by ·Comments Off on Ballerina (2025, Len Wiseman)

John Wick spinoff from the writer of Army of the Dead and director of Die Hard 5, oh boy, this is even worse than part three. Tried to half-watch this, which worked fine during the opening backstory, then it turns into a gang war that’s also a dystopian cult thing with not a couple minutes rest between each CG-assisted fight scene. Lotta fighting with hammers at first, then she escalates to an audacious grenade battle in an armory and a flamethrower finale. I didn’t believe a single thing that happened for a second, so the revenge aspect doesn’t register, but eventually Ana de Armas shoots Gabriel Byrne while he’s monologuing, and the guy from Blade lives, which are good outcomes. Only great shot was when Ana whacked a would-be assassin with a TV remote, each blow summoning a different classic action scene on the background TV.

de Armas vs. Buster Keaton:

by ·Comments Off on The Golden Spurtle (2025, Constantine Costi)

Good-natured and well-presented doc about a Scottish competition to make the best bowl of oats. Watched with K, who uses more ingredients than are permitted by competition rules to consistently make better bowls of oats than any of the ones in the movie.

by ·Comments Off on Magellan (2025, Lav Diaz)

A daring thing to say in January but I’ll be surprised if we see a better pig sacrifice scene all year. Justin Chang compared this to Zama, but I dunno. This was less phantasmagorical, more of a bio/history pic than I wanted, and sitting up front at the digital screening felt like “TV in public.” Still some undeniable imagery here (with Serra’s DP, looking like Pacifiction) and Gael entering his Viggo era.

Lav in Slate:

It’s just one film for me—one whole thing. This is a continuing discourse. It’s all dealing with the suffering of other people, and not just particularly [that of] the Philippines.
…
I studied cinema as well, all the theories and everything. It’s very distracting, but it helps with discourse. Before you go into the process of filmmaking. It helps when you talk about the rigidness of Antonioni, the spirituality of Tarkovsky, and the humanism of Ozu. You mix all those perspectives and then just destroy them.

by ·Comments Off on Björk: Cornucopia (2025, Isold Uggadottir)

A ton of cool stuff here, absurd costumes and masks, a large variety of setups: scrims and screens, organics meet computer graphics – every song is the most bananas shit you’ve ever seen. Not my favorite arrangements of Bjork songs (woodwinds and beats) but I melted at “Hidden Place” a cappella with a whole school of choir kids. Icelandic film director capturing stage production by the great Lucrecia Martel.

Other arguably non-movies watched lately: Aparna Nancherla Hopeful Potato, and Demi Adejuyigbe Is Going to Do One Backflip, both excellent.

by ·Comments Off on Mistress Dispeller (2024, Elizabeth Lo)

For our final movie of 2025, K wanted to watch a better doc than Predators and… we didn’t quite manage. Good badminton scenes, at least. Wife hires a consultant/confidante/spy who finds excuses to get alone time with husband and his mistress in order to (successfully) talk them out of their relationship.

by ·Comments Off on Predators (2025, David Osit)

We love when a documentary immerses us in a world of scumbags and creeps then offers no comforting answers, don’t we folks?

Mike D’Angelo:

Less enthused about Osit’s personal angle, largely because expecting a meaningful, peace-imbuing response to “Help me understand” seems painfully naïve … and the climactic Hansen interview’s kind of a bust, for more or less the same reason that Errol Morris got little of genuine interest from Donald Rumsfeld — his quarry came well-armed with practiced soundbites, and Hansen’s far better than Rumsfeld at making them sound sincere. (Maybe they even are, a little.)

by ·Comments Off on Wake Up Dead Man (2025, Rian Johnson)

Priest Josh Brolin, Gardener Thomas Haden Church, and Doctor Jeremy Renner conspire with Glenn Close to perform a miracle, but she kills them all, confounding disheveled priest Josh O’Connor until our guy Blanc figures it all out.

The bar with a hell theme has a Ricky Jay poster:

by ·Comments Off on Pinocchio (2022, del Toro & Gustafson)

After Don’t Look Now and The Church, I’m on edge when there’s an artist on scaffolding in a movie. Pinocchio (the puppet) is a real horror, created in a drunken rage. Fascists insist that P go to school, but carnie Christoph Waltz wants to kidnap him into the circus instead.

When you are being puppeted by a monkey:

The technical “perfection” doesn’t work in the movie’s favor – it doesn’t look handmade, but composited. Feels like the voices are on one plane, visuals on another, and they are not in unison. At least Waltz (who cannot pronounce Italian names) is having a flamboyantly good time. And have I mentioned it’s a musical for children?

Have I mentioned Pinocchio is Jesus Christ:

When you meet Dragon Cate Blanchett in the afterlife:

–
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964, Larry Roemer)

I had never seen this before, at least not in living memory. Mildly distressing to discover it has better songs, better voice acting, and better stop-motion than the Guillermo. Nobody ever talks about the team’s follow-up, a James Cagney Smokey the Bear movie.