so rare to see a film with such intense commitment, at every level and in every craft, to such a bewildering vision. shoutout to warren beatty for making a movie about how being in love with two women is totally fine
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Roundhay Garden Scene 1888
so glad i got to see this fully restored by the victorville film archive!
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Scream VI 2023
after finding scream 5 pretty much worthless i was pretty confident this one wouldn't be much better. i was very wrong! this is handily the best sequel besides 4. i've said in the past that scream movies are best when they lean into being mysteries more than horror films and while this is a great example of that principle (so many terrific misdirects from the opening scene on and a payoff that made me shriek) it's also really good at…
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023
if you put up the armrest between 2 recliners in dolby theaters and you curl up in the fetal position you can actually nap pretty comfortably
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Ballet 1995
in model, wiseman cheekily mocked the falseness of talking-head-centric documentary film. so in the first half of ballet (which resembles model structurally quite a bit) i was surprised that he leaned so heavily on interviews with people. disappointing. also, i just don't think i find ballet interesting enough for the rehearsal scenes to be very compelling for me. there's some great stuff here though. the scene halfway through of a theater manager absolutely reading someone the riot act over the…
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Actors 2021
the premise here, of a cis actor pretending to transition for clout, is obviously pretty fraught but has genuine satirical potential in the right hands. those hands do not belong to betsey brown and peter vack, whose clumsy filmmaking and lazy provocations amount to something that struggles to even rise to the level of offensive. the real problem is that this kind of satire has to be based in some level of reality, and the idea that peter's career prospects…
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She Said 2022
there's nothing technically wrong here but it just kind of shouldn't be a movie. the film really struggles with how uninteresting it is to watch reporters do normal, diligent work while meeting little dramatic resistance beyond "i don't want to talk..............okay never mind i will." credit to the film for not trying too hard to spice things up i guess, but there's little being added here to the raw reported material. you might as well just listen to the audiobook…