“I know everything about film. I’ve seen over 240 of them.”
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2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
“A film is—or should be—more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
So said Stanley Kubrick of cinema, a quote which perfectly captures the essence of my overwhelming affinity for the director’s 1968 masterpiece. The reason I return to this film again and again is not to ponder its philosophical musings, although they are profound, nor its religious allegory, though it is transcendent,…
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Game Night 2018
The best studio comedy in years (since oh, let’s say, Forgetting Sarah Marshall?) and—it’s time I admit it—my favorite film of 2018. Shy of creating a laundry list of all of my favorite bits, there’s not much I can offer by way of "analysis" as the movie’s hilarity is self-evident, but it plays even better on a rewatch once you’ve already registered the narrative twists and can take the time to appreciate all of the little throwaway notes that play…
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Margin Call 2011
I’m a nerd when it comes to stock market history, so coming in, my intense interest in the subject matter was already baked into the cake. That said, it’s hard to see how this couldn’t play as absorbing drama even if conference room meetings about mortgage-backed securities and over-leveraged assets don’t spark your fascination. The cast is outstanding; the script wrings moral complexity out of a situation wherein one could credibly argue that everyone is a scumbag; and Chandor directs…
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God's Not Dead 2 2016
Watched this with a friend as a drinking game, and it was mildly fun to laugh at. Unlike the first one though, this isn’t really uproariously risible; it’s just plain stupid and boring. I miss the eminently campy classroom debates of Kevin Sorbo and Shane Harper.
Anyway, yeah, it sucks. Surprise.
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 2019
The fact that I, the biggest apologist for this franchise on planet Earth, have no desire to even discuss the ways in which this depressingly stupid motion picture pissed me off—let alone ever watch it again—is perhaps the most damning thing I can say about it right now. The short version: give /r/StarWars a writer credit. Rebuilding Kylo’s mask is a microcosm of the whole movie; you booed when The Last Jedi shattered the series’ familiar symbols, so they’ve been…
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Baby Driver 2017
The most fun I've had at the movies all year. So refreshing to see a studio dole out $40 million to someone with an idiosyncratic directorial voice and who actually knows how to film a car chase. I especially loved those few scenes in the first half hour where Baby is strolling irreverently through the city, with every movement or real-life event flawlessly choreographed to Bob & Earl's "Harlem Shuffle". For a moment or two, his life becomes a music video—car chases and…
