Dir. Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Starring Josh Brolin, Zoe Saldana, Robert Downey, Jr. For about six months now I’ve been casually watching these MCU movies, typically watching a couple at a time and then leaving them alone for a couple weeks. Infinity War was part of a double feature with Thor: Ragnarok for me, a movie which I’d… Read More Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Gene Hackman, Liv Ullmann, Eileen Heckart There’s nothing inherently weird about the idea of a disaster movie where the first three-quarters of it have nothing to do with the disaster itself. The reason Titanic turned into this enormous phenomenon was not really… Read More San Francisco (1936) and Zandy’s Bride (1974)
Dir. Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, Michael Keaton At the time I’m writing this, I have seen seventeen MCU movies; the first half of this sentence gives me heartburn. For the most part, those movies are like going to a fast casual joint. Even if you order the wackiest cheesecake off the menu… Read More Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Dir. Josh Boone. Starring Blu Hunt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams This one has such a tortured production history that it’s basically a Terry Gilliam movie. Goodness knows there’s something genuinely interesting about taking The New Mutants, which featured some of the most jawdropping art of any mainstream comic book I can name, and which features teenagers… Read More The New Mutants (2020)
Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo. Starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford I wasn’t going to talk about Three Days of the Condor, but a little poking around and it turns out that the people who wrote the movie wanted to talk about Three Days of the Condor, so let’s talk about Three Days of the Condor. At the… Read More Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Dir. David Fincher. Starring Gary Oldman, Sam Troughton, Tom Pelphrey Thank God it finally happened. It took until he was near sixty years old to get to this point, but there is no longer any way for us to understand David Fincher as a cool director. There’s a subspecies of movie guy for whom I… Read More Mank (2020)
Dir. Ben Wheatley. Starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas Few scenes have stayed with me so viscerally as one from A Field in England where, playing out in monstrous slow-motion, a scholar with his mind ravaged by some magical power emerges as a diving rod, eyes wild, tongue out, rope affixed to him. It… Read More Rebecca (2020)
Dir. Taika Waititi. Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson From this Hollywood Reporter article listing some trivia about Jojo Rabbit after its Best Picture nomination, here’s Taika Waititi talking about what inspired him to make the picture: I wanted to tell a story about kids witnessing the behavior of grown-ups—especially during times of conflict and war—because I’ve… Read More Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Dir. Aaron Sorkin. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Mark Rylance Spoilers for this recent release, but as ever for movies based off historical events, Wikipedia exists, so… I read seven or eight reviews of this movie before I had a chance to see it, but very few of them get further into David Dellinger… Read More The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Dir. Max Barbakow. Starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons Seeing as this is a recent release, and I genuinely think you’re more likely to enjoy this one if you don’t know much about it going in, a wholehearted “spoiler alert!” So when you do a time loop movie and the action is more “romantic… Read More Palm Springs (2020)
Seeing Things Secondhand 