until later in life that I was able to recognize the difference between 16 and 35 projected. Something else I noticed for the first time: almost all of the actresses playing Aviva speak in a wispy babytalk withdrawn kinda way. I guess it's fitting because if this movie’s about anything, it’s children. 

 
I can’t believe I’d never wondered if the structure of Palindromes is a palindrome. Duh of course it is. I mean I don’t think it’s overt. Okay it’s made up of 8 chapters, right? Chapter 1 “Dawn,” and Chapter 8 “Mark,” each have a moment where Aviva asks if she’ll end up like Dawn Wiener; in “Dawn,” we hear Dawn Wiener killed herself because (according to Missy Wiener) she was pregnant from a date rape, and in “Mark,” we find Mark Wiener has been recently accused (according to Missy Wiener) of being a child molester.
 
In Chapter 2 “Judah” Aviva wants a baby (not love) and offers herself sexually to some dude, and in Chapter 7 “Bob” Aviva falls in love with some dude and offers to have sex (not to get pregnant) with him.
 
In Chapter 3 “Henry” Aviva’s forced to get an abortion, and pro-life protesters yell at her. Also in this segment Aviva’s mom warns her against having the child because of risks children of young mothers very often face: “What if it’s deformed? If it’s missing a leg or an arm or a nose or an eye? If it’s brain damaged or mentally retarded?” In Chapter 6 “Mama Sunshine” Aviva boards in the house of a pro-life Christian family, where there’s a scene with Peter Paul who prays for all of the unborn babies in heaven “even the ones that aren’t wrapped in plastic bags; even the ones that were strangled, suffocated, drowned, or incinerated; even the ones whose bodies were pulled apart limb by limb and cut off, eyes plucked out; even the ones who had no fingers or toes, missing ears or noses, no brain or heart.”
 
In Chapter 4 “Henrietta” Aviva runs away and hides in the back of a semi as a stowaway. In Chapter 5 “Huckleberry” Aviva runs away and drifts down the river in a boat.
 
I remember at the time it was first released I’d picked up on how it was the first Solondz film that didn’t have one of those surreal fantasy scenes, y’know (everyone loves Dawn, Maplewood mass shooter in the park, Scooby on Conan). But Palindromes instead has this kind of children’s story aesthetic thing going on throughout, with the lullaby, and pastel hued chapter cards.
     Palindromes also could be the first Solondz film to feature a scene with his philosophical dialogues. And who better but Mark Wiener to deliver them? It’s that scene at the end when Mark gives his speech about genes and randomness. That’s what sticks with me. That counterpoint. At one point in his speech, Mark mentions the “depressed type,” and the “mindless happy type.” Aren’t these 2 the only types found in all of Todd Solondz’s films? But in Palindromes, it’s clearly Aviva who’s the mindless happy type. And when depressed nihilistic Mark says: “You might lose some weight. Your face might clear up. Get a body tan, breast enlargement, a sex change. It makes no difference. Essentially, from in front, from behind, whether you’re 13 or 50, you’ll always be the same.” And I don’t need to put it into words, but in the “Huckleberry” chapter, times having changed quite a bit, when I saw that little boy actor playing Aviva, it meant a little more this time.
 
4/13/2025 Plaza Theatre
Atlanta, GA

This town ain't got no hat-size no how

The key to interpreting Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973, Sam Peckinpah) is the line of dialogue spoken by Garrett: “This country’s gettin’ old and I plan to grow old with it.” I mean duh. But what makes the film so compelling is how the Garrett character embodies, let’s say this mythical restructuring shift depiction of America growing up; and that in doing so, it seems he’s encumbered with the sole task of getting rid of the Kid; yet throughout the entire course of the narrative Garrett does everything he can to prolong its completion. Because Garrett’s got morals. And he knows once he goes through with it, he’ll lose that part of himself. But he goes through with it anyway. And it’s at that final decisive moment that he suddenly realizes he loses all of himself.
     Garrett’s conflict is so profound because he thinks he’s doing what needs to be done according to the law. Although in Peckinpah’s film, the US government establishes a law that’s not about justice, but about the interests of power elites who’ve bought the control to protect their own interests—and of course there’s nothing subtle about Peckinpah’s coda crawl he wants to link this corruption to the present. And in the legend this elegy mourns, it’s of course that much more emotional with the added father-son dynamic Peckinpah imbues it with. 
     Garrett’s stubborn willful ignorance or denial about the whole thing is his fatal flaw. When he’s in Lemuel’s (Chill Wills) saloon, we see this emphasized when the proprietor confronts Garrett with this painful truth, to which an angered Garrett defensively berates Lemuel because his “eyes ain’t seen nothin’ but the bad side of news since he been in this territory,” then goes on to literally pull the wool over Lemuel’s eyes. Was this darker side of Garrett always there, or did it emerge out of necessity? And by Garrett I mean American justice. Recall the vitriol in Garrett’s spite over the capitalist motivated politicians and power wielding business men like Gov Wallace and Chisum early on.
     But James Coburn as Garrett is the best part of the movie. His moral deterioration and cool detached bitter condescension above everyone else is handled perfectly through the performance. And his blackhat costumes throughout with that cigar clenched in his jaws, as stylish as they are, and as much as they fit a stock villain, can’t make us feel like he’s the real bad guy here. Or is he? It’s metaphorical.
 
And what about Billy the Kid? In contrast to Garrett, every scene the Kid’s in he’s only ever either fucking or killing by the end of it. But in all of the Kid’s scenes, we see him smile. Billy only kills to live. Pat only kills to enforce the law. The irony is that the only time we feel a sense of justice, like they had it coming, is when Billy murders someone. 
     Notice how every time Billy sleeps with a Mexican woman, it’s sweet and tender. But once Garrett puts on the badge he treats his wife like shit. And while in the scene where Garret has sex with every prostitute in the house in that montage, although equally sweet and tender, he will later lock all six of them in that same room and then throw them in jail. These moral ambiguities allow for a more nuanced comparison. Also, when the Kid tells that dude he’s trading his brown horse for the buckskin, in that quick scene, the disappointment conveyed here really hits home that the Kid isn’t always all good. 
     I’d always felt like the Kid has a reluctance proportionate to Garrett’s. But he doesn’t. How could I have missed that for so long? The Kid is often nudged towards goin’ off to Mexico if he doesn’t want to die by staying in the US. But after the murder of Paco, the Kid vows to go after Chisum. There’s no way that can be taken as a realistic endeavor. But I’m also not sure it’s as overt as a deathdrive. Maybe the clue lies in the Kid’s outstretched Christ sacrifice arms pose he enacts both times Garrett catches him.
 
Recently I’ve been asking myself what movies really stay with me after they’re over. And that’s when I came across rediscovering Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. After watching it 4 or 5 times in the past few weeks, I’d realized that as a whole it really makes me feel that it has this tone of overwhelming inevitable loss. And I can’t get enough of it. Every death is significant.
     How could the Slim Pickens death not move you? (I only watch Peckinpah’s final preview cut, and I like seeing that scene without Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which isn’t to say I don’t think that it’s a great song.) Recently I’ve also been wondering if I tend to process movies more rationally than emotionally. So the death scene of the character played by Elisha Cook, Jr has stuck with me more and more because of the words from his soliloquy: “I’m tired. Tired of looking for yellow rocks. Tired of trying not to look at your ugly face. Tired of seein’ the land get crowded. Tired of bein’ snake-bitten, sunstruck, waiting to be killed.” Such gloom. 
     Finally, it’s PETE MAXWELL who ultimately really depression knocks me down. Pete seems to be this symbol of tradition. When Billy shows up at Pete’s place, the way Pete instantly goes into nostalgia storytelling mode, while Billy and the lady he’s with walk out on him still talking is poignant; even more so in that Pat sneaks in, and is also known by Pete, and that Pat takes advantage of that to sit and wait for the Kid to walk in and gun him down. That bond. It’s like it links them. Because they both know Pete = they both value enjoying life/enjoying the company of a good friend/a good conversation/enjoying the moment. Until it’s gone. 

A Trip to the Art Supply Store

I made you something. :) It is a draft playable one-page solo journaling RPG about shopping for art supplies. You can check it out here: https://cfcollision.itch.io/a-trip-to-the-art-supply-store.

There may be some revisions / updates coming, and it's just barely possible that this is the beginning of a larger project. (Okay, okay, cards on the table: I was working on a bigger game, with a different subject, and got stuck on a couple things, including a list of prompts and how to ... win.)

This is probably mostly @metal.txt's fault, for initially making Sweaters by Hedgehog, which was one of the first of these I ever heard of. I also had a good early experience with Wanderer, before discovering the works of Anna Blackwell, which absolutely rule. All of them, in mechanics and style, have influenced this, as has the super good 5-min-e, mostly in tone.

I've also bought and tried Miru, and fooled around with the Alone type genre, including Alone Among the Stars, a prog album cover description generation engine (complimentary), and Alone on a Map. Check out Deus Sex Machina for a maximalist approach that's mindblowingly good.

I Have a New Hobby :)

I suppose I have two new hobbies, where "new" has some relationship with "haven't really appeared on the blog yet". The first is running, about which the less said the better (if you've been in person with me since about the middle of 2022, I haven't had much to say about anything else, for which I am sorry). The second is a twist on my longstanding fixation with office supplies, including notebooks and pens, my interest in journaling, and even my experiments with drawing.

(Current Status of The Collection)

What we've got here is:

1. Unbranded Wooden Pen
   A gift from a few years back! Writes nicely, now that I finally got it cleaned properly.
2. Zebra V-301, Fine Nib
   Picked this up at a drugstore during the height of my Zebra fixation a few years ago. It doesn't write very well comfortably—it's VERY scratchy—but is fun to draw with, for some reason?
3. Lamy AL-Star, Blue, Fine Nib
   Another gift! This is really the one that got me fired up about this stuff.
4. Kaweco Sport, Red, Fine Nib
   Bought this one from Flax, a local pen shop because I needed a pen in red. Unfortunately, in person, it's very orange, but it's also a pen I truly love, that writes beautifully in my current notebook (Traveler's, because now I'm That Guy).
5. Kaweco Liliput, Brass, Medium Nib
   A gift from Noodles for my bday! A beautiful object, that writes like a dream (on almost everything), fits my hand, fits my pocket, fits my life.
6. Lamy Safari, Cherry Blossom, Extra-Fine Nib
   I bought this one, haven't inked it up yet. I love the way this one looks, and am excited to try a different size of Lamy nib one of these days.
7. TWSBI Eco, Heat, Fine Nib
   My friends Abe & Sarah gave me a gift card to the local art supply store (hi again, Flax!) and so I treated myself to another orange pen, because ... I wanted a red pen and wanted to try a TWSBI, and for some reason, they just do not make a red pen?? Come ON TWSBI, make a dang red pen! Anyway, this one is fun af, because you can see the ink sloshing around in there, and it writes nicely and feels great in the hand.

A slightly strange side effect of this hobby is that it has made me much more interested in novelty. For years, my usual preference was to find a pen a liked and just use it forever and ever. Now, though, I find myself halfway through an ink cartridge and thinking "I want to try something new".

Yes, "I want to try something new" IS code for "I bought a ton of inks too", and obviously I picked up that excellent pen tray (thanks again to Sarah and the White Elephant Sale), and some other knickknacks, geegaws, and foofaraw.

(I also made a special spreadsheet to track my pens and inks, which required me to learn about both VLOOKUP and QUERY, but, in honor of the reason I'm writing this blog post—to be impressive and cool, natch—I will hold off on describing this spreadsheet at this time.)

I'm trying to be a bit disciplined about what I have inked at any given time, because I don't want to carry THAT that many pens with me. I also haven't quite figured out how interested I am or am not in trying to do anything like pen / ink reviews. But this is where my thoughts about my hobbies get published, so here have been some of those about one of those.

2024 Year End List of Favorite Movies Seen in Theater

      

1.     Ick (2024, Joseph Kahn)
2.     Nutcrackers (2024, David Gordon Green)
3.     Gladiator II (2024, Ridley Scott)
4.     Juror #2 (2024, Clint Eastwood)
5.     I Saw the TV Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)
6.     Lisa Frankenstein (2024, Zelda Williams)
7.     Anora (2024, Sean Baker)
8.     Blitz (2024, Steve McQueen)
9.     Challengers (2024, Luca Guadagnino)
10.  The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat) 

Violence is the universal language

I’m a fanatic obsessed with every movie Ridley Scott has done since The Counselor (2013), a period which includes his (to me) highly acclaimed RED camera quad. So if you choose to read what follows, disclaimer: I’m stubbornly unqualifiable when it comes to my bias in favor of being a Ridley Scott apologist. I know Gladiator (2024, Ridley Scott) sucks (in some ways). But I will rave about it as a masterpiece nonetheless. (And I’m intentionally dropping the II because the new Gladiator is a cash grab for a younger generation of ticket buyers that you know has no qualms replacing its predecessor in the arena in cold blood.) The best form of revenge is to be nothing like the one who inflicted you is talking about this movie.
     Like Michael Bay, a Ridley Scott movie is fodder to be torn apart yet maintains a unique visual/pacing that’s impossible to mistake for anyone else. David Scarpa’s script is late Scott—the equivalent of thrash metal, all muscle all the time. Paul Mescal is less of a star presence as we might have taken Russell Crowe for, and that’s all for the better. Gladiator starts off with a coastal invasion and then delivers a steady adrenaline drip of gladiatorial blood matches up until the house lights come on. So detracting critical reviews are all the more welcome; Gladiator enjoys taking a beating more than Scorsese’s LaMotta. 
     The characters in Gladiator are shallow, and cynically underdrawn because here, it’s more efficient and what the crowds really want. Women don’t belong here. Mescal’s wife is expendable in the opening scene—who could miss the feeling as soon as she appears she’s going to be slaughtered? Same with Connie Nielsen: she’s ruthlessly employed as a concession to the studio as a callback to the source who’s sacrificially executed in front of the large crowd (both diegetic and non). Pedro Pascal’s a pussy, which makes him the antagonist. The plural protagonist in Gladiator is actually Mescal and Denzel, who despite their ideologies, earn hero status by mowing down bodies for entertainment and prey on the subjugation to power of the masses. The gates of hell are open night and day.
 
Gladiator indicts the audience’s tastes and politics more harshly than Joker: Folie á Deux and just about as accurately as Idiocracy. Ridley Scott has posited the twins’ status of aristocracy as code for all the few hundred million dollar budgeted movies being made nowadays: young, spoiled, fickle, entertainment-addicted, amoral, falsely appointed polarizing tastemakers. One can easily imagine how many hits Barbarian Bites Dog Monkey would get on youtiktaktube. Their Rome rotting is why ours is, tentpoles and review aggregators. But what fun right? 
     Denzel should have been the victor. He had the political acumen Mescal didn’t. That would have been real life. But to gain their hearts and minds ($$), we all know the studio has to instead deliver a vengeful climax. And I still can’t stop laughing when I think of the final shot. When Mescal asks his father what to do and we get that music cue and the gag me with a stick schmaltzy hand through the wheat field it’s the biggest fuck you to the audience no effort to the point of hilarious that makes me so happy about how unabashedly cynical this thing is. I can’t wait to see this again. 
 
11/18/2024 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

We cannot break the law we can only break ourselves of the law

Okay, first of all the thing about Juror #2 (2024, Clint Eastwood) is it’s got this they-don’t-make-‘em-like-this-anymore quality going for it. It’s the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. It didn’t take long for me to get into it, and once I did, I was relaxed, in no hurry for it to end, under its fuzzy calming lull.

     As courtroom drama, the genre blends well with its plot. The prosecuting attorney says something to the jurors early on like, “nobody wants to be here. That’s what makes you such ideal candidates.” Being stuck in the theater for 2 hours is very conducive to taking an active interest in this jury room. I’d forgotten what a joy it is to watch a movie that is so familiar you aren’t doing the exhaustive work in something like a say, Oppenheimer. But that isn’t to say the plot isn’t well executed, because it feeds you just enough to grow increasingly intrigued. 
     The dialogue in Juror #2 is mischievously adorned with so many double meanings you have to acknowledge it as pointing to the duality of justice. And yeah, sometimes it’s heavy handed, like when the defense attorney is in a 50/50 pointing right at Juror #2 talking about finding the guilty man who did this. But I love it. It’s my ham this Thanksgiving. 
     The theme of Juror #2 is morally complex. And it's constantly embodied by its characters; mainly the 2 couples. You’re indicted as being complicit when you ask yourself what you think of character moral dilemmas like “when you let her walk away alone in the rain at night is that how you treat someone you love?” I see 2 sides, and I don’t know. The midpoint for me is when Zoey Deutch hears “Old Quarry Rd.” That’s the point of no return. And like, what about all the awesome overt symbolism names like the accused SYTHE (as in grim reaper), prosecutor FAITH (as in believe in her to do what’s right), and JUSTIN (not quite justice but close enough). 
 
In closing, you’re with Justin because Nicholas Hoult has to be as nice and as good as he looks. And you see him struggle to do what he knows in his heart is right. And you want him and Zoey Deutch to be happy; until he makes his decision; and you realize it was never possible. When the credits roll it hits you that most people decide what justice is in their own minds, and the chills up your spine are because in reality the life or death verdicts are in the outcome of a bunch of random ordinary people who on any given day will probably succumb to their own prejudices.
 
11/18/2024 AMC Parkway Pointe 15
Atlanta, GA