2025 Year End List of Favorite Movies Seen in a Theater

1.  The Chronology of Water (2025, Kristen Stewart)
2.  Eddington (2025, Ari Aster)
3.  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025, Mary Bronstein)
4.  Cloud (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5.  After the Hunt (2025, Luca Guadagnino)
6.  The Code (2024, Eugene Kotlyarenko)
7.  One Battle After Another (2025, Paul Thomas Anderson)
8.  The Phoenician Scheme (2025, Wes Anderson)
9.  Where to Land (2025, Hal Hartley)

10. Videoheaven (2025, Alex Ross Perry)

Memories are stories so you better come up with a good one

You want a film to burn into your cortex. You want to cry. You want to find meaning in it. Subtext. Something old said in a new way. Or something entirely its own new thing.
 

The Chronology of Water (2025, Kristen Stewart) is an edgy vital sexy personal kaleidoscopic stream of consciousness rough visceral expansive innovative reinvention of the language of cinema. It’s immediate. It lives for the moment. It’s a collage of memories. And after it’s over they stick with you.
     Shot on 16mm 4:3 without masking—the vignetting of the negative requisite for K Stew’s raw nothing to hide punk manifesto. Imogen Poots is out there. Her character drinking fucking puking fighting bleeding loving and swimming. The sound design free foraging through silence cacophony and sludge turn the work into what used to make MTV videos as exciting as they were in an ancient past cut up into fragments with the intimacy of home movie reels.
     Matching frames jump cutting from day to night. With a character disappearing and reappearing. Repetition advancing us into a scene before we get there and back again and there again. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Everything else seems so formal constrained status quo let’s be careful there’s not a single frame the audience might not know understand or comprehend exactly what’s happening every single second in service of a plot driven narrative with increasingly difficult obstacles story beats act breaks midpoint conflict and resolution automaton lifeless product.
     Forgoing story. Forgoing explanation. Forgoing plot. Imogen Poots at the pool bleeding is what you get instead. And if you care. If you process the feeling. The gut punch knock down drowning in empathy femininity bringing you back to life force of its content The Chronology of Water is at once intimate inspired impressive and inimitable. Seriously it pounds pulsates and postulates rage. 
     Everything from the source K Stew strips away is a choice. I think we get chapter breaks for I. II. and V. So yeah she leaves out chapters III. And IV. of Yuknavitch’s memoir and clues us in that there’s missing pieces which only emphasizes the film’s aesthetic—fragment formations. I’ve never walked out of a theater with such vivid memories. Instead of making a memorable film we get a film made up of memories. What a bold direct let’s cut to the heart choice. K Stew gets it.

     Except Kristen Stewart was an actress since she was a kid and she takes this filmmaker thing pretty seriously which makes me ask why would anyone cast Kim Gordon? Especially K Stew? Can't she discern? Ever since Last Days (2005, Gus Van Sant) I've thought she's the most wooden performance ever. The worst. I guess because she's cool in real life? So cool it doesn't matter that her acting is terrible? Oh and does the dad have to be so cliche serial killer looking? A bit obvious coding. I mean I get it it's whatever.

    
10/31/2025 Trustees Theater
Savannah, GA

Lifeless romanticism

Can you even begin to imagine if man were capable of bringing a rotting lifeless lump to life? I can’t either because Guillermo del Toro sure couldn’t. Frankenstein (2025, del Toro) is a remake no one asked for dull trite adaptation with yet another daddy issues backstory and adds new characters that add nothing to the story why? To pad its run time? To help modern audiences find one of the oldest most enduring classic easiest to read not even that long of a novel written by an eighteen year old girl’s story easier to comprehend? Because striving impossibly to please his dead father explains Victor Frankenstein better? 

     Around midway through the movie Victor goes to a battlefield to scavenge cadavers for his reanimation experiment when he remarks to his assistant to only be concerned with looking for taller specimens because “larger limbs are easier to work with.” Bigger is not always better. That sums up del Toro’s problem—throwing a lavish budget full of stupid CG effects two and a half hours long into a prestige pic unnecessarily on source material already brilliantly handled in 1990 by no less than Frank Henelotter and Tim Burton respectively. 
     But the worst is the moralizing. The Elordi Creature is this altruistic peaceful zen compassionate empath who befriends rats and even has a scene where he’s bonding with Bambi when some hunters show up and gun him down. That’s del Toro’s other problem. Queerbaiting. He paints evil heteronormative coded villains against other coded as The Elordi Creature says “the way of the world it will hunt you and kill you just for being the way you are” heroes. But it’s all so watered down generic one wonders at the mind that would think even a child needs to be taught it’s wrong to hate a sweet kind friendly generous charismatic innocent person for being themselves. Fomenting the cult of oppression. If it were woven into the subtext it’d be rad. Might even be beautiful. But not this way. Not as desperately contrived underdeveloped as it is here.
     Mia Goth plays a nun who’s been in a convent her whole life and is engaged to be married only a week after entering the outside world then encounters The Elordi Creature chained up in the basement unable to articulate any semblance of language and she instantly falls madly in love with him. Because del Toro’s trying to sell this star-crossed beautiful movie star teen romance between a virgin saint and a martyr who’s persecuted for being smartquotes different is too vague to mean anything. Del Toro doesn’t even bother to take the time to establish any chemistry between them. Nor that society can’t accept The Elordi Creature’s otherness. Just because some random hunters freaked out and shot at him doesn’t mean the world hates him and denies his right to exist. But that’s what this movie wants. What it expects us to believe. So sure. Why not?
     Also in del Toros’ version The Elordi Creature has superhero powers and saves everyone and doesn’t regret anything and goes on to fall in love and save the world because everyone deserves to be themselves and in doing so are humanity’s only hope. Okay yes reading identity politics into movies is annoying I promise not to do it anymore except this one time. The moral of the story then is probably I’m the real monster. 
 
10/24/2025 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Atlanta, GA

Emergency cinema

So me I’m a middle aged white male. A demographic that’s excluded from the our voices need to be heard or our stories must be told category of movies. I hate the whole notion of that. I’m more of a if you have what it takes make your movie. I decide what movies I’m going to like before I watch them. And it has nothing to do with the race sex gender or age of the person making it. 

     I don’t seek out queer black or female as subjects. But when I see a film that I get something out of and it also makes me feel like I’ve gained a newfound insight empathy affinity understanding shock surprise laugh scare tear or story from someone that just so happens to be because of an aspect signifier of their identity in a way I can access it means a little more because it’s not merely artifice. Truth is a slippery word to throw around when talking about film. I tend to avoid it. In life too. 
     Obviously there are films I’ve watched by people who check different boxes than myself that doesn’t have anything to do with the films they make. Sometimes they do sometimes they don’t. Cool. But it’s a balance. I can’t even think of that many off the top of my head. Films that are vital cinematically while also containing an element of representation that neither detracts from nor becomes the reason for its being. I could see how that might sound harshly selfish. Hey I go to the movies for the experience I get out of it not to be charitable.
     If that was all incomprehensible tedious garble what I’m trying to say is Mary Bronstein is a woman who makes movies about women and I enjoy love applaud stan worship her style of filmmaking. I’d seen Yeast (2008, Mary Bronstein) a few times and could’ve sworn or forgotten or given up the hope that we’d ever get to see a follow up by her. Until now.

 
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025, Bronstein) is a Rose Byrne vehicle mumblecore thriller character delve of a narrative that sweeps you up you’re drowning in its brilliance never knowing where its taking you and if you can ever manage every once in a while to come up for air for a moment ceasing to be distracted by how amazing Rose Byrne’s performance is you might remember this is what offbeat indie filmmaking promised before you forgot about it. 
     It reminded me of why I once long ago became smitten enraptured embraced with the woman’s picture. Most men can only make films that express feelings like this is what it cost me to get what I wanted. But women can make films that you walk in their shoes and they show you make you feel this is what it’s like being me and it’s not easy and I’m trying and I’m vulnerable and I’m not perfect and I want someone to love me and someone to listen to me and someone to tell me what to do how to do what do I do mother wife therapist I need help you need help I want to help I do help I’ll do better I’m doing my best here I’ve given so much of my love and I’m failing I know but I won’t give up.
     Sorry things got a little cathartic in there. Mary Bronstein is a real one. She’s tough. Her characters provoke insight instigate castigate wreak havoc. Misanthropes. Gen-X ne’er-do-wells. Ah the beauty in such. It’s a character driven motor that speeds us along. And I hate movies that make you feel like they’re just trying to go as far as they can to put their protagonist through torture how much can they take but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not that. I never felt like it was more than I could take. It felt like LINDA’S (Byrne) stumbling was expressionistic. Stylized for emotional undertone not gratuitous substitute for dramatic structure. 
     Slightly not quite reality also achieved through this crisis culture. Therapy culture. The cool blue building calm offices with therapists treating therapists treating patients. Emergency culture. Everything’s an emergency. Notice how often that word is used. Especially followed by this isn’t an emergency. (In contrast to Linda’s daugher’s room at home red for aggravating.) A theme I’m whittling might be like society as a bunch of self-centered nuisances trying to live together although not really liking each other or wanting to so blaming but underneath it all just wanting to make it work. 
 
Cinematic flourish aptitude for Bronstein only depicting the daughter and husband as disembodied voices. And the daughter is in like the whole thing. God I love that kid. Her panicking. Her fear. Her hyper. Her desperate need for a hamster to love her so she can control it and make it do tricks for her.
     Also almost the whole entire movie is shot on a long lens. My guess is a 75mm. Close-ups of Rose Byrne literally ninety-nine percent of the film. Intense. Felt like I was watching a Cassavetes movie if I didn’t think Cassavetes’ movies were so lame. Also literally the first time I’ve seen Ivy Wolk in a movie where the quality of her personality style of attitude schtick wasn’t lost in translation. She’s rowdy perfect for Mary Bronstein. 
     There’s no way for me to know or care how much or if If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is autobiographical but I feel like the Linda character brought more life genuine effect of following a human being along a story that wasn’t manipulative uninspired calculated compromised lifeless dull Academy Award prediction Rose Byrne Actress in a Leading Role.
 
10/23/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

In memoriam Woody Allen

It began in my early 20s. Deciding who my favorite director was. Anticipating the question to come along throughout the rest of my life. I chose Woody Allen. And committed. Like a loyal sports fan never to waver. And I never have. Never will.

In the context of modern cinema I’d almost forgotten about Woody Allen. Accepted that we won’t see another film from him for the rest of our lives. That is until earlier this evening. After the Hunt (2025, Luca Guadagnino) doesn’t directly address the subject of either the life of nor the films of Woody Allen. Yet their presence underlies its subject matter.
     Set amongst the faculty and students of an Ivy League campus—it happened at Yale—wealthy people in affluent spaces adorned with intellectual dialogue After the Hunt opens with the unmistakable condensed Windsor typeface opening credits that Allen used for all of his films. But more importantly I see the film as an allegory of the #metoo witch hunt via a power struggle between that angry little mob of culture police it created and yeah the films of Woody Allen.
     Needless to say as a reminder the journalist credited for exposing Weinstein and starting the #metoo movement is Yale alumnus Ronan Farrow or uh Woody Allen’s son. Oh and as a bonus capper Amazon is distributing this as in the same Amazon that canceled Allen amidst a four picture deal they had with him during the height of #metoo.
 
Okay but seriously about the film itself. I feel like MAGGIE (Ayo Edebiri) is meant to get under our skin. And she’s perfect. Her youthful vibrancy. Her excruciating youthfulness. Her nervous awkward stubbornly accusatory shallow ambitious entitled setting of traps to persecute and ridicule culture writ large for her own confused haphazard meaningless agenda. The way we see through her phony impulsive convictions is to know the fear of the threat of its authenticity its power while being baited to also at the same time indulge our contempt of the vitriol which it bestows in kind. It’s cyclical. Mutually aggressive.
     ALMA (Julia Roberts) represents the films of the artist of the man of the idea of Woody Allen. I’m going to avoid spoilers. But I don’t really care to bother with this reading anyway because I doubt anyone will agree with me about it. But I can say After the Hunt digs into the topic of a person’s privacy and the conflicting standards within society attempting to morally judge aspects of compromising behaviors that not only are unable to have a clear resolution but also aren’t necessarily anyone else’s business; much less society as a whole; much less a matter for strangers to decide upon. But of course they do. And what of those affected most by this?
      I’m talking about themes in the film. What do I care about society’s morals? Like it matters. Like I give a shit. But in a dark theater yes I feel like that angry little mob are mocked for our own—or some of us—to deride as entertainment. Should I be ashamed or afraid to admit that? Because I am. Although in my own defense I feel like myself including everything I live for stand for if I can’t laugh at it. At them. Or at me. Something’s wrong. But think about how in After the Hunt direct reverses are used.
     When Alma is confronted by HANK (Andrew Garfield) and he looks into the lens he’s talking to society. Then when Alma confronts Maggie it’s another direct reverse shot. And Alma’s looking into the lens. She’s condemning society. This movie has a message. This movie has a voice. It takes sides. Why not? Above all the horror of it all really gets to me. And the unsettling piano cues underscoring deliberate scenes heightens it all the more. I think we all should know what’s right and wrong morally after it’s all said and done. There are tragic victims of assault. No one condones that. But what happens when allegations are unfounded? It’s a tough question. And it leads to worse. But I’ll leave that to your speculation imagination.
 
10/15/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The Battle of Baktan Cross

That was the best movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Felt like it anyway. Back when I was still a teenager chronologically replacing Tarantino my favorite director became PTA mainly due to seeing Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) five times in the theater. Although his last three films all took time for me to warm up to. Especially Licorice Pizza. But I just saw Licorice Pizza again a few days ago in 70mm blowup at my neighborhood theater and I got a lot more out of it. Particularly the way these two young people are trying so hard to be older or more sophisticated or confident or accomplished in competition with each other. The way their flaws aggravate each other. His newest film took me back to that sense of instant recognition of greatness.

     Coincidentally both Tarantino and Anderson remain two of the few directors who have held out and continue to shoot on film. They're also two of the only directors in the world who have written all of their own screenplays and make big budget Hollywood studio pictures. Both have made roughly the same amount of films (9-10). Most of the movies they've both made have been set in L.A. And the same actor has starred in each of their last films: Leonardo DiCaprio.

As One Battle After Another (2025, Anderson) began (man I love getting to see a film play in a theater with no ads or trailers) I was enraptured shocked amazed that it was so unbelievably good. For the first ninety minutes I lost all sense of time. First the political content. Zeitgeist as fuck. Okay not really anything to do with politics. Except the stuff that incites people to passionate outrage—which let’s be honest that’s all most Americans really care about am I right? The immigration issue. Raids. Mexicans. White supremacist secret societies fighting for racial purity. Undisclosed locations. 

     It’s the kinetic energy PTA designs that figuratively and literally keep everyone on the run. And the threat of danger is palpable. It taps into that real life paranoia of the possibility of secret government agendas targeting you. Or cops. Or you know like they could be capable of. Also my entire life I feel like I’ve only ever encountered that former revolutionary trope countless of times like the Dude being boomer burnouts who claim to have been involved in all these radical groups in the 60s but you kind of take it as tall tales or even completely exaggerated ineffectual fraud. In One Battle After Another by updating the former revolutionary thing to a more contemporary setting and showing how serious about it they all really were is part of how the film deals with such real stakes. What happened to revolutionaries? My hunch is we stopped using that word ever since 9/11 because President George W. Bush replaced it with terrorist.
     Another trope so overused (I realize that’s redundant) is going after a man’s daughter being the center of the conflict in a huge action movie. But this time around PTA makes it work. Fresh enough spin. Heartfelt. Pathos. I was on the edge of my seat feeling like I’d never seen a movie this good and how does PTA know how to write an action movie this well since he’s never made one before until around the ninety minute mark it popped into my head that okay this is finally after all just a dad getting his daughter back plot. And you know there’s no way in this film anything will prevent that. But alas? I could hardly hold that against it or say it in anyway diminishes its grandeur.
     Seems like it’s also catering to a modern (youth) audience with its potsmoking black women loving not too bright hero played by an A lister icon like Leo. Good for us. The car chases are maybe the best part of the movie. After suffering from Marvel fight choreography rot I had recently been thinking how they may have ruined fights but I still love a good car chase. Heck I even rewatched Transformers Age of Extinction (2014, Michael Bay) just last week just for the car chase scenes. And I won’t bother to lookup the special ops government guy who interrogates characters trying to find Bob Ferguson and his daughter but his dialogue and casting also felt like a fresh take on something we’ve seen so many times before. Probably best movie of the year.
 
9/24/2025 Plaza Theatre
Atlanta, GA
70mm

Gentrifishcation

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) is a pop slasher astroturfing shill for the therapy industry. But it’s really about boobs. 

     I Know What You Did Last Summer is bookended on two consecutive Fourth of July holidays, and is set in a coastal town, released in theaters the same summer as the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg). If that connection sounds like an overreach, trust me I felt it. Crowdpleaser horror. And the night exterior scene on Reaper’s Curve uses the fireworks in its sound design as suspenseful jumpscare adjacent like that Chinese kid in Boogie Nights. Also during that scene the muscle prep dude playing chicken with traffic because he smoked a joint is so very teenager.
     Reaper’s Curve for the first time got me thinking of The Fisherman as like the grim reaper. But that’s wrong. The Fisherman is trauma manifested in a corporeal vessel. And to indulge my cheesiest of impulses I’d like to think of the harbor town of Southport, NC as a place where the teens-twentysomethings harbor their overwhelming guilt. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a subgenre I would coin as Dawson’s Creek horror. It’s about privileged pretty WASPy kids. The group is composed of half altruistic ambitious hardworking kids and the other half spoiled nepo jerks. Good mix.
     But this reboot adds a new dimension: resentment-based class conflict. Throw in some divorces, break-ups, and wealth envy and the ammo is there for them all to blame and attack each other. Skewer some church and state. Also new (or a desperate attempt to seem to be) is throwing in Gabbriette as a sexy it girl—so basically playing herself. Toss in some quasi dangerous sex and kinkbaiting and the genre formula is complete. For the first half of the movie DANICA only wears bikini tops, and her boobs aren’t gratuitous because its franchise requisite. The TEDDY actor seeming to be doing a Channing Tatum impersonation had me puzzled initially but I just went with it. 
     Visually my favorite touch is the red bath bomb. And there’s a certain aftermath that’s strung up in a way you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say all that and the town hall meeting have got me back to thinking this has gotta be some kind of intentional Jaws homage. I thought this movie was great. Slick, fun, teen soapy, effectively designed Hyannis giallo.
     But sometimes it lays things on a little too on the nose. Like second screen pandering. And there’s a suggestive line at the end about a character surviving, which you think means potential return in a sequel. Then someone says it outright, spoonfeeding it for the audience. And then yet again the same exposition is an apparatus for a mid-credits sequence way too shoving advertising the sequel down our throats. Also I really wish they could’ve got Sarah Gellar back for this. Minor complaints that don’t detract for how much I seriously love this.
 
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA

A narrative about framing narratives

Eddington (2025, Ari Aster) is a crime thriller comedy that satirizes how 2022 was a new lowpoint for how stupid Americans are; also, it’s an unsettling male crisis slowburn psychological cautionary horror about social media. Its tone is a slow, quiet, sustained disintegration in a desert small Anytown, U.S.A.

     The first hour or so roughly lays the groundwork for this memorial of the inane hive mentality of Americans for us to laugh at. Looking back at all Covid brought with it like facemasks, 6 feet apart distancing, nasal swabs, reduced-capacity public spaces, is just the start. The rift of conflicting values, politics, convictions, and character assassinations is too scary and true to be funny, which makes it even funnier. When this all starts to coalesce I am conditioned to even laugh at Black Lives Matter protests, zoom meetings with 2 out of 8 people that have their pronouns as part of their screen identification, and conspiracy theorists. It all happened so gradual but so quick. It was such a drastic phase and it’s interesting to see the power of cinema to organize it all into an experience to soak in for a couple of hours traveling through this terrain of emotional national identity recognition. 
     The message of Eddington is that America is very online and behind and in-between all the social media, real news, fake news, and politics, people use people and causes whenever it’s convenient. And if they can get away with it they will. Online Darwinism rewards self-interest. And anyone can rise to the top of the foodchain if they have a wifi connection.
     Something I find effective about the plot is how the BRIAN kid fakes his way into sounding like he’s a political activist to impress the SARAH girl, but when she’s no longer available, not only does he seem to preserve his budding awareness, but he doesn’t seem to care too much that he lost his chances with her. It’s a subtle but very integral touch to show some of these young adults with more on their mind than crushes and hookups. Also the way they have this sense of rebellion for gathering in public to drink some beers during quarantine is ridiculous but so very truthful to the culture of the time. 
     My favorite gag is this bit where there’s this unhoused mentally ill denizen screaming at an Amazon Prime sprinter van stopped at a crosswalk angrily honking at him. If I had to pick one scene to define the zeitgeist that’s it. That’s real life. The feeling Eddington left me with reminds me of what Ariana Grande says after she licks that donut: “I fucking hate America. I hate Americans.” But if I can see a movie like this and laugh this much life is good.
 
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

Probably less a Superman review more about how hot Sara Sampaio is and a rambling freeform rant about the movie itself

The following comments may be biased due to this reviewer’s view of comic book movies. I’ve seen every Marvel and DC movie, some in the theater, and I think of them at best as fun little diversions. With one exception, The Suicide Squad (2021, James Gunn). And the reason none of the other superhero movies really do anything for me is because if I’m going to get excited about a movie it’s because it either moves me to tears or at the very least warm fuzzy goosebumps; or gets me to think about cinematic form in a way I never had before (plot, character, dialogue, genre, setting).

     The Suicide Squad makes me cry when Ratcatcher II flashes back that memory of her father and Harly dives with the javelin and the music underscoring it. But I also cry at, and what sticks with me more than anything else in that movie is, Starro the Conqueror’s dying words: “I was happy floating staring at the stars.” The bad guys are the heroes because they kill a bad guy who’s worse; but when they do, James Gunn gives it dignity, and the pathos wherein I empathize with that kaiju feeling bad for it being kidnapped from outerspace by Nazi scientists makes that movie better than I think any other comic book movie for me ever could be. Okay I could go on so much longer about The Suicide Squad but this is about a different James Gunn movie.
 

In Superman (2025, James Gunn) the JIMMY OLSEN-EVE TESCHMACHER story arc frustrated me because I was trying to figure out why a chick that hot who’s dating a super rich powerful asshole is so desperate for some kid who works at a paper and he doesn’t want her. He actually finds her somewhere between repulsive or obnoxious. He has her contact saved as Mutant Toes because he once told her her bare feet look like someone spilled a shrimp cocktail on the ground—great line. I do love that Portuguese Victoria’s Secret supermodel Sara Sampaio is cast as Eve Teschmacher because she’s actually hot though. I know beauty standards are subjective but a movie works a little better for me when there’s a character who’s supposed to be sexy desirable and actually is. Or is to me anyway.
     But then I realized I made the mistake of thinking of Eve Teschmacher as a person. This is a comic book movie. And James Gunn gives it the quality of resembling comic book form. Eve Teschmacher is a two-dimensional comic book bimbo who’s got a crush on Jimmy like she stepped straight out of Archie comics. (But her chronic selfietaking and how well she dresses and lives for travel all captured on her social media still makes her all the more believable in our real world.) That’s what I like best about Superman. 
     There’s a scene later when SUPERMAN is in LOIS’ apartment and outside the window the Justice Gang are fighting this thing that reminds me of Revenge of the Sith when Anakin and Palpatine are watching Squid Lake, that Superman says is an interdimensional imp. And the way Lois asks if he should be helping and Superman says they can handle it, casting it as some minor distraction not worthy of his attention further emphasizes this is Metropolis where things that don’t happen in our world happen there all the time. And happen so much sometimes it’s not even a big deal. After the screening I ran into this dude I know from work and he said the movie was something like, too much going on, disjointed. And I like that. I think it’s like our world where so much shit is going on all the time and conflicts seem to be getting bigger, more frequent, more sensationalized.
     Superman strikes this balance of comic book world and our real world. LUTHOR has this angry tirade where he’s telling Superman that he’s destroying us, while the tear spreading across Metropolis is literally going to rip the world apart and Luthor created it. He’s a hypocrite. He represents all of the bombastic fearmonger hate dealers who are constantly bemoaning what’s threatening our lives that are seen as the very same threat by the other half of the world. 
     The only thing I was disappointed about with Superman is that it felt like none of the emotion connected with me. The only part I was really struck with feeling was in the opening scene when the on screen text tells us Superman has just lost his first battle. Okay and the amazing speech at the end where he says his greatest strength is that he’s human. But the ending with his parents did nothing for me. Although in The Suicide Squad in that quick scene with Taika Waititi as Ratcatcher telling his daughter “Rats are the loneliest and most despised of all creatures my love. If they have purpose so can we all” brings me to tears every time. Maybe the difference is the Superman parents scene lacks anything for me to grasp as to what they did for him that made him who he now is. Or maybe it was because the scenes on the farm didn’t mean anything to me. I just thought they were boring.
     But anyway, at a lean slightly under 2 hours (minus end credits), the runtime and pacing of Superman are as light and frivolously free of any serious demand on our time or attention as a comic book. I love James Gunn’s universe. I love Grillo as RICK FLAG, SR. I love the PEACEMAKER cameo. I love Superman saving the squirrel. And I love the way Eve Teschmacher is like the perfect dream girl shrill voice how could that guy not be into her character. Maybe that cool detachment is what makes Jimmy so cool. And maybe there's something to say for the way Eve Teschmacher's selfies are actually what save the world. 

7/12/2025 AMC Mad Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

The phrasing of it which I don't recall doesn't matter what matters is your sincerity

The question is what happened between The French Dispatch (2021, Wes Anderson), Asteroid City (2023, Anderson) and now? Some have described these films as too Wes Anderson. I didn’t find either immediately accessible the first time I saw them in the theater, but chalked that up to me needing more viewings, more time, to recognize and appreciate them. 

     But now I don’t think it’s that at all. I think they lack anything to make me emotionally invest in their characters or stories. This even led me to question as to whether all works of those whom I would call master filmmakers did in fact possess some capacity to deliver a meaningful emotional connection and without such, are the works themselves empty? Shallow? Ultimately meaningless? 

 

The Phoenician Scheme (2025, Wes Anderson) proves that the Golden Age Hollywood era perfected comedy. In terms of depictions of sex, violence, or postmodernism, Anderson confines his aesthetic by not employing any advances to come from the past 60 years or so. He isn’t doing anything new. He’s just doing it better than anyone else.

     On my second theatrical viewing of The Phoenician Scheme, in the final scene I realized where the feeling is. It’s not that (like in The French Dispatch and Asteroid City) it doesn’t generate a means to deliver significant feeling; rather, it’s that its two central characters repress their feelings, and so in turn must the narrative. It’s as though Anderson decided for a change (in his last 3 films) not to rely on easy, overly sentimental devices. And this time it worked. The Phoenician Scheme basically uses a twist on the Paper Moon dynamic. And the common link here is in both cases neither father nor daughter give an inch of emotional real estate, thus in the end allowing us to feel what our hearts know to be true, and in a most rewarding way in that we don’t see it on screen but recognize it for ourselves, like a profound secret. And isn’t that the highest cinema can strive for?

 

But stylistically, if Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Anderson) was the first Wes Anderson movie to matter, with its adherence to x and y axis camera moves, then The French Dispatch and Asteroid City added the z axis to the rigorous exacting staging of composition. And The Phoenician Scheme keeps in line with this tradition, adding a greater emphasis on 90° pans, and utilizing open framed gags.
     And a lot of violence. This is one of my favorite openings to a movie ever. The adrenaline inducing score punctuated with the bisected administrative secretary. And into the cockpit argument awoke me from my cinematic hibernation of recent years and got me to sit back up where we belong: on the edge of my seat. And as a sidenote, the funniest moment for me is the crash at the end, realizing that’s the same pilot. 

 

In closing, I think the casting of the great Benicio Del Toro channeling a millionaire heel from some on the tip of my brain Hollywood movie from the 1940s (Brian Donlevy?) opposite the unknown playing LEISL is timeless dynamite. And the motor of the plot with the bashable rivets soaring, along with bolts, spikes, and pulverized gravel, exploding the gap for the success of the sabotage plan is mere cosmetics to keep us entertained. The real scheme is getting to enjoy ZSA-ZSA KORDA time and time again dying, and coming back from death and Liesl figuring out (though little does she know it) her path in life is to be just like him. 
 

6/8/2025 AMC Phipps 14
6/19/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA

People driving through this neighborhood like it was a racetrack

Friendship (2024, Andrew DeYoung) has this understated intensity that wonderfully adorns the diegesis with enough stuff beyond Tim Robinson’s schtick that it avoids becoming dull or too predictable. It’s maybe heightened comedy. I almost wanna use the term surreal, but I don’t like throwing that around too easily.
     It works as a comedy built around a comedian. And that’s what links it to the earliest of Hollywood’s most effective genres. But instead of merely being a Tim Robinson vehicle, Friendship can be looked at as this psychological cautionary farce about a man whose family life and career are close to perfect, but nevertheless allows his fatal flaw to get the best of him. It’s interesting to ask yourself what is this flaw of his? Do you think he’s a nut? 
     I kind of identify with Robinson’s character. To those who would say he’s got stress management issues I would say who doesn’t? His stress levels are cathartic so ours don’t have to be. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that what made Friendship work so much better than I expected it to for me is the overall tone; slightly subverting what you’d expect in original, oddly creatively satisfying ways. Pay attention to everything that happens at the phone store. Or his son’s birthday. 
     And more than anything this thing stayed with me long after watching. It reminded me of 50s Buñuel. Except Friendship, again, isn’t surreal. None of the scenes are fantasy. Or unreliable narrator illusions. Those are cop-outs. Okay, maybe there’s one. At the end. With the guys in the garage. Only more of a reason to commend the restraint and impressive blend of serious storytelling with escalating uncomfortable humor.
 
5/16/25 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

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