Here's all the movies I've seen this year (I'm pretty sure) and what I thought about them. It's both incomplete and also not very detailed for movies I saw months ago because I wasn't taking notes. That's why there's such a length disparity between some of the reviews. I'm only including movies I saw for the first time this year, so you've got to leave a comment if you want the Morbius appreciation post. I will try to do a more detailed version for 2025, writing each piece immediately after the movie instead of at the end of the year. I'm also going to try to update this through till December with any more movies I see.
Apart from general thoughts, I'll rank each movie on three criteria with a scale of -5 to 5:
- Enjoyable - did I have a fun time watching it? -5 means it was actively torturous, 0 means I was indifferent, and 5 means it was a delight.
- Effective - was the movie good at doing what it was trying to do? -5 means I can't even tell what it was trying to do, 0 means it exists and no one can take that away from it, and 5 means that it installed exactly the emotions or thoughts it wanted to
- Recommended - would I recommend you watch this movie? -5 means avoid at all costs, 0 means maybe while you're doing something else, and 5 means watch immediately
Beware, there will be unmarked spoilers for any of these. Beware, these are unedited, inconsistent, and not aimed at any particular goal.
In no particular order:
Cabin in the Woods
Excellent movie. Maybe in my all time top five. Fascinating mediation on the relationship between the people who make horror movies and the actors within, as well as that between the writers and the characters. There's a lot of clever characterization that the actors portray really well. I especially loved the mundanity of the facility in comparison to what they did. People really can get used to any kind of horrors.
It was an interesting choice to show the force field as early as they did. It was necessary so the bike crash wouldn't feel like it came out of nowhere, but I almost feel like the bike crashing coming out of nowhere would've been more effective at showing how overpowered they are and building the subtle horror of everything around you being controlled. Unsure. There's definitely a version of this where the facility is more of a twist? Although I had some idea of it going in so I knew where it was going. Maybe if you knew nothing it would land better? Whoops, I just ruined that for you.
I thought the exploration of the nature of horror was really interesting. The facility simultaneously act as directors and audience surrogates through their casual perversion, betting pools, and general aimless bloodlust.
As an occasional horror writer, I'm not sure I fully agree with all the conclusions it comes to, although I think that its critiques are aimed more at big budget movies than indie queer short stories. The clear positioning in the metaphor is that the evil gods are us, the real audience outside the screen. We cut them off if we don't like the movie by not paying to go see. The directors are forced into a box of cliches by audience demands and can't break from those patterns, not that they want to. In a way, that's just a normal reflection on the artistic process. It's impossible to know what people will and won't connect with. Sticking to known patterns is one way to fly and thus guarantee the level of income needed to make big budget horror movies. The lack of creativity in the space comes from the size of it. If anything, this movie is a plea for more indie films.
I think there's probably space for a queer remake of this. The way the facility tries to press the protagonists into a very "normal" social dynamic is distinctly familiar as a queer person. Scarifies for the throne of capitalism and normality etc etc.
Overall a very strong, well made movie.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 4
Recommended: 4 if you're into horror, 1 if you're not
Hellraiser
This might be my all time favourite movie now. I'm going to rewatch it in a few months to really study it again and see if it holds up, but I fully expect it to. I was entranced from start to finish. I have so many thoughts about this movie.
The cinematography is excellent and delightfully dreamlike, almost positioning the whole thing as a fantasy. It begs the question if any of the movie is really happening, is really out of control, or is just part of the game. Did Frank escape the cenobites because he actually escaped or did they let him as part of his tortures? Is the taste of freedom, the hope of survival one of the pleasures they promised? Is the resounding defeat in the end, the moment when all hope dies just a part of the torture? It's hard to say, but the symmetrical opening and closing shots of the box transferring hands provoke the question.
The use of imagery, especially with regards to sex, was fun. My favourite shot in the whole movie is the duality of the Julia cheating with the sexually adventurous Frank compared with the mundanity of Julia's husband Larry moving a mattress in a way that resembles perfunctory sex. It perfectly contrasts the Frank's kink with Larry's normalcy while nailing the questions about pleasure and pain that permeate this film. Is this what Julia asked for? It's unclear.
The cenobites are incredibly effective monsters, partially for their sheer alien nature and partially for the way they're not portrayed as irredeemably evil. Rather, the way they alternate between villains and shaky allies helps make the film more tense and unclear. The eventual ending, the cenobites taking Frank back to their realm becomes obvious partway through, but the tension is maintained via the question of how the protagonist will then escape also being taken. Their deep connection to kink could be read as a criticism of kink itself, but I'm not sure I see it that way. The movie asks why we're obsessed with pain and torture with genuine curiosity. Does Frank deserve his fate? Does anyone? Why is horror always about punishment? Why is society obsessed over punishment? Given that we are, is it so weird for someone to be into pain for the sake of pain, punishment for no particular wrong?
Overall, the lack of explicit sex sits as a deliberate absence in the film. It's implied, talking about, and outright canonically happening frequently. The cenobites promise pleasure and pain and yet they're only ever shown engaging in the pain, tearing humans to shreds and stapling them back together. In that way, it asks about our society. How come violent horror movies are more accessible, more approved that pornographic imagery? How come it's okay to watch a man be ripped apart slowly, but they can't show a single penis? Further, what is the difference between sex and violence? Why do they both fascinate us? Is it their forbidden nature or is there something more? Is there space for sex as power, as a lure and means of control? The way that sex flows into violence and back again, snaking backwards and forwards as it worms into everyone's minds, underscores our needs. We are all human. We are all flesh. We are all pleasure and we are all pain.
The effects are wonderful, the gore is disgusting and appropriate, and the way it builds a mood is simply a delight. I love this movie. The funniest part of the movie was when my roommate walking in halfway through, saw what was on screen, and immediately walked out again. It turned out she'd forgotten something in her room, but it was a funny image.
Fair warning, this movie features some sexual assault adjacent imagery as part of its greater themes of pain, desire, and sexuality.
Enjoyable: 5
Effective: 5
Recommended: 5 if you're into horror, -3 if you're not
Robocop (1987)
A little slow to get going but ultimately well put together. Alternates back and forth on being pro cop, but I think it does raise some good points about the inherent violence of policing, although it undercuts them with the violence of the ending. Very pro union which is always good. I watched it with my younger brother because we wanted something kinda mindless and then I annoyed him by analyzing all these films while it was still going. Good time.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 2
Recommended: 2
Bottoms
Bottoms is a brilliant movie. It's delightfully funny and pointed. I really love the way it builds up the exaggerated violence and sexuality of football in direct contrast to the brutality of the fight club. By being a clear comedy, it occupies a space of exaggeration and unreality. This lets it directly contrast the actions of our protagonists (lesbians who start a fight club to date cheerleaders) with masculine jocks (who play sports to date cheerleaders). This is a movie with a lot to say about double standards, about the violence of sports, about the difficulties of dating in high school, about growing up, about the directional acceptability of violence. It's great.
There's a huge amount of love and dedication on display to the craft in this movie. I watched it with someone who had already seen it a handful of times, so she was able to point out that interesting things were going on in the background without any comment. The signs on the school, the activities of the jocks who aren't in the foreground, and the messages on the blackboard are all wild and hilarious. My favourite sight, which she had someone not noticed before, is the absolutely massive penis on the mascot's costume, a thing which is never in focus and no one ever draws any attention to. Bottoms is confidently comedic. It doesn't condescend to explain the jokes. It merely displays them and moves on.
I will caution that this movie can be an uncomfortable watch, partially because one of the protagonists is such an unbearable and unforgivable asshole and partially because it relies on a lot of awkward moments (particularly in the first half). Both of these are deliberate choices that I understand the reasoning for and think help the movie prove its point, but they can be hard to sit through.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 5
Recommended: 5
Five Nights at Freddy's
This is a bad movie. This is a really bad movie. I like bad movies. Normally, I find great joy in the social aspects of watching bad movies, the way it unites the room against unpleasantness, the way that coming up with your own jokes is a far more interactive activity than just watching a movie. I also derive intellectual pleasure from trying to diagnose exactly what makes a movie "bad" and further figure out the simplest possible fix to render it okay.
I found no joy in this movie. It sapped the life from our attempts to make it funny. I honestly believe the easiest way to fix it would be to start from scratch.
There is so much to say about why this movie fails on nearly every level, how it follows bland characters through a generic arc, how it misunderstands basic narrative setup and payoff, how it fails even on a basic level to be scary. I could watch a four hour video essay on this movie. I could write a four hour video essay on this movie.
Easily the most fascinating thing about this movie is that fans of Five Nights seem to like it. I've had two interactions with people who were surprised by my distaste for it. Perhaps I'm simply not in the target audience for this. I don't know nothing about the "lore". I've never played one of the games. I've never seen a Matpat video. I went in blind and maybe that was my fault.
But on the other hand, it's not just me. It got terrible reviews from anyone who wasn't a fan. When questioning what people liked about this movie, I was told that "it's just a kids movie", "it's not supposed to be scary", and "it's aimed at fans". I maintain that these aren't reasons this is secretly a good movie. These are excuses. This movie pisses me off because it's so plainly a lowest denominator cash grab. It paces through the most standard plot points because they're easy. It doesn't have anything to say beyond "this is a fandom with money". It's okay to enjoy fanservice if you're into it. But I think you can ask for more. You can ask for characters with personality, for scares that make you feel, for things to be setup and paid off, for pacing that doesn't drag, for plot points that feel natural instead of forced. Don't settle for this. You can ask for more.
Enjoyable: -5
Effective: -5
Recommended: -5 if you're not a Five Nights fan, -1 if you are (because I cannot in good conscience recommend it).
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I liked this movie. I don't know how I'd gotten this far without seeing it. The plot felt fairly standard, but I think that was okay given everything else it managed. The special effects were a delight, the comedy mostly landed, and I loved the pro transit angle. I would recommend, although I don't have a lot to say about it.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 2
Recommended: 3
Everything Everywhere All At Once
This is a brilliant magnificent movie. Visually stunning, powerful delivery, very strong emotionally. I wish I'd started writing this post at the beginning of the year so I'd have more thoughts. It's been like 8 months at this point and I can't remember too many details, possibly partially because I think I watched it while I was recovering from hospital. I'm going to try take notes every time I watch a movie next year.
But I remember really enjoying this movie. I particularly adored its use of visual metaphor, the way each dimension felt calculated to represent something about the mother and daughter's relationship. Brilliant.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 5
Recommended: 5
Nostalgia Critic's The Wall
This "movie" will make you go "what the fuck". Repeatedly. For half an hour. I am fascinated by it. Entranced by it. I want to know what drives Doug Walker's brain. I want to know what makes him tick. I want to know if he even knows anything about Pink Floyd. See, I grew up listening to Pink Floyd (one of my dad's favourite bands). I was listening to The Wall long before I had any of the context to understand what it meant and even then I understood it better than him. This is either a disaster or a psy op to earn views via rage bait. Either way, it's spectacular. You should watch it. Have vodka handy.
Enjoyable: -2
Effective: -6
Recommended: 5 if you hate yourself, -5 if you don't
Slaxx
My roommate put this on because a movie about "the pants that kill you" sounded funny. I kinda expected it to be bad filler. Instead, it was a fairly tight and effective horror movie.
The camera work and lighting was really good. They were having fun with the experience of being in a store, the way the lighting is too bright, too harsh, too unnatural, especially versus the darkness of the back rooms. The editing was tight and gave it a neat consistency. Overall, very competent.
The writing was okay. It had a few things to say about the exploitation of fashion, which it diluted a little by filtering it through the mouth of the white girl who saves everyone. There was one scene which I thought was brilliant and subtle where the Indian character is shown listening to an Indian song despite getting mad at the white girl for assumng she liked Indian music earlier. It was simultaneously effective characterization and a nice commentary of the double bind of stereotypes. They then lost it later by hammering it home when the white girl noticed the inconsistency and it went from being subtle to falling flat.
Still, the gore was effective, the scares were good, and I had a good time.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 2
Recommended: 2 if you like pants, 4 if you hate pants
Shiva Baby
My roommate had some friends over and they picked this movie. I don't think I was in the target audience for it and it's unclear if that's because I never have any interactions with my extended family or because I'm not Jewish (or perhaps for some other secret reason). I found it boring and aimless, lacking any characterization or tension, but the room seemed entranced. Take my opinion with a grain of salt. This movie may land for you.
Enjoyable: -3
Effective: -2
Recommended: -2 if you're like me, 2 if you're not
The Instigators
Let's continue movies that someone else picked with something my mom picked. This was a movie about a pair of guys in Boston who keep trying to move to Montreal. From the number of ex-Bostoners in Montreal I know, that seems pretty accurate to Boston. There was some stuff about crime and it was okay but a little cliche. Overall, it was solid.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 1
Recommended: 3 if you're my parents, 1 if you're not
Wolfs
This is a very pretty movie that doesn't really make sense the more you try to think about it. In a way, that's kinda okay. I think it's supposed to be presenting a window into a world that exists beyond the perspective of the protagonists. But it suffers from an incredible cliche and predictable plot that, despite the best effort of the actors, leaves it feeling a little hollow. Technically, it's marvellous. Practically, it suffers a little.
Enjoyable: 1
Effective: 3
Recommended: -1
The first half of The Final Sharknado: It's About Time
I have seen the first Sharknado and enjoyed it in a "this is bad but funny" kinda way. The idea that they made so many sequels is kinda scary but makes sense. I can see how you could have fun with them. Lean into the gore. Make them more extravagant. Embrace the chaos. Really play up how you're doing the same thing again for a joke. I even admire the pun in the title and think you should be able to do a lot with the idea of time travel and Sharknados and so on.
This movie is not that. This movie is so painfully boring. It follows a basic loop of "they time travel to a place, they meet a celebrity guest star, they drop some lore connected to the previous movies, they find some way to blow up a tornado" but without any energy or life. We gave up halfway through it was so boring. Don't make our mistake. Watch something else.
Enjoyable: -5
Effective: -5
Recommended: -4 if you're sober, 5 if you're incredibly drunk and too busy making out with a hot queer to pay attention
Twilight
Me and my roommate had a running gag where we watched all of the Twilight movies except for the first one. We also watched them wildly out of order. But all good things had to come to an end, so we finally finished the set by watching the first one for Halloween. My opinion of it is similar to my opinion of the second one. There's some neat cinematography and acting held back by serious weaknesses in the dialogue and plot. I can see why it might captivate someone younger, but I can also understand why it is so criticized. It's not bad, but I wouldn't say it's especially good either.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 1
Recommended: 1
The Amityville Horror (1979)
I was kinda skeptical going into this one. Half of the reviews said it was a flop but the other half claimed it was an essential entry into the "haunted house" genre. I lean far more towards the first camp, but think the reasons for the divide are interesting.
Particularly, I think this movie is held back by a very strong reliance on a fundamentalist Christian understanding of the world. It was trying to coast on thematic elements that I just lack the cultural context for. The haunting elements felt insufficiently explain, disjointed, and unconnected. It gave the movie a very muddled feel, especially with the frankly underwhelming climax. But, of course, thast's frequently a problem with supposedly true stories. Real life rarely delivers a satisfying climax. "They all moved out and did nothing to solve the problem" is a perfectly reasonable response in reality but unsatisfying for a movie. The attempt to inject drama via forgetting the dog was more comedic than anything for how transparently obvious a ploy it was. Like, I'm sorry, but you can get a new dog! Don't go back into the murder house! You idiot!
Stephen King apparently complimented this movie for displaying the financial anxiety of homeowners. My generation will likely never be homeowners, so that too went over my head. I think I would've liked it more if they leaned into that even harder and had an actual reflection on the costs of giving up the house in the climax instead of just like, driving off into the night.
I will shoutout this movie for having actors who actually look human. When the protagonist took his shirt off, I was struck by how much he looks like my dad. Everyone Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny remains as relevant as ever. The family scenes at the start had more romance, desire, and life than most movies I see today and that's worth celebrating.
Enjoyable: -1
Effective: -2
Recommended: -1
Saltburn
This is a gorgeous movie. I'm in love with everything about its visual style. The set dressing, the lighting, and especially the editing all combine perfectly. The way it flicks back and forth across time, mixing scenes to perfectly hold an emotion in the air. It's a technical marvel, it's gone on my list of movies that deserve a detailed rewatch, and I love it for that at minimum.
I do think my first watch was somewhat tainted by my insistence on predicting the future. I came up with a guess at the twist about half way through and enjoyed the way more and more foreshadowing piled on supporting my theory. I was so excited for the reveal, so delighted by how well they'd built it up. It was intricate and delightful and they went with a way weaker and worse twist than the one I came up with (spoilers: the twist they used is that Oliver planned it the whole time. The twist I thought they were building towards is that Oliver was one of Felix's previous summer flings back for revenge after being dropped, possible having killed and replaced the real Oliver as part of the scheme). Because of that, I did spend the latter half of my watch convinced it was a lot cleverer than it was.
Despite that, I think the movie had a lot of interesting things to say. I love a good plot about fucked up little guys, the interplay of love and hate, and especially how rejection turns to violence. There's been a seemingly recent genre of movie I don't have a name for but can only describe as "look how fucked up rich people are" (Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, Knives Out, etc). In many ways, Saltburn feels like a direct response to this. It dresses itself in their clothes but instead carries the devastating point that we're all just as fucked up. The key difference between rich people and normal people isn't the degree of fuckedness but the ability to act on it.
For the record, I watched this movie with my parents. Bathtub scene and all. And you know what? I will defend the bathtub scene to the death as rife with symbolism, essential for Oliver's queercoding, and absolutely vital for driving his characterization shift in the second half. It wasn't part of his deception and thus the clearest view we ever get into Oliver's head. Sadly, I had to avoid defending it when my parents critiqued because I didn't want to explain the definition of a "rimjob". I'm considering writing a full blog post with those thoughts after doing a rewatch, so stay tuned.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 5
Recommended: 4
Twisters
Twisters is a movie that tries to simultaneously deliver a disaster movie about people who chase tornados and a cutesy romantic comedy. Unfortunately, these two goals work out to be diametrically opposed. It's nearly impossible to take the romance plot seriously when the sheer destructive power and loss of life from extreme weather is on full display and the time dedicated to attempting to build a romance saps from what should have been giving the cast interesting and memorable personalities.
There are a lot of the pieces of an excellent movie here and sadly they're all jumbled around and messy. The point of view character spends half the movie characterless so that her backstory can be a big twist learned about at the same the man she's falling in love with does. But this leaves the movie feeling rudderless and aimless. The scene in the barn was good. It was the first time she felt like an honest character and it should've been at the start of the film to hook us in. There's an excellent speech in the middle about the mysterious chemistry of tornadoes and it is a crime it wasn't put at the end of the movie, maybe after their first kiss, over a montage of their relationship to that point. If you want us to invest, there has to be stakes. Either show how she loved tornados and had that ripped way from her by tragedy to show her overcoming her traumas or show how lonely and unfulfilled she is. Overall, it's a fairly cheesy romance disaster film. I can't say I recommend it.
Enjoyable: -1
Effective: -3
Recommended: -3
I Saw The TV Glow
I did not like this movie. Unusually for a movie I didn't like, it's hard to say why. I like to analyze films I don't like, to ask myself why they made the choices they made and what other choices could've been made. Fascinatingly, I understand and agree with every choice this film makes (bar one minor quibble). And yet, the whole fails to deliver for me. It makes it difficult to talk about.
The one thing I think the movie did objectively wrong is end about 10-15 minutes later than it should've. The ending was full of "oh I'm pretty sure they're about to cut to credits" moments, which is never a good sign. I'm half convinced there were several points they were considering ending on in the original script and they just left them all in. The one I think was strongest by a huge margin was a shot of him sweeping up the movie theatre after a film and the screen behind him showed a "Thanks for watching" message. It would've nicely undercut the breaking down of boundaries of fiction and reality, made the audience more invested, and helped build out the mundanity of his life. Instead, it drags out but goes nowhere, repeating the ideas already hammered home during the climax but going nowhere new with them.
Really, the pacing is off all throughout and it's hard to say why. The first half is outright boring, and while this feels like a deliberate choice to show how the protagonist feels, it somehow fails to land properly for me. After thinking about it for a while, I think the issue isn't one of pacing but one of tension. There is no weight to anything that happens in the first half of the movie. There is no risk of anything going wrong, no point where a character has to make a choice, nothing to indicate what is to be gained. But the second half of the movie doesn't work without the first half and that's the core of the problem.
The protagonist isn't a character. Again, this is deliberate, to talk about what it's like to live a fake life. They do this very effectively. But, as a consequence, watching him feels tedious. He has little screen presence and doesn't really command anything. I don't think it's a coincidence that the times I was most captivated was when the girl was on screen. She felt like a character with personality and desires. I have a theory that blank slate characters land really well for anyone who can identify with them. Thus, I think anyone whose transition feels very similar to the protagonists would be very moved by this film. Mine was not and so I find it hard to identify with as not enough is put into making him into someone.
In some ways, it feels like a student film that was given slightly too much money and runtime. I think there's a really strong 60-80 minute film in there waiting to be cut out. There's a lot of clever subtle filmmaking going on and none of it is wrong per-say, but the whole doesn't land for me. It might for you. It's hard to say.
I will add that it was downright cowardly to not have the same actors portraying them in and out of the tv, but that's just petty to be honest.
Enjoyable: -3
Effective: 4
Recommended: 1
Elemental
This movie was a little cliche but decent. It falls very much into the category of "someone invented a new animation technology and wants to show it off" but the animations were very pretty so that isn't a complaint. While simple and predictable, it had a lot of hard. No major complaints.
Enjoyable: 2
Effective: 2
Recommended: 2
Casablanca
This movie was weird! It was like they kept taking a bunch of famous quotes and tried to weave a story around them.
Okay, jokes aside, I can see why this movie is considered so historically important. It doesn't really have any flaws. The characterizations are solid, the plot is engaging, the dialogue is witty, the acting is great, and once you understand that it's World War II propaganda, everything makes sense. It's entirely designed to convince moderates to fight nazis by appealing not to righteousness but to friendship and money. And you know what? That's fine. I don't like nazis.
I don't have anything to say about this movie that hasn't, I suspect, been said a billion times before. You should watch it if you haven't and you like old movies.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: 5
Recommended: 4
Free Birds
This is the movie where they go back in time to get turkey off the menu and no one can ever take that away from it. Despite releasing in 2013, it really has an early 2000s energy to the animation and not in a good way. Don't watch this movie for anything other than the bit and maybe not ever that. It's bad.
Enjoyable: -3
Effective: -4
Recommended: -3
The Brood
I wanted to start going through Cronenberg's canon recently but got forestalled by difficulty locating most of them without resorting to aggressive amounts of piracy (while I'm not morally opposed to piracy, the extra step it creates frequently causes me to go for an easier option instead). After getting annoying by Prime having Scanners II but not Scanners, I wound up settling in for this and enjoyed it immensely.
Not knowing anything about it really helped as I went into it unsure if it would be purely psychological horror or move into the murderous body horror Cronenberg is known for. All I'm going to say is that it delivered masterfully and I loved the way it looked at divorce, rage, the pathologization of emotion, and the way psychology can be used to oppress. I'm not convinced all these themes were intended but they're there anyway. This was a great very tense horror movie and a treat for Toronto fans. It also continues a fine tradition of Roger Ebert hating all the movies I like.
Enjoyable: 5
Effective: 3
Recommended: 3
The Simpsons Movie
I don't remember very much about this movie. I was quite drunk. I think it had about the same experience as watching an equivalent length of Simpsons episodes from the same era, so on that level it cannot be called a failure.
Enjoyable: 2
Effective: 2
Recommended: 1
Dune 2
Now this is an excellent movie. David Lynch's take is one of my favourite films, so I was skeptical going in. As well, I thought the first part was a bit average, enjoyable but forgettable. However, Villeneuve delivers in every way. This is a gorgeous well put together film. The cinematography, costuming, and set design especially is art. The script is well written, the characters feel alive, and it permeates with a lot of the themes the book was trying to get across.
There's a couple things missing. Dune is a massive book and any attempt to bring it to screen has to cut things. I think a lot of Jessica's depth was dropped and the environmental themes of the novel weren't quite as strong as I'd have liked. Despite that, this remains an excellent movie and I'm very excited to see the finale of the trilogy.
While I was watching the first one again with my family shortly before this released, their cat sat on my lap. We all thought she was fast asleep until the exact frame the dessert mouse appeared, at which point she was instantly on the coffee table, alert and pawing at the screen. She didn't get to see Dune 2 because we watched it in cinemas, but I think she would've enjoyed the mouse scenes in this movie too.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 4
Recommended: 3
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
This movie is to musician biopic epics as Weird Al's music is to other people's music. At least, I assume so. I haven't seen any of the epics it's parodying. But much like Al's music, that doesn't actually matter. It stands up on its own, an accordion solo proving to be the one thing that was missing all along. This is a joyful alive movie. Excellent work.
Enjoyable: 5
Effective: 3
Recommended: 3
Inside Out 2
Perhaps aimed at a younger audience than I am, I still enjoyed this movie immensely. It was a very well put together coming of age story that at once felt relatable and personable. I don't have any big thoughts about it. It was just good.
Shoutout to The Linda Lindas for getting a song here. They rock and their new album kicks ass.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 3
Recommended: 3
Transformers (1986)
Out of all the movies I've seen this year, Transformers (1986) ranked the second highest for making me ask "am I currently on drugs?" while watching. This film is insane from start to finish. It's packed full of life and character, backed by a bizarre and seemingly inappropriate soundtrack, confusing and muddled plot, and joy and despair in equal measure. It builds on the cartoon and toys in ways that make it unwatchable without that, failing to properly introduce the dozens of characters it uses and failing to properly establish much about the new characters apart from their cool designs and strange quirks. The voice cast is strangely talented and the soundtrack is wild but enjoyable.
Is it good? Who is to say? It feels like peering into an alternate universe that you barely understand and maybe that's enough.
Enjoyable: 3
Effective: -1
Recommended: -1
Lawnmower Man
Out of all the movies I've seen this year, Lawnmower Man ranked the highest for making me ask "am I currently on drugs?" while watching. To bolster that point, almost everyone else in the room when I watched it was on drugs and kept asking me to confirm that their understanding of the film was correct and it wasn't the weed/alcohol clouding their minds.
This is a film whose moral is "if you participate in a government program to train chimps to kill, you shouldn't then apply the same program to humans". I don't think there's anything more to say on it. It's a wild ride. Sit back and enjoy it.
Enjoyable: 5
Effective: 1
Recommended: 3
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
Now, I was not expecting this to be a particularly good movie. This is not a movie you go to for a masterpiece of cinematography, scriptwriting, or even acting. This is a movie whose main appeal is watching huge monster smash buildings and sometimes even each other. While we can talk big about what Godzilla stands for, and there are still some works willing to explore him as a metaphor for nuclear war or climate change, the monsterverse has made it pretty clear it doesn't care about those things. And you know, that's basically fine. Not everything has to be big. Sometimes you just want to see monsters smash things. The last movie in this series, Godzilla vs Kong, was fun because it focused on the good things, although it sidetracked a little too much into the human characters and fell into that classical versus cliche of refusing to deliver a satisfying final battle. Instead it introduced a third opponent so the two could really team up. Also it casually gave way to the hollow earth theory in a twist that honestly just made me laugh and was riddled with plot holes.
Despite all that potential, Godzilla X Kong does not deliver. It feels empty and hollow, much like the hollow earth turns out to be with the reveal of a second secret deeper layer. A "hollower earther", if you will. The cinematography is weaker than usual. Distant shots feel wrong slightly. The weaknesses in Godzilla's character model are on full display here. What makes for an effective and scary creature as the villain, shown mostly from a distance or in darkness, looks awful by daylight. It lacks emotion or expression. The animation in particular is just bad. It looks bad. There is at least one instance of monster feet clipping through the ground, Kong's sometimes jerks, and there's at least one shot with incredibly poorly corrected fisheye. This is a movie whose main appeal is supposed to be looking fun.
The action scenes feel almost lazy and tensionless. It's unclear and muddled. The plot is so full of holes it's almost an abuse to call it a plot. They've made the fundamental mistake of trying to build Godzilla as a good thing, as an ally to humanity. Godzilla doesn't work that way. He cannot be ever a wholly unalloyed positive. To do so completely defeats the purpose.
I had a good time watching this movie and laughed my head off repeatedly. I'm curious to see what they do next given they seem to have written themselves into a pretty strong corner. Watch it with a strong drink and an inactive brain if you dare.
Enjoyable: 1
Effective: -4
Recommended: -1
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I have so many thoughts about this movie. It delivered on most of what I expected. The cinematography is as gorgeous as I remember from Fury Road. Chris Hemsworth is having a great time hamming it up as the villain. It mediates on a number of interesting philosophies. They were doing incredible work with the soundtrack, keeping it carefully silent where more cowardly directors would've played music, just so that when they finally hit you with it you really feel it. The characters are unique and distinct, the apocalypse feels logical and consistent enough to work, and the action scenes are fun and dynamic.
But mostly, it made me just wish I'd rewatched Fury Road, which is still one of my all time favourite movies. I think this movie revealed a lot of the weaknesses with that style.
Fury Road gained a lot of ground from its mostly silent protagonists. They didn't communicate much about who they were directly, which both provided a captivating air of mystery and a brilliant source of tension. It meant the action never got bogged down and gave the movie a believable weight. It trusted the audience to fill the gaps themselves and we did. The movie made sense and that's all it had to do.
Here, the method works far less well due to having fewer protagonists whose goals are outright stated to intersect more. Further, Furiosa's absolute powerlessness for the first half of the movie, while effectively portrayed, feels very bleak and meaningless, sapping the energy from it. The decompressed time period lets it really wallow in the bleakness of the apocalypse unlike the adrenaline fuelled Fury Road. It lacks a lot of the big action scenes that made Fury Road so fun, having fewer and more drawn out fight scenes. Writing a good prequel is really hard. Knowing that Furiosa cannot escape at any point, that she will always come to be working for Joe lest the Fury Road timeline break, saps the movie of a lot of tension. The question is not how the road will end. It's how much suffering she will suffer along the way. The answer is a lot, perhaps too much to enjoy. It feels more aimless than Fury Road, more of an incoherent anger instead of a directed criticism towards fascism and masculinity. Dementus is an effective and perhaps terrifying stand in for Trump and yet the metaphor feels uncomfortable.
I recommend it, but only cautiously. It's dark. It does not have a happy ending and maybe that's just not the kind of movie I need these days.
Enjoyable: -1
Effective: 4
Recommended: 2
Midnight in Paris
I don't have a lot to say about this movie apart from that it was fun. It was very clever. I really liked the way they took a simple concept and then iterated on it in logical ways towards the end. A lot of interesting reflections on the writing process that made me feel inspired. I recommend it.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 4
Recommended: 3
The Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare
As expected for a Guy Ritchie, this is a fun movie full of fun choreography and snappy dialogue. The fight scenes are great, the characters are full of life, the scheme is appropriately outrageous, and I'm always a fun of punching nazis. My only critique is that, like many adaptations of true stories, it lacks a proper climax. Life just doesn't arrange itself that way. "They get away with the scheme without a significant hitch" just tends to happen more often in reality and despite some attempts to dramatize the ending, the last half hour of the movie feels slightly anticlimactic. Despite that, it's still a solid ride and I recommend it.
Enjoyable: 4
Effective: 3
Recommended: 3
The Fast and the Furious
I honestly have no idea what grabbed people about this movie enough to turn it into a franchise. The protagonist feels like the most bland white guy ever, the plot is just bizarre, and there's multiple holes (why do they rob trucks in the most inconveniently Mad Max way ever? why did the asian crew have a warehouse full of non-stolen tvs? Why did that kid see the protagonist lose his car in a race and think "oh that's a good idea, I should do that too!"?)
If I had to guess, this movie appeals to men who like sexualized women and cars. Possibly the blank slate protagonist helps here too, giving them someone to identify with. Maybe this is a movie for white guys who have nothing going for them but are convinced they'd be great at drag racing if they ever tried it. I wouldn't know.
My brother wants me to watch the rest with him. If I do, I'll let you know how they go. Hopefully they get more cool car stunts. That would sucker me in.
Enjoyable: 1
Effective: -1
Recommended: -2 if you're normal, 5 if you're a boring white guy who has nothing going for you but are convinced you'd be great at drag racing if you ever tried it
Conclusion
I don't know why I thought I'd end on a better film that Lawnmower Man. Oh well. Sometimes you are the man who mows the lawn and sometimes the man mows you. That's life, you know?
That's it for this time! Let me know if you found this interesting and I could start to make a habit of it.
Today's link of the day is No Wheels Racing, a fun and very clever indie video game.