🍿 If there is such a thing as a cinematic soulmate, Scott Sumner is mine. He has just published a batch of reviews that includes his best ever in each genre which all but confirmed it: both Singin' in the Rain and Mulholland Drive are there, and deservedly so. (ᔥTyler Cowen)
🍿 Barbie (2023) turned out to be I ♥︎ Huckabees (2004) with a higher budget and a feminist bent, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. Like its partner, it relies more on moods and vibes than narrative coherence, particularly in the third act which required so much mind-squinting to make sense on any level that my brain shrunk by two sizes. Still, it was better at being an existentialist comedy than Oppenheimer was at being a biopic, so pink for the win!
Miyazaki has a new movie coming out, “The Boy and the Heron”, and the teaser trailer looks like “Spirited Away” mixed with “Grave of the Fireflies”. I’m sold!
This would, of course, be Miyazaki’s third last film ever to date. Here’s hoping for many more. (ᔥwaxy.org)
Update 9/8/23: Well, that didn’t take long!
🍿The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, extended ed. (2001) deserves every superlative you can throw at it. While by no means perfect — the closing credits go on for 20 minutes yet Tom Bombadil is still missing — it is as close as anyone has gotten to perfection.
🍿 Elemental (2023) is a sweet kids' movie that has seemingly little to offer to the adults in the house. That’s a first for Pixar, but why not: our demographic has already been served this year. The message may be more complex than it lets on… I’ll leave that for a re-watch.
🍿 Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was apparently the only film adaptation that Agatha Christie liked, though she thought Albert Finney’s mustache weren’t impressive enough. It’s a good movie and a remarkable cast, but I bet she would have found David Suchet’s Hercule Poirot even better.
Watching Across the Spider-verse reminded me of a recent article panning Phil Lord for his obsessive iterations on what the animators thought were finished sequences, because “the working conditions required to produce such artistry are not sustainable”. To those who don’t mind being jackassess go the spoils.
🍿Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was the perfect sequel. I can’t imagine anyone who liked the original not being absolutely thrilled, with a twinge of sadness for never again being able to see either with fresh eyes. I look forward to the 7-hour Spider-verse viewing party whenever Part 3 comes out.
🍿 Re-watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) both for palate-cleansing after a not-so-good attempt and to set stage for the sequel.
My gosh, what an outstanding movie, never mind the nitpicks. They swung for the fences like Pixar shuld have, had they listened to Hypercritical.
Craig Mod reviews Oppenheimer:
Strauss and his kangaroo court and Oppenheimer’s philandering all become (quite frankly) sort of meaningless things in the greater context of quantum matter, in the context of splitting the atom, in the context of briefly running a nuclear reactor beneath a football field in Chicago, in the context of somewhat arbitrarily vaporizing a few hundred thousand civilians. I couldn’t but feel heartbreak that the miracle insights of our consciousness (we are the eyes of the universe looking back at itself and all that), the ingenuity of our skull-protected meat-lumps, played a distant second fiddle to (an admittedly well-acted) Downey Jr. as Strauss and his bafflingly pea-sized ego.
Could not have said it better myself, and not for a lack of trying.