review
Project Hail Mary
Charming feel-good fun (with perhaps a bit too much goofiness coming from Gosling's character), but also constantly felt overly reminded that I was watching a Hollywood product optimized for affective impact and mass appeal.
Reviews
late night reviews and rants about film and other media
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review · Berlinale
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
While the script is rather formulaic, this had a lot of heart. Definitely enjoyed the playful "kids these days" digs throughout.
review · Berlinale
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Entertaining and pretty much what I had hoped Mickey 17 would have been, even if it's at times just a modern reimagining of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
review
The Long Walk
While the plot twists are mostly predictable, and this Mark Hamell / Stephen King joint project is also, unexpectedly, rather liberal in its understanding of contemporary politics in terms of individual evils over systems and structures, I really did enjoy this quite a bit.
review
Gladiator II
Entertaining if bloated Hollywood romp that manages to subvert enough of the tropes of the original to not make it feel like it's too much of a complete retelling, even if Ridley Scott is constantly shoving pieces of the original in our faces to the point I feel Russell Crowe should've been properly credited as lead actor.
review
Return to Seoul
Excellent performance by the lead actress in her painful depiction of a desire to belong while constantly pushing away anyone that gets close; but halfway through the film does lose its focus and I felt there was virtually no character development from that point onward.
review
Poor Things
Fundamentally a Hero's Journey reimagination of Frankenstein, Poor Things explores themes of the human condition, patriarchy, and ideology through its subversion of the overplayed 'born sexy yesterday' power fantasy trope of oversexualized, childlike women.
review · TIFF
Blue Giant
Blue Giant, an animated adaption of the eponymous graphic novel chronicling the rise of a starting Jazz musician, is a wonderful and sometimes moving love letter to Jazz, elevated by a brilliant soundtrack composed and performed by the ever so talented Uehara Hiromi.
review
The Smashing Machine
It's by no means Raging Bull or The Wrestler, but Safdie's directorial vision and Belgian composer Sinephro's soundtrack elevates what otherwise could have been another overly dramatized run-of-the-mill biopic.
review
Asteroid City
More so than than his previous films, Wes Anderson's newest film, superficially a story-within-a-story focusing on one hand on a ragtag ensemble cast in a retro scifi play, and on the other hand on that play's lead writer and its lead cast, may come over as just a handful of colorful vignettes forming a pastiche of postmodernist cinema.