The History of Concrete
it's delightful, because it's mostly a film about noticing things, and then fixating on them to the point of transcendence. it's funny, it's charming, it looks at the world through a very familiar lens, one that picks up on the inherent contradictions of reality.
would see it again, honestly, because the links between things are so tangled.

nic cage in true detective is such a good choice. when i told the spouse about it he responded "i thought he was already in true detective" but no, he was thinking of Bad Lieutenant.

my current game obsession is BaBa is You. it's a very clever and mildly infuriating variation on the crate pusher, with really adorable graphics and truly annoying logic puzzles. i gave myself the task this year of getting better at Sokoban-style puzzles, since i assign them to my students and am often embarassingly bad at solving them. this is definitely working to close that gap. https://www.hempuli.com/baba/

I started the Mike Flanagan Carrie series and I've already devoured 4.5 episodes. it's very good. and, Matthew Lillard.

The Devil Bat - fully absurd Bela Lugosi vehicle, the kind of late 30s/early 40s monster movie that is enjoyable enough while watching and disappears from memory as soon as it's done. neat old footage of flying foxes, though

The Incomer
if you are a seeing movies in theaters person, see this in the theater. it is modern folklore and folklore should be experienced with other folk. it is sweet and funny and sad and eerie in turns, and so deeply believes in good things for its characters. the casting and acting is superb, it's shot beautifully, it sounds fantastic.

Camp Miasma
I know people loved it. i didn't. it was technically proficient enough but didn't blow my mind. it felt like one long meme, with no space to understand the film if you don't get the reference. why was it so funny to the audience that they kept buying candy? i don't know. i like the cast fine. but it felt cold. the sex was stiff, the horror nonexistent. the joke about the filmmaker character over-intellectualizing was definitely made manifest.

stumbled across Mayday last night in my pirate horde and decided why not, i don't hate Ryan Reynolds, he's one of the less objectionable Ryans.

It was funny, maybe moreso because of my childhood obsession with Top Gun, and Kenneth Branagh was clearly having a lot of fun which I don't think he does very often.

this is the kind of thing i would have seen in a theater when I just needed some time in a dark room with ac. streaming has really cost us the goofball matinee popcorn flick

perhaps i should disclaimer that i have Herzog tattooed on my leg? the man's work is always weird and wonderful to me

i rewatched Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans for the first time.in years, in anticipation of a new Herzog narrative film coming soon. his narrative work is always so, so strange. it follows a narrative but also chases down visually poetic sidebars for no real reason beyond Werner wanted to.
Nic Cage is at peak Cage in this, and it's prime Eva Mendes Hot Girl stuff, but I really wish Val Kilmer was better utilized

Resident Evil: Snappy and fun, like a video game adaptation should be. Selfishly, I am glad we've decided that Raccoon City is in Colorado. Maybe this reboot will work, it feels less clunky than previous ones and Cregger knows how to use humor and horror together in a way that Johannes Roberts absolutely does not. This clocked in at exactly 90 minutes, told a solid chunk of expo plot while setting up a next chapter properly, and let our protagonist be both hilarious and mostly bumblingly inept.

The End of Oak Street:
This was genuinely enjoyable in the all-star summer 80s movie sort of way. It's like if The 'Burbs and Jurassic Park had a baby. Fun, quick, a little mean, a little sweet. Lessons are learned. The dog doesn't die.

there is a chance, I think, that Dominic Sessa will get stuck in playing the mopey insufferable shithead for a while, because he has resting mopey insufferable shithead face. but he does it well, so there's that.

i've adored Antonio Banderas for forever, for since the first time I saw 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down', and this is a film that really lets him show his skills as an actor and doesn't simply rely on his status as international sexy spaniard. and Leo Woodall is going to be great, i am sure of it.

Tony -
I was very worried that I would hate this movie, because I love Bourdain and I hate biopics. but i saw it anyhow, and i am glad i did. it's cast impeccably, shot greasily, and while it glosses over some of the history of an egotistical late-teens shithead who much later became a beloved cultural icon it does not sugarcoat him too much. it makes a couple more jokes about bildungsroman than it needs to but it is, in fact, a very good one.

(i am just going backwards through the movies i have seen recently, while also adding in things as i see them fresh)

Coyote Vs. Acme:
All the praise is well deserved. Roger Rabbit levels of craftsmanship in the integrating of live action and animation, the world feels lived in and real, Will Forte is as always an excellent coward, Lana Condor is a perfect foil to his sad sack. The whole thing is a breath of fresh air, something familiar but reimagined without sucking all the life and playfulness out of it. And, if you don't love Martha Kelly, you're just wrong.

I won't spoil it, because it's so good and surprisingly gutting in the way his mature work always manages to be if you watch closely. But the amount of work put in to such a delicate, abstract piece is hard to fully comprehend in one go. It's required six watches to feel like I can say anything about it beyond "oh".

Don Hertzfeldt's Paper Trail is breathtaking in several ways (all of his work is, honestly, I am perhaps deeply biased on this as I am an animation fan and he is one of my favorite living artists). People who only know him for his early slapsticky stick figures like Rejected and Billy's Balloon are missing out, in a profound way, and I will consider blocking you if you respond to this with anything about bananas or spoons.

He pulled off something so deceptively simple with this latest piece.

the human actors were fantastic. truly excellent, really loved all of the desperation and bumbling and ferocity.

the cgi felt like watching a commercial for Unity.

give me puppets or give me nothing. please.